Side note before the post starts: I will be using several quotes from the game to support the arguments. These quotes will be noted as (Act, Scene). This way, the reader can see these quotes in-game should they desire to look for them.
As an alternate this past week, we were given the option to play Katawa Shoujo instead of Doki Doki Literature Club (DDLC). With my only two visual novels being played previously being the two mentioned here, I felt like revisiting Katawa Shoujo would be more interesting to look at in a critical analysis viewpoint than DDLC. The name Katawa Shoujo (written in Japanese as かたわ少女) contains two words. Shoujo (少女) means girl. The more shocking word is Katawa (かたわ) is a slur for disabled people or a more rude way to say cripple. It’s a dating sim for dating disabled girls, which is surely a turnoff to most people.
While this premise is offputting for many, I found its characters and messages quite clear in what it wanted to say. It is played from the perspective of the protagonist, a high school male named Hisao. The story starts with him getting confessed to by his love, to which he has a heart attack. He was diagnosed with arrhythmia and is hospitalized for several months. His parents and doctor convince him to go to Yamaku High school, which is meant for disabled people with nursing staff on campus. Once he meets the students, Hisao is off-put. It’s hard to blame him for being so off-put too, as how should he try to talk to these people. Obviously, the answer is like normal people, but I feel the majority of people would not act completely normal towards others if they saw missing limbs or massive burns. To demonstrate how easy this bad mindset is to fall into, I’ll quote his feelings during his first impressions of his classmates during his first class. “... I stop walking in front of the classroom and face the other students. They all look normal, like the students in any other school. But then, why would they be here? They’re probably like me and have something wrong with them, only it’s just not immediately obvious. Then, I notice one of the girls seems to be missing the thumb of her right hand. It’s a little jarring.” (Act 1 - Life Expectancy, Enter Stage Left)
The best part about this game is easily the characters. There is the student council president Shizune, whose disability is being deaf. Alternatively, there is Lilly, a blind girl. There’s also the track star, Emi, who has no legs beneath the knee. To counteract that, there’s the artist Rin, who has no arms beyond the elbow. Lastly, there is Hanako, who suffers from terrible burns. With the focus of treatment of the disabled, I want to focus on Hanako and Rin in this analysis.
What I found interesting about this game is the difference in the expected message the player should have for the game, and the message the game actually shows. The best case for this is Hanako’s route. Hanako is the shy girl in class, with burn marks down her body. As Hisao asks around on how he should talk to the people in the class, calling their abnormalities an elephant in the room, he gets the response, “I think it’s an elephant only if you feel that way.” As the player gets to know Hanako better throughout her route, it becomes apparent that Hisao is trying to protect Hanako from situations. This brings up a white-knight mindset for the MC. If the player continues to do what they think is right for Hanako without asking for her opinions on things, Hisao gets the mindset that he is the white-knight even if the player disagrees with the choice in the end. This causes Hanako to snap at the player, saying,
“I know I need help! I know I’m broken! I don’t need you to tell me that! … It’s written on your face, it’s written on Lilly’s face, it’s written on everybody’s faces! I see a therapist every week, Lilly dotes on me as if I were her child, and now… even you! Nothing’s changed, nothing at all! I hate Lilly and I… I hate you more than anyone…!” (Act 4 - Scars, Misstep)
This subverts the player’s expectation. As this is a visual novel, the average player is one that is more likely to be a white-knight with little social experience. Other players might assume that this game is targeting white-knights, as it is a visual novel, and thus, they might also assume that they are going to support the white-knight mindset. Having this lesson be learned in such a harsh way subverts their expectations, and makes the message more impactful. No one likes to be thought to be someone to protect and nothing more. Hanako confirms this in another ending saying, “All I ever was to you was… a useless person. Just someone... To protect. Someone like… a child. I-I wanted to be more to you than that, but after so long… I… got used to it.” (Act 4 - Scars, Adulthood) That's not to say that the game tries to preach that helping your loved ones is bad, of course. It simply tries to explain the difference between helping someone because you love them, and trying to help someone because you believe they need protecting from everything. This difference is explored more deeply in Emi's route, which is not going to be analyzed here.
To discuss Katawa Shoujo is subverting expectations, Rin Tezuka is a character that comes to mind. Rin has no arms, so it is quite easy to imagine how difficult life would be for this character. When Hisao and Rin discuss what life might be like without their disabilities in a more normal world, Rin asks “Is it hard to be disabled?” (Act 2 - Disconnect, Six Meters Closer to Heaven). While Rin would have lived with this disability throughout her entire life, thus getting more accustomed to it, this question caught me off guard while playing through the game. While this is just a one-liner from Rin’s route, several comments throughout it caught me off guard. Many of these were less-hard hitting and were more puns, such as:
Hisao: Oh, shoot!
Rin: Who? (Act 1- Life Expectancy, Things You Can Do)
The last way Katawa Shoujo subverts expectations is with its manly picnic ending. That’s right, “This is a manly picnic. No glasses. No napkins. Whiskey only. The beverage of true men… And pretzels.” (Act 1 - Life Expectancy, The Deep End). This happens when the main character is nice to everyone or mean to everyone. While being nice to everyone may seem like the completely correct moral thing to do, in this game it leads to a bad ending. Once again, it subverts the player’s expectations of what Hisao is supposed to do.
Katawa Shoujo is a surprising deep game, despite it being a visual novel about dating girls with disabilities. However, everything about the game demonstrates that it is subverting expectation. For such a controversial name, it turns out to have a lot of thought put into the game, giving off some rather deep lessons to give. Furthermore, it punishes players for being too kind towards everyone. This teaches the lesson that white-knighting is a bad thing to do to others, even if the visual novel is targeted towards a white-knight audience. Lastly, and most humorously, it demonstrates a difference of expectation with puns, creating some hilarity within its dialogue.
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