Interest
Demon King Aims to Kill Hero in RPG Personifying Japanese Words
posted on by Jennifer Sherman
From Japan's prefectures to hot springs, highway service stations to Christian denominations, and sake varieties to rice balls, Japan loves to anthropomorphize things. The latest wave of the personification craze has led DMM Games to create a new head-scratching browser game that reimagines a certain kind of Japanese lingo as cute girls. The company began streaming three promotional videos for its Kill Doya (Kill Self-Satisfaction) browser role-playing game on Friday.
The game centers on "ishiki takai-kei" (literally, "high consciousness-type") words as humanoid characters. The term "ishiki takai-kei" may refer to people who boast excessively with nothing to back it up, people so focused on and motivated by a certain goal that they lose sight of all else, or people overly concerned with their online appearances who are hyper-conscious about seeming interesting. In this case, the game's anthropomorphized words may most closely relate to the first and third concepts. A provided example of someone who is "ishiki takai-kei" is a Japanese person who uses English words where Japanese could be spoken and opens up their MacBook Air to work at Starbucks.
The game anthropomorphizes trendy "ishiki takai-kei" words and business terms that are real English words used in Japanese or Japanese terms derived from English. Female characters in the game include Global Standard, a self-styled citizen of the world; Drastic, a girl who can't stand doing things halfway; and Agree, a young girl who agrees with everything. Other characters inspired by words are Agenda, Stadoya, Brain Storming, Just Idea, Barter, Counter Plan, Engagement, and Milestone. The character Death March is in charge of the game's official Twitter account.
In the game's story, personified words live in an alternate world ruled by the Demon King. The "ishiki takai-kei" hero Takao Isshiki suddenly appears from another world, changes some of the word girls, and creates chaos. The player becomes the Demon King who strives to defeat the self-satisfied hero. The Demon King and his associates strive to release the words dominated by the hero and return the world to peace.
The game's pre-registration period opened on Friday. Depending on how many people pre-register for the game, all players will receive various in-game items and characters.
An open beta test for the game will launch at the end of August. People who participate will each receive 50 Crystals in the game. A pre-registration mini game will also debut in early September.
DMM Games' new work will not be the first to recreate words as moe characters. IT Gijinka Keikaku (IT Anthropomorphization Project), a project that turns information technology terms into pretty girl characters, is inspiring a "Gijinka de Manabo!" (Learn via Anthropomorphization!) anime with popular voice actresses.
