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Karifean's Blog of Visual Novels

Katawa Shoujo Review

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Katawa Shoujo (lit. "Disability Girl") is a visual novel developed by Four Leaf Studios. The novel gathered a bit of attention as its developer team consists of volunteers from the 4chan community which formed Four Leaf Studios with the sole purpose of creating and freely distributing this visual novel.


Katawa Shoujo is one of a vast minority of visual novels that was not made in Japan.

Overview

The main protagonist is Hisao Nakai, a high-school student suffering from arrhythmia, a heart condition that causes irregular beating and occasional sharp pain. Following the discovery of his condition, he is sent to a school specializing in giving disabled youths a proper education.


From one day to the next Hisao's life turns upside down.

While at first apprehensive about his new life he soon comes to know many people around the school, and before long he starts to get accustomed to it.

Structure

The story begins with the introductory Act 1 where it then splits off into five character arcs, one per main heroine, which are divided into three Acts each.



All the Acts are of similar length, although you will breeze through Act 1 on any subsequent playthroughs thanks to the Skip function. The character routes all have one good end, one neutral end and potentially one or multiple bad ends. To get 100% CG and Library completion it is necessary to get all the good and neutral ends at the very least.

All the routes are easily found and entered with careful selection of the proper choices in Act 1.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack of Katawa Shoujo is not particularly notable. None of the tracks on the OST really stand out - neither in a positive nor negative way - but they do mostly manage to help create the proper atmosphere for any given scene. When beginning this visual novel it first struck me as being a rather dull soundtrack, but I grew to appreciate it over time.

One thing to note is, the game gives you the name of the currently playing soundtrack if you open the menu which is a mind-boggingly simple yet useful feature and I'd love to see it in more visual novels. Saves the time of aimlessly looking around trying to find tracks you like among names that tell you nothing.

Characters

Besides the main character we have five main heroines, a supporting heroine and several side characters.

The five main heroines are Rin, a painter without hands and a personality that defies understanding or explaining, Emi, a girl who lost her legs in an accident but is still an enthusiastic runner, Shizune, a deafmute girl who is also student council president and has a strong competitive spirit, Hanako, a very shy girl with burns over the entire right half of her body, and Lilly, a blind half-Scottish girl with a somewhat noble air about her. There's also Misha, Shizune's best friend and her interpreter, who also happens to be the first person Hisao becomes acquainted with after his initial introduction to Yamaku High School.


The main cast is quite good with none of the characters suffering from a lack of characterization or an overbearing reliance on tropes. Although some characters can overstay their welcome in the early parts of the story, they all have a chance to shine in their story arcs. More or less, at least. Sometimes it worked out well, sometimes not so much.

The side characters are pretty good. Kenji is Hisao's neighbor in the school dorms and has the role of comic relief character which works well for the most part. There's also Yamaku staff members, and family members for most heroines and some of them are quite memorable characters. I especially liked the Nurse of Yamaku High School and Akira Satou, Lilly's sister, the former for being a quite helpful guy with a good sense of humor, and the latter for just being plain great in most scenes involving her.

Story

Storywise Katawa Shoujo feels similar to many of the other popular tearjerker visual novels. The setup is interesting and executed quite well, although only one route feels like it truly takes advantage of all the nuances of the rather unique setup. The routes themselves are also for the most part very enjoyable and succeed at making the characters they focus on more and more likeable.

There is no one true route which leaves everything open to interpretation and the reader's preference. On the emotional side I can't really say Katawa Shoujo had any moments that made me tear up which is a bit of a shame, but it does make up for it with a rather commendable amount of good character interaction and development. It's interesting seeing Hisao's character subtly change depending on which arc you go through, and also how there are certain things that just don't change.


Hisao's occasional introspectives were interesting.

Considering the amount of different writers the visual novel had I expected it to be a bit more disjointed, but it was pretty consistent in its tone, thematic focus and overall feel, which is something I find quite impressive as I've seen it done a lot worse in other novels with multiple writers.

Summary

On a whole, Katawa Shoujo was an enjoyable read. It did not betray my expectations, but it didn't exceed them either. There were few particularly memorable moments but I had a great time following the storylines of the characters I liked.


The comedy in this game is pretty great at times ^^

As some may know, I found Lilly's route in particular to be easily the best route in this visual novel for a variety of reasons. It excels in all of Katawa Shoujo's strong points while not really sharing any of its main flaws. If you're unwilling to read through everything I would definitely recommend that you at least read her route - although if you are willing I would instead recommend that you leave it for last, to end on the highest possible note.

A lot of times the other routes have a serious pacing issue, feeling as if they take hours upon hours even though they don't actually take long at all. This is more of a problem for some routes than for others but is still an issue that is difficult to ignore. As such I cannot recommend this visual novel to anyone who particularly dislikes slow pacing. It's especially frustrating if you're not new to the visual novel genre and have already read some of similar style but without the problems Katawa Shoujo has. I would have probably enjoyed it a lot more if it had been one of my first visual novels.

Overall, I give Katawa Shoujo a respectable

7 / 10

It's worth looking into, but likely won't blow you away.


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