Feelings & Fire: A Third Review of Katawa Shoujo

Overwhelming Need to Help: My Experience As a White Knight

Ogachi's Review of Hanako's Story
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Okay, I grudgingly agreed to play through this with the sole purpose of proving I could. It's a visual novel with an anime style developed by 4 Leaf Studios (Here: http://katawa-shoujo.com/). It follows Hisao and his paper heart through his time at a school for the disabled. Whilst there, he goes after one of five disabled chicks, each with positive, negative, and "Well, shit." endings. SO! I downloaded it, thinking it was just some stupid weeaboo kawaii uguu nonsense I'd be done with in 2 or 3 hours of laughing. 8 hours later, I completed a story. It was... different, to say the least. Now, I'm not big into the whole "Video Games as Art" thing or "Visual Novels Can't Be Video Games" thing, but it was certainly a different experience from the usual. Perhaps, that the lack of total control was it. Sure there were choices in the "Choose Your Own Adventure" style, but no more than 16 or 17 per story, and all the stories share 9 or 10 of the same choices in the 1st Act. Even the whole "Normal Guy" thing has been done before, but it is presented differently. You are not just a normal guy trying to get by but having trouble with the world. You are the normal guy, frail and knowing the wrong move can kill him, but always trying to deal with the problems and concerns of others instead of your own, which hits close to home for a lot of people. Perhaps it's just novelty value, as was recently suggested to me. Perhaps it was interesting in its way. Perhaps I'm just bullshitting my way through this. I'm not sure. Alas, I must continue my tale. ONWARDS!

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Hanako's Story

AVAST! Minor Details and My Reactions to Unspecified Plot Turns Lie Ahead!

Right-o. So. I started as Hisao and went through my first week at the school. Along the way, I saw a girl will long, dark hair who seems to be constantly hiding from everyone, raising some suspicion. Later, I meet a blonde, blind girl, named Lilly, and so I take the time to converse with her before accompanying her to the library. Whilst there, I saw the same dark haired girl in the Library, reading alone. Out of instinctive chivalry (or maybe just curiosity) I chose to cowboy up and attempt to talk to her. After a few odd sentences, awkward silences, and her just jumping up and running off, I learned her name, Hanako. I also learned the had quite the collection of burn scars and SERIOUS social anxiety. Unlike Fat4all's sheer curiosity about her, I felt slightly obligated to at least attempt to force a few more words out of her. Who says chivalry is dead? I found out her and Lilly are friends. Thus, off I went, on a roller-coaster of confusion, unsure that I was making any progress or not.

If I could describe the story in two words, it would be "emotional baggage". Seriously, Hanako would need an entire brigade of Psychonauts to clear that out of her head. About halfway through the story, I thought I was finally doing right well, making good progress as Hanako was actually starting to talk to people. My success lasted a half second before it was crushed into the dust of false hope as she then had an emotional breakdown. The next day, I thought I was bringing her out of it and even believed so for a bit after that but lo and behold I was WRONG. Though, I do have patience so I toughed it out and kept trying to break her out of the mental concrete barrier she made around herself. Thus the white knight that is in my blood did not allow me to leave it be but instead forced me to have a sense of obligation to protect her. Towards the end, I had the feeling of success again and once again it seemed to have been smashed. But then, during some of the last lines of the final Act, I had gotten a message she had been trying to put across the whole time, and thus "Oh. Well. Shit." It triggered a strange response, an experience I can't quite put my finger on. It seems like there's a word for it but I just don't know. Luckily, I never got a bad ending, and instead got the good one. Huzzah.

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Generic Technical Reviewing

Music- I don't really see that much to praise here. It was good for the job it was doing, I suppose, but nothing amazing.

Writing- Fairly good, definitely made me think about it. I was actually impressed by this part, being not what I expected.

Art & Design- Eh, this is a bit complicated. It's standard anime art, but the character designs do well to fit the personality of the character they represent, and I suppose calling an armless girl "generic" in this regard would be... unfair.

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The End Is Here

So, was it good, you ask? Was it playable? Was it worth it? In a nondescript, hesitant and shortly put way, yes. I only hesitate because I suppose at heart I am still biased and dislike this kind of thing off instinct. Did I enjoy it? ... Yes. It was actually much better than I expected. Hell with it, it's free. If you've got time to spare, go for it. It's just like reading a book, just with more pictures, music, sound effects, small choices that end up having a dramatic effect, and etc. Until next time folks. See you on a walk around town accompanied by "Dust in the Wind".

Oh God, why do I want to play it again? Oh dear lord, why? What is this? What is this I am experiencing? Oh God, it's the same as before! I think I know what the experience is called now. Is this what they call... feelings? My God.

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Katawa Shoujo: A Review

I would like to start by saying I generally dislike anime, manga, cuteness, big-eyed, crazy-haired anything. It does nothing for me. When I approached this "game" I knew I would nitpick and do my best to not give it a chance. I came to terms with this before I got started with this review and made it clear to myself that I would finish this game despite my feelings towards the genre and be a man about this review. This is what I took away from it.

Ugh.

It fucking SUCKED. Okay, that was a bit rash. For the target audience of people who enjoy generic romance and high school drama it's gaurunteed to pluck the heart strings and leave the "player" with a sense of coming away with something rewarding and... good. I guess.

Pretty much.

What is Katawa Shoujo? It's a Japanese style visual novel dealing with dating disabled girls created by members of 4chan (don't let that fool you, it's legit and free to download and play so that's something). What is a visual novel? Think a choose-your-own-adventure book with a lot more text and fewer choices. You play as Shithead (I don't remember his name) who has a heart attack because he has arythmia and didn't know it and a girl asked him out causing Call of Duty blood to fill his eyes and his heart to explode. As a result you wake up in the hospital and find out you can't go back to normal high school because you're different now and get sent off to cripple camp. Sorry. Cripple High. Anyway, everyone there has some sort of disability or what have you even if it's not completely obvious and it's up to Shithead to go out there and bless one lucky disabled lady with his cripple dick. Think of it as a school for super heroes except instead of super powers they are missing their legs or blind and there's no laser fighting, just talking and drama and romance and crap.

Expect things more nonsensical as this, i.e. "time is a gooey mass"

The first act of the game determines exactly who the recipient of said cripple dick will be. Don't expect to be able to directly control who the lucky lady is, the games handle choices as indirect and vague questions dealing with your opinion on certain things and how you spend your time rather than how to approach a challenge or situation. With visual novels it's all about the placement of the protagonist rather than how you would solve a problem so you're forced to view the world through Shithead's eyes (the guy is as exciting as a dead cow). Your choices in ladies are Armless, Legless, Deaf, Blind, Burnt, and a dude who looks a lot like Harry Potter.

Well at least it's not obvious.

Anyway, the games dialogue is very repetative and cute and you take away from it what you will. Expect to be told the trees are green a lot. I went down the path of Legless and got to have weird cripple butt sex at one point. That was the highlight of the story. This was only after 6 hours of reading about Shithead's feelings and boring developing romance and how protective Legless is about why she's Legless but she pretends to not be legless so... yeah. Anyway, somewhere along the way I screwed up and Legless never spoke to me again and the game ended.

Stupid BITCH! You broke my HEART!!!

Think of the choices as kitten cannon, where you aim and shoot and hope you don't land on spikes. There isn't a real target you're aiming for or anything you're just hoping for the best, at least that's what it felt like to me. Normally I would have been content with Shithead's failure and the game ending but by this point I admit I kinda cared about Shithead and what happened to him. I felt like his conscience and somewhere along the way I failed in guiding him to sweet cripple heaven. So I opened up my last save and made sure he got his happily ever after.

Facesole

In short, if you've got some time to kill and you're into the whole high school drama thing with a sprinkling of disabled girl hentai then go ahead and give this "game" a shot. If you would rather enjoy an intriguing story with tons of action and twists then go pick up A Game of Thrones.

*SPOILER* This guy DIES.

Comic Dump 03 July 2011

Another spat of comics for your viewing pleasure!


The Blain Test




Pro

  Writing, Pencils, Ink, Lettering - Frankie Sanabria II
Colors - Jessica "Jaz" Sanabria

Raptor Inc. at Kawaii Kon 2011

Okay, so I got a chance to go to Kawaii Kon 2011 (if I had known what kawaii meant at the time I would now have gone) and despite all the weirdos and spandex it was a pretty decent time. Lots of art work shops, acting lessons, interesting panels, a wide variety of vendors, free video gaming, tournaments, all kinds of cool crap to fill up your weekend and destroy your pride.

Anyway here are "Greatest Hits" of the pictures I took over the weekend. My one regret: I forgot my RINC shirt.



My bad ass button collection I got for my messenger bag.



Check out the fat fifth element chick!

I don't know what is....

The green guy is a creeper, you can see his head on the table. I first saw him coming down the escalator with a stare locked on to me as if he would explode. The Deadpool is just awful.



One of the contenders for the silent auction.



Ezio isn't very sneaky.

I'm in the  middle. I know these guys from my old submaarine. Doesn't everyone looks so happy?!

Favorite picture.

Me wrecking my wife's shit on SF2

This is my scribble for one of the art contests. They give you a scribble and then you're supposed to draw something using it.

Here's my drawing! I lost.

That pikachu probably got laid that day.

This is the line for Otaku speed dating. Note that they are all dudes.

This guy sat in the audience at the speed dating and exposed himself for the men causing a big distraction. Genious.

The dude who everyone is cheering on in the blue hoodie is wearing hot pants.

My wife with pedobear.

So much fucking awesome in this shot I just came.

My souvenier, my very own potted fire plant.

Side Note: Comics

I have recently rediscovered my love of the good ol' American comic book and oh, what a love it is. My first comic book was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles back when I was young enough to not be able to remember how old I was to recall this memory. In it there was an anti hero turtle and people died and were blown up. I also had a Transformers comic. Same scenario.

Just like that

That was my exposure to comics in the beginning, cool images with lots of colors and people died. It wasn't until much later when I started doing my own artwork and writing that I began to drift back into the way of comic books. The blossoming of my love took place in Groton, CT where I chanced upon a place known as Sarge's Comics in New London which was right across the river from where I attended sub school.

Notice the Green Ranger

New London was a charming and beautiful New England town and with Mystic right down the road I can tell you it was one of the most intriguing areas I had ever lived in. People were friendly, the nights were cool and the fog rolled in heavily in the morning. Old tall sailing ships could be seen in the harbor and the towns seemed to emerge from the thick evergreen forests as if it was one big painting planned for beauty and resonance. There is mysticism about New England that seemed to be everywhere you look, just under the surface. It's no wonder that Stephen King sets up most of his stories there and I can tell you you haven't lived until you've been in Salem on Halloween. Sarge's Comics was the biggest comic book shop I had ever seen with rows upon rows of comics of every genre and publisher and not to mention a basement devoted to board games and other nerd finery's. I was there looking for inspiration and dammit, I found it.

New England!

In between these epochs of my life I was big into Japanese comics and storytelling, an interest brought upon me by Cartoon Network with Tunami and various Japanese games I was playing at the time, most notably Pokemon for it's brainwashing of my young mind. The Japanese style of storytelling is as far away from reality as you can get, everything is amazingly exaggerated, there's lots of screaming and exuberant cuteness and melodrama and a horrible fascination with teenage girls that are useless and when I look back in it now I can see its appeal to my child like mind. Now, however When I compare Japanese and American style graphic storytelling there is simply no comparison to be made.

Every Japanese anything, ever

American storytelling is hard and real and at its best visceral in its presentation. It captures mainstays in American culture, violence, sex, hard truths, betrayals, the good guy doesn't always win and he's always faced with insurmountable odds and yet always manages to find a way and forge his own path. Even if he loses everything, he sucks it up and moves on. It's that hardness and realism that I crave in a good story. I tend to overlook the spandex costumes and sometimes cheesy plots that can happen. With the right writer and artist at the helm some great work can be done. It's been three years since I bought a comic book and now I get at least one a day while I'm on my lunch break at work and you know what? I'm glad I came back.

Comic - Clowns Vs. Mimes : By the Pricking Of My Thumb... by Frankie Sanabria

Yeah it sucks but it's good for this week. Piss off, you!

*On a side note, I have colored this comic. I'm not too proud of it but it will do.

**Background can fuck off.