Rin's Path discussion *spoilers*

[Kino]

Just finish Rin's story and there's one thing that I don't quite understand, it mostly has to do with the H-scene, or the part before that, actually it's the whole ending.

When Hisao and Rin are in the art room, Hisao tells Rin that they can never be friends and that people will never truly understand one another. How did this translate into the H-scene and later into Rin telling Hisao that she loves him?

Maybe I'm a bit dense but this made me so confused.

Never mind, after re-reading that scene it all makes sense now. I was actually reading that whole art class scene in a negative way and it completely messed up my view on the matter. So yeah, pay attention to the subtleties at work and notice what kind of music is being played.

[Qaenyin]

I'm not sure if the writers really intended her to come off as autism spectrum or not, but speaking as someone with an autism spectrum disorder I could really empathize with her character, that feeling of depersonalization and lack of identity and the feeling like the thoughts going through your head are in a totally different language from the one other people use. The alienation that creates and the feeling that because you don't know who you are you don't know what you can, or for that matter even want to, be.

I found the whole route really moving for that reason even dismissing the depression and sadness evoked by the atmosphere in general. I'm very curious what inspired the person who wrote her route to characterize her in such a manner.

[DoctorX]

*** * Contains spoilers for Rin's Route only * ***

I don't get why people use all the spoiler tags for Rin's story, when there's a big fat spoilers mark right on the thread, I thought only other route's details needs to be obscured.

Anyways...

Just like other people said, this thread is like therapy to me... however those posts replaying back the events of Rin's path is getting to be too much, had to stop reading at page 12 and skip to the end to make my post.

Damn, what can I say? After Emi's path I thought that set the high mark in this game, but Rin's path is crazy well written. My scalp is still tensed up from the stress of reading Rin's dialogue and sharing Hisao's frustration.

I'm high on the drug called Rin and I don't want to come down... is how I would describe my feeling after finishing her route. Just like Emi's route I went straight to the Good Ending though always with close calls - so glad I chose "I want to understand" option when I consulted the chart afterwards. The other option seem too accusing to me at the time "Then explain!", like something you snap out with, good to see that I guess correctly that it's a bad choice.

Still, even though this is a best writing, I'm not too sure I would chose the "girl" Rin over the "girl" Emi. Rin really does seem to have mental disability - she was talking about how she can only keep 6-7 things on her mind at the same time, I can literally see her ram just filled up in the exhibit scene where ppl bombarded her with questions, and can almost nail down the exact moment when she ran out of memory and had to go fetch from her slow, slow hard drive - and end up with a read error.

Could Rin be dealing with TWO disabilities? Both physical and mental?

I think so, it's almost black humor when I realized being armless is the least of Rin's problems.

Also the H-Scenes, the 1st one is almost like the writer decided that she/he needs to create an H-Scene that is not really an H-Scene. That is, you must be inhuman if you're still in the mood for it during that scene. Thank god the 2nd H-Scene offers a much needed reprieve from all the tension. That reminds me, the 2nd H-Scene still doesn't feel "H" to me because I was feeling too relieved from all the previously built-up tension to be in the mood again.

This is like trying to see how many ways you can make an H-Scene not about the H-Scene.

Great job?

I really, really hope the rest of the paths are of this calibre.

[QbertEnhanced]

I played her's third, and I'm not planning on doing any more of them, it was simply that good. Its not that I'm super attached or anything, but rather that this story satisfied whatever I was craving.
And you know what, I never came up with my own interpretation of why she did what she did, I never felt the need to. Its really difficult to truly know someone, and with the brief glimpse of a person you get through the words of a good writer I personally find it all but impossible. But I really really enjoyed it, it felt like I was getting to know someone interesting, which is an all to rare occurrence for me.
And goodness, did it ever blow my mind. I feel like I got some perspective on the nature of personality, and even more so into that of relationships. I feel like the criteria I had in my head for who I wanted close to me have been broadly redefined into something both more selective, yet also broader. Most importantly it gave me a little bit of hope that there are real people this captivating out there in the world, people who think so differently from you that you can't help but be captivated by their mind's inner workings.
A beautiful mind indeed.

[KaneTaker]

Tried for her first. Ended up with Lilly. Seems like the hardest path to open. Trying it now that Lilly, Hanako and Emi are 100%.

[Atticon]

I think i'm going to have to take a break from KS for a while. I just finished dragging my way through Shizune's path, which, while not bad, is as if it's from a completely different VN.

Argh, I knew I should've kept Rin for last, I just keep thinking about how good her route was.

[Guest]

I did the Hanako route first, I thought it was amazing (although I didn't cry or anything) and immediately fell in love with Hanako, I then decided to do the Hanako route again just because of how amazing it was, but then my friend forced me not to cos he said it'd ruin it.
So I found myself doing Rin instead.
And wow.....just....just wow.
I think I cried about 3 times (and I am famous for never crying and never showing any emotion)
The Rin route was f-ing amazing and that's all I can say really, it was the most emotionally straining experience of my life too (Act Three + Act Four = Hell)
But anyway, I got the good end, no idea how but I did.

[Drake]

You know, I was looking at the flowchart after having completed Rin's route and noticed that there's actually allot of ways to get to her good ending. In fact, if you just use common sense you'll more then likely end up there regardless of your early choices.

Wonder if there's some sort of meaning Aura was trying to convey behind this.

[someonelse]

"The bad" ending is actually better than "the good" one. Hisao i such an @^%#@, he is not worthy of Rin's love!

[panique]

I played through Rin's path third (after finishing all endings for Emi, then Shizune).

She frustrated me quite a bit. I was sort of expecting a happy ending, similar to Emi's (I'm holding them all up to that standard ), so to go on for so long and for Rin to just seem to stay the same or get worse was frustrating for me. It was frustrating the way Hisao was dealing with it, and although I enjoyed the story, it's definitely below both of the others I've played so far. Definitely getting the feeling that Rin may have had some form of mental problem as well, and it was a little bit upsetting that it was never really dealt with in her path.

[maymay]

From the start Rin was the most interesting character to me, but I inadvertently ended up playing through and getting Emi's good ending. On my second try I managed to get Rin's path, and was absolutely floored by the story.

Anyways, I've played through her path multiple times since then, and I just had an epiphany while watching the video.

First, there's the imagery of Rin's painting, discussed earlier in this thread, where you get a glimpse into her mind (the weird abstract section), but when she looks at the painting itself, it's a mirror. In other words, her paintings are a reflection of herself.

The epiphany I had was with Hisao and the dandelion imagery. I think this is representative of Rin's changing feelings towards Hisao, and is a metaphor for her growing feelings that she has to change, to become someone not herself - possibly because she's realizing she wants to make Hisao happy and feels like her current self can't do that. To delve further into the imagery, Hisao plucks the yellow dandelion (which could be representative of Rin's current state), in other words, he's entered her world. In the last part of the movie, the dandelion has now changed to be white, and he shakes it off, signifying change. Rin wakes up and looks for Hisao but he's not there - because the Hisao in the movie is the Hisao in her mind. This idea is supported when you realize that the parts with Hisao have a sky background, and Rin later compares her mind to the sky, or the sky to her mind.

I never really understood the significance of the movie until now, but it makes complete sense, since Rin's already showing some feelings towards Hisao (sleeping on him in the fireworks scene, and hesitating before leaving him at the end of the night).

[Panty Supervisor]

Just finished Rin's route. Does anyone remember the moment after the second sex scene? The screen fades to white and in the middle of the screen appears one single word: Present

The problem is that when you're in auto-mode, it doesn't go on. I was looking at just this one word for... I don't even know... maybe half a minute, maybe a minute. I thought it was some kind of artistic means to break the fourth wall and make the reader more aware of the world around him. At first, I thought it was stupid, but as I decided to just try to go with it, it actually worked for a moment. Any story can capture your interest within its world, turning the reader into some kind of spectator. But only very rarely do you experience that your attention is being directed back at yourself without you being aware of it. You know, like you are watching yourself from an outside perspective, but without noticing that this isn't possible. I was really impressed, until I figured out that it was really just an issue with the auto-mode that didn't work properly.

As for Rin's path in general: I didn't enjoy it very much. It was frustrating and I could understand neither Rin nor Hisao. Rin didn't feel like an actual person to me and I couldn't understand why Hisao puts up with all the shit he gets from her. The sex scenes were nice, though.

[Quark]

Hisao didn't feel like an actual person to me and I couldn't understand why Rin puts up with all the shit she gets from him.

Fixed that for you.

[Benkei]

Disclaimer: before you launch into an angry or argumentative reply to this post, be sure to read from "But despite this observation" onward. You'll see that the first half of the post is just setting up for the second half. Thanks.

One of the problems I had with the Rin path was that it doesn't seem to fit in with the theme of Katawa Shoujo like the other paths do. For the other girls, their disabilities play into the plot, relate in one way or another to psychological problems that they are experiencing, and are explored by Hisao after he gets to be more intimate with them. But with Rin, her armlessness didn't really matter at all: aside from the fact that it was there to explain "this is a girl who paints by using her feet as hands," Rin's armlessness was never the cause of, say ...
--- Emi: phantom pain
--- Hanako: paralytic self-conscientiousness
Nor did Rin's armlessness relate to some critical event which underscored a different side of her, like:
--- Emi: how the event which robbed her of her legs also robbed her of her father, and how losing her father was really Emi's biggest issue: trauma
--- Hanako: how the event which robbed her of her face also robbed her of her parents, and how losing them was another huge blow to Hanako's psyche

We never really learned much about Rin's parents. I don't recall if we ever even learned how she lost her arms. I had assumed, pre-disrobing, that she was a thalidimide baby (or something similar) and that she had simply been born without arms. But once we saw that she actually had what appeared to be developed upper arms that terminated bilaterally just above the elbow, I was left wondering if perhaps Rin had suffered a double amputation earlier in life. And I never got to find out.

Now, you could say that the details of Rin's physical disability were unimportant to her story. And I'd be inclined to agree with you. Especially because I didn't even notice this complaint of mine until after I completed her path and was comparing and contrasting her path with the others I'd completed. But even if details are unimportant, that doesn't make them any less fascinating: sometimes the most interesting things can be the most trivial, and I suppose I really wanted to know more about Rin's disability and how it had affected her growing up. But to get back to the point I made at the onset: even if the details are unimportant to Rin's story, they seem paramount to relating Rin back to the core theme of Katawa Shoujo -- a game which explores physical disabilities and the effects they have on people. Insofar as KS is a game about physically disabled girls, Rin's path doesn't seem to fit at all: because it's never ever about her physical disability nor is it ever made clear that Rin's peculiar mind is an indirect result of her disability.

But despite this observation, I've actually really come to respect what Aura did with Rin's armlessness. And I've come to reconsider the claim that Rin's path doesn't tie into the KS theme the way the other paths do. And I was made aware of it thanks to this post:

[Rin's tale] is very much meditation on the nature of genius and the ability of people to understand one another. To the point where Rin's disability almost beacomes a metaphor for her inability to "touch" others the way she would like.

The idea that Rin's physical disability was a metaphor (or a symbol, or whatever we want to call it) for her psychoemotional disability -- or perhaps we should say inability -- to relate to others, to understand them and to be understood by them ... this idea completely went over my head when I first played the path. In hindsight, it's pretty clear that Rin's path is the artsiest one of them all (I believe Aura called it a more "cerebral" path in one of the recent blog posts. Not sure if I'd use that exact adjective, but I definitely would agree that it's a path that makes you work a little harder for your money). And so since Rin's path is so artsy, so "cerebral" if we will, it doesn't surprise me in hindsight at all that Aura might have been going for this level of symbolism: that Rin's armlessness was used as a physical analogue of the psychological or emotional problem she was experiencing -- an inability to reach out to others. That even if her armlessness didn't cause her mental state, it still mirrored it. That's pretty cool.

Also -- and this now is perhaps me being a little too meta -- I think it's damn neat that the most abstract path of them all dealt with the most abstract girl of them all. It's very fitting and remarkably artistic. Again: it's the sort of thing I think that Cannes would absolutely lap up. Would not be surprised at all to learn that this path gets nominated for (and quite possibly wins) an award for young or novice writers.

[maymay]

Now that you mention it, the only time Rin uses her arms in the game is at the very very end when she's 'hugging' the sky.

If being armless mirrored Rin's inability to 'touch' others, then having her use her arms at the end to reach out to the world can be seen as a metaphor for Rin being able to finally reach out and connect with another person. I admit it may be a bit much to think that Aura specifically planned it this way, but nonetheless its a very symbolic gesture that fits perfectly with the story and character development.