It's gonna take a hundred thoughts to make this one disappear A train like that could travel a soul for years A terrible thought could have a terribly long career - Poe - "Terrible Thought" A blog for the blogging and reblogging of blog things. Lately that's mostly just Kyuugou's "Acid Town" manga, which I do scanlations for. Acid Town chapter downloads All posts about Acid Town All posts about Asexuality All posts about Japanese
Oh man! I'm so hyped for this, I figured Mangagamer would grab the license since they did all the other parade titles, but I'm still happy to see the announcement.
A while back (like 5 years ago back!) I played through a visual novel called No, Thank You!!! and wrote up some thoughts about it here, so now that I've had a chance to play a game related to it, I thought I'd post some thoughts here. This time around the game is so short that I think I'm going to dive into the potential endings, so I'll call out at what point I'll be mentioning spoilers. This is like part review, part just me rambling because this game made my brain fall apart.
Room No. 9 is a BL visual novel game that was released in Japan in 2016 and in English in 2020, so I'm a little behind on the times. It was produced by the BL off-shoot of "Clock Up" called "parade" that also produced No, Thank You!!! The connection between Room 9 and NTY is kind of tenuous; they feature the same train station, so they probably take place around the same area and time period, and they both seem to feature the same shadowy organization that the protagonist of NTY was connected to. But that's about the extent of the connection and the game features no returning characters or plot points from NTY, and focuses exclusively on two new characters, Daichi (the player character) and Seiji. Similarly to NTY, Daichi is not a nameless PC but a fleshed out character; the game is fully voiced in Japanese for all speaking lines; and the amount of actual choices in the game are fairly minimal, which makes it a bit less like a game and more like a vaguely interactive novel. It took me about five hours to play through the first time so it has a fairly brief play time in comparison to NTY. It also goes without saying that Room 9 is most definitely NSFW. :) Similar to NTY there's extensive options for customizing the content and interface, and I was definitely taken aback the first time I booted the game and it asked if I wanted to turn the scatological filter on. "What am I getting myself into?" definitely crossed my mind at that point.
The story of the game can be summarized like so: Daichi and Seiji are best friends, and at the beginning of the game, meet up for drinks to commiserate about their recent breakups with their girlfriends (yes they're both straight). Daichi had been saving up to take his girlfriend on a 10 day trip to Okinawa, and it's too late to cancel at that point. The suggestion is jokingly made to take Seiji along instead, and the joke ends up becoming the plan, and not long later the two head off to Okinawa together. When they arrive in Okinawa, they board the bus to take them to their hotel... and the next thing either of them know, they're waking up in a hotel room. But the hotel room itself is odd; there's a giant video screen in place of a window, and the door leading out of the room is locked. Neither of them know how they got there. They soon find out they've been kidnapped as part of a "behavioral analysis study," and are shown a video demonstrating the consequences if they don't cooperate (involving the madness and violent death of past participants). The rules of the experiment are fairly straightforward: complete one task a day from a short list of options and earn ten points. If they earn 100 points, they'll be released. Assuming they manage to do a task a day, they can be out in about ten days. The tasks are a rather extreme version of a "would you rather" game, and involve either Daichi being physically injured by Seiji, or Seiji being sexually degraded by Daichi. The intensity of the tasks increases with each successive task, and a task that appears as an option one day may not appear the next. The game largely follows Daichi and Seiji as they attempt to navigate the tasks to escape as quickly as possible and, hopefully, not compromise their friendship.
I recently started replaying NTY, and these "experiments" are mentioned in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it line by Haru reflecting on the sort of things his "grandfather" indulges in. Daichi and Seiji spend some time towards the beginning of the game wondering about the nature of their kidnappers; the hotel's furnishings are upscale, and the food they are served is very high-end. The entire nature of the experiment implies an extensive amount of money is involved. It fleshes out a little bit the scope of just how massive and influential the criminal organization from NTY is that they can pull this off, apparently with quite a number of victims and a body count, and have never gotten caught. Why anyone would do this and how they can afford the cost is never really answered and we never actually see any of the kidnappers. The entire room is bugged with cameras and microphones, so my personal opinion is they sell the tapes or possibly even the data from the experiments for a lot of money. In any case I'm not sure it's worth thinking about that much, LOL. The nature of the experiment lends itself well to a game and it surprised me a bit that they didn't push the extent to which you could have really interacted with the experiment and the point system, but that would have ballooned the amount of narrative way beyond whatever I imagine the budget was. As it is, the game features over 2000 CGs, though most are just minor variations of the same art like eye darts and facial expressions.
Anyway, if you've read through this description it can definitely seems like this game has "fan disservice" written all over it, and you'd be right. This is a brutal game. I'll admit that I went in with some level of expectation of what would be involved and was WOEFULLY UNPREPARED. I am forced to admit that my imagination in this department is incredibly innocent in comparison to what some of the tasks were that Daichi and Seiji were forced to choose between.
And yet I really enjoyed this game and find myself struggling to say why exactly. What I did like is that the game really takes its time to develop the two lead characters and make you care about the stakes they're facing. What I also liked is that the characters' reactions to their situation felt very natural and not forced or overly dramatic. I think this concept had a potential to go to somewhere incredibly horrific and melodramatic, and they just never really go there (with some exceptions... more on that when I discuss the endings). Daichi in particular is a character who already has faced a significant amount of suffering and trauma in his life and recovered thanks to his friendship with Seiji. They already have a strong rapport and know how to lean on each other coming in, so the experiments are mostly designed to try to break the connection between them. Something that impressed me about the game is the way it depicted reactions to trauma... the descriptions of dissociation, especially, were absolutely spot on, and you can tell the writers did quite a bit of research (and it seems like the English translators did a fantastic job, so kudos). .. maybe a disturbing amount of research, now that I think about it. Anyway, I just felt like the characters always seemed real, and I often found myself relating to things they said or did. The progression of your choices always results in something that made me go yeah, I guess that makes sense, even if I never had any fricking clue what result the choices would have (they give you like nothing to go on, it's things like choosing whether Seiji keeps his glasses on during sex which seems like it would be utterly inconsequential but speaks to how much Daichi is thinking of Seiji's comfort). Also unlike NTY, both characters are essentially good people (I'm placing a big old asterisk on this again), so you want to root for them and for things to turn out well.
There seems to be only one "true" ending, so I'll say at this point forward I'm going to be playing kind of fast and loose with spoilers, so if you're actually interested in picking up the game for some strange reason, you were warned. :)
There are six endings, labeled with letters, and the ending I got the first time was ending D. Most of the endings follow a similar route and branch off towards the end. The D ending results in Daichi and Seiji escaping, but they drift apart and don't remain friends. For the most part I felt like this made sense as part of the progression of the story; Daichi and Seiji take turns being the victims of the tasks, with the scales weighted a little more heavily towards Seiji's side, and they are so careful to avoid tipping over their physical reactions into more-than-friends territory that they never really show any physical affection for each other whatsoever. I'll admit this drove me bonkers. I have no idea what I'd do in the same situation, but if it was my friend, I would try to reassure them with something at least as banal as a hug or something. But despite sharing the same bed, Daichi and Seiji always keep a physical and mental distance between them in this version of the story. I'd say it's probably the most neutral of the endings and maybe even the most realistic... it'd be difficult to forget about that experience and go back to being friends if you weren't able to help soothe the mutual sense of hurt in any way.
It's worth mentioning if you're kind of squeamish about the physical torture side of this game, it is very benign, and none of the endings I played went further than driving a nail through Daichi's hand. In basically any version of the story where it comes up, cutting off one of Daichi's fingers to fulfill a task is considered too extreme and not even offered as a playable option. Because the tasks include instructions and any objects needed to fulfill the requirements of the tasks, the physical tasks are almost hospital clinical in their depiction and very clean. The first time around I found myself wondering why this was even included in the game... if it's someone's fetish, it's not portrayed in any sort of fetishy way, and it just sort of makes you wince in agony for these two for having to go through it at all. I think it's mostly there to just split the burden between the two characters and because having only sex scenes results in the hell that is ending A.
It's difficult to say which is the worst of the non-"true" endings. I think if you're playing for the sex, ending A would seem appealing - in this version of the story, Daichi and Seiji pretty much exclusively choose the sex tasks, which puts a heavily emphasis on Seiji being victimized and Daichi being the aggressor. While this results in a LOT of sex scenes, the end result is increasingly horrific, as the repeated abuse turns Seiji into a masochist and warps Daichi into a sadist. In this version Daichi finds himself musing that cycles of abuse often result in a victim becoming an abuser, and as a victim of abuse himself at the hands of a violent stepfather, he resigns himself to becoming the villain. It's portrayed in a way that makes it seem as if Daichi is being considerate of Seiji; he doesn't want Seiji to have to compromise himself at all by being forced to hurt Daichi. Despite physically escaping the room, and returning to something resembling a normal life, I think in this version they never really do escape the room. Daichi and Seiji continue to have violent sex, and Daichi has even escalated to whoring out Seiji, though he hasn't yet accepted money for it. This ending was such a bizarre confusion of sex scenes and absolutely gut-wrenching sadness that the story would result in this happening to these two.
Ending B introduces Daichi and Seiji crossing the friendship line a bit earlier, pushing the requirements of a task to add kissing, but unlike ending A this only seems to add to the level of torment the two of them experience. The two spiral into despair, and at the end Seiji attempts to kill Daichi, and can't do it. They're both absolutely shattered, and perhaps wanting to spare Seiji, Daichi kills him. Fortunately (or unfortunately) the death of one of the participants will result in the release of the other, and Daichi is suddenly turned out back into the world, where he walks around in a daze, struggling to come to terms with what happened and the death of his friend. I was shocked that Daichi doesn't kill himself in this ending. I think the only reason I wouldn't rate this ending worse than A is because killing at least one of the characters seems to be a sort of mercy in this situation. My headcanon would definitely be that Daichi offs himself as soon as possible after the credits roll. He has nothing left to live for.
Ending C is very similar to B and follows some of the same progression, but given a choice, Daichi reaches out to Seiji while he's lost in despair and comforts him a bit. Taking physical comfort in each other spirals out of control, however, as they repeatedly indulge in sex as a means of escaping their thoughts and emotions about the situation. In that sense it is kind of similar to A, except that the characters don't lose their inherent values; they just become lost to the room, and never bother trying to escape, despite having made it so close to the end. This ending is definitely sad... but at least they have each other... my standards are so low!!
Ending E gets close to the true ending, but in this version after Daichi and Seiji manage to escape, Daichi insists on going to the cops in a misguided attempt to spare others the pain of what they went through. There's a bit of a disconnect between Daichi and Seiji in this version. Seiji explains he doesn't want to go to the cops because he doesn't see the point; the criminal organization is so powerful, there's nothing they can do. It's not mentioned but it's also possible Seiji doesn't want to go to the cops because he doesn't want the story getting out there and negatively affecting his family or reputation. But I think it's more likely the real reason he doesn't want to go to the police is he doesn't want the experience to continue. Making the case public means he continues to be victimized for life every time the story is brought up. At the very least if he keeps it to himself, he can pretend it never happened and go on with his life. If you choose to go to the cops anyway, it doesn't go anywhere; no one will believe Daichi, and he won't give them Seiji's name. Seiji disappears, supposedly to continue traveling, and Daichi and Seiji never see each other again. It's left very open-ended what happened to Seiji here; did he really run away? Did he feel abandoned by Daichi? Did he get kidnapped again, did the kidnappers do something to him as punishment for Daichi going to the cops? It's unclear, but a shame. The D ending is not great, but at least we know that both characters are alive and relatively healthy at the end in comparison to E.
The F ending is most likely the true ending and the only one that ends happily. In this ending, Daichi decides to not go to the police and instead to go have fun with Seiji outside their new hotel room. On the train into the city, Daichi is having difficulty processing a return to normal life, and instinctively reaches out to connect with Seiji. Seiji does the same. This seems to reinforce their connection to each other as someone they can rely on for support, and they go on to have normal lives where they're still friends, and Seiji will always be around for Daichi. I think for anyone hoping for an ending where the two end up as a couple, this will seem really disappointing.... but it's the ending that kind of makes the most sense for these two characters, so I think it's sweet. At the beginning of the game Daichi is a character who believes that no matter how difficult things get, there's always a better day ahead, and that he can get through anything with Seiji's help. Seiji saved him as a child in his darkest moment when he was abandoned by his parents, and Seiji is there for him again as they try to recover from the events of the experiment. It's nice to me to see Daichi retaining his hope and positive attitude.
All the endings that involve one or both of them going back to their lives after escaping, and struggling a bit to adapt, really hit me hard. I remember times in my life after surviving trauma where I went out into the world and saw people going about their normal lives and feeling an odd sort of disconnect, like there was a barrier between myself and others. It's almost physically painful the way the world continues to go on completely oblivious to whatever it is you're experiencing or have experienced. At one point early in the game Daichi muses about his situation and how you don't often think about how there are people out there at any given moment struggling to deal with something. It was just one of many lines in the game that felt so real to me.
I think that's about it... if I can think of more to say about it I might come back for a second post. Hopefully this time Tumblr doesn't delete this before I post. Don't come after me Tumblr sexy police!!
Talk to meeeee! 😭 I will happily blab about this game to anyone. Every time I see a like or reblog on this post I am like, ah, another person of culture. 🙂↕️
I'm hoping to get my fanfiction up in time for the game's 10th anniversary at the end of September. I recently found out they made an art book for this game that is out of print and I'm losing my damn mind. I keep checking to see if they'll reprint it.
Got faked out by a mention of Acid Town on the Rutile site, but it was just a note that they're reissuing certain comics for online stores selling e-books.
How we hanging in there, Acid Town fans? Coming up on 3 years since the last chapter. Been reading anything interesting lately?
Volume 3 of Monster in Sheep's Clothing/Hitsuji no Kawa has been announced for release in Japan on Christmas Day... I was expecting early next year so a bit earlier than expected. That cover is, uh... ahem. 😍
I haven't been keeping up with this volume in the magazine at all so I am Hyped, no idea what happens honestly. I'm sure lots of pleasant, not at all dramatic or traumatic things.
Usually different editions/retailers have bonus materials so I wonder what that will be this time around...
It's the two month check-in, I checked and Kyuugou isn't listed for either the November or January issues of Rutile so there's no Acid Town chapter in sight. Meanwhile there is a chapter of Hitsuji listed for December, though.
I'm concerned there could have been an announcement about this in a previous issue of Rutile that I missed because I don't order the magazine if there's not a chapter listed. I feel really left in the dark about this. I feel a bit like Hachiko waiting at the station.
When I was picking up visual novels recently during the crackdown on erotic games I picked up a number of titles by Clockup since I enjoyed (?) some of the titles from their BL imprint and was willing to give some similar H games a try, one of which is Dead Days. I'll write up a full review when I finish the game but... So far the first two endings I've hit are probably some of the worst ones only part way through the beginning and I feel truly cursed. 🥲 Cannot unsee the things I've seen. Was not at all prepared.
uhh dunno if I missed it in the reblogs somewhere but here's the staff comment from the artist (I think if you unlock all the endings, can't remember how you get it)
With the release of chapters 14 and 15, we're wrapping up volume 2 of Monster in Sheep's Clothing/Hitsuji no Kawa... There are still some supplemental bonus materials we're planning to release but at least the bulk of the work for volume 2 is done.
In the time it's taken to get through volume 2, there have been a number of chapters published in the magazine; unlike Acid Town, Kyuugou is pretty consistent with chapters of Hitsuji in Chara, where the series remains fairly popular. I'm expecting there will be a volume 3 sometime early next year but that is just my guess.
I think I mentioned before, but we don't currently have plans to continue the series beyond volume 2. My free time has become very limited and the scanlation process is very time consuming. I think it would be different if we had reliable staff, but I'm doing most of the work currently with some occasional help from volunteers. I don't mind continuing to work on the series in my free time, but it would probably result in long wait times between chapters. I'd also prefer to wait for volume 3 to even start on any new chapters. Kyuugou is notorious for doing extensive touch-up work and revisions for the print versions of her manga; for instance, the chapter 15 we are releasing is from the print version of volume 2, and the first 19 pages of it didn't appear in the magazine. That's a big difference.
I don't have much else to add, I hope people enjoy the chapters and I'm curious what happens next. I fell behind on collecting the magazine releases so I'm genuinely in the dark.
We've finally released some new chapters for Monster in Sheep's Clothing/Hitsuji no Kawa wo Kita Kemono... you can download chapter 14 here: Monster in Sheep's Clothing - Chapter 14
and you can download chapter 15 here: Monster in Sheep's Clothing - Chapter 15
I just finished RN9 for the first time and I'm so desperate to read your fanfic!!! I need it... I can't stop thinking about these two ever since completing it but nobody talks about the game. Please tell me you're still working on it!!
Welcome, hahaha.
The fanfic is done, I've done a couple of editing passes on it for grammar and spelling errors but at this point I've hit the limit of what I can do without outside feedback... Like at this point I need less "this is spelled wrong" and more "this doesn't make sense". I have a couple people IRL who said they'd beta the fic, but one has had it for weeks and hasn't started (AFAIK, probably just busy) and the other has a personal project they're working on and is too busy... so if I'm waiting on them I don't know when I'll be able to post it. As the fanfic is rather long (152k words) I feel bad bothering anyone to beta it as it's quite a task.
If you're interested in beta'ing it, let me know through DMs or something and I can send you a link. 😅
Hey, we've got chapters 14 and 15 typeset for Hitsuji no Kawa, but I'm having trouble getting a hold of my usual JP proofer (to be fair it took me like a year) so we are searching for another JP proofer to fill in and help us get these chapters out. I just feel more comfortable having someone with more Japanese knowledge than I have looking over the translations to make sure there aren't any egregious errors.
If you are available please send me a DM or you can message me on Discord at "tigrin". Thanks!
uhh dunno if I missed it in the reblogs somewhere but here's the staff comment from the artist (I think if you unlock all the endings, can't remember how you get it)
With the spreading crackdown on NSFW content through payment processors, I'm considering picking up some more visual novels before they are no longer available. Does anyone have any recommendations?
I'm mostly into BL, but I won't rule out het or yuri if the story is good. I was considering picking up Euphoria because of the vague link to Room No 9 but I do realize they aren't at all similar. Similarly I was going to grab Lykt since it's by the same studio as No Thank You and Room No 9.
Itch.io has temporarily hidden any game marked as adult to appease payment providers
I want to talk a bit about this, because it's something that affects a lot of people like me, and I want to emphasize that this is not about "protecting women and children" as anti-porn interest groups would want you to believe. It is about exerting control and silencing voices they don't like. They won't stop at just erasing porn. What they don't like will always keep growing. LGBTQIA+ content is just the beginning. It is about silencing the voices of anyone different or anyone who has experienced something unpleasant. It's about revising history and our human experiences.
I wanted to talk a little bit more about what's frequently mentioned in this article, which is interactive art as a means for processing trauma. Art can sometimes be used for depicting things people find distasteful or objectionable. The purpose of this is sometimes to titillate or shock, but often it's for those who have had these experiences to process their thoughts and feelings on it and give it a voice. The reality is that awful, traumatic things happen to real people in real life all the time. As much as it may sometimes feel like it, the people in art and stories and video games aren't real. They can stand in for real people and real experiences and create a safe distance for real people to experience and process difficult things they might not be able to otherwise. It is important, I'd even say essential, to expose ourselves to stories and voices we find uncomfortable. These are the stories of human experiences, and it's important as a person to understand the experiences of other people... otherwise you end up with things like this, people who are so afraid of others and themselves that they try to silence others, or legislate them out of existence, or literally kill them.
It's not about trying to defend truly awful content (and it does exist, the sort of stuff most people find beyond the pale). It's about protecting our voices and our rights to process our human experiences on our own terms. I want to emphasize again that anti-porn groups like this will never be satisfied, they'll never stop, because they need a boogeyman to galvanize their base.
I don't know, I am tired, and overwhelmed, and dismayed, and afraid, and maybe if I can think of more to say I'll come back later.
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