Rifts Japan
Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 10:38 am
RIFTS JAPAN (1995):
-Coming out right in the "Vince Martin as Head Artist" era, and packing probably the largest amount of "Cool Anime Shit" in the setting, comes the only book so far to deal with Japan. This one seemed AMAZING to me as a kid, and made me the most jealous of my friend's killer book collection. I ignored all the "Boring Traditional Crap" and went straight to their 975 versions of modern-day techno-ninjas, and then drooled over DRAGON CYBORGS, YO! Rifts Earth is a setting that rules on Rule Of Cool, and possibly the Coolest Ruler of them all was Rifts Japan. The entire book just BLEEDS "You wanted to play this when you were fourteen".
Hilariously, Kevin Siembieda takes full credit for the book, explaining in the beginning that he's apologizing to Pat Nowak, who handed in a great manuscript that KS re-wrote "80% of" because he got an idea. Nowak's name does not appear on the cover, and near as I can tell he only has one other writing credit period.
The nation of Japan is largely intact on Rifts Earth- it's scarcely Post-Apocalyptic at all, featuring well-ordered societies of what Japan looks like to white people. Nowak came up with the idea of Japan having one technological state and one "traditional", magic-leaning state, and KS decided to use some kind of "Brigadoon" thing to indicate that the technological cities were actually teleported out of our time for a while, popping up only recently, in a world that reverted back to the old ways. Some of these techno-cities hate each other, while others are allies. An uneasy balance is taking place between old-style and new.
The first half of the book is all "photo-referenced" art and traditional-looking guys, most of whom don't look super cool. The second half if Vince Martin's trademarks- slender people in organic, rounded armor with ridiculous amounts of detail. You want Ninjas? WE GOT NINJAS- there's Mystical Ninjas, Tech-Ninjas, Ninja Juicers, Ninja CRAZIES, Ninja Borgs (complete with scorpion tail and extra limbs!), Techno-Wizard Ninjas, etc. Basically, they want teen boys to pop stiffies at the sight of this stuff.
There's some pretty silly stuff in here, of course. The Ninja stuff comes off like pandering, and it is. They include goofy things like Samurai SAMAS and a Glitter Boy force for no real reason other than Power Creep and because they want recognizable stuff, when they should really have come up with their own things. And FOUR Dragon 'Borgs? That absolutely comes off like "Vince Martin drew four Dragon Cyborgs, so I guess there's four different kinds now". Also fifty goddamn suits of Robot Armor, which is redundant even for this setting.
Power Creep: Not so bad, actually, though the versatile Glitter Force neutralizes some of the few weaknesses of Glitter Boys (their signature Boom Guns being their only weapons), and the Dragon 'Borgs are better than Full-Conversion Cyborgs from the Main Rulebook in every way.
The impact of this book is oddly minimal- the setting is so "apart" from everything, and the game so America-centric, that none of this ever seems to appear again. There were no sequel books, unlike ones that South America, Germany, Russia, China and the American West got.
-Coming out right in the "Vince Martin as Head Artist" era, and packing probably the largest amount of "Cool Anime Shit" in the setting, comes the only book so far to deal with Japan. This one seemed AMAZING to me as a kid, and made me the most jealous of my friend's killer book collection. I ignored all the "Boring Traditional Crap" and went straight to their 975 versions of modern-day techno-ninjas, and then drooled over DRAGON CYBORGS, YO! Rifts Earth is a setting that rules on Rule Of Cool, and possibly the Coolest Ruler of them all was Rifts Japan. The entire book just BLEEDS "You wanted to play this when you were fourteen".
Hilariously, Kevin Siembieda takes full credit for the book, explaining in the beginning that he's apologizing to Pat Nowak, who handed in a great manuscript that KS re-wrote "80% of" because he got an idea. Nowak's name does not appear on the cover, and near as I can tell he only has one other writing credit period.
The nation of Japan is largely intact on Rifts Earth- it's scarcely Post-Apocalyptic at all, featuring well-ordered societies of what Japan looks like to white people. Nowak came up with the idea of Japan having one technological state and one "traditional", magic-leaning state, and KS decided to use some kind of "Brigadoon" thing to indicate that the technological cities were actually teleported out of our time for a while, popping up only recently, in a world that reverted back to the old ways. Some of these techno-cities hate each other, while others are allies. An uneasy balance is taking place between old-style and new.
The first half of the book is all "photo-referenced" art and traditional-looking guys, most of whom don't look super cool. The second half if Vince Martin's trademarks- slender people in organic, rounded armor with ridiculous amounts of detail. You want Ninjas? WE GOT NINJAS- there's Mystical Ninjas, Tech-Ninjas, Ninja Juicers, Ninja CRAZIES, Ninja Borgs (complete with scorpion tail and extra limbs!), Techno-Wizard Ninjas, etc. Basically, they want teen boys to pop stiffies at the sight of this stuff.
There's some pretty silly stuff in here, of course. The Ninja stuff comes off like pandering, and it is. They include goofy things like Samurai SAMAS and a Glitter Boy force for no real reason other than Power Creep and because they want recognizable stuff, when they should really have come up with their own things. And FOUR Dragon 'Borgs? That absolutely comes off like "Vince Martin drew four Dragon Cyborgs, so I guess there's four different kinds now". Also fifty goddamn suits of Robot Armor, which is redundant even for this setting.
Power Creep: Not so bad, actually, though the versatile Glitter Force neutralizes some of the few weaknesses of Glitter Boys (their signature Boom Guns being their only weapons), and the Dragon 'Borgs are better than Full-Conversion Cyborgs from the Main Rulebook in every way.
The impact of this book is oddly minimal- the setting is so "apart" from everything, and the game so America-centric, that none of this ever seems to appear again. There were no sequel books, unlike ones that South America, Germany, Russia, China and the American West got.