I have a confession to make: I never finished Ghost of Tsushima. Don't get me wrong, I loved the quiet, contemplative nature of the beautiful world Sucker Punch created, and the slick combat, stealthy features, and storyline really ticked all my boxes. But quite far into Jin's journey, something happened to a companion I'd become very attached to along the way (if you know, you know) and it devastated me so deeply, I had to stop playing. I'd originally intended to take a brief break, pull myself together, and see it out to the end. Life had other plans, though, and before I knew it months turned into years, and I never got around to picking it back up again.
It's one of the many games in my backlog that continues to haunt me, and with every new showing of the upcoming follow-up, Ghost of Yotei, my regret about never finishing Tsushima has only gotten worse. Now it's reached a tipping point, because if I wasn't convinced about the sequel before, the dedicated State of Play earlier this month revealed a new feature that I didn't know I desperately wanted.
The feature in question? An optional Watanabe mode from the legendary anime director behind the likes of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. Set to allow us to explore Ezo to some seriously smooth lo-fi beats, Ghost of Yotei is about to make my teen dreams come true by letting me channel the vibes of the coolest anime around, and there's no way in hell I'm going to miss out on it.
Battlecry
When I think about the epitome of cool, I think of the anime of Shinichiro Watanabe. I can still remember the very first time I watched Samurai Champloo when I was about 17. Watching it off the back of finishing Cowboy Bebop for the first time, I wondered if Champloo could possibly top the heights of Spike Speigel's story, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover it reaches the same kind of level of slick animation and engrossing storytelling, with characters you just can't help but be drawn.
In fact, the minute I laid eyes and ears on Champloo's highly stylized opening, I was hooked. Not only does it capture the Edo era in which the story's set, but it also effortlessly mashes it up with the hip-hop infused track Battlecry (by Nujabes ft. Shing02). It's hard to top Bebop's iconic OP, Tank, but Champloo absolutely goes toe-to-toe as one of the chicest anime openings ever created. Basically, both openings are un-skippable. I don't make the rules, I just follow them.
With three lead protagonists in warrior Mugen, Ronin Jin, and waitress Fuu, they really start to feel like a found family of misfits with each episode, and I loved their dynamics and the way they clash with and complement each other throughout their journey together. The incredibly slick combat sequences are hard to forget, too, with Mugen's scrappy style borrowing from breakdancing, while Jin delivers practiced, precise swordfighting.
All the while, Watanabe makes lo-fi hip-hop feel right at home in the period setting, with beats accompanying every fight that marry perfectly with each character's preferred style of swordplay. I've come to fully accept that I'll never be as slick as Spike in Cowboy Bebop, or as badass as Mugen in Samurai Champloo, but now I'm going to get as close as I can to feeling like I'm on their level of cool in Sucker Punch's adventure. Yes, I'm absolutely going to try to channel the effortlessly stylish moves of the anime protagonists with the rad as hell vibes of the music when I take on the role of Atsu in Ghost of Yotei.
The more I hear about Atsu as a protagonist, the more perfect a fit the Watanabe mode feels for her, too. Said to be a lone wolf mercenary who will use anything to her advantage to gain the upper hand on her foes, with improvisation that smacks of Mugen and Spike in my mind.
The State of Play shows her using a vast arsenal of weapons and performing various tricks to emerge victorious. From grappling a soldier with a kusarigama and taking them out while they're down on the ground, to delivering precise blows with dual katanas in close combat, Atsu's fighting styles already look sleek as hell, and I can only imagine the lofi beats will only enhance it all the more and make me feel like a smooth operator.
I didn't expect anime would be the final catalyst that pushed me to try and finish Tsushima ahead of Yotei, or that Samurai Champloo would sell me on Sucker Punch's sequel so strongly. But here I am, eyeing up reinstalling Jin's journey on my PS5 and eagerly awaiting the day I can feel half as cool as the anime characters in Atsu's shoes.
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