MX Media LLC Blog Archive

“Mind Stat of 34″
Hey all, Adam here again with another note on something that probably went by 99% of the viewing audience on Shin Koihime.  Back a few eps ago, during the tournament between Enshou and Kan’u’s group, Chouhi made a crack about Toshi having a mind stat of 34.  If I remember right she made a similar joke in the first series, too. (I was not the translator for Koihime Season 1, that was a different company actually.)  But characters in Shin Koihime don’t HAVE stats, at least, they were never mentioned outside that one joke.  So what gives?

If you read my last post, you’ll remember that Shin Koihime is based off of an old historical book called “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms”.  As I said then, that book has inspired hundreds of spin-offs, including several well known video game series.  One of these series is a terrifyingly complex historical simulation “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms” by Koei.  The game puts you in the role of one of the generals of the Three Kingdoms era, and has you try to take over China by making alliances, waging warfare, and building cities.

Every general in the book is represented in the game, and each of them has various statistics that represent their capabilities.  Toshi’s role in the game is that of a military strategist: a cunning advisor whose knowledge and insight gives you the edge over the opponent’s army.  The most important statistic for a strategist is “mind”; a high mind stat means a genius of Sun Tzu proportions, and a low mind stat means you have trouble remembering how to tie your shoes.  Stats are scored from 1 to 100, and Toshi’s got a mind stat of 34, by far the worst in the game for somebody of her type and placing her squarely in the “paint-eater” category.

So there you go.  It was a joke from an obscure historical sim that probably less than 1% of their audience has played, and less than 30% of that would remember, which may earn it some kind of record for obscurity.