The Shapeshifting Trickster Dentists

Image courtesy of Bluemue

PART 1: Shady Dental Practices

In Shenmue II, there are five dentist offices that can be found in Kowloon – specifically, they all reside on the 6^th floor of the Moon Child Bldg. in the walled city’s Stand Qr. This appears to be a reference to some of the shady goings-on within the real-life Kowloon walled city (built in 1898 and demolished by 1994 – so would have still been standing during 1987 when the game is set) – it was well known for its high number of unlicenced dentists (as well as doctors) who could operate there without threat of prosecution. Little details like this, coupled with the overall run-down and grimy atmosphere, show how much attention to detail and desire to be faithful to the real-world locations depicted there is within this series of games.

But why are we concerned with these dentists in the context of this post, do you ask? Well, there is a strange anomaly which involves two of these dentist NPC’s in the game– a curious issue which seems to have somehow arisen in between prototype builds and the final build. First of all, let’s consult the character profiles of the first three dentists, from the Shenmue II Perfect Guidebook and the Shenmue II Complete Guide, to see which office it states each dentist can be found in (below images are from the Perfect Guidebook, translated from the original Japanese):

Have You Seen Me? Possibly Missing NPC in Shenmue II

I previously posted on this blog about a project I ended up spending some years (on and off) working on, the Shenmue II Character Database, with the aim of cataloguing all 700+ characters in the game, using the official Japanese strategy guidebooks for Shenmue II as sources (two of these books between them have names and short profiles for each and every character).

However – it turns out one of the characters listed doesn’t actually seem to appear anywhere in the final game at all! Frustratingly, this realisation came long after I completed the project and already included them (10 years later in fact!!) Read on to find out how I only very recently discovered this, and about the assumed role of this NPC before they were (seemingly) inexplicably removed at some point in development!

The Phantom Teahouse Lady: Redux

NOTE: This is a follow-up to a post I originally wrote back in 2018 – there has now been some further light shed on the oddities surrounding this NPC following the discovery of the Shenmue II Game Jam prototype in 2022!

I also created a separate site covering the differences/oddities seen in this prototype – you can access that here

This article has therefore also been linked to in the ‘NPC Placement Changes/Oddities’ section of that page.

You may recall my post back in 2018 that went into the mysterious circumstances surrounding a particular NPC in Shenmue II – namely, Wen Huachun – who (supposedly) can be found as the owner of the Luck and Virtue Teahouse in Kowloon’s Tea Break Building. This post will recap a lot of what was already discussed, but adds some crucial information that was recently uncovered thanks to the recent discovery of a prototype of Shenmue II – which has been coined the ‘Game Jam’ prototype, the build compiled a few months before the Japanese release of the final game. You can find out more about the various other differences and oddities of this prototype by checking out my dedicated site here. As this is one of a few NPC anomalies in Shenmue II that requires a more in-depth explanation, I have opted to write a whole article regarding it, and you can expect more to come soon. So without further ado, let us delve into the mysterious tale of the NPC I like to call, ‘The Phantom Teahouse Lady’…

Shenmue II Game Jam Prototype – Launch of Research & Differences page!

Hi all – sorry it’s been a while! I had planned on creating some more articles about the Shenmue anime following the conclusion of the series and my reviews (and we have also since received some unfortunate news about the current probability of a Season 2…) but I then found myself distracted by the release of a Shenmue II Prototype back in May! (see here for the Shenmue Dojo’s article on this monumental release) This prototype is known as the ‘Game Jam’ build of the Dreamcast version of Shenmue II, and is presumably the one showcased at the Japanese game show of the same name back in April 2001. Having eagerly played through this prototype on release to check for any differences/interesting changes between this and the final release, I posted a lot of my findings on the Shenmue Dojo forums and also on my Twitter. (some others in the community spotted things I didn’t as well). For a bit of fun I played the ‘Yu Suzuki’ build of the prototypes that was specially created, using a model of Shenmue’s creator himself found in the files, wearing Ryo’s clothes and taking his place as protagonist! (this model is seen in the image above). I realised that it would probably make sense to catalogue this research on a website of its own, hence the launch of this project today for this month’s Shenmue day 🙂 You can access the site here:

Home

You can also expect some more in-depth articles to be posted here on Shenmusings regarding this prototype – as there are some interesting discoveries/oddities that deserve articles of their own! So stay tuned for that, and in the mean time enjoy reading through my findings so far 🙂

Stuart/Miles

Shenmue The Animation Ep #13 -‘Shenmue’ recap and review

NOTE: This is a recap/review of the Japanese audio & English subtitled version of the episode, viewed via Crunchyroll. It is currently not possible to view the English dub where I am, in the UK.

SPOILER WARNING: This review assumes you are a fan familiar with the source material, and that you have seen the episode in full.

So here we are, at the end of the road (for now?) of the anime, after 13 weeks that feel like they’ve just flown by. I suspect fans will have mixed feelings about this finale, specifically about the pacing and just how much is packed into this episode, but I must say I am mostly satisfied with the result, as I am with the series in general. A sizeable portion of Shenmue II has been cut in order to get this episode where it needed to go, but I think it still works well, and won’t be such a heavy loss if we do get a Season 2 (I’ll go into this more in my final thoughts at the end!) At the end of the day, a Shenmue anime of all things was something I never thought would have existed, and I think they did a fantastic job on it on the whole. This episode has a lot of ground to cover and I think it mostly does it very well. So without further ado, let’s get into the recap of the final episode!

Shenmue The Animation Ep #12 -‘Guidepost’ recap and review

NOTE: This is a recap/review of the Japanese audio & English subtitled version of the episode, viewed via Crunchyroll. It is currently not possible to view the English dub where I am, in the UK.

SPOILER WARNING: This review assumes you are a fan familiar with the source material, and that you have seen the episode in full.

One of the anime’s greatest strengths so far has been keeping events exciting and engaging, even for hardcore fans who have played both games countless times and know the story inside out. Nowhere is this more evident than this episode – I was genuinely gripped this week, despite having played through the Yellow Head Building scenario in Shenmue II countless times! A lot of this is due to Ryo’s allies being given a far more active role in proceedings; it was genuinely interesting to not know what was going to happen next in some scenes. Their motives for wanting to help Ryo are also a lot better defined than in the game – particularly in the case of Wong, who has a surprisingly moving scene early on in the episode. While of course certain parts are shortened or excluded altogether, I feel this can be forgiven due to the extra ‘meat’ that other aspects are granted instead. I must admit I really did think that the Yellow Head Building infiltration would be covered in a single episode, so it was a somewhat pleasant surprise to see this week’s end where it did, allowing things a bit more time to breathe. However, the title of next week’s episode (we’ll come to that!) does suggest that next week’s finale will have quite a lot to pack in – it remains to be seen how well that works out, but first off, let’s recap this penultimate episode…

Shenmue The Animation Ep #11 -‘Entangled’ recap and review

NOTE: This is a recap/review of the Japanese audio & English subtitled version of the episode, viewed via Crunchyroll. It is currently not possible to view the English dub where I am, in the UK.

SPOILER WARNING: This review assumes you are a fan familiar with the source material, and that you have seen the episode in full.

After having some mixed feelings about the pacing of last week’s episode, I was a lot more satisfied with this week’s offering. We’ve gone back to the anime putting a different spin on things and elaborating on certain character details (Joy and Ren especially get some nice added meat to them this week, which I very much approve of), as opposed to the ‘speeding through the game events’ feel we had last week. While a lot of Shenmue II’s scenarios in this point of the story are cut down or left out altogether, I feel this episode still does a good job of keeping the pace lively while still remaining coherent. It arguably does a better job of emphasising the point that Ryo has got himself tied up in an extremely dangerous criminal underworld than the game does, with both the threat of the Yellow Heads and the Chi You Men having a lot more weight to them than the slightly vaguer presence seen in Shenmue II. I am therefore extremely excited to see how the storming of the Yellow Head Building is handled next week – but let’s not get ahead of ourselves – let’s recap the events of this excellent episode first!

Shenmue The Animation Ep #10 -‘Comeback’ recap and review

NOTE: This is a recap/review of the Japanese audio & English subtitled version of the episode, viewed via Crunchyroll. It is currently not possible to view the English dub where I am, in the UK.

SPOILER WARNING: This review assumes you are a fan familiar with the source material, and that you have seen the episode in full.

Like last week, this episode zips through Shenmue II’s events at lightning pace, but still allows time for some extra context to be given, that was not made apparent in the game. This ends up resulting in some slightly mixed results this time however, as (towards the end of the episode especially), credibility is slightly stretched as to how certain characters could get from one place to another so quickly – as in the game, there was naturally some gameplay time in between. Because of this this episode arguably suffers a bit, very nearly skirting the line of not being entirely coherent. I did find myself wondering if viewers who had not played the game would be able to keep up with what was going on. Nonetheless, this is hardly a bad episode by any means – with plenty of nice action and gorgeously realised locations as per usual – but for me it was the first episode where the time crunch is apparent to the point of distraction. Perhaps I’m just hard to please – just a few episodes ago I was worried they were going too slow, after all! Let’s get into my issues a bit more once we have recapped this episode’s events…

Shenmue The Animation Ep #9 -‘Distinct’ recap and review

NOTE: This is a recap/review of the Japanese audio & English subtitled version of the episode, viewed via Crunchyroll. It is currently not possible to view the English dub where I am, in the UK.

SPOILER WARNING: This review assumes you are a fan familiar with the source material, and that you have seen the episode in full.

After the fairly sedate pace of the last few episodes, things kick up a notch this week. Most of the events of the latter half of Disc 2 of Shenmue II are breezed through with abandon in this episode, whilst still masterfully incorporating the learning of a Wude as well. The pace rarely lets up, with not as much room for quieter, introspective moments as the first few Hong Kong episodes have had. That isn’t to say there isn’t any meaningful character work at all however – Xiuying’s emotional core continues to be slowly unravelled, and there’s a little added dimension to Ren as well. The main takeaway I have from this episode is that I’m no longer fearful of events being rushed or condensed as we head into the final weeks of this marvellous anime – it still remains to be seen of course if we will get as far as Guilin by the time the credits roll on Episode 13, but for now let’s focus on the events covered in this extremely packed and fit to bursting episode!

Shenmue The Animation Ep #8 -‘Aspiration’ recap and review

NOTE: This is a recap/review of the Japanese audio & English subtitled version of the episode, viewed via Crunchyroll. It is currently not possible to view the English dub where I am, in the UK.

SPOILER WARNING: This review assumes you are a fan familiar with the source material, and that you have seen the episode in full.

I had some concerns last week about the pacing of the Shenmue II part of the story as it has been adapted so far – mainly that they possibly seem to be spending too long on the ‘Wude’ portion, and how this would affect events later down the road. I still have some nagging thoughts about this, but I think this week’s episode mostly quelled them – I can now see that latter parts of the story appear to be running parallel to Ryo learning the Wude, which allows some time to be saved while still focusing on what is an important part of Ryo’s teachings and development as a martial artist. I still find myself wondering if we truly will reach the end of Shenmue II’s story by Episode 13, but I guess part of the fun is in the finding out! At any rate, let’s get into this week’s episode, which has a nice balance of scenes familiar to fans as well as some added depth…