Dramatical Murder or You can fuck everyone. Yes, even the dog.
Sooo, considering I cosplayed someone from that game/series, I thought that I should tell you people something about it as well.
„Nani the fuck…“
“Dramatical murder” is a Japanese “Boys Love” visual novel aka a game where you stay glued in front of your laptop for like five hours, clicking two buttons max and reading the text rolls on screen until you get to choose which love interest you want to pursue. To call this a game might be a stretch, it’s more like a moving comic with voice overs and awkward sex sounds. Great fun, I tell ya.
Visual novels are a sub-genre of dating sim (those usually have more gameplay and some more choices) and that usually is sooooo not my genre because the stories tend to be rather flat and not very compelling since they are bound to the genre’s expectation of heavily focusing on the romance which often ends in rushing through the relationship’s development or cramming sex scenes everywhere .
Dmmd is guilty of the last one (decaying robot sex, we will get to that), but the plot is surprisingly intense and thrilling. It takes place on the fictional island of Midorijima which was privatized by the Toue Cooperation some years prior to the start of the game. A large part of the island was converted into the gigantic luxurious amusement park “Platinum Jail” and the island’s original inhabitants were forced to relocate to the Old Residential District.
Street gangs are fighting for dominance by battling in the popular game “Rip” (or Riebstiz. Whatever the translator smoked it must have been good), marking their territory by graffiti tags.
Like this. “Scratch” is a group made up entirely out of convicts so naturally they have a pastel rainbow tag.
There is also another cyber game called “Rhyme”. Fights controlled and supervised by the mysterious Usui break out all over the city and attract a great number of Rib players who sometimes disappear right after playing Rhyme and resurface as weird apathetic zombies. It’s a rather unsettling environment and people are getting nervous.
People who are not Aoba Seragaki, our main character, that is. He is totally chill with all the gang violence going on, probably because two of his best friends - Koujaku and Mizuki - are the leaders of the most popular Rib teams (Benishigure and Dry Juice. The names are hilarious.)
Koujaku. He is a hairdresser and how anyone takes him seriously is beyond me.
Mizuki. He is a tattoo artist and practically the only guy you can’t fuck in this game.
For shame, really, I am so digging the sad clown look.
Aoba doesn’t partake in any of the popular games. He played a lot of Rhyme when he was younger and ended up in a hospital for quite some time so he now prefers to live a quiet life with his grandma while working part-time at a junk shop (called Heibon, which means mediocrity. This game is killing me).
Tae-san and yes she has a rainbow flag in her living room because she sees right through Aoba’s bullshit.
He gets dragged into dangerous happenings though when Mizuki gets kidnapped by the mysterious group of “Morphine” who are the ones responsible for people turning into lifeless zombies left and right. They also kidnapped Aoba’s grandma and since Aoba has the worst timing ever, he finds out about that just as he gets himself a stalker with a gasmask who calls him “Master” all the time, gets attacked by a Drive-by Rhyme player called Noiz, and THEN Aoba himself gets kidnapped by Mink and his band of rogues.
Mink. Don’t let the fabulous cockatoo fool you, this guy is evil incarnate.
Clear. Don’t let the gas mask fool you, he is the cutest thing walking this earth.
Noiz. Believe it or not, but this is what you get when you mix 50 Shades of Bunnies with Germany. No, really.
What the hell, Aoba, your life is a catastrophe.
Anyway, since everyone is in love with Aoba, Mink lets him go and even promises to help rescue Tae, who is still held captive by Mizuki.
While trying to free Tae, Aoba discovers a hidden ability called Scrap (basically mind control), that takes over his body whenever he is danger - which usually results in a much bigger mess, dead or hurt people everywhere and monstrous headaches for Aoba (and him looking really sexy).
Scrap-Aoba aka Sly Blue. Not too fond of shirts but he will crush your brain for free.
They get Tae back and grandma proceeds to spill some truth tea as to what the hell is going on: Aoba is a lab experiment cooked up by Toue who were trying to create the ultimate mind control weapon. Tae was one of the researches and when she finally found out that they were experimenting on babies, she took Aoba with her and went into hiding, raising him as her own grand-son. She then explains that Platinum Jail is merely a huge testing ground for all sorts of mind control devices and she fears that Morphine rising has to do with Toue expanding his evil schemes.
This is the point where - influenced by your previous choices - you get paired up with one of the love interests and enter Platinum Jail.
And this is also the part where it started to get really, really weird, albeit only for me.
Pinku played the game before me, using all routes so she had already unlocked the bonus route and on my first run through I ended up on that one (which includes fucking the dog albeit in its human form, yes) - which is why I got ALL the information about the main storyline and nothing about the characters (apart from Aoba). In turn, when trying out other routes like for example with Noiz and Koujaku, you are much more focused on their personal tragic back stories and don’t get to see so much about the whole Toue-is-trying-to-manipulate-everyone-business.
This of course increases the replay value greatly (you can skip stuff, so you won’t have to suffer through the background story explanation more than once) but it also takes away from the urgency of the main plot since you waste so much time in Platinum Jail with exploring the different feels of everyone and the dog that I was sometimes sitting there and screaming at Aoba to get his head in the game and save the WHOLE DAMN ISLAND and not wander off into rave parties and other stuff (yes, that happens).
I am doing these games all wrong, I am sure, but I found the main plot very engaging so I couldn’t stand wasting so much time when I tried Koujaku on my second play through. Nonetheless, all the characters are very well designed and even though the balance between their stories and the main plot isn’t always kept, they are still interesting, cute, funny, heartbreaking - AND DOWNRIGHT DISTURBING IF YOU END UP ON A BAD ENDING. Jesus fucking Christ, really, some of those are not only violent but downright sadistic and crazy.
I am now going to talk about the endings (I haven’t played all of them yet, but that’s what the internet is for) so if you’d rather play the game yourself, you should skip to the next section.
As I said, everyone has a good and a bad ending (sometimes two bad endings because yeaaah let’s traumatize the people even more) and sometimes you can fuck up on the last two questions (THANKS NOIZ) and it will be totally devastating. I took to playing with a walkthrough after my first run in with basically Satan himself.
Koujaku is Aoba’s childhood friend, a ladies’ man and the epitome of no homo when you decide to follow his route.
His good ending involves cute adorable sex in Aoba’s room, awkward hand holding, mumbled confessions of love and “I always thought about you when I was going through the most painful experience of my life, you helped me through that, NO HOMO.” It’s heart-warming, hot and all in good fun but as with most good endings in this game, there is a sour aftertaste connected to the dramatic showdown in Platinum Jail, so not everything is sunshine and rainbows no matter how cute and adorable they all are. I personally liked this bitter fluffy ending.
The bad ending has to do with Aoba’s scrap abilities (they all do) - he breaks into Koujaku’s mind, trying to free him and when you fail, you end up turning Koujaku into a ruthless, red-haired monster with sharp teeth ready to go on a killing spree. He gets confined by Toue’s men and Aoba, consumed by guilt, is taken over by his Scrap-personality. Toue mind-controls his way through the whole island and you end up having weird demon sex with demon!Koujaku. And this is one of the nicest bad endings. Really.
Clear’s good ending has him sacrificing himself for Aoba’s sake, destroying himself in the process (he is a robot, did I mention that) and his dying wish is to have sex with Aoba (he also has a dick, did I mention that) - cue decaying robot sex with tears. Yeah. What the fuck, game. Anyway, after that, Clear completely falls apart and Aoba tries his best to repair him which sadly doesn’t work. Until Grandma steps in, and asks one of her former researcher friends to help rebuild her grandson’s sex-bot robot-boyfriend and Aoba and Clear are reunited after a year. (This ending is wonderful and sweet, but the sex scene feels totally out of place, really, that was SO shoehorned in, I felt bad.)
The bad ending has Clear turning you into a doll - by removing your eyes, your legs, your vocal chords and so on, all after Aoba was experimented on by Toue for the longest time. THIS IS NOT VERY NICE, GAME, WHAT THE FUCK.
Noiz, who is my favourite character because his route packs a lot of my favourite tropes has two bad endings and one ending that is supposed to be good but just totally weird and out of place.
Noiz, a famous hacker, has no haptic perception (which means that during sex he asks Aoba to bite his dick and... yeah... I sat there laughing and in hysterics for like half an hour) so the reason for him playing Rhyme is that he tries to gain feelings directly in his mind from that. In the good ending which is rather action packed and one of the best story-wise I think, Aoba breaks the mind control Toue put on Noiz and rescues him and then they have sex in the hospital. Yay! No really, yay, they have sex one time before that which is really hot and steamy (and not as weird as Clear’s sex scene) because they both are just curious, tired and full of tension so it’s fine. By me. Yeah okay, I just like Noiz and the age kink and the trust issues and the weird “I hit you because I care”-dynamics they have going on.
Sadly, the game doesn’t end with the hospital sex scene but has Noiz return with the worst makeover ever and then he whisks you away to Deutschland. No, really, Deutschland. BECAUSE WHY NOT OBVIOUSLY. Noiz is apparently the son of an obscenely rich German family who has nothing better to do than to welcome his punk ass back into the business. Yeah, whatever.
The bad ending has you either play a pokemon battle with the police officer Akushima for all eternity (in charming 8-bit fashion), stuck in a false reality created by Noiz’ broken mind or you end up in another false reality where every time you and Noiz touch your skin bursts open and starts to bleed (which in Noiz’ mind doesn’t mean you can’t have really painful sex, lalalala, wtf).
Mink. Oh God. This is creepy from start to finish and the worst part is that I am kinda starting to like Mink because of his character design and my age kink and… yeah no, not going there. Mink is the bad boy of the game, has a tragic past cranked up to Mach 5 as well as the unfortunate role of aggressive asshole that needs to be healed by the power of your love.
We start with a gang rape scene, followed by more scenes where he beats Aoba up, forces himself on him repeatedly and instead of telling him to fuck of and go die in a fire Aoba starts to chase after Mink in the good ending, travelling the world until he has found him.
The bad ending is slightly less disturbing. There, Mink just rips your head off and is done with you.
(There is the bonus ending with Ren, the dog, but I’d advise you to just read this summary because this tumblr user hits the nail on the head. Also, I am tired and this entry is way too long as it is already.)
Where to get this
If you want to give the game a try, here is a site where you can download the English version. (Follow the instructions the little fox is giving you) It is fan translated and they did one hell of a great job with that. Some sentences still had me cackle madly at my screen but that’s more due to the game’s general approach to Aoba discovering he is attracted to guys as well. (“Because we both have dicks… it can’t be that bad, right…?”)
All in all, it is a very enjoyable visual novel, the sex scenes are nice and hot, the designs are beautiful (there is this little 8-bit-game-in-the-game and it’s the most charming thing ever) and the main plot is intriguing - if you can get to it, that is.
Bonus
There is an anime based on the game. The animation is not top-notch and so far it’s strictly clinging to the game’s storyline but I do enjoy it and I am happy to see that the voice actors from the game all reprised their roles (the voice acting is absolutely mind blowing, really, I love it).
There was a controversy surrounding the third episode though and since it just makes for the funniest shit ever, here is my rundown of it for you.
The studio aired a beta-version of that episode (they said it was unintentionally and I am inclined to believe them) which meant horrifyingly bad animation everywhere. Granted, it was never highest quality to begin with but just look at this.
Man, they were trying our patience with that one. At least we got some funny things out of it though and the studio did re-release the episode with better quality so not all hope was lost.
Also, the anime gave us this scene (which was not shown in the game), so who am I to disagree.
gif taken from here
Cosplay-entry will follow ...soonish.
„Nani the fuck…“
“Dramatical murder” is a Japanese “Boys Love” visual novel aka a game where you stay glued in front of your laptop for like five hours, clicking two buttons max and reading the text rolls on screen until you get to choose which love interest you want to pursue. To call this a game might be a stretch, it’s more like a moving comic with voice overs and awkward sex sounds. Great fun, I tell ya.
Visual novels are a sub-genre of dating sim (those usually have more gameplay and some more choices) and that usually is sooooo not my genre because the stories tend to be rather flat and not very compelling since they are bound to the genre’s expectation of heavily focusing on the romance which often ends in rushing through the relationship’s development or cramming sex scenes everywhere .
Dmmd is guilty of the last one (decaying robot sex, we will get to that), but the plot is surprisingly intense and thrilling. It takes place on the fictional island of Midorijima which was privatized by the Toue Cooperation some years prior to the start of the game. A large part of the island was converted into the gigantic luxurious amusement park “Platinum Jail” and the island’s original inhabitants were forced to relocate to the Old Residential District.
Street gangs are fighting for dominance by battling in the popular game “Rip” (or Riebstiz. Whatever the translator smoked it must have been good), marking their territory by graffiti tags.
Like this. “Scratch” is a group made up entirely out of convicts so naturally they have a pastel rainbow tag.
There is also another cyber game called “Rhyme”. Fights controlled and supervised by the mysterious Usui break out all over the city and attract a great number of Rib players who sometimes disappear right after playing Rhyme and resurface as weird apathetic zombies. It’s a rather unsettling environment and people are getting nervous.
People who are not Aoba Seragaki, our main character, that is. He is totally chill with all the gang violence going on, probably because two of his best friends - Koujaku and Mizuki - are the leaders of the most popular Rib teams (Benishigure and Dry Juice. The names are hilarious.)
Koujaku. He is a hairdresser and how anyone takes him seriously is beyond me.
Mizuki. He is a tattoo artist and practically the only guy you can’t fuck in this game.
For shame, really, I am so digging the sad clown look.
Aoba doesn’t partake in any of the popular games. He played a lot of Rhyme when he was younger and ended up in a hospital for quite some time so he now prefers to live a quiet life with his grandma while working part-time at a junk shop (called Heibon, which means mediocrity. This game is killing me).
Tae-san and yes she has a rainbow flag in her living room because she sees right through Aoba’s bullshit.
He gets dragged into dangerous happenings though when Mizuki gets kidnapped by the mysterious group of “Morphine” who are the ones responsible for people turning into lifeless zombies left and right. They also kidnapped Aoba’s grandma and since Aoba has the worst timing ever, he finds out about that just as he gets himself a stalker with a gasmask who calls him “Master” all the time, gets attacked by a Drive-by Rhyme player called Noiz, and THEN Aoba himself gets kidnapped by Mink and his band of rogues.
Mink. Don’t let the fabulous cockatoo fool you, this guy is evil incarnate.
Clear. Don’t let the gas mask fool you, he is the cutest thing walking this earth.
Noiz. Believe it or not, but this is what you get when you mix 50 Shades of Bunnies with Germany. No, really.
What the hell, Aoba, your life is a catastrophe.
Anyway, since everyone is in love with Aoba, Mink lets him go and even promises to help rescue Tae, who is still held captive by Mizuki.
While trying to free Tae, Aoba discovers a hidden ability called Scrap (basically mind control), that takes over his body whenever he is danger - which usually results in a much bigger mess, dead or hurt people everywhere and monstrous headaches for Aoba (and him looking really sexy).
Scrap-Aoba aka Sly Blue. Not too fond of shirts but he will crush your brain for free.
They get Tae back and grandma proceeds to spill some truth tea as to what the hell is going on: Aoba is a lab experiment cooked up by Toue who were trying to create the ultimate mind control weapon. Tae was one of the researches and when she finally found out that they were experimenting on babies, she took Aoba with her and went into hiding, raising him as her own grand-son. She then explains that Platinum Jail is merely a huge testing ground for all sorts of mind control devices and she fears that Morphine rising has to do with Toue expanding his evil schemes.
This is the point where - influenced by your previous choices - you get paired up with one of the love interests and enter Platinum Jail.
And this is also the part where it started to get really, really weird, albeit only for me.
Pinku played the game before me, using all routes so she had already unlocked the bonus route and on my first run through I ended up on that one (which includes fucking the dog albeit in its human form, yes) - which is why I got ALL the information about the main storyline and nothing about the characters (apart from Aoba). In turn, when trying out other routes like for example with Noiz and Koujaku, you are much more focused on their personal tragic back stories and don’t get to see so much about the whole Toue-is-trying-to-manipulate-everyone-business.
This of course increases the replay value greatly (you can skip stuff, so you won’t have to suffer through the background story explanation more than once) but it also takes away from the urgency of the main plot since you waste so much time in Platinum Jail with exploring the different feels of everyone and the dog that I was sometimes sitting there and screaming at Aoba to get his head in the game and save the WHOLE DAMN ISLAND and not wander off into rave parties and other stuff (yes, that happens).
I am doing these games all wrong, I am sure, but I found the main plot very engaging so I couldn’t stand wasting so much time when I tried Koujaku on my second play through. Nonetheless, all the characters are very well designed and even though the balance between their stories and the main plot isn’t always kept, they are still interesting, cute, funny, heartbreaking - AND DOWNRIGHT DISTURBING IF YOU END UP ON A BAD ENDING. Jesus fucking Christ, really, some of those are not only violent but downright sadistic and crazy.
I am now going to talk about the endings (I haven’t played all of them yet, but that’s what the internet is for) so if you’d rather play the game yourself, you should skip to the next section.
As I said, everyone has a good and a bad ending (sometimes two bad endings because yeaaah let’s traumatize the people even more) and sometimes you can fuck up on the last two questions (THANKS NOIZ) and it will be totally devastating. I took to playing with a walkthrough after my first run in with basically Satan himself.
Koujaku is Aoba’s childhood friend, a ladies’ man and the epitome of no homo when you decide to follow his route.
His good ending involves cute adorable sex in Aoba’s room, awkward hand holding, mumbled confessions of love and “I always thought about you when I was going through the most painful experience of my life, you helped me through that, NO HOMO.” It’s heart-warming, hot and all in good fun but as with most good endings in this game, there is a sour aftertaste connected to the dramatic showdown in Platinum Jail, so not everything is sunshine and rainbows no matter how cute and adorable they all are. I personally liked this bitter fluffy ending.
The bad ending has to do with Aoba’s scrap abilities (they all do) - he breaks into Koujaku’s mind, trying to free him and when you fail, you end up turning Koujaku into a ruthless, red-haired monster with sharp teeth ready to go on a killing spree. He gets confined by Toue’s men and Aoba, consumed by guilt, is taken over by his Scrap-personality. Toue mind-controls his way through the whole island and you end up having weird demon sex with demon!Koujaku. And this is one of the nicest bad endings. Really.
Clear’s good ending has him sacrificing himself for Aoba’s sake, destroying himself in the process (he is a robot, did I mention that) and his dying wish is to have sex with Aoba (he also has a dick, did I mention that) - cue decaying robot sex with tears. Yeah. What the fuck, game. Anyway, after that, Clear completely falls apart and Aoba tries his best to repair him which sadly doesn’t work. Until Grandma steps in, and asks one of her former researcher friends to help rebuild her grandson’s sex-bot robot-boyfriend and Aoba and Clear are reunited after a year. (This ending is wonderful and sweet, but the sex scene feels totally out of place, really, that was SO shoehorned in, I felt bad.)
The bad ending has Clear turning you into a doll - by removing your eyes, your legs, your vocal chords and so on, all after Aoba was experimented on by Toue for the longest time. THIS IS NOT VERY NICE, GAME, WHAT THE FUCK.
Noiz, who is my favourite character because his route packs a lot of my favourite tropes has two bad endings and one ending that is supposed to be good but just totally weird and out of place.
Noiz, a famous hacker, has no haptic perception (which means that during sex he asks Aoba to bite his dick and... yeah... I sat there laughing and in hysterics for like half an hour) so the reason for him playing Rhyme is that he tries to gain feelings directly in his mind from that. In the good ending which is rather action packed and one of the best story-wise I think, Aoba breaks the mind control Toue put on Noiz and rescues him and then they have sex in the hospital. Yay! No really, yay, they have sex one time before that which is really hot and steamy (and not as weird as Clear’s sex scene) because they both are just curious, tired and full of tension so it’s fine. By me. Yeah okay, I just like Noiz and the age kink and the trust issues and the weird “I hit you because I care”-dynamics they have going on.
Sadly, the game doesn’t end with the hospital sex scene but has Noiz return with the worst makeover ever and then he whisks you away to Deutschland. No, really, Deutschland. BECAUSE WHY NOT OBVIOUSLY. Noiz is apparently the son of an obscenely rich German family who has nothing better to do than to welcome his punk ass back into the business. Yeah, whatever.
The bad ending has you either play a pokemon battle with the police officer Akushima for all eternity (in charming 8-bit fashion), stuck in a false reality created by Noiz’ broken mind or you end up in another false reality where every time you and Noiz touch your skin bursts open and starts to bleed (which in Noiz’ mind doesn’t mean you can’t have really painful sex, lalalala, wtf).
Mink. Oh God. This is creepy from start to finish and the worst part is that I am kinda starting to like Mink because of his character design and my age kink and… yeah no, not going there. Mink is the bad boy of the game, has a tragic past cranked up to Mach 5 as well as the unfortunate role of aggressive asshole that needs to be healed by the power of your love.
We start with a gang rape scene, followed by more scenes where he beats Aoba up, forces himself on him repeatedly and instead of telling him to fuck of and go die in a fire Aoba starts to chase after Mink in the good ending, travelling the world until he has found him.
The bad ending is slightly less disturbing. There, Mink just rips your head off and is done with you.
(There is the bonus ending with Ren, the dog, but I’d advise you to just read this summary because this tumblr user hits the nail on the head. Also, I am tired and this entry is way too long as it is already.)
Where to get this
If you want to give the game a try, here is a site where you can download the English version. (Follow the instructions the little fox is giving you) It is fan translated and they did one hell of a great job with that. Some sentences still had me cackle madly at my screen but that’s more due to the game’s general approach to Aoba discovering he is attracted to guys as well. (“Because we both have dicks… it can’t be that bad, right…?”)
All in all, it is a very enjoyable visual novel, the sex scenes are nice and hot, the designs are beautiful (there is this little 8-bit-game-in-the-game and it’s the most charming thing ever) and the main plot is intriguing - if you can get to it, that is.
Bonus
There is an anime based on the game. The animation is not top-notch and so far it’s strictly clinging to the game’s storyline but I do enjoy it and I am happy to see that the voice actors from the game all reprised their roles (the voice acting is absolutely mind blowing, really, I love it).
There was a controversy surrounding the third episode though and since it just makes for the funniest shit ever, here is my rundown of it for you.
The studio aired a beta-version of that episode (they said it was unintentionally and I am inclined to believe them) which meant horrifyingly bad animation everywhere. Granted, it was never highest quality to begin with but just look at this.
Man, they were trying our patience with that one. At least we got some funny things out of it though and the studio did re-release the episode with better quality so not all hope was lost.
Also, the anime gave us this scene (which was not shown in the game), so who am I to disagree.
gif taken from here
Cosplay-entry will follow ...soonish.