Katawa Shoujo Forums

Hello all. I am curious as to what got you into Katawa Shoujo.
I found out about the game by mistake while I was watching some videos on Youtube, and I decided to give it a try. At the main screen, while listening to the music (which now I kinda like), my first reaction was "Am I gay or what?, this is a game for girls" (No disrespect intended). I decided to give it a chance, though. I started playing act 1 based on my own choices and didn't end too well (The Deep End) since I wasn't sure if I should remain with Shizune and Misha or going with Emi. But at least it caught my interest and gave me an idea of what the game was all about. After that, I decided to go with Emi's storyline and ended up falling in love with the character. At this moment I've finished Shizune's good and bad storyline and am halfway through Lilly's.
There are a few things that I personally like about Katawa Shoujo:
- I think the game-art is awesome.
- The stories are simple and well written.
- Lovely characters, especially the main girls.
- Strong life lessons that involve love, friendship, compassion, acceptance and other ones that you'll probably note.

So, I don't know if girls play this game more than guys do, but I don't think it matters. I think it's a pretty enjoyable and personal experience.

E.

From what I've seen, it's mostly males that play the game, or at least post here.

If I were to list everything I like about this game, I wouldn't know where to finish. My favorite thing is the excellent character development. Few other games/books/movies have made me care so much about each character, to the point of both elation and depression. This game has a very powerful effect in that regard. The music and art is great too, but that's just a bonus in my eyes.

I finally finished all the stories and saw all the endings. There's just one scene in Act 1 I'm missing that's keeping me at 99% completion... So I now consider it safe to return to these forums. There's a lot of things I like about this game. It was surprisingly emotional and not cliche, even when comparing it to "professional" works. I found it hard to believe that this is something a group of first timers just made in their free time. The story was very well done, the art was great (although a few images here and there stood out as not as well done as the rest) and the music was well done as well.

There are plenty of elements in the story I really liked, but I'll just say I loved the treatment of disabled individuals. This is the kind of treatment we need in the media to reduce prejudice. Most stories that include disabled individuals or anyone in a minority define them by that alone and that's all. Each character in this game was so incredibly fleshed out that it felt just like a normal high school. Which was the point. This same story could, for the most part, be told in a normal high school with all the disabilities removed. And although it sounds strange, it's for that reason that having the disabilities there adds so much to it.

For me its gotta be the characters themselves and their plot lines. I was so interested in the girls and supporting characters and wanted to find out more about them and was drawn to them. The plot kept me going and i wanted to find out what happened next, the whole game just absorbed me.

It actually makes me wish it was longer and even more fleshed out with more supporting characters like other students, especially males ones, since they were pretty non existant except Kenji and Hisao. A Persona like Social Sim would be awesome, or an anime fleshing out the world more

Other than that the music really impressed me too.

The fact that it exists and was released to critical acclaim, despite starting its life as just a single picture drawn by some Japanese dude 12 years ago, is pretty awesome on its own.

the one thing above all else that i love ... the music .... ater i get sick of the story , the debates of who is the sexiest , and so on ... i think the music and how it affects the mood of the sceene your watching will stay with me for years to come

Art, character-development, music and the most important thing, it keeps me reading to see what is going to happen next. Also, to see that this was made by people who are not professionals amazes me more.

From here, I just see it as a VN with no weak areas. Everything worked together to make a solid whole. Artwork was well done and (mostly) consistant, musical score was pretty well chosen and never broke the mood of a scene, writing was consistantly strong and (because it was written largely by westerners) didn't have any of those little linquistic eff-ups that plague japanese-to-english translations. Even the brief animated scenes were strong.

The ONLY thing that could have strengthened it further would have been voice-acting the whole thing, but unless it was done really well it could have hurt. Professional voice acting is hard to find, and for an amateur project is simply out of reach.

Given the resources at this teams disposal, the whole thing came out WAAAAY better than we had any right to expect.

oh i wanna add the whole fact the the devs did this for love not money

Mostly the realism of the characters and the setting. And the fact that while KS played its share of typical anime and VN tropes, it averted, avoided or deconstructed a good deal of others. A few examples:

- I liked the fact the routes aren't riddled with the typical cliché's that often appear in highschool romances...the panty shots after bumping into a girl, walking in on a girl while she's undressing and the typical "Gyaaa! Hentai!" that follows...all leading up to a sex scene as reward for playing through.

- I liked the fact that KS had sex scenes that were subdued instead of filled with stock H-lines and flying semen. Like one reviewer said..."the scenes look to be written by someone who's actually had sex before."

- I liked the fact that the girls' various issues fit their character and that KS didn't randomly toss diabolicus ex machines onto their paths just to get some cheap anxiety or tears out of the audience.

- I liked the fact that a lot of the girls' issues and Hisao's own issues were relatable and realistic instead of stuff like one of the girls really being an artificial being or having someone else's soul inside her or something like that.

- I liked the fact Hisao is a character in his own right with hopes, dreams and anxieties. I like the fact his hair doesn't fall in front of his eyes either. And I like that sometimes the story arc isn't just about the girl's issues, but also about Hisao's own.

- I liked the fact that instead of turning Hisao into a babe magnet who has a 6-person harem following him around all day long, he simply develops into a certain way at the player's discretion and (usually) only ends up with the girl best suited to that person being drawn to him.

- I liked the fact various tropes like the Rin's cloudcuckoolanding, Hanako's woobie-ism, Hisao's white knighting, Emi's determinatorism and Lilly's Mary-Sueism are deconstructed. Kudos too for rather than having the main character "help" the girls with their problems actively, the protagonist simply being there for them and supporting them unconditionally is what allows the girls to sort things out themselves. Double kudos for the message "Sex is not a magical cure to issues and sometimes even complicates things".

Maybe there's more, but I can't think of it right now. These are some reasons why KS feels so realistic, which in turn allows the player to relate better.

Fishpick wrote:There are plenty of elements in the story I really liked, but I'll just say I loved the treatment of disabled individuals. This is the kind of treatment we need in the media to reduce prejudice. Most stories that include disabled individuals or anyone in a minority define them by that alone and that's all. Each character in this game was so incredibly fleshed out that it felt just like a normal high school. Which was the point. This same story could, for the most part, be told in a normal high school with all the disabilities removed. And although it sounds strange, it's for that reason that having the disabilities there adds so much to it.

I totally agree with you on this subject. After a while you don't really notice or care about the girls' disabilities and you simply accept them as they are.

Something I forgot to mention is that the game also made me go back to some fond memories of my high school period. I mean, my school was nothing like Yamaku but it reminds me of the good times I had during that period in my life.

Thrasher Thetic wrote:The ONLY thing that could have strengthened it further would have been voice-acting the whole thing, but unless it was done really well it could have hurt. Professional voice acting is hard to find, and for an amateur project is simply out of reach.

Agreed! That would have been awesome.


E.

Sex wasn't the ultimate goal of the relationship.

Attraction may start physically but Hisao likes the heroine on a deeper personal level.

The best thing in Katawa Shoujo that makes it stand out from any other VN I read is the god-tier characterization. It was so good that it made feel empathy. Sympathy is easy to create, just torture a cute girl. But empathy is usually nigh impossible to evoke. However, this game subtly reaches into your heart with cute bishoujo then pulls it out so you can see yourself and your relationships with your friends and family and inspire you to improve yourself.

... Underneath their facades, my young adult cousins are ... bent. While the facades are working out for them, I can easily see through them and know that it's only a matter of decades before they break, but I know that if I bring up the subject, they'll refuse to believe me. Because of what I said above, I plan to show them this game when I meet them in the summer. I'm not sure how they'll react, but ... I honestly think that it will help them.

Its improbable development cycle, and the fact that everyone was expecting tasteless fetish porn and got basically the exact opposite.

Here's one thing I appreciated: no CG is ever re-used. Something that threw me out of immersion playing, say, "Da Capo," is that every love scene uses the same CG to start with.