Yes, that’s right. I’m writing my first recap in two months. You are so excited you can barely handle it.
The action begins with an FMV of the rather large seaside city of Luca. We see a bunch of ships on their way to the blitzball tournament, a large, bubble-domed stadium, and a million people milling about the streets. Unfortunately, we also have to see a long, drawn out shot of Tightass excitedly staring at Luca. The sound system at the stadium is quite fantastic, seeing as how we can hear it all throughout the city. The announcer informs us that the blitzball tournament is sponsored by Yevon. That’s kind of like saying “The World Series is brought to you by Jesus Christ” (tm John).
Valley of the Penises.
Whoever was on the Tournament Balloon Design Committee had a brilliant idea. “Hey!” he or she said. “Let’s make a bunch of phallic-looking balloons!!” The rest of the committee apparently approved that idea because there are penis-shaped balloons floating all over the city. Tightass immediately feels inadequate.
The announcer has another job on the side — Exposition Man. He informs everyone that this year is Maester Mika’s fiftieth year in office. No, we don’t know who the hell Maester Mika is at this point, but he’s obviously old, even by non-RPG standards. Suddenly we’re back to normal game mode, with a bunch of people standing on the dock waiting for the players to exit the ship. The people of Spira have gotten quite creative, even with their machina prohibition, because some dude has a video camera and is filming a reporter who is, well, reporting on this very thrilling scene.
Exposition!Announcer introduces each of the teams in turn. However, he doesn’t say anything we don’t already know. That means we get to sit through all this boring info again. Let’s pretend we haven’t heard any of this before. Sometimes it’s just easier that way.
Oh, look at that. It’s the Kilika Beasts. Did you know that High Summoner Ohalland used to play for them? Me neither! Wow, that’s quite exciting. Oh, and their hometown was just attacked by Sin. Dude, that sucks! I’m sure glad I wasn’t there. The next team is the Besaid Aurochs. According to the announcers (who we now know are named “Jimma” and “Bobba” — yes, there’s two of them), the Aurochs are a really shitty team. NO! I’m shocked! Shocked, I say! Maybe that wankyass new guy on the team was hired to make the other team laugh so hard that they are unable to play. I can’t think of any other use for him. And finally, it’s the home team, the Luca Butt-Designers! I guess they’re really good and stuff (Note: I just summed up in one sentence what took about a minute for the announcers to say. Cripes.).
Now that we know all about the teams we already knew about (and don’t know any more about the teams we didn’t know about), Jimma and Bobba shut the hell up and allow us to get on with life. Tightass is all bitter because not only does everyone rip on his team, but he’s not the star player anymore. No one is asking him for his autograph or flirting with him, so he’s going to be a big whiny crybaby now. Wakka tells him that it’s the same every year and not to worry about it. But that’s not good enough for Tightass. Oh, no. It’s already been almost three minutes since he last made an ass out of himself. Statistically, it’s time for that to happen again.
The camera shifts away from Tightass for a split second, and suddenly he has a megaphone in his hand and is climbing on top of a pile of boxes (managing to steal both Cait Sith and Rinoa’s shticks). We never find out where he magically found the megaphone. I mean, in my experience, I’ve never seen an abundance of megaphones just lying about. It’s almost like Tightass has some special super power where can stretch the bounds of probability in order to find things that will help him on his quest to look like a giant wanker.
Wankaphone.
As Wakka looks on in embarrassment, Tightass screams into the megaphone, trying to look and sound all cool and menacing. “Stop right there, Goers!” he wanks in an unbelievably obnoxious way. Well, it’s Tightass, so it is believable, but still, words cannot express just how wanky he sounds. Buttson and his buddies look over, thinking, “Wow, that guy is the biggest asshole I’ve ever seen.” Everyone on the dock looks over, too, thinking the exact same thing. “You guys are smilin’ now, but not for long! ‘Cause this year, us Aurochs are taking the cup!” Tightass shrieks. And with that, he begins laughing like a wacko. Wakka covers his face in shame. I kill myself.
Only one thing can happen now: Tightass must lose the tournament. For the sake of everyone in Spira, and this world as well, he must lose.
“What in Yevon’s name were you doing up there?” Wakka demands as Yuna and the others walk over to them. Yuna is giggling because she’s a moron. Everyone else looks disgusted. Oh, except for the other Aurochs, who think that any attention is good attention. No. No, it’s not.
A second later, the random people on the dock have all forgotten Tightass and his stupid little performance. It’s kind of like when something really, really traumatic happens, and the brain can block it out — that’s what happened here. I only wish my brain would do the same, but alas, I remember. And the nightmares will never stop.
A random person announces that Maester Mika has arrived at Dock number 3, and everyone rushes to see him. Tightass doesn’t know who Mika is, and neither do we, so Lulu explains. “Maester Mika is the leader of all the peoples of Spira.” That would make him pretty darn important, then. Tightass says something stupid about Mika’s age, which prompts a rebuke from Wakka. I’m so shocked. Yuna wants to go see Mika, so they do. I want to see Tightass die, but unfortunately he doesn’t.
Maester Mika has a bigass ship with Yevon symbols all over it. Square crammed as many NPCs as possible on Dock 3, but fortunately, not too many of them have asscracks hanging out. Tightass whines about not being able to see anything, and Wakka tells him to shut the fuck up. I’m noticing a pattern here. Suddenly, a sextet of odd creatures with musical instruments (three different kinds of instruments total) starts to play a song. The song is all regal and stuff, and there are two things of note: 1) There are more than three kinds of instruments in the song, and 2) The creatures don’t even play in rhythm with what we hear. Either the game designers were very lazy, or these creatures are just like the recording artists of today — they fake it.
Eek!
The camera zooms in on the ship, where we get a lovely shot with some guy’s crotch right in the center of the picture. We don’t see his face, but we see his bare chest with its dragon tattoos. I could have lived the rest of my life without seeing that.
Then we have to see Tightass again. He’s straining to see over the two guys in front of him, even though there’s a huge space between them. One of the guys says “That’s a Guado, right?” Some chick asks, “Who could it be?” And finally, some random guy asks, “Isn’t that…Maester Seymour?” I love how it’s all like they can’t figure out who this random Guado guy is, and then it’s like “Oh yeah, that must be that other really fricking important Maester dude. I forgot.” Way to go with the shitty expostion.
Maester Seymour is the scary chest crotch shot Guado guy, and for the record, no, we don’t know what the heck a Guado is at this point. Seymour does a dramatic turn and we see that he has the stupidest hairstyle ever — it’s blue with these long ponytail-like protrusions out the side. It’s like Nomura loaded up on drugs and stuck the pen in his ass before drawing this character design.
Seymour turns and does the prayer bow to Maester Mika, who is just appearing at the top of the ramp. Yup, Mika is pretty damn old. He’s all bent over and feeble-looking. He approaches Seymour and tells him (and the assembled crowd) to rise. “I present to you the son of Maester Jyscal Guado, who departed for the Farplane a fortnight past,” Mika exposits. “As some of you already know, he has been officially ordained a maester of Yevon.”
Would you like to ride in my car, little boy?
By this point, Seymour is facing the crowd. Obviously, he’s supposed to be the hot bishounen type guy. Unfortunately, many things went horribly wrong along the way. Besides the aforementioned hairstyle and chest, he has these yucky veins all over his forehead. As if that weren’t bad enough, his voice sounds like a mix between a pedophile and Winnie the Pooh. “I am Seymour Guado. I am honored to receive the title of maester,” he says in the same tone of voice as he would say “Would you like a lollipop, little boy?” He spouts some boring stuff about how his father wanted to create friendship between man and Guado. Tightass makes a wanky noise — apparently it takes one wanker to recognize another.
As Mika and the other religious-looking guys from the boat walk off, Seymour stands there creepily, scanning the crowd for underage boys and girls. He hones in on Yuna, and the camera does this disturbing closeup on her from Seymour’s POV. She looks surprised, wondering why this 28-year-old man is checking her out — particularly when he looks so fruity. I’m thinking about how if Seymour had taken Yuna to his senior prom, she would have been in second grade.
Suddenly, Seymour turns and walks away, but not before we get a closeup on his crotch. Then there’s a closeup of Yuna’s boobs with Tightass in the background. God, how I hate you, Square. Wakka is just a little too excited about seeing the maesters, and wants the team to meet him in the locker room for a pregame huddle.
Cut to the locker room. The Aurochs all look up as Tightass walks in, and then sigh in disappointment when they see who it is. It turns out the Aurochs are waiting for Wakka to get back with the results of the match-up draws. They always end up playing against the Goers in the first game, and they’re worried the same thing will happen this year. But it won’t! Because Wakka returns at that moment, and announces that they’ll be playing the Al Bhed Psyches. If they win, they’re in the finals. Imagine that. Hmm…I wonder if the finals will be the Aurochs against the Goers…
At this point, there is an extremely long tutorial for the blitzball minigame. In fact, if you added up all the actual non-minigame tutorials in Final Fantasy X, they wouldn’t be anywhere near as long as this one. I mean, at least the instructions don’t tell you to figure out the rules on your own, but still. I skip the tutorial, seeing as how Tightass is going to lose anyway.