Pollution's Cartagra and Kara no Shoujo Review V2

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Table of Contents

Preface

Spoilers, obviously.

Kara no Shoujo is a series I learned about maybe three years ago through one of my schizophrenic Japanese artist friends. They're someone who doesn't speak English or Japanese that well. However, it was evident how much this game seemed to mean to them in both what I could parse from their words, as well as how their artstyle attempted to resemble Sugina Miki's. They're one of the main reasons I wanted to read this visual novel.

Cartagra

Before I can talk properly about Kara no Shoujo, I did play Cartagra about a year ago on a whim. I was maybe orange or blue at the time, having only been reading visual novels in Japanese regularly for six months or so. With these two factors in mind, I don't remember that much about this game. I remember not having particularly strong feelings about the art, this being early into Sugina Miki's career.

I'd hate to leave my impression of Cartagra at that though. Around this time, I've been reading a lot of VNs that have bored me, which weren't particularly interesting, or had long stretches of time where I found myself doing mundane things. I want to point to the slice of life sections in Island and Kanon instinctively, but it may have also been just because I was pushing myself to read even past the point of being tired just to reach a goal. While reading through Enking, there were a few times I felt overwhelmed by H-scenes. Looking back, rereading, and masturbating to a lot of them again, I realize now that there's a lot to love about that game. In the moment though, yeah, it's easy to feel that way.

Cartagra was the first VN in a while which I really felt was challenging me in some way. Maybe it was because I was playing without a guide, or it being a game about a murder mystery where you have to try your best to figure out the contents of the situation at hand. There being some barrier which you cannot cross without having to have some conscious degree of understanding of what you're doing, what's happening right now in the game. Being tested on your ability to read, understand, and digest Japanese is fun. I like that in a game, if it fits.

At this point I wish I wrote something down about my feelings regarding Cartagra the moment I finished it in February, because it's just a blur. I can scroll through the CG gallery now, having 100% the game, remembering bits and pieces of the story. I guess that's what I can do.

When I think back about my favorite CGs from Cartagra, this is the one my mind always leads back to. I really love guro art. Being able to follow guro artists is one of the bigger reasons I'm learning Japanese, besides Lily Chou-Chou who's probably my main reason. This corpse belongs to one of the employees at the whorehouse a large portion of the game takes place in, Otoha, as is evident by the tattoo on her left breast. Otoha plays the role of an arrogant bitch for most of her scenes throughout Cartagra, having particularly a lot of interactions with a character we'll become more deeply acquainted with in Kara no Shoujo, Hatsune.

What I love about this drawing is the paleness of her skin and how it contrasts with the redness of her clothes and wounds, as well as the black wings. This is probably one of the more attractive stages of human body decomposition, helped by it being preserved with the winter air. This kind of simple color composition using very few colors is something I find really satisfying, and appears more heavily in the CGs from Kara no Shoujo. The proportions on her body are just right, and it's like looking at a doll. Her head and limbs are cut so cleanly without much of a trace left. The way the feathers lean on her thigh, how her clothes just cover her crotch, and the snow building up on her coat are all just so good. It's a beautiful drawing, simple as.

Cartagra and Kara no Shoujo share a lot in themes, with the killers both being artists in some way. I think how that plays into the killings is really satisfying and intriguing. It says more than just mindless murder. Maybe I'm just attracted to vapidness and praising style over substance in this moment, I'm not sure. I really don't know. I don't know if I should feel ashamed in that way, or if this is even the conclusion I'm coming to.

This is the other CG which comes to mind, and I'm reminded of it pretty regularly every time I have to rep 磔 in anki. It's a lot more messy than the previous CG, Takako's face being pierced directly through her eyes by a fence which I have no idea why it was constructed in this way. A couple of the death CGs in this game where the head is still attached show pretty emotionless faces, with the eyes being blackened and sunken as though scooped out. I'm really not a fan of that style. Koyuki and Seri are the clearest example of this.

Besides those, I feel like I'm gonna be here all day if I talk about every CG in Cartagra, let alone what else I think about the characters, music, and story. I just really wanted to express my love for that first CG in particular. I hope you get the feeling I'm trying to convey when I think about this game. Here is the full gallery.

Kara no Shoujo

I started Kara no Shoujo about four months ago, and began reading alongside Hokage in VC for the large majority of the game. A lot of the enjoyment that I got from playing this game was from playing it alongside him, as well as everyone else who came in VC along the way and read along with us. Peanuts-kun, Chuba, Sorren, Sava, and a few others. The last time I really had this feeling of community while playing a VN was Little Busters, and it increased my enjoyment immensely. I really probably could have finished up this game in some 2-3 weeks if I was by myself, but I wonder what I would think when looking back on it. The discussions that I was able to have, the notes taken, rereads made, and whatever else. I think it was all worth it even if I had to spend 3 months on this game. I'm thankful for it.

Kara no Shoujo starts out adopting a different artstyle than how most of the game is drawn, being more sketch-like, painterly, or maybe toned down in a soft, almost greyscale. I really enjoy the NVL sections of this game. They're written from the perspective of a narrator, rather than the protagonist's internal stream of consciousness which is generally how the VNs I've read up until now have treated it, save for maybe Hotel Ergriffen, I'm not sure. We learn later that what we are reading was written by one of the characters we'll meet later in the game and become more deeply acquainted with, Katsuragi Shin.

From here, we're introduced to some of the characters. We actually start the game out from the perspective of not the person we'll be playing as the majority of the game, but some of the girls at the school. I think this is really cool, and I'm into this kind of writing. The same thing was done in Enking I believe, but in ADV format. There are actually not too many moments in Kara no Shoujo where the perspective shifts or changes from Reiji's outside of a few of the NVLs. 透子's bad end sticks out to me because I read it just a couple days ago. There's also Kusaka's in the route where he dies. Yaginuma's backstory. Some others.

I'm not gonna painstakingly go through this game's story from front to back. If you've played it you've played it. It's some 400k characters and the art and music are great, so it's far from an abrasive game that'll take long to finish. What I want to comment on foremost is the art in Kara no Shoujo and what I think about it. First, we'll start with this CG of Yukari being walked in on while undressing. This is a great drawing for a few reasons. First, she's your sister. She's your 妹 which enhances it by +10. She's a beautiful, young, high school girl. Her facial expression is very familiar and calm even though she was just walked in on by her older brother. I love that. The dutch angle adds to the effect, giving an air of tension as well as conveying the height of the viewer looking down at their 妹. Her hair and skin are perfect. Even though she's a younger girl, she has a refined and upright atmosphere to her like an お姉さま which is really attractive. Her clothes and the manner in which they're drawn are amazing, what with the way her sash covers her crotch, showing high taste. The way the green contrasts with the red is impeccable. Really beautiful CG of your naked little sister.

Fuck, I'm worked up now. This is another beautiful CG featuring Kyouko. There's a lot to love about this CG, from more than just how aesthetically pleasing it is. The relationship Reiji has with Kyouko is one that I find really sweet and touching to the heart. The night after Reiji has his flashback regarding Yukiko, which by the way is really cool that we get to go back in time and have a nice scene getting to see what she was actually like, being someone important to Reiji who's mentioned a bunch, he finds himself at 月世界. Hope I'm not mixing up dates and sex scenes here. But Kyouko in that moment acts as an emotional shoulder to lean on for Reiji. In a lot of their scenes they go back and forth in doing so, both sharing a similar trauma over losing someone dear to them, it affecting them in different ways. For Reiji, it's something he can't forget. For Kyouko, she almost wishes she could remember, it having faded in memory by this point, something she's jealous of Reiji for.

The softness of her breasts, how the sweat drips off of them, how her skin wraps around Reiji's hands, the fine details on her nipple, all work together to create a really erotic visage. I love this CG. I love this scene. I hate that I can't convey every emotion I want to regarding this CG, that it has to be formatted well and understandable. It's frustrating. I don't want to spend all day writing this and communicating my love for people who I don't know whether or not they'll enjoy it or get something from it. Whether they'll find more meaning in Kyouko's tits for more than just being someone's tits.

One difference between the guro CGs in Kara no Shoujo compared to Cartagra is that you get to have a direct interaction with them while playing the game. In doing so, they almost lose meaning somehow. After spending hours upon hours looking at the same drawing, similarly to how a word loses meaning after being repeated enough times, it loses that emotion from the first moment you got to lay eyes on it. This has been most evident for me while going through Watanabe Akio's artbooks, trying to study from them the past few months, retreading over the same limited number of drawings. However, I think this is one of the guro CGs from this game that stands out to me despite that. I did comment before that I really wasn't a fan of eyes being carved out of their owner's skulls, or blood staining the body, but I think it works here in this context. It's just messy enough while retaining a lot of its beauty that it's still an erotic corpse and a great drawing.

Kara no Shoujo is a good example of how you can use guro elements and make them work in a refined way while writing a story. Getting to read Shinji's backstory involving his mother as well as how his father's painting has affected him and his mental state really enhance the effect. I hope what I'm saying makes sense. I'm trying to say that when you put effort in, you can make really difficult to stomach things easier to stomach. Things otherwise broadly perceived as distasteful finding taste. That's something I really like about art just in general, including movies and why I've been more interested in watching Japanese movies lately. Hotel Ergriffen is another visual novel, and a short one too, just read it, that gives me this feeling, using loli and prostitution as its basis.

I wanna get back to reading Itsusora, but I hope I was able to broadly explain what I find most special about Kara no Shoujo in a digestible manner. One of the main reasons I don't usually like writing well thought out, or at least readable and well formatted pieces like this is just because I don't care about communicating my love for most things I read or watch. It's a pain without many benefits, especially given by comparison I've written so little about my favorites. I really don't know who cares to read someone else's organized thoughts about a VN they enjoyed but don't feel insanely strongly about. Maybe I do feel strongly about Kara no Shoujo, I'm not sure. I'm still fresh off it. But yeah. Besides that, music in this game is great. Neanis no Tamago is probably my clear favorite, but the whole OST is worth a listen too. I probably will listen to it more throughout the coming months.

Fuck you Jtank.

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Pub: 10 Oct 2022 20:18 UTC
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