And weeping, and weeping over the sea
Zar played a game called Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea, and she wondered if I played it yet. So I told her I'd review it, nom. I've been dying of boredom since my cough, and I was getting burnt out on Story of Seasons. TIME FOR SOME OLD FASHIONED INDIE HORROR. I downloaded a program that let me open .zips, and so far so good, my computer's cooperative. So I zoomed through Wadanohara! Yay!
I thought I'd enjoy it more, tbh. I mean, it's an okay game, there's a lot to like about it, and I came in without much expectations (and I was warned for gratuitous sexual assault, which I'll discuss in a bit). But by the time I finished it, I thought it would have much more than what I got. :o It had potential and a lot of cool concepts, but they never really got expanded upon and it makes the game feel incomplete. It didn't leave me mad in a "Uggggh, how could you waste such a good idea" kind of way like some Pokemon movies did, just... empty and kind of hanging.
- I loved the art in this! It's easily the best thing about the game. It's cute and unique and it's got a nice clean feel to it. I loved a lot of the gajinka designs, like Samekichi (dat jacket), the Lobster girl (Lobco), angler fish and orca. And the demons look great! Samekichi reminds me of something Jean would draw. ;; Doesn't help that he acts like Jean's favorite Pokemon character, Silver. XD I love love love love Wadanohara's "Red Witch" form. The eyeballs under her hat and the one on its bow is genius.
- I LOVE THE CHAIN-SMOKING ORCA WHALE. I really wished he showed up more often. I read that he's actually a cameo, but still. The game gave me the impression he was going to be more important. :/ No surprise Tatsumiya's got a crush on him. I also liked Cherryblod and his giant lobster wife Doloz, awww.
- The music's okay. It's got a few songs I like, but overall not too memorable. Overall fitting for the game. Sea of Stars is probably my favorite. I also liked most of the regular battle themes (the harpsichord ones end-game would've been fine if they weren't repetitive), and I liked how there's no victory theme--it just stops suddenly, giving you the feeling that something's off about the game and it's hiding something sinister (which it is).
- Not that the games are in any way related except that they take place underwater (and it's about the lead heroine going back to save the sea, so there's that), but I kept thinking of the NES Little Mermaid game while I played. I kept waiting for an 8-bit version of "Under the Sea" to play. XD Man, the Little Mermaid game was fun. Short, but bright and happy and colorful and fun.
- Reading the translation notes and learning the meanings behind the puns of everyone's names helped enhance the game a bit for me. Check it out. :o
- I messed up the genders of so many characters in this game, it isn't funny. I thought Memoca and Delphi were guys and Fukami a girl (when it's the other way around. Oops), and I thought Sal was female until someone called him "he" in-game. (I thought he was an albino dolphin and assumed Sal was short for "Sally" instead of salmon. Hush, you can't blame me for being in SatAM fandom) Is it just me, or does Fukami look like a Team Galactic grunt and Meikai (Wadanohara's dad) like Sir Aaron from the Lucario movie? I even heard the latter with Jason Griffith's voice in my head.
- There's WAY too many characters in this game. You thought Sonic games were bad? At least the new characters are spread out over games. Here, you're constantly getting the impression that so-and-so is important the way the game makes it a BIG DEAL you're meeting these guys (ex. You're supposed to meet Tarako and Irena when you get back to Deep Sea Town before going to the palace, and it's emphasized that they're big friends of Wadanohara), only for them to not matter much at all. Nearly everyone is given names and a two-sided conversation with Wadanohara, yet you wouldn't notice if characters like Minero and her gang, Miyura, Seguro, or Aom went missing, because they contribute nothing to the plot. Hell, I have to look at the TV Tropes character list (along with pictures!) in order to remember who anyone is! I can probably tell you what they look like (Red squid girl who keeps getting in trouble with her friends including a brown angler fish gajinka who sleeps all the time, blue mermaid who says "dude" a lot, a black snake, light blue prawn girl with antennae and pincers), but hell if I recall their names. And that's probably being generous; I'd probably remember Squid Girl and Angler Fish Girl simply because I liked Angler Fish Girl's design. (What's Angler Fish Girl's name anyway? *looks it up* Oh. Tomoshibi)
- Likewise, there's a few characters who aren't meant to be developed much at all, but they're SO COOL that you wish they were. I'm definitely talking about Orca, but I'm also referring to the mini-bosses. The demons and antagonists have some of my favorite designs in the game! Like Tsuribari, a guy with a fishhook impaled through his head. He's standing there bleeding profusely, yet he's bored and all he cares about is reading his book. WHAT'S HIS STORY? I WANT TO KNOW. What little is known about Laurentia, Vendetto and Ver Million is awesome (ex. Ver Million is mercenary who's friends with Wadanohara, and she hadn't expected to attack her or her kingdom. Whoops. WHY ISN'T SHE MORE IMPORTANT TO THE PLOT!?), but all we get of them is one video in the extras. :( Oh yeah, tell me if you think this should be a minor character: there's a shark named Old who's Samekichi and Sal's dad and an ex-familiar of Wadanohara's father who betrayed him and Tatsumiya. He is never brought up until a short scene near the end of the game where he shows up just to get his ass kicked by Orca. This isn't just wasting what's potentially an important character... this is storytelling FAIL.
- Finally, the characters who are important still don't get much development at all. Tatsumiya is supposed to be Meikai's most trusted familiar, right? And she raised Wadanohara after his death? I still feel like we don't really know her at all, and little is delved into Tatsumiya and Wadanohara's relationship. Chlomaki introduced Wadanohara to the witch world and shows up in the game a lot, yet we still don't know much about her or the witch kingdom. Speaking of which, what is the witch kingdom like? How does one become a witch? What kind of training is involved? How does a witch choose a familiar and what qualifications should the familiar have? I need to know those things! :( WORLDBUILDING IS IMPORTAAAAAAANT. DDD:
And dude, the conflict between Princess Uomi and Princess Mikotsu. Why was Mikotsu rejected by her dad in the first place? Is her dad just being a dickhead and choosing favorites? Is there a law against there being two rulers? My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic did this better with Celestia and Luna. There's also the question of why they are princesses instead of queens, but eh, I have a feeling it's tied to the God Save Us From the Queen/Everything's Better With Princesses tropes, which is a subject the Nostalgia Critic already covered. Fukami's crush on Wadanohara wasn't obvious to me until the very end of the game during the True Ending (If I had unlocked the second Bad Ending before that, my reaction would've been "Eh? What the heck?"). Considering this is supposed to be Fukami going through a character arc (leading from jealousy to I Want My Beloved to be Happy), this... is bad.
I also want to know how the hell the Sea of Death works. Does it awaken the inner darkness and negative qualities people try to repress or does it straight up brainwash you? The game usually leans toward the former (Sal gleefully makes it clear to Wadanohara that he's clearly embraced the Sea of Death without its help), but on the other hand, it switches to "Oh no, it's brainwashing" at the second Bad Ending where Fukami kills everybody. Dude, it's one or the other. You can't have both.
- Name a common anime archtype. Voila, you just named a character in Wadanohara and the Deep Blue Sea. You've seen these people before: Wadanohara is the Nice Girl who sees the best in everybody and doesn't have an iota of hatred or anger in her body (her only flaws are naivety and LOLCLUMSY which only serve to make her endearing). Samekichi is the textbook tsundere. There isn't anything to Memoca except Genki Girl TM. Same with Fukami as The Stoic. Hell, Wadanohara's familiars are so one-note to me they're barely even a blip on my radar. Okay, maybe I like Samekichi, but I tend to be drawn to grumpy softies anyway.
I don't mind archetypical characters and I'm not saying tropes are horrible (they're impossible to avoid anyway), but if I can describe your character in a single sentence ("______ is a _______"), you need to do some work. Rune Factory 4 is troperific, and in a good way; it's meant to appeal to people who like the tropes in the first place, and the familiarity is meant to make you feel welcome and at home in the town you're farming and working. What makes the bachelors and bachelorettes so memorable though, is their individual characteristics that goes along with their archetype. Take Dylas, for example. We could've just left him at Jerk With a Heart of Gold. But RF4 gives him backstory and little quirks and explores his relationship with various characters (his interactions with Doug compared to Frey or Ventuswill), so there's a lot more to him than what meets the eye. While Samekichi has it better than many of Wadanohara's cast in the development department, he hardly holds a candle to the amount of characterization Dylas gets. Hell, compare Arthur with Fukami, who are both scholarly dudes. Yes, Arthur's a prince and a Megane, but as you get to know him better, you learn that he likes cute things, has a tendency to overwork, and is haunted by the memory of his mother. But Fukami, other than his crush on Wadanohara and jealousy issues... what you see is what you get. Margaret's afraid of heights and ghosts, but is also the Team Mom who looks after Porcoline and is kind and hardworking, and worries about outliving all of her human companions (she's an elf). Delphi is shy and dislikes scary things. That's it, that's all to her character. And she's supposed to be one of your party members.
- The dialogue in this game really needs work. You can practically play a drinking game and poison yourself for the amounts of extraneous dialogue that can be snipped out in this. The game eats ellipses like potato chips... it can't have just one. Remembering Wadanohara's name is not a problem, because people say her name again and again and AGAIN. It gets especially bad in conversation between Wadanohara and Samekichi, where they call each other's names so much that Tamahome and Miaka are yelling at them to shut up. EDITORS PLZ.
- Finally, we come to the sloppy way this game handles sexual assault. I have nothing against rape and/or sexual assault in stories. It's a real problem in our society and it needs to be talked about. Which is why it gets under my skin when it's used for shock value and an excuse to slap a Tragic Backstory onto a character without considering other traumatizing options, or else trying to prove the villain is horrible and making them a rapist is the only thing they can think of.
The game doesn't outright say Wadanohara was raped by Sal, but that's what it's going for (the cutscenes thankfully don't show the rape itself with the exception of a dodgy screenshot, but you still have Wadanohara screaming, "It hurts..." "Stop!" and "I don't want this!"), and the worst part is it feels entirely unnecessary. Sal's real form (white shark with tentacles and bleeding from his eyes) is frightening enough to look at, and he laughs and eggs Wadanohara on to hurt him more while she's fighting him. Why does he need to rape her? And don't give me that "He's yandere for her!" bullshit, 'cause that doesn't crop up until late in the game and it hardly elaborates on his obsession with Wadanohara anyway. It'd make sense if Wadanohara's memories were wiped due to the trauma as a defense mechanism (and if she felt sickly and uncomfortable around Sal for no reason, all while she's trying to convince herself of his innocence for reasons she doesn't understand (("I must be going crazy. Sal would never hurt anyone!")) would be effective foreshadowing), but nope, that gets thrown out the window because Sal and the Sea of Death would've wiped out her memories anyway.
Rape and sexual assault is not something you can slap on a character and expect them to brush off like a scraped knee. It has social ramifications and affects your relationships with people, including family and friends. Wadanohara's constant assurances that she's fine and her low confidence should be worrying people more than a single dialogue box. Maybe she beats herself up while she plays the piano because she feels like she's changed from the person her dad wanted her to be. Hell, there's the above example I mentioned with her memory loss. Yet, all those reactions could still result from witnessing the Sea of Death and its denizens without the rape. So the rape is still pointless.
You wanted "shock value?" I can think of a hell of a lot of ways to make it worse. What if instead of Wadanohara, it was Samekichi?
Sal is a sadomasochistic Eldritch Abomination. Raping his brother because he dared to be close to his yandere crush isn't too twisted for him. What if he did it in front of Wadanohara as a way to humiliate and shame him, and break Wadanohara into becoming his by showing that even her familiar is "too weak" to protect her? In-game, there's an implied prejudice against sharks, and Samekichi is treated as an enemy at the beginning of the game. That would give Samekichi another reason to clam up. Not only did he not want Wadanohara's memories to return and break her mind, but he also didn't want to be scorned and shamed and put through the wringer all over again. It gives more weight to "Believe in me, Wadanohara!" Not only would it mean Wadanohara trusted him, but also that she's not dismissing or abandoning him. Him going to fight Sal through the gate is facing his past and his rapist, and with Wadanohara's support, he's going to come out alive, dammit.
Edit: Just in case, I ought to clarify these scenarios would still be gratuitous and pointless, and the game is better off not having rape at all, narrative-wise. What I was trying to get across is if the game really HAD to keep rape in the plot, it ought to have been more thoughtful in its inclusion, whether the survivor is Wadanohara, Samekichi, or even both. Or if it only wanted to be "shocking" that there's worse ways than simply raping Wadanohara, and that using rape alone as shock value does NOT work and merely invokes Rape Is The New Dead Parents and audience apathy. I hope I didn't imply that raping Samekichi would've made the game "deeper" somehow, due to some Double Standard or otherwise. If I did, I sincerely apologize.
Just... ugh. Dreaming Mary handled the subject so much better. Ugh ugh ugh.
- All THAT said, this was my reaction near the ending when "Trust Sal" was the only option:
Me: "YOU FUCKING RAPED ME! WHAT MAKES YOU THINK I'M GONNA TRUST YOU!?"
Thank GOD the other options were unlockable after that. The regular good ending was meh, though it's interesting that Wadanohara's sacrifice made nobody happy in the long run. I guess I shipped Wadanohara/Samekichi a little more than I thought, since I liked their hug in the True Ending when they reunited. Enough to want an icon of that scene, but I can't find one anywhere. Ugh. Time to reinstall Photoshop.
- I thought the game was going to go somewhere with the "Stay as who you are, Wadanohara" thing. I wondered if the game would be a deconstruction of how people treat the "Good Girl" and going out of their way to "preserve her innocence" for her own good, even if it's harmful to her in the long run. I thought it would've been cool if Wadanohara was forced to confront the "darker" parts of her (with her Red Witch form being the result of her saying "Fuck it" and finding nothing redeeming about humanity left) and learning to accept the "impure" aspects of reality and still coming out as a good person in the end. Which... isn't what happened. Dammit. :/
I spent way too much time talking about this game. There's probably some points I've forgotten, but eh. I'm not in a rush to play Mogeko's other games any time soon.
This post has been crossposted with Dreamwidth at http://shamanicshaymin.dreamwidth.org/120665.html. Pick your poison. Mwoiiiiiiiing~!
I thought I'd enjoy it more, tbh. I mean, it's an okay game, there's a lot to like about it, and I came in without much expectations (and I was warned for gratuitous sexual assault, which I'll discuss in a bit). But by the time I finished it, I thought it would have much more than what I got. :o It had potential and a lot of cool concepts, but they never really got expanded upon and it makes the game feel incomplete. It didn't leave me mad in a "Uggggh, how could you waste such a good idea" kind of way like some Pokemon movies did, just... empty and kind of hanging.
- I loved the art in this! It's easily the best thing about the game. It's cute and unique and it's got a nice clean feel to it. I loved a lot of the gajinka designs, like Samekichi (dat jacket), the Lobster girl (Lobco), angler fish and orca. And the demons look great! Samekichi reminds me of something Jean would draw. ;; Doesn't help that he acts like Jean's favorite Pokemon character, Silver. XD I love love love love Wadanohara's "Red Witch" form. The eyeballs under her hat and the one on its bow is genius.
- I LOVE THE CHAIN-SMOKING ORCA WHALE. I really wished he showed up more often. I read that he's actually a cameo, but still. The game gave me the impression he was going to be more important. :/ No surprise Tatsumiya's got a crush on him. I also liked Cherryblod and his giant lobster wife Doloz, awww.
- The music's okay. It's got a few songs I like, but overall not too memorable. Overall fitting for the game. Sea of Stars is probably my favorite. I also liked most of the regular battle themes (the harpsichord ones end-game would've been fine if they weren't repetitive), and I liked how there's no victory theme--it just stops suddenly, giving you the feeling that something's off about the game and it's hiding something sinister (which it is).
- Not that the games are in any way related except that they take place underwater (and it's about the lead heroine going back to save the sea, so there's that), but I kept thinking of the NES Little Mermaid game while I played. I kept waiting for an 8-bit version of "Under the Sea" to play. XD Man, the Little Mermaid game was fun. Short, but bright and happy and colorful and fun.
- Reading the translation notes and learning the meanings behind the puns of everyone's names helped enhance the game a bit for me. Check it out. :o
- I messed up the genders of so many characters in this game, it isn't funny. I thought Memoca and Delphi were guys and Fukami a girl (when it's the other way around. Oops), and I thought Sal was female until someone called him "he" in-game. (I thought he was an albino dolphin and assumed Sal was short for "Sally" instead of salmon. Hush, you can't blame me for being in SatAM fandom) Is it just me, or does Fukami look like a Team Galactic grunt and Meikai (Wadanohara's dad) like Sir Aaron from the Lucario movie? I even heard the latter with Jason Griffith's voice in my head.
- There's WAY too many characters in this game. You thought Sonic games were bad? At least the new characters are spread out over games. Here, you're constantly getting the impression that so-and-so is important the way the game makes it a BIG DEAL you're meeting these guys (ex. You're supposed to meet Tarako and Irena when you get back to Deep Sea Town before going to the palace, and it's emphasized that they're big friends of Wadanohara), only for them to not matter much at all. Nearly everyone is given names and a two-sided conversation with Wadanohara, yet you wouldn't notice if characters like Minero and her gang, Miyura, Seguro, or Aom went missing, because they contribute nothing to the plot. Hell, I have to look at the TV Tropes character list (along with pictures!) in order to remember who anyone is! I can probably tell you what they look like (Red squid girl who keeps getting in trouble with her friends including a brown angler fish gajinka who sleeps all the time, blue mermaid who says "dude" a lot, a black snake, light blue prawn girl with antennae and pincers), but hell if I recall their names. And that's probably being generous; I'd probably remember Squid Girl and Angler Fish Girl simply because I liked Angler Fish Girl's design. (What's Angler Fish Girl's name anyway? *looks it up* Oh. Tomoshibi)
- Likewise, there's a few characters who aren't meant to be developed much at all, but they're SO COOL that you wish they were. I'm definitely talking about Orca, but I'm also referring to the mini-bosses. The demons and antagonists have some of my favorite designs in the game! Like Tsuribari, a guy with a fishhook impaled through his head. He's standing there bleeding profusely, yet he's bored and all he cares about is reading his book. WHAT'S HIS STORY? I WANT TO KNOW. What little is known about Laurentia, Vendetto and Ver Million is awesome (ex. Ver Million is mercenary who's friends with Wadanohara, and she hadn't expected to attack her or her kingdom. Whoops. WHY ISN'T SHE MORE IMPORTANT TO THE PLOT!?), but all we get of them is one video in the extras. :( Oh yeah, tell me if you think this should be a minor character: there's a shark named Old who's Samekichi and Sal's dad and an ex-familiar of Wadanohara's father who betrayed him and Tatsumiya. He is never brought up until a short scene near the end of the game where he shows up just to get his ass kicked by Orca. This isn't just wasting what's potentially an important character... this is storytelling FAIL.
- Finally, the characters who are important still don't get much development at all. Tatsumiya is supposed to be Meikai's most trusted familiar, right? And she raised Wadanohara after his death? I still feel like we don't really know her at all, and little is delved into Tatsumiya and Wadanohara's relationship. Chlomaki introduced Wadanohara to the witch world and shows up in the game a lot, yet we still don't know much about her or the witch kingdom. Speaking of which, what is the witch kingdom like? How does one become a witch? What kind of training is involved? How does a witch choose a familiar and what qualifications should the familiar have? I need to know those things! :( WORLDBUILDING IS IMPORTAAAAAAANT. DDD:
And dude, the conflict between Princess Uomi and Princess Mikotsu. Why was Mikotsu rejected by her dad in the first place? Is her dad just being a dickhead and choosing favorites? Is there a law against there being two rulers? My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic did this better with Celestia and Luna. There's also the question of why they are princesses instead of queens, but eh, I have a feeling it's tied to the God Save Us From the Queen/Everything's Better With Princesses tropes, which is a subject the Nostalgia Critic already covered. Fukami's crush on Wadanohara wasn't obvious to me until the very end of the game during the True Ending (If I had unlocked the second Bad Ending before that, my reaction would've been "Eh? What the heck?"). Considering this is supposed to be Fukami going through a character arc (leading from jealousy to I Want My Beloved to be Happy), this... is bad.
I also want to know how the hell the Sea of Death works. Does it awaken the inner darkness and negative qualities people try to repress or does it straight up brainwash you? The game usually leans toward the former (Sal gleefully makes it clear to Wadanohara that he's clearly embraced the Sea of Death without its help), but on the other hand, it switches to "Oh no, it's brainwashing" at the second Bad Ending where Fukami kills everybody. Dude, it's one or the other. You can't have both.
- Name a common anime archtype. Voila, you just named a character in Wadanohara and the Deep Blue Sea. You've seen these people before: Wadanohara is the Nice Girl who sees the best in everybody and doesn't have an iota of hatred or anger in her body (her only flaws are naivety and LOLCLUMSY which only serve to make her endearing). Samekichi is the textbook tsundere. There isn't anything to Memoca except Genki Girl TM. Same with Fukami as The Stoic. Hell, Wadanohara's familiars are so one-note to me they're barely even a blip on my radar. Okay, maybe I like Samekichi, but I tend to be drawn to grumpy softies anyway.
I don't mind archetypical characters and I'm not saying tropes are horrible (they're impossible to avoid anyway), but if I can describe your character in a single sentence ("______ is a _______"), you need to do some work. Rune Factory 4 is troperific, and in a good way; it's meant to appeal to people who like the tropes in the first place, and the familiarity is meant to make you feel welcome and at home in the town you're farming and working. What makes the bachelors and bachelorettes so memorable though, is their individual characteristics that goes along with their archetype. Take Dylas, for example. We could've just left him at Jerk With a Heart of Gold. But RF4 gives him backstory and little quirks and explores his relationship with various characters (his interactions with Doug compared to Frey or Ventuswill), so there's a lot more to him than what meets the eye. While Samekichi has it better than many of Wadanohara's cast in the development department, he hardly holds a candle to the amount of characterization Dylas gets. Hell, compare Arthur with Fukami, who are both scholarly dudes. Yes, Arthur's a prince and a Megane, but as you get to know him better, you learn that he likes cute things, has a tendency to overwork, and is haunted by the memory of his mother. But Fukami, other than his crush on Wadanohara and jealousy issues... what you see is what you get. Margaret's afraid of heights and ghosts, but is also the Team Mom who looks after Porcoline and is kind and hardworking, and worries about outliving all of her human companions (she's an elf). Delphi is shy and dislikes scary things. That's it, that's all to her character. And she's supposed to be one of your party members.
- The dialogue in this game really needs work. You can practically play a drinking game and poison yourself for the amounts of extraneous dialogue that can be snipped out in this. The game eats ellipses like potato chips... it can't have just one. Remembering Wadanohara's name is not a problem, because people say her name again and again and AGAIN. It gets especially bad in conversation between Wadanohara and Samekichi, where they call each other's names so much that Tamahome and Miaka are yelling at them to shut up. EDITORS PLZ.
- Finally, we come to the sloppy way this game handles sexual assault. I have nothing against rape and/or sexual assault in stories. It's a real problem in our society and it needs to be talked about. Which is why it gets under my skin when it's used for shock value and an excuse to slap a Tragic Backstory onto a character without considering other traumatizing options, or else trying to prove the villain is horrible and making them a rapist is the only thing they can think of.
The game doesn't outright say Wadanohara was raped by Sal, but that's what it's going for (the cutscenes thankfully don't show the rape itself with the exception of a dodgy screenshot, but you still have Wadanohara screaming, "It hurts..." "Stop!" and "I don't want this!"), and the worst part is it feels entirely unnecessary. Sal's real form (white shark with tentacles and bleeding from his eyes) is frightening enough to look at, and he laughs and eggs Wadanohara on to hurt him more while she's fighting him. Why does he need to rape her? And don't give me that "He's yandere for her!" bullshit, 'cause that doesn't crop up until late in the game and it hardly elaborates on his obsession with Wadanohara anyway. It'd make sense if Wadanohara's memories were wiped due to the trauma as a defense mechanism (and if she felt sickly and uncomfortable around Sal for no reason, all while she's trying to convince herself of his innocence for reasons she doesn't understand (("I must be going crazy. Sal would never hurt anyone!")) would be effective foreshadowing), but nope, that gets thrown out the window because Sal and the Sea of Death would've wiped out her memories anyway.
Rape and sexual assault is not something you can slap on a character and expect them to brush off like a scraped knee. It has social ramifications and affects your relationships with people, including family and friends. Wadanohara's constant assurances that she's fine and her low confidence should be worrying people more than a single dialogue box. Maybe she beats herself up while she plays the piano because she feels like she's changed from the person her dad wanted her to be. Hell, there's the above example I mentioned with her memory loss. Yet, all those reactions could still result from witnessing the Sea of Death and its denizens without the rape. So the rape is still pointless.
You wanted "shock value?" I can think of a hell of a lot of ways to make it worse. What if instead of Wadanohara, it was Samekichi?
Sal is a sadomasochistic Eldritch Abomination. Raping his brother because he dared to be close to his yandere crush isn't too twisted for him. What if he did it in front of Wadanohara as a way to humiliate and shame him, and break Wadanohara into becoming his by showing that even her familiar is "too weak" to protect her? In-game, there's an implied prejudice against sharks, and Samekichi is treated as an enemy at the beginning of the game. That would give Samekichi another reason to clam up. Not only did he not want Wadanohara's memories to return and break her mind, but he also didn't want to be scorned and shamed and put through the wringer all over again. It gives more weight to "Believe in me, Wadanohara!" Not only would it mean Wadanohara trusted him, but also that she's not dismissing or abandoning him. Him going to fight Sal through the gate is facing his past and his rapist, and with Wadanohara's support, he's going to come out alive, dammit.
Edit: Just in case, I ought to clarify these scenarios would still be gratuitous and pointless, and the game is better off not having rape at all, narrative-wise. What I was trying to get across is if the game really HAD to keep rape in the plot, it ought to have been more thoughtful in its inclusion, whether the survivor is Wadanohara, Samekichi, or even both. Or if it only wanted to be "shocking" that there's worse ways than simply raping Wadanohara, and that using rape alone as shock value does NOT work and merely invokes Rape Is The New Dead Parents and audience apathy. I hope I didn't imply that raping Samekichi would've made the game "deeper" somehow, due to some Double Standard or otherwise. If I did, I sincerely apologize.
Just... ugh. Dreaming Mary handled the subject so much better. Ugh ugh ugh.
- All THAT said, this was my reaction near the ending when "Trust Sal" was the only option:
Me: "YOU FUCKING RAPED ME! WHAT MAKES YOU THINK I'M GONNA TRUST YOU!?"
Click to viewThank GOD the other options were unlockable after that. The regular good ending was meh, though it's interesting that Wadanohara's sacrifice made nobody happy in the long run. I guess I shipped Wadanohara/Samekichi a little more than I thought, since I liked their hug in the True Ending when they reunited. Enough to want an icon of that scene, but I can't find one anywhere. Ugh. Time to reinstall Photoshop.
- I thought the game was going to go somewhere with the "Stay as who you are, Wadanohara" thing. I wondered if the game would be a deconstruction of how people treat the "Good Girl" and going out of their way to "preserve her innocence" for her own good, even if it's harmful to her in the long run. I thought it would've been cool if Wadanohara was forced to confront the "darker" parts of her (with her Red Witch form being the result of her saying "Fuck it" and finding nothing redeeming about humanity left) and learning to accept the "impure" aspects of reality and still coming out as a good person in the end. Which... isn't what happened. Dammit. :/
I spent way too much time talking about this game. There's probably some points I've forgotten, but eh. I'm not in a rush to play Mogeko's other games any time soon.
This post has been crossposted with Dreamwidth at http://shamanicshaymin.dreamwidth.org/120665.html. Pick your poison. Mwoiiiiiiiing~!