#blgamereview

This game has 4 routes and I think the best order is probably Hozumi -> Haru -> Touka -> Souma. Some routes have 2 different paths which leads to completely different endings and scenarios, so for the full experience I definitely recommend playing them all. I also recommend patching the game first before playing as it fixes some issues with certain sprites not showing up. You can download the patch here! If you can't access the website due to the region lock you can use a free VPN since the file size of the patch is pretty small. A guide of the game can be found here.

Story and characters This game focuses on Mahora who’s a member of the Special Security Guards or "Yonomori" who’s tasked to kill demons. Within the Yonomori there are 3 different divisions who all have their own tasks. The First and Second Divisions mostly do research and don't usually battle the demons, as they're considered valuable people who they don't want to lose. The Third Division on the other hand is a group where the more ‘problematic’ and reckless individuals go. According to Mahora, they’re basically disposable soldiers and the other divisions don’t care if they get injured or die. A lot of people join the third division mostly because they want to take revenge on demons that killed their friends and family.

The town where the story takes place is also interesting, as it’s a city where morning and daytime don’t exist, so the sky always looks like it’s evening/nighttime. This is something the characters don’t question at all, so it must have been like that for a long time. It also rains almost every day and sunny days are extremely rare. Based on the backgrounds and some of the backstory, I’m going to assume the story takes place somewhere during the Meiji period, though it's mostly a fantasy setting. Other than demons and humans, the game also has a third kind of creature who are commonly referred to as Tosenbo. In-game they look like giant bird-like creatures who are harmless, but sometimes they do block the paths in town because of their size.

This game has several important characters, but the ones you're introduced to first are Mahora's coworkers Hozumi, Suzuri and their leader Ibu. There's also Mikage, who's part of the first division and sometimes shows up to talk to Ibu. Mahora also meets Touka pretty early on into the game when he visits one of his favorite confectionary stores.

Before joining the military, Mahora worked at a kimono shop. One day the Third Division leader Ibu invited Mahora to join the Third Division as they were still looking for new people, despite him having no prior battle experience. At first I thought this would get explained more, but I think the Third Division is just constantly recruiting new people because they keep dying in battle… Mahora also lives together with a demon called Shuu, who unlike the other demons isn’t hostile. He has been living with him for a long time and can’t exactly recall how many years it has been, but it has pretty much become normal for him. Of course he can’t let too many people know about this, especially not because he works as a demon hunter.

One day while just walking around town Mahora suddenly gets attacked by a demon called Yae who wants Mahora to summon Shuu. He grabs his neck and threatens to kill him, but then a mysterious man called Haru saves him. After Haru brings Mahora home, Haru explains that he was raised by Tosenbo and that he’s able to use some of their abilities because of that. Haru doesn't want to explain much about himself though because he doesn't trust the Yonomori (fair).

Hozumi route This is the first route I recommend playing as it serves as a good introduction to the setting of the game and what kind of work the Yonomori do. Members of the Third Division usually work in pairs, and Mahora is partnered with Hozumi, who is quite the troublemaker. Before Mahora became his partner, his partner was a friend of them called Suzuri, but Hozumi accidentally injured him during a mission. One of the reasons he often gets into trouble is that he tends to make decisions on his own without listening to his partner, something Mahora is still getting used to as well. This route mainly focuses on the two of them investigating the Tosenbo around town, along with exploring Hozumi's own backstory. Suzuri also appears frequently in this route and does have his own endings, though the true ending of this route is Hozumi's. His route has two different paths and I think it's important to play both of them to get the full story. At first I wasn't sure what to expect from him because he's very stubborn, but he does get better at communicating later.

Haru route In this route Mahora gets closer to Haru and invites him to stay at his place, as Haru seems to be living in an abandoned shrine instead of a proper house… (which he admittedly doesn't seem to mind though). Because Haru was raised by the Tosenbo, he isn’t fazed by Shuu’s existence, as he can sense that Shuu has no malicious intent despite being a demon. Haru's arguments with Shuu were pretty funny because both of them have a pretty childish personality at times. This route mainly focuses on Haru’s backstory and why he wasn't raised by humans. I think this route also had some of the better looking CGs, I just wish his sprite art was as cute as the CG art... I think if I had to choose a favorite character in this game though it would probably be Haru.

Touka route Touka is described as a good-looking guy who’s well known around town for his flashy appearance. He helps out at a restaurant called Seikaro, though I did spend a long time wondering what he even does as he isn't often seen doing any work?? Mahora seems to wonder this too and at one point even assumes that Touka sells his body, though this turns out to be a misunderstanding. After Mahora spends some time with Touka, rumors quickly spread around town that Mahora is sleeping with him, even before they show any romantic interest in each other. This route also has two different branches and one of them heavily focuses on the side character Ibu, who is the commander of the Third Division. Even though Touka isn’t a member of the Yonomori, he’s friends with Ibu and they often talk to each other. In this route Souma's also often mentioned, who's a mysterious character Ibu seems to be quite interested in.

Souma route Very early into the game it's explained that Souma is someone Mahora remembers from the past, as they spent some time together when they were kids. He usually avoids going into town as he's known as ''the cursed child''. He's also connected to the demon Yae who attacks Mahora early into the game. Souma's route is locked and unlocks after you get all of the other good endings. In this route we finally learn the truth about the demons and also the whole mystery surrounding the town in general. I liked seeing more of Yae as he's surprisingly funny and he wish he had his own route, but (...small spoiler?) he does have his own ending and 18+ scene. We also learn a lot more about the demon Shuu who Mahora has been living with.

Final thoughts I played this game without guide so I was a bit lost sometimes until I realized each character has multiple route branches, so definitely keep that in mind and try playing them all for the full story. I think this game had its pros and its cons, but let's start with the pros. The game is pretty long (about 40 hours) which I do enjoy, as a lot of games I've played recently could be finished within just one or two days. It was about 35 USD on DLsite, but I did use some of their coupons which made it a bit cheaper. One thing I liked about the story is how involved all of the side characters are. The relationships they have with each other feel very realistic. I especially liked Commander Ibu and the demons Shuu and Yae. The only downside of this is that I sometimes ended up liking the side characters more than the main characters and wished they had their own routes. That said, Holicworks games do sometimes make this possible in their fandiscs, as I’ve seen with BeniTen and Taisho Mebiusline, though I'm not sure if this game will get any. I also think it’s important to play all of the endings, because even the ones I initially missed added a lot of information that isn’t mentioned anywhere else in the game, such as Yae’s backstory in one of Souma's other endings.

Unfortunately, the game’s lead artist was changed and I think multiple new artists replaced them. This is noticeable in the CGs, as the art style varies quite a bit throughout the game. I think Haru and Souma received some of the best-looking CGs, which were also fairly consistent, while Hozumi’s and Touka’s routes sometimes had some pretty noticeable art inconsistencies. I also think it would have maybe been a bit more interesting to include some of the main lore in the earlier routes, as those mostly focuses on the characters' personal issues rather than the fact that there's demons everywhere in town. You also never really see Shuu's reaction to Mahora getting together with the love interests, which is a bit strange because Shuu lives with Mahora, so it's not like he can keep this a secret lol? I sometimes also felt like Mahora could have gotten a bit more character development. In-game his only hobby is buying sweets and even though that's pretty cute, I think it gets a bit old after 40 hours of gameplay (but maybe that's just me). Lastly, there's also some typos and audio bugs that have not been patched out yet, but because I'm seeing Japanese fans mention the same issues, I'm hoping they can patch this!

This is a bit of a shorter game because it only focuses on two main characters, so it took me about 15 hours to finish it, which is similar to the playtime of Parade's second game Room No.9. There are 5 different endings which were all pretty easy to get as there's not a lot of choices in this game, and I think some choices also aren't available during the first couple of playthroughs, so you don't really need a guide for this one.

Kento grew up in a harsh environment and as a result of that, he ended up in a juvenile detention center twice. After turning 20 and entering adulthood, he finally decided to turn his life around and find a job. However, one day while riding his motorcycle, he collides with a car and is hospitalized with serious injuries. Because of this past and his bad relationship with his family, he doesn't have any friends and family to rely on, which is why Yoshino, the man who owns the car he collided with, decides to help him. At first Kento's attitude towards him is bad and he doesn't understand why he keeps visiting him, but this quickly changes when he spends more time with Yoshino. After he's discharged from the hospital, Yoshino allows him to stay at his house until his injuries are healed.

The first part of this game mostly focuses on Kento's recovery, but there's a lot of timeskips so the pacing of the game doesn't feel slow at all. This game also has quite a lot of 18+ scenes now I think about it, but it doesn't feel like these scenes were just randomly thrown in there. When a BL game has too many random 18+ scenes I tend to get a little bored, but that wasn't the case luckily. In general I was just really interested in seeing how they'd eventually grow close enough to do those things together, especially because Yoshino's such a serious character and not the type to play around with other men, and I think Kento wouldn't either. I think as usual they're supposed to be ''straight'' lol, though Kento does have some dialogue in which he's also doubting this.

The sexual depictions in the game are mostly consensual, but like any Parade game, this one also deals with heavy themes such as abuse, rape, and suicide, which is also mentioned on the official website. The descriptions are sometimes very detailed, so just be aware of this before you play, though if you've played any of Parade's games in the past you'll probably be fine. Even though it deals with a lot of serious topics, there's plenty of cute scenes too. I really liked how Yoshino has two cats called Gomashio and Lulu, and at first Kento isn't sure how to react to the cats as he's not used to them, but later it's pretty cute to see him playing with them. I expected his personality to be a bit different honestly because he's pretty rude in the first 15 minutes of the game, but he really just wants to learn new things and make up for any mistakes he has made in the past. Because of his upbringing, Kento never learned many of the basic skills people his age usually know, for example how to properly clean the house and how to cook, so Yoshino decides to teach him all of that. When the game was announced I was a bit surprised that the protagonist was a muscular guy, because all of Parade's previous protagonists are (kind of?) skinny guys. I think this is also a reason why many people got interested in their games, as it used to be quite rare for BL visual novels to have a top protagonist in general, especially one that would top muscular older guys. Looking back at this though, I can kind of understand it now, because Kento's much younger than Yoshino, and throughout the game you also learn that Kento has a pretty innocent personality and Yoshino's the older one who's teaching him all kinds of things. So in the end he's not too different than the other Parade's protagonists, maybe only his appearance.

Yoshino's character was a bit mysterious to me at first, because I also wondered why he wanted to help Kento, which is mostly explained later in the game. He seems really stoic and serious at first and I understood that because he's a teacher, caring for someone is something that's also natural for him I guess, but letting someone live in your house and helping them bathe etc. obviously isn't something a regular teacher would just do for someone. I can't say much more because I don't want to spoil his backstory, but I do think it was incredibly well written and I finished this game in two days because I couldn't stop playing. Some parts of this game did remind me a little bit of their first game No Thank You!!, because even though the plot isn't similar, I guess the general atmosphere and build-up kind of is. For example in both games most of the other main characters seem to be living a pretty stable life when you're introduced to them, though later you learn that many of them have a darker backstory and are facing all kinds of challenges in life. In lesson you also don't learn a lot about Yoshino until later in the game, and there's many things about the story I really couldn't have predicted, which makes it a really good game in my opinion. The artist of this game is Nikaidou Shino who also did the art for Room No.9 and Lkyt. and I love their artstyle, so I certainly wasn't disappointed and all the CGs looked great. By the way, I always find it funny that there's a button to turn the body hair off, but if more people can enjoy the game that way I'm all for it.

Probably a bit of a vague review because I am trying so hard to not mention what happens later in the game, but I just wanted to say that I loved it! If you're interested in purchasing this game yourself, it's currently only available on Fanza which you do need a VPN for, but after that it was pretty easy to purchase. Also important, make sure to update Soft Denchi as it might give you an error while opening the game if you're running an older version of it (or if you don't have the software yet). Since MangaGamer localized all of Parade's previous games, I also think it's very likely that this game will get localized eventually. The game is not too long so maybe the localization also won't take too long? Who knows...! If you're not sure if you will like it or not you can also try the trial version, which can be downloaded on the official website now!

When this game was announced, it was mentioned that all 9 main characters are named after train stations on the Yurikamome line in Tokyo (the train line most people take if you go to events like Comiket). Other names Oosaki, Shinagawa and Shinkiba are train stations on the Rinkai line, which was not officially confirmed, but very easy to find because both train lines are located in the same area. So far the last names of the side characters in the game also followed this pattern, so there's not much information I can add to this. However, their first names is where things start getting a bit more interesting. When the first names of Funeno and Shiodome were released, fans immediately recognized that their names were references to characters in existing novels. Then while playing part 1, this theory proved to be correct, as some of the other first names could also be linked to existing literature. I created this list while playing the game, but I've seen similar theories on social media such as Twitter (or well, X now) and Weibo too, therefore I think a lot of these could be correct. I will also include the Japanese titles of these works to make it a bit easier to look them up yourself. Of course I don't always remember every detail that happened in these novels, and some I only read very recently, so please correct me if anything is wrong! I'm always happy to learn more.

Ariake Shoutarou (有明勝太郎) Ariake's first name "Shoutarou" is most likely a reference to Junichiro Tanizaki's "Tojo" (途上). The protagonist is actually called "Katsutarou", which is another way of reading the kanji used to write Ariake's first name. This character has an ex-wife and a current wife, whose names are Fudeko and Kumako. This is only briefly mentioned at the end of Ariake's route, but his wives have the same names. In this novel, Katsutarou tries to kill his first wife Fudeko by purposely exposing her to dangerous situations that negatively impact her health, but he won't directly harm her to make her death look like an accident. The motive and the way he tries to kill her is different than what happens in Ooe, but I think it's definitely the inspiration behind this route. Another connection to Junichiro Tanizaki's works is the name of Ariake’s sister, who's called Naomi (奈緒美) which is a name that appears in “Chijin no Ai” (痴人の愛). Around this time the concept of “Naomiism” was born, which was used to describe a free-spirited devilish, beautiful girl. Sometimes it looks like this term was also used for girls who manipulate men, but it wasn't always used in a negative context. I'm curious if this concept was also used to create Ariake's character, as in of the official blog posts he's described as a "male femme fatale". I'm not sure if this is plot-related or not, but Ariake's ending song also has an audio clip from the play "Cyrano de Bergerac", which doesn't exactly have a happy ending either and both of the characters lose their lives.

Shimbashi Mei (新橋冥) When I looked for novels which focused on a character called "Mei", I couldn't find much, until I realized the kanji used to write his name is also the first kanji in the Japanese word for Pluto (冥王星), which is also the name of the theater company he works for. In his ending, Shinagawa even tells Oosaki that Shimbashi is Pluto, so it might also be his pseudonym. Pluto is also the cat that appears in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat" and even though the story isn't identical to what happened in his past, there are similar elements. For example, the cat in this story Pluto is often drawn with only one eye, and while Shimbashi does have another eye, he usually hides it with an eyepatch. The unnamed protagonist also ends up killing the cat by hanging it, which is similar to how Shimbashi's brother used to kill animals. Later in the story, the protagonist adopts another cat who resembles Pluto, but because the new cat keeps reminding him of how he killed Pluto, he eventually loses his sanity and tries to kill the new cat as well, but ends up killing his own wife instead who tried to protect the cat. Despite the protagonist trying to hide her body, the police eventually finds her because the cat was trapped in the same wall where the protagonist tried to hide her body, and the sound of the animal scratching the wall gained their attention. Even though the story is a bit different, Shimbashi also got his revenge by murdering his brother, which he doesn't seem to regret much. Shimbashi's ending song is called ルドン (rudon/redon) which is the name of French painter Odilon Redon. The song also mentions his mentor Armand Clavaud, who was a botanist. Clavaud taught Redon many things about flowers, but also introduced him to Buddhism, which shows in Redon's later paintings too. The flowers are an important element in this route as Shimbashi's the person who was leaving flowers on the grave of Oosaki's grandmother, so maybe all of that is also intentional.

Aomi Kaede (青海楓) This is not necessarily about the name Kaede, but about Takuichi (卓一), Aomi's father who he's impersonating on the island. Takuichi is also the name of the protagonist of Koga Saburo's "Aofuku no Otoko" (青服の男) and his cousin is called Shinzo, who shares the same name as the student who committed suicide in the game, Shinonome Shinzo. In the novel the two of them schedule a meet-up to discuss money Takuichi wanted to borrow, but when he doesn't show up to the meeting, Shinzo later confronts him. In the middle of the confrontation however, Shinzo suffers from a heart attack and passes away. In Ooe their relationship is a bit different, as Takuichi and Shinzo are teacher and student, and Aomi's father passed away shortly after receiving the invitation letter. In the novel Takuichi is alive and impersonates Shinzo in order to get his own inheritance money, though the theme of impersonation is relevant in Ooe too as Aomi pretends to be his father. There's nobody called Kaede in this story, but in the game Aomi mentions his father called him Kaede because he thought his hands resembled a frog's webbed feet (kaeru = frog) so currently I'm unsure if there's any further connections. Aomi's ending song is called Taichourou (対潮楼) which is actually the name of a temple in Fukuyama, a city located in Hiroshima prefecture. I'm not sure if there's any specific reason for this, but it's not too far away from Ookunoshima (also known as bunny island because of its many rabbits), which is one of the locations that was used as inspiration for some of the background art in-game.

Funeno Kureichirou (船野呉一郎) Hashihime fans might recognize this one as Kureichirou is also the name of one of the most important characters in Yumeno Kyuusaku's "Dogra Magra". Dogra Magra is not one of the easiest stories to understand, as the protagonist's memory is hazy and you never know if the researchers are telling him the truth either, but generally we know that Kureichirou seems to have murdered his cousin (who was also his fiancé). Funeno's crime is revealed at the end of the trial version of Ooe and he killed his sister. So far we haven't really seen much of Funeno in part 1 because he immediately acts strange when he sees Oosaki, probably because he has Daiba's letter and Oosaki introduced himself as "Daiba", so it's a bit hard to analyze his character yet or compare him to Dogra Magra's Kureichirou in my opinion.

Shiodome Michio (汐留道雄) Just like Funeno, Shiodome's first name was also revealed a long time before the trial version and part 1 of Ooe were released. It references Edogawa Ranpo's "Kotou no Oni" (孤島の鬼) which is not really a secret as it's one of the novels that was mentioned in one of the first blog posts about Ooe and its inspirations. Michio is one of the main characters, who's a gay man who falls in love with the main character Minoura. So far their personalities do not seem that similar, but Kotou no Oni's Michio is adopted by a man called Jogoro, which is also the first name of Shiodome's professor (Tsukishima Jogoro).

Takeshiba Yozo (竹芝葉蔵) This is one of the new names we learned about in part 1, but since Yozo isn't the most common name ever it's probably referencing Dazai Osamu's "No Longer Human/Ningen Shikkaku” (人間失格). Yozo (or ''Youzou'', it's hard to keep romanization consistent...) is the name of the protagonist. He's a troubled individual who can't relate to other human beings and doesn't understand them. At first he tries to hide these emotions by playing the clown so people laugh at him, but eventually he turns to alcohol and drugs. Takeshiba is a magician who quickly tries to change the topic when things get serious, which matches the theme of playing the clown, but we also know he gets nervous fast and he's also the character who committed some of the most brutal murders in the game so far. I think the story won't be exactly the same, but he definitely seems to share certain personality traits with the main character. He's accused of murdering his family by setting their family home on fire, though in the first part of the game he makes it seem like someone else did it, or if it was some kind of accident. His route also seems to reference Suehiro Maruo's Shoujo Tsubaki, for example him describing his mother as a snake woman, and he's also wearing a yellow shirt with red dots in some of the promotional art, similar to Midori's dress.

Shijoumae Giichirou (市場前義一郎) Shijoumae's first name could be a reference to Akutagawa Ryunosuke's "Kaika no Satsujin" (開化の殺人) in which the protagonist shares the same name as him. This is a rather strange short story that focuses on a number of suicide notes, written by a doctor who's called Kitabatake Giichirou. He's often described as a man with a rather 'western' appearance because of his beard/moustache, which matches Shijoumae's character design. He was in love with his cousin Akiko (which I guess was not uncommon during this time period) and wanted to marry her, but she married another man called Mitsumura. In the book, Kitabatake was incredibly jealous of him and poisoned him. However, even after this first murder, his cousin started getting close to another man called Honda, who Kitabatake was also jealous of. Initially, he planned to poison him too, but in the end he decided against this and took his own life instead. In Ooe, Shijoumae's wife is also called Akiko and has red eyes, which means her family's also from Ooejima, though she's not confirmed to be Giichirou's cousin like in the original short story.

Toyosu Rouren (豊洲浪蓮) I was a bit confused when I heard the pronunciation of his name in-game, as it sounded a bit unusual to me, though many fans so far have pointed out that the name sounds similar to ''Lawrence/ローレンス'' who's the antagonist in Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" which is the novel that gets mentioned in-game too. In the novel Lawrence fakes his own death, which reminds me of the boat scene in Ariake's route in which Toyosu drowned, but the whole scene seemed rather sudden to me. For example, he tries to convince the others that nobody else should join him, and the food at the inn also disappeared around this time. After finishing Aomi's route, we know he's lying about his real identity too because no matter what temple they visit, there's no monk with his name, and other characters also suspect him of being the client, which is later revealed to be correct.

Daiba Shizuma (台場静馬) Another name we've known for a long time is Daiba's first name Shizuma, which is a reference to Yokomizo Seishi's "The Inugami Family/Inugami-ke no Ichizoku" (犬神家の一族). This is another story about impersonation which fits the main theme of Oosaki pretending to be Daiba on the island. There are actually multiple characters in this novel who share the same names as some of the Ooe characters, such as Sukekiyo (佐清) the name of Daiba’s brother who passed away in the boat accident, and Sahei (佐兵衛), Daiba's father Oosaki meets in the common route. The connections between characters in this story get very complicated, but Sahei is the head of the Inugami family who has an illegitimate son called Shizuma, who went missing. He also has a grandson called Sukekiyo, who was disfigured on the battlefield. Similar to Ooe, the story starts with Sahei's death, though in the novel he leaves a suicide note and in Ooe he seems to die rather suddenly after talking to Oosaki. In the novel, it's revealed that Sukekiyo actually passed away some time ago and Shizuma has been pretending to be him. There are also some other shared elements, such as the Shizuma in the novel trying to take revenge for what happened to his mother, and in the game Daiba takes his mother's last name "Hama", and expresses that he doesn't like the Daiba family.

Oosaki and Hinode This is another update after playing part two, but I'm still a bit unsure about both of them. Oosaki's first name is Hiiro which translates to 'scarlet'. One of the things I can think of is that it's maybe a reference to the Sherlock Holmes series, "A Study in Scarlet" as this is of course also a detective story. As for Hinode, in the pamphlet that came with the game Dostoevsky's book "Crime and Punishment" is mentioned. Even though there's no character named Riichi, there are some elements of the plot that are similar. For example, the eight years he spends together with Oosaki after the main story ends is the same length as Raskolnikov's prison sentence in the book.

Side characters I haven't looked much into the side characters, but I assume their first names are also references to something. The names of Shinkiba and Shinagawa (Jinza 甚三 and Zakuro 柘榴 ) could be referring to some of the side characters from some of Edogawa Ranpo's works, as there's a short story called ''Zakuro'' (石榴) and there's also a "Jinza" in the novel Ghost Tower (幽霊塔), but I can't exactly find any connections between them and the Ooe characters. For Oosaki I'm guessing his name could also be something related to the Inugami Family too because it is a bit suspicious that he looks almost identical to Daiba, I think they have to be related to each other in some way.

Other literature references In a previous blog post I wrote in 2022, I mentioned that when Ooe was announced, one of the official blog posts also mentioned works that inspired them to create Ooe. I will include those in this blog post again as the previous one is a bit outdated now.

Of course the main inspiration is Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, as it follows a similar closed-circle murder mystery story on an island. In Ariake's first ending, Oosaki even compares some of the characters in the novel to characters in the game, calling himself Vera for example who murdered for love. Another important connection is that the owner of the island in this novel calls themselves "U.N. Owen", a fake name which basically just stands for ''unknown''. This of course sounds very similar to "Ooe" and the game's official alias is also "Owen" according to the official website. The actress who passed away is called "An Ooe", which also sounds a bit similar to "unknown".

Previously, I mentioned that Shiodome's first name Michio is a reference to Edogawa Ranpo's "Kotou no Oni", another novel that focuses on a murder mystery story, this time about the death of the protagonist's fiancé. As the title of the novel suggests (which translates to "Demon of the Lonely Isle") they also travel to an island, though this one is inhabited by people who all have some kind of deformity. Of course most of the characters in Ooe look pretty normal, but if you've played part 1 you've probably noticed how many characters either suffer from an illness or were born with some kind of physical abnormality, although sometimes it's not really severe. Ariake's has a thyroid disease (Grave's Disease according to his character profile in-game), Shimbashi has strabismus (misalignment of his eyes) and Aomi has webbed fingers which his father made fun of. If we look at the other characters, there is of course Hinode who won't talk and also seems to have difficulty walking, though the reason for this has not been explained yet in-detail. In the full body art, Shijoumae is also drawn with a cane, which might also be linked to something related to his health, but I'm not completely sure about some of the other characters yet.

The same blog post also mentions three incidents which happened in real life, but which all have novel adaptations as well, with the first one being the "Anatahan Incident", or also called the "Queen of Anatahan Incident" (アナタハンの女王事件). This incident focuses on a number of deaths that happened on Anatahan Island, located in the Pacific Ocean. The island became Japanese territory after the First World War and Japanese settlers began living on the island together with natives. Years later near the end of the Second World War, most locals fled after the American military called for Japan's surrender during the war. During this time, some refused to surrender and stayed on the island. Initially, the Japanese people who refused to leave the island were left alone, but things changed when a U.S. Boeing crashed into the island and guns were found inside of the wreckage. Afterwards, these guns became a symbol of power among men on the island, and some of them would kill each over the only woman on the island, Kazuko. After this, it was reported that more men died under "mysterious circumstances", and eventually Kazuko surrendered herself to the U.S. military, as she felt like she was the root of all the problems on the island. Writer Iwasaki Sakae also released a novel based on these incidents, which is just called "Anatahan".

The second incident mentioned is the "Hikarigoke Incident" (ひかりごけ事件), and translates to "Luminous Moss Incident", though the name comes from Takeda Taijun's short story which is based on this incident. The short story is actually just based on rumors rather than factual reports, so there are some differences. The real incident is rather graphic and took place in 1944 in Hokkaido. It was reported that after ending up in a shipwreck, the captain of the ship survived by eating the corpses of his own crew. The captain was later arrested on charges of corpse mutilation, corpse abandonment and murder. Even though he said he didn't kill them, he did admit eating them. This case stood out back then because even though cannibalism had undoubtedly happened before in Japanese history, it was the first time such a case was reported by the newspapers. If we want to link this to what happened in the game, there's of course Shiodome who was accused of corpse mutilation. He also took Funeno's head in the first route, and in this case the captain admitted that he ate the brains of one of the crew members (... as well as their genitalia, so do with that information what you want).

The final incident mentioned in this blog post was the "Mount Hakkoda Disaster" or "Mount Hakkoda Snow Disaster" (八甲田雪中行軍遭難事件) which happened in 1902 when a group of Japanese Imperial Army soldiers got lost in a blizzard on Hakkoda Mountain, located in Aomori. This incident is considered one of the most lethal disasters in history and 199 people lost their lives. After getting stuck in the blizzard, during the next days many soldiers would freeze to death, while others fell down the cliffs during their ascent. This incident also has a novel which translates to "Death Wanderings on Mt. Hakkoda" (八甲田山死の彷徨) by Nitta Jiro, which was also made into a movie "Hakkoda Mountain". Of course, Ooe's story is about an island and not a mountain, but I do understand the similarities about getting stuck somewhere and being unable to leave.

Final thoughts and information from the pamphlet/Cool-B One thing I was really curious about after playing part 1 were the red eyes, as eye color was a pretty important theme in Hashihime and Uuultra C. In Ooe, all the main characters have red eyes but most of the side characters have black eyes. This did turn out to be relevant as the pamhlet that comes with the full version of the game confirms that descendants of those who lived on Ooejima do all have red eyes, though most ordinary people will just see it as black. It seems like only Daiba's father Sahei and Ariake are able to see this red colour though, so just being a descendant from Ooejima doesn't mean that you can easily spot others whose families are from the same island.

Another thing that was teased long before the game was released was the so called "madness scale" which was published in Cool-B magazine. This scale ranked the characters from 1 to 5 (with 5 being the worst) which gave us some hints about what these characters would be like in their own routes. Aomi and Toyosu are ranked 1, Shimbashi and Funeno 2, Hinode is the only one who's a 3, Takeshiba is 4, and Ariake, Shiodome and Shijoumae all got a 5. Oosaki and Daiba weren't included in this list. I think while looking at this again later, this scale does make a lot of sense now.

Lastly, the letters you unlock in-game are also really interesting to me and even after finishing the full game I still have some questions. I think it's clear that some of the earliest ones were sent by Ooe Ann whose sister married into the Daiba family, but the final ones look like they were sent by Hinode's mother. Anyway, it has been really interesting to read everyone else's theories about the game so far! The creator Kurosawa Rinko is still working on all kinds of Ooe-related projects, so I'm hoping that some answers to the questions I still have will eventually be published in the Q&A which will be part of the supplementary reader. I did submit some questions, but I'm sure others might have submitted the same ones.

Here's a list of my previous blog posts about Ooe! Though I haven't looked at these for some time now so some might be outdated...