One Week Ramblings: 6/14/14 Special E3 Edition

Another edition of weekly ramblings, but this time I'll be looking at some things that happened on the video game side of the world. Why am I doing this on an anime blog? You'll see...

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Nintendo had a stellar showing this year at E3. With the announcement of several nice-looking entries in existing franchises, as well as showing off some new IPs, they really showed how they are first and foremost about the games. With that said, then, why am I talking about video games on an anime blog?

Well, I will be highlighting two pieces of news in particular. The first is the announcement of Palutena, the Goddess of Light from the Kid Icarus series, for the next Super Smash Bros. games.  This in and of itself is notable for fans of the series, but the announcement came with a special bonus: a trailer animated by none other than Studio SHAFT of Madoka Magica/Bakemonogatari fame.

Only a 30-degree head tilt? For shame, SHAFT.

Other new Smash characters include Mii fighters, who come in three unique variants with their own move sets, and of course allow you to customize their looks so that it looks like anyone is fighting. Want to have Kirito try out his sword skills as a Swordfighter? It's not entirely out of the realm of possibility (as long as your Mii-creating skills are better than mine).

Pac-Man is the third new Smasher announced. A classic video game character, his move set not only includes moves from both classic and newer Pac-Man games, but also references to all sorts of old arcade classics like Galaga.

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The second news of interest here is one of Nintendo's new IPs, Splatoon. In this third-person shooter, teams of squids who can turn into humans attempt to cover as much of an area as possible in their own team's color ink, by either spraying ink in human form or turning into squid form to swim in their ink color. It looks wacky and fun, and more importantly, it features cute squid girls.

Wait, squid girls? Why does that sound familiar...

I'm going to paint the town-de geso!

Yep, this is an Ika-musume game in all but name. Well, sort of; Ika-musume cannot turn into a squid to swim in her own ink (that we know of), and she prefers to spew ink out of her mouth than through a super soaker. But hey, there's now a revived interest in squid girls, and that has to make Ika-musume happy. The original creator of the manga even posted a picture of Ika as one of the game's Inklings on his Twitter.