Kenji's Ending: Katawa Shoujo

Kenji's Ending: Katawa Shoujo

There's one ending in Katawa Shoujo where you die. I just want to talk about it. Since this is a visual novel, you have to show interest in one character, and then that character's narrative opens up. But, since Katawa Shoujo also deals with disabled characters, or characters that are negotiating disability, I find that many people often unknowingly get this ending.

So, what happens? Well, Hisao tells off all the girls after having a heart attack, and they express concern. Instead of picking one activity for the school festival, Hisao gets drunk with Kenji on the roof. Kenji rants about feminist brainwashing, how there will be a war between men and women, and you cannot trust anyone. So, he perceives everything as a threat to his masculinity as a blind man.

This is the only possible “ending” with Kenji, who otherwise is a clownish character, down to his theme music. But, it probably reveals the the most about his character. He simply doesn't know how to treat people as normal, because of his own sense of self-worth, or lack of it. Similarly, I think many players who first play Katawa Shoujo, unknowingly get Kenji's ending, where Hisao gets drunk and falls off the roof.

Again, this isn't because people are trying to be mean, or get the worst ending. This is simply storytelling. The game must continue with one girl's narrative taking over at the end of Act 1, the festival. If your answers are all over the place, the game can't continue. I think many players got this ending not through meanness, but through expressing curiosity about each girl.

When I first played, I was naturally drawn to Emi, because of her having no legs, which most mirrored my experience as a quadriplegic. I think most able-bodied players may not have that experience where they see their interests and positions mirrored in Katawa. They simply try to investigate the strange world of disability, and only later discover that they are more than they appear to be.

There's a lot of reasons why one might accidentally fall into Kenji's ending, if as previously stated, players are unfamiliar with the game's structure, just expressing interest in characters, or simply wanting to know more about disabilities. I'll put the ending down here, just to illustrate it. Kenji's ending might be the “worst”, but it is the most revealing of his character, and perhaps of the players' possible mindsets.

Metropolis (1927):

"In a futuristic city sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, the son of the city's mastermind falls in love with a working-class prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences."

I just want to talk about a movie I like: Metropolis from 1927. It's one of the first sci-fi films, a silent movie from Germany. It's about a future society divided between the rich and the poor. The poor do all the labor and make all the machines. (It's from 1927, so we're talking giant machines with clocks and pumps, it all looks very towering and uncanny.)

One day, a rich young man named Freder discovers a poor woman in disguise, Maria. He follows her down from the opulent bright gardens where the rich enjoy the labor of the poor, into the feverish Machine Hell that is the poor community below. The machine mouths are even designed to look like demons.

Moved by the plight of the poor, Freder joins Maria in an underground church where she preaches the Tower of Babel story. It is apt here because of the divide between the rich and the poor. The hands that built the tower to Heaven knew nothing of the brains that conceived it. The mediator between the head and the hands, so Maria says, must be the heart.

However, Freder's father doesn't like that his son is meeting with the poor and has discovered their world. So, he makes plans with a wild-looking mad scientist named Rotwang to build a robot of Maria and place mistrust in the people's hearts. What follows is some of the best special effects in cinema history, as the robot takes the form of Maria, with electrical effects and all, inside Rotwang's evil lab.

The evil robot Maria preaches that the workers destroy the machines and the rich. She even dances in a show, to display how evil and tempting she is. Freder even discovers the robot Maria canoodling with his father, and falls into a delirium, with great visual effects, where he sees the grim reaper and a skewed reality reflects his madness.

Freder returns to the poor after recovery, and exposes the False Maria. He works with the head mechanic Grot to free Maria. Rotwang and Freder fight as Maria escapes. Rotwang hallucinates that his robot (Maschinenmensch in German.) is the Goddess Hel. Rotwang finally falls of the roof, and dies. Freder shakes hands with Grot, fulfilling his role as the mediator between the head and heart.

Even today, Metropolis is a technical marvel which invented many sci-fi tropes we take for granted. Things like the divide between an opulent rich society and a technologically oppressed poor, a wild mad scientist, and even robots...are seen here for the first time on film. The visual designs, creating a towering Heaven, and a technological Hell below, are still relevant and marvelous.

Whatever version of this film you can find, watch it if you have a chance. I first saw the 2006 version. Several scenes were filled in with title cards and lost to time. But now, through the miracles of technology, you can watch the whole thing for free on YouTube. It's amazing that a sci-fi film from almost 100 years ago continues to inspire. It's a true testament to the power of film-making.

ReelAbilities Film Festival 2013 Preview

ReelAbilities Film Festival 2013 Preview:

Well, I always love the ReelAbilities Film Fest in Columbus! You get to see movies dealing with disabilities and even discuss it afterwards, which is a rare opportunity to make one’s viewpoint as a person with a disability heard. It’s even better, because they always have international entries. So, I get to do some intercultural analysis as well.

     This year they have two entries from Germany, one from China, one from Portugal, one from Israel about a disabled soccer (Football to international viewers.) team. Other entries deal with Down Sydrome, (Yo Tambien, Spain.) and Aspberger’s (The clayamation feature Mary and Max, from Australia.) Longtime viewers of this blog know how important it is to me to promote strong, human portraits of disabilities. And I think ReelAbilities gives us all the opportunity to look at those kind of portraits. The festival begins Oct. 4 and ends on the 7th.

I will go to at least one showing…probably on the 6th, as I am close by the Wexner Center for The Arts. They will show “Yo Tambien” (“Me too”, from Spain.) and Renn Wenn Du Kannst (Run If You Can, from Germany.) Renn Wenn Du Kannst is about a paraplegic man in love with his nurse aide’s love interest. Since I speak German, I definitely want to go when one of the German movies is playing.

The Spanish film will probably remind me of Spain, which is a beautiful country. But, anyway, I rarely see disability films in an international context, so ReelAbilities is a real treat for me.
 
If you’re in the Columbus area, you can catch all the times by going to: columbus.reelabilities.org. Tickets are $5 at the door. If you’re an international reader, let me know of some good films with disabilities in them, and I will submit some requests. If you’re too far away to attend, I’ll provide analysis of the films after I see them to give you a taste. Regrettably, I think I’ll only be able to go to the one screening this year. But, we’ll see.
 
As usual, it should be a fun time, and give me a chance to share my human experience with others who have disabilities. We’ll have some guest speakers, one of whom I know is the poet from last year’s festival. In any case, it should be fun to see some disability stories with a little bit of international flavor! Maybe I’ll see YOU there!

Spider-Man: Torment (2009)

Spider-Man: Torment (2009)

 “Come sit, my little one. Lull yourself into a false sense of security. Let your mind relax and your soul become vulnerable.”

- Calypso

   Spider-Man: Torment is a graphic novel collecting the 5 issues of the same name from 1992 (collected in 2009.) by Todd McFarlane. Calypso is controlling The Lizard with voodoo. Spider-Man hears the voodoo spell and it begins to affect his brain: (Read: DOOMDOOMDOOM.) He becomes lured to The Lizard, but not before the Lizard murders 4 people. For the luring spell to work, the sorceress adds a spider to her concoction and poisons him.

    In the fight that ensues, the sorceress makes Spider-Man believe he killed The Lizard by impaling it. He  wakes up and believes he sees Kraven The Hunter, who is supposed to be dead, so at this point the is losing his mind. This is a good psychological thriller of a graphic novel, a theme McFarlane does well. I feel as though I have a greater connection to Spider-Man because of this type of complexity. Also, Mary Jane is away dancing at a nightclub. She too. Worries that Spider-Man won’t come back.
   
   Spider-Man in this story has a triple threat. He’s got to save Dr. Connors AKA bring the humanity out in The Lizard, restore his grip on reality affected by the spell (DOOMDOOMDOOM.) and save himself. Eventually, through sheer force of will he is able to rescue himself from the burning building, and barely make it home in one piece, but the fate of The Lizard  seems uncertain. McFarlane does well illustrating how bloody and tattered the fight left Spider-Man…The Lizard finally swims up from deep below the sewers, with one word: DOOM.

   It’s Todd McFarlane, so obviously there’s a lot of dark spaces and blood. He shows you each panel almost bit by bit, so you don’t know what’s creeping around the corner. A recurring theme is “…RISE ABOVE IT!” which ends the intros to each of stories in the collection!

   This applies to location as well as psychology. While DOOM lurks below in the sewers, Spider-Man swings above him and confronts him finally in a warehouse. Also, he has to rise above the sorceress’s (Calypso’s) mental control, and physical pain through the poison. But, for a while it looks like he might not make it…(Spoilers, I guess?)

    Spider-Man: Torment is a neat graphic novel that actually starts off kind of funny (and what would Spider-Man be without jokes?) and then delves into mind control, murder, and anxiety. It has a pretty good story, despite working with second-tier villains. As usual per McFarlane, it’s very affecting both in art and psyche, but that’s what a good comic does: It stays with you.

      Lots of buildup, a useless Mary Jane subplot, and second-tier villains kind of make it hard to get through, but as I understand it, The Lizard wasn’t McFarlane’s first choice…the other villains all had other stories going at the time. This gets a 2-star rating from me. It’s really McFarlane’s art that draws me in.