Doki Doki Majo Shinpan: We found a witch, may we burn – I mean, touch her?

The Japanese are known to be outlandishly creative, oftentimes crossing going beyond the borders of logic and reason and into the realm of the weird, quirky and just full-out WTF. One only has to look into the games the Land of the Rising Sun is churning out, some of which becoming an overnight success in far-off places (Katamari Damacy is a good example) for proof, and in this article one of the esteemed QJ writers will undertake the soul-baring journey of writing about one such game.

Namely, Doki Doki Majo Shinpan for the Nintendo DS.

The full article after the jump!

Like any red-blooded male, I like girls, and rightly so: girls are soft and cuddly and they smell pretty, even if it’s a hot day. They’re awesome to hug, and righteous to cuddle. They’re cute, they’re smart, and are better at games than I am (Honeycomb Beat, I’m looking at you). Never mind the fact that they can get testy sometimes when you try to do these things without their permission – I’m appealing the restraining order this Friday – but I digress, girls are fun. Sometimes dangerous. But still fun.

Another (dubious) interest of mine is quirky Japanese games. The graphics, more often than not, are…aesthetically-pleasing, moreso when it’s in the all-too-famous anime style. The soundtrack is definitely a strong point, from cute, catchy tunes (Katamari Damacy‘s Lonely Rolling Star) to epic, full-out orchestra tracks (Shadow of the Collossus’ The Opened Way). But most of all, they seem to be…well, weirder than most, in terms of gameplay. Not that it’s a bad thing – just that the Japanese seem to find new ways to redefine what a videogame is supposed to be, and I’m constantly amazed by what they can do.

For the longest time, I didn’t expect Japan to find a way to combine two of my main interests and pack it into a tiny cart that fits into the Nintendo DS (barring eroge, of course, but that’s probably for another article).

Such was my surprise when I found out that a game is being developed by none other than SNK Playmore that promises to replicate the exact same experience (that is, interaction with members of the opposite gender), but without the painful physical (and legal) ramifications. Not only that, but it’s also at the top of Amazon‘s preorder charts, rising above popular contenders such as Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings and Odin Sphere! Who’d’ve thunk it? I certainly didn’t. Honest. No, really.

(coughs) Moving on. Doki Doki Majo Shinpan puts you in the shoes of male high school student Akuji. In typical anime protagonist fashion with typical ungodly anime protagonist LUCK, he’s asked by an angel named Lulu to find a witch (or a sorceress, depending on the translation) that had secretly infiltrated his school. It’s a witch hunting game, so to speak – minus the dark, depressing overtones of death and evil, and more of the happy, bright, cute and innocent anime stylings only Japan is capable of – and as the protagonist, you have to investigate a number of girls to see if one of them is a witch.

To do that, you have to find a mark on their bodies – and to do THAT, you have to touch them.

Yes, touch them. No burning or drowning witches here to see if they have wood-like properties, but touching. With the touchscreen function, guide Akuji’s eager hands onto the suspect girl’s body to see if she does indeed have a “witch mark” anywhere on her – and from the looks of the screenshots, it seems you’ll be able to use things other than your hands. What happens afterward is still unclear, for as we said, the game’s still unreleased – but we’re pretty sure about the touching. And stuff.

Despite the game’s rather thinly-veiled excuse for letting you have your way with girls, touch-wise, it’s surprising that there’s a bit of historical background to it: Inquisitors from the Early Modern Europe period would try to prove a witch’s identity by looking for a mark on his or her body, called the “diabolical mark.” If the suspect in question was found with something resembling that mark, then he or she would be merrily carted off by an angry mob to be executed, either by hanging, drowning, or the ever-so-famous burning at the stake.

The bad news was, the so-called diabolical mark almost always turned out to be anything but, like the MOLE of unrelenting evil or the BIRTHMARK of eternal pain and sorrow. This accounted for a lot of deaths, but probably not as much as the other brutal, more head-scratching methods those innovative witch hunters came up with (throwing an alleged witch into a deep body of water with a millstone attached to their necks; if they surfaced, they were witches, if they drowned, they weren’t).

With that aside, there’s a lot many things to look forward to in Doki Doki Majo Shinpan. There’s the bright and clean-looking visuals, a soft, stylized anime style to the art that’s more than just easy on the eyes – and of course, the clever, innovative use of the touchscreen. Although not of the game’s actual game mechanics beyond the witch-hunting process is revealed, it should be quite interesting to find out ourselves – expect a full, in-depth review from yours truly when the game is out on its promised July 5 release date. Dibs, fellow QJ writers. Dibs.