Community Visual Novel Book Club - Kara no Shojo

[Exzyleph]

Welcome to the sixth MetaCouncil visual novel book club!

For the sixth MetaCouncil visual novel book club we will be reading Kara no Shojo, a highly regarded murder-mystery/detective story released by Innocent Grey in 2008 and published in English by MangaGamer in 2011. The novel is approximately 220k words in English and is expected to take around 30 hours to complete according to HLTB.

Bookclub participants can obtain this visual novel through MangaGamer (NSFW) and Steam. Reader discretion is advised, as there is no all-ages version of Kara no Shojo and the game contains both explicit sexual content and graphic depictions of violence and death. Because of that, I ask that you take care to keep the thread safe for work.

This is an informal book club, so there is no fixed schedule; you simply read the novel at your own pace, and share your thoughts along the way or when you are done reading. Just remember to use spoiler tags liberally. For general information and past and future book clubs, please see the main MetaCouncil Book Club thread; a preliminary schedule has been added for the remainder of 2020, and I greatly welcome any suggestions on how to improve it.​

The Story

​

March, 1956.
Tokyo: A metropolis finally starting to recover after Japan's defeat in the War.
Private eye Tokisaka Reiji accepts a strange request from a girl in Inokashira Park.

"I want you to look for something. Me. My true self."

Meanwhile, a series of bizarre murders are plaguing the area. Young women are disappearing, only to turn up dead and maimed with their wombs torn out. Seeking assistance on the case, Detective Uozumi Kyoko called up his old friend and former co-worker, Reiji.

Ouba Girls Academy: A school on the outskirts of Hoya City.
Reiji's little sister attends this school, where two young women have mysteriously vanished. Saeki Tokio, the vice principal, calls in Reiji to investigate their disappearance, giving him his third case.

Reiji infiltrates the academy as a substitute teacher to learn information from the students--but that's when he meets her once again.

Kuchiki Toko--his first client, the girl who asked him to search for her true self. Her manner is distinctly boyish as she remarks:

"Heya - so we meet again, Mr. Detective."

The body count continues to rise.
What should be a simple search for some lost students is starting to grow out of control.
For some reason, the number of missing people and unidentified bodies don't match up.

Who will be chosen as the next victim?

As this endless cycle of tragedy continues, what mysteries lie behind these new cases?
---Behind a similar series of murders from six years ago?

[Taken from the Steam store page]​

Walkthrough

Kara no Shojo is generally considered a difficult game to read due to a large number of choices and investigation segments where you can easily miss important clues, leading to a number of bad endings, normal endings, and one true ending. For this reason it is commonly advised to use a walkthrough after your first playthrough.

A context-free walkthrough can be found on FuwaNovel.​

 

[Ascheroth]

Looking forward to reading this!
And I hope the other games in the series will come to Steam as well in the future. shakes fist at Valve

 

[Ascheroth]

Alrighty, I've played a bit under an hour, which was the Prologue and the first Song, if I got hings correctly.
I'm already intrigued and wild theories are emerging, lol.

Spoiler

The imagery in the beginning with the egg implies that these murders are filled by some crazy desire to collect body parts to create a new body.
Toko's request for him to "find her real self" may imply that she is behind the murders and she wants him to stop her.
The 2 corpses are unidentified so far, but since that academy vice-director wants him to investigate 2 disappearances the chances are high that those are the same people.
I'm looking forward to our detective infiltrating an all-girls school undercover.

 

[Kvik]

I hope y'all prepared for some heavy twists later on. And, for some fun in the coroner's office.

 

[Ascheroth]

Played up to Song 3

Spoiler

Jesus I didn't think the murders were going to be this brutal and fucked up. Damn.
Many new fun and new interesting characters got introduced. The Takashiro family seems to be quit peculiar, lol - Shugo's introduction was a riot.
And the first day at the girls academy was intriguing as well.
I have no theories though.

 

[Ascheroth]

Up to Song 4 now!

For something general, I really like the character designs and voice acting in this. They're right up my alley.
The interactive segments are also really cool.

Spoiler

Alright, so Reiji has another fucked up murder on his hands.
The only connections so far are: the victims are young women, dismemberments and other mutilations of the body, they're found clad in a black cloth, the uterus was removed and instead a broken black egg was inserted (well except for the 1 corpse whose torso is missing).
Reiji connected the state of (at least the most recent 2) corpses to sections in Dante's Divine Comedy. And then there's the black egg stuff which seems to be tied to a rumor going around in the academy - the Black Madonna.

Speaking about the academy, that one sure is weird or rather... stifling. Have no individuality, talk to no-one, just silently do your duties like a mindless zombie. No surprise that some girls aren't quite happy with that.

The game keeps introducing new characters, so I still have absolutely no idea who the culprit could be. Though Shugo mentioned how this case resembles the case were Reiji's fiancee was murdered a few years ago.
I also kind of assume that eventually one of the known characters is going to die :/

 

[Exzyleph]

I ended up being busier than I expected this month, and so I didn't have as much time to read Kara no Shojo as I'd like. That should be over with and I've read up to (and including) song 3. Speaking in non-spoilery terms, it has been a really positive experience so (minus the out-of-place imouto tits, but that's eroges for you), with a nice, distinct art-style, good voice-acting, and pleasant sound-track, as well an interesting crime-scene investigations and use of clues. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the game features an auto-log of clues. Reading this I am also thinking back to another really good visual novel that features a similar murderer, but sadly it would be a not insignificant spoiler to name it.

Spoiler

Much like Ascheroth I immediately connected the girl in the dream-like sequence with Toko, but there are also obvious parallels between that sequence and what the culprit appears to be doing, namely looking for body-parts appropriate for whatever their goal is. And while it is not impossible that Toko is the murderer, the comments that Reiji made about how difficulty it would be to twist the head of the third(?) victim made it seem unlikely that Toko could be the culprit.

But Toko is an odd individual regardless; her request to have Reiji find her true self, the fact that the game makes a point of her speaking in a masculine manner, and the fact that she is seemingly suffering from sort of amnesia regarding her child-hood all point to something going on with her. The cliché answer would be split/multiple personality, or something akin to that effect, which with some creative liberties could still allow her to be the murderer. This could also explain her frail health, if the other personality did not take care of her body, including the fact that she had seemingly lost weight when Reiji saw her in the infirmary. Perhaps something like split/multiple personality is also what the other Toko's statement, that the two of them "exist as one mind, and one body" points to? Though I don't think that this story features supernatural elements.

Regardless of their identity, the murderer seems to be an odd individual in many ways. The religious symbolism could come from them being connected to Ouba Girls Academy or it could be a red herring. However, I found it noteworthy that the murderer described the victim's womb as "impure"; one victim previously had sex, which could be the impurity in question and it is possibly that the murderer was targeting "promiscuous" women. In that case, the "black egg" could be used a symbol for virginity by the murderer and the broken egg representing its loss (their "impurity" as the murderer puts it).

Additional clues makes me suspect that the Ouba Girls Academy victims had relations with (part-time?) teachers, or that it at least happened previously: The strict rules about not talking to male teachers outside of class, the other teacher's (Kusaka's) comment that a lot of stuff happens, and his comment that the male teachers are being watched as if by hawks. We've already been told that the school is very keen on maintaining its reputation, which could explain drastic measures like that.

It is also noteworthy that the murderer is in procession of and familiar with the use of morphine. Toko is once again an obvious candidate, considering the fact that her home is a clinic, but her uncle (and possibly her mother), and even the school nurse would be obvious options as well, if we consider known characters. However, if we take Reiji's comment about the head-twisting for granted, then that would mostly point at Toko's uncle.

Around the time that we learn about Toko's (missing) past, we also learn that her uncle (Kuchiki Fuiya) is left handed. This fact that is surely going to pop up again, though it is too early to speculate in what context.

However, the note found in the third victims mouth was seemingly also written by a girl and I see 3 possible directions that could go: Firstly, it could be written by the murderer themselves (Toko?), it could have been written by the victim, or it could have been written by a third party. If it was a third party, then the murderer could perhaps be a part of Ouba Girls Academy, having stolen the note from a classmate. An obvious twist here would be if the note was written by Toko, but actually stolen by her uncle. We'll see once (if?) they do a hand-writing analysis.

And that's my straw-grasping session for today. Join me soon for more wild leaps of logic and flights of fancy!

 

[Ascheroth]

Completed Song 4

Spoiler

Where things are starting to come together. So it looks like all the victims had teen pregnancies and abortions, which tie into that whole black egg thing.
Two of them also had parents who have dirt on them, dirt that matches the sins brought up into Dante's Divine Comedy.
All the girls also had their abortions in the same hospital, of which Toko's grandfather is the director. The other male teacher, Kusaka, takes medicine from there. Since this got an entry in the notebook I'm sure it will be important (I love the notebook btw).

Also, a wild shot in the dark, but what if Toko is pregnant? That "exist as one mind and one body" line, her being frail and in the infirmary and the nurse not wanting to talk about her condition and her being related to that hospital run by her grandfather whose big theme in the story so far is "abortions" made me think of that.

The addition of that hospital also adds a bunch of characters as suspects. That doctor guy there or maybe even Kusaka who has a connection via his medicine.

Next up is the art gallery day, I'm looking forward to meeting Stella via the main story.

---

Got a Game Over, whoops. That sure escalated

 

[Exzyleph]

Finished reading songs 4 and 5 and likewise got a game over

Spoiler

We quickly learn that every victim so far had been sexually active and that they all had abortions performed. Thus, it seems likely the the black egg is used not to refer the the victims virginity by the murderer, but rather their unborn children. This also explains why the womb in particular is considered "impure" by the killer and why they were replaced with the broken black eggs.

There is some spurious logic about rape from Reiji (that it couldn't have been rape because there was supposedly not violence involved), but the game later confirms that he was right in this estimation, and that the victims apparently prostituted themselves as an act of rebellion. We learn the name of this group of girls, "Schisma", and that Orihime was the leader and the original "Black Madonna". It us unclear whether or not the killer had a connection to this group and is intentionally acting out the rumor about the black egg, or if this is merely coincidental. Considering the killers fondness for symbolism and the fact that they possibly wore a black cloak when depositing a corpse, it seems likely that they were at least aware of this rumor, even if that was not their original motivation.

The use of morphine by the killer is brought up, and the game kind of declares it a non-hint: Everyone could obtain morphine on the black market. The author of the hand-written not was, however, not identified. If Yui is still alive, which is suggested by her seemingly intentional disappearance, then she is a one candidate for somebody who could have written that note.

It also seems that Nene is unaware of Toko's health status, or is covering it up, and she makes it sound like Toko is merely using the infirmary to nap as opposed to resting out of medical necessity. If so, then what caused the apparent weight-loss that Reiji observed previous (see previous comments)? It could be that she is pregnant, as Ascheroth speculates, but it seems a bit too vague for me to latch onto that explanation just yet, partly because Orihime gives the impression that she sees herself as the obvious next victim, which at least makes it seem unlikely that Toko was part of Schisma.

The titular painting by whats-his-name is introduced and we learn that the woman depicted on there looks remarkably like Toko. Reiji considers that a relative could have modeled for the artist, but also concludes that it could not have been Toko's mother.

Then stuff happens and Reiji dies. Whoops.

One line stood out to me at the end of this run: Just before Reiji is killed by the murderer, he states that it was "you all along". The obvious take-away is that the murderer is somebody known to Reiji, which is expected from detective fiction that isn't terrible, but the "all along" suggests to me that Reiji is acknowledging that he has known this person for longer than the current case has been ongoing. If we assume that to be the case, then one person stands out to me as a potential candidate, namely police detective Uozumi Kyozo.

There are a few things that made me consider this possibility:

• Uozumi has a connection with Reiji going all the way back to the first murders, when Reiji's fiancé was killed, making him a potential suspect for that murder.
  
• Uozumi is a very bulky man, making is seem plausible that he would have the physical strength needed to break the neck of the 3rd victim, chop off the limbs of victims in one swing, and easily knock Reiji out along with a lot of his teeth.
  
• He is in position to know about the "sins" of the parents of Koizumi Kei and Takigawa Yumi, both of which would be likely to involve police reports.
  
• (questionable) He seem to have found the hospital that performed the abortions surprisingly quickly, as fast as Reiji who was literally told where it was. However, I do not remember what the game said about this, so that may merely have been a matter of phoning each hospital.
  

However, we do not know enough of Uozumi private life to give a plausible motive. He does not seem like the religious type and has not (IIRC) lost a child, which could otherwise have been used an a justification for anger against those that had abortions. But the sheer physical prowess of the killer does make it clear that it can't have been Toko, even if we make allowances for split personality or any other such tomfoolery, and likely eliminates the other students at Ouba Girls Academy, doubly so when we consider that they were driving a car themselves, something that wouldn't have been possible to do inconspicuously as a school girl.

All of these clues have, however, led me to conclude that Tojiko is best girl.

Having reached one end, and being somebody who hates trial and error in VNs, I'll be using the walkthrough going forward and I will therefore read Orihime's route.

 

[Exzyleph]

I finished reading a handful of routes following the walkthrough (Orihime, Mizuhara Toko, Tojiko, and Nene) and thought I'd try to gather my thoughts before getting to any more reveals:

Spoiler

Orihime's route ended up just being the same bad-end that I had already gotten, but with an H-scene tacked on. During that scene, Orihime states that she is taking birthcontrol; considering that the pill only was only legalized in 1999, that seems like a bit of an anachronism that somebody would have access to effective birthcontrol in 1956 (it is at some point stated that she was likely never pregnant, unlike the other members of Schisma).

Mizuhara Toko's route was a lot more interesting, not because of mainly because it got me a lot further in the plot, and not so much because of Mizuhara. One thing that I will be assuming going forward is that we may be dealing with an unreliable narrator when it comes to the murders, and that some (all?) of those scenes do not reflect what actually happened, but rather what the killer wants us to believe happened. I'll get to why later.

During this this route we learn additional information about the murders that claimed the life of Reiji's fiancé (Yukiko), that the murderer in that case was targeting women considering abortions, and that they were likely perpetrated by a fake doctor Rokushiki Makoto). We also learn that vice-principal Saeki lost one of his daughters (who is the other daughter?) in these murders, a daugther who was at the time enrolled at Ouba Girls Academy, connecting him to this case as well.

We learn that Yui was the author of the scraps of paper that had been found, and that the arms that were discovered early on in fact belonged to her, putting to rest any questions about whether or not she was dead. Eventually she is identified as Kusaka's brother, raising questions as to why Kusaka is not worried about her whereabouts, and pointing to his involvement in the case. Eventually the notebook belonging to Yui is found at his house and (somehow?) the police identifies a residence of his in which his corpse, the corpse of Yui, and the remnants of several other victims are found, painting him as the culprit of the previous murders. This is also reinforced by a scene with seemingly narrated by Kusaka as he finishes his work.

I did briefly consider Kusaka as a possible culprit while reading this, but my guess at his motivation was that he was jealous over not being able to touch the girls, despite them sleeping with other men, based on his anger over being so restricted in his interactions with the girls at the school. However, in hindsight that anger may instead have been because he wanted to get closer to Yui, and was unable to do so due to interference from other teachers.

So why don't I actually think that Kusaka was the murderer? For one thing, the way in which Reiji finds evidence at his residence seems way too convenient. Firstly, Reiji arrives and finds the door unlocked (described by him as "a stroke of luck"), and secondly the notebook belonging to Yui lying where it can easily be found. This, to me, gives a strong impression of somebody else wanting this evidence to be found. Why was the door unlocked and why was the notebook not found with the corpses, considering that the killer placed pages from that book on the victims? The fact that Kusaka was found dead, seemingly from "heart failure due to an overdose of antidepressants and sleeping pills", seems way too convenient as well.

This suspicion seems all but confirmed when the next scene featuring a (the?) murderer included the comment about "the axe I used before" (which turns out to be an adze, the bastard offspring of an ax and a hoe), and when said murderer targets Mizuhara Toko they also make use of sleeping pills, suggesting to me that the actual murderer disposed of Kusaka similarly to how they disposed of nurse Nene.

We also learn that Nene was working with the murderer (or at least somebody who thought that Reiji was getting in their way), possibly being the person who picked up Tojiko based on her appearance (dressed in black, but not all black) when she picks up Reiji in her car. As for who she was working with, my current best guess is vice-principal Saeki, for a number of reasons:

• As noted above, Saeki was connected to the original killings, six years ago, making him potentially involved from the start.
• He lost a daughter who had become pregnant while still a student, potentially explaining both the strict rules about male interaction with the students, and potentially explaining the obsession with their chastity/pregnancies/abortions.
• He is in a position to know about Kusaka familial relationship with Yui, either through Kusaka being diligent and telling Saeki himself, or through Saito by way of Nene and the female doctor at Kuchiki hospital.
• He is of course also in a position to work together with Nene.
• Reiji speculates and it seems to be confirmed by Mizuhara that the girls know the killer; otherwise why would Mizuhara willingly enter the killer's home? There are few other candidates that I can think of.
• Saeki is somehow connected to the artist Mamiya Shinzo, and was involved in a feud that that left him "ostracized" from the art world. Shinzo was an artist whose work related to "shells", which means that the human-meat eggs may be meant as a mockery of Shinzo; the murderer does comment that the black eggs is where "it all went wrong".
• His relation to the art world could also explains the use of paper clay in the second set of murders and the obsession with symbolism in the first set of murders.
• More so than Uozumi, he is the perfect person to make Reiji exclaim "Ahh. So it was you all along", considering that he was the one who summoned Reiji, as happens during Orihime's bad end.

Uozumi is still suspicious in my eyes, though less so than Saeki. In particular, we are told that Shogu's wife amputated leg had received "expert treatment", which made me think of somebody who had treated amputees before, such as a war veteran. However, now that we know that Nene is involved, it may simply have been her work.

Of course, Shinzo may also end up being the murderer, but that would be a disappointing reveal considering that he has not played a visible role in the story. If so, then the flashback in which the killer(?) describes their mother's makeup like a "shell" may be some hint at the origin of the artists obsession with shells.


Finally, we learn a lot about Toko, both before and after she is hospitalized by Truck-kun. She is not only adopted, but is also described as the product of incest by her adopted grandfather. However, as Nene describes her as being born through parthenogenesis, which would look very different from incest at a genetic level. For Nene to detect this, she would need a sample from Toko's mother and technology that to my knowledge did not exist at the time. However, said grandfather also calls her his "grandchild", suggesting that they may actually be related. Toko is also taking medicine for anemia, supposedly iron and vitamins, but that seems unlikely all things considered. We also learn that she has Bombay blood (428!) and that everyone in the hospital seems to be involved in some conspiracy around Toko.

Some old man also shows up and seems to recognize Toko, despite Toko not knowing him. The obvious conclusion is that Toko's mother was the model for the painting Kara no Shojo, and that is why it looks so similar to Toko, making that man Shinzo and signifying that he is aware of Toko's special heritage.


In the end Mizuhara Toko has a mental break-down and seemingly gets taken out by Truck-kun at the end. However, I am choosing to interpret everything that happens after she cuts her own neck as the hallucinations caused by her brain shutting down from lack of oxygen. She does mention that Reiji's attempt at stopping the bleeding would have that effect.


Best girl didn't even get a proper route. It seemed obvious from the moment it got stuck on her finger that the ring that Reiji got her would be used identify her corpse, and sadly I was right. RIP

Reiji's statement that "The image of a girl looking like a daruma comes to mind" seems sure to be prophetic.

The soundtrack for KnS was recently put on Steam as part of the current Soundtrack Sale:

And if you still haven't gotten around to purchasing KnS itself, then it is currently 30% off:

As a side-note, I think it is a shame that the Innocent Grey have (apparently) been unwilling to produce 17+ editions of their VNs; if Kara no Shojo is any indication, then very little would be lost by cutting out the H-scenes, and it would have made their titles (or at last KnS) approachable to a wider audience.

 

[Exzyleph]

So I finished reading what the walk-through describes as the "normal" ends:

Spoiler

These routes were quite a ride, especially since I was too focused on other characters to realize that Katsuragi Shin could be the culprit. The main take-away is probably that I've been terrible at figuring out any of the mysteries in this visual novel.

While I found these ends to be very interesting, it did get to the point where I stopped taking notes and just read due to the sheer amount of info-dumping and due to how ludicrous it got. On one hand I liked how the individual mysteries started out (Toko's background, the murders by Kusaka, the murders by Shin, the original murders), and yet by the end most of it just felt like an overly complicated mess.

While the game seems to hint at Kusaka having been murdered himself (dead from the sleeping pills that Saito was ever eager to prescribe), the end to his arc fell flat for me. So much so in fact, that I found it more plausible that the game was setting him up as innocent, as my previous post attests. Yet if these routes are to be believed, then his end was just that anticlimactic.

I found Shin's ends to be much more satisfying, but in neither cases did it feel like the game did a good job of hinting at either of their being the murderer, or hinting at the true nature of Kara no Shojo, though it is of course very possible that I missed obvious clues. There were certainly clues tying some of the relevant characters together, such as Kusaka being the brother to Yui, and Mizuhara Toko's mother having materials that she could only have received from Shin, but motives felt lacking until the game just info-dumped it all at the end. Speaking of Mizuhara Toko's mother, why did she create those eggs filled with human meat? Shin supposedly had no idea that Mizuhara was doing this, so why would she bother? It simply strains credulity as a method of disposing of a corpse, so why? That does not seem to be addressed.

Toko's background also felt extremely overwrought, and I have no idea why the authors felt the need to make her a clone of her mother. It kinda felt like they wanted to make her father all the more villainous by having him engage in incest, but didn't want the icky to rub off on Toko. It also made me wonder if somebody on the writing team had a fetish for incest, and makes it feel almost surprising that Yukari seemingly doesn't have a route. Similarly, the kidnapping at the end felt shoehorned in there to get her out of the hospital and into the hands of Shin.

Perhaps some of these issues will be addressed in the final routes. We'll see. But despite my complaints I have still greatly enjoyed reading the story, and look forward to seeing how the last couple of routes conclude.

 

[Exzyleph]

I finished reading the last couple of routes, including the true ending.

Spoiler

Those last two endings did not add a whole lot. I had hoped for a happier ending for Toko, but I did like her painting in the true end.

To put it in non-spoilery terms, I think that the authors let the story get out of hand. There were definitely a lot of clues that went over my head, as is obvious if you read my past comments, but the story ended up being a lot more convoluted than was necessary for the core mysteries. As a result, the endings felt somewhat messy and detracted from what was otherwise a great read. And I did enjoy reading Kara no Shojo; the art, music, characters and writing in general was all excellent, despite the misgivings I had about the overarching plot.


Incidentally, somebody has released a fan-patch based on the Japanese HD edition of KnS, that adds voice-acting for the protagonist. I literally just noticed this, after I had already finished reading the KnS, but perhaps somebody else can benefit from it:

Kara no Shojo - Voice Patch

Ports Reiji's voice from Japanese HD VOICE FULL SIZE EDITION (r68307) to English Voiced Edition (r29843). Works with Steam release. More info in readme.txt.

vndb.org

There is also a patch that adds the prologue from the HD edition, but it is not yet translated:

Kara no Shojo - HD Content Patch

Restores missing prologue from Japanese HD VOICE FULL SIZE EDITION (r68307) assets for English Voiced Edition (r29843). Also adds some new CGs. More info in readme.

vndb.org

As a reminder, the visual novel for next month will be Eliza.
A thread will be going up on the first of March as per usual and I hope that you will join me there.

 

[Ascheroth]

That voice patch will indeed come in handy! Thx for sharing.

I kinda fell into a Tokusatsu shaped hole (and a second Chinese RPG shaped hole, and a third webnovel shaped hole), so my progress has slowed down tremenduously for now.

 

[Exzyleph]

That voice patch will indeed come in handy! Thx for sharing.

I kinda fell into a Tokusatsu shaped hole (and a second Chinese RPG shaped hole, and a third webnovel shaped hole), so my progress has slowed down tremenduously for now.

Don't worry about it.
I also procrastinated a fair bit while reading KnS, and unfortunately that included starting on several other VNs that I was interested in.
It's a good thing that next month is a short title or I'd end up buried under in-progress VNs.

But I hope that you'll still share your thoughts when you get back to KnS, as I'm looking forward to seeing your take on the mysteries

 

[Ascheroth]

But I hope that you'll still share your thoughts when you get back to KnS, as I'm looking forward to seeing your take on the mysteries

Don't worry, will do

 

[Ascheroth]

Alright, I played until the Intermission (and got a few more bad ends along the way )

Spoiler

So it turns out Kusaka was the culprit. Like I've written a bit above he was a suspect of mine because of the victimes having ties to the Kuchiki hospital and the note about him taking prescriptions from there.
There isn't really much to say right now. The game continues to be pretty graphic (flashback about Reiji's wife and Nishizono Yui's stitched together corpse.) Kusaka's motive seems to simply have been insanity after his sister died.

But now there seems to be another murderer on the loose. I wonder if he just coincidentally started murdering now, or if there have been other murders going on that have not been discovered yet. Well for now I'm not really sure how it will continue but it's clear that things are not over yet.

 

[Exzyleph]

The 7th VN Book Club thread is now up and this month we will be reading Eliza by Zachtronics.

Thank you to everyone who joined in reading Kara no Shojo!
This thread will of course remain open, and I hope that you will still share your thoughts if you are not yet done reading Kara no Shojo or if you find this thread at a later date.

 

[Ascheroth]

I've got an ending now, but I gotta rant a bit first:
So I've mostly played this without walkthrough only consulting it when I got stuck and started just following it during the last few in-game days.
Now, I did all the steps the walkthrough marked as required to get a regular ending, but I'm unable to actually get on the "Normal Ending" path, and just get an end that is an ending but doesn't count as one (no credits or gallery unlock).
And I have no idea where I went wrong, so I guess I'll have to either google a bit or completely start over following the walkthrough to the letter, yay.

Ngl, this is dropping my opinion on this game by a lot :/

This alone wouldn't be so bad, but I installed the voiced lines for the MC and it looks like this causes all previously read voiced lines to not count as read anymore, so I can't even use the fast forward for most of the text until I've "cought up" to where I started using the mod. Gah.

 

[Exzyleph]

I've got an ending now, but I gotta rant a bit first:
So I've mostly played this without walkthrough only consulting it when I got stuck and started just following it during the last few in-game days.
Now, I did all the steps the walkthrough marked as required to get a regular ending, but I'm unable to actually get on the "Normal Ending" path, and just get an end that is an ending but doesn't count as one (no credits or gallery unlock).
And I have no idea where I went wrong, so I guess I'll have to either google a bit or completely start over following the walkthrough to the letter, yay.

Ngl, this is dropping my opinion on this game by a lot :/

This alone wouldn't be so bad, but I installed the voiced lines for the MC and it looks like this causes all previously read voiced lines to not count as read anymore, so I can't even use the fast forward for most of the text until I've "cought up" to where I started using the mod. Gah.

Yeah, the requirements for getting the real/true endings seem to be fairly strict.
You probably just missed visiting a location somewhere, but figuring out where is going to be a pain.

Stuff like this is why I go straight to the walkthrough as soon as I hit a false-end that doesn't involve an, in hind-sight, obviously wrong choice. It's not great having to consult a walkthrough, but it does a lot less damage to my enjoyment of a VN than having to trial-and-error my way through routes. I'd much rather have a few, clear options than this excess of mostly unclear choices. It's not like you need a lot of choices in order to have a compelling mystery.


And I'm sorry about the trouble with the voice patch.
I didn't notice it had reset read lines, since I just tried it out briefly after having already finished the game, and probably didn't pay attention to the text. My bad.

 

[Ascheroth]

I powered through the early sections with the power of Steam Input (just put left click on my Steam Controller and activited turbo mode for it, so basically "constantly click while the button is pressed"). Worked pretty well.

And I noticed fairly early that it looked like there were a few choices I'd made that were different from the walkthrough, and while I think not all of them were important, there was one that was pretty big and I think might have been what pulled me to this different route. Or it was all of them, or some of them.
No idea ¯\(ツ)/¯

Ended reading all of the "Normal Endings"

Spoiler

This was a brutal, messy wild ride. Messy in more than one way, because as it went on things just got more and more convoluted to the point where I stopped thinking and just continued to read.
I did make the connection that Kazuragi Shin could have been the murdered after Reiji found his photo in Mizuhara Toko's room and when eye witnesses said that it looked like Tokijo went with her murderer willingly - which implies it's someone she knows (or idolizes) and Shin would fit that as well.
I felt everything went off-the-rails after Toko's accident and it just continued to add piles of suffering onto Reiji while making everything convoluted.
So Katsuragi Shin, real name Mamiya Shinji, was the murderer who dismembered girls to replicate the painting "Kara no Shoujo" his father made. Except it wasn't a painting, because Mamiya Shinji turned his assistent Nakahara Misa, who replaced Shinji's mother Miyuki after he killed her because she raped and abused him, into a limbless Kara no Shoujo.
Also Shinji wasn't actually born by Miyuki, but instead by Mizuhara Toko's mother, who was Mamiya Shinzo's niece? By taking an egg out of Miyuki, fertilizing it with Shinzo's sperm and implanting it into Mizuhara to give birth.
Incidentally Mizuhara was also the accomplice Shinji had who disposed of the body parts (she threw her own daughters limbs onto the street wtf).
And Nakahara Misa is Toko's mother, which is why Shinji kidnapped her to turn her into his "mother".
BUT! Thing's can't be this simply right, of course they can't. Because Nakahara Misa's real name is actually Rokushiki Misa, sister of serial murder Rokushiki Makoto, who's also Toko's father because incest. Except it wasn't really incest because he had a condition where he couldn't fertilize an egg or something. (He seems to have many conditions, in the end where Reiji shoots him he gets away because he has a condition where his organs are flipped, so Reiji missed his heart lol).
So Toko is actually some miracle child born of incest-but-not-really. (I did chuckle when I learned of the Bombay blood type, Shibuya 428 is greeting)
But yeah, suddenly Rokushiki Makoto is also back in the picture, and he was actually the husband/lover/boyfriend (don't remember) of Stella's twin sister.
And he's now the psychatrist working in the Kuchiki clinic, who incidentally councilled both of our murderers, which I did find to be pretty clever.
But none of this is really that important because most endings end with Toko dead and only the first one (the one I also got in my non-walkthrough attempt) she's saved, but still got all her limbs amputated because that's what the doctors needed to do in order to save her from the accident.

Not sure what the true end is going to change, because to me it looks like all endings are a variation of a bad end. Which is also why most of the answers to the mysteries leave me feeling pretty empty because well, ultimately everything bad that could happen happened and they are just solved after the fact. Oh well, let's see what's left.

Yeah, the requirements for getting the real/true endings seem to be fairly strict.
You probably just missed visiting a location somewhere, but figuring out where is going to be a pain.

Stuff like this is why I go straight to the walkthrough as soon as I hit a false-end that doesn't involve an, in hind-sight, obviously wrong choice. It's not great having to consult a walkthrough, but it does a lot less damage to my enjoyment of a VN than having to trial-and-error my way through routes. I'd much rather have a few, clear options than this excess of mostly unclear choices. It's not like you need a lot of choices in order to have a compelling mystery.


And I'm sorry about the trouble with the voice patch.
I didn't notice it had reset read lines, since I just tried it out briefly after having already finished the game, and probably didn't pay attention to the text. My bad.

Oh not your fault, how could you have known. And like I said, I did find a comfortable workaround pretty quickly, so no harm done.

I usually use walkthroughs pretty quickly as well, but I guess the murder mystery nature of it made me want to give it a shot first and avoid accidentally spoiling myself with the walkthroughs.
But yeah, ultimately that was more trouble than it was worth. This game is annoyingly pretty much impossible to finish without a walkthrough.

 

[Ascheroth]

And got the True Ending now.
Tbh I'm disappointed that barely anything changed from the normal endings. I didn't really feel worth fast-forwarding through almost the entire game once again just for those little extra bits...

 

[Ascheroth]

Here are some closing thoughts now that I've digested everything:

Spoiler

Ironically the first ending I got on my own, the one where I complained that it didn't seem to count as an ending, turned out to be the one I like the most in retrospect.
It was on a path where Shugo's wife was rescued and Toko got "rescued" as well. Well, she still lost all her limbs from the accident, but she's alive and both Katsuragi Shin/Shinji and Shinzo are dead. (It seems to be the same as Ending 1 of the guide I was using, except I got auto-locked into it and didn't have a choice).

The other endings are where things spiral into a convoluted mess and Toko is either dead or missing and Shinji still on the run.
The way to get those ending (and the true ending) feels also pretty bizarre, as you have to choose NOT to search for Toko but instead leave that to the police and go investigate her past. Like, Reiji, wtf are you doing. It feels out of character for him to not jump into the search headfirst to find save Toko. And yes, the one ending where he does search for her is the one where she's still alive, but it's not the true one.
I dunno, it just feels odd.

In general, I think I liked the first half of the game, the first case, much more than the second half. It was also where things seemed to have a decent balance between serious gory muders and slice-of-life whereas the second half just continues to pile on the suffering without any breaks.

 

[Exzyleph]

Here are some closing thoughts now that I've digested everything:

Spoiler

Ironically the first ending I got on my own, the one where I complained that it didn't seem to count as an ending, turned out to be the one I like the most in retrospect.
It was on a path where Shugo's wife was rescued and Toko got "rescued" as well. Well, she still lost all her limbs from the accident, but she's alive and both Katsuragi Shin/Shinji and Shinzo are dead. (It seems to be the same as Ending 1 of the guide I was using, except I got auto-locked into it and didn't have a choice).

The other endings are where things spiral into a convoluted mess and Toko is either dead or missing and Shinji still on the run.
The way to get those ending (and the true ending) feels also pretty bizarre, as you have to choose NOT to search for Toko but instead leave that to the police and go investigate her past. Like, Reiji, wtf are you doing. It feels out of character for him to not jump into the search headfirst to find save Toko. And yes, the one ending where he does search for her is the one where she's still alive, but it's not the true one.
I dunno, it just feels odd.

In general, I think I liked the first half of the game, the first case, much more than the second half. It was also where things seemed to have a decent balance between serious gory muders and slice-of-life whereas the second half just continues to pile on the suffering without any breaks.

Spoiler

Your comment that you stopped thinking and just continued to read was pretty much exactly how I reacted as well. Up to that point I had been keeping fairly detailed notes, but the normal endings (mainly the one where Reiji confrots Mamiya Shinzo) just got so info-dumpy that I gave up on taking notes and just read in disbelief.

Your summary also quite accurately captures how bonkers it all got and why I ended up feeling that the mystery got out of hand for the writers. The entire thing would have been much more satisfying if they had left out about half of those plot-points, if not more. Despite Kara no Shojou ending up having such a central role in the second half of that game, it did not feel like the writers developed that mystery quite enough before the reveal.

I think I also agree that the end where Toko survives is the most satisfying, even if deeply tragic. It was certainly more satisfying than Reiji buggering off to solve the mystery while Toko was still missing, which to me felt completely out of character for Reiji. Though as I mentioned before, I did like the reveal of Toko's painting at the true end. But on the other hand, that was something that could easily have been incorporated into the story elsewhere.

Did you ever catch why Mizuhara was making those human meat eggs in the first place? It was utterly ridiculous as a means of disposing of corpses (just think of the logistics involved), so it needs another motive, but I did not find any explanation even after searching through the game script.

 

[Ascheroth]

Spoiler

Your comment that you stopped thinking and just continued to read was pretty much exactly how I reacted as well. Up to that point I had been keeping fairly detailed notes, but the normal endings (mainly the one where Reiji confrots Mamiya Shinzo) just got so info-dumpy that I gave up on taking notes and just read in disbelief.

Your summary also quite accurately captures how bonkers it all got and why I ended up feeling that the mystery got out of hand for the writers. The entire thing would have been much more satisfying if they had left out about half of those plot-points, if not more. Despite Kara no Shojou ending up having such a central role in the second half of that game, it did not feel like the writers developed that mystery quite enough before the reveal.

I think I also agree that the end where Toko survives is the most satisfying, even if deeply tragic. It was certainly more satisfying than Reiji buggering off to solve the mystery while Toko was still missing, which to me felt completely out of character for Reiji. Though as I mentioned before, I did like the reveal of Toko's painting at the true end. But on the other hand, that was something that could easily have been incorporated into the story elsewhere.

Did you ever catch why Mizuhara was making those human meat eggs in the first place? It was utterly ridiculous as a means of disposing of corpses (just think of the logistics involved), so it needs another motive, but I did not find any explanation even after searching through the game script.

Spoiler

Yeah, I don't remember anything in particular either regarding the egg situation. Reiji talked about her "paranoia", but that wasn't explained further.
I feel like the game was just trying to cleverly set up a person who could do this and foreshadow it properly, but then was so happy with the smart setup that it forgot to give her a proper reason why she would do something so messed up.
"Hey, look at this woman doing this messed up thing, we hinted at it many times, aren't we clever!"
"...But why would she do this?"
"Let's take a look at these other 5 clever mysteries, shall we? Exciting! Now move along."