I have a confession to make: I don’t really watch anime. Sure, I’ve seen some staples that appeared on American TV in the 2000s, like Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh (But not Naruto), I watched a lot of Studio Ghibli over the years, and I’ve barely dipped my toes into anime since (and only if you even want to count several Gundam series and the Netflix-produced Castlevania). But, that’s about it. As a medium, it is one I’m not very familiar with, outside of osmosis from my anime-watching friends.
I’ve also never really gotten into character-action games, aside from a single playthrough of Nier:Automata. Nor have I ever spent much time playing “Bullet-Hell” games, whether 2D or 3D.
I promise this is relevant.
Because, when I was contacted by publisher PLAYISM and asked to play Crimson Dusk’s anime-inspired, 3D-bullet-hell/character-action game, Homura Hima, I was naturally… Worried. While there were quite a few elements that I was familiar with in the trailer and marketing materials — and by familiar, I mean “I play games with dodge rolls a lot” — there was a lot more influence from things that I was fairly ignorant of....
