Hello everyone. This week I am doing something different from my usual articles. Instead of looking at a manga this week I am looking at a visual novel. Let me preface this by stating something not that many people know. I have epilepsy, had it since I was a child. You might be wondering what bearing me telling you about a disability I have has on this article.
Well, for the longest time I have been searching high and low for a good representation of disabled characters in works of fiction, and I had not found such a thing until now. I had never found someone actually “get” how to properly characterize disabled people. The mind-blowing trick here is to not let their disability define them. People with disabilities are still at the end of the day just people.
That is pertinent with this week’s subject because that is the running theme in Four Leaf Studio’s Katawa Shoujo. Katawa Shoujo, roughly translated to be “Disability Girls” in English, though “Crippled Girls” would be a more direct translation, started its life in the early 2000s when the artist Raita Honjou, also known as the character designer for the cult classic PS3 game Valkyria Chronicles, created a single rough sketch page for the idea of a visual novel based around five girls with disabilities.
In the late 2000s the page was colored, translated into English, and then posted onto 4chan. This attracted enough attention that people started to want to see this game come into being, and as a result a group of 20 or so people eventually banded together and got to work.
This backstory into the creation of Katawa Shoujo, that it is about girls with disabilities, that it had its origins on 4chan, and that its selected genre, visual novels, have a bad track record of basically being porn with shoestring plots, didn’t give Katawa Shoujo the kindest of first impressions in the world. Many people thought the game would fetishize the disabilities of the girls or it would be straight up raunchy porn scenes.
Both ideas, however, are gravely wrong. It is almost as wrong as judging others based on any disabilities they might have. What the real end result, however, is probably one of the most visually stunning games I’ve seen in a long time, one of the most well written games in the history of the industry, and without a shadow of a doubt, the most realistic portrayal of humans in the medium period.
Katawa Shoujo begins with our main character, Hisao Nakai, having a heart attack at the worst possible time, when his crush confesses her own feelings to him. It turns out Hisao had a long dormant case of arrhythmia, and the sudden arrival of it lands him in a hospital for several months. As a result of his heart deciding to turn itself into a ticking time bomb, Hisao is suggested by his doctor to transfer to Yamaku High School, a school that specializes in students with disabilities, complete with a 24/7 medical staff.
When Hisao arrives at the school, he is initially down in the dumps, feeling that he was dropped off in some hidden away school to be kept out of the public eye. During his first week at school he meets the 6 girls that will comprise the main cast in addition to himself, Emi Ibarazaki, Hanako Ikezawa, Lilly Satou, Rin Tezuka, Shizune Hakamichi, and Shiina Mikado, aka Misha. Emi is amputated below her knees, Hanako has severe burns on the right side of her body, Lilly is blind, Rin has stumps for arms, and Shizune is a deaf-mute. All of the girls, except for Misha, are dateable in the game.
The game consists of 4 total acts. Act 1 is one that is, for the most part, the same among each of the girls, as it serves to introduce each of the girls and gives Hisao choices to make, and you, as the player, must make the right choices to get Hisao a date for the school festival that occurs shortly after his arrival.
The girl you hang out with at the festival ends up as the girl whose path you end up on. Acts 2 through 4 deal with Hisao’s slowly evolving relationship with the girls whose path he is on, and the choices Hisao makes via your guidance will decide how that path will end. Each path has at least two endings, one of which is a good ending where Hisao gets the girl, the other one is either a bad ending where Hisao ends his relationship with the girl for good or a neutral ending where Hisao and the girl remain friends. Some of the paths will have all three kinds of endings.
During each of the girls’ paths, we get to see the girls for who they really are and see how they overcome their disabilities or struggle with problems that are deeper than what their outer appearance portrays. For example, Hanako suffers much more scarring than the kind visible on her right half of her body. Emi puts a positive spin on her condition by calling herself “The Fastest Thing on No Legs”, but suffers from Phantom Limb Syndrome and has nightmares about her accident. Rin is a brilliant artist, but at the same time is distant from everyone because she can’t properly say what she thinks. Shizune is a hard worker, but is also hyper-competitive and extremely ambitious to the point where she scares people away. Lilly is kind and motherly, but she takes it to the extreme, coddling nearly everyone she comes across, even if she doesn’t mean to.
In addition, each of the girls initially look to belong to common character tropes that proliferate visual novels, but in actuality, they are each a deconstruction of those tropes. Lilly appears to be the standard “yamato nadeshiko”, which means she is the idealized version of what a Japanese woman should be like, but in reality Lilly is a woman who likes to take the lead, something that goes completely against that trope. Hanako looks to be a “shrinking violet”, but when pushed to the limit, her shy exterior is replaced by a very outspoken and emotional person. Emi looks like the token lolicon option, being super sweet and young looking, but she’s really the oldest member of the main cast and has quite a mean streak in her. Rin seems on the surface to be the comedic cuckoo character, but the real source of her weird behavior is much more darker than you could imagine and it isn’t funny at all. Shizune seems like the time honored “tsundere” trope, meaning a person who on the outside appears to hate the main character, but slowly reveals their love for them. This isn’t the case at all, as Shizune is definitely presented as a kind, but strict, person from nearly the get go.
Now while I think all of the characters are complex and each of their paths are great, the paths are not created equally, and this is in part due to each path having different writers. The weakest of the paths is Shizune’s, it only has one choice to make and that is at the end of Act 3, and on top of it, the path is the most cluttered in terms of main characters sharing the focus as it focuses heavily on Misha in addition to Hisao and Shizune, and this makes sense because Misha is Shizune’s sign language interpreter, so wherever Shizune goes, Misha is usually within distance. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Lilly’s and Hanako’s paths are the best in the game. Both offer emotionally charged stories, but for different reasons.
I acknowledge that I have to eventually talk about the large elephant in the room here, and that is the sexual content. Yes, there still are sexual scenes in this game, however they aren’t just thrown in like in nearly every other visual novel. In Katawa Shoujo, the sex scenes have a purpose, they further the story, they further character development, and they help further the relationship between Hisao and the girl he is pursuing. Most of the sex scenes are honestly nothing worse, visually, than what you would see on Cinemax late at night. However, I will warn that one of the sexual scenes is pretty visually hardcore.
Make no mistake, though, not many people will actually be able to get their jollies off of most of the sex scenes, as they are more times than not extremely awkward to see, and the aforementioned visually hardcore scene is quite possibly the most awkward one of them all. You do have the option to turn off the sex scenes, though, however turning off the sex scenes won’t rid the game of all nudity, as any of the character sprites where the characters appear nude in will still have them appearing nude.
Moving on, I would like to talk about the art present in the game. By this point in the article, you will have seen several examples of the game’s CGs. I don’t really think I could give the art its due justice by trying to describe it. In addition to the excellently done CGs, the character sprites are highly detailed, except for Emi’s sprite, which at times looks to be still roughly sketched. This probably has to do with Four Leaf Studio changing her look after they released the Act 1 demo a few years ago.
All 5 of the paths also have an anime FMV that plays right before their Act 2 begins that gives a brief preview of things to come, and each one is a sight to behold. Perhaps the most stunning one, though, is Hanako’s FMV, which could be its own stand alone short film. Unlike all of the other FMVs which give hints to what will happen in the upcoming acts, Hanako’s FMV has a self contained story in it.
One thing all of the pictures can’t capture is another thing Katawa Shoujo has in spades, great music. The soundtrack to the game, of which it consists of over 40 songs, is incredibly crafted and emotional. The songs selected for each scene for the most part fit, and each of the girls have a specific theme song that reflects on their character perfectly.
I’ve been playing the game since it came out on January 4th, and even got a 100% completion grade. It has been multiple emotional roller coasters for me these last few weeks, and I’ve connected deeply with these characters. They aren’t just simply cookie cutter tropes, they have unique personalities, they have feelings, they have hopes and dreams, and yes they have a lot of personal issues, but then again, who the hell doesn’t? I went into Katawa Shoujo expecting a fun tale with some good characters. I came out of Katawa Shoujo with a whole new outlook on my life. I’m not defined by my condition, my condition is part of who I am, but it isn’t all that I am. I’ve noticeably been less judging of others since I started playing Katawa Shoujo as well.
In the end, Katawa Shoujo is something I highly suggest people should experience. 2012 has barely started and I already think I have my personal Game of the Year for 2012. It will be hard for any other game to enthrall me as much as Katawa Shoujo has. The facts that it will work on virtually any computer that runs Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux, and that it is 100% free are more than enough reasons alone to at least try it. You can download both the full game and the Act 1 demo in the link right here.
However, while you play, you should ask yourself the following questions: Can you see what I see? Can you face your fears? Can you seize the day? Can you stand up for yourself? Can you tell me what you think?
