NARRATIVE TEXT:

Name: Rya Li St. John

Age: 16

Weapon: Staff and Sword magic

Series: Neo Black 9

"High art? High magick? High stats? I'm just in it for the time killers really. Not like I aimed to become a hero."

Character Bio:

Rya Li St. John doesn't ask for much. Just a nice warm meal or 3-4 every day, a little treasure, and maybe her own team of adventurers not waylaying her into stupid situations. She's seen it all, and she's done a lot of it too. She likes to pretend she's the logical, level-headed one, but Rya's prone to the silliest, most absurd choices, like jumping off balconies, 2 stories up, or charging into danger armed only with a stick and a jar of jam. She's talked to gods (they're weird too), she's tangled with entities beyond comprehension (what is it with their need to play Jenga and mess with geese?), and even crossed dimensions (too much work, she complains so she rarely does), but at the end of the day, what Rya Li St. John really wants is a nice meal, a nap, and a whole lotta sweets. So fighting gods is a fair enough trade. Maybe.


Level: Sweet Garden Cherry Blossom Festival

One thing Rya's home world does a lot of is festivals, and different ones year round. Her favourite is the spring cherry blossom festival, and this one takes place in her hometown. Nearly 2 miles of stalls, games, and performance stages, Sweet Garden goes all out with its decorations of lanterns and paper flowers on all the stalls, and magical twinkling lights in the pink and white blossomed trees. Fireflies are abundant, as are fluttering blossoms on the dusky evenings. Decidedly Japanese in style, but with a more partying style, the festival is certainly the best venue to visit when on the Pun servers.


Boss: Demon Lantern Golem

In terms of goofy enemies Rya and gang have encountered, a giant golem made of festival lanterns isn't the strangest. To be fair, it's kind of cute. A giant version of the usual chochin obaka (yokai lantern), this creature got a little too into the festivities, and got a little too excited. It might be best to calm him down with a little "nightstick" conversation.... As a lantern, it has a penchant for fire and wide sweeping attacks. But you won't have too much trouble finding a target; this huge enemy takes up part of your screen anyway.

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IN-CHARACTER TRACK COMMENTARY FROM GONKAKA:

Denji Koshiro: So, a confession out the gate; there is no other mix of this song, and there never was.

Takayuki Mitsuyoshi: Ever the deceitful one, eh?

Denji Koshiro: (Laughs) Quiet, you. Anyway, I have a lot of fondness for Ondo music- my family and I would attend our local Kyu Bon festival every year, so the gentle, light-hearted rhythm of Ondo brings back many happy memories from those days. Upon seeing the brief for this level, I knew I had to capture that joyous feeling in the music, to really get across that in more usual circumstances, the Sweet Garden Cherry Blossom Festival was a truly wonderful event to experience. Hopefully I achieved that- it really hit home working on it that I don't often do very many songs that are as straightforwardly happy!

Fumie Saso: I have to ask; what was that “Salmon Skin Tamaki” all about?

Denji Koshiro: (Laughs) There was a Tamaki Stall at our Kyu Bon that offered them, and they were- and still are- my favourite type of Tamaki. According to my parents, I would get very cross if we forgot to stop by there to get some.

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DECON'S TRACK COMMENTARY:

Man, the shift in tone between this and Stage 1's theme, huh? I don't do Happy Key stuff nearly enough, really.

This one fought me nearly every step of the way, and not necessarily for lack of ideas; as soon as the concept of the level was pitched to me, I knew I wanted to do something that matched the feel and vibe of this official remix of Jun Kazama's Tekken 2 theme (done by the original composer, Yoshie Arakawa), and even ideas for things like chords and some of the melody lines came fairly quick, but others- such as the basslines, flow, what samples to use- took a lot longer. Had a bit of a bout of depression that set me back as well, which was Fun™ (and kinda cost me a bit of my lead in terms of backlogged songs- I'm now only 1 ahead). The end result is mostly worth it; I have a small nagging bit of perfectionism niggling at me, saying "there's more you could've done with this", but what *is* there sounds pretty decent. I'm particularly fond of the intro- managed to nail the exact vibe/ambience I had in mind for that- and the jolly flute melody in particular.

As it might be a bit tough to hear, the text to speech synth line in the buildup says the following: “This is the Sweet Garden Cherry Blossom Festival. Games, Shows, Food, and Lights await you in this springtime extravaganza. Dreams are made real inamongst the fireflies. I've always wanted a thing called Salmon Skin Tamaki.” (extra fact: having the fairly relevant content of the TTS shove that near non-sequitur in at the end is a direct and deliberate shoutout to Olga Breeze from Darius II, of which the call of "I've always wanted a thing called Tuna Sashimi!" became an infamous in-joke amongst series fans).

This track used the following recording from freesound(.)org;

- Tokyo - Chanting Crowd (manuke)