Kara no Shoujo Ramblings (SPOILERS)

Foreword

Blog inactive for more than 2 months, Tsun said he’d be back on the 29th but I haven’t seen him, I’m getting rid of the “A closer look at…” category so I can use more amusing titles when (if) I fully revive the blog. (As if it was ever alive)

Rather than do full fledged eroge reviews or so much shit, I intend to take it slowly at first and keep it to impressions for now.
As for this post, it’s actually a ramble I wrote in my diary. Since even in my diary I’ve been taking my non-existent readers too much in consideration I decided to just let my thoughts flooooooooow onto the notepad again this once, and it felt good. I realized that if I don’t restrict myself like I did in the past I can write better material in my diary that I can use as a base for an actual post after.

In this case though, I am not planning on writing a review of Kara no Shoujo. SO RAMBLE ON!

Warning: Do NOT continue reading if you don’t want to be spoiled!

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Firstly, my spoilerish synopis:

Kara no Shoujo is a grotesque, gory detective eroge by Innocent Grey and translated into English by Mangagamer. It has quite the somber atmosphere and portrays little hope, but overwhelming despair. Only a masochist
is able to go through all that without going insane. (Since masochists are already somewhat insane, in a way)

The protagonist is Tokisaka Reiji, a former cop, now detective. A friend who is a cop asks him to help them with an investigation involving a bizarre murder where body parts are chopped off and disposed of in peculiar ways except one part. It is later discovered that the body parts disposed of weren’t from a single person and that the disposal methods were based on literature, specifically a manuscript called “Dante’s Divine Comedy“.

RAMBLE ON!

“WHY, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT!?” (The protagonist never actually said this)

There are barely any characters in the game you can save from dying. The first characters that pop into my head are Kuchiki Touko, Yuki, and Kazuna; but even then Touko will ALWAYS lose her limbs.

It’s all her fault.. it’s all the fault of THAT OTHER TOUKO who threw away her medicine. I hated her until the very end, apart from the bad ending with her; at that point I didn’t hate her (as much) anymore.
Why? Because she wasn’t even worth being hated, I pitied her. Her mind was as distorted as Michael Jackson’s nose. (First thing I could think of, sorry)

Speaking of bad endings, I got one on my first playthrough. Just by experiencing that one playthrough and bad ending I already knew that this game isn’t doable without a walkthrough, unless you’re some kind of super masochist with the pride of Katsuragi Keima. (Though I can’t imagine him ever playing a game like this)

Even the endings that aren’t considered “bad” are probably worse than the average bad ending you see in other eroge. No, Kara no Shoujo is definitely not a joke.

“GIVE ME MY TOUKO BACK!” (The protagonist never actually said this either)

Side note: Mangagamer actually transliterated Touko’s name as “Toko” instead; I do not like.

Anyway, just because the endings never end 100% happy for our hero doesn’t mean they don’t make the story good.
Personally, I think the one involving Touko’s head cut off by Katsuragi Shin, also known as Mamiya Shinji might’ve been the best of all. Apparently the trigger to this ending was the photo or postcard of the lake nearby the chapel Touko and Shinji used to live at you can find during the investigation of Shinji’s room. It would’ve been very easy to overlook this item if it wasn’t for the walkthrough.

It may be a exceptionally cruel ending compared to the other ones, but much better than the lazy conclusions where Touko hadn’t been found at all. There’s also the ending where Touko hadn’t been
hurt by Shinji at all and returned safely, but it didn’t give the same impact I felt with the other ending during those scenes where Shinji dropped the black egg, the picture showing Touko and Shinji from when they were small, and the developments of Shinji’s wicked mind.

Like many games do, Kara no Shoujo has a true end route. Unfortunately, it wasn’t like I had expected it to be.
Before I even got to doing the true route I asked ADD and lolicon friend for some vague opinions such as “How was it? Was it good?” without actually getting spoiled. Their reactions weren’t exactly the most happy ones.

Kara no Shoujo, I am disappoint(ed) and impressed at the same time. It was a rough but interesting ride, tears of rage were shed, expectations were not met, hope eventually turned into despair and yet they got me to 99% clear a game (with more than one route) since months, or even years.

Innocent Grey should change their name to Guilty Grey.