My Top 10 Otome - Refresh for March 2023

The end of March seems a bit of an odd time of year to be doing a Top 10 list, but the last time I did one of these I kept it to a Top 5, and a lot of games have come out in the two and a half years since. While undoubtedly I'll get a few more otome under my belt before the end of the year, I figure this list isn't likely to change too much. And in any case, I tend to feel uneasy about listing something I played too recently, as my love of a game can fade with time, as we'll see one of the games that was previously in my Top 5 has actually fallen.

Moving the number up to ten also gives me space to add a few indie titles, which can't match the production values of a dedicated company willing to shell out for recognizable talent in voice, art, and music.

I'd also like to give honorable mentions to two titles: Hakuoki: Demon of the Fleeting Blossoms, for being my first otome and covering a part of history I find fascinating, and to Bad Apple Wars, for giving second chances to those most willing to fight for it. I thought maybe when I expanded to a Top 10 I might be able to fit them in, but couldn't.

10) Halloween Otome

Halloween Otome is a bit of a sentimental favorite in the English speaking otome community. It was made several years ago when indie projects were much fewer and less often complete. The artwork, while adequate for a free game released nine years ago, would not generate much enthusiasm in today's indie pool, but what I like about Halloween Otome is that it's just sincere fun. Emma Cee is fabulously lucky, and it's worked right into the story as she finds herself with a free ticket to a costume party for the rich and famous. There is no danger. Just people having fun and trying to win a contest put on by their host. The characters are entertaining and it's nice seeing them cameo in the Valentines Otome sequel/spin-off.

You can find this one on the popular indie site Itch.io, and it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

9) My Vow to My Liege

My Vow to My Liege is probably the direct opposite of Halloween Otome, being full of war and betrayal. I wasn't sure exactly where I'd put in the bottom half of my Top 10, but settled on #9 because to be honest, I only really liked half of the love interests. What makes it for me personally is the attention to historical and folklorical detail (once past the part where King Fuchai is actually a younger sister crossdressing as her deceased older brother in order to maintain a hold on her kingdom's power). Fuchai is quite possibly one of my favorite otome protagonists ever. She is king in a time of war and the game lets her do everything a king in ancient times could do, from leading an army to torturing prisoners for information. If you need a more aggressive protagonist than most, Fuchai is your girl.

I believe this one is Windows only, and can be found on Steam.

8) Pre-Odyssey: Odysseus, Penelope, and Her Ducks

The most recent otome on this list in terms of release, I just adored this very sweet and funny story about the courtship of Penelope by Odysseus. It was entirely a one person dev team, so there are rough spots where it shows, but the ducks add a note of levity to what could otherwise be a very serious story, and the nods to the original Greek mythology are top notch. I don't usually talk about the ending credits to a game, or the bonus material, but they're genuinely worth it for this game, since anyone familiar with the mythology knows what happens to these two in the future and the extra material is entertaining commentary from the characters themselves.

The dev also has you covered when it comes to being able to play. Aside from supporting Windows, Mac, and Android, there is a web version that requires no download at all. The game can be found in Itch.io.

7) The Blind Griffin

Though not without its flaws, I think The Blind Griffin is still my sentimental favorite indie, for combining two things I have never see in a game before: 1) being set in the 1920s and 2) starring a Chinese American protagonist. Though the protagonist is player-named, she has her own identity as a Chinese American child from a large family in a time when the Chinese were not particularly welcome. Having come from earlier generations of Chinese immigrants, I knew what sort of history she likely had (for instance, she was more than likely Taishanese, like my own family) and being able to combine that with my general interest in early 20th century history, was pure catnip.

The Blind Griffin can be found for PC, Mac, and Linux on Itch.io.

6) Norn9: Var Commons

The reason I originally justified this in my previous Top 5 is that it emotionally moved me in a way that lower ranked games did not. Norn9 certainly isn't perfect, and the non-romance portion of the plot was a complete mess, but what it did, it did well, and chances are you will like someone in the cast, even if it's not who you originally thought it would be. It's like a bag of jelly beans. You might not like every single bean in the bag, but there are enough of the good ones (assuming you like jelly beans) that it's still worth buying the bag in the first place.

Also, Norn9: Var Commons has now been ported to Switch and in fact is coming out in English this week! So there's no longer a need to own a Vita to play it. The translation has been updated and the fan disk Lost Ark is coming out in English for the first time later this year, so now is a good time to get into the first game.

5) 7'scarlet

Despite being a little light on the romance, I was never not engaged in trying to figure out the mystery of Okunezato in 7'scarlet, and I love a good mystery, but when I looked at its competition I realized that there are a few flaws that really bothered me; mainly the half-baked brother route at the end, but also that there were inconsistencies between routes (such as Sosuke's level of knowledge about the town secrets) that didn't make any sense. I also don't like yandere romance options, though not badly enough that it affects my ranking.

Though this was originally a Vita release, it can be found on Steam where it's often on sale.

4) Collar x Malice

This is the game that probably dropped the most, having been previously at #2. While I did really enjoy the investigation and liked (slightly) over half the romance options, I still don't like the plot problems in Shiraishi's route and even though I bought the fan disk, the longer I go without playing it the more I realize that I'm not quite as in love with it as I originally thought. Still, I really love that Ichika has a social life outside of her interactions with love interests, and especially that she has other women to both hang out with and back her up. It's still a good blend of action and romance that other games don't quite hit.

It originally came out for Vita, but is also available on Switch.

3) Cafe Enchante

I had just gotten Cafe Enchante at the time of my last ranking, so I wasn't sure where it would fall, but after some time and distance I've decided that I really still like it. It's aided by an excellent cast, one of the few where I can say I genuinely liked every guy, including the one I thought I would be ambivalent about. Though it suffers from a lack of quality checking (names are sometimes translated differently, and the dubious translation of "hako oshi" introduced a whole new term to the English speaking fandom), I still like the directions the story was willing to go, making this a surprisingly poignant game by the time I finished.

Cafe Enchante is only available on Switch.

2) Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly

Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly was originally my #3, but was bumped up by the fall of Collar x Malice. It's still not a traditional otome in that the common route (with its own ending) is more or less the canon ending with everything else being either "in addition to" or "instead of," but I love the mystery and the shared story of the cast. The primary characters wake up in a mansion with no memories of how they got there, but the more they learn about their true circumstances, the more painful regaining their memories becomes. Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly gets its placement for having amazing plot twists and a non-linear method of storytelling to show how everything came to be. Romance is much weaker in this game than others due to the nature of it, but it's still a solid game.

Though it was initially released on Vita, it's also been ported to Steam!

1) Code:Realize (series)

And now for my favorite, which is unlikely to be toppled anytime soon, and that is Code:Realize. Spanning three games, Cardia's story of falling in love and finding a way to touch another person without harming them still resonates with me. She's fully capable of facing bad guys with or without her man and the men themselves form a formidable band of friends who work together, so the game is never just a one-on-one with Cardia and a pretty face. Many of the best moments are watching the guys interacting with each other, making them full fledged characters with lives outside the romance, and in turn, that makes the romance better, because when the chips are down it feels like the rest of the cast is 100% behind the couple. They're all friends. Why wouldn't they be? Add in a gorgeous steampunk London, hidden organizations, and the philosopher's stone and you've got quite a combination!

Code:Realize and its sequels were originally released on Vita, but have since come out on PS4 and Switch.

My Favorite Games of 2020

I'm getting better at not buying more games than I can consume in a year, but I still play the occasional free-to-play indie title and wind up with a number of commercial games through promotional giveaways. The result is that I rarely play any game in its year of release unless it's a part of a favorite series, and even then, depending on how busy I am, a much anticipated game might get postponed.

These are the 12 games I liked enough to finish for the first time in 2020, in the order I played them. If the game is available on multiple platforms, the one I played on is listed first. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).

AI: The Somnium Files (Switch, PS4, Windows) *

I didn't think I'd find one of my top 3 games right out of the gates, especially since it had a fair number of early road bumps that would have turned me off had this been any other game. Date and his AI partner Aiba make for a winning team though, and I lived for their banter. By the time I was about a third to halfway in I was seriously invested, and by the time I finished I was sad that it was over. This might be a game about solving gruesome murders, but the frequent moments of levity keeps it from getting too dark. I also like Date for being able to keep a professional face for his job while being a complete dork on the inside. It makes him highly relatable.

Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly (PS Vita, Windows) *

A mystery visual novel with romantic overtones. The mystery element is an overwhelming part of the main story, with the romance tacked on as alternate and arguably optional endings so this is probably not a first choice for romance fans, but the mystery is fantastic with two big twists which put a number of events in a different context on replay. Though the characters start out as five strangers trapped within a mysterious manor, there's so much about that statement that isn't necessarily true or doesn't properly represent their true situation.

9:05 (Web)

I played this little text adventure web game because it was in an article I read about the best video game endings and it promised that it was a short 5 minute playthrough. I think it was actually closer to 10 for me and I did not like the surprise ending. Ironically, 9:05 was created to show why it's a bad idea as a game writer to hide certain things from the player, and in that respect it works beautifully. So I agree with the author, that this is supposed to be bad!

Valkyria Chronicles (PS3, PS4, Switch, Windows)

If you ever wanted a change of pace from medieval fantasy and far future sf for your strategy RPG, Valkyria Chronicles has you covered with its WW2-inspired low fantasy gameplay. The small touches like having characters break line of sight, take cover in tall grass or behind bunkers, are details you just don't get in similar titles out of Japan. Magic is rare so most of your squad consists of regular people running around with guns, and each one of them is an individual with their own backstory. The watercolor-inspired art style still holds up twelve years later, and the overarching story does too.

The Sexy Brutale (Windows, PS4, Switch, XB1)

I'm not entirely sure what to call this. Maybe a puzzle-adventure game? The protagonist is stuck in a time loop inside a marquis's manor and is tasked with saving the guests from the mansion's murderous staff. Though the subject matter is dark, the game itself is more of a black comedy, with staff taking a certain amount of glee in their over-the-top murders (and the sheer variety of ways they can off someone). By taking advantage of the time loop, the protagonist can learn which events need to change in order to prevent a murder, and each "solved" murder gives new abilities that can be used later in the game. Took me about 9 hours to complete, which felt like just the right length for this kind of game.

Return of the Obra Dinn (Windows, PS4, Switch, XB1) *

As chief inspector of the East India company, the player is dispatched to investigate the listless Obra Dinn, which has drifted into port with damaged sails and no sign of the crew. Armed with a mysterious watch that allows the wielder to see and listen to a dead person's final moments, the inspector is tasked with documenting what happened to all the souls on board. There are no jump scares, but the atmosphere can get unnerving just because there are a lot of dead people to catalog and most of them did not go out on pleasant terms. A lot of the gameplay is unraveling the mystery, so the less you know going in, the better.

Norn9: Var Commons (PS Vita)

Otome visual novel following a group of espers on a flying ship in an alternate 1919. Unusual for having three playable protagonists, all voiced, and a total of nine fully fleshed out romance routes. One of the better otome I've played, but really faceplanted on anything that wasn't romance, resulting in unanswered questions and a half-baked frame story. Taken in pieces it's fine, but this is a case where the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Some of the parts are pretty good though!

Path of Exile (Windows, PS4, XB1)

Gritty action-RPG in the style of the Diablo series. You mass murder monsters and they drop loot. It's free to play and microtransactions are only for cosmetics or quality of life (like additional storage space beyond the generously sized stash they give you to begin with). The skill tree is pretty gnarly, but as a result it's super customizable so if you want to do something weird like a melee witch or a cold-blasting ranger you can. Path of Exile has a feature called "leagues" where every three months a new league is introduced with its own special set of mechanics to liven up the game and give something new for players to do. Leagues can be hit or miss, but the right mechanic can add enough spice to play through the game again.

Murder By Numbers (Windows, Switch)

Murder mystery game combined with solving nonograms to earn clues. Music is by the same composer as the Ace Attorney series and it really shows. Most of the tunes are really good, though they may start to grate if you're slow at solving puzzles (I had to mute a couple times because I couldn't take them anymore). The mysteries are entertaining with the usual colorful group of characters for this type of game, and considering the game takes place in Los Angeles, the cast is fairly diverse with a woman of color in the lead role. I would have to say though that I'm not good enough at nonograms to love this game though, and there was a point where I had to take a long break, not because I lost interest in the story, but because I honestly couldn't look at another nonogram, and that may impact your enjoyment of the game.

Cafe Enchante (Switch)

Romance game based around the owner of a cafe that serves a group of non-human regulars. The first half of the game is very low stakes, slice of life storytelling, which makes it a bit jarring when things go off the rails in the second half for most of the routes. Three of the five endings are on the bittersweet side, which I did not expect given the fluffy intro about life in a cafe with non-humans (with all that absolutely gorgeous food art). I enjoyed this game a lot, and I hope it gets a sequel/fandisk, but I also have a lot of bones to pick with it.

Hatoful Boyfriend (Windows, PS4, PS Vita, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS)

I technically finished this back in 2015, but only did one ending and never got to the fabled Bad Boys Love ending which turns the rest of the game on its head. Now that I have, I'd have to say that the world building is pretty good and deceptively deeper than you would expect from a game that presents itself as a high school romance with pigeons. The gameplay itself is not to my tastes though (I found several of the choices to be too arbitrary and I dislike stat building in visual novels) so I wouldn't have given it another shot if not for a walkthrough.

Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle (Switch, PS4, XB1, Windows)

Technically seven games in one since this is a collection of Capcom's old beat 'em up arcade brawlers, but because they're all short individually I decided to count them together. Final Fight is the most polished of the bunch and is the marquee title, but I bought it for The King of Dragons which is my childhood favorite. I also enjoyed Knights of the Round and Warriors of Fate, though I wish the latter had been accurately translated as a Romance of the Three Kingdoms game.

My Top 5 Otome as of 2020

Well, I don't have as much news to share as I would like, and it doesn't look like November is going to be as bad as I thought, but I still think it was a wise decision to cancel my NaNoWriMo participation this year in favor of other things. Mostly, there's a lot of personal stuff I want to wrap up while I have the badnwidth to do so, and I hope to have some actual good news to share in the coming weeks (to offset when I'm ready to share the bad news).

In the meantime, I hope to keep blogging as usual. So even though these posts will keep coming up, there may be a lot going on behind the scenes that you're not seeing.

That said, with last week's release of Cafe Enchante on the Switch, I realized that I'm starting to get backed up on otome games again. I was surprised since I thought I was putting a fair dent in my backlog, but it's mostly that my Vita backlog is dwindling, since Period Cube and Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk are the only ones that remain of that generation. Switch is probably going to be the new home of backlog, as I already had Collar x Malice Unlimited waiting for me.

So I realized; otome has been out long enough that I've played a fair number now, and the English language audience has grown, from dozens of indie studios making PC games to a gaggle of mobile titles. I actually could put together a list of my favorites and it wouldn't simply be every game I've played.

This Top 5 list might be a bit biased, because quite frankly they're all Otomate titles, but Otomate also has the budget for art, voice acting, and sheer length of story that most indie studios can't match. It doesn't hurt that nearly every Otomate title that has an English translation has also been released by Aksys on consoles/handhelds, where there is minimal competition, especially in the realm of physical releases.

Without further ado, here's my Top 5:

5) Norn9: Var Commons

I had to think about this one. There were other runners-up, particularly indie titles Halloween Otome and The Blind Griffon, but when I thought about it, though those two indies were really fun, I wasn't emotionally moved the way I was with certain routes of Norn9. Norn9 certainly wasn't perfect, but what it did, it did well, and chances are you will like someone in the cast, even if it's not who you originally thought it would be. It's like a bag of jelly beans. You might not like every single bean in the bag, but there are enough of the good ones (assuming you like jelly beans) that it's still worth buying the bag in the first place.

Unfortunately, Norn9 was only ever released in the US on the PS Vita, so if you don't have the hardware, you're out of luck.

4) 7'scarlet

There's a part of me that's shocked 7'scarlet comes in at #4 because I really loved the mystery and how the supernatural lore unfolded with the completion of every route. I was never not engaged in trying to figure out the mystery of Okunezato for myself, but when I looked at its competition I realized that there are a few flaws that really bothered me; mainly the half-baked brother route at the end, but also that there were inconsistencies between routes (such as Sosuke's level of knowledge about the town secrets) that didn't make any sense. I also really don't like yandere romance options, and Isora tilts that way, though not badly enough that it affects my ranking.

Non-Vita gamers are in luck with this one, as it's also available on Steam.

3) Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly

This one is not a traditional otome in that the common route (with its own ending) is more or less the canon ending with everything else being either "in addition to" or "instead of." But since it's marketed as otome, I'm putting it here. As with 7'scarlet, I love the mystery elements of the story. The primary characters wake up in a mansion with no memories out how they got there, but the more they learn about their true circumstances, the more painful regaining their memories becomes. Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly gets its placement for having amazing plot twists and a non-linear method of storytelling to show how everything came to be. Romance is much weaker in this game than others due to the nature of it, but it's still a solid game.

Though it was initially released on Vita, it's also been ported to Steam!

2) Collar x Malice

There's a part of me that thinks I should have switched this with Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly, but Collar x Malice is pretty clearly an otome with more emphasis on the romance even though the player is also hunting down criminals with the help of a cop and/or private detectives. I really love that Ichika has a social life outside of her interactions with love interests, and especially that she has other women to both hang out with and back her up. The blend of action and romance was pitch perfect in this one. What prevents me from ranking it higher is the X-Day methodology on Shiraishi's route (which makes no sense compared to the other routes) and that I actually didn't like Shiraishi or Okazaki that much, and having two of five love interests not work for me was a little high.

This was originally a Vita release, but has since been ported to Switch. And the fan disk is out in English as well, though I haven't played it yet. If it's good enough, it might even change my mind about Shiraishi and Okazaki.

1) Code:Realize ~Guardian of Rebirth~

Okay, if you know me, the #1 pick wasn't going to be any surprise. I adore the Code:Realize series. Cardia is a lovely protagonist who grows over the course of the game. She's fully capable of facing bad guys with or without her man and the men themselves are a wonderful cast of characters. The group of them form a band of friends who work together, so the game is never just a one-on-one with Cardia and a pretty face. Many of the best moments are the guys interacting with each other, making them a full fledged cast of characters with lives outside the romance, and in turn, that makes the romance better, because when the chips are down it feels like the rest of the cast is 100% behind the couple. They're all friends. Why wouldn't they be? Add in a gorgeous steampunk London, hidden organizations, and the philosopher's stone and you've got quite a combination!

Code:Realize and its sequels were originally released on Vita, but have since come out on PS4 and Switch, with the exception of ~Wintertide Miracles~ on Switch, which isn't due until early 2021.

VN Talk: Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly - Part 7: Beniyuri

Beniyuri does not have her own route in Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly, but since I'm doing character arcs this time rather than game routes, I decided to devote one last week to talking about our protagonist. This also seems a good time to point out that this is the first otome I've played with a voiced protagonist, which surprisingly changes a lot of my impression of the character. Oddly, this likely explains an issue I had with the Code:Realize anime.

Most otome protagonists are unvoiced, so the player can self-insert. The protagonist tends to have a few character traits due to word choice in their unvoiced dialogue and/or habits mentioned in their first person narration; enough to know whether they're optimistic, bad at studying, or proud about their athletic skills. How a particular piece of dialogue or narrative is read can therefore be left largely up to the player.

This is where I'll digress into Code:Realize a bit. I read Cardia's dialogue as being pretty dynamic and lively after the other characters indicated that she was opening up, which made it hard to reconcile the Cardia in my head with the anime Cardia, who was voiced with a subdued personality for most of the series.

So now we have Beniyuri. Because she was voiced, it was very clear from the get-go how her lines should be read, since they were being performed. Unfortunately, that put a barrier between me and Beniyuri because I wanted to read her more favorably toward what I wanted in a protagonist than who she actually was.

It was interesting to see how much of a disconnect there was just through the voice even though the written words were the same.

This might have come down to casting choice, but I think it's also that hearing Beniyuri's distress verbally instead of just reading it made it more annoying to have yet another crying and helpless protagonist. It's not that she's crying and helpless all the time. I genuinely liked the finale where she realizes she has to kill Kagiha to stop Hikage and send everyone home, and I loved the scene where she dives into the Abyss to save Monshiro, but the scenes where she's feeling miserable and betrayed are long and extended and so emotionally charged it's draining just listening to her. (Heck there's an entire chapter of her feeling bad.)

That said, I had hopes for Beniyuri in the beginning. When she first sees Yamato and Karasuba she is the first one to summon a weapon to try and save them, and she does it based off her memory of what Monshiro did when he saved her and Hikage. In retrospect this was probably a narrative misdirection to avoid Hikage being too knowledgeable right at the start, but it was still great that she was the first to figure it out. Until suddenly she can't do it a second time and Yamato has to show her. I mean, sure, you get a nice picture of him helping her out, but it could have been the other way around too.

Initially, Beniyuri seems to be a generic not-to-competent otome game protagonist until you start getting to her flashbacks. Oddly, she was really spirited as a kid. She got upset, fought with her younger sister, and it's surprising to see the contrast between her as a child and her as a teenager. I'd like to say the change in personality is due to the accident, but it's more likely that the social standards for being a mouthy girl in elementary school are different from being a mouthy girl in high school since she's still pretty subdued in the alternate Happy Ending.

What saves her from being generic is her flaws; specifically her inability to let go. She looks happy on the outside, and tries to be upbeat and friendly with Yamato and Karasuba prior to the start of the game, but she's not, and she's hiding it both from her family and her friends.

In fact, one of the nice things about the expanded prologue that encompasses the Real World ending is that you get to see how Beniyuri is consciously trying to keep her distance from Karasuba. She's not blind to the fact he likes her, but she recognizes that she's not in a position to be in a relationship with him. All things said, she'd just like to keep their relationship at being friends.

And as the audience, we can see the disconnect between what she says about Karasuba and the kind of person he presently is, well before he calls her out on it. When the two of them meet Yamato for the first time again in years, she laughs and talks about how none of them have changed, when it's pretty obvious that Karasuba is no longer the soft-spoken little kid he used to be. That's just how she remembers him, and not reflective of his current personality, so it's easy to see why he ultimately blows up over that.

Beniyuri's hang-up over the course of the game is that she feels guilty over Kagiha's death, and this causes her to withdraw because she never wants to lose a friend again. This feeling of guilt is so strong that when Kagiha is taken hostage, her childhood friends refuse to tell her that the reason they're not rushing out to rescue him is because he's already dead. They know that if she knew, then all that guilt would come back again.

The first time I played through I actually didn't understand why she felt so guilty to the point it breaks her during the showdown with Hikage, because I missed that she was the one who suggested they look at the ruins in the first place. Instead I focused on the fact she's the one who suggests they brave the flooded path to escape the ruins. While it wasn't a good idea, they were in a bad situation with few alternatives, so I didn't like that she was beating herself up over making the best of a bad situation, and the choice to go back for a ribbon wasn't hers at all.

It was only on replaying the flashback that I realized Beniyuri is the first to suggest going to the manor, in which case I can understand her blaming everything that happened there on herself. I think that scene needed a little more pushback from other characters. Instead, everyone except for Kagiha agrees with her, making it so easy to forget that it was Beniyuri's idea at all. As a result, I thought she was being excessively hard on herself.

Unlike a lot of otome protagonists though, Beniyuri does grow, and it's not because a new boyfriend swept into her life and made it all better. The finale against Hikage, when she's the only one who can save all her friends, is still a standout moment. It's not merely the physical act of being the only one free enough to shoot, but the fact that by doing so, she's finally accepting that Kagiha is dead and will never return. She faces the truth that she was trying to suppress the entire time in the manor world.

Before passing on, completely this time, Kagiha lets her know that he doesn't regret giving his life for her and his last request is for her to live on. The Beniyuri we see in the best ending (and the Takuya and Aki endings) is finally at peace with the past and ready to let go.

I don't think Beniyuri will end up on any list I make for favorite otome protagonists, but she wouldn't be at the bottom either, because even if I have trouble relating to her, she's still her own character with her own personality rather than a bland self-insert.

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.

VN Talk: Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly - Part 5: Karasuba

Most otome games end up having a love interest I don't particularly care for, and Karasuba is Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly's. Though Hikage can be a sexist jerk, he's the kind of jerk I can deal with. Karasuba's actually twisted and I can't see myself ever replaying his route as I was pretty grossed out while reading it. If non-consent is your fantasy, you may not mind, but the fact that Beniyuri said "no" (while she's obviously in emotional distress) and he went ahead anyway is not something I'm down with.

Probably the only saving grace with Karasuba is that he's complicated. I don't think it makes up for him having a rotten personality, but we can understand how that rotten personality emerged.

Karasuba is a year younger than Beniyuri and was bullied as a kid since his family name is "Himeno" and "hime" is the word for "princess." Being a small, non-athletic kid, he was called "princess" as a put-down. (Even Yamato, in one of his less sympathetic moments, did it.) Beniyuri stood up for Karasuba and brought him into her group of friends, which earned her place as his childhood crush.

When the summer camp accident happened, Karasuba was safe, but freaked out over how helpless he was and how he couldn't do anything to save his friends, so when he grew up, he decided to change himself.

Teenage Karasuba projects an air of cocky confidence. However, he's also incredibly distrusting of people, believing that it makes things easier should they ever betray him. Both in the real world and in the manor world, he is incredibly unsubtle in the way he hits on Beniyuri. It's impossible for her not to realize he's flirting with her, and in the manor world it even crosses over into sexual harassment. (Thankfully the worst incidents are either in optional episodes or his manor ending so they're skippable.)

However, despite his lack of propriety, Karasuba does have one good thing going for him, and it's that he's really good at reading people. He's not always nice in the way he uses it, but when they find the summer camp photo that restores the memories for everyone except Beniyuri, Karasuba is the one who takes a moment to comfort Kagiha, recognizing that there's no easy way to bring up to Beniyuri that Kagiha died back then.

Because of this, Karasuba is also the one to reveal that Hikage is the master, because he knew that there was someone Monshiro liked as a kid, even though Hikage professed to have never liked anyone.

However, his insight into people is used less sympathetically in the real world. Karasuba is right when he confronts Beniyuri about the fact she still hasn't gotten over Kagiha. And he's completely correct in that she's so trapped in the past that she only sees him as the little kid he used to be rather than the person he is now. When he rips her for not knowing anything about his years in middle school because she never thought to ask, it's completely understandable. He doesn't like who he was, and he's gone to great lengths to change himself, but she refuses to acknowledge any of it.

What causes him to lose this sympathy is that he also refuses to let her move on at her own pace. Rather than cutting his losses and moving on himself, Karasuba is hellbent on dragging her (and to a lesser degree Yamato) into getting over the past.

From a plot perspective, Karasuba is a necessary instigator. He gets the ball rolling as he's the one who drags Beniyuri and Yamato out to the lake in their ill-fated attempt to say farewell to Kagiha (only for the bus to get in an accident and the three of them to end up in comas as well). And he's also the one who figures out that Monshiro is the real Kazuya. Major plot beats happen because of his involvement, and yet he's the character who's least interested in going back at all.

At one point in the story, depending on how much Beniyuri wants to remember the past, she has the opportunity to sit down with Karasuba and he asks her to forget along with him. On first playthrough she automatically realizes from the conversation that she does want to remember, sending her back on the main route, but after seeing enough of his optional episodes, it's possible for her to choose to forget.

This gives Karasuba essentially what he wants, though it's not clear how any of this happens. It's kind of like the Kagiha Ending, only we don't see a dream vs. reality dichotomy. Is this all a joint hallucination? But the two of them live day in day out in the group hideout, only there's no one else around and no explanation for how this dream world exists, since I think Hikage would want to keep his game going.

All we know is that Beniyuri seems to have forgotten how their situation had come about (convenient), but she also recognizes that there's a part of her that still isn't ready to move into a relationship with Karasuba even though he pushes for it. Specifically it's like there's a shard in her heart, which is a phrase used in the main path to refer to her memory of losing her friends. Despite the fact she even tells Karasuba "no" in regards to a kiss, he does it anyway, and quickly escalates from there.

This is the only ending that results in implied sex and it's not entirely clear how consensual it is. Aside from that, it's pretty nihilistic, with no future for either of them. They wouldn't be returning to life, but it doesn't look like they'll be passing on either.

His Aki Ending is better, mostly because I find real world Karasuba more tolerable. (He's definitely a guy who needs societal restraints.)

Like Yamato's Takuya ending, this follows the main path with Kagiha's sacrifice and the living characters returning to the waking world, and in this one, she agrees to ditch school with Karasuba, much to his surprise (since he thought she'd turn him down as always). While ditching, they sit down and have a proper talk about their feelings and their past, and Karasuba agrees to wait for her to catch up with him instead of forcing her forward, which would have been a way better move if he'd done it earlier.

Though I wanted to feel good about that ending, I couldn't really because then I'd flash back to all the incredibly awful things he did in the rest of the game and his id is just out of control.

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.

VN Talk: Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly - Part 3: Hikage

Continuing my character arc discussions for Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly, Hikage was the second of the characters whose character-specific ending I got.

His route is interesting in that it branches from the main story early on, and it has to in order for Beniyuri to get to know him while he's still a sympathetic character. Chronologically, it's the first alternate ending you can get.

Since he's such an effective villain and the main story makes no bones about how twisted he is, I was curious about how they would make him sympathetic. What they do is make it clear that even though Hikage is incredibly sadistic, there are still moments that reflect who he had been in life, giving him a chance to figuratively pet the dog and show a softer side.

Though I like the self-labeled best ending the most, because it wraps everything up, I think Hikage's is probably the most moving ending.

We don't get to know the mastermind in the main storyline, because his time with the group is a front to get his game going. He plays the pragmatic leader because he knows it's effective, but when it's time to drop the charade he becomes a completely different and arrogant personality, so we know him more by what he says and does than what motivates him in the first place.

He wants the kaleidoscope shards collected and gets a bunch of lost souls to work with him on it. Then he breaks them down until they're consumed with despair. He repeats this over and over again while waiting for the final shards to fall in his grasp and he clearly has no intention of helping anybody but himself. It makes him evil, but we don't really understand why he's like this in the first place. We don't even know if he's really human.

His storyline gives us that answer, as well as the story behind his rabbit-masked servant, Usagi.

Hikage's route plays the most like a traditional otome divergence in that it's a very long, fairly developed story branch, and it's only accessible after having completed the best ending, so when the player goes through it, they have the knowledge that he's the master of the manor, even though Beniyuri lacks it.

This gives us his first real pet the dog scene, when we see one of the masked children of the manor. She's scared of being left alone and latches on to Hikage thinking that he might be the older brother she's looking for, but then she realizes he's not. Hikage speaks gently to her and guides her to finding her way to her brother (who clearly has already passed on) and as a result she fades away peacefully to the afterlife.

The thing is, we know there are other souls trapped within the manor besides our main cast, but they're all children. They wear masks because they are so close to forgetting everything they were in life that they don't even have faces anymore, and they use the masks to hide that. Usagi makes it clear that the natural order of things is for souls to forget everything and depart for the afterlife.

This means that in most cases Hikage is allowing the process to proceed normally with children. He primarily incorporates teenagers and adults in his game, and by helping a little girl along after the player already knows he's the villain, we get to see another side of him. There's no advantage for him to be as helpful as he is in this situation as either Hikage the pragmatic leader or the manor's insane master, and it's the kindest we ever see him.

Aware that Hikage still needs to be revealed as the manor's master, the game also lays out a parallel story within the route itself to set him up as a sympathetic character. In one of Kagiha's childhood side episodes, we learn about a story where two white butterflies are separated by death and the living one goes on a journey to see the other again.

In Hikage's route, the title of that story is finally dropped and of course it's Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly. Beniyuri finds the book in the hideout and reads about the still living white butterfly who's looking for psychedelica, the place where the living can meet the dead. Over a long and arduous journey the white butterfly becomes black with dirt, but eventually it finds psychedelica. She's puzzled though when she discovers the end of the book has been torn out, so she doesn't know what the butterfly does once it actually gets there.

Hikage tells her the rest of the story and how it doesn't have a happy ending. Ashamed of how it looks, and fearing the other white butterfly would no longer accept it, the now-black butterfly turns away from psychedelica and dies alone in the desert. Beniyuri disagrees with the ending, thinking that the white butterfly wouldn't care what the other butterfly looked like, but Hikage says he understands how the black butterfly felt, which is important since his personal story parallels it.

(As a side note, the game does show where the last page of the book is. Hikage keeps it in his study! It's just you don't get that scene if you follow the chronology of his route.)

Since Hikage himself is not forthcoming about his true identity, his route handles this through getting to know Usagi. We've known that Usagi is different from the other masked children in that she's actively working on the master's behalf and that she still has a face even though she's wearing a mask. She comes and goes without fanfare to keep the hideout stocked with food or to deliver messages, and Beniyuri gets the idea that she can try plumbing Usagi for information by leaving notes for her in the food basket.

Initially their conversations are a bit silly, especially when Usagi learns that Beniyuri might be attracted to Hikage and tries to play matchmaker, but eventually Usagi decides to lay all the cards on the table in order to save her brother, who turns out to be the manor's master.

That's when Hikage's backstory comes into play.

Usagi was born to a wealthy merchant and his wife in what was probably Taisho era Japan, but was terribly sickly. Eventually, an older brother, Hikage, turned up at their manor, which caused a rift between her parents since Hikage was the child of a mistress and was presumably being brought into the household as an heir under the assumption that Usagi would die before adulthood. Because of this, her mother hated Hikage, but Hikage and Usagi got along well and became close.

Over time, their father's finances dried up, and along with it, the ability to pay for the medicine for Usagi's treatment. Hikage did everything he could to scrounge up the money for it, even debasing himself in front of relatives who hated him, but ultimately failed when the promised medication didn't arrive. Usagi died, and Hikage went insane with grief, killing the uncle who reneged on the promise of medication and then going full-on occult in search of a way to bring back the dead.

This led him to the kaleidoscope, which can breach the barrier between the living and the dead, and he activated it, creating the manor world that now exists in-between. Because he did this on the shore by his manor, the in-between is like a surreal version of the manor he actually lived in (and the ruins the main cast explored as children at summer camp). Hikage shot himself in the head, killing himself, and fell into the water, entering the manor world the same way the rest of the cast did.

This also means like everybody else, he forgot who he was on entry, and the reason everyone's weapon manifests as a handgun is because he shot himself with a revolver.

However, because his intention was to meet with Usagi, she was also pulled into the manor world even though she had properly passed on. This makes her different from everyone else and is why she retains her memories. She would like for her brother to also pass on, but because of his strong attachment to the resentment he had in life, he's unable to fully let go even though he has otherwise forgotten enough that he's become faceless. Usagi hides her face because she doesn't want him to remember her since it makes it harder to move on.

Hikage eventually goes full-blown psychotic mastermind on his own route, but only after we know all of this, and because of Usagi's side of the story, there's now incentive to try to save this guy. The attempt goes poorly, though, and I respect the fact that Hikage's ending is not happy.

When Usagi and Beniyuri try confronting him, he decides they're conspiring against him and shoots at Beniyuri, only to be stopped by Usagi who takes the bullet for her. When Beniyuri removes Usagi's mask at her request, Hikage sees his sister's face and his memory comes back to him, causing him to effectively lose her all over again as she returns to the afterlife.

We also learn that Hikage, like the black butterfly, actually turned away from psychedelica once he found it. Even though he activated the kaleidoscope, he realized that everything he'd done to get that far had changed him into a kind of person he didn't want his sister to see, so he broke the kaleidoscope (yes, he's the reason it's broken in the first place) before shooting himself. Only he didn't realize its power was still active when he died and fell in.

With his memories back, Hikage bids farewell to Beniyuri, knowing she and her friends now have all the shard pieces they need to reassemble the kaleidoscope and leave, and shoots himself again to pass on to the afterlife.

Beniyuri does try to get him to go back with her, but Hikage quite rightly points out that his body has long since rotted so he couldn't go back even if he wanted. (Presumably this is the case for Kagiha as well, but Hikage's ending doesn't bother addressing what happens to him.)

His ending does have a bit of a hope spot, having Beniyuri meet a pair of siblings at the lake in the real world when she comes to say good-bye to Hikage. They're heavily implied to be the reincarnated Hikage and Usagi, and the brother is even wearing a shirt with a black butterfly monogram.

I was surprised by the amount of sympathy Hikage got from me considering what an absolute dirtbag he is in the main route. Even when he's playing the role of party leader, he's sexist early on towards Beniyuri and prickly about what's "manly" behavior. Though he has what as a stand alone piece of art looks like the most passionate kiss in the game, when you actually get to the scene it's a forced kiss with the implication that he could easily go further whether Beniyuri wants him to or not, and this is while he's still playing the part of group leader.

When I first started the game, I thought that I would like Hikage based on his personality type, but he constantly kept shooting himself in the foot as if to remind me that I really should not like this guy. So while I was shocked he was the mastermind, I wasn't dismayed about it.

In a way it's too bad though, because Hikage has some funny scenes where he's fairly likeable. Since he's so uptight as group leader, there's a side episode where everyone realizes that despite being seemingly proficient at everything, Hikage has no idea how a smartphone works. Though Kagiha doesn't either (which is likely because they've both been dead prior to the invention of smartphones), it's a lot funnier with Hikage trying to figure out how to type on a screen that has no buttons, and the eagerness with which he explains his newfound knowledge to Kagiha is charming.

Though it's not a trick of the written narration, there is one visual element of the storytelling that gives an extremely subtle hint that Hikage is not the Kazuya he pretends to be most of the game, and that's the two moles under his left eye. He's introduced as the Two-Moled Man prior to picking a door name and it's a facial feature only Hikage has. Kazuya doesn't have moles in any of his flashback images and once we learn Monshiro is the real Kazuya it's pretty clear that he doesn't have any either.

One thing that I kind of wish had come up regarding Hikage's disguise is that no one asks him what happened in between Kazuya falling into a coma and now. While his disguise is not perfect in other ways (he doesn't behave like Kazuya and there's the facial feature he apparently cannot or chose not to change), it seems asking about the coma ought to have been on people's minds, especially since Hikage says he arrived in the manor the same time as Beniyuri, Karasuba, and Yamato. Hikage doesn't behave like a six-year-old who's been unconscious for the past ten years.

In fact, what gives him away to Karasuba in one of the side episodes is that Hikage ends up answering a question as himself rather than as Kazuya, in regards to whether there's a girl he likes. While it's a nice catch, it's not the first thing I would have asked in Karasuba's place and it seems like Hikage should have expected someone to ask about the coma as part of his disguise. It wouldn't have had to be anything elaborate, he could even say he's not sure, which is why it's weird that the game dances around addressing it at all.

VN Talk: Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly - Part 2: Kagiha

This is the first of my character arc looks for Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly. You can get my thoughts for the overall story over here.

Admittedly the main reason I chose to break out my subsequent posts by character arcs rather than routes is because of Kagiha. Since his past and his connection to Beniyuri form the climax of the main story, the main story essentially is his route. Hikage might be the love interest on the cover and the most prominent one on the title screen, but in the story itself Kagiha is the most important person to Beniyuri, and her feelings for him are the fulcrum on which the plot rests.

It's Kagiha's death in the real world that caused her to withdraw out of fear of losing other people, and it's his selflessness that saves her not only as a child, but as a teenager.

Though Kagiha has his own ending like all the love interests, it's very short and very weird (I didn't even think it was really him until the game called it the Kagiha Ending) and would not have been worth doing a full post about since it would be a few paragraphs of me asking what the hell.

Also, there are things I want to bring up from other routes, and it feels best to do this by character rather than doing a post for every ending.

When I started the game I didn't think Kagiha was going to end up being my favorite character, largely because I disliked his character design (it's grown on me since), but the game did a wonderful job of selling me on Beniyuri and Kagiha's relationship as children and when they reunite as teenagers in the manor world. As a result, I completely bought in to their feelings for one another.

It's unusual for an otome heroine to have a canonical first love, but the Best and Real World Endings makes it clear that Kagiha was Beniyuri's. Even before we get to that point, once she begins to remember who he is and what he meant to her, we see her fear of losing him, and this is before she realizes that he's already dead. It's worth noting that even if she moves on to loving someone else in an alternate epilogue where she returns to the world of the living, that doesn't change anything about how she feels about Kagiha during the main game itself.

It also helps that Kagiha is the kindest member of the cast. When Beniyuri struggles to answer whether she still wants to marry him, he doesn't pressure her, even though from his perspective this is all he exists for. And of course his sacrifice to allow Beniyuri and the others to return to life is the emotional high point of the game, especially since Beniyuri is the only one capable of shooting both him and Hikage to free everyone.

We know Beniyuri was broken by losing him, and now she has to lose him all over again, but the girl comes through (unlike a certain someone in 7'scarlet *cough*) and this time Kagiha passes on to a proper death.

With one exception in the main storyline, the Kagiha we see is the Kagiha of Beniyuri's memories; kind and compassionate, the sort of boy willing to sacrifice himself for others.

When he dives into the lake as a child to save Beniyuri, we're not surprised. When he rescues her and goes back for Monshiro, that is not unexpected either, because that is the kind of person he is. It wouldn't have been enough for Kagiha if he saved Beniyuri and left Monshiro to drown, even though that choice ultimately cost him his life.

In fact, that is why I initially didn't believe it was him in his personal ending, because it's so twisted.

Beniyuri wakes up in the middle of the night to the sound of rain and an odd voice that pesters her about how she can't trust her companions since they're withholding information from her. (The laughing voice sounds like her own, implying that she might be going insane.) Trying to get away from the voice, she leaves the greenhouse the group is currently using as a hideout and bumps into Kagiha, who seems to have escaped Hikage.

Though she's initially doubtful it's him (with good reason, seeing as he was dragged off as a hostage), his behavior is of the Kagiha she remembers, not just in the manor world, but also the real one. As part of her internal argument with herself, she pictures a dream world where she and Kagiha are married and live a happy life together, and she becomes lost within it. Reluctantly the voice pestering her gives up, seeing that this is what she really wants.

Which I was fine with as a bad ending. But Kagiha plays along with her hallucination and there's a super creepy image of them in the dream world that transitions to the two of them in the manor in the exact same pose, making it clear that nothing Beniyuri is seeing is real and Kagiha is aware of it. He even calls her his wife and says he will protect her.

That was my what the hell moment, because that's not the wish of a guy who's kind and always looking for the best for those he cares about.

But it turns out, he's actually a darker character than he initially appears. It's just easier to overlook on first playthrough.

When Kagiha died, his soul and Monshiro's arrived in the manor world at the same time. Kagiha agreed to work for Hikage in exchange for the chance to return to life, even when the work became despicable (as we learn on Monshiro's route). More than anything, Kagiha wanted to return to Beniyuri, and that desire never changed.

By the time Beniyuri arrives in the manor, he's working as the master's assistant, and pretends to have amnesia even though he recognizes her. At some point he modifies the deal he has with Hikage to bring them both back, but he recognizes that what he's doing is terrible. He's become willing to sacrifice anything and everything for the future he's been dreaming of ever since he was a kid. He knows it's wrong and he's afraid Beniyuri will hate him for it, but he can't bring himself to tell her.

Later in the game he even convinces her to give up her mother's ribbon, which is a protective talisman, so that Hikage's plans can proceed. Though he regrets it relatively quickly when he sees Hikage has no intention of keeping his promises, he still did it, knowing that Hikage could not be trusted.

As Hikage points out, Kagiha never believed him, but working with him was his only hope so he had no choice.

It's easy to say that Kagiha makes a lot of bad decisions over the course of the game, and that he should have known better. Monshiro even calls him out over how he's changed since they were kids. But the thing is, Kagiha was about seven when he died, and spent the last ten years in purgatory being neither living nor fully dead.

He was a very mature seven-year-old with a good-natured personality, which maps closely with how he is when he's presenting as seventeen in the manor world, but there are a fair number of cues that Kagiha is still a kid inside. For instance, in the optional Shoujo Manga episode, Kagiha is shocked and embarrassed to see a depiction of kissing between kids at school. It made him look terribly prudish at the point in the game when I unlocked it (not knowing his backstory), but on replay it was hilarious because I realized that's because he's still a kid. In fact, most of his romantic gestures are things people do with close friends and family in general (bringing hot cocoa, cooking together, etc), which is probably because that's the best way he knows to show he cares.

Despite all his mistakes though, Kagiha ultimately makes the right choice, bringing him back the kind of person he was before he died. After holding on for ten years he finally lets go of his wish to return to life, and his final request of Beniyuri before she shoots him and Hikage is for her to smile and live a happy life under the sun; the life she'd largely been denying herself.

Notably, Kagiha is the only love interest without a kiss scene, likely because it wouldn't have fit with his chaste impression of romance.