Paize Keulemans (Princeton University)

The Ming-dynasty vernacular novel “Outlaws of the Marsh” (Chinese: Shuihuzhuan; Japanese: Suikoden) famously tells the tale of 108 heroes who band together to fight official corruption from their hide-out in the marshes of Mount Liang. In the classic, 16th-century novel these characters are firmly embedded in a narrative that poses the initial assembly and final disbanding of this group of heroes as inevitable. But can we also think of these characters outside of the necessity of plot and the demands of fate? This paper examines these questions through one of the most popular remediations of the “Outlaws,” the Konami-produced video-game “Suikoden Card Stories 幻想水滸伝カードストーリーズ” (2001) which circulated both as video-game and set of collectible playing-cards... (more details at like above)