japanese porno cartoon video game review: katawa shoujo

Hmm, how to put this…

after about 20 minutes so far, i have to say that liked katawa shoujo better when it was called deus ex human revolution—
  (@jpmeyer) January 27, 2012

Nah, that’s not quite it.

How about: Katawa Shoujo is a game about buttsecksing a gimp girl in a toolshed.

Well, I mean it is, but that’s not what I’m going for. One more try: I’m pretty sure that Katawa Shoujo is bad, but it has a lot of heart. Or to put it another way, when it comes to the writing, it’s technically quite bad, but it has the right idea. I’ll defer to Leigh Alexander, who I agree with for like 80% or so (I’ll cover that other 20% at the end.)

That said, the one thing where they weren’t quite thinking clearly is the name. Yeah yeah, I know the original drawing said “Katawa Shoujo” at the top, but when I was reading some of the Japanese 2ch matome blogs to see what their opinion was of the game (despite what Shitkaku Complex wanted to say, it looks generally well-received, with a lot of people thinking that the girls are cute) some people totally called the game “K****a Shoujo”.

Actually, there’s one more: like, I know that visual novels are generally pornos and whatnot, but the sex scenes were all over the place. Some of them (like when Hisao pity fucks Misha’s or rapes Hanako) are clearly supposed to be uncomfortable, Emi’s are clearly supposed to be comedic, and the Lily and Shizune are just supposed to be straight up porno. But the scenes that aren’t just supposed to be straight up porno have this awkward tension to them because they’re not handled in the “normal” way visually. Back me up here, Zizek. (Then Linda Williams pokes her head in and says “Did someone just mention the connection between melodrama and pornography?” I was about to upload that essay, but it turns out I only have a paper copy of it and not a pdf.)

Ack, okay three more: that fade to shrimp that replaces all of the porn scenes was stupid as hell, especially when it happened during the non-porn, non-comedic sex scenes. Like, how are you supposed to take the game seriously when that pops up during Rin’s route?

Now, onto what I mean when I say that the game has its heart in the right place. One thing that’s never sat well with me with visual novels, and especially anime adaptations of visual novels, is how the different characters seem like they have nothing going on for themselves outside of their routes. This gets even more absurd in games with more supernatural or magical realist angels to them. Like, if you decide to do the childhood friend’s route, does the transfer student never realize that she’s the incarnation of a dying tanuki spirit that’s returned to the land of the living for one final week? Fortunately, in Katawa Shoujo you can often piece together events between routes that each of the other characters end up working through the central conflict in their storylines (or never get them in the first place) even when you’re not around.

Also pleasing: the game often makes you want to treat the characters like moeblobs (especially since this is after all a visual novel), but that’s usually the wrong way to go about doing things. That’s why you got the bad end with your waifu Hanako the first time. Don’t lie. The clever aspect is that the whole nurture/protect thing with moe here really boils down to ableism in the context of the characters in this game. The characters are in exactly the sort of situation that would usually be fodder for some kind of tragedy. But despite not being able to use “easy” stock moeblob scenarios or character types, the scenarios developed well enough that unlike something like say, Buttflower Anohana, they actually make an effort to make you care about the characters rather than taking it as a given that the sight of them bawling their eyes out will make you overcome with emotion.

That’s what I mean when I say that the writing is conceptually good. When I talk about how its technically bad, I’ll be talking primarily about the way the stories unfold. Each character’s story consists primarily of the same few scenes repeated over and over again, like classroom lessons, Kenji’s rants, and then some character-specific scenes like jogging or student council work.

Some of these scenes are so short and devoid of content that it almost feels like a stretch to even call them filler. There are “days” that consist purely of say, Hisao going to the Shanghai for lunch and bumping into someone. They’re so short that I can’t even always tell if the next scene is the next day or what happened immediately later that day. I mean, that can’t be the only thing of note he did that day? Or rather, does that even count as “something of note?”

Then there’s the flip side, where there are days that feel narratively like they are there for a very specific reason, then inexplicably end. There are scenes in multiple routes where the activity that day consists of Hisao trying to find that route’s heroine so that they can go on some kind of date. My assumption then becomes that the point of that day is to go on said date, but then once you find her the day abruptly ends. It’s extra awkward since these are the sorts of scenes that one would expect to really develop the relationship between Hisao/you and that route’s heroine. Shizune’s route was the worst offender here, which is why it doesn’t particularly surprise me that she seems to be the least liked of the heroines.

The other huge weakness of the writing is that it’s completely ham-handed and subtle. There’s very little subtext in the game, since someone (usually but not always Hisao) will spell out everything, frequently more than once. Descriptions, character motivations, and any kind of morals work in a similar way. It almost serves as another kind of filler, yet the game definitely has more room for actual content.

I do wonder though if that’s also partly a fundamental problem with visual novels in general. My thinking here is that these games can’t really devote much space on the screen to text. It’s hard to really fit more than a sentence or two on the screen without having to overlay text over most of the graphics. That’s not really a good option, however since it kinda defeats the purpose of the “visual” half of “visual novel”.

Finally, while I pretty much agree with Alexander’s review, there is definitely one thing that I don’t agree with: I totally understand the audience for the game. Or should I say, the two audiences. The first audience is the one that wants to as the meme puts it, rub their cum in crippled girls’ burn scars. But once they are confronted by the real and can no longer utilize the irony they were using as a defense (oh look, Zizek came through again), they morph into the second audience: the enormously underserved audience for male teenage romances and melodramas. And by melodramas I’m not counting pro wrestling here; I mean like Stella Dallas. These are pretty easy to find coming out of Japan (not just eroge but also meanstream stuff; think Mitsuru Adachi manga.) Obviously nobody would make these in America, since any teenage boy that shows an interest in romance or feelings will get branded a pussy or a faggot.

Take this guy. He’s not crying manly tears. He’s crying, as I’ve seen mentioned over and over on forums and whatnot, “like a little bitch” or “like a sissy”. He’s not crying because his aniki just yelled out “I CAN AT LEAST DO THIS MUCH!” and blew up his giant robot. He’s crying because he realized just how beautiful on the inside his waifu is. Then check out his comments. Half of them call him a pathetic virgin loser, but the other half are like “I KNOW MAN SO MANY FEELS”.

Let’s end with the individual routes (in order that I completed them)

Shizune – Shizune’s route is probably the worst. Not because you think that she is a castrating bitch (which you only think because you are threatened by women lolololololol), but rather because her route has the most egregious examples of the filler scenes, the most annoying instances of days that cut short right before the meat, and a lack of conflict for most of the route. Despite that, I did at least find Shizune and Misha to be fairly enjoyable characters with their combination of snark and pep.

Hanako – Hanako is your waifu for a good reason. Her route was probably the best because of how it works against your tendencies to be an ableist white knight. It really makes you want to help her, but then shows that you didn’t think your cunning plan all the way through. Then you end up like this guy. Also, yes, it does count as rape.

Lily – Lily’s route is about as bad as Shizune’s, but for different reasons. Technically, it was better than Shizune’s. There were far fewer scenes that randomly end and far more meaningful interaction between Lily and Hisao. It also doesn’t help that Lily doesn’t really have much going on as a character that’s particularly interesting. That leads into the main problem with her route: there really was no conflict in it. There’s no real tension of any kind between Lily and Hisao (compare to say, Emi, Rin, or Hanako’s routes) and the only conflict shows up at the very end of the route and then resolves itself almost immediately afterwards. Oh, and to top things off, Lily is a total madonna/whore fantasy object. Or if you will, a lady on the streets and a freak between the sheets. I mean, she fucks Hisao so much he gets a heart attack!

Emi – Emi’s route was like Hanako-lite. It also focuses heavily on ableist white knighting screwing up everything, but without the emotion porn that made Hanako your waifu. It’s also a totally unsubtle version of Hanako’s route, in the sense that it bangs you over the head with the whole “don’t be an ableist asshole” moral, compared to how that lesson is more like a ticking time bomb in Hanako’s route that you/Hisao doesn’t realize until he’s fucked things up royally.

Rin – Rin is everyone else’s waifu, and for good reason. Her route definitely has the most emotion porn to it. It’s almost entirely “feels bad man”, rather than how all of the other routes have some emotional and/or sexual catharsis at the end. The good end is more like a neutral end and the neutral end is more like a really bad end.

Before we conclude, my one medical nitpick. Hisao’s disability is that he has a life-threatening heart arrhythmia. Despite this, he guzzles coffee and tea non-stop. My dad has a very minor arrhythmia, to the point that really the only impact on his life is that he…can’t drink coffee.

(Oh and hell, at least in this game nobody gets locked in a cage, which apparently is so hot right now in the land of otome games.)

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