The Protagonist Yusuke, bored with everyday life, slips slowly into the realm of madness. One day, without warning, his classmate, Kanako, goes insane during a lesson, screaming obscenities while clawing her own face with enough force to draw blood.
Tasked by his uncle to uncover the mystery behind this incident, Yusuke must pair up with one of the three heroines in order to learn the truth.
Shizuku (雫, “Waterdrop”) is a horror Visual Novel by Leaf originally released in 1996. Leaf (now Leaf Aquaplus) is an influential company in the scene renowned for hits such as To Heart, Utawarerumono and White Album.
Bygone Days
The Visual Novel community, as with most entertainment mediums, has a short memory. Once popular entries fade into obscurity in the blink of an eye – how many people still remember Seasons of the Sakura or True Love? It’s a mercurial industry and many companies and creators tend to go defunct and vanish into the annals of history. But what of those that stick around?
Successful companies tend to cash in on their popular franchises – think of how the Fate universe started as a humble doujin production and is now a huge multi-medium production with tons of spin-offs that keeps the brand name in public eye, feeding upon itself to keep the engine running.
It may be hard to imagine, but all great companies have to start somewhere. Quite often a company’s early attempts can best be described as “throwing poop at a wall to see what sticks” and it can be a bit of a tonal shock to head back and explore the earlier works of a company, especially if they’ve since traded the niche adult-oriented industry for a more mainstream approach (When’s Rasen Kairou going to be introduced into the Muv Luv Cinematic Universe, huh Age?).
Today we will be looking at Leaf’s very first work and the very first Visual Novel*!
Of course some of you may already be questioning that statement – hasn’t there been tons of other naughty games involving Anime grils where you read lots and lots of text way before this game even sprung into existence? And what’s that asterisk for?
Now here’s the thing – the term “Visual Novels” isn’t used the same way in Japan as it is in English regions – in fact they don’t really use it at all! What we know as “Visual Novels” in Englishland tend to be simply categorized under ADV (“Adventure”) in Japan. For some reason, this phrase was “repurposed” as the go-to term for such games, taking on the role that in Japan would be served by several phrases such as Galge (“Gal Games”) / Bishoujo Games (“Pretty Girl Games”) and Eroge (“Erotic Ero Eroge Games”) – likely because the original substitute “H-Games” was a bit of a PR disaster for attempting to go mainstream.
(On an interesting sidenote, before the term “Visual Novels” went into vogue people correctly identified games like Ace Attorney under the adventure genre before it was eventually shunted under the VN umbrella but I suppose the degradation of language over time is inevitable – ask me how I feel about the misuse of the term “Roguelikes”)
Otogiriso and Kamaitachi No Yoru – Chunsoft’s famous Sound Novels
So what is the secret origin story of the phrase then? For that we have to go back a bit earlier in time with the release of the game Otogiriso by Chunsoft, whom you might know from that really obscure series Danganronpa. Otogiriso was advertised as a “Sound Novel” – a format which will certainly look very familiar but at the time, what Chunsoft was selling as revolutionary was the concept of sound design for their brand, which would enhance the storytelling through the use of sound effects and BGM.
Shizuku (Left) VS Tsukhime (Right)
The context of the term “Visual Novels” then falls neatly into place – a storytelling medium that ultimately uses the same structure, but rather than “sound”, Leaf’s new brand of novels would instead focus on the “Visuals” instead. Simple enough, isn’t it? Granted, in practice they mostly just added character sprites to Chunsoft’s original formula.
As I said, the term “Visual Novel” was for the most part only used by Leaf but there’s one interesting exception – TYPE-MOON, whom you may know from creating those really obscure series Tsukihime and Fate / Stay Night, also referred to their games as “Visual Novels” and it’s very clear that they were strongly inspired by Leaf’s style at the time, primarily Kizuato, the “sequel” of this game. Some of the background classroom shots from Tsukihime and Shizuku are so similar that it’s likely an intentional homage.
(As a personal note, I always relate that term to this particular visual style where the text is overlayed over the entire screen rather than the modern format of having dialogue in its own text box.)
Well, that’s a lot of words setting up the historical context so I should probably actually start talking about the game.
On paper, Shizuku had potential to be a really good read – a strong opening hook combined with the atmosphere built by the prose and music leaves the player wanting to uncover the mysteries behind this incident. Was it drugs? Mental illness? Or is this incident simply the beginning of a greater conspiracy beyond your imagination?
There’s just one problem.
The mystery really sucks.
The basic method of constructing mystery stories is to dole out information piece by piece, where each new input allows the reader to build the puzzle in his mind, sometimes having to completely reconstruct his thoughts when a curveball is thrown into the mix, and if he’s good he might even come to the conclusion before they mystery’s explained in-universe by the detective on the scene.
Here, if you get the bad ending from refusing the investigation by making the wrong first 2 choices, the bad ending that follows basically gives away the antagonist’s methods and identity (especially if you’re playing the remake with voice acting as the extremely tiny cast list means basic process of elimination cracks the case instantly) which leaves the only mystery… discovering his motivations? But don’t worry, even if you do manage to avoid that little gaffe, you’ll stumble upon the mastermind 30 minutes later anyway.
Shizuku is a very short game and in this case it doesn’t really do it any favors. In fact most of the running time felt like a non-stop barrage of humiliation-based “erotic” scenes anyway that you could very well file this game under nukige or at best a B-Movie sexploitation film. To make matters worse, most of the text between routes tend to be repeated so you’re doing a lot of reading of reused text just to get to the tiny scraps of new content per route. This isn’t uncommon during the era in which Shizuku was released and is still happening today, but the lower standards for QoL features tend to make it less tolerable than in modern times.
Bottom Line: If you’re looking for the next Zero Escape, well, this ain’t it chief.
Is there anything I like about the writing? Well, the protagonists strange delusional apocalyptic ramblings are rather entertaining. Strangely enough, they do feel rather disconnected from the rest of the story because as soon as he’s together with one of the heroines they seem to just stop and he just turns into a pretty non-descript character – not even as a “character development” sort of thing, it just stops abruptly.
And now’s a good time as any to start talking about the love interests. Shizuku has three heroines – the shy glasses girl Mizuho, who’s best friends with the victim Kanako, the energetic Saori in the volleyball team who witnessed a strange incident while practicing late night and feels compelled to solve it and Ruriko, the mysterious girl who underwent a strange, complete personality change since the protagonist last saw her. They would likely be considered very stock characters nowadays, but the last one’s a little… interesting.
I’m not sure if Ruriko could be considered a breakout character (although her theme song definitely seems to be with quite a few remixes when the game was still relevant) but she appears to be quite influential – with her strange talk about transmitting and receiving radiowaves, her body acting as an antenna (thus explaining her preference for hanging around on rooftops) and her dialogue revolving around those analogies, Ruriko is one part of the “denpa” (electromagnetic / radiowaves) phenomenon that arose from Shizuku’s wake.
As stated in the For Elise review, “Denpa” is a genre for stories that involves around descending into madness and Shizuku happened to be the game to coin the term because of its usage in the plot. A “denpa” character also refers to characters like Ruriko who share similar erratic and bizarre behaviour that gives them a mysterious appeal.
(For those of you reading this article on release, Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi by Nitro+ (creator of heartwarming stories like Saya no Uta) has a heroine who is described with the phrase, though this might not be kept intact in the upcoming localization due to the term not penetrating the culture in English regions)
Something else that Shizuku just happened to coin is the usage of the phrase “True END” for the canonical ending of the game. In this case, Ruriko’s route is the designated True END and is the only one which ties up several loose ends from the other routes especially regarding the antagonist. If you had to only play one route from the game then I definitely suggest this one.
There’s just one more particular thing from this game that has outlived the game itself and strangely enough – it isn’t related to its medium or any of the game’s contemporaries at all. It does however, relate to a particular obscure franchise that you just might have run into – Gundam.
If you’re a big fan of Zeta Gundam or Japanese memes, you may have run into Youtube Poop-like videos where Zeta’s main character Kamille’s dialogue is edited to intercut “SEX!” or rant about the subject. Shizuku happens to be where it all began – at least in the Renewal version.
You see, while there were no voices in the original PC-98 version of the game, in an example of brilliant voice casting, Nobuo Tobita does the voice of Shizuku’s main antagonist (under a pseudonym since participating in adult works is still somewhat frowned upon in polite society).
And it is glorious. The man just goes ham with his portrayal of said character and every line of his is a joy to listen to. If I had to give just one reason for why someone should pick the Renewal version over the others, this would be it. Objectively I would consider the character to be fairly poorly written and his motives questionable, but my objections are washed away as the voice of Evil Kamille goes on about his plans to start a country-wide orgy using his Newtype powers.
To finish off, let’s briefly discuss the multiple releases of the game – I would roughly divide this into two categories – the original PC-98 release and the later “Renewal” edition. There are several reasons why I would consider the Renewal version to be the superior version, of which the voice acting has already been brought up. As for the other factors for comparison.
1) The Art
Now the PC-98 has a reputation for having games with gorgeous artwork but I wouldn’t say this is the case here – how ironic, given the “Visual” Novel” marketing push. It’s more akin to something like Higurashi where the original artwork is honestly kinda derpy and amateurish at times but could be considered “charming” when taken in the context of it being a company’s first attempt at being professional. The Renewal version just looks so much more polished without completely torpedoing the artstyle like what would happen in modern VN remakes nowadays (cough YU-NO) – I believe there’s also a couple more scenes in the game that received CGs which weren’t there in the original.
PC-98 (Left) VS Renewal (Right)
One interesting artistic decision change between the two though is that the PC-98 uses digitized photos for its backgrounds, a common technique for saving money on a budget, while the Renewal goes for a more standard drawn art approach. On one hand, the digitized approach does lend itself to a more disturbing, unnerving atmosphere during some parts of the game but it does seem rather jarring when the characters show up and they’re drawn in the usual anime artstyle of the time.
2) The Music
This is one of the parts where I will actually give credit to the original PC-98 version of the game, but I admit I’m very biased towards its soundfont and chiptunes sound in it. I will give the Renewal some credit that some of the songs work better with modern instrumentation, like this piece on the piano.
3) QoL / Interface
I’ve hinted at this throughout the article already but good lord is the original interface god awful. The Renewal’s version “Skip Text Seen” option has its flaws as it tracks progress based on routes rather than on the actual text displayed and the speed could be faster, but this is still a significant improvement over the original not having it at all.
In addition, the PC-98 version of Shizuku has a whooping 3 save slots in total, and the game tells you to restart from the beginning while reusing the same save slot because each playthrough would unlock more options in the future, which makes clearing content a tedious ordeal. The save slots are named “bookmarks” and I think the idea is supposed to simulate only being to bookmark one section as if you were actually reading a novel, I suppose, but it’s just ends up being an annoyance.
The Renewal version brings things to modern standards with significantly more save slots, enough to allow you to create convenient jumping points to try to minimize the rereading you have to do.
So unless you want to do the original just for historical sake, the Renewal version is the preferred way of experiencing the game.
(There is a CD Windows version in between the PC-98 original and the Renewal remake that I would consider the worst of both worlds, as it loses the PC98 chiptunes but retains the interface/QOL of the original.)
What is the legacy of Shizuku? It seems to be a game that Leaf Aquaplus likely intends to put behind them, as it can no longer be found on the official website, destined to be nothing but a historical footnote.
Still, reality is strange – To Heart, the game that cemented Leaf’s future mainstream path and one of the reasons behind the medium’s jump into high school romance stories (sci-fi and fantasy settings were originally more popular), now lives on through its First Person Dungeon Crawler Spinoff “Dungeon Travelers” which has since shed most of its original To Heart connections (another franchise that seems to have ended up as a historical footnote). White Album received a modern remake that made the interesting decision of retaining the technological standards of its time rather than update it to modern day, turning what was then a contemporary story into a period piece of relationships growing distant from the pressures of a high-profile career before the invention of cellphones and it was a resounding enough success to receive a well-regarded sequel. Utawarerumono is now a long-running series with a mobage when the story seemed complete back in 2002.
So who knows what the future will hold?
EXTRA BONUS OMAKE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1tacOUnbZY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7sOFTgBXMg
Characters from Shizuku, along with many other Leaf characters of the time that would probably be unfamiliar to anyone other than Boomers from the Bubblegum Crisis series today, starred in a fan-made fighting game Queen of Hearts (a parody, of course, on SNK’s King of Fighters) – the group would eventually move on to create a certain obscure fighting game you may have heard of – Melty Blood.
Going from Leaf to TYPE-Moon as the subject of their games? How fitting.
(Ruriko’s Super Gauge is named Denpa!)
(Boy I sure abused the “obscure series” joke a ton in this writeup)
