VN Talk: Rose in the Embers - Part 4: Misao

I didn't expect to like Misao when I first started looking at Rose in the Embers. He's still not my preferred type of love interest, but he's not as bad as I thought and his route was entertaining. If anything, his route is a nice example of why it's worth seeing people for who they are rather than who they appear to be.

Misao is known as an ukiyo-e artist who does erotic paintings of partially clothed women, and given his line of work, the assumption is that he's a wanton hedonist. After all, he lives at a lavish inn with dubious moral standards and has various women going in and out of his room in the later hours of the day. The main character's first impression upon accidentally catching a glimpse of a half-naked woman inside is that she stumbled upon a couple in the middle of a private moment, and Misao does nothing to disabuse her of this notion.

I probably would not have bought his route if not for the fact that there was a special running that let players view half of it for free. Since he was the one Rose in the Embers love interest I thought I might skip, I took advantage of it, and was pleasantly surprised.

Unlike the other routes, the MC is not actually sent to live with him as a new maid since Misao doesn't live in a proper home, but instead the inn that had contracted her. Kyosuke dumps her on him simply because Misao is the first one to give her a kind word after Kyosuke bought her and couldn't figure out what to do with her. Uncomfortable with being the subject of a game of hot potato, where none of the guys want her, she promises to do anything to repay Misao for taking her in, which of course leads to a realization that after what she just went through (nearly being whored out by the proprietor), "anything" might not have been the word to use.

Misao doesn't help by trying to undress her once they get to his room and it's not clear that he's doing this because he's considering using her as a model (he definitely could have been more blunt about it, rather than asking if she can inspire him), though that's what the MC eventually realizes some time later (after slapping him and running away). Despite the slap, he arranges for her to keep her job at the inn and the proprietor agrees to no longer have her serve customers who might want her for sex.

This allows Misao and the MC to keep bumping into each other since he lives at the inn and she works there. At first it's not a particularly comfortable existence for her because she doesn't fit in with the other maids. Kyosuke got the handsy customer permanently banned from the inn for her, and she got to go inside Misao's rooms even though no one else is allowed in. Because the maids are afraid she has powerful friends, she ends up ostracized. (Oddly, the fact she's exempt from offering sex to customers never comes up, which I think would be the biggest reason for her coworkers to dislike her.)

But in Misao's first public act of kindness towards her (as opposed to talking to the proprietor, which he did off screen), he invites her to join him where he's reading fortunes for the other maids. The others are reluctant to have her join, but when he asks her what sort of man she'd like to marry and if she's been in love before, she gets really flustered and embarrassed, and it becomes pretty clear to all the other maids that she's not anyone to be afraid of. In fact, she's pretty naive and looks for a traditional caring and kind gentleman as the kind of man she'd like to marry, if she had any choice in the matter.

This leads to a pretty neat contrast that runs through the route between what a person thinks they want and what they actually want.

Mr. Mogi is introduced as a clothier of some means. He's kind enough to give a maid like her a ride when she's out in the city on an errand, thanks her for her time when looking for her boss at the inn, and tries to look out for her because he knows she works at an inn with a certain reputation for its treatment of maids.

Unsurprisingly, this brings him into conflict with Misao, who lives at an inn where such things goes on, and paints erotic art for a living. Because it's erotic, it cannot be proper, and thus Misao's character must be suspect.

And this is a point of view the MC herself has early on in the story, but as she keeps bumping into Misao, she sees that he's very serious about his work and it is work. His usual playful behavior goes away and he becomes hyper focused on his painting. He wants to keep his relationship with his current model professional, even when she doesn't, and after spending enough time observing the two, the MC finds that she's able to appreciate his work, to the point she's horrified when the model tries seducing Misao and ends up stepping on one of his paintings in the process.

Though Misao is disappointed to lose a good model when she leaves in a huff, this leads to his request for the MC to become his new one. And it is definitely a request, since he leaves it up to her whether or not she wants to comply, and at this point in the story (halfway through) we know him well enough that we can expect he won't be sleazy about it. He might live the carefree artist life and be suspected of wild debauchery behind closed doors, but at the heart of it, he's a creative type who wants the space to do his work. It's just that work happens to involve partially dressed women.

We learn from Kyosuke (since Misao himself would never talk about it) that Misao is actually from a wealthy family, but cut ties with them and lives at the inn because it allows him to pack up and leave whenever he feels like it. Misao doesn't want to be tied down and in return, does not expect to tie down anyone else. This is important, because of Mr. Mogi's proposition in the final third of the route.

Mogi comes with an offer to give the MC a job at his shop so she'll no longer have to work at such an awful inn, but she initially doesn't want to leave Misao, who is still in the process of painting her. Miseo doesn't voice any objection to her going, but rather than reading this as a positive, that he is leaving her free to make her own choice, she takes it as he cares nothing for her. Which to be fair, is not a hard reading to come at. Though he teases her, and has looked after her multiple times, by this point she's well aware that it's not in Misao's nature to form attachments to other people.

So she leaves, taking the painting of herself with her, but even though she has food, lodging, and a new boss who worries about her welfare, it's clear that life at Mogi's shop isn't where she feels comfortable. And Mogi himself turns out to be prejudiced in his kindness. Upon discovering the painting, his first assumption is that the MC was coerced into it, and then his second is that she's been driven mad so the only way to make her sane again is to burn it.

Fortunately Misao shows up before that happens for the finale, and the juxtaposition of Misao's disheveled look and Mogi's prim appearance serves as an excellent contrast between the two men. One works in a disreputable trade (depending on whether one approves of the subject matter), and the other owns a high class business. One does not always say what he means and the other has trouble keeping his thoughts to himself. Each has his own idea of kindness and how to treat women.

But it's clear that Mogu is not the one for the MC. Meta reasons aside, he just doesn't understand her and isn't sympathetic to the fact she could have been a willing participant and that nothing untowards could have happened.

The finale is really just hoisting Mogu up by his own petard as his business, though upscale and classy, is failing, and Misao basically tells him how he could run it better, with an added dose of Kyosuke waltzing in and offering to invest under the condition that Misao does the promotional art for the place. Mogu doesn't like it, but he does need the money, so he agrees, leaving Misao to paint the MC again (this time fully clothed so as to advertise the shop's wares).

All of this is a roundabout way to have Misao show up again after the shop's fortunes have turned around, and it's at an early hour he'd never otherwise be up at, prompting his friends to make leading comments about what got him up so early. Having held up his end of the bargain with Mogu, Misao claims the MC as his prize and they go back to the inn together. (Is she going to work there again?!)

This happens on both the Favored Bold and Fortune's Fools endings, and the two are very similar, with none of the class difference discussion in the previous routes I played (possibly because Misao threw away his trappings of class). Really, the only difference I can remember off-hand is that the Fortune's Fools ending makes a callback to the fortune telling scene when Misao told the MC that she would fall in love with a lazy man who sleeps in the afternoon, which is an apt enough description of him.

Misao's route was not my favorite, but it surprised me by being tasteful about what would normally be regarded as unsavory. The story easily could have made Misao an oversexed flirt, but he's not.

Next week is another creative, Tsukumo; an author.