Kumauta Impressions

Silly is the first word that comes to mind when trying to describe Kumauta, Sony Computer Entertainment's new game, where a large, white bear storms its way to the top of the music charts. Kumauta has nothing outstanding when it comes to graphics, and there's not much gameplay to it either. But seeing a huge, civilized bear talking and singing like a human being has clearly caught the attention of Japanese gamers, who have flocked to the title like bees to honey. In fact, the game has been sold out in most stores since the day it was released.

The main character in Kumauta is a white, alien bear who learns to talk and sing in the human language after reading a songbook that was thrown away on the side of the road. The songbook is based on a very traditional Japanese method of singing called Enka. This style of singing is rather melancholic in nature and often focuses on resignation in some aspect of life, such as the loss of a lover. The passionate style of song clearly inspires Kumauta, who decides to make a phone call and registers in the Outer Space Enka Association. The bear then flies off to master the art of Enka by studying under a retired singer. You take the role of the retired singer and must coach the bear to success.

While Kumauta plays, in part, like a simulation game and also, in part, like Mad Libs, it's difficult to categorize the game into an existing genre. Much like Mojib-Ribbon, the main character in Kumauta sings through the use of a text-to-speech synthesizer engine. As Kumauta is mostly text-based, some knowledge of Japanese is definitely required to enjoy the game. Unlike Mojib-Ribbon, though, there is no action-input element.

Most of Kumauta takes place inside the retired singer's living room, where the bear plans and writes songs. The writing process is mostly automated, so once you give the bear a theme to run with, it thinks and creates the lyrics and tunes on its own. You can intervene and order the bear to fix parts of the lyrics once it's finished writing. The words used for the lyrics are preset from the game's library, but you can add your own vocabulary by inputting a word and telling the bear what kind of a word it is. In general, the lyrics written by the bear are fairly nonsensical, but it can be quite humorous to leave them as they are to see them get turned into a song. Once a song is written, the bear wears a costume and sings it on the music floor. The results are illustrated as on-air TV rankings--to which the bear reacts accordingly.

Aside from the main mode, where you coach the bear, there is also a mode where you can write a song from scratch. Much like the main mode, the bear sings the song once it's written. The songs can be saved and sent to other players via the PlayStation broadband adapter. This mode can prove to be pretty funny, thanks to the lack of a censorship filter, which apparently lets you type in anything you want. Players with enough knowledge of Japanese can even make the bear "speak" English words, albeit with a Japanese accent.

The strange--and oddly compelling--game has been released in Japan and is currently not slated for a US release. Anyone hoping to coach a singing, white, alien bear should start a petition and lobby for the game's US release--or at least you could import the quirky game.