No Con Kid eps 5-7, 10-12

Episode 5 - Tetris/Columns

I like how the episode starts with people playing Tetris at the university and Kid looking at windows imagining they were Tetris blocks. Reiji falls head over hells over his future wife Akari but is intimidated by her ex basketball playing boyfriend so he challenges him to a game of Columns, Sega's answer to Tetris.

I love the scene where Reiji is walking down a corridor with Akari and they keep running into all her exes and we see column bricks continually dropping. Reiji runs away in horror, runs into Takano Fumi with another her boyfriend and the final column brick drops and the game over screen appears. On of the best examples of No Con Kid using games to make a simple story so much more entertaining.

Episode 6 - Mario

The Megadrive doesn't make an appearance in this series but at gets a token mention with Strider while Fumi plays Super Mario World on the SFC. Fumi wants to combine fashion with gaming by playing Super Mario World during the fashion show but the SFC gets stolen.

Reiji dresses up like Mario and runs with his SFC to the fashion show while Fumi makes do with playing Super Mario Bros on the FC.  Stupidly cheesy episode but sometimes you got to bend the stories to fit the game.

Episode 7 - Fantasy Zone

The basis of the episode is Reiji finally deciding to take over the game center from his dad. The game for the episode is Sega's Fantasy Zone which works really well storyline-wise because the final boss of the game is the main character's father. I've never played Fantasy Zone before apparently its the precursor to cute shooters like Twinbee.

Episodes 8+9 - Virtua Fighter 2

Already wrote about it here.

Episode 10 - True Love Story 

Ahh, the Reiji discoveres dating sim episode. Hillarious and works very well with the story of Reiji and Fumi.Love this episode.

Episode 11+12 - Xevious

Well, back to the game that started it all. Standard ending but I'm just happy it doesn't suck.

SUMMARY

I adore No Con Kid. One of the most fun doramas for me in recent memory but that's cause I'm an old school gamer. I would love to rewatch it again and look up the Japanese wiki to find all the references that I missed. Not sure how non-gamers will find No Con Kid but at the very least I think everyone will find a simple story of friendship with a lot of love and effort gone into making it.

Gah, recent comments widget seems to be broken. Are there any alternatives for blogger?