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Link to original post: [drupal=4968]6 Things I learned from Katawa Shoujo[/drupal]
This game, Katawa Shoujo is really something. It really was kind of an eye-opener for me about a lot of things, some positive, some negative... After a little more playing of it, I just couldn't shake the feeling that my first review (hosted on another site) was... missing something. The personal side. So here you go:
6 things I learned while playing Katawa Shoujo.
6. I think my self esteem might suck
I'm writing an essay on a Dating Sim visual novel, so maybe this kinda goes unsaid, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the level of introversion present in myself that this game revealed to me. What do I mean? Well, for starters, I started the game on the Hanako path, because she was the only girl in the story I felt that I could really connect with - someone shy and timid enough that I could, within reason, approach her.
Hanako is a girl who is scarred from a fire and essentially pathologically timid - she has very few friends, can barely express herself, and is prone to locking up and becoming catatonic with panic. And this is the character I connected with most. That is, not the protagonist I was playing as, but rather me, as a person. Every other character made me feel somewhat out of place, with a cheeriness or quirkiness I couldn't latch on to for some reason. I tried the Emi (extremely peppy, athletic girl) path next, and felt horribly out of place. But I'll get back to that in a second.
In any case, it left me really wondering, "Is there something I'm doing wrong?" I tend to go after the girls who aren't as popular, pretty, or have weird self-esteem. It makes me wonder how that reflects back on me... Probably negatively. I never thought I stood a chance with the "popular" girls, so I specifically went after those who didn't have many friends, who were shy, who were pariahed. I would "help" them. The despicable "nice guy" routine. Ugh.
5. I'm really into this style of narrative
Most of the time when I game, it's high-action style stuff - 2D fighters, 2D and some 3D platformers, side-scrolling brawlers, and the like. So when I started playing this, I was sort of unsure what to expect - I had never played anything that was even remotely like this, excluding cheap flash games of a similar style that were exclusively there for the porn content. But as I went into it, and really got involved with the story and the characters, I started to really emote with the game. Not only in the sense that I laughed at the jokes and comedy segments, or that I felt bad when one of the characters were hurt - I really started to feel the emotions that Hisao seemed to hold, and even further, how he empathized with the other characters to an extent.
This doesn't usually happen to me in other media, save for the best-written normal video games or the very greatest of films. I don't know if Katawa Shoujo is simply a shining gem of the genre or not - I haven't been exposed to that many of its like - but I very highly doubt that this kind of reaction is simply due to it being great in its genre. I think it genuinely has to do with the way the narrative is exposed: it just works for me somehow, and allows me to connect with the characters really well. I'm guessing I'm not the only one.
4. I don't understand what a relationship entails
I'm currently 18. While I'm no longer a virgin, I have never really had a stable relationship. All of my relationships in the last 5 years could, essentially, be described in one of two ways:
1. I ask girl out -> I get rejected -> I become emo for a few days then learn to get over it
2. I meet girl online -> We hit it off -> I ask if she wants to be my girlfriend -> We have some sort of online relationship, which then inevitably falls apart due to the distance or other factors.
Notice how success in the first category is basically a non-starter for me. That normal procedure of high-school romance is basically a closed book for me. I've never had a real relationship... But after playing this game, I can't shake the feeling that I've been deceiving myself on that point for quite a while. Right now, I'm in a long-distance relationship with a girl from my previous home (a place I go to to visit every few months). I met her online, and have not been home since. And I'm taking it like a real, real-world relationship. My first sexual encounter was with a girl who I met in exactly the same way... About a year after she dumped me because of the distance. It feels like somehow, now that I really think about it, I'm just pretending that these relationships are something they aren't.
But even more than that, I wonder "what's the difference between what I have with my long distance girlfriend and friendship?" Yeah, sure, there's the erotic connotation, but what else? We say we love each other, but somehow I can't shake the feeling that I've missed the entire point of what love, and this relationship, means. This came to me after playing through the Emi path of the game. *Spoiler warning* Emi is a very peppy, upbeat girl with some dark past (she has no legs - that's kind of a given), and although to begin with her relationship with the protagonist seems like smooth sailing (especially compared to Hanako), after a while the question of what it means to love one another comes up, and Emi turns out to be something of a closed book in regards to her past, and unwilling to open herself up. The Hanako path features very similar scenes. After looking at these relationships unfold, I was stuck puzzled, wondering, "Why do I love my girlfriend? How is this different from friends with benefits?" And I couldn't find a decent answer at all. And now I'm stuck here, puzzling about what to do and what I'm doing wrong.
3. I take virtual relationships too seriously
Remember back in point 4, where I mentioned how I was really getting into the story? Well, when I decided to leave the Hanako path and turn to a different storyline... I felt bad about it. Does that smack as bizarre? At all? Well then, let me fill you in on one more detail: it felt like I was cheating. It felt genuinely bad. Like I was betraying something. But as I pondered over how it was strange that a game could have this sort of effect on me, I almost froze in place as I realized the bitter irony. It took a virtual relationship with a virtual character to realize just how ****ed up my virtual relationships with real people are.
As I mentioned before, essentially all of my "relationships" have been with girls online. Most of whom live halfway across the globe from me. And one of these was... bad. Not "I met 'her' and ended up getting molested by a dark man in a trench coat" bad, but "I stayed up all night crying and chatting with 'her' as she pretended to kill herself" bad. It really, really disturbed me, and was another one of those moments that should have made me think twice about my relationship to girls I've never met physically. And this game caused that again. Take my current girlfriend: she's a real person, we've talked, I've seen her on her webcam and heard her speak. But the relationship is still virtual. We're not there for each other. I can't give her a hug if she's up all night crying with her problems. I don't suffer the kind of closeness issues that you have with Emi and Hanako because the physical distance is too extreme. And I'm left wondering, "Should it matter?" I honestly don't know, and it feels outright horrible to dwell on it.
2. I can't play games like this any more
Shortly after putting down the game and finishing the Emi storyline, I went to eat dinner, and it felt like something had just hit me in the gut. As all the realizations I had, caused by the game, tumbled over me, I felt rotten, and what's worse: I felt like it was all made even worse by one simple fact: I had just spent 3 hours on a Saturday night and 5 hours over the few days beforehand playing a dating sim visual novel. Is it something to be ashamed of? Maybe not. But for some reason, it felt like it - this was the first game I would have to hide from my friends, the first game I felt positively about that I just couldn't share with them. Unreasonable? Biased? Maybe. But it's not that I didn't like it. It's that I feel that its influence is releasing thoughts in my head that I should not be considering in the first place. And what bugs me the most? It took a ****ing dating sim, a game I feel ashamed for playing in the first place, for me to think about this stuff! It makes me feel as ****ed in the head as Kenji, and I can't shake this feeling that the other shoe is gonna drop.
And remember, it's not that I dislike the game - I find it extremely enjoyable! It's just...
Following the Hanako path made me realize that I have a real tendency to go after girls with low self-esteem, and feel terrible about it because it makes me wonder what's wrong with my own self-esteem, or if I'm even seeing them as equals so much as "doing them a favor".
Following the Emi path made me realize just how little drive I have, and feel terrible about giving up running because of the cold weather and my lack of interest in leaving my room and doing something productive most days.
Following the Shizune path made me think about how hard it is for me to communicate with my girlfriend, and made me feel terrible about how our relationship makes me feel... And if she feels the same.
I'm scared to go down the other two paths, because I don't want to know what they're going to tell me about myself.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't supposed to take anything away from this game (as I said in my review, from a purely objective standpoint, it's a really good narrative). In fact, this isn't even supposed to take anything away from the game in a subjective sense: any game that can dislodge this sort of feeling and realization from me has something special about it. I think I have not played a game - hell, any media in my recent life - which had more influence on me
[*]. That scares me, but at the same time makes me wonder: am I the only one? Am I just ****ed in the head? Am I just overreacting to an average narrative? Or is this really such a powerful piece? I have no idea. But I'll say this much: if I can't take what I learned and do something with it, then I... don't know.
Strangely, I have to give my recommendation for this game while simultaneously hoping that it doesn't have such a strong influence on the person playing it, despite that somehow being the point of the medium. It really just hit me like a flying brick, and I'm sure that, for some, it's simply enough just a fun little past-time. But for me, it was more than that, in a disturbingly effective way. And as a rule of thumb, I cannot give anything that moves me that way less than a perfect score. Katawa Shoujo is ****ing beautiful.
[*] Unless you want to count my playing Kaizo Mario in German Lit and Math, which correlates very nicely with my dropping grades...
1. 4chan has a sensible, heartfelt side
Huh. This one kinda was a shocker for me. Maybe I should spend less time on /b/.
This game, Katawa Shoujo is really something. It really was kind of an eye-opener for me about a lot of things, some positive, some negative... After a little more playing of it, I just couldn't shake the feeling that my first review (hosted on another site) was... missing something. The personal side. So here you go:
6 things I learned while playing Katawa Shoujo.
6. I think my self esteem might suck
I'm writing an essay on a Dating Sim visual novel, so maybe this kinda goes unsaid, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the level of introversion present in myself that this game revealed to me. What do I mean? Well, for starters, I started the game on the Hanako path, because she was the only girl in the story I felt that I could really connect with - someone shy and timid enough that I could, within reason, approach her.
Hanako is a girl who is scarred from a fire and essentially pathologically timid - she has very few friends, can barely express herself, and is prone to locking up and becoming catatonic with panic. And this is the character I connected with most. That is, not the protagonist I was playing as, but rather me, as a person. Every other character made me feel somewhat out of place, with a cheeriness or quirkiness I couldn't latch on to for some reason. I tried the Emi (extremely peppy, athletic girl) path next, and felt horribly out of place. But I'll get back to that in a second.
In any case, it left me really wondering, "Is there something I'm doing wrong?" I tend to go after the girls who aren't as popular, pretty, or have weird self-esteem. It makes me wonder how that reflects back on me... Probably negatively. I never thought I stood a chance with the "popular" girls, so I specifically went after those who didn't have many friends, who were shy, who were pariahed. I would "help" them. The despicable "nice guy" routine. Ugh.
5. I'm really into this style of narrative
Most of the time when I game, it's high-action style stuff - 2D fighters, 2D and some 3D platformers, side-scrolling brawlers, and the like. So when I started playing this, I was sort of unsure what to expect - I had never played anything that was even remotely like this, excluding cheap flash games of a similar style that were exclusively there for the porn content. But as I went into it, and really got involved with the story and the characters, I started to really emote with the game. Not only in the sense that I laughed at the jokes and comedy segments, or that I felt bad when one of the characters were hurt - I really started to feel the emotions that Hisao seemed to hold, and even further, how he empathized with the other characters to an extent.
This doesn't usually happen to me in other media, save for the best-written normal video games or the very greatest of films. I don't know if Katawa Shoujo is simply a shining gem of the genre or not - I haven't been exposed to that many of its like - but I very highly doubt that this kind of reaction is simply due to it being great in its genre. I think it genuinely has to do with the way the narrative is exposed: it just works for me somehow, and allows me to connect with the characters really well. I'm guessing I'm not the only one.
4. I don't understand what a relationship entails
I'm currently 18. While I'm no longer a virgin, I have never really had a stable relationship. All of my relationships in the last 5 years could, essentially, be described in one of two ways:
1. I ask girl out -> I get rejected -> I become emo for a few days then learn to get over it
2. I meet girl online -> We hit it off -> I ask if she wants to be my girlfriend -> We have some sort of online relationship, which then inevitably falls apart due to the distance or other factors.
Notice how success in the first category is basically a non-starter for me. That normal procedure of high-school romance is basically a closed book for me. I've never had a real relationship... But after playing this game, I can't shake the feeling that I've been deceiving myself on that point for quite a while. Right now, I'm in a long-distance relationship with a girl from my previous home (a place I go to to visit every few months). I met her online, and have not been home since. And I'm taking it like a real, real-world relationship. My first sexual encounter was with a girl who I met in exactly the same way... About a year after she dumped me because of the distance. It feels like somehow, now that I really think about it, I'm just pretending that these relationships are something they aren't.
But even more than that, I wonder "what's the difference between what I have with my long distance girlfriend and friendship?" Yeah, sure, there's the erotic connotation, but what else? We say we love each other, but somehow I can't shake the feeling that I've missed the entire point of what love, and this relationship, means. This came to me after playing through the Emi path of the game. *Spoiler warning* Emi is a very peppy, upbeat girl with some dark past (she has no legs - that's kind of a given), and although to begin with her relationship with the protagonist seems like smooth sailing (especially compared to Hanako), after a while the question of what it means to love one another comes up, and Emi turns out to be something of a closed book in regards to her past, and unwilling to open herself up. The Hanako path features very similar scenes. After looking at these relationships unfold, I was stuck puzzled, wondering, "Why do I love my girlfriend? How is this different from friends with benefits?" And I couldn't find a decent answer at all. And now I'm stuck here, puzzling about what to do and what I'm doing wrong.
3. I take virtual relationships too seriously
Remember back in point 4, where I mentioned how I was really getting into the story? Well, when I decided to leave the Hanako path and turn to a different storyline... I felt bad about it. Does that smack as bizarre? At all? Well then, let me fill you in on one more detail: it felt like I was cheating. It felt genuinely bad. Like I was betraying something. But as I pondered over how it was strange that a game could have this sort of effect on me, I almost froze in place as I realized the bitter irony. It took a virtual relationship with a virtual character to realize just how ****ed up my virtual relationships with real people are.
As I mentioned before, essentially all of my "relationships" have been with girls online. Most of whom live halfway across the globe from me. And one of these was... bad. Not "I met 'her' and ended up getting molested by a dark man in a trench coat" bad, but "I stayed up all night crying and chatting with 'her' as she pretended to kill herself" bad. It really, really disturbed me, and was another one of those moments that should have made me think twice about my relationship to girls I've never met physically. And this game caused that again. Take my current girlfriend: she's a real person, we've talked, I've seen her on her webcam and heard her speak. But the relationship is still virtual. We're not there for each other. I can't give her a hug if she's up all night crying with her problems. I don't suffer the kind of closeness issues that you have with Emi and Hanako because the physical distance is too extreme. And I'm left wondering, "Should it matter?" I honestly don't know, and it feels outright horrible to dwell on it.
2. I can't play games like this any more
Shortly after putting down the game and finishing the Emi storyline, I went to eat dinner, and it felt like something had just hit me in the gut. As all the realizations I had, caused by the game, tumbled over me, I felt rotten, and what's worse: I felt like it was all made even worse by one simple fact: I had just spent 3 hours on a Saturday night and 5 hours over the few days beforehand playing a dating sim visual novel. Is it something to be ashamed of? Maybe not. But for some reason, it felt like it - this was the first game I would have to hide from my friends, the first game I felt positively about that I just couldn't share with them. Unreasonable? Biased? Maybe. But it's not that I didn't like it. It's that I feel that its influence is releasing thoughts in my head that I should not be considering in the first place. And what bugs me the most? It took a ****ing dating sim, a game I feel ashamed for playing in the first place, for me to think about this stuff! It makes me feel as ****ed in the head as Kenji, and I can't shake this feeling that the other shoe is gonna drop.
And remember, it's not that I dislike the game - I find it extremely enjoyable! It's just...
Following the Hanako path made me realize that I have a real tendency to go after girls with low self-esteem, and feel terrible about it because it makes me wonder what's wrong with my own self-esteem, or if I'm even seeing them as equals so much as "doing them a favor".
Following the Emi path made me realize just how little drive I have, and feel terrible about giving up running because of the cold weather and my lack of interest in leaving my room and doing something productive most days.
Following the Shizune path made me think about how hard it is for me to communicate with my girlfriend, and made me feel terrible about how our relationship makes me feel... And if she feels the same.
I'm scared to go down the other two paths, because I don't want to know what they're going to tell me about myself.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't supposed to take anything away from this game (as I said in my review, from a purely objective standpoint, it's a really good narrative). In fact, this isn't even supposed to take anything away from the game in a subjective sense: any game that can dislodge this sort of feeling and realization from me has something special about it. I think I have not played a game - hell, any media in my recent life - which had more influence on me
[*]. That scares me, but at the same time makes me wonder: am I the only one? Am I just ****ed in the head? Am I just overreacting to an average narrative? Or is this really such a powerful piece? I have no idea. But I'll say this much: if I can't take what I learned and do something with it, then I... don't know.
Strangely, I have to give my recommendation for this game while simultaneously hoping that it doesn't have such a strong influence on the person playing it, despite that somehow being the point of the medium. It really just hit me like a flying brick, and I'm sure that, for some, it's simply enough just a fun little past-time. But for me, it was more than that, in a disturbingly effective way. And as a rule of thumb, I cannot give anything that moves me that way less than a perfect score. Katawa Shoujo is ****ing beautiful.
[*] Unless you want to count my playing Kaizo Mario in German Lit and Math, which correlates very nicely with my dropping grades...
1. 4chan has a sensible, heartfelt side
Huh. This one kinda was a shocker for me. Maybe I should spend less time on /b/.
