4.02.2007

Live the Yankee Life



The above opening clip is from Spike's Kenka Banchou 2 ~Full Throttle~ for the Playstation 2. A banchou (番長/"group leader") is an authority figure in a group of juvenile delinquents -- specifically, the kind of delinquents who ascribe to the yankii (ヤンキー/"yankee") philosophy and dress code (think Onizuka from GTO). As a matter of fact, the tutorial portion of Kenka Banchou 2 will teach you about the rules ("no matter what happens, be a man! Establish your life around your manliness!") of yankii-hood and teach you some really classic maneuvers (such as the eye beam -- a banchou way of staring at somebody so intensely that the target breaks out in buckets of sweat). The loading screens will teach you some of the most important words in the yankii lexicon, such as otoko (漢/"man" in the context of one who lives his life honorably) and aniki (兄貴/"big brother" in the context of a senior delinquent of the same affiliation).

As for the game itself, it's said to play like a 3-D version of River City Ransom. I don't know about that, but then, I'm still chuckling over the whole idea of someone making a game series about yankii to begin with.

The opening theme, Otoko no Kunshou (男の勲章/"Emblem of Manhood"), is performed by Shima Daisuke. The song was originally released as a single in 1982 but has been co-opted recently as theme music for Shima's segment of the variety program Radical!!.

Update - Here's the opening video from the first Kenka Banchou PS2 game:

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