14 DAY TRIAL // Bandai Namco Games Europe announced that the side-scrolling action game Ranko Tsukigime's Longest Day, tied into famed manga artist Katsuhiro Otomo's four-part animated feature Short Peace, is now available on the PlayStation 3 in Europe and Australia.
Katsuhiro Otomo's most notable achievement is the creation of Akira, one of the most influential animated films ever made, which developed a cult following and numerous fan-fiction spin-offs and is still regarded as one of the best animes ever made, even though it's been some time since its release in 1988.
Ranko Tsukigime's Longest Day is a PlayStation 3-exclusive game directed by renowned designer Goici "Suda51" Suda, who also created killer7, Killer is Dead and Lollipop Chainsaw, along with the No More Heroes franchise.
The game is meant to be the fifth and closing part of Short Peace, and it follows an adolescent girl leading a double life, that of a regular high-school teenager by day, and that of a deadly assassin by night, as the trailer below shows.
The game is the result of the collaboration between several famed eccentric designers, and as such offers an enticing and stunning visual experience as well as an eerie conceptual direction that brings more depth than its simplistic gameplay mechanics allow.
"For the first time in video game history, Bandai Namco Games Europe is pleased to bring to players this tremendous cross-media experience," said Herve Hoerdt, vice president of IP strategy at Bandai Namco Games Europe.
The film component of Short Peace is made out of four different animated shorts, one of which, Possessions by Shuhei Morita, has been nominated for a 2014 Academy Award.
The other three animated shorts are Hajime Katoki's A Farewell to Weapon, Katsuhiro Otomo's Combustible and Hiroaki Ando's Gambo.
"We hope that players will enjoy discovering the unique and mesmerizing universe of Short Peace as much as the directors behind this gigantic project enjoyed creating it. Short Peace is the proof that only the video game medium can generate experiences very deep yet exciting at the same time," Hoerdt concluded.
For now, Bandai Namco has not revealed any information regarding Ranko Tsukigime's Longest Day's release in other territories, but it was initially announced that the game would also make it to North America sometime this spring.
If you want to see a giant Pomeranian in action and more footage of the sniper violin, as well as some friendly strangling underneath a blossomed cherry tree, you can check out Ranko Tsukigime's Longest Day's first trailer, released back in February.
