#oneaday Day 750: I Love You, Hanako

This is the third of several posts regarding the notorious amateur-developed visual novel Katawa Shoujo. If you are intending to play this game and proceed down the “Hanako” path and would like to avoid spoilers, I recommend you skip this post. I’ve even put the spoilery discussion below the break. Aren’t I nice?

If you’re still reading this, it’s highly likely you already know what Katawa Shoujo is but just in case you aren’t and/or you haven’t read the previous posts where I included this exact same paragraph, it’s a visual novel developed by 4 Leaf Studios, made up of members of the much- (and usually justifiably-) maligned 4chan community along with other itinerant creative types from around the Internet. It was developed following extended discussion over a sketch by Japanese doujinshi artist Raita, and is the very definition of a “labour of love”, having come from discussions on 4chan all the way to a full-fledged, professional-quality game between the years of 2007 and 2012. It’s been described by some as “eroge” or an erotic game, but I feel this does it an injustice; there are sexual scenes in the game, yes, but the point of the game is not to get to these scenes — rather, they are part of the plot, and not necessarily a “victory” for the player. They are also not terribly frequent compared to the rest of the game, which focuses on interpersonal interactions and psychological issues.

If you want to check out Katawa Shoujo for yourself, take a peek at the official website. My previous post regarding Emi’s path can be found here, and if you’re too lazy to scroll down, yesterday’s post on Lilly can be found here.

Before I proceed, I should probably explain a few things — primarily, why the hell I am blogging more about this game than pretty much anything else I’ve ever played?

I don’t have an easy answer to that save for the fact that it’s resonated with me. And that’s pretty much all there is to it — gameplay consists almost entirely of reading, looking at pictures and listening to music with the occasional choice between two (or, on very rare occasions, three) options. So it’s certainly not the in-depth gameplay that has made me so interested in and enthusiastic about this title. The quality of writing, the well-defined characters and the emotional stories that they’re used to tell, though? That’s the prime attraction for me, and simultaneously what might put some others off.

So, on to Hanako.

I was expecting Hanako’s path to be one of the most difficult to deal with, not necessarily from a choice-making perspective, but from an emotional perspective. While I can’t relate to the trauma Hanako suffered when she lost her parents in the fire that caused the scars over half her body, I can relate to her social anxiety — that urgent feeling in your brain that when surrounded by unfamiliar people you really, really want to be somewhere else, and fast.

Like Hanako, I don’t suffer it all the time. I have close friends with whom I can hang out, relax and chill out with for indefinite periods of time, just as she has Lilly and subsequently Hisao. But at the same time when thrust into a situation that will require socialising with people that I don’t particularly know — or, worse, like — I often have a “fight or flight” response, usually ending in the latter. It’s something that has got somewhat better over the years, but I can vividly recall on a number of occasions at university being out with a group of friends on the town, and just quietly slipping away at some point throughout the course of the evening because I couldn’t take it any more. Often my absence went unnoticed.

Back to Hanako, though. In Hanako, we see a scared, fragile little girl in a teenager’s body. She’s afraid to leave her childhood behind, even after it was ripped from her by the death of her parents. She latched on to Lilly as a mother figure, and Lilly, as the caring, kind and gentle sort of person, accepted her. The two enjoy a good relationship, though Hanako becomes extremely dependent on Lilly’s support, as we see by how terrified she is when it becomes necessary for her to talk to people when Lilly isn’t there. She stammers, she fumbles her words and, occasionally, she simply bolts.

When Hisao comes on the scene, it’s the beginning of something new for both him and Hanako. Hisao and Hanako both feel as if they are damaged goods, for different reasons — Hisao for his heart problems, and Hanako for her visible scars, which she does the best to cover up at all times with her hair and clothing. They begin to discover that they’re able to relate to one another for these conditions that they’re ashamed of, and, on the “good” route, come to bond over their scars. Hisao may only have a single scar on his chest as opposed to burns all over the side of his body, but it’s still there as a constant reminder of his weakness.

Their finding each other comes to be less beneficial for one another than initially appears. While they support each other, they quickly fall into a codependent relationship, with one relying on the other. Hisao uses Hanako as an excuse not to have to think about the future, thinking of her as a special case who needs protecting. Lilly picks up on this and calls Hisao on it towards the end of the story.

If following the “good” path, Hisao ends up with Hanako late at night. He shows her his scar, the reminder of his painful past. In response, she strips down and shows him her body, scars and all — “this is me, all of me,” she says — and the two end up having rather awkward sex. It’s not until afterwards that Hisao has the sickening feeling that he wasn’t even sure if she said “yes” — it was just something that happened, though he feels afterwards that it shouldn’t have, that all it has achieved is put more walls up between the two of them.

Up until this point, Hisao has been somewhat absorbed in his own “white knight” quest to “fix” Hanako. Indeed, Hanako’s “bad” ending sees her flying into a furious rage as he gets so absorbed in his role, so utterly convinced that he can somehow “save” her that he fails to see — or accept — that she wants and needs the space to work things out for herself, and to be independent, despite how much she has relied on others.

The final scene of Hanako’s “good” path, however, reveals the girl’s true intentions — “I wanted you to see me as someone more than someone you had to protect,” she says. “All I ever was to you was a useless person, like a child.” Hisao initially wants to deny this, but realisation finally dawns on him.

“She had become to me what I had been to my friends after my heart attack,” he thinks. “A broken person.”

He realises that this is actually the last thing he wanted to happen. He knows how awful it felt to have people he loved fall away from him because of his own issues, and at this point, he realises that he’s been doing the same to Hanako. She didn’t want to lose him, but her own feelings of inadequacy meant she felt she was unable to pursue him and admit her true feelings. We see this from the last thing she says in the story — her kiss is a “gift”, and “something she should have given [him] a long time ago”.

Hanako’s feelings cut deep. I can’t count the number of times over the years that I have felt similar feelings to her. Feelings of inadequacy, of being unable to measure up to impossible, undefinable standards that I’ve conjured up from somewhere. Feelings of being “useless”, of being a “broken person”. Feelings that came to a head as my marriage and life as I knew it came tumbling down around me. I had fucked up, made a mistake, ruined everything. And who would want someone so broken?

My own feelings, of course, don’t come from physical scars of feeling responsibility for a past traumatic event. In my case, they’re born from depression and, I imagine, whatever mental scars my less-than-pleasant life at school left me with. The result is the same, though — a depleted sense of self-worth, the feeling that you’ll lose people simply for being somehow “useless” or “inadequate”.

I haven’t felt those feelings to the same degree for some time now, but Hanako’s story resonated deeply with me precisely because I understood what running through her mind, if not the exact circumstances which caused such thoughts. While I shan’t say that experiencing her story was particularly “comfortable”, containing as many truths and familiar things as it did, I’m glad I went through it.