VN Talk: Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly - Part 4: Yamato

Back when I thought Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly was a more conventional otome, where there would be a central branching point based off a series of choices I made, I decided that I was going to choose Yamato first. It wasn't because he immediately jumped out at me as a character, but because he didn't do anything to push me away from him (unlike Hikage's sexism and Karasuba's bizarre mix of cynicism and aggressive flirtation).

Though Yamato and Hikage are both brusque and prone to bouts of male ego (one clue that Hikage is not the polar opposite personality Yamato's brother is supposed to be), Yamato's more concerned about what he sees as his own personal integrity than putting other people down, and given his backstory, it's not surprising to see why. He wants to become the better person that he wasn't when he was a kid.

After having finished the game and all its endings, I'd also have to say that I'd be fine if my first playthrough had somehow taken me to Yamato's Takuya ending (Takuya being his name in the real world). It's not possible to unlock on first playthrough, but it feels like a very natural epilogue that isn't necessarily incompatible with the best ending.

Like Beniyuri, Yamato is also a person trapped in the past and unable to let go. And it's for this reason I'm much more sympathetic towards him than Karasuba. Everyone grieves at a different rate, and both he and Beniyuri are still suffering from the decisions they made the day Kagiha died and Monshiro fell into a coma. He and Beniyuri get each other, and we see this in the extended version of the prologue.

If the bus accident that sent the two of them and Karasuba into the manor world had never happened, I think Yamato and Beniyuri would have become close. (I can't say the same for Karasuba.)

Both of them had made regrettable decisions as children that changed who they became as teenagers. Yamato's was especially petty, but also completely in line with the behavior of a jealous six-year-old.

Like all of the boys in their group of childhood friends, he liked Beniyuri, but Yamato has never been a good communicator. As a kid he was brash and bullying, always wanting to do things his way and getting him to compromise would only happen after an argument. So even though he liked Beniyuri, whenever they spoke with each other it had the tendency to turn into a fight.

That was not the case with his twin brother, Monshiro. When they were at summer camp, Beniyuri used the ribbon her deceased mother had given her to bandage Monshiro's leg. Unhappy that she used something so important to her on his brother, Yamato loosened the ribbon later, on the pretense of fixing the bandage. He hoped Monshiro would lose it and she'd get mad at him, which is a jerk thing to do but at six completely believable.

What he hadn't counted on was the heavy rain when they were exploring the manor ruins. If the ribbon had remained securely tied everyone would have made it to safety, but because Monshiro realized the ribbon had fallen off, he went back to the ruins to get it. This caused the delay that separated Beniyuri, Kagiha, and Monshiro from the others and eventually resulted in Monshiro's coma and Kagiha's death.

We learn that as a kid Yamato loved soccer and wanted to eventually become a pro, and this is the memory that Beniyuri kept with her even after his family moved away in the wake of the accident. When they reunite as teenagers, she learns that Yamato is no longer playing. In fact, his life now revolves around his comatose brother. Since he's heard evidence that speaking to a comatose person helps maintain their awareness, he visits Monshiro everyday after school in hopes of someday coaxing him back to the waking world. This means he's not in any clubs at school and soccer is a long lost pastime.

In fact one of the touching moments in the alternate Happy Ending, where no one died or ended up in a coma, is seeing that Yamato is in fabulous athletic shape and still playing soccer.

In the main storyline, teenage Yamato is still not great at communicating, and he's still impulsive, but he's also much more compassionate.

Though he loses all his memories upon entering the manor world like the rest of the cast, the one thing that remains is that he has an incredible drive to get out and he doesn't know why. It's only later once he starts getting fragments of his memory back that he remembers it's because he's afraid his brother will fade away without him.

Interestingly the first time Beniyuri has a bad reaction to the idea of her memories returning is when Yamato reaches for her after telling her about his comatose brother, and it's likely because that moment is similar to one they had walking home together after visiting Monshiro and the two of them realized they were both dealing with losing their loved ones.

Yamato's place in the manor world is mostly removed from the group, which is narratively necessary since he would have blown Hikage's cover much earlier once people started getting memories back. In fact, Hikage only sends Beniyuri the childhood photo of Yamato and his brother right before Yamato is overwhelmed by despair and transformed into one of the manor's monsters, causing him to panic and run away.

This allows the player to start piecing together previous relationships without Yamato confronting Hikage, but the result is that Yamato spends about a third to half the game sitting in a greenhouse that he uses as his own hideout while staying away from the others. The game's not specific about exactly when he gets his memory back, so it's not clear if he tells Beniyuri not to tell the others about his survival because he's figured out Hikage is an imposter, or because he just doesn't want everyone to see him in his monstrous state, but if it's the former I would have liked him to have dropped a hint not to trust Hikage. I don't like the idea that Yamato would have left Beniyuri in danger knowing that there was something very wrong about the group's leader.

Yamato's manor ending is pretty bleak, with him beating himself up over losing his brother and Beniyuri choosing to share in that loss until they are both consumed with despair, but his Takuya ending is a much better showcase of his growth.

This one follows the main story path, but instead of going to the "best" ending where the group takes a memorial trip a year later to say farewell to Kagiha, we're treated to an earlier point in time after Beniyuri has woken from her own coma and is ready to go to school again. She meets Yamato, who has decided to fess up about what he did with the ribbon to his brother and the two of them visit Monshiro who is still in the hospital (not being strong enough to leave given his ten year coma).

Yamato and Monshiro are able to reconcile (and Monshiro admits he was being a bit of a jerk too because he knew showing off the ribbon would make Yamato mad) and on the way home Yamato and Beniyuri decide to begin dating. And I liked it, because the two of them have constantly been on the same page over their past and now, their readiness to move forward.