Katawa Shoujo

Cartoon Porn or Worth Playing?

During your journey through life, you may have heard of a storytelling medium called the “visual novel.” You may have mocked the shit out of it. I have, and now I’m surprised to confess that I regret doing so. I guess I even think that one such visual novel, Katawa Shoujo, is worth playing.

A Bit of Background

Despite often being referred to as a computer game, a visual novel is essentially a work of fiction with just a small sprinkling of interactivity. It’s computer-based, and consists of a series of images (occasionally animated) and sounds, perpetually accompanied by text running across the bottom of the screen. Some of them are voice-acted, but Katawa Shoujo isn’t. The reader (player?) clicks or presses a key on the keyboard to advance the story. On occasion, the novel asks the reader to make a simple choice.1 It’s not often clear what the ramifications of your choice will be, but many of the decisions you make have an enormous impact on the story and its ending.

If you were an avid reader as a kid, this may sound reminiscent of those “choose your path” books, where your choices are represented by turning to specified pages. That’s what I thought of, anyway.

The reason a lot of people have a tendency to mock visual novels is because they are largely dominated by a single genre: romance. So much so, in fact, that the term “dating sim” has become virtually synonymous with visual novel. And yet they seem to cater mostly to males. How suspicious.

They almost always feature anime-style artwork, and this of course stems from the fact that most of them are made in Japan.

And yes, there’s sex in them.

I still remember when I first came across an anime-style porn video.2 I watched in bewilderment as the slimy and lustful beast used each one of its phallus-tipped tentacles to ravage the poor girl’s body — whose breasts, incidentally, were so large that the physics of the real world would prevent her from standing upright. It wasn’t clear whether she was a willing participant, but her many orgasms were certainly well-conveyed.

Unable to do otherwise, I watched it to the end, and then sat for several minutes, pondering. I speculated about what sort of person would find the scene titillating.3

For many years that scene was my only exposure to anime-style anything, so it’s easy to see why I might have had the wrong impression about visual novels like Katawa Shoujo. Especially when I learned that in English, Katawa Shoujo translates to “crippled girls.”

You may be thinking to yourself, “Jeff, if you had this impression of it, what could have possibly prompted you to try this visual novel in the first place?” Well, Day[9], whose show I watch occasionally, tends to have pretty good taste in video games. He was talking about Katawa Shoujo one day, and so I had to find out what was up.

At last, I think I’ve brought you up to speed, and can actually talk about why I think Katawa Shoujo is worth playing (reading?).

A Touching Story

I sat down, opened Katawa Shoujo on my computer, and prepared to be amused and disgusted.

The story opens on a crisp winter day. Snow is drifting down across an image of a thickly wooded area. A piano plays gently in the background, unintrusive. Text appears at the bottom.

A light breeze causes the naked branches overhead to rattle like wooden windchimes, it says. This is a popular retreat for couples in the summer. The deciduous trees provide a beautiful green canopy, far out of sight of teachers and fellow students.

But now, in late winter, it feels like I’m standing under a pile of kindling.

And so it begins. The protagonist, Hisao, waits here upon instruction of a note passed to him in class. When a girl speaks from behind him, his heart skips; it’s the voice of Iwanako, the girl he loves but hasn’t the courage to tell. He is filled with joy as she approaches. His heart races. His throat tightens.

When she speaks, the words are sweet.

“I just wanted to know… if you’d go out with me?”

Hisao just stands there, unable to move, unable to speak. His heart pounds harder still. He tries to say something, anything, but his throat is just so tight. He tries harder to force the words out. White-hot pain washes through him.

And then his heart stops beating. Completely. He collapses, and the world fades to black.

The screen follows in kind, and when it returns we are presented with the opening credits. A heart monitor appears, chirping rhythmically.

Text returns to the screen: It’s been four months since my heart attack. In that whole time, I can probably count the times I’ve left this hospital room unsupervised on one hand.

You see, Hisao has discovered that he has a latent birth defect called Arrhythmia. Despite never having symptoms as he grew up, his condition now is quite serious. He requires a mountain of daily medication just to keep him alive. He often asks the doctor when he’ll be able to leave, only ever obtaining vague responses. His love, Iwanako, visits every day. Then, she comes every other day. Then every week or so. Then not at all. His friends follow suit. Even his parents, who are not rich and must both work, begin coming less frequently.

One day, his parents and doctor gather in his room and tell him that he must go to a boarding school of sorts, for… special students. Students who are academically quite capable, but physically disabled.

When Hisao reaches the school and the story truly begins, he is alone and in a dark, uncaring state of mind. He sees himself as a broken person, cast into a collection of others who are broken.

The rest of the “game” tells the story of Hisao’s life at the school. The most important component of the story is of course the relationships he forms, both friendly and romantic, and how they impact him as he deals emotionally with his new lot in life.

The Dating Game

Choices, choices…

There is a fairly large cast of characters, but the main ones other than Hisao himself are his five “datable” options.

One of the key sources of my praise for Katawa Shoujo is how it handles itself with respect to the characters’ situation in life. Their disabilities do not define them, despite having a large impact on their day-to-day lives. The story neither downplays nor overstates the ways in which their disabilities affect them.

There’s the student council president, hard-working and a bit of a rules-nazi (deaf and mute). There’s the tortured artist, deeply philosophical and all in all quite strange (arms amputated, paints surprisingly well with her feet). There’s the jockish track star, always peppy with a positive outlook (legs amputated, runs fast with prosthetics). There’s the shy bookworm, complete with full-on social anxiety (severely disfigured by third-degree burns on half her body). And finally, there’s the wise, almost motherly class representative (blind).

My expectation, of course, was that this would be a sick game about trying to sleep with crippled girls. But that’s not it at all. It’s a story about a group of people, each living under the shadow of tragedy, each demonstrating strength in the face of it. The reader exercises almost no control over how the story progresses, instead being pulled along, pulled into the lives of not just sad little cartoon characters but of young human beings. Rather than assuming the role of Hisao, I found myself instead rooting for him, and for each potential love interest. The desire was not to see them hook up, but to see them come together and seize a bit of happiness for themselves.

The choices you do make are very indirectly related to which girl Hisao ends up with. Most do nothing more than add definition to his character. Is he a bookworm? Does he boldly introduce himself or keep quiet. When playing a board game, how aggressive is he? He loses the game either way (I tried both), but his choice defines who he is as a person, which determines his actions later in the story (and the opinions of him held by others).

A big criticism from people, especially women, is that a reader of something like this must be quite an asshole, or at the very least pathetic. Who else would dream of a world in which you are the only truly eligible bachelor among herds of desperate women?

Indeed, I can think of some girls I know personally that would no doubt express this opinion. After doing so, they would turn back to each other and resume an exciting discussion about Edward vs. Jacob, or Damon vs. Stefan, or Eric vs. Bill (vs. Alcide?), or any other piece of fiction4 involving two or more super-sexy guys that only have eyes for the main character: a girl that everyone likes/loves/is obsessed with and wants to protect. This girl is of course guiltless in leading them all on; she just doesn’t know who to choose (poor her).

I don’t begrudge these women their fantasies,5 but I’m extremely critical when they expose their ugly double standards.

All of that being said, Katawa Shoujo is not even a male version of this fantasy. There are multiple females you can potentially end up with, true, but the path is chosen fairly early on in the story, and the rest is focused on whether or not things will succeed with that single girl. You never lead anyone on. You never attract the interest of every female character in the game simultaneously. You never swap back and forth. If things don’t work out with the one you develop a romantic relationship with, then you end up alone.6

You can’t really predict what your choices will result in (and therefore which girl you’ll end up hitting it off with). Thus, the fact that there are five different girls you can end up with only serves to make the game re-playable. It’s a way of including five different stories in one. Each path of the fork gives you the opportunity to explore a relationship with distinct and interesting character.

Sex

The truth is, the characters are eighteen years old and trying to find happiness. It would seem odd for their romantic relationships not to involve some sexuality.

But the “sex scenes”7 could not be further from porn. They are about developing the characters’ relationship. I found myself turned on not so much physically, but emotionally.

For each potential love interest, there are one or two tastefully drawn and written scenes that include nudity and sexual prose. But it’s such a tiny part of the story. This content can even be disabled in the options menu, further driving home that sex is not at all the reason for the visual novel’s existence.

Indeed, if you’re looking for sexual fiction, you would be much better served by reading basically any romance novel ever written.8 Perhaps start with 50 Shades of Grey (if you can stomach the primitive storytelling and awful writing).9

Or you could just watch porn.

The point here is that the little bit of sex in Katawa Shoujo is tasteful and integral to telling a love story.

Criticisms & Caveats

So far I’ve only really sung praises. I guess I’m feeling defensive about it because lots of people I’ve encountered have vicious disdain for this type of fiction/game. But there are some faults, and this type of fiction is definitely not for everyone.

It’s important to note that Katawa Shoujo is my only experience with visual novels. I suppose it could be an exception to the rule. Also, I should note that I’ve only played through it one time.10

Assuming the genre appeals to you, there is still a major risk that, well… you just won’t get it.

There are some technical things and design details that might bother you. The prose is rocky at times, in large part due to it being a translation from Japanese, I suspect. The personalities of the characters are exaggerated to varying degrees. For example, when one loud and jovial character laughs, it’s depicted like this: “Wahahaha!!” Very cartoonish.

Cartoonish is probably the best way to describe everything. That includes the art style, of course. As with pretty much all anime type stuff, it does not prioritize realism. The font used throughout the story appears to be Comic Sans.

Constantly clicking through to the next piece of text can get a little tedious. There’s an “auto mode,” but I could never get the speed quite right.11

But details aside, the most important thing to realize is that it’s not really a game, it’s more a unique form of illustrated fiction. And to get it, you have to do more than just look at it and read its text.

To get it, to feel something as you journey through it, you have to bring something with you. You have to be able to extrapolate a little. You can’t just read it; you have to recognize what the cartoon images and textual storytelling represent. The visual novel itself does not do nearly as much “work” for you as, say, a movie or even a traditional book. It is its own art form, and allows for (and requires) much more interpretation. You must contribute to the experience with imagination.

I think a lot of people don’t realize this requirement, or if they do, they struggle with it, and they end up not getting it. Many people have this thing where if they experience a thing and don’t get it, they want to criticize it. What a bad approach to life.

Secrets of the Manly

My two favorite things about fiction in any form — perhaps the only two things important to me in stories at all — are (1) bad ass action and conflict, carried out awesomely, and (2) characters and the relationships between them. Katawa Shoujo is steeped deeply in the second of the two.12 It drew me in, made me feel something. I suppose it was my shock at such a thing occurring that prompted me to write this.

The appeal of Katawa Shoujo lies almost entirely in its status as a dating sim. I hesitate to call it that, but if you remove all the scorn surrounding the term for a moment and examine what it really is, then you reveal a storytelling method focused entirely on exploring relationships in their most intimate form: romantic. And for many reasons, the characters and relationships in Katawa Shoujo are of a compelling variety indeed.

The loneliness within Hisao (and his potential love interests, if you look closely) is palpable when the story begins, and so the significance of its lessening is well appreciated by the reader when a relationship begins to form. Throughout the story, the ever-present threat of losing what’s been gained is keenly felt.

Katawa Shoujo is told through the eyes of a male, and some of my favorite aspects of the story are learning about the oddly charming personalities of the female characters, seeing them lifted up and cared for, seeing them happy. Seeing them show affection, and care about a guy.13 But that is not to say that female readers would not also find the story moving. The story’s treatment of the characters’ disabilities is respectful and sincere, and that aspect alone will likely affect you emotionally. There is drama to be had, and that same flavor of suspenseful question asked by romance novels: Will it work out? This suspense is enhanced, of course, by the fact that unlike a romance novel it might very well not work out, and if it doesn’t it, it’ll be the reader’s (read: your) fault.

But it is refreshing indeed to come across a type of fiction that takes on nothing except the intimate relationship, in full, defining itself not with which story a girl would like to hear, but with the stuff that moves a boy.

Sex isn’t all of it.


  1. Here’s an example of choice from Katawa Shoujo: (1) Ask about the library or (2) Ask about Shizune’s blindness. 

  2. Believe it or not, I came across it quite innocently! I think I was like fourteen or so, searching for fantasy/sci-fi cartoons. 

  3. If you find that such things turn you on, I won’t think less of you. We all have our kinks, definitely, and I’m a much more accepting person than I was at age fourteen. 

  4. If you went looking, I predict that you’d find thousands of pieces of fiction centered on just this theme. 

  5. On the contrary, I encourage them to explore what interests them and makes them happy. 

  6. Or dead… 

  7. Perhaps a better term would be “love scenes”? 

  8. Of course this is an exaggeration, as there do exist romance novels without a hint of sex in them. I’ve just never seen any of my female friends take an interest in those. 

  9. In all seriousness, it’s some of the worst written trash I’ve ever read. The story has potential (but still pretty much sucks compared to better kinky romances), and there’s even some sexiness here and there, but the author’s command of the English language is very poor. Unfortunate for her, seeing how she’s British. 

  10. For those curious: Lilly. It was a happy ending. 

  11. There’s also a skip mode, which takes you rapidly through everything until you reach a decision point, and also stopping if you reach any scene you haven’t already seen. This is presumably for when you replay the game, making it easy to skip the parts you’ve already read. 

  12. It lacks pretty much any action to speak of, true. Characters I can care about and stories that move me have always been more essential than action, though. 

  13. All favorites of mine in real life too, come to think of it.