VN Talk: Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly - Part 6: Monshiro

Continuing my examination of character arcs in Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly, I saved Monshiro for later because of his unique position as a "secret" route. He's not even featured by name in the opening credits. While everyone else (supposedly) arrives at roughly the same time, Monshiro is clearly an inhabitant of the manor world who has been around a while and knows how it works. In fact, he makes his entrance by shooting one of the monsters that's about to attack Beniyuri and Hikage before leaving without talking to them.

Since he wears a fox mask and has long white hair, Monshiro presents as otherworldly and, more importantly, as an outsider to their group. Of course, Monshiro is not actually an outsider at all, since he's Yamato's brother Kazuya.

I've already discussed the twist involving him and Hikage, but what I hadn't talked about was Monshiro's side of the story.

Unlike Kagiha, Monshiro didn't like working for Hikage because of the cruelty of his games and decided to withdraw. Over the years spent in the manor world he gradually began to forget everything about his past in the real world except for one thing: he had a ribbon he wanted to give back. Even though he no longer remembered Beniyuri, and apparently even lost his face because he was so far gone, he refused to pass on without giving the ribbon back.

Considering he risked his life to go back for the ribbon (and fell into a coma because of it) it's not surprising that his soul would have fixated on it while trapped in-between.

Monshiro's side of the story fills in a lot of gaps in the main plot. Nothing critical, but smaller things like how he came to know where Yamato was hiding (it turns out Yamato's sanctuary was Monshiro's up until monster-Yamato crashed it) as well as how he and Kagiha ended up staying as long as they did in the manor world without passing on or being turned into monsters.

He also is a nice contrast to Kagiha's desire to return to life. Monshiro actually believes he's dead, having no evidence to the contrary (which clears up his confusion about whether or not it's okay for him to go back in the main story). He's only waiting in purgatory to return the ribbon and has no clue that his body is still waiting for him or that he's physically in a coma.

Unlike Kagiha, Monshiro is very much in favor of following the proper order of things and would have departed already if not for the ribbon. He even confronts Kagiha late in the game over Kagiha's willingness to do whatever it takes, no matter how unsavory, in order to return to life; an attitude he finds irreconcilable with the Kagiha he once knew.

In fact, it's their confrontation that blows the cover off the mastermind, when the rest of the group finds Monshiro pointing his gun at Kagiha.

Monshiro gets his memory back at the same time Karasuba and Beniyuri do, when they look at the childhood photo of summer camp, but he chooses not to reveal himself even though he's aware that Hikage is masquerading as him, which is puzzling at first, until you realize that he's been largely alone for ten years. Revealing the truth would have broken the group's friendship dynamic, so even though Monshiro knew the game would eventually end, he didn't want to ruin it before its conclusion, since that would leave him alone again.

(Though as I'm writing this, I'm not sure that quite meshes, since he gives the ribbon back to Beniyuri the first night they actually talk, which means that he should be prepared to pass on. Or at least prepared to pass on after seeing his friends safely off.)

Monshiro behaves rather strangely, being overly cuddly with Beniyuri, though it's played off as not understanding personal boundaries more than intentional harassment (like Karasuba), and that not a bad take on it considering that he was likely six when he landed in a coma and has been starved for human contact for years. At one point he ends up sleeping in the same bed as Beniyuri and it's played completely chaste. Monshiro says he's cold and doesn't want to be alone.

Unlike the other living characters, Monshiro doesn't really have a character arc where he changes because of his time in the manor world. This partially because he didn't have to deal with years of regret following the accident where he nearly drowned, but also because he's the one character who tends to make good choices both in life and in-between.

While that's commendable in a cast where nearly everyone's keeping skeletons in the closet whether they know it or not, it also makes his personal story a little flat. It's well-executed, I felt for him at the appropriate times, but I think that's why his endings felt the weakest. Because he's never been wrong, he doesn't have a chance to grow.

His route is also unusual in that it doesn't follow the main storyline even though he's a living character. The branch to both his endings splits if Beniyuri chooses not to run to Kagiha's rescue at first opportunity. This allows Monshiro to attempt confronting Hikage alone, which works out poorly for him.

It's only lightly touched on elsewhere, but everyone is wearing accessories of some kind that absorb the black butterflies that emerge on killing a monster. What the game doesn't really bother with until this route is that the accessories have a limited capacity and when filled, the person succumbs and is pulled into the Abyss, which is basically the ultimate destination of those who've been turned into monsters. It's pretty much the bad place for a soul to go if they do not properly pass on.

Though Hikage pushes Monshiro to the brink, it's Kagiha who tips him over the edge, and it's not entirely clear whether Kagiha does it maliciously or not. Regardless of why Kagiha does it, a massive hole to the Abyss opens up in the floor of the manor's foyer, which does not go unnoticed by Beniyuri who decides she's going inside to save Monshiro no matter the cost. In what must be one of the most heartbreaking scenes for Kagiha, she gives him her hairclip with the final shard (the one everyone needs to go home) and tells him to use it to go back with the others before diving in. (She doesn't know Kagiha's dead at this point.)

Finding Monshiro is a surreal experience punctuated with flashbacks of his time in-between, and once she locates him in nothingness, Beniyuri has to nudge him into remembering her before they try to leave.

All of this is managed through her mother's ribbon, the one she used to bandage his leg as a child and the one he kept all his years in the manor world to return to her. It feels like a dropped plot thread, but at some point the ribbon had become a talisman to ward off harm. We see this in the main story when Beniyuri becomes corrupted after Kagiha takes the ribbon from her, but there's never any explanation for how the ribbon became able to do that.

Now, somehow, the ribbon is able to serve first as a divining rod to locate Monshiro, and then a wayfinder to point the way out. At the end, it's literally pulling them to safety and the breaking point for the Monshiro vs Kazuya endings is whether or not Beniyuri tries to bring Monshiro up with her even if it means the ribbon could break.

His route is pretty touching, but his endings are substantially less happy either way. In the Monshiro ending he sinks back down and Beniyuri is the only character who wakes up, meaning that Yamato and Karasuba never made it out even though she left her hairpin for them.

The Kazuya ending is a little better since Monshiro wakes up from his coma, but Yamato and Karasuba are still unconscious, and no matter how hopeful Beniyuri frames it, they're probably not coming back. It would have been nice if he had a happier Kazuya ending, given that he's one of the living characters, but I think that narratively it would have been rough since all the good Monshiro scenes are on his own route, since by necessity his identity has to be hidden most of the game.

He's a pretty charming character though, and doesn't come with any of the badass attitude you'd expect from his gunslinging introduction. Instead Monshiro is soft-spoken (in fact he usually sounds like he's having trouble staying awake) and not terribly good at interacting with people, though he often tries with entertaining results.

In the alternate Happy Ending where the original accident never happened, we get to see he's going to the same school as his brother and he's still quirky about getting too close to Beniyuri, though that ending points out how ridiculous it is (much like it does Kagiha's childhood marriage promise). In fact, the Happy Ending plays it off as Monshiro doing the innocent bit as an excuse to get physically close to her, only for Yamato and Karasuba to call him out on it.

It's nice getting a chance to see what he would have been like as a teenager without having been stuck in the manor world (especially since he's pretty worn down in the Best Ending) as he comes off as a relatively normal person, even with the lack of personal space shenanigans.