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.

The Way of Progress

my current setup

My focus right now (other than my day job and relationship issues) is to keep some momentum going in the old creativity department and pump out some new projects while I'm waiting for the movie to sit and mellow out in my head.

The first project was some music composition, I made one song I may use in the movie and then called it quits so I can focus on piano lessons using my dandy new keyboard that already has a bad key (who needs D? pfft) and do a bit of writing of the prose variety.

http://soundcloud.com/draconistheory/the-town

I have in the works a short story that will hopefully get people interested in the movie and provide a bit of background into the mythos of the tale itself, all those spooky entities and stuff floating about needed a bit more flesh on their spectral bones, not unlike the companion books that came out with the Harry Potter series and the mini series of videos released before Alan Wake.

We may be completely lacking in fan base and production value but it doesn't mean we can't pretend to be pr0! So I'll keep you going as that progresses and hope to have something neat to show you guys soon (if you even exist).

"I Got This" Filming Starts On Dec. 19th

Wish us luck. We're gonna need it.

Production of Film to start quite soon!

We are back from our month off from the blog, in which time we stuffed ourselves with turkey and pasta, and loads of desserts, with a new announcement!

OFFICIAL PRODUCTION OF OUR FILM STARTS IN DECEMBER!


While it will mostly be filming with the main cast and establishing each of the filming locations, main production is set to start at some point towards the end of the month of December!

GET YOUR ACTING FACE ON, PEOPLE!

Over acting...

Not quite there yet...

The Thing (2011) Review

THE PROLOGUE! (feel free to scroll down to the actual review)
John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) is one of my favorite movies of all time. A team of American scientists trapped in the most desolate place on earth with a creature that is trying to kill and replicate them causing paranoia and terror to spread like herpes on Jersey Shore. The formula is perfect, the characters are believable and the creature effects set a standard for the movie industry.

When I learned that a prequel was in the works I got that:
"excited/scared feeling. Like 98% excited, 2% scared. Or maybe it's more - It could be two - it could be 98% scared, 2% excited but that's what makes it so intense, it's so - confused. I can't really figure it out." -Oscar (Armageddon)
I didn't want to set my sights too high and get stabbed in the back like Hollywood has a tendency to do but I allowed myself to hope. When I started reading articles talking about all the practical effects and the interior of the space ship I had a geekasm. The female role left me feeling dubious, but what the hell, WHY NOT?! It's gotta get pretty lonely out there in Antarctica, am I RIGHT LLLLLLADIES!? Nothing against female leads but in a movie such as this it's just a distraction. Anyway, I went to see the movie with my heart in my hands and hoping Universal would not snatch it from me and take a dump on it but instead cause it to erupt from terror and icky nasty alien glee.

MEH

THE REVIEW! (minor spoiler alert)
The Thing (2011) is decent movie. It's not good, and it's not awful. It is a modern director's tribute to John Carpenter's classic that was very aware that it could never come close to the movie it was honoring; but tried anyway.

OVERVIEW: A team of Norwegian scientists tracking a mysterious signal find a space ship in the ice, they find a frozen alien nearby and get a hold of an American paleontologist (Winstead) with experience digging out ice age animals to come to Antarctica and dig up the ET. Once all the characters are assembled on top of the alien space ship, the first thing that becomes apparent is that there are no ugly women in Antarctica. All two of them.

They dig up the alien and bring it back to base and OH NO the main scientist guy turns out to be a dick and wants a tissue sample from the alien despite the protests by our friendly neighborhood American paleontologist hot chick and wouldn't you know it the alien gets thawed out and death ensues.

THE TRAILER (LINK)

GOOD STUFF: The story keeps you interested through the end and it's a lot of fun if you're a fan of the 1982 film to see how the two films get tied together; the axe in the wall, the frozen body with it's throat cut, the creature that RJ and Doc find burnt in the ice outside of the camp are all there and explained. The ship is impressive and you get to go inside where a mad-crazy game of Tetris is going on (you'll see) and the base is faithfully recreated and the acting is pretty good.

The original original

BAD STUFF: The female lead is dubious and boring, not at all like the hard boiled RJ MacReady and her purpose seems to just be a place holder even though you're forced to spend most of your time with her instead of getting to know the other characters so when they die you don't really care because they are all place holders as well. Several scenes are brought right over from the 1982 flick which classifies it as a remake/prequel (remaquel, sounds Latin) only in less interesting ways. There are plot holes abound but you don't really notice them until the movie is over because it does keep you engaged to the end. There are some twists but the movie relies too much on shock scares to create the same level of paranoia in the original. Some characters make decisions that make no sense and it fails to explain how two men survive a helicopter crash with a massive alien on board with no fire. The creature itself also makes a lot of stupid decisions like NOT kill Winstead when it had several opportunities. OH, and if you like impaling than you have found your home! Impaling is EVERYWHERE! What is it with horror movies and impaling? Have you noticed that impaling is like the go-to for a death? And they're always through center of body mass, never through the face, or the side, or the hip, always through the sternum like they're SEAL team 6.

PRODUCTION: The creature effects are good if not great but become a little too reliant on CGI later on in the film which blows as the 1982 is so well known for it's practical effects; even the Norwegian helicopter is digital. Shaky cam is rampant, especially in a lot of the dialogue and if there's one trend I despise in Hollywood film making it's over used shaky cam. You don't feel like the characters are in Antarctica so much as on set; they don't get cold, in fact they don't even wear jackets a good bit of the time and run around outside like they're on vacation in Miami. For a place where the mean annual temperature is −57°C (−70°F) that's pretty ridiculous. To be fair the director had no idea what he was doing. He makes commercials. Considering this though, he did a good job for what he knew.

WANT

CONCLUSION: This movie is worth watching, but not a worthy installment to The Thing franchise. Think of it as a companion piece and nothing else. If you're looking a more satisfying accompaniment to John Carpenter's classic then I suggest the 2002 video game if you can find it.

The Thing (2011) gets a 3/5

SECOND OPINION

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7.5/10

Combating Complacency

I think everyone has the dream of doing what they love for a living. For those that can keep their heads straight and objective in sight a professional passion is an attainable goal if the dreamer has the talent and the drive. However I think most people are afflicted by the same plague that keeps me from seeing most of my grand schemes to fruition, the chronic vidjagametittiosis (legit).

Save the ta-tas

Losing focus on a project is an ailment that has afflicted me since I discovered video games and boobs. So, since second grade every time I set out on a project that takes longer than an afternoon to accomplish (Lego's, trapping lizards, climbing a tree) I tend to get sidetracked by the most basic of distractions, the two most common offenders being already mentioned.

semper gumby

When I start a project it is usually because I've been inspired by something, a movie, a book, a video game, a person, or just seeing something and going, "dammit, I can do better that that asshole." So I plan it out, I talk about it with my friends and maybe get a small support network going, tell people about it and start cranking out the framework and then maybe a week or so later, I just forget all about it. My vidjagametittiosis kicks in and I'll start playing a game or reading a book or pick up a weird hobby like wood burning or didgeridoos and get completely side tracked. All that planning, all that ground work is gone. If you know what I'm talking about by this point then hold on, because I may have some help for you that's better than anything prescribed by a prick in a lab coat.

That cure I was talking about? Oh, I lied I don't actually have one, that's what I'm talking about. But I do have a few ideas in mind which I will discuss... now.

Notice how it is blank.

1. Schedule - A routine is something that is tough to break. If you masturbate every night before you go to sleep for a week, chances are it's gonna be hard to break that routine, you may not even be able to sleep without doing it. I am aware that masturbation may not be the most common example of this but it's a human habit and it seems to work for what I'm getting at. The best time to set up a routing is first thing when you wake up in the morning and your brain has a chance to distract you from your goal or right when you go to sleep so you have a steady time slot available for whatever it is you are working on. This is all based on crap I've read but I know that it works because it's how I programmed myself to exercise 3 days a week. If I don't do it I go crazy, and if it works for flexing the gluts it's gotta work for a writing a novel. For further reading check out https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits.php

SUPPORT, GET IT?!

2. Support Network - A lot of professionals claim they never could have gotten where they are today without having a support network. Stephen King talks about it in his book On Writing and so does Robert Rodriguez in Rebel Without A Crew. Having a group of like minded individuals whom you can count on and share your passion is a huge plus to any project. "But Draco, what about the fine gentlemen of Raptor Inc.? How can you be so lazy when you have such an amazing team of professionals supporting you every step of the way?" you may ask. Well my answer to you is this: We're all lazy fat people on the inside if not on the outside. The fact that we have weekly meetings is a miracle. You should have seen the time we tried to make a video game LOL.

RAPE IS IMMINENT

3. Self Discipline - You can't do shit unless you force yourself to do it. Even if you feel awful and there is nothing you would like more than to NOT work on your project that day you HAVE TO. Why? Because if you don't you will start writing articles about growing complacent because you lost your pace. It's just like running a 10k, you have to find your rhythm and once you get it you have to keep it. You can't charge ahead and burn yourself out but you can't go so slow your 56 year old XO beats you (personal experience).

Working on the movie has taught me a lot about where I want to be in life and how I want to live it. So many people out there have found a way to make a living out of what they love, and a damn good one at that and I'll post some examples after I conclude this article. After 4 years of service in the Navy college is looming right around the corner. Do I focus on my passion and get an art based degree or do I play it safe and go for engineering and keep my loves on the side? Do I take a risk or cheat myself? I don't know. I know that 'starving artist' isn't a euphemism and I know that the economy is rough and if I can't even get off my ass to crank out and finish something that I know I love with all my heart, how am I going to convince others to take a trip through the worlds and with the characters I have created? Thus the dilemma.

Here are those links (keep in mind there are tons of crap like this, these are just the few that seam to have the biggest impact on me):
http://www.penny-arcade.com/
http://cinemassacre.com/
http://boburnham.com/
http://www.alagaesia.com/