Devil Hunter Yohko
Rating: 10
baseq2/players/yohko
Intro
"Dark powers whose black deeds escape even the light of the moon, behold now the radiance of the power of love! I shall destroy any who dare threaten this world. I am the scourge of evil, the 108th generation of Devil Hunter....Yohko!"
Mano Yohko may seem like a typical high school girl. She is sixteen years old, athletic, pretty, and boy crazy. She lives in a nice house with her mom and her grandmother. But once you get past that, Yohko is hardly normal.
One day while in a public pool, Yohko is attacked underwater by a demon. As Yohko struggles to escape, a momentary burst of 'power' comes from within her soul, freeing her of the beast. Later that day, Yohko discovers from her grandmother that she comes from a long line of mamono, or 'devil,' hunters.
Many of the female members of the Mano family have been mamono hunters, fighting evil spirits and demons throughout history. Over the years, they have been successful in preventing evil from taking over mankind. Yohko learns that she was able to escape the earlier attack because her powers have been manifesting as she grew up, and that now she is indeed the 108th generation mamono hunter."
All that was shamelessly ripped from the Yohko site I listed below. It does a much better job of describing the character than I ever could. If you're interested in more info on the anime, I would strongly urge you to check that one out.
The Model
The model is stunning in quality. An accurately modeled, proportional correct figure. She's about as close as it comes to a perfect model as you can expect with low polycounts. Even the dress is treated well, especially as how he blends it into the body. It does collide with the legs often enough, but do to the low poly nature of the models in general, its very hard to put enough polys into the skirt to allow proper folding of the fabric to keep it out of the thighs. As he says this is his first attempt at cloth, I'd say its a very solid first effort at it. There is a few spots of minor criticism to be noted though. [ I couldn't just say the thing was without faults, that goes against everything we stand for right? ;p ] The feet are a little boxy. Ok, ok, a lot boxy. Although he uses the skin to hide this pretty well, the few extra poly spent here probably couldn't have hurt much on the overall count. The next spot, moving up her body, is the knees. They seem slightly on the thin side. I think that they are probably fine actually but the real culprit is the calves. They might be a bit more robust in comparison to the rest of the physique yet seem fine themselves. I think are throwing the knees out of whack visually. But this is a very subjective issue and I will not use it in the final scoring. One thing that isn't subjective is her neck. Its pencil thin. I don't think she could swallow bird seed with that esophagus is so thin. :) But she's an anime character and some of the proportions do get exaggerated, so the only bad thing I could possibly find is the feet. This is easily 5 star rating.
Score: 10
The Animations
The animations on this model are yet another stunning part of this project. The author really added a charm and a class to the model with her various animations. All the moments are rather precise and fluid. Not a hint of any stuttering or chopiness that some models display. One of the nicer elements was that the model uses a sword as her main weapon. The author used this idea and really made it work. During one of the taunt animations she sticks it in the ground and steps forward, then steps back and retrieves it. The stand animation uses it as almost a focus point showing where the model is looking at and pivoting her weight around. It simply works well and is quite believable. Another item that the author excelled at was the dress. The author found this to be a rather tedious element to animate and I dont doubt that at all. The was also his first attempt at modeling cloth. Although the number of frames really dont allow for true motion of the cloth, what it there works amazingly well. If more frames were allowed, it might not have worked as well, or he may have had to animate it differently. As it stands, its a first class effort.
Score: 10
The Skin
The skins are the only weak point of the model. But as I say "weak", its only that this is only a hair under the quality of the rest of the model. The skins are of the basic Devil Hunter outfit from the anime as to be expected. The author also, refreshingly, added shading to the skin. As this is a "cartoon" model, some authors feel that a monochromatic skin will suffice due to that's how its presented in its native media. I'm a strong believer against this. The skinning should respond to the environment and reflect the media that's being used to represent the character. This is what the skins give us on this model. It allows the model to become more immersive to the game and that's in the end whole point of texture mapping. The author also included capture the flag skins. As the standard outfit is already red, he simply redid the skin once for the blue skin, but it works rather well.
Score: 8
Sounds
No sounds were provided directly with the model. Although the author has released two sound packs for the model by MrBungle and another, since its initial release. They seem to be not from the anime but pulled from other anime sources. In fact one fan, Jerry Qassar, has sent in a documentation of all the Japanese sounds: WAV-by-WAV:
death1.wav - I cannot verify the source of this WAV. It is not from any Street Fighter source that I know of, but nor do I remember it from Mamono Hunter Yohko.
death2.wav - Rose's death cry in Street Fighter Alpha (2?)
death3.wav - I cannot place this sound in either Street Fighter or Yohko, unless it is Chun-Li dying at the hands of Blanka in the original Street Fighter II.
death4.wav - Chun-Li's death cry in Street Fighter Alpha (2?) drown.wav - The standard drown? I don't use standard female.
fall1.wav - Chun-Li being hit.
fall2.wav - No concrete idea. Not recognizable, but such a piddly sound would not be in the anime. My guess is that it is the sound of a button being pressed or item being dropped, possibly from a video game desktop theme pack.
gurp1.wav and gurp2.wav - Standard female?
jump1.wav - Chun-Li performing a roundhouse kick (or throw?)
Pain100_1.wav - This is a combination of two sounds. First Chun-Li makes a small exclamation (a throw sound, or a medium kick?). Then Rose from Street Fighter Alpha says 'Soul Spark' (the name of her projectile move).
Pain100_2.wav - Again, a combination of two sounds. First, Rose(I think) gets hit. Then, Chun-Li says 'Tenshoukyaku', which means something similar to 'Heaven-rising kick'. It's one of her special moves.
pain25_1.wav - Chun-Li either saying the name of a super move (SenRetsuKyaku? It's the Thousand Burst Kick, but I thought the namewas Ressenkyaku), or using a different name for the Tenshoukyaku .
pain25_2.wav - Chun-Li says this in the split-second of charging another super move. It is transliterated 'ha has' in Japanese, but it's really a Chinese expression.
pain50_1.wav - Chun-Li does her third super move, shouting Kikoushou!'. It is basically a big ball of energy created in her hands, and the name basically means just that.
pain50_2.wav - Rose shouts 'Yo!', possibly while performing a roundhouse leg sweep.
pain75_1.wav - Rose says 'hah!'. This is used in several of her throwing moves.
pain75_2.wav - Either Rose or Chun-Li is getting hurt. I think it is Rose.
In any case the sounds do sound good even if they don't come from the anime itself. As to the english version, Will Burnett, is the author, I'm told and he's pulled most of the sounds from the English cut of the anime with an exception of a odd gurgle or two. But I'm not going to try to attempt the type of tracking that was done on the Japanese pack :) It works quite well but I personally prefer the Japanese version due the fact that I can't necessarly understand it. So, I tend to not focus on it during gameplay and it doesn't distract me with my own laughter like the english version does at times.
Japanese Sound Pack - Mr. Bungle's
Score: 8
Visible Weapons Support
There is no current VWep support built directly into the model.
There is a add-on VWep pack put out by another author, Frag-Me Elmo. It has been approved but not endorsed by the model's author, so I like to list it seperately. VWep pack
The problem is that the animations take such advantage of the sword, that adding in the standard weapons looks a little odd.
Pack Inclusion
The Yohko model is going to be included in the next pack easily. And frankly she's a breath of fresh air to the rather static offering of females model to date.
"Yeah, I know swords dont shoot bullets... use your imagination." - EvilBastard
review by rouge13
author name Evil Bastard
tris.md2
Vertices 411
Mapping Vertices 516
Polygons 772
Skin size 256x256
Skin Wasted Space ?%
weapon.md2
Vertices 23
Mapping Vertices 34
Polygons 28
Skin size 128x128
Skin Wasted Space ?%
relevant links
Mano Yohko's Manono Hunter Home Page
Are there problems with this model information? Bad formatting? Typos? Broken links? Check out the original content, and post a description of the problem in this thread. Thanks!