Katawa Shoujo Forums

man, you two guys really shed light on stuff. thanks, both of you.

As much as Hanako's bad ending tore me, Rin's was even worse. What Hisao and Rin said made me feel extremely sad, because she would, more than likely, follow in that one guy's footsteps andkill herself, makes sense if you think about it.

Oh God, Rin's neutral ending KILLED me. I don't see how it's not the bad ending. I was sobbing so much, it was just so painful for me.
All the things she said, especially when she said something like: "I can't hug anyone, Hisao, I'm a bad person like that. I have to hug people in my own way."
And at the part when Hisao says something like "I guess this is goodbye?" and she just walks off without giving any answer, at that point my heart was just ripped to shreds.
; ____________ ;

And about the whole Rin killing herself, I never thought about that possibility until now.
I had always wondered on Rin's bad ending why the credits only rolled and you never knew what happened after that, but that theory makes so much sense.
Especially because of the whole thing with Sae's husband...

Dawnstorm wrote: Note that the earlier change-rational was: Nomiya and Hisao would like Rin(B); I'm not sure I can be Rin(B), but I'll try. After all, if I don't, they'll be angry at Rin(A) for not being Rin(B). Nomiya acted exactly like she thought, but Hisao didn't and that must have got her re-thinking the very concept of change. Hisao hung out with Rin(A); Hisao encouraged her to become Rin(B); Rin failed at becoming Rin(B), but Hisao is still there, and he's not even really angry at her. But it's obvious that he's not quite happy with Rin(A) either. Confusing, no? The solution is that there is no Mystery Rin X to satisfy Hisao. Rin can only be Rin. But that doesn't mean that she needn't work out problem areas of Rin(A), and go on from there. But there aren't going to be any pressure points B, C, D... Just a free-flowing Rin who learns to address problems as they arise. But Rin isn't quite there yet: She has to shift paradigms. She has to become a Rin who can change when necessary, without destroying herself. She has to develop of sense for Meta Rin. And that's why I think the final "I need to change" is new; a synthesis of free-flowing change, and deadline-goal change. Unachnored, yet still goal driven. It's okay to be Rin. See? She doesn't need to embrace Rin(B); just the fact that Rin(B), too, is an avatar of Rin.

I'll take your description on Rin X and further elaborate that such one does exist but isn't portrayed as such in your description

Hisao is much to direct to the meaning of some object or an event that seems to take place to understand Rin. He lets his coherent thinking get the best of him and this is where the contrast lies between them. The difference between her free thinking and his ability to define an event as a whole.
Rin's storyline, to me, is more existential for Rin if anything else.
Her thoughts and actions appear very absurd, contradicting to Hisao's actions so much, which makes it hard to understand, without any knowledge, how they fall in love with each other in the first place. He even questions how he falls in love with her. It is the curiosity I believe that drives Rins mind to act the way she does. Rin (X) could perhaps be her mind. She tries to find a purpose in life but at the same time, meet the expectations of the real world rather than go into the fantasy world she often goes off into when she gets lost in the painting.
I personally feel sorry for Rin. The first time reading the story, I felt like punching Hisao for not being more open minded as to why she though about the things she did and acting like a total butt to her in the story, which made me very angry with him >:(!
She is different than all of the characters in the story. The proof is her love of art, because it could be anything, and she chooses her paintings in terms of absurdness.

The neutral and bad endings could have been switched, imo.
Having to willingly leave someone pulls more on the heart strings than getting angry at them and leaving.
Especially since its a finite thing like her leaving, at least you can make up from an argument and maybe be friends again.
I made sure to do those two endings first before her good ending cause I knew that they would suck, emotion-wise : /

zetsubouwalker wrote: Having to willingly leave someone pulls more on the heart strings than getting angry at them and leaving.
Especially since its a finite thing like her leaving, at least you can make up from an argument and maybe be friends again.
I made sure to do those two endings first before her good ending cause I knew that they would suck, emotion-wise : /

Agreed :/ The "bad" ending sort of left me hanging with my imagination telling me that the could have been friends.
But then again, there were worse arguments that ended up being the good endings. So I'm not quite sure why they chose it to be so definitive when their relationship ended in the bad ending.

Hi, Dream Hacked. I agree with a lot of what you say (if I understand you right, that is). There's a point of clarification, though:

Dream Hacked wrote:She tries to find a purpose in life but at the same time, meet the expectations of the real world rather than go into the fantasy world she often goes off into when she gets lost in the painting.

I think she doesn't look so much for a purpose as for a "place" in society. She feels alone. And people won't accept her until she knows what she wants: to rephrase, until she has a governing purpose to display. This is what Nomiya doesn't understand about her: she lives in her art; to set it as a career goal is process of alienation. You project a goal into the future means a re-orientation of why she wants to paint. And thus when she's painting for some outside goal (whatever goal that is), she loses her footing in her art. What was once an inner drive is now an outer demand - and there is no inner drive left; nothing replaces art.

Rin is fine without a purpose (i.e. "living for the moment"), and she wants others to understand that. But few, if any, will. And that has a corollary in the real world: if you keep living in the moment, how will you make a living? You need to get and hold a job. You need to make some sort of commitment. Rin herself says at some point (I think) that painting is really all she's good at. So it would make sense to profit from it financially.

That's why someone who doesn't understand her but keeps trying is valuable for her:

I personally feel sorry for Rin. The first time reading the story, I felt like punching Hisao for not being more open minded as to why she though about the things she did and acting like a total butt to her in the story, which made me very angry with him >:(!

As frustrating as Hisao might have been: a relationship like this is actually good for Rin. It needn't be a romantic relationship, mind you. Just meeting Hisao was good for her. And this is why the neutral ending, in all its frustrations, is the neutral ending. In it, Hisao didn't give up so much as he was lost for what to do. The basic lesson remains: even if people don't understand you, they'll be back. Rin walks away, because she hurts - she knows it's her problem; but once she gets used to the pain something might have changed: she may now have realised that hoping people will understand her through her painting is putting unfair pressure on others. That she's setting them up for failures. And if she modifies her behaviour she may yet profit from this. She may have failed with Hisao, but she may be better off from that failure.

In the bad ending, Hisao just gives up in frustration. It's the same old pattern. Examine the choices:

Bad ending: (a) Then explain. (b) I need to understand.

In the neutral ending, Rin's basic problem persists, but it's a generalised uncertainty; nobody's fault, really. Rin can't connect to others, but in the neutral ending she also learns that she can't connect to others through her paintings. This looks like a bad ending because it hurts a lot. But it isn't actually: this liberates her from a self-destructive habit. Depending on what new mode of living she comes up with, things can go to hell, or they can pick up and be a bit better.

The bad ending settles Rin on a path that confirms her fears. There's really not much but despair down that path. People will ask the impossible; she will fail. And that's pretty much all she can get from that.

To be sure, the neutral ending is a lot more painful for Rin than the bad one. With the bad one, she has a pretty high resistance to that sort of pain. She'll lock up and walk away from everyone. With the neutral one she's wide open: someone's stirring her guts with a spoon. But there is way more learning potential in that one. Rin is better off in her neutral ending; I'm pretty sure of it.

Thank you, Dawnstorm, Mirrormn. Your explanations were very interesting to read, and I appreciate you two taking the time to put all that into words.

I guess to me it really depends on how you are in your outlook. Obviously both endings are sad for Rin (especially in the short term), which is worse depends on what you want to expect from her.

In the Bad Ending, Rin is still left (potentially) with her desperate hope that someone some day will understand her through her art. It wasn't Hisao but it might be someone. We might know that isn't likely and can appreciate that she will always be alone but at least she still has her fragile hope.

In the Neutral Ending, Rin no longer has that hope. Now you can take that in two ways, a) she now has to find a new hope which might be good for her and lead her to happiness, b) she never finds a new hope (either because she cannot or because she doesn't try to after what happened) and is left with nothing.

I think it's clear to see why some people might find the "Bad" ending better then the "Neutral" ending. If you don't see Rin coming back from that scene with some kind of new direction for her life then it's a very bleak scene, much worse then holding on to a "false" hope. If you do think she'll find a way to move on with her life then the Neutral scene is a "step forward" (assuming her new aspiration is really a better one). Sadly I fall into the "bleak outlook" camp on this one. To me it's very clear that without Hisao, Rin's life will either be a very short one (intentional or accidental) or one spent in an institution. I don't see her finding a new purpose in life nor do I see her managing to fit into society or even art school. The "best" I can hope for for her is that someone finally sees her as more then just a "quirk" to be shrugged off (like her teacher or even Emi does) but even then I can't see it going anywhere beyond having a caretaker. To me both ends lead to the same sad place, it's just the "Bad" ending lets her hold onto her hope a little longer before the end...

Sigh, this is why I have to think of Rin's Good Ending as the "canon" one for the game as otherwise I'd be in a terrible depression.

Murkglow wrote:Sigh, this is why I have to think of Rin's Good Ending as the "canon" one for the game as otherwise I'd be in a terrible depression.

About that, I haven't checked myself but I've heard in the game files the picture that appears in the bad and neutral endings (The one with Rin and Hisao in the rain) is labelled "RinTrueEnd". I saw a screenshot of the files but It could be shopped, I'm not sure.

But from what I've heard, all the endings are "Canon", so If this is true I'm guessing this is what Rin's writer thinks is Canon.

Since providence caused Rin to be my last girl, I paid a lot more attention to her. The 'good' outcome at the very end of Act 4 actually seemed right. Rin is evidently feeling better and able to at least try to explain her emotions verbally, even if she's not perfect at it. She even straight out says, "I love you.".

The very last line, "What's the word for when it feels inside your heart that everything in the world is all right?" really brought it home for me, which I suppose was the purpose.

I'm an Engineer wrote:

Murkglow wrote:Sigh, this is why I have to think of Rin's Good Ending as the "canon" one for the game as otherwise I'd be in a terrible depression.

About that, I haven't checked myself but I've heard in the game files the picture that appears in the bad and neutral endings (The one with Rin and Hisao in the rain) is labelled "RinTrueEnd". I saw a screenshot of the files but It could be shopped, I'm not sure.

The image files for Rin's "neutral" end, within the game's archived data, are located in a folder called "rin_trueend". You can check this yourself if you're savvy enough to extract the game files (I will offer no help in doing so since the developers do not seem to like it). This doesn't necessarily mean anything substantive, though; once art assets are created, the file names and paths are basically locked down even when their uses in the game are subtly altered or changed outright. It could be the case that these images were created before Aura actually finalized the script for those endings, so the names of the image files don't necessarily reflect his views on the situations in which they are used.

I'm an Engineer wrote:But from what I've heard, all the endings are "Canon", so If this is true I'm guessing this is what Rin's writer thinks is Canon.

On the other hand, Aura has said that Rin's "neutral" ending is his favorite. Take whatever meaning from that you want.

I just meant in my own personal head canon I want the good ending to be the "proper end" (not just of Rin's personal path but of the game as a whole) not that it is or should be for everyone.

This ending was hard for me. Hisao just having to let go, like that.
The little "I'm good at forgetting", like he had no importance, just after the glimmer of hope of "why did you make me think like that?" I had to fix it with a fanfic to get it out of my system!
That neutral ending is really well written, I can understand how it would be an author's favorite.