Big Ass Queens? I'd rather have Little Tail Bronx

Author: ZodiKafka
First published 2023/11/26

My editor would not let me write this post unless I included this image

Introducktion

44,000 years ago an uncredited artist from what would much later be known as Sulawesi, Indonesia, painted half-human half-animal hybrids upon a cave wall. These hybrids are what are known as therianthropes in science circles and TF (Transformation Fetish) in normal circles. We do not know who commissioned the art or how much they paid because they presumably wanted to remain anonymous and currency had yet to be invented.

35,000 to 41,000 years ago, calendars hadn't been invented yet so accurate date of comission and completion is unknown, an uncredited artist sculpted a half-human half-lion figure out of ivory in what is now called Germany. Scientist still argue today about wether the figure is male or female but it most likely did not matter to the commissioner since it's common knowledge that all furries are bisexual.

In 1984 RAI, the national public broadcasting company of Italy, and Tokyo Movie Shinsha produced the anime 名探偵ホームズ (meitantei houmuzu, famous detective holmes) localised as Sherlock Hound in English due to the cast consisting of antopomoprhic animals. The series ran for 26 episodes and ended in 1985, a movie edited together out of two episodes directed by Miyazaki of anime fame, not of video game fame, was also released. At an unknown (to me) date this anime would be watched by a man in Fukuoka.

In 2019 Liar-soft released the game Alpha Nighthawk, first in Nanahoshi Dentou's STX series. At a known (to me) date this game would be played by a Zodi.

And in 2023 that same Zodi, having ran out of furry eroge and being unable to pull furries in soshage, resorted to playing normal non-ero non-sosha games. And that same Zodi is now writing a blogpost just for you about them.

Well, how did I get here?

My personal path down the animaltrail began in 2019 with the game Alpha-Nighthawk, Nanahoshi Dentou has since said on the website formerly known as twitter that she was unfamiliar with furries before the release of the game so my fall into the foxhole was by accident. The STX series, which also includes Beta-Sixdouze and the fandisc Gamma-Dimension, is to my knowledge and judgement the only commercial furry eroge. Previous Liar-soft titles like Sekien no Inganock and Shiei no Sona-Nyl feature anthropomoprhic characters in supporting roles but the STX series is really the only series with them front and center, and event then the actual protagonists are human. Unlocking a new fetish tends to be an exciting journey of discovery but once I had opened the door I realised that was it, the journey was the door all along.

Of course what one does when one once again faces the reality that nurse cosplay is about as spicy as commerical eroge is allowed to get is to seek out the wild untamed lands of doujinge. I took to DLsite and filtered for the けもの/獣化 (kemono/kemonoka, furry/TF) tag and faced page upon page of just... girls with cat ears with the occasional bestiality doujinshi mixed in. Kemono should in this context mean furry or anthro but it does quite literally also just mean beast, and it seems both circles and users on DLsite just assumed the literal meaning was the expected usecase. If you want to find furry doujinge there is no easy way right now, but there will be after this is published lemme give you a quick rundown of stuff that's notable in some way or another.

Easy top pick is Kinosei. The gameplay loop is probably fun even if you're not a furlord but the game also features so many of the big names on the Japanese fur scene. If your TL was already all fur you'd be familiar with probably all of them, and if it wasn't take this as a quick rundown on who to follow. The game set out to be the furry nukige that the commercial studios just won't deliver but it goes way above and beyond that. The gameplay is the kinda thing you haven't really seen in commercial eroge since the noughties, especially not nukige. [Editor's note: this one's getting an official English translation in 2024.]

Next up is gonna be the games by the circle Chivalry (I would link their website but it's gone so here's the booth page). These are novel games and the engine isn't the best at all times but for human on fur this is for sure a go to. The games are short and sweet, and voiced! Top pick for me would be Yuriroid Blue Star for sure I mean who else out here making furry yuri games? Kotou Yotogibanashi is straight but features some gradual transfurmation if that's your thing go check that one out.

Okay so to be honest that is kind of it, there are other games too but nothing I can really recommend. There's a funny one where the heroine speaks in a conlang that the protagonist never learns. And yes, it is voiced, you do get to hear doujin voice actors try to pronounce a conlang they don't know which is very funny. Probably wouldn't recommend it but it's a funny enough concept that I feel like I had to mention it.

At this point I have once again reached the end of the kemono tag, sorted by review count, on DLsite. Staring into the void together with the friend I always meet at the end of this journey: Tits Monkey. Always there for me at my most desperate moments, waiting for me at the very end of the doomscroll.

Housamo gacha reenactment

What does one do when out of both commercial and doujin eroge? Turn to soshage of course. Tokyo Afterschool Summoners (housamo) is a must for any furry worth their fur. Starring probably the worst gameplay of any soshage but easily the funniest mix of cast it's a true monument to the bisexual nature of the furry community. When you've waited weeks for a new banner you grow tired though.

Do you turn to World Flipper? That one pops up on your TL a lot! Support is ending in 2024 and there's no furry banner running, too many humans... no this is a dead end! What else is on your TL? What else does every Japanese fur artist draw? No not pokemon you've played those come on there must be....

What the Heck is Little Tail Bronx???

You might already be familiar with the Fukuoka based game studio CyberConnect2 from the .hack and Naruto: Ultimate ninja series, I wasn't but I trust you to be more well read on Japanese games than I am, but to start this story we need to go back to the original CyberConnect without the 2. The studio only existed as CyberConnect between 1996 and 2001 before the managing director walked out due to awful sales. The director walking out meant they lost 10% of all their employees, because they were 10 people in total. Supposedly at the start of the development of their first game they also only had one computer in the office. Their first title was Tail Concerto and while a sequel was planned it was never created due to the bad sales. You would think Tail Concerto 2 being dead in the water would be the end of it, but while Tail Concerto did not become the first title in the Tail Concerto series it did become the first title... in the Little Tail Bronx series.

Little Tail Bronx is a series that consists of (around) 4 games at this point, as well as a manga, a cancelled half finished light novel, several cancelled soshage that are now unavailable, multiple cancelled sequels, a series of animated shorts on youtube, and uh another thing we'll get to in a bit. This blogpost will consist of an overarching look at the series with spoiler free reviews, followed by a spoilerful world and lore part building up to the most recent series 戦場のフーガ (Senjou no Fuuga, Fuga Melodies of Steel), and then finally an even more spoilery part tying Fuga into the whole thing. This first section will be spoiler free but if you're interested in checking out the series heed later spoiler warnings!

Man they really didn't put a single dang furry on the box huh

Okay so back to Tail Concerto. President of CyberConnect2, Hiroshi Matsuyama, says 名探偵ホームズ (meitantei houmuzu, famous detective holmes) was his big fur awakening and what lead him to want to make furry games. As I walk you through the history of this series it will become very clear what a passion project it is but Tail Concerto begins fairly small.

Tail Concerto is a 3D action platformer for the original Playstation released in 1998 featuring fully animated cutscenes, partial voice acting, and collectible pieces of art. 3D platformers were blowing up at the time, Super mario 64 dropped in 1969 [Editor's note: this is just a joke; obviously we here at Skullfuckers are intimately familiar with gaming history and know that it's called Super Mario 64 because it came out in 1964], but the game was said to be doomed from the start due to three major aspects. It featured an all furry cast, it was set on floating islands, and there were robos in it (or mechas if you will but Hiroshi Matsuyama calls them robos so I will too). These three things were all said to be a hard sell on their own and together they made the game sink like a furry in a robo off a floating island.

you

the guy she te(ry

The game is fairly short, I managed to finish it in a day, and I think the story is best described as a Saturday morning cartoon. Our guy (read: protagonist) is Waffle Ryebread, oh lord get used to some S tier naming for this whole series, a lovely little cop dog piloting a robo chasing down cat delinquents. Yes he is a cop and yes the criminals he's chasing are all of a specific race and oh boy once I introduce you to the setting material and history this is going to be a real bad look for Waffle BUT at this point in the series it's a cute and harmless cat and dog and cops and robbers kinda deal. Waffle even says it's all a misunderstanding and dog people don't hate cat people don't worry about it!!! Waffle's childhood friend, a now eyepatch clad rowdy cat girl named Alicia Pris, is part of an infamous trio of cat criminals who are running the cat delinquent operation and this trio and their machines will be most of the boss battles of the game. Some other key characters are Princess uh I want to say Terrier but wikipedia is telling me Terria so make of that what you will because yes Tail Concerto is also set in a monarchy but don't think too hard about this yet okay we'll get there later? The princess is also often followed by the knight Cyan Garland who's a sort of comic relief rival to Waffle. There's also Fool, that is his name it's フール in Japanese which is just Fool, the sketchy merchant who's sponsoring the cat criminals and has some mysterous ulterior motives.

Waffle is so frickin cute dude

Most important though is Panta. I love Panta. ACAB can't be right because Panta exists. Panta is my son. I will draw an original piece of Panta fanart and post it right here later I'm typing this into the body of the blog so I do not forget it and I do not edit so this will still be here for you to read.

I did it here he is there you go past me

Gameplay wise I think I could best sum it up as yeet-based. You can walk and jump around and while you do have a bubble cannon it only stuns, all combat is done through picking stuff up and yeeting it. At some points in the game you get to storm into peoples homes and just toss their furniture around which is both extremely satisfying and highly realistic cop action. Ever since Dragons Dogma I've been awaken, arisen?, to yeet based gameplay so I very much enjoyed tossing stuff around but the gameplay is not without issues. It is as mentioned a 3D platforming title for the original Playstation and I think anyone familiar with the era would know that there's going to be some kind of issue with camera controls. In the case of Tail Concerto there simply are no camera controls, and when you get to the moving platforms in low gravity section this is... I'm sure if you're old enough you've been there. Camera issues aside the fundamental fun of yeeting paried with some nice gameplay variety in the form of for example minecart sections and a map where you get to fly around openly exploring makes for a pretty fun game to play.

Was considering what collectible CG to include but had to do Panta, you get two Panta images this post lucky you!!

The presentation is very cute. I really enjoyed the fully animated bits and the voicework (especially Panta's), and the collectible art was all also very cute. We get a little peek into what the Little Tail Bronx setting looks like and how it functions but it's not fully expanded upon until Solatorobo. It's a very fun game to look back on with the knowledge of what comes after it, but on its own it really is just a short and cute PSX era 3D platformer. A difficult game to recommend but one I'm very happy I played.

Solatorobo is not the next game I'm going to tell you about, it didn't come out until 2010 and there was in fact something between the two games not only set in the Little Tail Bronx universe but I believe the first time that name was used for the series. And this wasn't a game, or a light novel, or a comic, no this was a uh... a disaster prevention mascot for Fukuoka. Mamoru and his family live in Nipon which is canon to the Little Tail Bronx universe, on the site under the Little Tail Bronx tab you can see where Nihon is in relation to Prairie (the kingdom Tail Concerto is set in). That's right baby the first thing making this series a universe is a disaster prevention mascot for Fukuoka. Mamoru also later appears in Solatorobo and Fukuoka is in the end game credits, probably since they own Mamoru. Now keen eyed Japanese knowing readers may have noticed that one of the tabs on the official site also says "crime prevention simulation" because that's right baby there's a Mamoru game there are 5 games in the series not 4 (actually there are more we'll get to that later). The game has separate little stories for boys and girls about going home from school or going to the park and quizzes the reader on how to stay safe, if you know Japanese you can still go play them on the site right now. No one reading this blog should be the target audience for this but man the art is very cute so maybe peep it just for the CGs.

This is more like it

Okay so before we get to Solatorobo proper let's talk about why it took until 2010 for this to be made. Tail Concerto didn't sell well as mentioned and the publishers, Bandai Namco (or uh Namco Bandai at the time I think???), were not willing to gamble again on CC2's pet project (get it because dogs n cats). The higher ups were not going to allow a game with furries, floating islands, and robos to be made but the team were also not willing to give up on any of those parts. Eventually Hiroshi Matsuyama went to Nintendo and told them about how Namco Bandai didn't want to publish the game, and introduced the game to Nintendo who were interested in it and said it sounded like a good idea. This, unsurprisingly, got Hiroshi Matsuyama in a lot of trouble with Namco Bandai. After some more pushing and struggling they did manage to get the greenlight but had to make one compromise, which I can't talk about just yet so look forward to the spoiler section. When the game was released in English internationally later on it was published by Nintendo rather than Namco Bandai.

Solatorobo is not a 3D platformer like its predecessor but rather an action RPG. Combat is still grab and toss based but features tossing enemies into each other as well as combos and is just a lot more engaging. Where Tail Concerto used a combination of 3D gameplay and 2D animated videos Solatorobo mixes 3D and 2D in more interesting ways. The game utilises both 3D spaces and 2D backgrounds and sometimes through clever camera trickery moves from what appears to be a 2D background into a 3D space creating some really wonderful set pieces.

Like a this

Talking about the camera it is now locked for most of the game, which is what allows it to mess around blending the Ds, and it also makes for a much more playable experience. Tail Concerto was kept fresh through the varied gameplay and Solatorobo also steps this up by adding a fishing minigame, a racing minigame, special combat challenges, as well as a variety of puzzles involving getting in and out of your robo. Just like Tail Concerto there are collectible graphics but this is also expanded on by adding collectible music tracks as well as lore entries unlocked through doing various tasks. It's an RPG so you level up through combat but can also improve your character through a tile puzzle style equipment system and also by buying specialised robos.

Housamo jumpscare

Solatorobo is also not set in the kingdom of Prairie but instead in the nation of Shepherd, which is French speaking so you get a lot of lovely crusty DS French. Just like Prairie the nation of Shepherd is a series of floating islands but they all have their own little settlements and very unique designs to them this time rather than just being forest level and ice level type stuff. Our protaginst is Red the hunter, which also happens to be the subtitle for the international release. You can think of hunter here basically being like an adventurer or a mercenary in video game terms, he flies around and does various missions together with his step-sister Chocola who may or may not be the whole reason I got into this series to begin with.

She's so cute dude look at them lil like compasses or steam gauges or whatever they be look at them armpit windows whadda design

One CULTURAL difference you notice pretty quick is that Shepherd leans towards more plane like ships while Prairie primarily featured balloons. Without getting into spoilers the game consists of two parts, the Japanese subtitle is それからＣＯＤＡへ (sore kara CODA he, and then towards CODA) so I think this is fair to bring up, where the first one follows similar story beats to Tail Concerto and the second half uh is not write-able about without spoilers and lots of lore info.

You can really feel how Solatorobo was fought for and how it could have been the team's only chance at getting this world out there. Not unlike yer mum after last night, the game is stuffed with love. Every random side character is charming, every area is unique and beautiful, and the plot goes so much further than I was expecting. When Solatorobo came out Little Tail Bronx was already an established universe on paper but Solatorobo is what gives this universe life, history, and culture. I'll go into more detail in the next section but the settings book covers everything from funeral rites in different religions to bacteria, and while bacteria don't really come up, a lot of the setting details can be seen reflected in the world of the game.

If it wasn't an ancient-ass DS game with DLC that is now unavailable Solatorobo would be an easy recommend. I would strongly suggest, if possible, to play it before the Fuga games since certain big reveals about the setting dropped in Solatorobo are revealed in logs in Fuga and I just think it's a lot more fun knowing them going in.

A sequel to Solatorobo titled ストレルカ・ストーリーズ (Strelka(?) Stories) was planned but cancelled. A light novel titled Red Data Children was published in parts in Dragon Magazine but then cancelled in 2011. It was never fully published. In 2014 CC2 released the soshage Little Tail Stories set in the Little Tail Bronx universe, which has been out of service since a little later in 2014.

It's a digital game so have a title screen instead of a cover

Once again we're 10 years in the future and many failed attempts at expanding the Little Tail Bronx universe when we get to the 2021 title Fuga or 戦場のフーガ (Senjou no Fuga, Fuga Melodies of Steel). and as you may have guessed from, well everything so far, the path to Fuga was not an easy one either. On CyberConnect2's 20 year anniversary in 2017 the studio decided to make their next project self published, this is why Fuga released as a download only indie title. The project being a Little Tail Bronx game wasn't set in stone from the beginning either but there was a will in the studio to make another game in the series and having seen the metioric rise in furries, especially in America, they decided this was their shot to make Little Tail Bronx big. The project was planned to take about a year and a half but didn't come out until 2021 and went twice over budget. Remember how at the start of the making of Tail Concerto they only had one computer in the office? This time they had 0 programmers in the office since they were off working on other projects. They also ended up compromising on the three elements that make up the Little Tail Bronx series, or well they sort of did. Fuga is still set in the floating island universe of the series but on a large enough continent that new players might not notice it's a floating island (this was done intentionally), there's no robos in the game and they're replaced by tanks and other warmachines, however they did not bend on the full furry cast. The first Fuga was accompanied by a series of shorts on youtube and a manga but let's get on to da game.

So you had a PSX 3D platformer with animated cutscenes, a DS action RPG blending 2D and 3D presentation, what the hell do you do when making an indie entry to the same series in 2021? Well you make it a 2021 indie game, right? Fuga features command battles which is to say RPG style combat inside a big tank piloted by a group of furry children, my children. Outside of combat you progress on an FTL style, yes FTL is the game I'm gonna credit for this common indie game thing, map (although not procedurally generated) where you pick paths and get different combat encounters or item pickups etc. Between map sections you also get parts where you can upgrade stuff inside the tank, grow and cook food for buffs, progress relationships between the kids to power em up as duos, or obtain upgrade materials through fishing (not a minigame this time) or dungeons (this one's like a minigame). The story is also handled through more visual novel style presentation with sprites and CGs.

Wappa is my favourite child I am allowed to pick favourites I'm a bad mum

"But wait what happened to the yeeting?", I hear you asking. "Zodi I know you said the three elements were furries, floating islands, and robos but clearly yeeting was the heart of this series where did it go?", I hear you crying. Do not fret while I also played through the first couple of battles worried that they had forgotten their yeet roots I soon discovered that yeeting is a key aspect of this game as well. You see in Fuga if a battle is difficult you always have the option to instant win it, say if you haven't upgraded your tank good enough and you're out of healing items at a boss. All you have to do is pick one of the children to yeet into the furnace to power the SOUL CANNON. That's right baby now you can yeet kids at your enemies and they die permanently, just straight up kill em.

The mix of 3D and 2D is still kind of there but not at all to the extent it was used in Solatorobo but you instead get like a very distinct more grim and adult tone to the game especially set by the voiced narration and soundtrack. The soundtrack is super sick check this shit out dude it's so good imagine fighting a fucking boss in a big tank to this dude it's sick as hell. Anyway the voices are available in Japanese or French but I can only speak for the Japanese ones since I wanted the narration in a language I understand but they're very nice. The characters aren't fully voiced but the lil lines you get are wonderful, I love my children.

While yes like in Solatorobo you can get French voice acting no Fuga is not set in Shepherd but rather in Gasco a presidential democracy which at the start of the game gets invaded by a ethnofascist dog empire called Berman set on purging Gasco of cat people through death camps. Remember when in Tail Concerto Waffle said dog people don't hate cat people? Playing through these games all in a row was a very fun experience seeing them grow up over the 25 years they were made. Going from Saturday morning cartoon to sacrificing children to fight fascists is a pretty great evolution of a series.

Collectibles kind of return although most of them are given to you through just playing the game. The collectible comics and CGs you just get through regular gameplay while the collectible piss scenes (yes this is a thing) you end up randomly getting in the tank upgrade/etc section. The end of chapter CGs feature several artists that will be familiar to anyone who's into the Japanese fur scene which was a real joy doing the youtube thumbnail man point and pog every time I saw art I recognised.

Kishibe pooog dude pooog

The gameplay is as fun and varied as you'd hope from a Little Tail Bronx game, and while compromises were made on the three key elements this only made it more interesting just like what ended up happening in Solatorobo which I'll get to I promise there's one more game to review then we can do the insane lore behind all this I promise. Fuga is available on like every fucking platform so it's easy to find and a pretty easy recommendation, the game took me about 20 hours to beat first time through I think and there's replayability since unlike earlier entries in the series you've got multiple endings this time and the game for sure wants you to do two runs and I do too I think getting the true end second time is ideal even if the TURBO function isn't very turbo. Here have another track from the OST before we move on to the sequel. God the soundtrack is so good dude.

My title screen was a spoiler so have some cover art I googled

Fuga 2 is set a year after the events of the original and overall features the same gameplay as the original although withs ome QoL changes and tuning. The cast is mostly the same although with updated designs but you do get one new child who is a cat desuwa ojousama who IS my daughter and I love her.

(wappa is still my favourite child though)

I think the biggest change in terms of gameplay is the revamp to the SOUL CANNON which now randomly picks a child if you lose enough health in battle and gives you a countdown to finish the fight before the child is yeeted. While being made to choose in the original was brutal and great I do think this new system adds a very fun tension to battles. In general I think combat feels a lot more finely tuned but the meta gameplay of upgrades and farming feels a bit looser. Another big addition is that you're given choices that affect what kind of leader the older kid, Malt, is which gives special powers as well as story scenes, and also affects endings so you get more variations than the original's three.

Playing all the games in a row had been this extremely varied and interesting journey but Fuga 2 being a direct sequel made it a bit too similar to the original. the changes made didn't feel massive enough that I wish I had put a little bit of time between the two games but since I had nothing else to play I had no choice. If you like the original game, which is easy to do since it's a good game, you are going to want to play 2 but maybe put a lil break in between them. It's difficult to talk about some of the more fun additions and the plot without getting into massive spoilers so maybe it's time to finish this safe lil spoiler free review section and enter...

THE SPOILERZONE

Ask my editor on twitter to translate this for you

Okay so the review section was mostly sourced from well, the games, but also the afterwords of the Fuga manga, this interview, and some stuff sprinkled in from the solatorobo setting books. This part we'll look way more into those setting books because good lord there's a lot in there. There will be no spoilers from Fuga if you want those you still gotta wait, or just skip ahead, until the third section but there's A LOT to talk about when it comes to Solatorobo alone but let's begin with that compromise I mentioned.

So Solatorobo does have robos and floating islands, it's even got a buncha them furries on the box so what could they have been made to compromise on? Well Namco Bandai would not allow them to make a game with an all furry cast and preferably would not want a furry protagonist. Now the universe set up in Tail Concerto is one of cat and dog people living on floating islands so how would you introduce people into this, and how do you compromise to make sure you can keep the protagonist a furry? To answer the first question clearly what you do is set your game in a distant future after humanity has eradicated itself off of the planet and introduce an ancient human obviously that's what you do. Clearly the simple answer to how to put humans into your furry universe is to reveal that humans built a God AI that achieved post scarcity but due to many resources like oil and coal becoming worth nothing this lead to wars breaking out over wanting to maintain the pre God AI economy with the God AI creating increasingly world ending weapons until the humans left realised that they would inevitably just end up destroying the planet and that there was no saving humanity from itself so they commanded the AI to kill them and send what's left of the continents up into the air as a hard reset so maybe new life will use the post scarcity resources for good and not walk down the same path of destruction that man did. Then all you have to do is introduce the last old world human as a guardian of the planet waking up after thousands of years to see that the new life inhabiting these floating islands, the dog and cat people, are still waging wars, still killing each other for nonsense reasons, still being too similar to humans and he sets in motion the system to once again do a hard reset and kill this new humanity too. Then to solve the protagonist issue you make him a hybrid, the result of this old world human's experiments, a being that is both new and old human and have the protagonist transform into his human form when he powers up. [Editor's note: Zodi has informed me that this human form is just called "Trans Red," which is too funny to not mention.]

Now people weren't too happy about this human transformation thing since it's not PURE furry and I will admit it's pretty funny and weird to have the protagonist transform into a human to power up but I think the rest of it is a pretty smooth compromise, right? And this background sets the stage for the world and history we're going to be talking about. These are also details that I think are pretty key to know to appreciate Fuga fully. Fuga does reveal this stuff but mostly through logs you unlock on your second playthrough so the ideal way to find out is through playing Solatorobo but hey you probably found out by reading this maybe that's good too. Solatorobo ends with Red confronting the old world human and telling him that maybe they won't work out this whole living in peace thing this generation but they'll keep trying, and their kids will keep trying, and their kids kids will keep trying too. Then the next game in the series is about a fascist invasion. CyberConnect2 were cooking.

God where do I even start with the setting books, I guess I'll tie up another lose end from part 1 where I mentioned cop dog Waffle is gonna look kinda worse and worse as we go on. You probably thought the whole cat person ethnic cleansing in Fuga was gonna be the payoff for that but let's have a lil peep in the Solatorobo setting book and oh lord...

Population of Prarie is 96% dog person

Oh lord Prairie kinda an ethnostate with a monarchy huh, Waffle literally only arresting an ethnic minority huh. Not looking good on our boy. The setting book is for Solatorobo though so most of the stuff we'll be talking about is about Shepherd which has a much more balanced population and a democracy which is nice I'm sure they've got a nice clean history free of conflict. One thing that applies to anywhere in the Little Tail Bronx world though is the ocean, which is like an electromagnetic field between the new world and the surface of the earth preventing anyone from going down and finding the ruins of old humanity. There's also the crystals which are the post scarcity energy source used after the discovery of the God AI, which I should now mention is named Juno. The crystals are what the dog and cat people use to power their ships and appliances and they're dug up in mines. The crystals also mutate wildlife and allows creatures that really should have no business flying to be able to fly. Now let's talk a bit a history.

Yes the setting books have a section on bathrooms that yes features an illustration of what a normal bathroom in the Little Tail Bronx world looks like

I think the best way to go through the history would be by using the timeline from the setting books but since that's in Japanese and this is an English language blog, and also it's over several pages so I'd have to do some image editing to make it readable, why don't I just make my own version of the timeline just for you? Hold on this might take a lil bit, it'll be instant for you so it'll just be right down below here but it'll take me a bit so have another Fuga track to listen to while I work.

Click to expand it since wordpress wouldn't let me just put in a huge wide image like this normally

Okay so this is a highly simplified version of the timeline and I removed some events that while relevant to Solarobo the game aren't really relevant to this blogpost but I think this gets across the general idea pretty alright. If I've made any mistakes here or in the rest of the blogpost please contact my editor. There's a whole 3000 years of history here and both Solatorobo and Tail Concerto take place around the same time at the frickin end of this timeline, all the rest is lore and like background to why the world of the games looks the way it does.

Making this I also realised I forgot to talk about magic which is a pretty key part of this setting and not a spoiler in itself. Where dog people get robos the cat people get magic, it's usually elemental like fire magic and earthquakes and it is said to come from a deity or being or energy called Nono. The cat people of Shepherd's religious practices are closely tied to the magic and Nono, the dogs instead have a bird religion. What is a spoiler is that of course since Little Tail Bronx is set way into the future post-singularity the magic is in fact nanomachines, son. I don't believe it's ever explained why the cat people are more in-tune(?) with the nanomachines but that's the way it goes.

Since I mentioned religions I should mention the setting book goes into funeral rites, this is what a Shepherd dog person grave usually looks like

The cancelled light novel, Red Data Children, was set slightly earlier in the timeline when Red was still a child, the out of service soshage I have no clue when it was set since it is out of service, and that leaves placing the Fuga games somewhere on this timeline. However I had a ton of fun trying to place the original Fuga on the timeline when I played it so I will leave that open until the next SPOILER LEVEL.

THE EVEN DEEPER SPOILERZONE

Yes there's even more toilet lore

Okay so Fuga had to compromise on the floating islands and the robos and now that you know the timeline I'm sure you can guess that the lack of robos sets it before the dog people of Shepherd invented them. However the war being fought in Fuga is clearly not the Lily War which places it even further back in the section I boxed in white and hey hold on if you're playing Fuga you might start noticing location names being the same as in Solatorobo but this is Gasco right? And wait why are both Shepherd and Gasco French speaking?

Okay so Fuga is set around the year 2200 in the timeline before the founding of the kingdom of Shepherd, the game ends on a postcredit set 700 years in the future when the last old human, Baion, wakes up (a scene that surely makes no sense to people who started with Fuga). The solid chunk of continent known as Gasco gets blown the fuck up into the familiar islands of Shepherd from Solatorobo, and I'm sure you wonder when that happens and the answer is at the end of the first game that's right baby the game ends with the continent getting blown the fuck up and in 2 we're back on the floating islands baby. Gasco being a solid continent also meant that they had little development in terms of flight but after the defeat of the Berman empire in the first game they got some of that juicy airship tech from the Bermans which eventually ends up becoming the planes we see in Solatorobo. The name Shepherd? Well Malt the protagonist of Fuga and the leader of the children piloting the tank happens to be, well... a shepherd. Would make sense to name your nation after a national hero right?

There was no end to conflict, nothing has changed since old humanity

Taking a step back and looking at the timeline really puts the final confrontation of Solatorobo into perspective. The Republic of Shepherd in Solatorobo is a fairly peaceful nation but even in this limited part of the world there's a thousand year history of war and violence. The children of Fuga fight to save their families and end the war with the Berman empire, but then the republic of Gasco turns into a monarchy, and then the Lily war breaks out. The cat people they freed from the Breman camps are ancestors to cat people being put in the camps of the kingdom of Shepherd in a couple of hundred years, and then the cat people being arrested by police dog Waffle even later. History doesn't steadily progress forward, we're not moving further and further down a linear tech tree constantly improving. History is a constant struggle and it moves erratically back and forth, side to side, and in circles.

A history of failures, by failures

Is humanity even worth saving? Sorry sorry my Dead End Aegis leaked sorry I promise I'll write about some Maruchan games on this blog in the future I promise. But yes Little Tail Bronx is both dystopian and utopian, it's hopeful but not blind to tragedies suffered in the past. All we can do is warmly watch over the inheritors of the earth and hope they'll do a better job than we did. Judging by their silly little ducky toilets I'd say they definitely are.

AFTERWORD

This is a pen

God lord this was a timecube of a post. Unlike all the ones I've written in the past I had to write this one in bits over a couple of weeks and there's really so much I could have covered that I either forgot or just didn't know how to squeeze in. I decided to not go into spoilers about Fuga 2 at all since it's a very recent game and I think people should go and give this whole dang series a try I had a ton of fun with it.

I was intending the furry eroge section and the spoiler sections to be longer but there really weren't many furry eroge I felt like I could recommend and when I got to the spoilers I realised the post, despite me skipping over a LOT of stuff, was already too long. If you know any cool furry eroge I missed please do recommend them in the comments below, odds are I have played them and just didn't care for them but I'll be nice and not tell you if that's the case. Again if you're a Little Tail bronx lore genius please send your corrections to my editor on twitter or xitter or whatever, I will not edit this post but do it anyway.

If you somehow made it all the way here in this mess of a post I assume you're a freak so go check out my games on itch or my Japanese language game on DLsite, there's some furries in some of the games but I'm really not doing a good job fixing the lack of furry doujinge still. Maybe I will if you buy enough copies of my games give it a try.

Really didn't think my first post on this blog would be an all ages game series but here we are. Got a couple of possible eroge posts in the cooker so look forward to those you little pervert. Thank you for your hard work reading this, I love you, bye bye, goodnight.

XOXO Zodi

Finishing the post on my persona to prove my furry cred

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