Names are intimately bound up with identity — both individual and collective. Which name we use, in what situations and circumstances and to whom we choose to reveal it or allow to use it, is a matter of great personal import, status significance […] and, in a collective context, potentially explosive political relevance.
David Mason — A Rose by Any Other Name…? Categorization, Identity, and Social Science
Anyone amused by having history shoved into their fictional media in the early 2000s has Konami to thank for one of the greatest examples of this phenomenon. The Metal Gear Solid series, particularly the singular classic Snake Eater, uniquely blended real-world history and technology with outlandish anime-style exploits. Yet Konami themselves developed and published an earlier, more obscure game with these themes.
Ring of Red, a tactical mecha-themed RPG released in Japan in the year 2000, arguably trod similar territory more elegantly than its famous successor, even if it’s less reliant on spectacle. Undoubtedly it has to do with the fact that Ring of Red peddles in alternate history, while one could argue that Snake Eater is an unhinged form of historical fiction. It is heavily reliant on narrative gymnastics to connect it not only with its own series but with the broad real-world history of the Cold War, while Ring of Red is allowed to invent more of its internal history, thereby granting it far more cohesion unto itself.
Coincidentally, both Ring of Red and Snake Eater take place in the year 1964. Both are heavily reliant on what seems to be real archival footage to flavor cutscenes and interstitials, and both are driven by Cold War techno-thriller intrigue. The similarities in theme and delivery are striking. Snake Eater and Ring of Red both take the aforementioned archival footage and add characters or objects from the game. One way Snake Eater does this is to fake the footage or photos, using in-engine assets to create an authentic-seeming photo with actual historical figures and characters from the game. In the case of Ring of Red, the mecha (called AFWs) are added to the videos via some sort of composite imagery or CGI. The results are highly effective in both games.
Although the similarities are fun to notice, Ring of Red is a completely different experience. It is a turn-based RPG with a standard grid map showing elevation, differing terrain bonuses, and other tactics staples. However, the battle system is where the game shines and perhaps falters. This is the era where people wanted to show off the power of the PS2 badly through various “cinematic” techniques, resulting in slow gameplay. It’s no different here, though to be fair, the battles are spectacular.
You assign three infantry squads to each AFW. Each squad can be one of seven different classes, which grant passive bonuses, and can have up to three of a large number of skills, which are activated either by leaving them safely in the rearguard, ordering them to the vanguard, or having them mount the AFW itself as auxiliary crew. Meanwhile, you can command the AFW to walk forward or backward to adjust your engagement range, fire your main weapon after a lengthy reload period, or activate a “maximum attack” or special pilot skill. There are many possibilities for team building. The player will need to develop a certain technique for not only fighting with the AFW but optimally commanding infantry squads and utilizing their strengths and skills. It is a unique and fantastic battle system.
However, it is not without its flaws. The biggest is how slow the battles can get. This game should have had a fast-forward button built in for all the fighting and the length of each battle. The slow pace does allow it to luxuriate in the nice 3D graphics with the amazing looking AFWs—it takes a while to grow tired of looking at it—and the gripping way the camera is used to tell the stories of the battles, but the spectacle can only go so far to fend off tediousness.
From the intro we see that, at least aesthetically, Ring of Red is deliberate in its focus, from the expected battle scenes and equipment rolling off production lines to, more unexpectedly, children or families. The brief sequence of a little boy’s face, then a small family posing in front of their humble home, followed by a towering bipedal AFW leading waves of troops across a second-world-war battlefield begin to communicate the concentric themes this work grapples with. The effects of war across all segments and strata of society are clear to see, but also the embryo of the game’s central topic: how differing identities so often violently and contradictorily collide within civilizations, communities, and individuals, often fusing and shearing parts of them to form entirely new identities.
Civilizations and Communities
Japan is a major Cold War focal point in this version of the world. It’s a familiar story, only with the geography altered. The Allies occupy Japan to close out World War II, but tensions rise because the Soviet Union and the Western Powers quickly sour on one another, leading to a Korean War-esque conflict in Japan. The powers end up divvying up Japan, which causes further instability and cultivates deep resentment.
South Japan is very cozy with the United States and her allies, inviting huge Western industrial players to bolster its own limited infrastructure. This is mostly evident in its small but potent military, which features American and German-made equipment (never mind the fact that in this timeline, Germany is able to mass produce and internationally disseminate major military equipment by 1964). The World War II-era alliance with Nazi Germany seems quite intact as a rebuilding Germany is invited back into the world stage, so much so that the insignia for South Japan is disturbingly familiar. Meanwhile, North Japan is Communist with a military arsenal nearly exclusively supplied by the Soviets. It appears that the Soviet Union has unilateral sovereignty over Hokkaido, as it’s marked as a part of the Soviet Union, not North Japan.
Your “party” of characters is an eclectic group of Japanese, German, and American AFW pilots, officers, and collaborators. A new prototype AFW is stolen by an enemy soldier and taken from your base in South Japan to North Japan. The government officially dissolves your unit, only to hire it as a mercenary company for a deep infiltration to destroy the prototype. While there, you find an anti-communist resistance movement which bolsters your party with more characters. Soon it’s revealed that the prototype was actually built in North Japan, and they just stole it back. The shady South Japanese government sent you on a suicide mission unofficially for some black ops shenanigans and lied to you about your enemy’s motivations and the support they promised. It’s a mostly smart and appropriate Cold War story.
Puzzlingly, it is revealed that North Japan is seeking to emancipate itself from the Soviet Union. Presumably, it’s because of Soviet control over Hokkaido and a general disenchantment with communism. It seems wildly impractical for North Japan to break its relationship with Moscow, but then a postwar and divided Japan in this fictional version of 1964 could still have been clinging onto its fierce national pride. The North Japanese general Minakawa, the game’s antagonist and author of a coup d’état that toppled the pro-Soviet North Japan government, even states he does so to break from Soviet rule, reclaim Hokkaido, and unite Japan, seemingly to restore the empire.
It is important to consider that Japan, like most countries, seldom was homogenous in culture or identity. Several distinct groups flourished and clashed throughout its history, and many outside influences imposed themselves in different parts of Japan to differing degrees. However, by the second Sino-Japanese war in 1937, which fed into participation in World War II, Japan had meteorically risen up the international ranks. Having centralized its government and undertaken a miraculous industrialization through the Meiji Restoration barely 70 years prior, thereby imposing itself as a major colonial concern, this newly collectivized Japan was about as united as it had ever been. Therefore the national schism depicted in Ring of Red is particularly traumatic because of the general Cold War tensions and how Japan’s imperial ambitions were shattered against the anvil of World War II.
The supposed endpoint of the empire was the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, a vision of a self-sufficient Asian bloc extending from Japan to the Philippines, Indonesia, and Eastern India. It is easy to look back at this endeavor in the light of the brutal imperialism it signified and the atrocities it left in its wake, but we can see in the fictional alternate history of Ring of Red how this vision of a Japan-led united Asia collapsing into an inability to keep a small archipelago intact can be great cause for disillusionment.
The eventual rejection of communism and attempted restoration of a united Japanese empire, impractical as it seems in the Ring of Red‘s narrative, does make a certain kind of sense. Despite the stark lack of curiosity about communism in this game’s writing, which to its credit, accurately reflects prewar Japan’s views on communism, a possible discrepancy is perhaps found with our history in Korea and Vietnam.
Communism or socialism became widely popular in both these places, especially after World War II. In South Korea, Syngman Rhee, an Ivy League educated soon-to-be mass murderer who would later be responsible for the Bodo League and Mungyeong massacres, was installed by the United States to form a bulwark against Kim Il-Sung’s Soviet-allied North Korea. The United States used Syngman Rhee to attempt to stamp out communism through some variation of the methods used in Latin America, most effectively in Guatemala in the ’50s. That is, ally with and install a dictator, then brutalize the population to suffocate any popular socialist momentum.
Daily I pray for the joint success of our arms, for clear skies so that the planes of the United States Airforce may search out and destroy the enemy, and for the earliest possible arrival of sufficient men and material so that we can turn to the offensive, break through the hard crust of enemy forces and start the victorious march north. I have no slightest doubt in the ultimate victory of our cause; I know that both right and might are on our side.
Syngman Rhee, Korean Dictator
In Vietnam, an inert wannabe emperor, Bao Dai, was easily controlled by the French colonizers, then the Japanese Colonizers, before abdicating his power to the Viet Minh independence movement, led by Ho Chi Minh. “Uncle Ho,” as he’s known, then allowed him to serve as Supreme Advisor in his cabinet. When the French cynically tried to regain colonial rule over Vietnam in 1946, Bao Dai cravenly escaped to Hong Kong. Vietnamese anti-communist factions and the French then convinced him to return to power in South Vietnam. To avoid the growing conflict and the burden of governing, he let the French effectively control his nation’s affairs while he busied himself with vacations and nightclubs. The success of Ho Chi Minh’s forces led to the west, most notably the United States, getting involved.
Despite the enormous amount of resources thrown into Vietnam, the United States could not stop the encroachment of communism into South Vietnam. Had Bao Dai possessed the brutal will of a dictator like Syngman Rhee, Vietnam might yet be divided, but he wasn’t, and it’s not. A reasonable person would argue that the will of the people of Vietnam and their desire for communism is the other main factor in its success. To this day, Vietnam is a very successful socialist state that is stated to be working toward communism to be more self-sustaining. Having more ordinance dropped on it by the U.S. military than all the bombs they dropped in WWII, followed by subsequent brutal sanctions, that it emerged as it has is breathtakingly remarkable.
“Our mountains will always be, our rivers will always be, our people will always be, The American invaders defeated, we will rebuild our land ten times more beautiful.”
Ho Chi Minh
We should address the major difference in circumstances when comparing Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Japan was much higher up the global power hierarchy before the war than either Korea or Vietnam and had a very established political culture quite different from communism. In many ways, Korea and Vietnam, being subordinate to Japan and France, respectively, were more politically malleable when presented with an opportunity for independence, and therefore more open to modern ideologies like communism. While this is a significant difference to address, in the narrative of this game, Japan was in a similar situation by 1964: broken and claimed by outsiders.
So then why, despite its initial rejection of communism, couldn’t the Japan of Ring of Red harbor any communist sympathies by 1964? Minakawa might have been a stronger character were he a Ho Chi Minh figure rather than a wannabe Emperor Hirohito. The story might have been more unique, sensible, and believable had North Japan not attempted to pull off a break from communism and second unlikely imperial restoration that century. Finally, there may well have been great enthusiasm for communism in North Japan, but there’s almost nobody to voice that enthusiasm in the text.
Of course, nobody can blame Ring of Red’s writers for writing a story that’s unilaterally skeptical of communism. That’s just the education we tend to receive: we’re told socialism and communism are definitely wrong, at least in the United States. This sentiment was also very mainstream in Japan in 2000. Since that is taken for granted in Ring of Red, the writers are free to explore the real driver of the plot. It’s not about concrete politics but the more mercurial topic of identity.
It is poignant and relevant to exploring national identity that Minakawa announces his cause by detonating a tactical nuke in Hokkaido. While he does this as a symbol, away from populated areas, the environmental effects are not addressed until the last mission, in a throwaway bit of dialogue from a Soviet soldier, expressing his disgust that you would pollute Soviet territory (even though it wasn’t you who did it). It’s not technically Japanese soil at this point, but the gesture is still powerful. To this day, nuclear devastation is present in the minds of many Japanese people, so a Japanese company making a game that takes place in Japan in which a main character detonates another nuclear warhead on historically Japanese territory must speak to this anxiety. It’s even good to consider that this takes place on land robbed from the Japanese. The symbol then takes on a particularly menacing double meaning. Maybe it is both reclamation of nuclear holocaust as an element of identity and a threat to the foreign occupier. This is just one possible interpretation, but the abstract tragedy of it all is a fantastic narrative payoff regardless of the intended specific point.
So why does Ring of Red’s writing concern itself so much with real-world history? Isn’t this about a video game? Yes, it is, and in this video game’s timeline, there was a break from real-world history when Hitler deployed an early version of AFWs against the Soviets at the battle of Kursk. They did not change the outcome, but they revolutionized ground warfare. Despite this break into alternate history, the game’s timeline carries many parallels forward from actual history. The Cold War developed similarly, and there were proxy conflicts throughout the world — especially in Asia — very similar to the ones that actually happened. Therefore, all this history is actually relevant to the game and helps us explore the identity of the nation in which it takes place.
This is how we find Japan in Ring of Red‘s 1964. Shattered, inextricably influenced by outside power, and war-torn. There is a red-hot crisis of Japanese identity and the myriad more immediate socioeconomic crises that conflict tends to bring anywhere. Undoubtedly, this environment profoundly affects the individuals living there and their sense of identity.
Individuals
It appears that Ring of Red is interested in the effects of war on the people in general but doesn’t have the space to let the general populace express themselves. Similar tactical RPGs often have some way to deliver popular sentiment. Ogre Battle, and, to a lesser extent, Fire Emblem allow you to enter towns and villages and hear a snippet of opinion from the people, but Ring of Red relies on its characters to speak up for the people. This is unfortunate, since the characters are by nature a degree removed from the everyday concerns of most people. However, they do still have valuable contributions to the notion of identity.
Ring of Red has an ensemble cast, but the closest we get to a main character is Masami Weizegger. A young, brash pilot who seems like an arrogant young man cliché, but immediately becomes more interesting when you realize his heritage. With a Japanese mother and a German father, the game reveals the probable circumstances of his birth without explicitly saying it. When Kaiho, the North Japanese officer (and Vietnam War veteran, fascinatingly), steals the prototype AFW at the start of the game, he asks Masami if he’s Japanese. The question uncovers the degree to which foreigners utterly occupy Japan, and the response Weizegger gives betrays his internal turmoil.
Nothing is revealed about Masami’s home life, upbringing, or relationship with his parents, but his family history drives his behavior. For example, he says he prefers to go by Weizegger or Wei, and bristles when called by his Japanese given name. There’s no specific reason given, but it helps the game focus on its central theme.
We meet Ryoko Minakawa alongside Weizegger, and she matches him for arrogance and attitude. Her identity conflict lies with the fact that General Minakawa, the game’s antagonist, is the father who abandoned her and her mother to pursue his project of a new imperial Japan. Although it’s unfortunate her identity is mainly molded by what you might call “daddy issues,” the absolute fury with which she expresses them — and the revelation that her mother ingrained that fury in her — gives Ryoko some much-needed texture.
Emilio is a former Italian alpine infantryman who you find in a prison camp. His whole thing is trying to prove that Italian soldiers are strong or something like that. However, he’s given a moment to shine when he expresses gratitude toward the party for being his friends and promises to fight for Japan because he relates to patriotism in general. The moment reveals a genuine sweetness, but his identity is pretty firm throughout.
John is a pretty straightforward American linebacker cowboy type, but he’s the first to express distrust of the authority figures who command the mercenary company. In a sense, he is the first to understand they’re getting screwed by their commander. He’s an American soldier, so we can imagine his need to question his orders causes him some stress.
Ippei is the senior member of the party. Known as the “Witch Hound,” he is a legendary AFW pilot who gained notoriety during World War II. He doesn’t contribute to the identity conversation much, but he is the adoptive father of a Ukrainian orphan named Ayana.
Ayana is someone who’s far more advanced in her identity journey. As a Ukrainian raised by a Japanese man, her insight helps Weizegger reconcile his own identity and claim Japan as his home, and his friends as his purpose for living.
In Closing
Ring of Red has an infamous localization, but the degree to which this detracts from the experience is slightly overstated. Yes, there are moments of utter incoherence, and there are huge swathes of significant detail omitted from the English language version, but the plot is still easy to follow. The omissions are a real shame though. For example, knowing that your commanding officers were former Nazis is fantastic to illustrate how comfortable many postwar governments are with fascists who are good at their job. Also, any mention of nuclear weapons used on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, something explored in the Japanese version, is absent in the English language version.
There is some amount of bellyaching online about these vital missing details, and rightfully so. This would be one of those rare instances where complaining about differences in localization is entirely merited. However, their omission in the English version does not mean that they are explicitly excluded. When the character portraits for commanders Shringen and Rodriguez first appear, the implication that they might have been Nazis is heavy. If that’s not enough, the revelation of South Japan’s insignia, which is a slightly twisted up swastika, solidifies it. Likewise, the game never states that the United States didn’t drop nuclear ordinance on Japan, so I just assumed it was a given that they did. This made the nuclear launch subplot in the game much more powerful.
For these reasons, the poor localization does little to harm the experience. I found this work, despite its total lack of sympathy for communism, which would’ve made it far more intellectually engaging, still surprisingly smart and emotionally centered.
The contributions mecha-focused media has made to science fiction is already well-worn territory: What does it mean when we build hulking destroyers in our image? What does embodying a mechanical humanoid machine with superhuman capabilities mean in terms of the politics of bodies and identities? There is a lot of good writing and discourse in exploring these themes relating to religion, gender, and even sexuality. What Ring of Red contributes to this discussion has much to do with, perhaps less interestingly, the question of nationality. But by focusing on this and couching it in a version of the past, it manages to raise many thought-provoking questions that transcend a poor localization and elevate Ring of Red to surprising heights.
