Tom Hasler takes a a look at the obscure world of the Katawa Shoujo phenomenon.

The typical reaction I get when I tell people about Katawa Shoujo is, understandably, confusion and distress. A western homage to the Japanese visual novel, Katawa Shoujo puts you in the shoes of a young man at a school for the disabled who is surrounded by a harem of girls with various disabilities.

It would be misleading to say that your goal is to date one of these girls, because KS, like most visual novels, doesn’t really set out any explicit goal and doesn’t really offer the player the freedom to carry out those goals anyway. Instead, players (or readers, audiences?) are relatively passive and are simply presented with a prearranged narrative told mostly through text, but also featuring music, photographs, drawings and animations. The experience is not completely free of interaction however – occasionally KS presents the player with a choice that will determine the course of the narrative. It’s not too dissimilar from ‘choose your own adventure’ novels read by children.

This of course makes it difficult to define KS as a video game, it really depends on how broad your definition of video game goes. Regardless, with the rising popularity of ebooks and devices like the iPad, the integration of various types of art and media and interaction into the traditional novel is a natural step. And regardless of how strange you find KS’s premise or style, the Japanese visual novel will likely form a basis for this evolution.

Despite it’s eccentricities, KS has garnered a substantial cult following online. In some ways this is perplexing – the writing is frustratingly slow and overly melodramatic at times and until now the visual novel medium has remained fairly obscure in the west. It seems however that the novel’s primary appeal is in its escapism. The character arcs and writing gives KS the vibe of Twilight for boys. It’s a disturbing notion that the male answer to the female vampire fantasy is disability – fortunately that isn’t the exact parallel to be drawn, but rather that KS is romantic fiction targeted at young men. There is a much stronger emphasis on the personalities of the various girls the protagonist can court rather than their disability, and the game’s overall message seems to be a demonstration of how ordinary people with these disabilities actually are. The various potential partners seem to follow tradition girlfriend archetypes and the various choices you make act as personality tests that guide players to their ideal partner.

Although KS’s approach to disability is relatively rounded and mature for the most part, the overall writing and style isn’t really that great, and is certainly a little juvenile.

Regardless of Katawa Shoujo’s actual merits, its success may actually pave the way for some genuinely innovative storytelling and as a result, should be considered something of a pioneering endeavour. To many it will be weird, but it’s certainly got its own identity, and given that it’s widely available for free I would definitely recommend checking this ‘game’ out, if only to see for yourself what all the fuss is about. Who knows? maybe you may find yourself secretly dreaming of your imaginary disabled girlfriend.