LeMU.waterbottle

Com­pany: Nitro+
Sce­nario: 虚淵玄 (Urobuchi Gen) (Puella Magi Madoka Mag­ica, Saya no Uta, Fate/Zero)
Art­work: 中央東口 (Chu­uou Higashiguchi) (Saya no Uta)
Pub­lish Date: May 27, 2011

Price: 4,620 yen

Home­page: www.nitroplus.co.jp/game/kikokugai/

Hope­fully by now every­body knows the name of Urobuchi Gen.  His gain of fame after a cer­tain plot twist in a cer­tain mag­i­cal girl anime is almost leg­endary, and then his pop­u­lar­ity reached a new high for his other work, Fate/Zero became ani­mated.  As a fan of both anime and Saya no Uta, Kikoku­gai became a must-play for me.  Yet due to I’m not good at han­dling old games, the thought of read­ing the visual novel made in 2003 always made me hes­i­tate… Luck­ily, the Kikoku­gai received a remake in 2011 in wake Urobuchi’s (and Nitro+‘s) popularity.

Even though the remake is no longer R-18, this clas­sic still retains the dark­ened attrac­tive­ness of a hard-boiled cyber­punk dystopian tale of revenge.

In a futur­is­tic Shang­hai where the rise of cyber­netic tech­nol­ogy has ener­gized by local mafia, a man is set to avenge the rape and mur­der of his younger sis­ter.  There are five peo­ple on his list: his for­mer com­rades who gang raped the poor girl and then each received a cyborg doll with part of her con­scious soul.

I’m not sure whether Urobuchi is fan of Masamune Shi­row: the world set­ting of Kikoku­gai is prac­ti­cally a Chi­nese wuxia novel inter­pre­ta­tion of Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell (which not sur­pris­ingly, another favorite of mine).  Many of Kikokugai’s theme res­onates with what made GiTS a con­tem­po­rary classic–physical prowess of cyborg bod­ies and dis­cus­sion of dig­i­tize human soul (or “ghost”).

Unlike Nitro+ and Urobuchi’s other works, Kikoku­gai is a rather short visual novel with no branch­ing option and only one end­ing.  I roughly spent only about 4 hours to fin­ish read­ing it.  Pretty early into the story the reader would notice its end­ing is blandly predictable–like a mul­ti­ple choice ques­tion, instead of short answer ques­tion, where the reader is kept under con­stant plot pro­gres­sion until later into the story.  Nonethe­less, a pre­dictable end­ing does not mean a pre­dictable path, and this is where Urobuchi’s style cuts in.  His text is bal­anced in terms of nar­ra­tion and dia­log along with a near per­fect pac­ing between tense and relaxed scenes, with­out for­get­ting to give enough back­ground infor­ma­tion regard­ing the world and characters.

Look­ing at the evo­lu­tion of Chuuou’s art­work is inter­est­ing.  Improve­ment was expected–and is appar­ent in the remake ver­sion– as eight years have past since the orig­i­nal ver­sion.  Although the char­ac­ter design looks mostly the same, notice­able dif­fer­ences such as the size of char­ac­ter fore­head can be seen.  Of course, the remake version’s col­or­ing, shad­ing and other pol­ish leaves no hints of the orig­i­nal age of this visual novel.  Com­bined with the unusual choice of using 3D ren­dered still-scenery BG, the game’s mood is uniquely baked, which is quite fit­ting given the scifi (sci­ence fan­tasy) Shang­hai as the stage.

Since I have not played the orig­i­nal Kikoku­gai, I don’t know about how much improve­ments were made in the remake ver­sion on terms of spe­cial effects and stuff.  What I can tes­tify is the new Kikokugai’s com­bat scenes left me thirsty for a full length ani­mated movie.  The wuxia ele­ments are quite heavy dur­ing these scenes, so I’m not sure how a lack of tex­tual com­men­tary could be com­pli­mented.  These daz­zling SE com­bined with 15 BGM tracks and a full voice cast.. even though the game is a remake, 4600 yen price isn’t too much after all.  /CM_mode_off

The inter­face, unlike the game’s graph­ics, are less clear whether it is advanced or retro.  Most of the inter­face and all of the nar­ra­tion and dia­log in game are ver­ti­cal; it may be styl­ish, but  I don’t know how it can be trans­late to Eng­lish with­out break­ing the atmosphere.