Jul 24, 2012

Katawa Shoujo: Review

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Last time, I covered the bigger picture surrounding Katawa Shoujo, namely visual novels and eroge, and touched on the themes and impressions I got. This time, I plan to take a closer look at the plot and characters. I’ll also be peppering this profusely with nitpicks and gripes.

I should warn you, while I will be refraining from divulging any true spoilers, I will be assuming you’re not worried about me mentioning details that either occur very early in the game or won’t be surprises at all if you’re following along. If this were a review of The Sixth Sense, I would mention him getting shot (happens near the beginning) but not the bit about him being dead.

Jul 13, 2012

Katawa Shoujo: Thoughts

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Visual novels exist as a strange hybrid of mediums. Little known to Westerners outside of the anime/manga fandom, they are not quite games but not quite simply stories either. They are more like choose-your-own-adventure books half-way between a fully animated anime and a largely text-and-static-pictures manga.

Having many times more text and dialog than either anime or manga, they devote this considerable verbiage to character building and follow the convention of being largely relationship and romance oriented. Overwhelmingly they are dating simulations depicting high-school aged characters in a sort of anime version of the Western Harlequin romance.