Finding Rhythm: Katawa Shoujo in Review (Spoilers)

[Ricky Controversy]

Finding Rhythm: Katawa Shoujo in Review

Having completed all five routes a few days ago, I felt compelled to provide a thorough analysis of Katawa Shoujo from the perspective of a professional author. For the sake of brevity, I will not perform a complete dissection of the piece, but I will employ some very basic critical thinking techniques. This will be fairly lengthy, so I will break up my review into sections and post them as they are completed, to allow a reader to focus solely on the part they're interested in.

Foreword

Before I consider Katawa Shoujo itself, let me share some thoughts that will define how I assess it.

Arguably, one of the strongest lessons of Katawa Shoujo is that each person is naturally inclined to bring their past through the door with them wherever they go, and shedding the preconceptions born of it is a necessary step in growing towards maturity. This is of particular interest in a visual novel, a medium blacklisted by many based on their assumptions regarding it, placing it in the same contested corner as more traditional video games, comics and animation. The dreaded question, "can this be art?" is perhaps less bandied-about regarding visual novels than these other media, as there are significantly fewer proponents to seek social validation for their chosen pleasure under the banner of "art." But as with any contested medium, visual novels tend to get short shrift the rare times they are brought to the table on the basis of comparison to the accomplishments of older, more established media.

In the case of visual novels, the comparison tends to be to literature: novels, short stories, plays, epics, pastorals. The reasoning is obvious; the bulk of the content in visual novels has traditionally been communicated in its writing, despite the presence of pixel art, drawings, paintings, animation, graphic design, acting, music and interactivity. As a result, the fact that visual novel prose falls short of the mark of great--or even good--literature, would seem to dismiss it from the realm. The same is often said of video games, and frequently enough about comics to be distressing.

This assumption falls flat in two ways: first, it presumes that a medium is obliged to reach some arbitrary standard of maturation within a certain time frame, or else it is doomed to cretinism. It is worth recalling that not so long ago, cinema was regarded as a vehicle for entertainment, but widely dismissed as an art-form even as filmmakers in America, France and Russia experimented boldly with the form. Within accepted media, new movements always face opposition until they mature and critical thinkers have had time to ruminate and earnestly assess the results. Second, it presumes that distinct media can be evaluated according to the same standards, when in truth, each medium has a distinct set of vocabularies, and the ways these interact within a given work cannot be translated over to any other medium. That which makes a good novel, for example, would not make a good play without clever adaptation that accounted for and made appropriate use of the differing tools available in theatre.

Setting aside a lengthy debate about what art is or is not, this leaves us with the notion of 'vocabularies' in artistic media. A visual novel's vocabulary are those elements I listed previous: writing, visual art, animation, graphic design, acting, music and interactivity, and this is what I've said everything preceding this to get to. A great work within a medium is great because of the way it uses all of its vocabularies and pulls them all together. It's the result of a thousand small choices and combinations. It is along these lines that I have evaluated Katawa Shoujo whilst playing it. Now, the developers have made it clear that they are not overly preoccupied with being recognized artistically, and that's to their credit: real artists never are. Nor am I personally out to suggest Katawa Shoujo is a masterpiece: in my final evaluation, it is not, though it has its moments where it touches that line. I do, however, think that it goes a long way to showing that visual novels have great potential as a form. That being said, on to the actual review.


Act I

Based on my experiences with the Act I demo some time ago, I'd resolved prior to release to pursue Lilly first, then Emi, Shizune, Hanako and Rin, in that order. I wanted to build up from my least to most favorite, though in retrospect, I feel that a different order might serve better to create a game-spanning 'emotional arc.' More on that later. As Act I has a great deal of overlap across routes, I'll discuss its branches and the prologue as a single topic, then move on to the five routes in the listed order, beginning with their respective second acts.

The opening sequence is one of my favorite in the game. Beginning with the isolated, wintry glade setting, Hisao's narration of his withdrawal from the world, the image of medication names flooding the screen and the music used, everything contributes effectively to the mood of uncertainty, isolation, and a lost sense of time. Hisao's frustration and feelings of futility are made evident in the dialogue, which establishes whom we will be dealing with for most of Act I. I particularly appreciated the decision to leave Iwanako faceless; doing so really drove the cataclysmic nature of his heart attack home, having such definitive person in his 'previous life' becomes a faceless non-entity in the 'new life' it leaves behind. While I understand that the mother, father and doctor characters were likely not sprited to save on time and labor, it had a similar effect. This is what good use of the visual novel form's various vocabularies looks like.

From the fact that I played through the whole game so shortly after release, it's evident that I enjoyed Act I. The real stand-out parts of this act are the heroines' introductions, all of which succeed in very strongly establishing their characters through combinations of very expressive sprites, competent dialogue writing and--most notably for me--extremely apt leitmotifs. Not only is 'Parity' my favorite track in the game, but it is so incredibly well-suited to Rin, and really pushes her introduction past 'great' into 'excellent.' While the ways in which her introduction--along with Emi's, Shizune's and Hanako's--is strong are obvious, I'd like to take a moment to reflect on Lilly's scene in particular, because it's going to become a recurring theme in my assessment of her.

As her story unfolds and we learn more about her, it becomes apparent she could have been introduced in other, more active contexts: we could first encounter her in the midst of some class-representative work, interacting with Hanako in some way, or going in to town for something. Instead, she's sitting alone in the room she and Hanako use for lunch, and you idly shoot the breeze with her. There is no action, no heightened emotion, no peculiarity...and yet this scene makes itself enjoyable on the basis of sheer classiness, which is reflective of both Lilly and her route. She is, dramatically, the least interesting of the five heroines by a long shot, but not for lack of personality. Instead, it's because she largely has her act together and takes most challenges in easy stride. Very few characters in contemporary fiction of any medium get by on genuine charm, as it's in vogue to consider cultivated conduct cover for some moral deficiency, it's a pleasure to see that the art is not lost.

Kenji is also a joy here, of course. His non-sequitur, stream-of-consciousness antics are hilarious enough on their own, but he is also smartly written, and a well-conceived character as a mirror constantly held-up to Hisao. He is consumed by his bizarre views, but even in his state we see that there is humanity that can surface at times and possibly be recovered. It would be easy to make him a throw-away gag character to break up the tension, but he brings the full suite of quixotic behaviors to the table, and allows Hisao to recalibrate himself after major changes without the need for arduous tracts of navel-contemplation.

I had mixed feelings about the various route divergences in Act I, including the festival scenes. While the introductions all did a great job of blending character establishment and tone-setting, I felt that a few of the subsequent heroine-focused scenes were filler. Emi's festival sequence felt like a transposed repeat of previous Emi scenes, as did Lilly's: the intention of these scenes presumably being to mark a change or advance in the relationship between Hisao and a given heroine, these scenes did not give that impression. Hanako's did not stand out much either, but showed that she was gradually starting to overcome her social anxiety with Hisao's help. Rin's scene, despite being the lowest-action of all, did wonders for setting the tone of confusion and defied expectation that would come to define her route. Shizune has the best festival scene by far; arms spread wide to embrace the night sky, the fireworks and city lights off in the distance, Shizune uses the whole of the world to say what she cannot convey to Hisao with words. This at once shows that she genuinely cares for Hisao, illustrates her larger-than-life attitude, shows the fundamentally optimistic worldview that underlies her aggressive, competitive nature, and provides an important realization for Hisao himself. But more to the point, it does something that many of the 'effective' moments in KS fail to do: it communicates all of this beautifully.

This is one of those moments where Katawa Shoujo touches on being 'art,' and is something that I fear gets lost too often in debates about meaning or value: if one simply wanted to convey a raw idea, an essay would serve just as well. Art uses beauty to communicate, where normal methods are insufficient. A good story clearly conveys its underlying concepts. A great story makes you think about those concepts. A truly excellent story, though, will reach straight through you, into your heart, and make you feel it. At the end of Act I, I know that Lilly and Hisao are getting closer. I know that Hanako is starting to come out of her shell. I know that Emi has taken more of an interest in Hisao, and Hisao is starting to make something of his new life. I know that Hisao and Rin have entered into a very complicated, ill-defined situation beyond friendship. But I feel Hisao's awe of Shizune, I feel overwhelmed by the beauty and sincerity of that moment. It took judicious use of the medium's disparate vocabularies, but I was truly moved in a way my mind could not process.

Overall, Act I competently laid the groundwork for the main bodies of the stories, and has many satisfying moments for the attentive player. I would advise everyone to take their time and savor Act I in its entirety on each playthrough, as even the mutual scenes provide useful context for the divergences that lock one into a route.

Next, Lilly's Route

[Ricky Controversy]

Reserved: Lilly's Route Review

[Ricky Controversy]

Reserved: Emi's Route Review

[Ricky Controversy]

Reserved: Shizune's Route Review

[Ricky Controversy]

Reserved: Hanako's Route Review

[Ricky Controversy]

Reserved: Rin's Route Review

[Ricky Controversy]

Reserved: Final Thoughts