Katawa Shoujo Forums

Maybe I'm just a cynical bastard, but I don't for one second believe Takai was really there to help her or that this rescue plan has even the vaguest hint of actually happening.

Well, i have to admit, i am pleasantly surprised. I didn't think Takai would keep up to his promise.

Well, well, well. Welcome, TO MY LA- I mean, I didn't expect Takai to keep his promise. Very well done on the update. I'm looking forward to see where this is going.

Well, I just had to go and get sucked in, I guess. In the beginning I felt that familiar sinking and twisting feeling that comes with your stories so often. It's just the little details, the way things flow and spin that crawls under my skin, and now that things are in motion I find myself glued to the screen. Even though I have no doubt that things are going to go very badly very soon, it's like a crippled train wreck, I can't tear my eyes away and don't want to for a moment.

The story is unsettling. The descriptions, the characters and the implications are unsettling. The lingering, lurking thought of my own favorite girl going through the same thing is tormenting. And yet, as long as I can separate myself from that, I'm enjoying this piece a lot.

I would say that things from Hisao's point of view are necessary to the story but certainly not as interesting, so I'm fine with something less than a 50-50 split between Hisao and Hanako. I know you've said that you don't usually put a lot of time into editing and refining, and I have to say that shows just a little bit, now and then, when words or short phrases get repeated in quick succession every once in a while. It's really the only structural issue I could notice, and none of them are jarring, just something to keep an eye out for.

Doomish wrote:

Mirage_GSM wrote:Doomish mentioned in his OP that this story would be extremely OOC for Hanako, so I restricted my comments to the setting.

I did no such thing? Maybe I should change the OP's phrasing.

Hmm, if Hanako is supposed to be in character here, she should have gone catatonic at least half a dozen times during the last chapter instead of just freezing up once, having a nice cry afterwards and then going home...
The reaction Hanako diplayed here is what one would expect of a normal girl suddenly being put in that situation, and even then I'd say the reaction is pretty mild.

You also have to consider that they're a whole town over, meaning Sendai wouldn't be the first place the police would check if Hanako was reported as missing.

I don't know where you live, but missing person cases are taken very seriously here in Germany. It's rare but not unusaul for photos to be shown on national TV. Calls for help on the local radio station (local meaning a coverage of about 200 km radius) are not unusual at all and Hanako is not really hard to describe. A few days gap until the police decides to go to the media may be plausible, but Len Mao cannot possibly hope to hide Hanako in plain view like that for more than a week.

Well, i have to admit, i am pleasantly surprised. I didn't think Takai would keep up to his promise.

Actually I still don't believe it. If Doomish wanted to end this story so easily, he could just as well have Hanako run away by herself.
It's probably just some psychologic trick, but there is one fault with it: Where is the difference between Hanako running away on her own and Takai taking her away? If she is afraid she will be followed, she should be just as afraid of running away with him.
Not that she has any reason to be afraid, since one trip to the police would be enough to have him spend the next ten years in prison.

This would make a lot more sense if she had been shipped out of the country, agreed. Thailand, maybe.

And yes, If Hanako can have a panic attack over school group assignments then in this situation she should have been catatonic a long time ago. In all likelihood she ends up dumped in a trash pile after being given a fatal overdose because she knows too much to be set free, can't generate enough funds to justify keeping her fed and her body being found cuts down on loose ends. And then Takai has to kidnap someone else as compensation for selling defective goods and to avoid being made an example of.

nemz wrote:This would make a lot more sense if she had been shipped out of the country, agreed. Thailand, maybe.

And yes, If Hanako can have a panic attack over school group assignments then in this situation she should have been catatonic a long time ago. In all likelihood she ends up dumped in a trash pile after being given a fatal overdose because she knows too much to be set free, can't generate enough funds to justify keeping her fed and her body being found cuts down on loose ends. And then Takai has to kidnap someone else as compensation for selling defective goods and to avoid being made an example of.

Well, that's depressing.

Archangel Gabriel wrote:

nemz wrote:This would make a lot more sense if she had been shipped out of the country, agreed. Thailand, maybe.

And yes, If Hanako can have a panic attack over school group assignments then in this situation she should have been catatonic a long time ago. In all likelihood she ends up dumped in a trash pile after being given a fatal overdose because she knows too much to be set free, can't generate enough funds to justify keeping her fed and her body being found cuts down on loose ends. And then Takai has to kidnap someone else as compensation for selling defective goods and to avoid being made an example of.

Well, that's depressing.

Even more deppressing to think that is quite likely the more realistic outcome if someone like Hanako were to go throught something like that. Also, on the bolded part, if that were to happen in this i just can't avoid thinking the compensation would end up being either Emi or Lilly. Not sure why, but i just have that impression.

But also, this brings up something i have been thinking of: Either Len Mao is planning something big, he really wants Hanako, or something with his actions doesn't make sense.

Karen was surprised when she found out Len Mao bought Hanako, saying something like that Len Mao never did something like that before, and risking charges of kidnapping, and human traffic/sex slavery is kind of a big risk, specially when he apparently got the rest of his merchandise throught less dangerous means. From what Takai said and Len Mao's demeanor at the scene where he bought Hanako, it certainly doesn't sound like he particularly wanted her or even knew she existed. So he started on a big risk for his bussiness, to buy a girl he didn't even know, for... unique profit? Maybe this gets expanded on as the story progresses, we'll see.

Also, i was surprised when i read the Hisao/Lilly section, since i believed it would end up being much less interesting than the Hanako chapters. It turned out being just as interesting, or at least Lilly acting weird was.

I agree something doesn't add up, but every time I try and put the pieces together they still don't fit. My original stupid thought was that Lilly was somehow behind all this, but getting Hanako to a specific bar that she's never visited before is just too coincidental for her (or anyone, really) to have actually planned this out. Then again at a place like Yamaku the existence of an all-disabled maid cafe in a nearby city would probably become a 'well-known secret', so I don't know what to make of any of this.

nemz wrote:My original stupid thought was that Lilly was somehow behind all this

I don't think Doomish would be THAT evil.....right?

Forget it.

I just assumed she was so caught up in herself that she just didn't talk about it and imagined this place was nothing short of a circus sideshow, in fact that that was what it's claim to fame was, with dehumanization of the staff as expected par for the course.

If that's not the case though I don't understand at all what the hell Len Mao is doing sending her there. The bitch has a point, Hanako probably would be bad for business even if most would be far too polite to say to her face why they won't be coming back. And that's to say nothing of the kidnapping angle, which should be all the motivation she needs to keep her inside the main building.

nemz wrote:I agree something doesn't add up, but every time I try and put the pieces together they still don't fit. My original stupid thought was that Lilly was somehow behind all this, but getting Hanako to a specific bar that she's never visited before is just too coincidental for her (or anyone, really) to have actually planned this out.

Yeah, i also had the impression that Lilly had something to do, or at the very least is aware of some of the shadiness Hanako could have fallen victim to (Lilly being reluctant to investigate the bar, being worried as fuck when she learned Hanako dissapeared, reacting harshly at the idea she might be out of town, etc.) And while i wouldn't discard the idea that she (or someone she knows) might be involved with that, i doubt she would want to sell her friend to slavery. Actually, if Lilly is involved, i imagine that she often looked out for Hanako and tried to keep her from any situation where she might end up getting enslaved, hence why she's both so worried and secretive with the whole matter, if i recall correctly she didn't want to go to the police either.

Also, i don't think that the situation with the couple would end up being something common, or constant enought to cause bussiness trouble, considering a sizable portion of the client-base seems to come for a disabled/dehumanization fetish. But yeah, Len Mao's actions still don't make much sense. Even if Hanako might be useful as a maid/sex-servatn, if she decides to make a run for it, she has plenty of chances where she has good odds. And if she goes to a non-corrupt police, he and all asociates are truly, utterly fucked.

I keep trying to convince myself that Best Girl isn't going to get sexually assaulted but then that "[EXPLICIT CONTENT]" in the title won't go away.
Really enjoying it so far, though. Takai seems a little suspicious, but it might just be me.

Well, I dislike any stories containing rape in all its forms, but so far this story is effecting me far less than Doomish's other stories. That's probably because my suspension of disbelief is shattered every second paragraph.

I gave a bit of thought to how one could make the story work... If Hanako had been abducted and sold into slavery to some other country shortly after the fire where she lost her parents, that would have probably made for an interesting alternate history.