Katawa Shoujo is a volunteer project, five years in the making. It began on the forums of 4-chan when there was a thread for posting pictures about severely maimed or disabled people for pornographic use by others. A male nurse posted pictures of a half-Japanese girl who had lost her parents, both legs, an arm, and an eye in an accident. Some of the people on the born made pedophilia based comments, but over time, even the trolls began to care about the girl's recovery, and eventually the nurse regretting his initial small joke, and him adopting the girl, moved to his core.
Then, a group of fans from around the world began to work on a project to help disabled people everywhere: a dating sim where you can only date disabled people. It was a complete lampoon to the community that had sexually looked at others' despair. And now, it is released for free, and in Windows, Macintosh, and Linux format. And now I will talk about how it is a lot like Visual-Kei.
In 1992, a Visual-Kei band that would go on to pioneer the genre as we know it, Kuroyume, scored a hit with the provactive "autism" which proclaimed the limits of a disability few knew at the time, especially in Japan. (Don't believe me, go read With the Light.) Visual-Kei has long been about breaking down the worst parts of society, with bands like Dir en Grey decrying religious fanaticism and war crimes. So, I think this is probably one of the best games a Visual-Kei enthusiast could play.
Note: It comes for any type of computer, and in a boatload of languages, including both English and Japanese.
Links:
The Download
Wikipedia Article
Kotaku Article About the Game and Disability in General within Japanese Sub-culture
Why would any one make fun of disabled people in the first place. Wow that's sickening. Although I never herd of anything good ever coming out of 4chan any ways. =/
ReplyDeleteI don't do dating sims though.