Katawa Shoujo Forums

@Oddball, that's a pretty good point... Bugger ;P

KSPuff wrote: I've known guys who think and act like Kenji, paranoia-wise and eventually, they all snapped and did something terrible. Then again, this head canon, so it's free to open interpretation.

It's just me or compare real people with Kenji sounds always jerkish ? (or this immediate judgement "they will did something terrible" towards all those who seems a bit weird)

It's just you.

Though for the record, I really don't think Kenji is really all that bad. As KSPuff put it, he is more bark than bite. He's demonstrated the ability to act perfectly normal when out in public (for all we know, this is the "real" Kenji), and it's not like he thinks all women are feminists. He makes that abundantly clear. He would probably mellow out after leaving Yamaku.

Mahorfeus wrote:It's just you.

Though for the record, I really don't think Kenji is really all that bad. As KSPuff put it, he is more bark than bite. He's demonstrated the ability to act perfectly normal when out in public (for all we know, this is the "real" Kenji), and it's not like he thinks all women are feminists. He makes that abundantly clear. He would probably mellow out after leaving Yamaku.

That's why I think Kenji deserves a real story. Given a choice of male protagonists to empathise with, we'd either have Hisao or Kenji—and Kenji might be the less frustrating of the two to play, if we had a choice!

Mahorfeus wrote:It's just you.

Though for the record, I really don't think Kenji is really all that bad. As KSPuff put it, he is more bark than bite. He's demonstrated the ability to act perfectly normal when out in public (for all we know, this is the "real" Kenji), and it's not like he thinks all women are feminists. He makes that abundantly clear. He would probably mellow out after leaving Yamaku.

Yeah I agreed, Kenji is not a bad guy, but KSPuff seems to have a very bad opinion about him BECAUSE he know guys "like him"...seriously if he treats all people he find a little weird like that (and certainly because they have at least some social problems if not emotional issues),he should not be surprising if they end up by doing something "terrible".

He didn't say anything about how he treated them. He just observed a correlation within his own experience.

Maybe bullying is too strong a word.

I would instead compare it to Hisao's time in the hospital and how the visits from his friends and Iwanako dwindled. I have some first hand experience with this. When I was in the hospital and had visitors, it was painfully obvious to me who came to see me because they genuinely wanted to and who was there simply because they felt obligated to be there.

I'm not talking about bullying by making fun of, hitting, making rude comments about, etc. I'm talking more of a forced interaction or exclusion.

In a school where you're the odd one out (either from disability, skin color, sexuality, etc) you will get people that interact with you just because they feel they are obligated to or forced to because of the pressure around them, or they do it because in their mind it makes them a better person to interact with/show friendship towards the "kid that needs it." It's not "I'm your friend" but "I want people to see that I'm your friend."

There's nothing genuine behind it. It's forced, it's patronizing, it's disgusting, and when it was done to me, I absolutely hated it. Friendships should be based on common interests instead of pressures of obligation.

It's a very difficult feeling to put into words, and until you've experienced it it's difficult to understand.

Hisao notices this a bit when he's adjusting to Yamaku and during the festival, when he says he can just "feel" that normal guests are staring at him and the other students trying to figure out what's wrong with them.

Now, it's very easy to imagine all this happening to one of Yamaku's students if they were in normal schools. Hanako being bullied, people making fun of Shizune because she couldn't hear them, etc. I think it would be naive to assume that this doesn't happen to an extent (even if I agree it would be severely lessened) at Yamaku with the situations reversed. Instead, I would imagine exclusion being the big thing there.

People don't have to actively go out of their way to hurt or mess with you, but exclusion is another thing that happens often. Being picked last for a school project, nobody asks you to the dance, being picked last for a sports event, nobody has interest in talking to you or they actively stop talking when you enter a room, etc. It's much more subtle but can be just as damaging as someone who shoves you up against a locker and demands you give them your lunch money.

So, while I do think that the kids at Yamaku are more accepting than those you'd find at a typical high school, I don't think they're so good to the point they wouldn't have this mentality of "exclusion" even if they didn't know they were doing it. There for sure would be some people who would resent that a "normal" kid was going to "their" school, but it would never result in physical bullying.

People, especially teenagers in high school, naturally form cliques. The ones at Yamaku would probably be stronger because there's fewer students there and that the school itself is a unique circumstance. In fact, the whole school is a clique of it's own because the students that go there all have the fact they go to that school in common.

So yeah, I guess that's what I was trying to say. I don't think that the students at Yamaku as a whole would be as accepting of someone without a disability as they would be of someone with one - but it would be extremely subtle, and a lot would depend on how the person without a disability handles and reacts to that.

Eurobeatjester wrote: In a school where you're the odd one out (either from disability, skin color, sexuality, etc) you will get people that interact with you just because they feel they are obligated to or forced to because of the pressure around them, or they do it because in their mind it makes them a better person to interact with/show friendship towards the "kid that needs it." It's not "I'm your friend" but "I want people to see that I'm your friend."

There's nothing genuine behind it. It's forced, it's patronizing, it's disgusting, and when it was done to me, I absolutely hated it.

Isn't this one of the many reasons that Hanako's birthday is so traumatic (for the lack of a better word) for her? The fact that people put on their "happy faces" and pretended that she mattered when the other 364 days of the year they could've cared less whether she existed or not...

Oscar Wildecat wrote:

Eurobeatjester wrote: In a school where you're the odd one out (either from disability, skin color, sexuality, etc) you will get people that interact with you just because they feel they are obligated to or forced to because of the pressure around them, or they do it because in their mind it makes them a better person to interact with/show friendship towards the "kid that needs it." It's not "I'm your friend" but "I want people to see that I'm your friend."

There's nothing genuine behind it. It's forced, it's patronizing, it's disgusting, and when it was done to me, I absolutely hated it.

Isn't this one of the many reasons that Hanako's birthday is so traumatic (for the lack of a better word) for her? The fact that people put on their "happy faces" and pretended that she mattered when the other 364 days of the year they could've cared less whether she existed or not...

The route heavily implies that it's also the anniversary of the fire, even if it doesn't say it.

Hanako doesn't strike me as someone who would be bothered by exclusion. In fact, I'd say she welcomes it.

Eurobeatjester wrote: The route heavily implies that it's also the anniversary of the fire, even if it doesn't say it.

Hanako doesn't strike me as someone who would be bothered by exclusion. In fact, I'd say she welcomes it.

I agree with you about Hanako welcoming exclusion -- especially if those were those people's honest emotions.

I was thinking about the "forced inclusion", where people socialize with her out of some sort of social obligation to (or pity for) the "broken girl", or because they were compelled to by those who had those feelings. The example here is a birthday party given for her year by the orphanage staff (or her teachers) and attended by children only interested in cake and ice cream -- the same children who, at best, ignored her the rest of the year or, at worse, bullied her.

brythain wrote:Given a choice of male protagonists to empathise with, we'd either have Hisao or Kenji—and Kenji might be the less frustrating of the two to play, if we had a choice!

Hmmm...so, a visual novel where all the visuals are indistinct? Might be intriguing .

dewelar wrote:

brythain wrote:Given a choice of male protagonists to empathise with, we'd either have Hisao or Kenji—and Kenji might be the less frustrating of the two to play, if we had a choice!

Hmmm...so, a visual novel where all the visuals are indistinct? Might be intriguing .

I think it would be fantastic, since Kenji has this annoying habit of shoving his face close up to his interlocutor. So you'd see in sharper focus the more prominent (well, 'forward'?) features and the rest wouldn't be so obvious. That's why he thinks Rin is male; the uniform comes into view first, and that frames the rest of his perceptions. Misha wouldn't fare the same way...

Zarys wrote:Yeah I agreed, Kenji is not a bad guy, but KSPuff seems to have a very bad opinion about him BECAUSE he know guys "like him"...seriously if he treats all people he find a little weird like that (and certainly because they have at least some social problems if not emotional issues),he should not be surprising if they end up by doing something "terrible".

Oh, I never said I treated them badly, I'm far from one to really judge people. I have some pretty bad social and emotional issues myself. I like to give everyone a fair chance at first and even then I usually forgive more outbursts and screw-ups then most people. I knew people with paranoia like Kenji and they were usually pretty cool if you keep an open mind.

However, I also experienced the worse case scenario where someone snapped. It was my brother. Paranoid like Kenji but his issues were with Doctors rather than with women. So we didn't take him to see doctors and he was an okay guy most of the time. If he met someone who was doctor/nurse/medical staff outside of hospital, he'd be polite until he could get away from them as quickly as he could. The family and I never worried too much.

Then late in his senior year, his girlfriend of two years told him that she would to going to medical school to become a registered nurse while she was visiting him at out home. Suddenly, he grabbed her by the throat and slammed her into the wall several times while trying to choke her. Thankfully, he was yelling at her in a mad anti-medical rant which alerted my parents to what was happening. My father barely managed to stop him as my mother called police were called and, long story short, is currently spending several years in jail for attempted murder. He could chose to going to mental hospital but he took the jail time instead.

And don't worry, his ex-girlfriend is okay and doing well in college working on her PHD. Her family stay in touch with mine since our parents were lifelong friends.

So, I know what is to experience both side of the outcome for someone like Kenji.

Is Kenji a bad guy? No. Could he do something like murder Hisao in the right situation? Yes.

And you might be taking this tad too seriously, this is just headcanon talk.

The route heavily implies that it's also the anniversary of the fire, even if it doesn't say it.

Does it? As far as I know, the only time it's suggested is when Hisao's speculating, but he himself acknowledges it's not more than that.

Hanako doesn't strike me as someone who would be bothered by exclusion. In fact, I'd say she welcomes it.

Personally I doubt that. It's possible for people to not like dealing with other people and still be hurt when those other people keep you out. Even Hanako gets lonely from time to time.

Hanako wants interaction on her own terms, but that doesn't mean that exclusion can't hurt her - in fact, exclusion 364 days of the year is part of (most of?) why she has such trouble with social interaction.