Embedded Files
Our final portion of the Zero series review will include various media outside the core series of the games. I divided the series into 3 parts: First Testament, Second Testament, and Apocrypha (which I again stress is a naming device solely for organization and nothing religious). Its required to read both parts before continuing, as a lot of the themes explored in the games will be repeated in this piece, as well as revisiting many characters we've seen before already.
零~Zero~ is, as one can see clearly, very dear to my heart and its universe expands greatly with every entry into its franchise. As such, I have relied on 2 very important sources for my research: the Zero Wiki and FFTranslations. The latter link will be used more extensively as it contents translations for both of the novels, which were not released outside japan with translations.
I use the term "apocrypha", for this final section in the definition of "secret" and "hidden" but not necessarily "non-canonocal". Indeed, all of the media here gives the series a unique flavor as well as expanding their use of other media to further their ideas of horror. We will organize the section by media types, and therefore will be skipping around time, so I will also mention bookends of games to keep reference (i.e. What games were out when Real Zero when it was).
The Apocrypha
Cellphone: Zero Sound & Real Zero: Another Edition
Beginning in 2002 (following the first game), Zero Sound was more like an auditory supplement, with short episodes sent to your cellphone. These were relatively short and cheap: with lengths of around 5 minutes and at the paltry sum of 200 yen each, every couple weeks, you would receive an episode that chronicled the events in Miku's life following the first game. According to the wiki, they were written by Tecmo staff and used the same tech that the games used for 3D acoustic fields. Unfortunately, released in 2002 and only available for DDI Pocket-brand cellphones, its unknown what these stories were, or even the final number. I would assume, given that Miku narrates the opening of the game, that these would have been in a similar format, but alas, we may never know (nothing on these has ever been released beyond the cellphone episodes.
Debuting in 2004, this game is flanked by the first and second games, and as such includes ghosts from both. Subscribers at 525 yen per month would hunt and photograph ghosts, collecting them as they used real photographs on users' phones. While compatible with other series phones, it was mostly promoted on the FOMA series, 900i, 901i, and 902i.
Though tiny, I think you'll get a good idea of how the game looked. Very similar to the spirit photography mode in Spirit Camera, in fact I would argue its the predecessor. Users would receive emails upon defeating a spirit that would give hints for the next ghosts or taunting messages.
Combat seemed to be very similar to the core series and Spirit Camera, with the usual aperture and charge meter, but I am not sure if there were different film types or other such limits. Obviously the graphers were limiting, but back in 2004, this was a really neat venture.
Talk of international release was speculated, and at E3, there was a booth available for people to give it a try, and would include the original 70 or so spirits from the japanese version and would add more if the game sold well. Unfortunately by 2008, there were no longer plans for the game to enter the international waters, and sadly another side game fell by the wayside (until the advent of Spirit Camera).
At the same time as REAL零: Another Edition, another great addition to the series franchise debuted, though this one would be more interactive than cellphone games….
Ride: Zero 4D
Debuting at the same time as REAL零: Another Edition in 2004, this interactive ride attraction opened in 4 different parks, though as of writing, only 1 location was still open in Tokyo (Palette Town-Odaiba; in the arcade beneath the ferris wheel). Back then the fee was about 600 yen, though the last location is a little cheaper. Viewers would follow the Amakura twins on a truncated journey through Minakami Village, animated by the same CGI team that handled the opening and trailer sequences of the second game (and as such, you'll see a lot of familiar scenes).
The story is loosely followed, based on videos available, and with a run time of less than 10 minutes, there's a lot you have to leave out.
If you've never done an interactive ride like this, allow me to explain a little.
Called an Action Theater attraction, you have a giant movie theater, and instead of seats, you sit in cars that move about with the action on the screen. I first was introduced to this type of ride at Great America, where they were showing a James Bond themed movie (previously it had been Days of Thunder). You're often given 3D glasses to see the film in a sorta 4D environment (if motion is the 4th D). Think of it as a sorta themed Star Tours ride, only with individual cars verses a whole car that seats more than 2.
The ride is one great way of advertising the game, and while its based on Akai Chou, its also vague enough for those who have never played the game to get it.
Also, the movie sequences are quite beautiful, so its worth riding for that.
On the subject of motion pictures, let's take a side tour of the various DVDs that were released for the first 2 games.
Fan Discs
Crimson Report, Fatal Frame Premium Fan Disc and History of Project ZeroThese discs were released in different years to promote the series, with Crimson Report for the second game in 2003, the Premium Fan Disc in 2004, and the History released sometime before the third game was released. These often contained scenes from the games, narration and summaries of the series, depending on which disc it was. They also were sometimes released with booklets that contained art and concepts. A little looking on youtube will produce links, and they're all very interesting to watch. With limited runs, its hard to track down copies. The little booklets are worth tracking down for the art, like this:
But then, you don't need me to tell you. I think the pics speak for themselves. XD These are also some of the few places you'll see the twins in their alternate outfits.
Guidebooks
These books, too numerous to individually go into here, were often books with information on game development, story explanations, glossaries, concept art, and interviews. Some of these interviews have been the source of research for these pieces for Zero Week, and are invaluable to understanding the series, especially the second game, with its numerous layers.
Part of some of these books also include supplemental material, such as Yuu's research into the House of Sleep (with editing from Kei Amakura), Kaname's letters to Reika, describing his absence and how he came to be studied by Dr. Asou, and the Tamashizume, which was written by both Seijiro Makabe and Ryozo Munakata. These are additionally great reads for the background of some of the stories, especially the rituals and long explanations into said rituals, and should help considerably for those still a lil foggy on many elements in the games. Hearing a lot of the development story straight from Kikuchi-san and Shibata-san is also a great read, especially when they speak about the weird supernatural things that happened during development (oh yeah, it happened).
FFTranslations is the best source for translations of them, and while many of them have not yet been translated, you'll find them great reads.
Manga: Zero~Shisei no Koe Comic Anthology and 零: Shadow Priestess
Zero~Shisei no Koe Comic Anthology
Released in 2005, after the 3rd game, this anthology included stories by popular manga artists, with stories about the game. While unofficial, it has the blessing of Tecmo, and expands on the already established universe of the 3rd game.
There are a total of 10 comics, 7 of which are more of a serious tone, and 3 of which are humorous, gag stories. Some of these stories have been scanlated, but not all. Comic anthologies outside the original creators isn't new in Japan, and by all accounts, this anthology can be considered doujinshi, which makes the variety of styles and story types varied and interesting. The themes tackled are about the same ones in the game, though some stories introduce new characters (like nurse Haruka Kuze), or expand on already established, minor ones (like the twins in Kei's dream portions, named in the anthology Musubi and Tsuzuri Osaka).
Another, hentai anthology was also released after the 4th game came out, but information on that is more slim than this one. I can assuredly assume that that anthology isn't canonized nor is it given an official blessing from Tecmo.
On the other hand, this one does….
零: Shadow Priestess
Announced in the 零 Media Mix in 2012, Kage Miko or Shadow Priestess follows the story of Sara Washizuki, heir to the Shadow Priestess mantle, whom exorcise spirits with a Camera Obscura created by one of her ancestors. Sara is brought back to the place of terrible memories when she and her architect class go on a field trip to her old elementary school, a school where she saw her best friend Kanon disappear into the school pool. Followed by a supernatural photographer and a film crew, they all become trapped in this old school, tormented by the very spirits that drove many children to insanity and death, and ultimately closed the school. Could it perhaps be due to the nearby Mount Kegare, or something much more sinister?
Now, there are those who insist a Zero work cannot be a Zero work without the eponymous camera; strong arguments against the weak theory are the aforementioned ride (the camera doesn't appear once in the ride), and this work here. Sara's camera is not part of the Camera Obscura game family, which were all products of Kunihiko Asou. Her camera actually came about when her grandmother's grandmother (I think that makes that great-great grandmother) put her feelings into this camera, making it a tool for exorcism, which happens to be one of the shadow priestess' duties. It shares its name to the game cameras only, but it performs better on the whole (Miku's was a final product and hers shattered because the Holy Mirror needed to be whole to seal Kirie away), since hers exorcises spirits very easily (a feat first seen in chapter 3, and seen later as they enter her old school). Sara also makes mention that the camera was thought to steal one's soul, a fact that feeds into, though not necessarily is the same theory into Dr. Asou's cameras (his were meant to see the supernatural, and sealing/exorcism was merely a part of his research).
The manga is being released as of writing once a week on fridays on Mangabox, but you'll be hard pressed to catch up on the previous 10 chapters, since the site only allows viewing for chapter 1 and the latest chapter. You can get around this by downloading the app, but the major drawback is the hard UI and the seeming inability to access chapters before 10 for this manga on the phone (if you have an idea, please contact me, I missed chapter 9 @_@).
So far the story is very engaging, and you'll find yourself counting off which characters might end up on the other end of the chopping block, and who or what might be contributing to the evil permeating the story. Its just enough of a Zero work for fans to enjoy it (Sara even notes that she runs on limited film), and it also appeals to people who have never played before.
We're nearly done, and we're going to end our look through the Apocrypha with the 2 novels and a passing glance at the just released film….
Novels: 零～zero～Novel Edition and 零～zero～A Curse Only Affecting Girls
零～zero～Novel Edition
Mafuyu Hinasaki is an aspiring novelist and decides to take on the novelization of a video game as a job. But his sister Miku doesn't feel right about it, and tries to warn him.
But failing to heed his warning, Mafuyu ends up being drawn into a whirlwind of curses and must use his wits and skills to help he and his sister escape this curse before it claims them both….
The first thing that this 2002 novel does that's unique is that it states its written by Mafuyu himself. In fact, Mafuyu is the main narrator of the entire story as he gets drawn into the haunted mansion and tries to rescue his sister who has not only become trapped in the mansion, but a mansion not quite in real life.
The novel came about as a germ of a story inspired by an odd bug in the game that Shibata-san encountered. Mafuyu's character began running around in circles when no one was touching the controller, taking random pictures of nothing. Unplugging the controller made it stop, but the oddity of the "bug" was like a brief glimpse into a world that is just under our own, a world that can come dangerously close to destroying our everyday life with a single breath. When discussing this with the writer of the novel, a gradual mutual feeling of this grew, and from that, this novel was made.
Its a little jarring to keep up with the viewpoint switches, but that disorientating feeling is pretty key in the discomfort that keeps you reading. The familiar fading into the unfamiliar, that ages old horror criteria of the heimlich and the unheimlich. I contend that this is why the novel is so successful.
With a few scant illustrations, this light novel is an expansion of that, [highlight for spoiler] with Mafuyu trying to save Miku when she is trapped in the video game, or rather trapped in that same pocket dimension she is, often taking her view point. Its an odd alternate story, existing in an alternate dimension from the original game. Same characters, same basic ritual, same basic story, much different results. If you're interested in reading it, the translation is here.
The first novel here was born at an early time of the series, but the next one, that was also made into a film, also takes a little of that familiar and does something different.
零～zero～A Curse Only Affecting Girls
Aya is the most beautiful girl at St. Loudun's Academy for Girls. And at this school, a sequestered and sheltered school for only girls, there's a "curse", a curse that only strikes girls. If one kisses a photo of their beloved a thousandth of a second before midnight and post yours and her photo on the wall behind the confessional, you can curse her.
Kasumi desperately wants Aya, who has been missing from school for awhile, to return her affections and starts the curse. But what happens to her isn't love returned.
Its death. And that's not the worst part of it.
Announced simultaneously with the film of the same name, written by Eiji Otsuka, both of Curse's incarnations follow the same basic plot: Michi, another student at the school teams up with Aya to figure out the source of the curse and stop it once and for all. The novel, like the first, follows different viewpoints, from Michi, to Aya, to even Risa (another student). At the very base of the novel is a story of girls, the idea of love, and the eventual womanhood they all are destined to grow into. In this cloistered setting of the academy (which is named after a notorious town in which a convent of nuns were all possessed by demons, and therefore aptly named), girls shed their black uniforms like a discarded chrysalis and become women. The headmistress compares this to death, wherein your old self dies and a new one is born. Sinister? You have no idea.
What is so lovingly handled is the delicate relationship of these girls in this all female society. Love runs the gamut from obsession to genuine platonic, to even fanatical, and above all else, its usually for someone of the same sex. And needless to say, its taboo, and has been for nearly as long as people have been falling in love. This notion of love is presented in many different ways: the love Aya's legion of fans have for her, the glass-like and delicate love Risa and Itsuki share, the love between budding friendships like Aya and Michi, the twisted love between Taruho and her brother, his longing, ghostly love for the girl in his glass coffin, to even the love between the headmistress and her doomed lover. As the movie's theme song is called, "Love Ain't Easy".
And its this notion of love, in all its different forms, that Michi learns to separate from this idolized "love" (which is also interchangeable with the word "curse" in the novel). Michi avoids contact with her peers for 2 reasons; the first is because she has a sixth sense, which ostracized her from her mother, and the second is the fact that "love" to Michi represents the adulthood she so very much hates. This may stem from her parents, where her mother resented her and her father, whom ran off to have an affair. Love=adulthood which leads to hate, a lesson Michi learnt from adults around her. To say she fears adulthood is an understatement. Michi doesn't want to become that which caused her pain.
Its when she decides to help break Aya's curse that Michi begins to grow, she begins to see that human contact isn't to be feared or shunned, and that love doesn't automatically mean an adulthood she has come to hate. That she learns how to fall in love is part of the massive tapestry of the novel, and I would argue the most important part of growing up.
Life in the academy also brings to light those terrible notions of mob rule: how so many girls in the academy don't ask questions, merely going along with the flow, and when whipped into a frenzy, can become a riot of like-minded, irrational, amorphous thing. 2 scenes exemplify this idea of joining a bandwagon with no thought to your own individuality. Without checking on rumors, asking questions to find the truth, you are nothing more than a mindless mob ready to hurt innocent people. [highlight for spoiler] The first is early in the novel where the girls are all called to discuss the missing girls. When someone thinks they've seen Aya, the whole group begins a massive collapse. But Michi, even with 1 eye covered, can see the truth: that its almost like a game, and the girls are all doing it of their own volition, racing to be the first to collapse. Its a sad example of how people, especially young girls, can fall into the trap of the mob.
The second instance is when the girls, thinking Aya responsible for the deaths, mob she and Michi, not bothering to listen to reason, only wanting to hurt and kill Aya. An excerpt:
There are people, children and adults alike, who always keep their heads down and hide themselves away behind others, who only step forward when the time comes to ridicule someone. Michi was well aware of that. This girl was one of them.
"Why do you die if you kiss her?"
The girl flinched at Michi's calm question, but immediately replied, "That's what everyone says."
Oh, this is one of those "everyone does it" times, thought Michi, remembering when "everyone" had bullied her in the past.
"That's right. If you kiss her, you die."
"If you kiss her, you die."
"If you kiss her, you die."
They all screamed it. What selfish people. The only thing they will ever live for is shouting out the same thing as everyone else and ridiculing people. The thought made Michi sad. It was so terrible that she almost felt like she couldn't trust anyone anymore. They were far worse than any ghost.
The girls' voices melded together as one. The sound reverberated in her ears, like the shriek of cicadas in the middle of summer. It sounded almost like an actual spell. The words had magical powers. The girls were all casting their own curse with words. Cruel words hurt people more than any curse. They had realised that instinctively, shouting them over and over.
Bolded words are some of the most important things to take away from the novel: this is the root of Michi's reluctance to have human contact, her reasons for hating adulthood (these habits do not change when we grow up, as we can easily see), her anger with the mob. These are lessons to keep in mind, even beyond the story. Never before has the line from Men in Black been true: "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." If you're looking for true horror, its these scenes here: the ugliness of human behavior when reason is ignored, more than the frightening curse that is striking them.
2 characters appear later in the novel, a bald man named Kuro Karatsu and Keiko Makino. These are actually characters from the author's other work "Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service". Cameos, I suppose. Its part of the little bits that make this work a little different from its game siblings.
On that note, the camera appearing in the novel is not called a Camera Obscura, but is known to be able to see spirits. The film version presents it as a TLR camera (which if you have never used one, is HARD MODE photography since your viewfinder is waist level as well as showing your scenes in reverse), and its not used to combat spirits. It is used more for viewing ghosts and tracking them, and becomes a background item more than the driving force of the story. Again, I stress, this is not outside the realm of Dr. Asou's cameras, since he built them to prove the existence of the spirit world, and this camera seems to perform this ability perfectly. This novel, the film, and ride all are parts of the franchise that lack the camera, and therefore cannot be used to discount it from the canon.In fact, being called Zero is what gives this novel form, in addition to its unique curse. The curse itself, in true narrative fashion, ends up being layers of curses, and the hard part, the climax of the novel, is to untangle them before they end up claiming more victims. While the story resolves the problem, Shibata-san's notions of that these curses never truly end is summed up so perfectly. The novel (and presumably the film) ends with the curse beginning anew and is stated it never will end from the headmistress' lover. But some girls manage to live and move on with their lives, dying then becoming reborn, the cycle of life and death ever present in Zero. And its that grace to continue living with the pain, to live on for people who could not, falls perfectly in line with the rest of the series. Do yourself a favor and give it a read. Its a page turner. Also read the after wood, which helps codify the novel as well as its adaptation to the movie, with lots of movies, films and even art that inspired the story.
Which brings us to our final point and fleeting glance to the last portion of Apocrypha….
Film: 零～Zero～Theater Edition
零～Zero～The Movie
As of writing, I haven't had the pleasure of viewing the movie, instead having to be content with the scant images from the site, the trailers released, and the overall feeling I got from the book. The novel and movie appear to have been developed together, and so I assume the story must be very similar (as evidenced by the afterword of the novel). After reading the novel, I did note that the trailer scenes match up to an extent, with some variations. Some characters have had name changes. Some scenes appear to have been played out differently (such as Aya and Michi wandering about in nightclothes, which is in a lot of the website's photos).
A single review out seems to confirm a lot of the story elements, though I disagree about some of the review itself (I don't think the trailers give everything away, and I knew the story before hand), its a decent review and the closest to having the movie until it hits DVD and possibly can be fan subbed.
The actresses chosen were perfect in these little snippets, with Aoi Morikawa as Michi and Ayami Nakajo as Aya (whom has a very sweet, exotic look to her face). Michi's cute short hair and her huge eyes make her fear that much more palpable, much in the same way Miku or Mio had. Very charming.
Plus when you have ads like this, how can you not win?
If you think this is cute, check the Second Testament for 2 ads for the 5th game, with both girls trying to play (and they're not bad!). Being models in magazines, they have a very high appeal, and as far as I could see, they had very convincing acting.
That's an ad for flavored popcorn by the way. And here's a tv spot for it:
TOO CUTE. @_@ If you wanna stay abreast of their news for the film, try the blog, which is part of the official site (and where you can join the Facebook page). Let's hope more coverage will bring this to the states (unlikely but I love to hope). There are rumors of a Hollywood Fatal Frame movie, but this remains to be seen (talks of which have been spinning since the first game).
And with that, we end our retrospective on the Zero series. Even with the bulk of the work I've done in the last 3 days, I haven't even begun scratching the surface of the games. But that's part of the series charm. We may not be able to see spirits like Shibata-san has, but we can come close from his hard work, dedication, and raw talent to get these games made. What we can learn from these games is not just a great scare, but new ways to look at the horror genre. We also come to know how to shoulder the pain of life, and show grace under pressure. That life isn't always certain. Tragedy is what tinges the best example of horror, and personal tragedy can be overcome. That these curses never truly end, only allowing some to escape, and others trapped by destiny. And that the ties that bind us all can sometimes strangle us, uplift us, bring us grief, tear us apart, or haunt us for the rest of our life.
Thanks for joining me on this long journey. Sweet dreams.
--Dio (10/15/14)
Research conducted with the Zero wiki, and FFTranslations. Images also from the Zero wiki, as well as official websites.
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