Ask!

[ArcCain]

Unless something changed or my memory fails me, the game is set in 2007

Ah, I had completely missed that it took place in 2007. I just assumed that the year was left vague. Also, Suriko, do you stream or were you just on a stream?

[Hobojoe]

With how 2016 has been, with the sudden rise in global feminism, do you think Kenji was right? I feel the need to start preparing for the war...

[LaurelaiLong]

This game and forum are pretty old so maybe these questions have already been answered before, but I couldn't find an answer anywhere so here it goes. How did you go about forming your dev team? Was it originally one person who had the idea and found friends to help or was it brain-stormed together by a group of people who formed 4LS together? Did any one aspect (art. music, writing, backend) of your game start development way ahead of the others?

Thanks for reading this. I've been working on a project myself for about 6 months with others helping on and off and now and I'm at the point where I need a stable dev team to continue working efficiently.

[Richiter Bromont]

Among your most pertinent adversities, I'm sure you were posed with many paradoxical and often self-defeating inquiries that tested yourself and your fellow crew-mate's merits. However, I must pose to you now, the greatest question of which you have been faced through your many years of Katawa Shoujo affiliation.

And that question is: What do you think of Howard Stern's penis?

[Aura]

With how 2016 has been, with the sudden rise in global feminism, do you think Kenji was right? I feel the need to start preparing for the war...

If you think Kenji's opinions sound reasonable you might need to take a break from the Internet.

[Aura]

This game and forum are pretty old so maybe these questions have already been answered before, but I couldn't find an answer anywhere so here it goes. How did you go about forming your dev team? Was it originally one person who had the idea and found friends to help or was it brain-stormed together by a group of people who formed 4LS together? Did any one aspect (art. music, writing, backend) of your game start development way ahead of the others?

Thanks for reading this. I've been working on a project myself for about 6 months with others helping on and off and now and I'm at the point where I need a stable dev team to continue working efficiently.

KS's core idea was by one person but they never participated in the development itself in any way. The actual design ("brain-storming") was done by the dozens of anons who initially got the project started, and then 4LS. Music and coding started later than other things, since Nicol and delta didn't join 4LS until like 8-9 months into the project.

[TheHivemind]

Among your most pertinent adversities, I'm sure you were posed with many paradoxical and often self-defeating inquiries that tested yourself and your fellow crew-mate's merits. However, I must pose to you now, the greatest question of which you have been faced through your many years of Katawa Shoujo affiliation.

And that question is: What do you think of Howard Stern's penis?

I've seen better.

[emi]

Sorry if it's been asked recently, but what are you guys working on now? Any projects apart from the Comiket artbooks?

[IcemanABC]

for KS devs involved with Hanako's route: are you surprised that she still has fans? by all means she should have been forgotten quickly as "the girl from a vn who those 4chan creeps made a rape scene and nothing else for" (and she certainly has in a lot of places; a route like hers doesn't retain fans) but she still has people here and there who like her, even in romantic ways that her story didn't so much as consider. is this an unexpected result and something you hoped to stamp out, or was there always a lingering understanding of "people will like a character no matter how much we degrade that character"?

[jijhijhet]

I haven't been here in ages, I'm almost nostalgic.

Which brings me to:
How do I delete this account?

[sauceman]

A question for Aura:

In reading Rin's route, I was interested to see the amount of focus placed on the difficulty of truly knowing someone, and the inadequacy of language in regard to this. This struck me as quite similar to absurdist commentary on the issue.

Would you say absurdist and existentialist philosophy/literature has influenced you at all?

Thank you!

[cpl_crud]

I'm not sure what part of the post offended either of you but it's an a real question and you don't need to jump to the defense of some writers turning tail when asked about their intentions. They can chicken out just fine without your help, and ban whoever hurts their feelings when it's appropriate, or just stay silent, or whatever.

Actually, I find it quite interesting that an actual internet troll with his weak bait would try to co-opt a response from the writers, breaking the very Rule 3 that he showed. There could just not be an answer since they didn't consider the ramifications of subverting her route, but the troll says "dey no respond since u troll" which is, unsurprisingly, going to cause confusion about what the writers actually think, if something like that were spread around as a rumor.

Huh. Turns out I missed something here.

Assuming that your first post was a genuine question, the lack of answer wasn't from hiding or anything, it was simply from not noticing. I only come here when I get a notice from the system or I want to post something (this time it was the closing of the 5th anniversary comp on the subreddit).

Anyway, in case you don't know, Hanako had two writers. I had to leave the project after the first draft of the "released" path was done. Suriko took over it, and I like to think that he kept most of the same themes intact. But more on that later.

Am I surprised that Hanako has such a following? Yes. I'm surprised about almost every aspect of the KS fanbase. It's a source of inspiration and, to be honest, going to Comiket with the other devs and VN devs from other groups is about the closest thing I have to a non-work social life. I did not expect that when I first joined the project in the pre-4LS days.


Did we deliberately degrade her character? No. I wanted to go a different way with Hanako, but it didn't mesh with the game. So the two main themes that I wanted to look at (remembering that Suriko also mixed in his own themes) were:
1) The fact that someone like Hanako, who couldn't even enjoy someone wishing here a happy birthday, could "evolve" to a point where she could actually start a relationship and
2) That mollycoddling/white-knighting is not the answer to those kinds of people. They want to be respected and then loved, not pitied and loved.

With that in mind, instead of some fantastical teen romance story, getting Hanako to actually "fall in love" with Hisao was the story. After that, the power seemed to come out of the story, and it was like starting again on a whole new arc. I think that this is why a fan work like Sisterhood (which I still need to read) is both popular and long.
AFAIK, it addresses a whole new "story" in Hanako's life, which means that it needs the whole new beginning-middle-end/conflict etc. At the time of drafting the Hanako path, I couldn't think of a more dramatic conflict than Hanako finally accepting herself as a person and rejoining the world. To beat that and install a "second act" (as it were), you have to get a bit fantastical.
That's why the original Hanako paths had so much death and drama. Moving Hanako from Hermit to Hisao's Girlfriend was a feat in itself, so to have an interesting story after that required some real fantasy. And that is where I overstepped the line, going so far away from the rest of the game that we had to delete the whole path.


Suriko might have other opinions.

tl;dr No, we didn't purposely "degrade" Hanako. Yes, I am surprised at how popular she is. Writing stories is hard. Read my book (please - and rate it on Amazon)

[Kon22]

Woah. Do you have a book, Crud?

EDIT: Nevermind, I just saw the link...

[cpl_crud]

Woah. Do you have a book, Crud?

EDIT: Nevermind, I just saw the link...

Yeah I need to stop wavering between being obnoxious and embarrassed about promoting it.


Some more reviews on Amazon would help though!

[D0lan]

I just remembered quite a while ago I found two music files hidden on the Katawa Shoujo website

"Daylight like it's hot"

and

"Parity Jam"

Who was the genius behind these two remixes? I laughed for 5 minutes straight listening to Daylight like it's hot.