![]() ![]() One important aspect of this was to have a realistic portrayal of the various disabilities, which Aura attributes to the extensive research undertaken by the development team. “It was an important, yet natural thing for us to take the path we did.” “Everything from the ground-up was designed to make a genuine and honest story, rather than fuel for fetishes,” says Katawa Shoujo’s lead writer, Aura. But the game’s developers, Four Leaf Studios, have gone out of their way to prove said reactions wrong. Given the general perception of society – that anything, especially videogames, containing sex is created solely for the purposes of titillation and pornography – it’s understandable why people’s initial reaction to the game’s focus on disability would be to consider it a fetish game. Combined with the unusual, somewhat uncomfortable subject matter and the unfortunately raw title (“Katawa”, while meaning ‘disabled’ or ‘disability’, can also be taken to mean something closer to ‘crippled’, and is considered outdated, discriminatory language in Japan), the game can easily be taken at first glance to be insanely offensive. The most problematic aspect of Katawa Shoujo, at least to a primarily western audience, is found in its nature as an eroge and its unflinching, occasionally playful attitude towards sex and sexual content. ![]() As Leigh Alexander put it back in 2010 when she reported on the earlier released demo, Katawa Shoujo is, perhaps against all odds, deeply respectful of its subject matter. But the responses from many of those brave (or eager) enough to actually dive in is telling most speak of the game’s sincerity, its attention to detail, its relatively high production values and its powerful emotional content. It sounds like the perfect setup for a brief exercise in politically-incorrect fetishistic pornography. As a visual novel (broadly similar to Ace Attorney, 999, Ghost Trick and Hotel Dusk, though with even less gameplay), the game involves large amounts of reading with the occasional choice that branches the story into various paths, each revolving around romancing another classmate with a disability. Set in a private school designed to assist students with various special needs and disabilities, Katawa Shoujo revolves around the life of a young man named Hisao, who has recently transferred in after discovering he has a heart condition. ![]()
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