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.