Holy crap, have I missed playing this game and mocking its horrible abuse of English. Back in part 11, the Young Guns Brigade of the Yaoi Army went on a field trip to Greenhill with Uncle Flik. There, they rescued the martyr mayor, Flik reluctantly procured a girlfriend, and Jowy showed up as the new commander of Salon Jhee’s old military company, breaking Barry’s heart for the twentieth time. And though he’s barely had time to recover from that particular gut-punch that everyone but him saw coming, Shu is waiting in the war room, probably with more shitty news that he’ll fail to follow up with a sympathy blowjob.
I read this in George Takei’s voice.
Barry is already late for this meeting, mostly because he’s dreading said shitty news, but also because I feel like running around the castle and Talking to Everyone. As a sign that Barry should get on with things, a lot of his important army members are not at their usual stations. (Grandma Taki and a bunch of Suikoclones also nag him to go to the meeting, but they can fuck off.) Right when Barry is thinking the most interesting thing he’ll do before this meeting is spend a token two minutes fishing with Yam Koo (death!), he wanders into High Yo’s restaurant, where Important Shit is apparently happening without Barry’s express written consent.
Loading ...A small crowd has gathered in the restaurant, surrounding High Yo and another chef in dark gray. (Andre is jumping around like a spaz trying to see, even though he’s probably taller than everyone else there. Whoops, sprite geometry.) “I heard a rumor, but I didn’t think you were really here. I’m shocked!! [High] Yo!!!!!” says the other chef, named Yu Kum. Holy shit, I totally didn’t notice that until just now. Yu Kum! That’s gold, Jerry. High Yo demands to know who this dude is, because he can’t read and giggle at text bubbles like us. Yu Kum introduces himself, adding, “I’m traveling around the world to become the greatest chef!!! [High] Yo, I challenge you to a cooking contest!!!! If you win, I’ll give you my closely-guarded family recipe!!! Do you accept!!!” What in the fuck. The culinary school that trains these guys really needs to have a class on using your indoor voice. Are they all emulating Gordon Ramsay?
As if Barry didn’t just happen to walk in on this, High Yo turns to him and asks what he should do. Barry tells him to kick ass, knowing that a victory in a cooking competition might bring some class to the joint. And with class comes sexy hipster prettyboys in tight jeans. Of course, Barry gets to be High Yo’s assistant, because it’s not like he has anything better to do.
As some silly fanfare plays, an announcer named Fu Tan Chen, now named Fukui-san, walks into the competition area with a goddamn bullhorn to start the proceedings. First, he introduces the four judges sitting behind him, all of whom are members of the Yaoi Army. It should be noted that during these Iron Chef HoYay intros, Fukui-san liberally peppers his lines with references to our own world and its culinary cultures. So Tuta loves spicy Chinese food (and spicy Chinese doctors, I guess), and Yoshino is “Japanese to the core.” Look. I know we’re already making specific ethnic foods like gyoza and tamagoyaki, but to me there’s a difference between not making up entirely fictional cuisines for this sidequest, and calling Yoshino, who is supposedly from Radat, Japanese. And I’m not about to fanwank some bullshit about how we’re all otakukin and were hanging out in Suikoland in our past lives.
Anyway. Enough of me getting all Comic Book Guy over an Iron Chef homage. In addition to being Japanese, Yoshino is also the wife that’s “too good for [Waylon].” This is funny in itself, but Waylon is also on the panel. Like, dude, Fukui-san, he’s sitting right there. Fukui-san says Waylon will be a “great dad someday,” like he’ll ever manage to do that deed with his too-good-for-him wife, right? Yeah. Our final judge is Eilie, who likes “delicate flavors.” Like Barry’s dick.
Like Barry’s dick.
Yu Kum–how on Earth did I miss that for this long?–is introduced to polite applause, but the crowd really goes wild for High Yo, who gets triple spotlights and his own theme music. So the crowd is all army members, the judges are all army members, presumably Fukui-san is some asshole I’ve been paying to sit around and do nothing all this time, and since Daddy Barry is assisting High Yo, everyone involved is going to be even more in the tank for him. Yes, it is possible to lose, but if it happens everyone in this castle is fucking fired.
Each chef must prepare an appetizer, a main course, and a dessert. All of the recipes that Barry has given High Yo are available, and each one can be modified slightly depending on the secondary ingredients (sugar, salt, soy sauce, mayonnaise, or red pepper). Each possible dish is classified as one of the three courses or as a “surprise,” and also has a rating that is kind of the baseline for the judges’ scores. (As far as I know, the stuff Fukui-san lists as the judges’ preferences is meaningless filler.) I conveniently remember how all this works about five seconds after I finalize my selections by randomly picking whatever sounds good. High Yo and Barry choose to make a deep fried gyoza appetizer (which is listed in the guide as a main course, and I call bullshit on that), something called “real tempura” for the main course, and pudding (ice cream with sugar–don’t ask) for dessert. Once the recipes are set, the timer begins and I have to spend about 30 seconds mashing the shit out of the X button while the chef and sous chef preside over a bamboo steamer (laughing, if the sprites are any indicator), chop vegetables, toss salad, stir fry in a wok, sensuously stir the contents of a pot with a wooden spoon, and suggestively shake salt into a dish. The blue bar, representing the doneness of High Yo’s meal, is impressively long when the gong signals the end of the allotted time.
Barry and High Yo try out their new Shake Weights.
And now the judging. Fortunately, the judges just provide a score from one to five, instead of giggling inanely or acting like pretentious bitchy douchenozzles like on the real Iron Chef. Also, if they got to talk I’d probably drown in exclamation points. Yu Kum’s first dish is tomato soup, which I’m guessing is extra creamy, if you follow me. And I must be right, because Waylon fucking loves it. High Yo gets worse marks for his deep fried gyoza–I’m guessing I committed some horrible faux pas by serving fried potstickers as an appetizer. Whatever. By some miracle, though, High Yo’s tempura and pudding go over a lot better than Yu Kum’s tamagoyaki and dessert fried egg (barf), despite Waylon being a fucking shill for the enemy. Fukui-san declares High Yo the winner for not jizzing all over his food. Probably. Yu Kum, true to his word, hands over his recipe for tomato soup, but sadly does not include a recipe for homemade goldfish crackers.
After High Yo’s victory, Barry heads out to the terrace on the cliff face to get some fresh air. Yoshino moved out here even faster than Barry did, and is busily scrubbing away at the Yaoi Army’s dirty laundry. This probably helps her avoid thinking about all the time Waylon is spending in the bathhouse. Barry plays a few games with Ace the Rope Climbing Guy, winning Turtle Plans #4–that seems like something he should hang onto for no reason–and a Ninja Suit he’s going to use in his roleplay session with Shu later. Let’s see him keep slinging bad news Barry’s way when he’s wearing this.
‘Like my sinful husband.’
Barry’s mostly exhausted the stuff he can do to avoid real work, so it’s time for this super fucking important meeting. It turns out that only Shu, Apple, Bear, Big Gay Fitcher, and Teresa were required to show up. Well, Flik should be there as well, Bear notes with a panicked sprite pirouette, and on cue he rushes in, claiming he was held up. “Where were you?” Bear asks. “Busy pursuing that little brat Nina?” Oh man, he is so jealous. That’s adorable. Flik, getting a little too defensive, insists that he is the one being pursued. “She stole my bandanna and washed it!” he whines in what I’m assuming is Tidus’s voice. “It took me all morning to find it!!!” Naturally this implies that he was late because there’s no way he could come to this meeting without his hair accessory. This is so funny that Bear drops the jilted lover routine, giggling that Flik has a “wife.” Flik tells him he’ll “pay for that,” meaning that Blue Thunder is going to ravage his butthole tonight.
While we’re having this meeting about Flik’s beard, Shu figures he should make a little time for his own trifling matters. “Of the 5 Cities and 1 Knightdom in the State, South Window has been destroyed, and Muse and Greenhill are under enemy control,” he unnecessarily tells everyone. Also, South Window was destroyed? Uh, not really, Shu. But go on. “Somehow we’ve managed to protect Two River, but Tinto is still closed to us. I think we should forge a bond with the only alliance member left to us, the Knightdom of Matilda. Their army is as strong as Muse’s, and if we ally with them, we’ll be able to attack the enemy from two fronts.” He asks Barry if he agrees, like Barry would ever go against Shu on stuff where not being an idiot is required. Shu expected no less, and has already set Barry’s itinerary. “Greenhill is still occupied by Highland, so we’ll have to travel to Matilda in small groups, so as not to be detected,” he tells us, prompting Barry to select his traveling companions. For once I’m not stuck with Nanami, but the next hour or so feature some of the game’s most challenging battles and I’ve invested too much in her to leave her out now. Since Flik got to come last time–heh–Bear gets his spot. Emo Clive gets to come too, since there’s more Elza sidequest nonsense in Matilda. Barry also grabs Muku Ranger Red for no real reason, leaving one spot open because the Strategy Rune told Barry it’d be a good idea.
Barry’s inventory is already stocked with a bunch of stuff for recruitment and I even head to a few locations all ready to fill out his Pokédex, before I remember that to get almost all of the recruits I’d planned for, HoYay Castle has to be at least level three, and it’s sadly too small and pathetic right now. Tsai probably thinks his divine spear is bigger and more impressive. Sigh.
Well, fuck recruiting, then–it’s off to Matilda. Before Barry left, Shu and Fitcher told him that the knights have been informed that he’s coming, so he just has to make it through the Greenhill-Matilda checkpoint to meet his escort. Fitcher and Flik also feel the need to remind Barry that Matilda’s leader, Wart, is a fat sack of puckered assholes, and the less expected of him, the better. But Barry also remembers that Wart had two super-sexy lieutenants, and convinces himself for five whole seconds that they will be true and loyal to him. But then he remembers his ex-boyfriend, his ex-boyfriend’s two similarly sexy lieutenants, and that most sexy men cannot be trusted, since the vast majority of his loyal army is chicks and ugly old geezers. God dammit.
The trip to the checkpoint is pretty uneventful. Once there, Nanami crawls out of Barry’s ass to wonder aloud if the Matilda Knights are “those cool guys” they met in Muse. Almost nobody else they met at the summit on Jowston Hill was cool, so that’s a yes. But Barry chooses to make fun of her anyway, since she’s TV ugly (not to mention she’s a girl) and has no chance with hotties like them. “What? What? WHAT?” she retorts like Lil Jon. “Are you JEALOUS? Don’t worry, Barry! Maybe one day you’ll be cool too!”
YEEEEEAH! OKAAAAAY!
The white-clad Matilda Knights at the checkpoint let them pass, so it’s only a short few screens to their official escort. Unfortunately for me and the silly, one-man-short party I put together, the monsters here are kind of a bitch. Like “ZombieSlugs,” blue fiery slug monsters that suck and swallow, aren’t bad enough–there are also motherfucking DoReMi Elves. Have Jeanne or I mentioned these irritating little fuckheads yet? I’m pretty sure we haven’t. So DoReMi Elves come in packs of six, in misleadingly cute pastel elf outfits. Barry thinks they’re just darling at first, until they start singing. These little shits essentially have unite attacks where they open their blowjob mouths and scream a note in unison at my party members until their eardrums rupture and they pass out. They do this, minimum, two times per combat round. Poor underleveled Bear gets his shit ruined by this cacophonous buttfucking. Best of all, both the DoReMi Elves and the Zombie Slugs drop rare items that I will probably never get because I’m not going to waste my time and sanity fighting them when I’m not required to do so. I hate admitting how much that annoys me.
They’re trying to throw us off with phallic hats and festive colors! It’s a trick!
Near the beginning of the trail Barry meets Badeaux, a predictably non-hot old man wearing what looks to be literally a pile of rags. But Badeaux is one of the many potential recruits who is less than impressed with the current size of Barry’s, er, abode, and just stares at him silently until he runs away. Barry, covertly wiping his eyes, pretends that this rejection didn’t lay waste to his self-esteem.
After finding a Guard Ring and a set of Dragon Armor–ooh, that’s even sexier sounding than the Ninja Suit!–Barry is stopped in his tracks by a dark-haired girl who teleports right in front of him. Of course, this is Viki. She is holding a knife and fork in either hand, and appears to have teleported here, through time, from the victory banquet of, well, one of the other Suikoden heroes. Who the hell knows which one. Viki is bewildered that her meal has disappeared and has been replaced by a teenage boy in a red bathrobe, but once Barry tells her where she is, she rolls with it and asks if she can crash at Barry’s place for a bit. Barry, like PUGGY!!! before him, is reluctant to take in yet another icky woman, but relents because she can teleport, and vagina or no, that makes her much more useful to the cause than, say, Luc and his oh-so-critical stone tablets. Viki joins the Yaoi Army and the party as well, automatically–shit!–returning Barry to HoYay Castle. I’m gonna have to fight all those fucking elves all over again! Fuckity fuck!