RADIRGY MENTIONED WOOHOOO
The "swirly glasses nerd" is one of my favorite designs in media, Tadayo being my favorite. The exemples in this thread are also great choices.
Naru Narusagawa from Love Hina, in her "nerd mode" comes to mind
It's a shame it's a shmup becaue I am garbage at them. I think I got to level 3 of Ikaruga once, though; top triumph.
You should really try Radirgy.
People tend to get intimidated because shmups have this fame of being way too difficult with almost laser-like precision to dogde bullets but they are not that hard. You will need a few tries to get a hang of things and even more tries to get your first clear but is more a matter of time once you put the effort.
Many console realeses have difficult options with fewer bullets and easier patterns for begginers. Later levels will still be challenging but getting there will be less frustrating.
Radirgy has some neat mechanics to help you. You can actually destroy some types of enemy bullets with your shot, you have access to a melee attack that damages enemies and also destroy bullets and while not shooting or using your meele attack you will activate a frontal barrier (bullets can still get you by the sides or from beheind) that block bullets and damages enemies that touch it. Finally, instead of a bomb, you can use an forcefield-like barrier that will destroy any type of enemy bullet and damage everyone inside of it
Never heard of this game before. Upon further analysis, it was at one point going to receive an American release on the Gamecube as "Radio Allergy" but that never came to fruition.
I will admit that the girl on the cover has a great design.
The Dreamcast release of Radirgy has a fantranslaion you can find on the Repo (we still call it Repo, tho?)
Radirgy (Distorted Audio Repair + Misc Patch) DC ISO CDI/GDI for SEGA Dreamcast. Genre: Shoot 'Em Up. Published and developed by MileStone Inc.
cdromance.org
Since it is a Shmup, you don't need to know japanese at all. You just need to know how to manuever, use you shot, use your melee.
You can't drop a design this good and not the game title, too!
That's Ciel from the Mega Man Zero series. Unfortunetly, this is not the designs used normally, just like the Tron Bonne one.