Immediately after leaving the station, he’s called over by the guy in the grey shirt, whose shy daughter is hiding behind his legs. Aw. “Well, you’re more handsome in person than in your photo,” Grey Shirt remarks. Gary isn’t sure whether or not to take this as a compliment, but it looks like he’s too busy checking the guy out to get all offended. Sure, he’s approaching middle age (the ageist text box even draws attention to this fact), but age is just a number, after all. Plus, to be blunt, the guy is hot, in a slightly-scruffy kind of way. Gary probably hopes the kid isn’t going to get in the way. Grey Shirt introduces himself as Ryotaro Dojima and welcomes Gary to Inaba, declaring that he’ll be looking after him during his stay. I still have no idea why Gary’s moved to this backwater place from the big city, but a “mail order rent boy” situation is looking increasingly likely.
Oh, I just bet you will.
Sadly, things swiftly head south with Dojima’s next line of dialogue; he says “Let’s see…I’m your mother’s younger brother, and that about sums it up.” Wait, they’re related?! I suddenly feel unclean. Even though Dojima is obviously out of bounds to Gary, I’m still going to nickname him Hot Uncle, just because I can. Gary now has a choice of responses — “It’s nice to meet you”, “It’s been a long time”, or “….” Since this isn’t Suikoden II, I instantly dismiss the string of ellipses, before deciding on the first option. Hot Uncle kind of rubs his neck coyly before telling Gary that they’ve actually met before, although Gary was so young at the time he probably doesn’t remember. There’s a TMI comment about diapers, too, which you can check out over there if you really want to.
Instant turn-off.
Quickly steering the conversation away from baby shit, Hot Uncle pushes his daughter forward and tells her to introduce herself to her cousin. The girl — named Nanako — is too shy, and blushes before hiding behind her dad again. Gary isn’t sure how to react. Attempting to diffuse the awkwardness, Hot Uncle directs Gary towards the family car. We now get a Black Screen of Stating the Fucking Obvious, and are helpfully told “You got in the car and headed to [Hot Uncle]’s house.”
Before we continue, I need to point something out, and this seems as good a time as any. Since we, the player, are supposed to be playing the part of Gary, we’ll be seeing a LOT of narration like this. Whether Gary is studying in his room, flirting with guys, or entering his TV to fight monsters, this voice will be there all the while like an invisible friend, logging Gary’s every thought and action. For reference, I’m going to call him the Invisible Narrator, though it’s funnier to imagine the voice being in Gary’s head.
In the next scene, the camera pans across the main shopping street of Inaba. The weather is overcast and foggy, making me think of Silent Hill, but since there are people walking down the street and not sacks of flesh with holes for faces, I think we’re OK. We move over to the Moel gas station just in time to see Hot Uncle’s white SUV pull up to the pumps. The gas station attendant runs up to the car, giving an over-enthusiastic welcome. His/her voice actor sounds like a 40 year old woman trying to imitate a non-gender specific teenager, and it’s incredibly jarring. Nanako wants to use the bathroom but is unsure where it is, so the attendant gives her directions: “It’s in the back, to your left. You know which way’s left? The side you don’t hold your chopsticks in!” Oh no, I don’t use chopsticks at all — what should I do?!
Dude, Gary’s a teenager. Give him some credit.
Ahem. Hot Uncle decides to go for a smoke, leaving Gary alone with the attendant. He/she asks Gary, in their ridiculous voice, if he’s in high school. A question mark blooms above Gary’s head, prompting the attendant to clarify “Does it surprise a city boy to see how little there is out here?” By his/her tone of voice, it totally sounds like he/she is coming on to Gary, which just sounds wrong given the middle-aged VA. Maybe he/she is on Pedocchio’s payroll.
…Or saving the world. You know, the usual small-town teenager’s activities.
The attendant randomly brings up the subject of part-time work and asks if Gary would be interested. Gary’s non-committal until he can determine this person’s sex, but agrees to give it some thought. They shake hands, and this seemingly innocuous gesture makes the controller vibrate suspiciously. Hmm, I wonder what that could be about. Once the attendant hears Nanako returning from the restroom, he/she quickly makes his/her excuses and leaves to fill up Hot Uncle’s tank. There’s a brief flash of light and Gary holds his hand to his forehead, apparently suffering from a sudden headache. I’m sure it’s just a result of the long train journey or carsickness, and won’t turn out to be important at all.
Nanako asks if Gary’s OK, and the Invisible Narrator seizes the opportunity to remark “Now that she mentions it, you feel a little dizzy…” Oh, that joker, giving us love-taps with the Foreshadowing Mallet. Before said mallet can bludgeon poor Gary into unconsciousness, the screen fades out and we transition to the Dojima residence, where the Invisible Narrator tells Gary he will be staying for a year. Wait, shouldn’t he already know this?
Loading ...Black Screen of Luggage Unpacking. Now Gary, Nanako and her dad are sitting at the living room table. Hot Uncle proposes a toast and everyone raises their glasses, but nobody seems to toast anything in particular. He exposits that Gary’s parents are working overseas, which is why he’s apparently been dumped on a relative who hasn’t seen him since he was a baby. “Well, it’s just me and Nanako here, so it’ll be nice having someone like you around,” he admits, then tells Gary to make himself at home, since he’s family and all. Just before they can eat, Hot Uncle’s phone rings. Ugh, I hate it when that happens. The call is serious enough to make him abandon dinner and leave for work, something which seems to be a regular occurrence if Nanako’s reaction is anything to go by. Leaving your six year old daughter home alone? Go, responsible parenting!
That’s NEVER the right choice if you’re a recapper.
Leaving the house, Hot Uncle realizes it’s raining, and yells back inside to ask Nanako what she did with the laundry. She replies that she brought it inside earlier, like the dutiful housewife helpful daughter she is. So, her dad regularly leaves her at home while he goes to work, AND she does all the household chores? Holy shit. Hearing her dad drive away, she sits back down and sadly starts to eat dinner. “You might want to strike up a conversation…” the Invisible Narrator nags, overstepping his boundaries. Stick to telling me what’s going on, not what I should be doing, thanks. Nevertheless, Gary must make a decision, and his choices are another Suikoden-esque string of ellipses, “It must be tough”, and “What does your father do?” Well, Gary would quite like to know what job would require someone to suddenly leave for work in the middle of the evening, leaving him to play babysitter, so he opts for the latter.
“He…investigates stuff. Like crime scenes,” Nanako replies hesitantly, adding that her daddy is a detective. Before Gary can respond, the TV announcer introduces the Inaba local news, and we get yet another report on the MYS. The only new information is that Mayumi’s employers have made the decision to take her off-air until the affair allegations have been investigated. Changing the channel, Nanako declares “…This is boring”. Well, someone had to say it. Next, there’s a commercial for a department store named Junes. The advertising jingle — “Every day’s great at your Junes” — is fairly irritating, made even more so when Nanako happily sings along to it. Seeing Gary’s horrified expression, she hurriedly quietens down and reminds him his dinner is getting cold, because that’s what six year olds clearly do.
Black Screen of Awkward Dining Experiences. Now Gary is finally free to move around, not that it means much right now — he’s unable to leave the house, and his only other options are checking the fridge or going to bed. Leaving Nanako in front of the TV, he decides to get an early night — after all, he has school tomorrow, and he’d feel so self-conscious introducing himself to any hot new classmates with bags under his eyes.
But going to sleep isn’t that simple. After collapsing onto his futon, Gary suffers one of the great RPG staples — an interactive fucked-up dream. Thankfully, this one doesn’t involve Pedocchio or the Velvet Limo. The confused Gary finds himself, still dressed in his daytime clothes, on some kind of jagged red platform suspended over a bottomless void. The immediate area is surrounded by a dense fog, making it impossible for Gary to see more than a few feet ahead. “All you can do right now is proceed forward…” the Invisible Narrator states, because apparently moving in the other direction is not an option. Fuck this guy.
Right now, I seek the gin.
Gary proceeds down the walkway — which, we can now see, is actually made up of dozens of red blocks haphazardly clumped together in midair — for what feels like half an hour, being intermittently stopped in his tracks by a disembodied voice saying things such as “Do you seek the truth…?” and “If it’s truth you desire, come and find me…” Gary has a big day tomorrow, and doesn’t have time for this shit, but I guess he’s curious enough to follow the voice instead of, I don’t know, forcing himself to wake up or something. Passing through a door, he suddenly finds himself in a fight, sword in hand. What the fuck?
Gary’s “opponent” in this fight, a misty human shape with the very unusual name of “???”, observes “So…you are the one pursuing me…” Uh, you kind of told Gary to come and find you, so don’t play the poor put-upon card. “Hmhmhm…try all you like,” it continues, allowing Gary to take the first action. He obliges, managing to deal a truly remarkable 5 damage. ??? seems shocked that Gary can see through the fog enough to land a successful hit, albeit a hit that sucked ass. “But…you will not catch me so easily…” it claims, as Gary chips away another few HP. I should point out here that ???’s dialogue isn’t voice-acted, so there’s no way to tell which gender it is — much like another person in this recap, who is clearly unconnected to this one. And Squall is straight.
“If what you seek is ‘truth’ then your search will be even harder…” ??? warns, before using an ability called “Bewildering Fog”. As you may have guessed, this thickens the mist covering the battleground, meaning that Gary now flails around at thin air whenever he tries for a sword strike. “Everyone sees what they want to…and the fog only deepens,” ??? lectures, as Gary pathetically swipes at nothing again. “Will we meet again…?” Christ, I hope not. This first meeting has been excruciating enough. After another couple of rounds, ??? seems to tire of the game and calls an end to Gary’s dream, telling him it looks forward to their next encounter. Speak for yourself, ???. Feeling like he hasn’t slept at all, Gary is awakened by the sound of Nanako knocking on his door and telling him breakfast is ready.
“You feel like you had a nightmare…” the Invisible Narrator breathes, and Gary, in his sleep-deprived state, could quite happily punch him in the face right now, corporeal or not. “You’re starting school today,” he continues, aiming for this recap’s Stating the Fucking Obvious award. “You should head to the living room for now…” And he would be, if you’d quit your babbling for ten seconds. Eventually the IN pauses for breath, giving Gary an opening to throw off the bedclothes and sprint downstairs. Nanako has just set down two steaming plates of eggs and bacon, because of course it’s her responsibility to prepare breakfast too. Does Hot Uncle actually do anything around the house?! Okay, I know he has a time-consuming job, and Nanako’s mom doesn’t appear to be around for whatever reason, but he needs to let his daughter actually act like a kid for once.
Looks like Nanako’s already a better cook than me.
After breakfast, Nanako and Gary walk to school together. On the waterlogged Samegawa Flood Plain, she points out the direction of his school, Yasogami High. “You keep going straight from here…” she tells him, like that’s going to happen. They part ways, and Gary heads on to the intersection in front of the school. There, he witnesses a fellow student careening past on a bicycle with faulty wheels, eventually crashing into a pole. Upon closer examination, Gary sees that the student, a guy the same age as him with messy brown hair and a pair of oversized headphones around his neck, is quite good-looking…certainly the best-looking person he’s seen in Inaba so far, anyway. However, he feels it’s rude to stare while the poor guy is massaging his bruised gonads, so decides to head straight into school — he’s sure there’ll be time enough for socializing.
Spot the important characters!
Bruised Gonads is already in class, hunched over his desk (I’m assuming he’s still in pain from the bike crash, and not hungover or something) along with a bunch of random students. However, two of the females are wearing brightly-coloured tops over their school uniforms, so we can easily pinpoint their importance among all the other faceless teens. It’s kind of like in one of the Harry Potter movies where Harry, Ron and Hermione would be wearing casual clothes while the rest of the students were in their school uniforms. We see a trio of unimportant students bitching about their teacher, Mr Morooka, whose nickname is apparently “King Moron”. God, that’s positively mild compared to the nicknames some of my teachers had. Incidentally, if Mr Dickbreath happens to be reading this — ha, I proved you wrong! I am writing on a day-to-day basis! Oh, and by the way, the fact you were screwing the netball coach behind your wife’s back was the worst-kept secret in school. Take THAT, you pompous, neurotic, schoolgirl-ogling twat!!!