I grew up watching anime. In fact I was just in time for the anime boom of the 90s. For those unfamiliar, anime is a form of animation hailing from Japan. I have fond memories of watching Pokemon at my grandmother's house, watching episode after episode of Ash Ketchum's exploits alongside his companion Pikachu. Later I got into Yuyu Hakusho, Rouronin Kenshin, Inuyasha, and much, much more that I cannot even name. I was hooked.
Then in around middle school I found a new passion: Role-playing games.
Role-playing games are a type of narrative based story telling game where players take the roles of heroes and partake in quests/missions for money, influence, and power.
The first game I ever played was actually a game of my own creation. Me and what few friends I had in middle school would make characters and fight monsters in a sort of hack and slash style fantasy style RPG. But my first true RPG would be the grand daddy of them all: Dungeons and Dragons. The classic heroic fantasy game created all the way back in 1974 by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.
There are currently a few games out there the attempt to combine both of my loves together. One of which is Big Eyes, Small Mouth (or BESM, for short) which was created by David Okum (Hi David!). BESM is a generic setting RPG that does a good job at mimicking anime inspired antics. Another one would be the JRPG Double Cross, where plays take the role of a superpowered experiment trying to evade the company that made them.
One of my takes on the anime RPG can be seen here. This is my game Hip Hop Chanbara. It is a game of samurai action in a hip hop based Feudal Japan (imagine this: a beat-boxing samurai protecting a graffiti artist from a group of ninja assassins). Enjoy the game, friends. It is free to play and you will only need a couple of d6 to play.
Hopefully there will be more anime based games in the future!
Excelsior
