Brain fart – Akira

I’ve been re-reading the Akira manga and I watched the anime again recently. There really isn’t anything I don’t like about Akira. I came to it, like most people outside Japan, through the anime back in the late 80′s. I remember being in Japan for the first time in January of 1989 and scouring the local shopping arcade in Kobe for the video (the movie had come out in Japan the year before). Back at my host family’s house, I rewired their VHS players together and made myself a copy – now that I think of it, I may have been one of the first people to “import” Akira.

Anyway, one of the most striking sequences in the movie is the motorcycle gang battle at the beginning. It goes down rather differently in the manga but it’s just as kinetic as the movie. For a long time I’ve wanted to do some sort of cyberpunk style game set in Tokyo where the characters are biker gang punks. There would be lots of high speed chases and fighting with improvised weapons (because no one but the yakuza have guns in Japan), plus lots of other crazy stuff going on.

The main thing would be to bring the full-on sensory overload of Tokyo to the game, something I think I can really do.

Not so sure what system I might use for this. Some variant of FATE might be good.

Old school cyberpunk oneshot

That’s “cyberpunk” the genre, not Cyberpunk 2020, the game. While the 40K campaign warms up I’m sniffing around for a oneshot to run. In addition to another Godlike game at some point, I still have an itch to do an old school cyberpunk game with a fairly specific premise.

You’ve seen Akira? Of course you have (if not, go watch it right now).

I want to do a oneshot set in a cyberpunk Neo-Tokyo, where the characters are all bosozoku (biker gang) punks. It would have the yakuza (of course) and mega-corporations (of course), and a suitably terrifying macguffin. The main things I want to get out of this are a) PCs as street punks on hot rides, b) setting this thing in a crazy surreal cyberpunk Tokyo (and I know Tokyo), and c) action, action, action (on motorcycles)!!

And maybe tentacles, ‘cuz you know, Japan!

Anime! Akira, Bubblegum Crisis, Cyber City Oedo, Silent Moebius, Gai Rei Zero… all of that.

I need a game that has good, fast moving vehicle rules that isn’t Car Wars…

Inspiration!

Today was a good day for kickstarting my imagination. This afternoon I watched the Blue Angels practice for their airshow tomorrow. They were flying their routine over Fisherman’s Wharf and it was awesome! They flew over in formation so low you could see the pilots, and the planes (F-18s) so close together their wings were casting shadows on each other. The rest of their maneuvers were equally stunning. Those are some damned good pilots!

Anyway, that made me think about my Area 88 inspired game. I’m too busy with other stuff to work on that right now, but it’s there when the time comes.

Then, this evening, I saw this new movie Redline at the New People Cinema in Japantown. That 5-min clip on YouTube is not in the movie btw, it’s more of a promo piece. It definitely gives you the flavor of the movie, and highlights all the characters. I swear it was the most fun I’ve had watching anime in years, hands down. If you have a chance to see it, see it, you won’t be sorry! Redline is AWESOME!

Anyway, all throughout the flick I was thinking about how to do a game about it. Starblazer Adventures would be perfect! That one is going in the “to be developed” file!