Seikai Houretsuden Fanbox (Heroic Legend of the Star Sea Fanbox)

Barn is a bright and cheerful boy, but lost his memory two years ago, apparently to hide an important or painful past memory. He was found unconscious in the Karukia mountains, and was found by Blood, a half-man, half-white tiger, who took care of him. In order to try to help Barn regain his memory, Blood and Barn leave the Karukia mountains to the kingdom of Melbird, where there is a rumor that a fortune-teller lives there that may be able to tell Barn about his past.

The fortune-teller speaks of a legend of the "Star Sea" that has been told in the kingdom of Melbird since ancient times, of a hero that will open the "door" of the "Rig Veda" to save the world, and says that Barn is the person who has come to do this, and that by doing so, he will regain his memory. He then disappears before Barn and Blood without another word.

Without anywhere else to go, Barn and Blood set out on the venture of the Star Sea legend, to travel over the seas to foreign lands to regain elemental treasures and go against the Guardians that protect them, and for Barn to regain his hidden memory: a memory that will save the world.

Barn

Race: Unknown
Blood type: B
Zodiac sign: Aries
Height: 177 cm (5'10'')
Age: 17
Weapon: Sword with fire magic

Barn was found by Blood collapsed in the Karukia Forest with no memories. Blood gave him the name "Barn," but his true name is unknown. Blood has taken care of him, and now he and Blood have set out to try to recall his memories. He is very energetic, but also a little too innocent and gullable. On his journey, he trains in swordsmanship, and fights with fire magic off of his blade. Seiyuu: Okada Takayuki.

Lucina Blood

Race: Animal people (White tiger)
Blood type: Unknown
Zodiac sign: Leo
Height: 187 cm (6'2'')
Age: Unknown
Weapon: Strength and lightning/earth magic

Blood is one of the animal people that has the ability to transform from human form to the form of a white tiger (which has given him the nick-name "Byakko-chan" among the others). Normally these half-animals stay away from humans, but Blood found Barn abandoned with no memories in Karukia, and feeling tender-hearted toward him, has taken care of him and trying to help him regain his memories. He is a bit serious and overly protective of Barn. When it comes to battle, he uses his brute force, and can affect the ground with lightning punches. Seiyuu: Narita Ken.

Hijiri Herz Jr.

Race: Human, American/European and Oriental heritage
Blood type: A
Zodiac sign: Capricorn
Height: 167 cm (5'6'')
Age: 23
Weapon: Frying pan

Hijiri is the cook on the Wing Sword. Though he is 23, he looks more like he is 13, and acts more like a capricious shouta. He is liked by animals, and has two hamsters, Hamlet and Ophelia, one of which is tucked in his shirt and the other that perches on his head. He likes things to be orderly, and is the "neat freak" of the ship, and he takes his job of being the cook very seriously. He is very cheerful, but also has a bit of a trouble-maker within him. When he is in battle, he weilds the giant frying pan that is strapped to his back with no mercy. Seiyuu: Motoki Takagi.

Rui

Race: Unknown
Blood type: Unknown
Zodiac sign: Unknown
Height: 182 cm (6'0'')
Age: Unknown
Weapon: Martial arts

Rui is a mysterious man who is found floating upon a raft one day and is taken aboard the Wing Sword. He is a smooth-talker and flirtatious to the others aboard the ship. When he fights, he uses martial arts, sometimes wearing his wooden clogs on his hands when he punches. In the evenings, he can be found under the stars playing an oriental instrument. But what is hidden beneath this strange romanticist? Seiyuu: Ichijo Kazuya

Est

Race: Unknown
Blood type: Unknown
Zodiac sign: Unknown
Height: Unknown
Age: Unknown

A mysterious figure from Barn's past. Seiyuu: Midorikawa Hikaru.

The Seikai Houretsuden Fanbox is a bit different than your typical fanbox, in that it is lacking Windows goodies such as sounds, screensavers, clocks, and the like. Instead, it is a short drama combined with a few mini games, and only features five characters from the original game (Barn, Blood, Hijiri, Rui, and Est).

When launching the fanbox, there are four different items on the table of contents. The first is a vocal image song called "Love All of the Night" which is sung by Kazuya Ichijo, the seiyuu of Rui. The second option is a short four-track drama which features Barn (Okada Takayuki), Blood (Narita Ken), Hijiri (Motoki Takagi), and Rui (Kazuya Ichijo). The third option is an interview with the above seiyuu plus Midorikawa Hikaru (the voice of Est) and some of Lucina Project's staff, including the artist, Sakurai Shushushu. For these vocal tracks, I find it really much easier to play them outside of the game in Media Player, so you can pause, fast-forward, rewind, ect., and then you don't have to keep the game screen active when you listen.

The last option is the mini games. There are two mini games: the first is a whack-a-mole game, and the second is a slide puzzle. Winning each of these games gives you a password, and the third option on the mini game screen launches a website in which you input the passwords to access a set of wallpaper.

In the whack-a-mole game, a hamster, Barn, Blood, and Est (as well as a "fake" Barn, Blood, and Est) will pop up from the holes. Hitting them will gain you a point, but if you hit the fakes five times the game will end. It's actually a bit annoying because whenever you hit a character, the game will stop momentarily for them to complain about it, and Hijiri and Rui will randomly say things as you are playing as well. The object is to win by either scoring 99,999 points (dear lord, how could /anyone/ accomplish that?) or by hitting the "guy eating ramen" who starts popping up after you've scored about a thousand points. The best way to score points is by always hitting the same character: when you do this, the point value will go up by one each time (+1 on the first hit, +2 on the second hit, ect.) I found hitting the hamster the easiest, since the game doesn't pause with an annoying sound clip when you hit him unlike with the characters. Then once you get up to around 1,000 points, go for the guy eating ramen, which will automatically clear the game when you hit him.

In the slide puzzle mini-game, you have an assorted of different pieces featuring Barn, Blood, and Est, and any two that match will disappear when set next to each other. The object is to get them all to disappear: if one will be left-over without a match, then the game will automatically end. To clear it, you'll have to get sets of three blocks to disappear at once as well as two. I found it easiest just to work on one character at a time, carefully looking over the available pieces once I started to get close to clearing a particular one, so I'd make sure to get them all cleared without leaving one behind. When cleared, you get to see a large picture of Blood that was behind the puzzle board, which takes up two screens (the bottom half is seen just by scrolling your mouse down toward the bottom of the window) and is rather yummy.

Each game gives you a password when you clear it, which you then enter into the website window that pops up when selecting the third item on the Mini Game contents screen. This gives you access to a set of wallpaper: unfortunately, there are only six, and there isn't anything that exciting about them -- one is of Nush, Nagi, and Syun in chibi, which is used on two papers just in a different style, one using just the top part of the Blood CG from the slide puzzle, one with the Barn, Blood, and Est chibis from the whack-a-mole game, one with Hijiri and Rui from the Mini Game contents page, and one using the fanbox cover art of Barn and Blood.

As far as technical issues, I had no problems running the game using Windows XP with the language set to Japanese.

However, the game disk is a "Mixed Mode" CDROM. This means it has data as well as normal CD-audio tracks (similar to those "Advanced CD" albums you get that have music videos as well as the CD music itself). For me, the computer would want to auto-run the CD-audio portion when the CDROM drive was clicked on, playing the vocal song and drama in Media Player.

To get into the game contents of the fanbox, right-click the CDROM drive that has the game in it, and go down to "Explore". It will then open up a folder with all the game data, and you can run the start.exe from there. The game plays right off the CDROM with no install. If you'd like to run it off your harddrive, then just copy all the contents from this directory to a folder on the harddrive and launch the start.exe from there.

I was a bit disappointed with the Seikai Houretsuden Fanbox. For one, with the exception of the mini games, this was really just a drama CD, of which I'm not a really big fan. I would've much preferred if they just made the vocal song, drama, and staff interview its own drama CD and then packaged new art or Windows media like most fanboxes include.

Having mini games was nice from the fanbox norm, since it gives it something interactive to do. Though I found the repetitious voices that played while playing the games very annoying (fortunately there is an option on the front screen of the fanbox to shut off BGM, voice, or SFX). They were also /really/ frusterating until I figured out how to actually win them: I spent a great deal of time hitting everything that popped up on the whack-a-mole game that wasn't one of the dummies wondering how I would ever reach 99,999 points since they went up one at a time, until I discovered that by hitting the same character each time (I opted for the hamster, since he doesn't complain each time he's hit and also doesn't look like any of the dummies) raising the points incrementally. Even then I wondered how anyone could have the patience to score 99,999 points when I was already 6,000 in and getting dizzy from all the quick characters popping up: I hit the guy eating ramen on accident and found it cleared the stage, then wish I had known that from the start. I also went through the puzzle game two or three times trying to figure out why I kept losing until I figured it out: fortunately for me I'm good at puzzles so I only suffered minimal frusteration before I figured out what I was doing wrong. But once you've passed the puzzles, that is about it: you have scored your password and there really isn't anything that enjoyable about them to warrant just sitting down and playing them over again after winning once.

I was also /really/ disappointed with the wallpaper (one of the main features I like in fanboxes). When I finally won the passwords from the mini games, I didn't know exactly what they'd be unlocking on that website, and I got rather excited with thoughts of nice new Sakurai-sensei art. But then it was just a set of six wallpapers, none of which were very good. It made me wonder why they make you go to all the trouble to win the passwords in the mini games just for that, instead of just sticking them on the fanbox to begin with.

I was also pretty let down that only five characters from the original game made an appearance in the fanbox, since the large cast was one of the main features of Seikai Houretsuden.

If you are a fan and collector of drama CDs, then I would suggest looking into this fanbox, since that is primarily what it is: a drama CD. For those that aren't so interested in dramas or are looking for Windows goodies, then there really isn't much here of interest.

Lucina's Seikai Houretsuden Fanbox Site (Japanese) - The company's site with information on the game.

No Reset Club (Japanese) - Personal website of Sakurai Shushushu, artist of Seikai Houretsuden.

Disclaimer: All written text and capture guides © Boys' Love Games Headquarters. All pictures and downloads are copyright of their respective companies and artists and are for promotional use only. I am in no way claiming the art as my own, nor am I trying to infringe upon the company's rights. I am trying to promote these games by allowing a foreign audience to see some artwork from the game.