Japanese Release - 03/07/2010
Translated Rerelease - 03/02/2017
Japanese Placement - 34th
Translated Placement - 11th
Length - Long
Genre - Adventure
Cold Sleep is just another word for time travel!
Cold Sleep is just another word for time travel!
A man finds himself nearly on death's door after getting wounded during a hunt as a tyrannosaurus bares its fangs at him. Instead of embracing death, he finds himself in the company of his brother and is taken to see a doctor.
He finds out that he's been mortally wounded from the tyrannosaurus, that modern medicine cannot save him, and that he only his a day before he expires. With death looming upon his shoulders, his brother suggests him an idea that can save his life.
They find themselves in a land of ice, the cold air cihlling their very being. His brother intends for him to go into cold sleep in the ice as a means to preserve his body and freeze his dwindling lifespan. If their medicene can't save him, maybe about era's can!
Eons pass and the man finds himself in the year 2010, entering what appears to be a hospital of the current era. But before he could get any actual treatment, the nurse that was going to overeee his treatment imprisons him. Seeing that a man from the Jomon-era is such a rare thing to see, she sees him as something to sell.
But the man uses his primal strength to break free and escape from his would-be-captor. With the police hot on his tail, he is forced to go back where he came from and enter cold sleep once more.
What seems to be eons for him soon becomes decades as an explosion melts the ice he was frozen in, defrosting his frozen body and bringing him back in the land of the living. Once again, he finds himself in a completely new era.
Displaced in time, thrown into a different era!
Displaced in time, thrown into a different era!
You are the dying Primitiveman, a man from the Jomon-era seeking treatment for the mortal wounds he suffered at the hands of a tyrannosauru. With modern medicine out of the question, he is forced to go forward in time via cold sleep and preserve his body from death.
Finding himself in the year 2010, his efforts of finding a treatment was garnered unwanted attention from a nurse who seeks to sell him for a quick buck. Forced to go into cold sleep and preserve his body once more, he finds himself in a ocmpletely different era.
Can his mortal wounds be treated in time, or will he constantly be on the run and cold sleeping into multiple eras?
Will he run out of time and die as his body gives in, will he be captured and sold off like merchandise, or will he die in a completely different era and lost in the sands of time?
Will Humanity even exist after multiple cold sleeps, and will he be able to even find a treatment then?
Features
Features
- A tale to cure oneself across the different eras of time via cold sleep
- Become a time-displaced caveman
- Cold-sleeping into different eras for a treatment
- Avoid both the police and hospitals
- Generic RPG Mechanics
Screenshots
The story
We start off our story in the era where cavemen and dinosaurs existed for whatever reason, just do not think about it too much though. The era is the Jomon Period and we're introduced to our protagonist of the story, a primativeman amptly named Primitativeman and he gets wounded during a hunt. The creature that brought him down is an apex predator, the tyrannosaurus. Since Primitativeman is the protagonist of the story, he gets Plot Armor and survives.
His brother is able to save him and escape the tyrannosaurus, bringing him to the doctor for medicial treatment. Since they're in the Jomon Period, the news is of course bad and Primitativeman finds out that he's been mortally wounded and that he only has a day to live. A decent Surprisingly Realistic Outcome out of the blue because medicine haven't exactly been perfected nor "invented" during the Jomon Period.
But his brother does not fear nor fret. Instead he hatches up a plan that is Crazy Enough to Work, something that no one in their time period could've ever thought.
Go into cold sleep like the cavemen from the Ice Age and go forward in time, preserving the body and delaying the day-long lifespan. Don't mind the errors and flaws in the plan nor how insane it is for his brother to be perfectly fine dying later on as his brother is a popsicle.
This is basically a time-travel plot from this point onward as we're shown how much time has passed. The Mad Genius of Kawagoe's intellect is amazing in this entry, you would think that Tetsuya Nomura would come up with this sort of idea. I mean, you've got mind manipulation, clones, mental time-travel, and bodily possession from him.
Primitativeman wakes in the year 2010 aka the year the video was posted and released on in Japan. He visits a hospital in Japan and calls in drab despite his era's hospital looking far worse than a modern building. He enters the hospital without any weird looks and talks to a nurse.
She agrees to help give him treatment without any hesitation but imprisons him because a living caveman from the Jomon Period would sell like hot cakes and make her tons of money. I mean, a Living Relic walks into your hospital and is a one-in-a-million, wouldn't you try to atleast capture them?
So, Primitativeman breaks free of his imprisionment whose brute strength causes the nurse to fall unconscious, and the police assume he's commited assault. He's forced to flee the scene and go back where he came from. He goes back to cold sleep and travels in time until an explosion melts the ice he was in.
He's found by a soldier and is brought to their base, he finds out the era he's in is facing some sort of dark demonic force. The soldier reports that Kawagoe is gone and that Primitativeman is the only survivor of the explosion. Primitativeman mentions that he came out from the ice that saved him from the impact.
The general of the base pauses as if something was said wrong. He proceeds to spout out that a ancicent legend prophesied a hero from ice is destined to fight the demonic forces and save humanity. Oh my god, why would you do this lady!
Primitativeman can't fight them until he's healed so they arrange for a doctor to treat his wounds. Instead of getting treated as promised, the doctor imprisons him as Primitativeman is unable to brute force his way out of his prediciment. The doctor is in fact the grandson of the nurse back in 2010, appearently she was murdered by Primitativeman and died in poverty. The doctor puts him to sleep and intends to sell him online.
The bidder comes and knocks out the doctor, revealing himself to be a descendant of Primitativeman's brother from the Jomon Period. Tasked with helping him in the future... yeah. Also, the only doctor around has been blown to smitheerins due to the explosions by the demon army's nukes and that the demon was killed by something minor.
He goes into cold sleep again and wakes up in a era devoid of life. Met with a flying machine and it declares itself as part of the machine army with humanity wiped off the face of Earth. Getting blown to bits and spared to meet the machine's master, and.. it's the nurse's grandson.
He found out that Primitativeman went back to cold sleep but he was destined to have his revenge but he knew he would never meet him in the flesh. He creates a mechanical version of himself and wiped out humanity for the For The Evulz, and created the machine army in the processs. Before he could deal the finishing blow, one of his machines gets shot down from the sky.
...and it's.. the tyrannosaurus from the start of the story. It also heard that Primitativeman went to cold sleep and decided to chase him into the 210,000th century because he's prey. Of course, both them and the mechanized nurse's grandson duke it out and the latter wins. The tyrannosaurus does a Dying Declaration of Love and the confession awakens something in Primitativeman.
He dodges the finishing blow with a backflip and hijacks the machine that shot him down, using it against the mechanized nurse's grandson. Crashing into the man and exploding like crazy, but atleast the guy is dead.
Fearing he'll die, he goes back to cold sleep to only awaken back in the Jomon Period. Once again, the entire story was made up but way too real to be fictional. Of course, his brother greets him and instantly scoffs the cold sleep plan, stating it would only freeze you to death. But then he gets crushed by the tyrannosaurus and gets a love confession, they marry while ignoring Primitativeman's brother's death and an Aesop is delivered.
Then he does a Title Drop, it makes perfect sense since you know... he uhh... married a dinosaur. You don't get to see many characters Title Drop the entry's title often enough.
The characters
Once more, I'll only talk about the characters with either the most screentime and/or enough development. Man, these entries just keep getting longer and longer, I'm not sure how long I can last!
You have our protagonist of the story, Primitativeman, and he's a caveman from the Jomon Period. Having been inflicted with mortal wounds that would've doomed anyone in his era, he sets out to find a treatment and cure for his prediciment. Freezing his body through cold sleep and preserving himself to save himself in the future, he finds himself in different eras each time he wakes up.
As far as his personality and character, he's actually a very pleasant guy whose entire goal is to save himself from his mortal wounds. He hardly does anything horrible unlike his fellow leads, and his only crime is commiting assault on a person despite doing it in self-defense. He's also a loving man at the end of the story, falling in love with a dinosaur both in his dreams and in real life.
And he is more than willing to lean towards heroic deeds when asked to - but that never actually came through because of the Nurse's Grandson.
Then you have the primiary antagonists, the Nurse and her Grandson. They serve the same function as antagonists to Primitativeman, sharing both their goals of selling him online, and having the same character traits.
But the Nurse's Grandson differs from his grandmother for having more time on the screen and a expanded role. His goals change from selling Primitativeman to exacting revenge on him in the 210,100th century. He also ended up wiping out humanity just because and that he had free time after turning himself into a machine.
Overall
I actually like this entry's story and characters because of how inventive and creative Kuniko Takahashi can be. Turning a simple premise into a accidental time-traveling adventure that spans from the Jomon Period to the 2010 to the end of time. Using the simple concept of cold sleep and preservation as the means for said time-travel.
I would suggest anyone to watch this entry and not skip it, it's got the best of everything and can serve as a decent opening entry into the series.
Primitativeman is a very likeable protagonist from start to end and his antagonists end up becoming one of the few reasons why the turn and twists in the story become interesting. Several elements of this entry do eventually get reused and repurposed in a later one, and is also interesting because of its usage.