Katawa Shoujo Forums

Kon22 wrote:Maybe this is a weird question, or a really obvious one, or something. But, in Lilly's route, if I recall correctly, there's a few references to Agatha Christie. Lilly is reading one of her books, and I think the other one is mentioned. Also, there's a mention to Poirot, maybe?

So, yeah. This is not really a question, but, I'm guessing Lilly's path writer is into that kind of books?

I think it is a safe bet that most of the writers are into books... But there was that inspiration Map that we did a while back..

Well, actually, I remember seeing that pic and I didn't find anything about Agatha Christie or something like that there. I guess it wasn't inspiration, just a few references because, why not. That's why I ask.

bhtooefr wrote:How old was Yuuko during the events of the VN?

I also would like to know that.

bhtooefr wrote:How old was Yuuko during the events of the VN?

She's not a Christmas cake yet.

Odd question: was Misha given hair drills as an obscure reference to one of the other omake that Raita included in Schuppen Harnische that had girls wearing drill attachments?

Merlyn_LeRoy wrote:Odd question: was Misha given hair drills as an obscure reference to one of the other omake that Raita included in Schuppen Harnische that had girls wearing drill attachments?

No.

I´ve noticed an uncanny resemblance between young Lilly (the picture from Lilly´s Act 2. i supposed it was her younger version) and the young version of Alice Margatroid from Touhou Mystic Square... blue eyes, hair ribbon and everything.

Was it intended?

A few questions for Nicol Armarfi.


Did any particular track of yours resonate with you more than the others during the composition process? If so, would you care to share which one and why?

What was the last track you composed for KS? Excluding the various resampling and tweaks that followed.

Finally, though a generic question and one that has been surely asked before, what do you think of the overall response to your work?

Crimson wrote:Did any particular track of yours resonate with you more than the others during the composition process? If so, would you care to share which one and why?

What was the last track you composed for KS? Excluding the various resampling and tweaks that followed.

Finally, though a generic question and one that has been surely asked before, what do you think of the overall response to your work?

There are plenty of tracks I liked more than others, off the top of my head I'd name Moment of Decision, Raindrops and Puddles and Parity. I just thought they turned out the best. I'm fairly certain the last original piece I wrote for KS was the new version of The Student Council. I wouldn't hesitate to call it a new track entirely as I only used about 10 seconds of material from the original track in the new version. I'm glad people liked KS.

Was there ever a discussion inside the team about which aspects of Japanese culture to leave in for the sake of realism and which ones to eliminate for the sake of connecting with a largely western audience?

I noticed for example that Yamaku doesn't seem to have any shoeboxes and students wear their ordinary shoes inside the school. Most students refer to others by first name, even someone as formal as Lilly insists on being on first-name terms with Hisao during their first meeting and refers to students she's not particularly close with (like Emi and Naomi) by their first name. The teachers do use the last names of their students, although the nurse jumps back and forth a bit, referring to Hanako by her last name, but using first name basis for Hisao and Emi. (and Meiko)

Guest Poster wrote:Was there ever a discussion inside the team about which aspects of Japanese culture to leave in for the sake of realism and which ones to eliminate for the sake of connecting with a largely western audience?

I noticed for example that Yamaku doesn't seem to have any shoeboxes and students wear their ordinary shoes inside the school. Most students refer to others by first name, even someone as formal as Lilly insists on being on first-name terms with Hisao during their first meeting and refers to students she's not particularly close with (like Emi and Naomi) by their first name. The teachers do use the last names of their students, although the nurse jumps back and forth a bit, referring to Hanako by her last name, but using first name basis for Hisao and Emi. (and Meiko)

The setting was never of particular focus to us, so many things are left pretty mysterious. It was more interesting to us to write about our characters than figure out the perfect simulation of a Japanese highschool for the disabled. Even so, of course we had to solve some issues, but the only big discussions regarding that topic concerned the ways we used language in the script rather than the setting, where we tended to just wing it (to the dismay of everyone who somewhere down the line got screwed by some carefree decision made years earlier).

As for your examples, the lack of shoeboxes has nothing to do with our attitude towards culture, but it's an example of a conscious decision we made. For some of the students in Yamaku changing to indoor "shoes" would be very impractical (because they are in wheelchairs) so the practice is absent in the school. This was, as I recall, a very off the cuff decision, and probably could've gone in a number of other ways too.

The handling of names was a pretty important decision I guess? Weeaboos fight over this all the time in different contexts. We solved it with experimentation. We wrote a bunch of script with variations on how people refer to each other, and then decided on the modes that we felt read the best. Honestly, it was awkward as hell trying to use certain Japanese tropes so the more time passed, the more many of us gravitated away from them. I think I had thrown almost all of it out of the window by the later stages of scriptwriting. Later on we had to work with the Japanese translators to figure out how to get the script to sound natural in Japanese, including stuff like sorting out the pronouns everyone uses. I suspect KS might feel pretty weird for a native to read. But yeah, for sure cultural considerations were in play in the decision, but I don't think our solution is too big of a travesty. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I remember someone arguing for using honorifics because it'd allow for things like using unusual honorific for an effect, or people changing the way they call someone, signifying a change in a relationship. It's up to your personal tastes whether that (or any other option) would've been preferable.

There are lots of places in KS where even a western person whose knowledge of Japanese culture comes from anime feels an uncanny glitch in the Matrix (and I'll note that though we didn't have a native "cultural advisor", we did have a couple of people who were quite familiar with the country). We're fine with that, it's the cost that came with some of the decisions we made. In the end it comes to down to this: we knew we couldn't pull off the authentic thing anyway and it wasn't in our interests to try to do so, so it was better to optimize for what we thought would provide the best reading experience. This is why the setting is a kind of a cardboard facade. Of course, in retrospect I think many of us feel we should've paid a lot more attention to how we dealt the setting, if for nothing else, at least to estabilish a strong internal logic that could've supported the stories a bit better.

gullim92 wrote:I´ve noticed an uncanny resemblance between young Lilly (the picture from Lilly´s Act 2. i supposed it was her younger version) and the young version of Alice Margatroid from Touhou Mystic Square... blue eyes, hair ribbon and everything.

Was it intended?

Doubt it.

Why did you guys decided to name your group 4LS?
Do you regret anything during the time the game was being made? like not being able to finish something, or not feeling confortable with something, etc.
Did you tought the game would be this popular?

claumax wrote:Why did you guys decided to name your group 4LS?
Do you regret anything during the time the game was being made? like not being able to finish something, or not feeling confortable with something, etc.
Did you tought the game would be this popular?

The studio name is a reference to the birthplace of KS project, 4chan aka Yotsuba (4 Leaves) Channel.
We probably regretted most things. We made a lot of bad decisions and some of us are beings made of at least 99% regret.
We absolutely did not think KS would be anywhere this popular.

I know this is a hard question to answer but, given ideal conditions (That being the right amount of people working in the game, not having trouble with you guys living in different countries, and you guys knowing exactly what the game was going to look like from the beggining, etc), how much time do you think this project would take? Like I said, it's a hard question, so it's okay if you can't answer xD