Katawa Shoujo Forums

bhtooefr wrote:Yeah, it's something that needs to be administered in a controlled environment to work. It's a tool to allow the brain to be receptive to therapy, not a "take this and your problems go away" pill.

Kind of sounds like the anxiety pills that already exist, really.

And pre-good ending Emi? Not taking them. Post-good ending Emi? With some coaxing, I think she'd at least think of them as an option.

SpunkySix wrote:

bhtooefr wrote:Yeah, it's something that needs to be administered in a controlled environment to work. It's a tool to allow the brain to be receptive to therapy, not a "take this and your problems go away" pill.

Kind of sounds like the anxiety pills that already exist, really.

And pre-good ending Emi? Not taking them. Post-good ending Emi? With some coaxing, I think she'd at least think of them as an option.

No they are vastly different. Anxiety pills release chemicals into your brain such as serotonin while these brain chips (I don't know what you would call them ) change the amount of heat or glucose in parts of your brain or other such similar stuff. These brain chips are much more assertive.

Post-good ending Emi would probably consider it after Hisao, the Nurse and Meiko nags at her about her and after she has chewed up Hisao and maybe even Meiko and the Nurse. After making everyone (especially Hisao) feel terrible and feel like shit and go through a lot of pain she will consider it. The true Emi way.
She will probably reject it because of social pressure. This will lead to Hisao trying to persuade her to get help again and than getting beaten down by Emi again.
I have to wonder how long Hisao can take this sort of abuse.

Considering that this is a societal-level issue, though, Hisao might not push too hard. (My understanding is that one is supposed to rely on their family in cases like that... and there'd be a lot of societal backlash against Hisao for "not properly taking care of his wife" or something like that. Unless, of course, he does the Walter White thing, and then administers the treatment himself. Because, you know, synthesizing and then handling a methamphetamine compound (the MA in MDMA) is exactly what someone with an arrhythmia should do. LSD might be the better choice given those circumstances...)

Forever_ambivalent wrote:I have to wonder how long Hisao can take this sort of abuse.

As long as you like.

Forever_ambivalent wrote:

SpunkySix wrote:

bhtooefr wrote:Yeah, it's something that needs to be administered in a controlled environment to work. It's a tool to allow the brain to be receptive to therapy, not a "take this and your problems go away" pill.

Kind of sounds like the anxiety pills that already exist, really.

And pre-good ending Emi? Not taking them. Post-good ending Emi? With some coaxing, I think she'd at least think of them as an option.

No they are vastly different. Anxiety pills release chemicals into your brain such as serotonin while these brain chips (I don't know what you would call them ) change the amount of heat or glucose in parts of your brain or other such similar stuff. These brain chips are much more assertive.

Post-good ending Emi would probably consider it after Hisao, the Nurse and Meiko nags at her about her and after she has chewed up Hisao and maybe even Meiko and the Nurse. After making everyone (especially Hisao) feel terrible and feel like shit and go through a lot of pain she will consider it. The true Emi way.
She will probably reject it because of social pressure. This will lead to Hisao trying to persuade her to get help again and than getting beaten down by Emi again.
I have to wonder how long Hisao can take this sort of abuse.

Okay, they have different mechanisms, but they're similar in how they are used. They both need to be controlled, both are supplemental to therapy and neither of them are a magical happy pill.

I think you severely underestimate how much Emi has changed by the good ending, and your use of the phrases/words "chewed up", "beaten down" and "abuse" are inappropriate here. Even at her worst, Emi never beat Hisao down, chewed him up or abused him. She pretty much got irrationally angry at him one time, which she later took responsibility for and is heavily implied to do her best not to do again. Even with Nurse and Meiko, as unhealthy as it may have been, can you really say it's abnormal for a teenager to resist assistance from an authority figure or a parent? It's not like her mom was showing up to track meets with black eyes and missing teeth or something.

I have to wonder how much Hisao would really care about keeping in line with societal expectations. Emi doesn't seem to care much about those in the first place, and the fact that he's dating her seems to indicate that he's not a super firm believer in them anyways. If her health is on the line, I'd like to think he'd have enough guts to do what helps her be happy and not what satisfies the general public. Which wouldn't be easy, but what is that's worth doing?

No I would think they would be severely different in how they are used as well (aside from the obvious fact that one of them needs surgery and another is just a pill and that, that is already a huge difference in usage). The reason they need to be controlled and are supplemental to therapy is most probably because they do a major change to the brain. As far as I know they don't have enough research on whatever psychological effects that may occur from forcefully changing somebody from depressed to normal. These chips definitely have the capability of being what you call a "magical happy pill" only problem is that you need surgery for it so you can't really call it a pill.

I think you overestimate how much Emi has changed. Really the ending is a bit too quick so you can't actually judge how much she has changed properly which is a bit annoying
She got angry at Hisao twice. first time was a bit understandable (I do need to read it through again. Mind telling me which scene it was?). Second time was absolutely horrible. When she got angry at her mom I was shocked and angry. She was being horrible towards Hisao and was snapping at him for just trying to be a good partner and trying to help her. Her stubbornness was unbelievable. Oh and about Emi taking responsibility to that I sort of don't see it. It was a more "I'm sorry for pushing you away in general" rather than a "i'm sorry for being so stubborn and hurting you". Heck Hisao had to force that apology out and she just forgot about him for an entire week. And when they meet Emi was just about attack him again for trying to be nice to her again. Hisao wasn't even white knighting like he was with Hanako (which was really irritating BTW) he was just trying to help somebody he loves just like how she helped him. So yes I am saying that Emi does chew up Hisao.

At the end all I saw was that Emi changed from not accepting help from Hisao about the loss of her father to accepting help about it. Of course that means she is going to stop attacking Hisao every time he tries to help her in that one specific area. If Hisao tries to tell her that she has a mental issue and needs help from the psychologist imagine how crazy she would go. She hasn't given up on her arrogance and pride. She just let somebody get close to her. The Nurse is pretty close to her and he should at least have recognized her problem and told her about it yet we don't see Emi visiting a therapist like she should be. She may have given up on hiding her problems from Hisao (I don't think she has done that completely anyway. If she was going through a lot of pain she looks like she would just hide it anyway) but how would she deal from getting told that she has problems and needs help? She would go into another one of her fits. She may have changed a lot but she certainly hasn't gotten rid of her stubbornness. She believes that she can do everything by herself. Hisao has helped her a lot and has made her become a better person but there is a limit to how much you can change in a day.

You can't change that much. Emi's stubbornness and arrogance hasn't gone away. All Emi did was accept Hisao as her partner and somebody she can sort of rely on. She still runs away from her problems (both physically and mentally) and is still stubborn and possibly arrogant (she might have gotten over that though).

Forever_ambivalent wrote:You can't change that much.

Says who? I've known people who have completely turned their lives around cold turkey on a whim. Nothing is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt and she likely has a ways to go, but if Emi only changed in that one specific area and nothing else, then that would defeat the purpose of the entire route. This is getting off-topic though, so maybe we should do this in a PM or not at all.

On-topic: Apparently there's a decently wide variety of burn scar cream available that Hanako could be using that not only might make them feel slightly better, but also look better as well. I wonder if she'd want to go for that.

Our "Anxiety pills = anxiety suppressing brain implant" debate wasn't on topic? Damn if I knew that I would have stopped talking about it.

I don't know about putting cream on your entire body. I doubt it feels good to walk around in an sticky school uniform.
Maybe that's why she buys a huge sleeping gown that is really big for her. So that she can put on the cream before sleeping and than sleep with less of the annoying ickyness of the cream sticking to your clothes.
BTW I hear about these artificial chips that they put into your retina so that blind people can see something. But when I say something I mean mostly just blackish weird shadows with a white background. Could Lilly not get them? Seeing something is better than seeing nothing I think.

Those implants are typically for people who experienced some form of injury that caused blindness during adulthood. As Lilly has never been able to see, there's no functioning visual cortex for those chips to interface to, and attempts to implant such chips in patients like that have caused severe side effects due to the brain's inability to process that information.

Forever_ambivalent wrote:Our "Anxiety pills = anxiety suppressing brain implant" debate wasn't on topic?

That part was fine, it was just the whole "Emi would/wouldn't use pills or implants" thing that I wanted to get away from.

AaronIsCrunchy wrote:

bhtooefr wrote:Especially considering that we're talking about Japan, there's also strong societal pressure to not pursue mental health treatment, as I understand.

Why would that be? I've always been a bit confused by this.

Because god forbid they ever have to acknowledge that abnormal people exist in Japan.

Potato wrote:

AaronIsCrunchy wrote:

bhtooefr wrote:Especially considering that we're talking about Japan, there's also strong societal pressure to not pursue mental health treatment, as I understand.

Why would that be? I've always been a bit confused by this.

Because god forbid they ever have to acknowledge that abnormal people exist in Japan.

More likely that acknowledging a mental deficit would effectively scupper your chances of getting promoted or even getting married. There's always been a strong eugenic mindset over there, much as there was up to the human rights era in the US.

Potato wrote:

AaronIsCrunchy wrote:

bhtooefr wrote:Especially considering that we're talking about Japan, there's also strong societal pressure to not pursue mental health treatment, as I understand.

Why would that be? I've always been a bit confused by this.

Because god forbid they ever have to acknowledge that abnormal people exist in Japan.

I love when people defend this as a cultural thing, like that somehow makes it better. Guess what? Cultures can be bad.

Not aimed at you, by the way, I'm just saying.

SpunkySix wrote:

Potato wrote:Because god forbid they ever have to acknowledge that abnormal people exist in Japan.

I love when people defend this as a cultural thing, like that somehow makes it better. Guess what? Cultures can be bad.

Not aimed at you, by the way, I'm just saying.

I don't think that was a defence; it's just explaining the particular origin. In various times and places, abnormality has been rejected, for various reasons. Of course cultures can be bad. Or good. Or anything in between. It is natural, and natural doesn't necessarily mean good.

brythain wrote:

SpunkySix wrote:

Potato wrote:Because god forbid they ever have to acknowledge that abnormal people exist in Japan.

I love when people defend this as a cultural thing, like that somehow makes it better. Guess what? Cultures can be bad.

Not aimed at you, by the way, I'm just saying.

I don't think that was a defence; it's just explaining the particular origin. In various times and places, abnormality has been rejected, for various reasons. Of course cultures can be bad. Or good. Or anything in between. It is natural, and natural doesn't necessarily mean good.

I swear I've seen people treating culture as an excuse for things. Clearly, you're being rational enough not to do that.