this got way too long for a comment, so reblog it is lmao
Hello! I'm not very sure what you mean by denpa characters, but i'm really fond of Denpa games, so I do have a few recommendations I can give you. For stories set in our world that are more grounded in the sense of holding that particular Denpa personal horror around the mundane everyday and one's sense of reality and awareness of it as it's corroded away, I have to reccomend the Serial Experiments Lain PS1 game (you can play it for free in your browser here), the Milk games (Milk Inside A Bag of Milk Inside a Bag of Milk and the second one has the same name, just replace "inside" with "outside". I'm particularly fond of this duology, the main character's diagnosis is never explicitly stated, the dev said it was an intentional choice on his part to force people to genuinely engage with her and her reality as it is without being able to just dismiss it as "she's just [x] thing" or trying to frame her every action through the lens of a known diagnosis, but one thing that is clear is that she does struggle with severe visual, tactile, and hearing hallucinations and since we're seeing the world through exclusively her point of view we see the world throughout the game just as she does, and as someone who also struggles with reocurring hallucinations, I genuinely like how *mundane* it feels, in the sense that since the reality she sees in her day to day is like that, there's nothing particularly scary or weird to her seeing the world only in shades of red or her mother looking like a molding Matryoshka doll sprouting claws, or the people in the grocery store looking far from human and being barely comprehensible, she's never particularly scared by those things because it's just her every day life and she's learned to navigate by that in her own way; what *is* framed as scary by the narrative is how genuinely frightening it is when people are acting in ways they think are for "your own good" while in a state of disconnect where you can't even hear and make out *why* they're doing that and without being able to properly defend or explain yourself, and when you do not being believed at all, we're never made to feel afraid of her and by forcing us into her perspective throughout the entire experience I felt really seen and humanized in a way), and also Soundless -a Modern Salem in a Remote Area-, it's free to play and you can find it here, I really like the way it delves into religious trauma and how existing in such a deeply harmful religious environment (the story is set in a cult commune) affects one mental state and how easy and facilited it is for abuse to occur in those institutions particularly against ostracized, vulnerable individuals like mentally ill people (i do reccomend you read the content warnings before starting and one that isn't mentioned but really distressed me is how well written the psychological abuse and particularly the gaslighting in it is done).
Another set in our world but with more heavily present supernatural elements is Sweet Pool, this one is also yaoi and done by Nitro+ (people who made Dramatical Murder, Slow Damage etc), and it's profoundly disturbing but also genuinely engaging in how discuss toxic relationships, matters of bodily autonomy and both dysmorphia and dysphoria, religious trauma and fanaticism and maybe a bit shockingly for a BL vn even delves a bit into misoginy and patriarchical family and power structures. It doesn't always hit the nail on the head but i do feel the story was genuinely well-intentioned with what it was trying to convey and expose/explore, and it *does* show the horror of those things very clearly and well.
And to finish these recommendations I also want to throw in my dearly beloved Hello Charlotte trilogy, the first two games are free here (the first is included as the second one's demo) and the last one is offensively cheap for how good it is, you can find it here, I genuinely want to do a better job selling them but Hello Charlotte is an *experience* and I'm afraid I can't say anything to properly sell it that wouldn't end up with getting too excited and spoiling things lmao.
Other reccomendations without long accompanying texts, these ones I either haven't played yet, aren't easily accessible through legal means, or definitely qualify as more surreal than proper Denpa but do share Denpa-like aspects
Mamiya, haven't played, but hear loads of good things about
Heisei Pistol Show and Re:Kinder, both of these I think lean more to the surreal than Denpa, more so in Heisei's case than Re:Kinder
Towelket: One More Time, this one doesn't have a link attached to it because these games haven't been officially ported to English yet, but if you look into them and get interested i can send you where you can download them patched with the English fan-translation.
I'm also under the assumption that since you enjoy Denpa vns you have played/know about Higurashi and Umineko, but in case you haven't played them yet they join the recommendation pile, particularly Higurashi (<-one of the 10 people that prefers Higurashi to Umineko)
snowghoul
theartofmadeline
yousharknotpass
dailybridgerton
origamiaround
titsay
ellievsbear
