Kara no Shoujo (18+) (vndb link) (MangaGamer link USD$34.95)
Hey, back with another world class rant!
Since as I said before Phenomeno while looking really interesting, sometimes (many times…) refuses to work, I had to do something else…well, for example, jumping to the next game in line. So I did and I’m back…
This time with a mystery/thriller/detective story (sounds good so far) set in 1950’s Japan (1956 more exactly; sounding even better) with reportedly above normal levels of gore (sounding great).
10/10 Would bang!
Wait…too early for that joke.
As usual, lots of spoilers and adult oriented illustrations after the “read more” tag. (really, don’t read if you’re going to play the game. I may or may not spoil everything and I’m not accountable for it.)
Also as usual, this is NOT a review, I don’t have the analytic power nor the writing talent needed for one, this is just a rant.
Another warning, this is a LOOOOOOOOONG rant and as a rant I kinda go here and there.
Also utsuge . (My first contact with this kind of game was Kana ~Imouto~ over ten years ago…my heart still hasn’t healed. 
, yes, a laughing smilie)
So, if ready, please go on.
First the kinda funny disclaimer they put on the game (I guess I should mention I don’t own the copyrights to any of the following images, only to the text on my article, but I believe their use is under the fair use thingie. You know…there might be americans reading this so I better cover my legal ass):
Which was exactly what the guys at mangagamer did, cover their legal asses. Although it would be…interesting to one day find out that a gore-ish eroge had actually been ‘live action’-ed by the creators, ghastly but interesting nonetheless.
I also agree that illustrations of sexual relationships and of different sexual fantasies are not offensive.
So, I guess I’m good to go.
There will be spoilers, this is the last warning. The reason I repeat this so often is that I hate to read spoilers before playing a VN, so obeying the good old “golden rule” I always warn before spoiling things, I even go as far as hiding the more important spoilers inside spoiler tags even if they are amidst countless lesser spoilers.
So, in this eroge you are…some guy, doing…some thing. (ah, my always dry, not funny jokes)
You are Tokisaka Reiji (henceforth MC or Reiji), who is a detective and former cop, who has a really cute younger sister Tokisaka Yukari who lives with him. (and who you see naked quite early in the game 
)
His fiancée was killed six years ago, on a wave of sorta bizarre murders, he is still trying to deal with the loss and the feeling of powerlessness as he was a cop back then yet was unable to ever find the culprit.
In your first contact with the MC he is in his office, just finishing a case and recalling some recent cases.
That’s a load of murders.
He agrees with me.
I’m starting to like this guy.
So, since he just finished a couple of cases and currently had nothing else on his hands, he decides it’s a good time for a break of a few days.
And goes on with his normal life and visits “Moon World” cafe which is owned by an old friend of his, Hazuki Kyoko. (who at some points comes out as totally hilarious, yet completely unbelievable, e.g. when she and her employee close the cafe for a day because it’s time to clean the place and as the MC approaches she comes out screaming for help…because she hates cleaning; otherwise she seems to be a sort of female version of Reiji as she’s a widow and just goes on doing her best to live with the loss, hence they sometimes have strangely deep conversations)
Meanwhile things happen and the MC is tailed by a young girl, who he tries to loose by going to the local park, only to go to his relax spot and…find said girl waiting for him.
Turns out she wants to give him a job, to go and find…
Miss…that might be a bit hard.
Find her true self, quite an unusual request but unfortunately the MC will soon have his hands full of work, you know…with the bizarre murders going around and the disappearing students at his sister’s school.
Talking about his sister Yukari…she’s odd, extremely odd I might say. (yet lovely…)
“Why?” you ask.
On one hand she’s a pretty, responsible, collected young lady, as shown in the following scene:
See? Young, pretty and calm.
You open the door to the shower while she is there and completely opposite to the usual stereotype (where you would at the very least get screamed at), she doesn’t bat an eyelid, in fact she just mentions that it would be really cramped with the two of you taking a bath at the same time; Reiji excuses himself and turns back, closing the door, while she says that she could at least wash his back if he wanted.
Calm and collected to the point of…being slightly odd.
She is also a very responsible young lady, as she takes care of the house and cleans Reiji’s office when needed. (and goes to school, where she is an exemplary student)
That makes it even more odd when…
On the other hand, she sometimes comes across as borderline retarded, as shown here:
Not necessarily this exact screenshot, where she is talking to the koi, apologizing for not having food to give them (which while slightly odd, is nothing to write home about), but in the scene preceding it where she is extremely distressed that the koi are drowning and how their faces show their pain and suffering as they grasp for air. (have you even seen fish beg for food? I can kinda see where she’s coming from)
In the game this is explained as her being oblivious to anything that doesn’t fall under her interests (autistic much?), kind of understandable I would say, but anyone who doesn’t simply deduce that koi, just like all the other fish are aquatic beings and can breath underwater, is a bit beyond oblivious. Still, like most other characters she manages to be a likeable character.
By now, another minor character that you’ve been introduced to is Amemiya Hatsune, a young lady who works for Kyoko at “Moon World” cafe.
Young, filled with dreams and with a positive attitude.
Your first contact with her is this:
Panty shot right at the first contact, nice start.
So you start talking with her a bit and she mentions ‘someone’ you know…whom you address as ‘that guy’, you must love him.
A phrase that should never be said by a young lady on a eroge.
I said I liked this guy, didn’t I?
Turns out that, no, he just taught her how to write and she’s really thankful for it (you tease her that she’s in love with the guy)…yet yes, she embarrassedly admits she worked at a brothel but Kyoko hurriedly jumps in the conversation and says Hatsune didn’t ‘service’ anyone. And that quickly ends the conversation, Reiji knows when to shut up. (I like the MC, enough of a perv to be a worthy MC, yet doesn’t go overboard with the pervness)
Well, enough talk about minor characters for now. (although that’s half the fun of a rant)
So things happen and after some twists and turns Reiji becomes an undercover detective at his sister’s school, to try to find some leads about the disappearances of two school students.
And, he’s such a great detective that as soon as he sets foot on the place, two teachers/staff and four students already know who he is (number including his sister).
Two of the students who know who he is are the slightly creepy Toko duo. (one is the girl who asked him to find her true self, seen on an image somewhere above, the other…is the creepier part of the duo…later in the game, WAY creepier)
And as if that wasn’t bad enough to work with, thanks to the school’s rules he has to keep dropping his cover to talk with students who may have information on the case and may or may not even be involved in it.
Being a male teacher on an all girls school while investigating disappearances is a bit crippling, fight on brave player, a seemingly solid story and gratuitous H-scenes await you.
Still, I must admit, haven’t had an eroge/VN that kept me glued to the screen like this one for quite a few years. And that’s good, very good. (then again, I haven’t played many of them in that timespan)
Detective VNs are always strangely immersive, I haven’t used this many save slots in a VN since…ever!
While our beloved MC has his hands quite full with creepy cases…our murderer gets to work.
Hihihihihihi…she has flowery butterflies coming out of her vagina. (that is NOT a Jpeg artifact, it’s part of the text decoration)
And the gore starts as the murderer gives us a fresh victim to deal with, with a severed right arm, her uterus ripped out and her head twisted backward.
And now the story deepens…
And as usual this is where I stop the rant as I dislike to go too in-depth into the game. (and still haven’t finished it)
Nice things:
The notebook feature is nice given the gameplay of the game.
The investigation/inference parts were nice as they were an unusual gameplay mechanic.
Not so nice:
Read some opinions that most H-scenes were superfluous and unnecessary. I tend to agree.
The investigation while a nice novelty is completely fucked, as it relies on non-existent details for essential plot things. e.g. a shelf of a dozen books that is strangely ‘broken’ into three clickable areas one of them being stupidly easy to miss, of course that is exactly the plot essential area.
If you’re into this for the H-scenes or are thinking about it…don’t, while many of them are/seem completely detached of anything in the plot (and a few of them actually end up with you dead…), they’re frustratingly hard to get if you’re playing casually.
More objective rating, yet, still completely subjective:
Art: 6/10; Chars themselves would be 8/10, the backgrounds…they are good but I still disliked them, so…
Music: 6/10; somewhat generic, not much that is memorable. Not bad music, quite the opposite, it’s just…meh.
Story: 8/10; good story, maybe a great story, I’m not good at evaluating these things.
Voices: 8/10; good voices all around I would say. Both male and female chars have voices, although I think nothing would have been lost if the protagonist also had a voice.
Misc.: Gore! Death! Dismemberments! Slightly imaginative murder scenes! Half point for that.
Overall: 7.5/10 Would hatch!
Although at US$35…well, at least it isn’t a ten years old VN.
Almost the end of the rant, as a see ya’ll later present, I’ll leave you Miss Hot nurse with glasses (Akazaki Nene), had many other images that I could have used, but felt most of them would spoil something or other in the game, this one doesn’t spoil much (except that you may have sex with her, but then this image is from when someone who was not you had just finished playing with them boobs. Hmmm…I guess I AM spoiling quite a bit.)
Click for bigger image if you want.
Ah, heck, one more of Yukari the demure, apparently Asperger’s little sister, staring at a snail. (I grew fond of her…)
Click for bigger image if you want.
This is by far my longest rant. Then again this was by far the most enjoyable VN I put my hands on in the last four years. (out of the maybe ten…so I’m not saying it’s the best VN ever)
Set in a world filled with all kinds of fucked up and weird characters, mixed with some gore and somewhat imaginative murders, it was a pleasure to spend two entire nights playing this. (did I ever mention I’m a slow reader?)
The endings…all fucked up in their own way.
Both following spoilers are pretty much rants within the rant, the reading is optional. Read the first one if you want a description of some of the endings. And the second…if you have nothing better to do.
And…end!
Kara no Shoujo, the original (hey, play the game and you”ll get my hint) Click for larger image.