VN Talk: Bad Apple Wars - Part 4: Shikishima

Even after playing a couple other routes in Bad Apple Wars, I didn't know what to expect with Shikishima as he's an odd duck who marches to the beat of his own drum. Specifically, rather than calling himself a good apple or bad apple, he calls himself an "odd apple." He breaks rules because they prevent him from doing what he wants and the artist in him doesn't want to lose his individuality to become a good apple. On the other hand he's not invested in chasing after forbidden apples to escape NEVAEH and expresses skepticism that it's even possible to break the unbreakable rules (and least until they get broken).

Being from the Taisho period (1912-1926), Shikishima is chronologically the eldest of all known students, and he is amused by the others' reaction to his age, since from his perspective everyone else is coming from an unknown future. I don't know if his attitude is supposed to be representative of his time, but Shikihima comes across as scholarly and whimsical (though despite his poetic sense of speech, he's actually terrible at studying).

In most routes Shikishima floats in and out of the story, enough to confirm that he's there, and never hanging around when a commitment is needed, as suiting his unaligned nature. He might break rules like a bad apple and sleep in the dorm like a good apple, but he's really just doing his own thing.

So I wondered how Rinka would even get involved with him.

And the answer is that she initially doesn't know how she's going to fit in, so she keeps bumping into Shikishima while trying to find her own space, and her persistence in trying to understand his artwork (which always looks like a slab of black paint) intrigues him enough that he starts hanging around the Bad Apples more, even participating in the Reaper Game and the exam, which he avoids entirely on other routes.

Eventually we learn that the reason behind his art always being black is due to a limit. Outwardly he isn't bothered by it much, because even in life nobody really understood his work, but he came from a wealthy family so he was allowed to be an eccentric who could hole up all day in a studio painting without worrying about material needs. Despite his way with words, Shikishima isn't very good at expressing himself, and feels he does it best with his art, which again, nobody really understands.

When he was dying from illness (implied to be tuberculosis), he thought he was all right with having never reached anyone, because at least he'd spent his life painting as he wanted to, but in actuality he was very lonely and died in despair that no one could ever understand him.

Unlike most of the characters, Shikishima doesn't have a life to go back to. He rightly concludes that returning to life would put him back in a body wracked by disease from which he would shortly die again. But after spending time with Rinka he decides he is going to join the hunt for the forbidden apple so he can finish his last painting and leave it for Rinka to find in the future.

Though I wasn't overly fond of the Shikishima romance, his ending was a real tearjerker about loneliness, loss, and accepting that pain is part of living. The Bad Apples crash the graduation ceremony as in other routes, and while there Shikishima presents a painting to everyone, which is as inscrutable as ever, but he uses it as a metaphor to show what the school has taken from them. He talks about his own problems and asks the graduating good apples to think about what they're losing (and I love that Yoh regains enough of himself to call Shikishima out on the fact being expelled will not reunite him with Sanzu).

When the rotten apple appears with its speech about despair, it's Shikishima who talks it down this time, expressing his willingness to go back to life, even if it means dying again shortly thereafter. And then unlike other routes, when everyone gets their own forbidden apple, Rinka isn't in a rush to leave, so we get an extended farewell to many of the secondary and tertiary characters.

Shikishima's route gave a lot of space for the supporting cast so farewells from characters like Enishi and even Ouji (who doesn't get a portrait and barely shows up on some routes) still have a bit of heft to them. We see almost everyone leave after eating their apple (except notably Alma, who walks away without eating) and then Shikishima and Rinka say their farewells to each other before going their separate ways.

I was glad Shikishima wasn't going the special graduation route that Higa did, and that both he and Rinka accepted that their reunification would take place through the art he promised to leave her. And eventually, once she's recovered from her accident, she hears about an art exhibition by a talented Taisho artist who died young. She goes to see the art and of course she discovers Shikishima's last painting before he died at age 17, which moves her to tears.

If that had been the only component of the ending, I would have been fine, but there's a little more to it. I guess since this is an otome they can't entirely leave it off at a bittersweet ending, so she meets Haruhiko Shikishima, the great grandnephew of Natsuku Shikishima, the original artist. Haruhiko was the one who discovered the painting in his family's storage and decided that it needed to be put on display, but he's clearly an adult (young, but definitely not in school). He doesn't quite look like the older Shikishima and isn't an artist himself, though they share some of the same mannerisms.

Essentially he's the replacement goldfish so Rinka can have a romance at the end. But it comes off as creepy because 1) she takes a part-time job at the gallery in the epilogue, which likely makes him her boss, and 2) she's still a first year high school student when Haruhiko confesses that he loves her. He recognizes that she seems to confuse him with Natsuku a lot, and it makes him a bit jealous, but he doesn't really care and Rinka (despite the fact she knows she's constantly confusing him with his great granduncle) seems okay with it too since she says she loves him back. And they kiss.

Of course, the implication is that he's Natsuku reborn, but it's not presented as strongly as in Higa's ending, where we knew he was going to be reborn and the rebirth tied up one of his regrets in his previous life. Haruhiko's appearance is just fanservice.

So my playthrough of Shikishima's storyline felt like a lot of "well this guy is rather eccentric," followed by "I can't stop crying," and ended with "this is gross."

We have two routes left and I'm hoping Alma doesn't pull a reincarnation romance, though he's supposed to have been born fifteen years after Higa, making him a child of the late 60s, early 70s depending on when Higa was born. I don't know Satoru's time period yet, but I guess I'll find out soon, because he's up next!