No more escape

What is it about the parts in between No More Heroes' title bouts that make the game feel like so much work?

The new minigame has Travis picking trash, and Lovikov Balls are now on the minimap. There's nothing but grind here. A grind that greatly contrasts with the rush of running through a few enemy-filled rooms before taking on a boss. Putting these two things side by side, weirdly, makes No More Heroes one of the few games that mimics life.

Not because it's an everyday occurrence to run down a hall lopping people in half before fighting a strong opponent to the death - definitely not. But because in the game that experience offers such a thrill, such an adrenaline rush. The sort of thing you might feel on weekends when you do whatever it is you do for fun.

Then, almost immediately afterwards (it's cushioned only by a few status screens), you're back out in the world, in the week, and you've got to work toward your next weekend. The grind always takes a lot longer than the title bout and its lead-up, too, just as weekends are only two out of every seven days, while the rest remain for work.

This blog post argues that No More Heroes has no big lesson or moral that it's trying to teach, no theme that permeates its every pixel. In short, no artistic statement. But I disagree.

No More Heroes is a translation of the binary of work/fun that most people experience in their workaday lives from real world situations to over the top video game situations. But does that mean that this game is a joke Suda51 plays on everyone who plays it? Or is it supposed to be somehow ironic?