Cruel Angel Theses

There are no pet psychologists. Not in our world at any rate, due to the nature of what constitutes a pet; they have no mouth, and they must scream seek to articulate their discomfort in other ways, like shedding excessively, losing control of their bodily functions, getting sick, or even dying.

This is the basic premise on which Wanko to Kurasou builds its case, “If there were human-like animals.” But that isn’t all to it, and in fact, it doesn’t even take that idea and run with it–rather, it takes the idea, strips off all its clothes, and proceeds to run amok with it in hand, with a lot by way of familiar imagery and uncommon archetypes that give a rather unusual, if effective portraiture of a world where there are dogs and cats that look human, sans ears and tail.

And we get a lot of tail in this game, if you know what I mean. Not like I’m going to go into that in detail either, since copious amounts of the Ctrl button makes that rather sticky aspect of WtK go away, and there is more to it than just the sex.

I Twittered about the hilarious convenience that was the premise, and it definitely made me reconsider my innate definitions of what exactly constituted ‘unrealism’, as it were–for while the premise was as convenient as any modern household appliance could be, the portrayal of the characters were not. How did this become possible, you say? Through copious amounts of voices.

Here’s text vs. voice for you: All text is necessarily bound to the reader’s imagination, i.e. it is through the act of reading that we supplement the information not given to us, like tone of voice, actions performed, and everything under that banner thereof. By giving us a lot of text and the barest of detail in a visual novel, the reader-cum-viewer is prompted to supply what is not given.

But what about ADV/chara games? I’m not going to assume I know much about what constitutes those games, but they’re far removed from the regular eroge in terms of presentation and values no thanks to two different aspects; the prominent roles that both visuals and voice are given.

IKnight’s written an excellent piece on Fate/stay night’s presentation, and as F/sn is as close to an story eroge as you can get (one with a larger focus on story, as opposed to a larger focus on porn), his post is there if you’re clueless as to what a non-adv/chara game is like.

If your regular visual novel is a light novel wanting to be an anime, then it would appear that chara games are like visual novels masquerading as a low-budget anime, for that’s exactly what it feels like–with the auto-read function turned on, it resembles any regular subtitled episode of anime.

If all text is bound to the reader’s imagination, then voices are bound to the creator’s imagination. With this in mind it is a fairly easy, if somewhat arduous task, to imagine how WtK is presented–the text portion supplements the role of getting the reader into the shoes of the protagonist, and the voices easing the effort of connecting with the characters.

This is where I found out, to my surprise, that genre is not premise is not portrayal, and that they are, for the most part, aspects of a body of work that are independent from each other, and should not be assumed to affect one another if the one perusing said work can help it.

WtK, for starters, is of the harem genre, and not the parallel-world faux-harem labelling more ignorant people are wont to inflict on just about any eroge adapted into anime these days–a genuine one that, as far as non-delineated and loosely-defined boundaries of a harem go, carries the well-worn stigma of unnecessary pandering and wish fulfilment; as far as it’s concerned, that label is accurate.

Then there’s the premise of Risa’s route, in which you, a financially independent, college-going former host who’s relatively asexual as a result of your previous occupation, shack up with a high-school girl due to her recently-deceased older-sister’s anthropoid pet dog running away from home as a result of mental health issues; what this means is that, you, having found said anthro dog, will take care of it until it gets better, while said high-school girl tags along for purposes of supervision.

What I found to be convenient about the premise was… everything. Like the fact that it was socially acceptable to engage in sexual intercourse with your anthropoid dog during its mating season should it need relief while being in heat, that the neighbourhood is full of such pets like these needing relief during said season, that no one finds this inappropriate in the least, or that a usually-hypersexual protagonist in games like these should have such an impeccable level of restraint, jadedness even. Or that aforementioned high-school girl likes porn. Lots of it.

But all of this is really irrelevant when you look at the portrayal of the characters. Needless to say, such a story in such a genre with such a premise sans voices would inevitably flop or read like the most wincingly adolescent–if twisted, due to adolescents usually not having such complex tastes–wet dream.

I suspect that this theoretical inability to supplement the imagination beyond what is not provided, given such a genre and premise, stems from the fact that there is nothing sufficiently grounded in reality that would otherwise make the task of imagining such a realistic reality (or ‘a reality steeped in realism’, if you like) a lot easier; anthropoid animals do not exist, and even if they did, it’d be pretty hard to think of them in the way that’s required here.

With this in mind, it’s exactly why the voices are so needed, necessary, and in fact welcomed in a game like WtK–they’re there to lend an otherwise-unreachable tone of reality to it, enabling the reader to look past the distractingly obvious premise, or the over-the-top interpretation of the genre, and into the heart of the story.

Portrayal in this sense is nothing more than lending urgency to one situation, poignancy to another, or even a simple sense of bumbling, heartfelt adoration towards a story so drowned in very fluffy moe. For while I could do with an option that muted the voices during the sex scenes or otherwise excised them altogether, they did what my mind could not, and made everything a lot more convincing as a result.

I found the usage of voices in F/sn to be potentially hindering my enjoyment of the text, and refused to opt for it in that instance. Why so? A significant portion of it was steeped in descriptions, internal monologues, and 3rd-person writing that, for the most part, didn’t involve much by the way of spoken dialogue.

I abandoned the idea mainly because I felt that the disparity between my imagination of how a character sounded like and how said character really sounded like was too jarring an experience to be had, and decided against it. Then there was the other factor of it slowing down my reading which, all things considered, would have me spending a lot more time on it than I cared for, and so I went through all of it voiceless.

This is where voices in WtK are significant, for unlike F/sn, voices are the focus here. Every character bar the almost-faceless protagonist and a few real dogs and cats (whose only unvoiced lines spoken from off-screen are ‘woof’ or ‘meow’) is voiced with the same professional standards as any anime, and every unwritten nuance, be it a hushed whisper or restrained emotion, when accompanied with voices only seek to enhance the skeletal text in a way that brings out the best of it.

And what’s there to bring out, you ask? The story, what little of it, is minimalistic and written in a way that complements the assumption of voices; it’s very much a postmodern Patrasche in the sense that yes, there is a dog, there’s the master of the dog, and there’s the tragedy, but it’s not tragedy for tragedy’s sake–it’s a tragedy that bends but not breaks them, a tragedy in which the two of them grow all the stronger from it.

But the devil’s in the details. Both Yuuichi and Risa are outcasts in a strictly social sense; he’s a former host who’s known his way around women (and a few men, he adds wryly) ever since his youth due to his parents voluntarily orphaning him through means of abandonment, and she’s an underage porn addict enthusiast who turns to films of a rather hardcore nature to seek relief from daily stresses. Both are people society likes to pretend doesn’t exist. Yet it’s in these very flawed ways their characters are written that they find themselves, and a generous helping of solace to go with it.

The way underlying symbolism is employed here to represent that of a typical nuclear family is interesting, for it’s this very family that both Yuuichi and Risa lack, the former by way of his parents abandoning him in his childhood, and the latter her parents’ thinly-veiled comparisons to her deceased sister. By taking Silvie and Mikan in under their wing, they become the parents they never had, and learn something in the process.

Yuuichi and Risa’s temporary household arrangement is, of course, something all too familiar to those growing up in a household with two parents and 2.5 kids present. In this little masquerade do they both play the doting daddy and mummy, while the two dogs take on visibly symbolic roles of daughters, even if it might be too Electra in nature for some quarters to stomach.

What’s interesting is that the moe elements present are at the very least two-fold, and what seems decorative on the outside is actually utilitarian inside; moe is present not simply because there’s a need for it–merely filling a need for moe without expanding on its presence makes a work incredibly shallow, in my opinion–but because its presence makes the story all the more better–the urge to protect is both pandering and parental, in line with expectations yet instinctive.

It’s the change that both Mikan and Silvie bring to their lives that makes it something to behold. Risa’s route is tearjerking that way, with each portion of the story put together brick by brick in an effort so laborious that it only takes the removal of one or two pieces to bring it all crashing down in a heartwrenching and painful moment.

Because what WtK does is give you the best pet in the world… before proceeding to break it into pieces, giving you the opportunity to wallow in an otherwise-impossible experience of emotional catharsis. In the span of about 20 hours, give or take, the unerringly linear and surprisingly repetitive nature of the game reveals many things about the anthropoid pets in a slice-of-life way.

Cute dogs do cute things, reveal their nature to be that of a fragile, sentient, animalistic one, before the hardest punch the game can muster is pulled, and one of them almost breaks–then said pet overcomes the odds, as do our slightly more matured characters, and they triumph. Tears flow. We get our happy end, but not before the darkest hour appears and despair looms like a black and stubborn rain cloud overhead.

The unconditional love and affection exhibited by the anthropoid pets in WtK, I think, is more than enough by way of a sufficient counter to Yuuichi’s cynical and inherently twisted view to love; he states in his non-committal way that all vows are really quite useless, and maintains that people have to learn how to live with loss and move on in life.

Yet by the end of the route he feels a sense of irreplaceable loss in the absence of the very one that he’s given that advice to. He’s scorned the system that’s been elusive all his life, yet finds that, upon meeting the one he’d never thought he’d see again, that it was right beside him all this time, and does so with much tears in his eyes.

I’m hard-pressed to think of something strictly harem in nature that delves into subject material so deep as to ponder on the machinations of Life, Love, and Everything, but WtK does all that without missing a beat. Yes, Yuuichi dances to the tune of “What is love? Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more.” No, he doesn’t merely pursue that line of thought for philosophical reasons–it’s actually within the boundaries of his character.

For Yuuichi isn’t the proverbial white knight in shining armour that’s come to rescue his girl; he’s Suzaku in his antiquated Lancelot Conquista getting a triple amputation from the Guren S.E.I.T.E.N., and he’s had that coming to him for ages. Neither are the various anthropoid pets the ones that need to be human, for of that they have plenty; it’s Yuuichi that, like the Tachikoma sings, “If I just could be more human/I’d have so many little babies/and maybe, a wife.”