Those who may have missed out on playing the original Little King’s Story will soon have the ability to do so on PC. XSEED Games will be releasing Little King’s Story on Steam later today where it will cost $24.99, €22.99, and £18.99 depending on your region and will be available at a 10% discount for one week after release.
This PC version of the game is a fully remastered and high definition version of the original Wii version of the game and will support numerous languages to choose from for text. You can check out the video for the PC version as well as a few screenshots below.
Her lonely lifestyle comes to an abrupt end when she is informed that her cousin Kirin, who despite the size difference is the same age as Ryo, wants to attend an art school in the big city in the future. With Ryo already attending cram school classes in an effort to make it into an art oriented school, it seems like a perfect fit since Kirin will be taking the same classes. While initially Ryo is a bit unsure of what to make of this arrangement, once she meets Kirin the two quickly begin to hit it off, especially when the first meal that she cooks for the two of them turns out to be the most delicious one she has tasted in a long time.
Shiina serves as a great addition to the trio by serving as something of a balancing act for Kirin. Kirin’s personality is full of energy and despite being the same age as Ryo, her impulsive nature mimics her smaller stature as she often plays the role of a younger child while Ryo takes care of her. As for Shiina, she is far more reserved and laid back when it comes to everything around her and also has a few little quirks of her own such as being from an incredibly rich family and getting sick whenever she happens to get splashed by rainwater of any kind.
Thankfully even with this issue the show stands out from the rest thanks to a certain element. That element of course is that every episode features food of some kind that Ryo or the other girls end up cooking and eating. While this wouldn’t really stand out in most other series, Gourmet Girl Graffiti sets up food as the focal point for many episodes, whether it is the girls bonding over a picnic watching the Cherry Blossoms, the three of them trying out various meals that they’ve seen on television, or even Kirin and Shiina stepping up to show that Ryo can rely on them in the kitchen as well, food plays a major role here.
Although his appearance is rather surprising for Sakura, it gets even more outlandish when she realizes that not only can no one else in the class see him, but that Rinne is dealing with an oversized spirit of a Chihuahua. The next day Rinne returns but this time everyone treats his appearance as something special since it is the first time that many of the classmates have even seen him. This leads Sakura to wondering what exactly Rinne is and after speaking with him and dealing with a fused evil spirit that results in the pair traveling through a realm between life and the afterlife, Kyoukai.
After this initial introduction, Rin-ne begins to settle into a fairly enjoyable pace of introducing various spiritual elements such as new ghosts or demons that need to be exorcised or bringing in people from the two main characters’ pasts. This means that the title settles for a more Ranma oriented pace than InuYasha as various characters are introduced and then appear as minor roles in later episodes. This includes the likes of an amateur exorcist who became infatuated with Sakura at a young age because she could see the same spirits he could, a demon that Rinne caused problems for as a child who now wants revenge, and eventually, near the end of this first half, introducing Rinne’s sleazeball of a father and another female Shinigami who will likely serve as a potential rival in the future.
This is due to the fact that her character so far is portrayed as being entirely nonplussed by any situation that comes her way. While she already has a thick skin to most of the supernatural world thanks to living with it for so long, no matter what happens the girl refuses to betray any type of emotion outside of the occasional spark. As for the rest of the cast, Rinne’s jokes come from the fact that he is incredibly poor and is a penny-pincher when it comes to using exorcism tools, meaning that he is often seen lamenting the use of cash to the point of crying blood, Rinne’s grandmother lashes out at those who call her old, an old demon from Rinne’s past is idiotic to the point that characters question whether or not anything he does is a trap or simply a mistake from his idiocy, and so forth.
This leads to a number of scenes that appear fairly generic and even though this Blu-ray release does increase the vivid appearance of the coloration used in most scenes they still feel a bit flat at times.
As far as the soundtrack goes, the background music is fairly standard for a series such as this and doesn’t really offer anything too surprising. The opening theme is “Riot of the Cherry Blossoms” by Keytalk while the ending theme “Ring of Time” by Passepied sound decent but don’t stand out in any real way.