Katawa Shoujo: Morbid Curiosity Backfires and Leads to a Great Game

Author’s Note: This review contains minor plot spoilers.

I stumbled upon Katawa Shoujo, a visual novel by Four-Leaf Studios, by chance while aimlessly scouring the web one late night.  At first glance, the game (if you want to call it that) appears to be nothing more than a twisted fetish wet dream translated into interactive entertainment form; a dating sim spawned from the nether-realms of internet perversioin that has you romance a disabled girl of your choice. 

I was braced to roll my eyes a migraine-inducing amount at a feast of creepy borderline hentai. Instead, I found myself fully engaged in a truly heartwarming story I couldn’t put down

A mixture of boredom and curiosity can lead people to do strange things, and seeing that the game was free for download from the developer’s website, and feeling uninclined to play any of the other games at my disposal, I decided that I just had to see what lie within this utterly bizarre game. I was braced to roll my eyes a migraine-inducing amount of times at a proverbial feast of creepy borderline hentai.

Instead, I found myself fully engaged in a truly heartwarming, and at times, tragic story that I couldn’t put down, and left me painfully sleep deprived the following morning upon completing just one of its character’s story arcs.

A Genre Far From My Comfort Zone

Katawa Shoujo is the first visual novel I have ever played. 

I have absolutely no point of reference as to how it compares in terms of quality to other visual novels, and frankly, I don’t have any desire to play another. I found the opening section of the game, which is split into chapters that branch off depending on the rare choice of dialogue the player is given, extremely long and tedious to read through, clocking in between one and two hours in length.

While it may just be a matter of personal taste, Katawa Shoujo takes a painfully long time to introduce its cast, and takes far too long to bring about any interesting plot-points to keep the player’s interest.  The path the game’s storyline eventually takes after the opening chapter depends entirely on the dialogue choices the player makes, though initially, these choices are often incredibly vague, and can set the player on to a track they had no intention of taking.

I found myself skipping through the majority of the text in the opening chapter, dying for the plot to start focusing on the character I was interested in, and choosing the odd dialogue choice that I hoped would get me to another interaction with said character sooner.  In the end, just as I was about to give up on Katawa Shoujo, I found myself in the game’s bad ending, where, after failing to gain the friendship of any of the game’s female protagonists, and partaking in a lonely “manly picnic” with my character’s shut in, feminist conspiracy obsessed dorm neighbor, my character proceeded to die.

Suddenly, and unexpectedly, I found my resolve re-kindled

After consulting a flow-chart online outlining which combination of dialogue choices led to what plot, I jumped back in to Katawa Shoujo, blazing through what I had already read, and determined to get into the meat of the game’s plot. 

For all of the boring text I had read through, there were enough interesting moments that I just had to know if the game ever got good, especially after such a shocking and anti-climactic ending.  What I found surprised me more than any game I have played in recent memory, especially one that I had such low expectations for going into.

A Story of Equality

In Katawa Shoujo, you play as Hisao, a high schooler in modern Japan who, after a girl confessed her feelings for him, has a heart attack that lands him in the hospital for a number of months, where is diagnosed with a chronic form of arrhythmia.  He is then transferred Yamaku High School, a school designed to cater to the individual needs of teenagers with disabilities; some of which are more obvious than others.

While initially reluctant to accept his illness, and somewhat resentful towards having to leave his old life behind and being lumped in with students with very visible disabilities he sees as unrelateable to his own, he befriends the girls the player directs him to spend time with and comes to realize that their respective disabilities aren’t what define them as people. Anyone can overcome their potentially crippling struggles, and, assuming the player chooses the correct dialogue choices, end up falling for one of the girls for who they are; not for their disability like I, and I’m sure most of the un-initiated, assumed.

Katawa Shoujo has five girls Hisao can potentially enter into a relationship with, each with their own individual storyline, ranging between four to six hours in length, with several potential endings respectively. 

I only went down one of these girl’s storylines: Hanako’s

Hanako’s story is handled with often startling and heartbreaking realism from first hand experience, making her an extremely sympathetic and genuine character.

Hanako is an extremely shy girl with severe burns covering half of her face, and presumably, much of the rest of her body.  Initially, the player assumes that these scars are what landed her in Yamaku High School, but as her plot progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that Hanako’s real disability is her crippling social phobia; a malady that I am personally familiar with and is what lead me to follow her storyline.

While I cannot speak for the rest of the character’s stories, I can say that Hanako’s is handled with often startling and heartbreaking realism from first hand experience, making her an extremely sympathetic and genuine character for me.  After a lukewarm opening, the game’s writing improved vastly in quality, and I came to genuinely care for Hanako’s well-being, and wanted to see a happy ending for her and Hisao.

I won’t go into further detail as to not spoil the story, but I can say that by the ending of Hanako’s story arc, I had been sent through the full gauntlet of emotions.

Yes, There’s Sex

While the majority of Katawa Shoujo is quite tame in subject matter, there are a sex scenes.  I have only experienced Hanako’s and it is quite graphic, both visually, and in its written description.  However, the game has the option to turn off the adult content, which is a welcome addition for those who aren’t keen on viewing frame-by-frame hentai.  However, at least with Hanako’s story arc, sex only occurred once, and it is by no means the crux of the game’s story, or its appeal for that matter. In fact, I found the sex scene very awkward to watch and read through, though to its credit, it did have important context within the story’s narrative.

Not Exactly a Game, But a Story Worth Reading

I’ll admit, I feel strange for confessing that I like Katawa Shoujo as much as I do, but that is only because of what it appears to be on the outside, and what I assume most people may think of me for playing such a game. But in the end, and to my absolute surprise, Katawa Shoujo is a game I’m glad that I experienced, for its central theme of how beneath our exterior differences and flaws, we are all people with something to give and teach to one another, and are all worth loving, is a powerful one, and something that is too often forgotten.

As a gamer, the idea of reading a visual novel may not initially sound like a good time, but if you give Katawa Shoujo a chance, you may end up just as surprised as I was, and like many who have played it have reported, in tears.