Community Visual Novel Book Club - The Silver Case

[Exzyleph]

Welcome to the 12th MetaCouncil visual novel book club!

For this book club we will be reading SUDA51's debut title, The Silver Case, a murder mystery about a string of serial murders in Tokyo's 24 Wards and a mysterious killer from 20 years ago who is suspected to be behind them. Bookclub participants can obtain The Silver Case on Steam and on GOG. The novel is medium length according to VNDB and a completionist play-through is estimated to take 16 hours on HLBT.

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 about past and future book clubs, please see the main MetaCouncil Book Club thread. The main thread also includes a preliminary schedule for the rest of 2020, and suggestions are very welcome both for 2020 and beyond.​

The Story

1999 – Tokyo’s 24 Wards.

The city has been plagued by a string of serial murders.
The detectives of the 24 Wards Heinous Crimes Unit have their sights set on one particular suspect: Kamui Uehara, legendary serial killer and perpetrator of a number of assassinations of government officials 20 years prior in the now-famous "Silver Case". However, nobody knows who - or what - Kamui really is.

Is this really the second coming of Kamui? Who is this infamous serial killer, and what is his endgame?

[Taken from Steam]​

Walkthrough

A spoiler-free walkthrough can be found here.​

Speeding up The Silver Case
The Silver Case contains a number of slow (and unskipable) transitions.
Credit goes to Ascheroth for describing how to speed those up using Cheat Engine:

In Cheat Engine go to Edit -> Settings -> Hotkeys. In the list there are entries for Speedhack speed 1 - 5 as well as +/-. You can set a multiplicator for each of them, but personally I usually only use 2 or 3 - one to go back to normal (1.00), one a bit faster (2.00) and one very fast (4.00). Change their hotkeys if you want. (For Silver Case I just use 1 and 4). It comes down to personal preference and a bit of experimenting though.

In the "General Settings" section there is an entry "Automatically attach to processes named". Enter "TheSilverCase.exe" here, so you don't have to attach it manually every time you start the game.

And that's it! When you start the game with Cheat Engine open and press the specified hotkeys the game will speed up if possible.
And when playing with a controller you can use Steam Input to map the defined Hotkeys to unused buttons.

Next Month

The currently scheduled visual novel for September is Coffee Talk (VNDB), a visual novel about coffee-brewing and listening to other people's problems, set in a modern world of elves and succubi, werewolves and vampires.
​

 

[FeedMeAStrayCat]

I just recently made a "top 100 games I should play next" list and The Silver Case is indeed on it. Sooooooooo this seems like a good time to start it! I'm in!

 

[Kvik]

I'll be joining in again this month. Sadly I didn't finish with The Devil in G-String for whatever reason. Hopefully, I will fare a little better this time.

 

[Mutant Strawberry]

I just managed to finish CUPID in time (strongly recommended and free, just beware the warnings) and i actually already own this so I'll give it a shot!

 

[Exzyleph]

I'll be joining in again this month. Sadly I didn't finish with The Devil in G-String for whatever reason. Hopefully, I will fare a little better this time.

That's just how it is sometimes.

But I hope that you'll be able to finish off The Devil some day.
I had criticisms, but it was still a really enjoyable read with a bang of a finalé.

 

[Kvik]

Read through case #0 last night, and it was quite the experience. lol. The presentation was unique enough, but I don't know whether it's just the localisation style, or everyone speaking in such hard-boiled style is the intention. Puzzle-solving is also quite obnoxious since I can't use the keyboard to quickly type the answer.

Still, the hook is interesting enough that I'm keen to see where this will lead up to.

 

[Exzyleph]

So I finished the first chapter (Lunatics) as well, and that was quite something. Overall I am really enjoying the presentation of this game, with the way it mixes traditional VN elements with animations and visual gibberish, for lack of a better term (it is kinda funny to see programming language keywords on screen). However, the control scheme is something thought up by the titular lunatics and the Ceasar Cipher puzzles got old in 3 seconds flat.

LUNATICS

There is a lot to unpack here. The 25 Wards is described as containing 100,000 people who've been picked or selected (I forgot the exact term), which raises the question as how people are selected to live there. Is it exactly 100,000 people or just around 100k? And if it is such an exact number, then what is the significance of that and how is it maintained?

Initially I just thought that the 'Heinous Crime Unit' was a "regular" special task force, but by the end of the chapter it becomes apparent that both it and 'Republic' are essentially paramilitary units tasked with eliminating criminals. Moreover, it seems that calling crime a "virus" is not merely a metaphor here, as the crime seems to take some sort of physical form and become capable of possessing humans. The gun-man in particular seems like a victim in this, injecting "PLEASEDONTKILLME" and "IREALLYDONTWANTTODIE" in between his nonsense. In fact, early he directly says that "THATWOMANKILLEDTHEM", foreshadowing her subsequent actions. He also says that "JUSTWANTEDTOPROTECTMIKA" and "FORGIVEME", though I am not sure who Mika is.

However, it is not clear if that is a general thing or something that applies only to specific criminals, as Kotobuki describes this entity as "the demon brought on by their criminal power". Kumoi, the criminal connected to the titular "Silver Case", is described by this entity as a "holy hunter" and the "demon" states that they will have their "revenge" when he returns, whatever that means.

A minor thing I noticed is how the tutorial seems to quite explicitly break the fourth wall. I was left to wonder if this was merely gameplay-bullshit or if there is some deeper significance to this. After everything else that happened in this chapter, I am even more interested in the answer to that question.

 

[Kvik]

Read through case #1.

Case #1

Things are happening rather quickly. We as the protagonist and the sole survivor of Republic mission gone wrong suddenly got embedded with Heinous Crime detectives and got thrown back into the field almost immediately on the trail of Kamui. During what I thought would be a "routine investigation", we found Kamui in an office stowed inside a closet and strapped with a straitjacket. Huh. Ok then.

However, it seems like this case is a "murder by proxy" thing since Kamui himself is mentally disabled. And, the actual perpetrator managed to escape custody from the police precinct. So much for being the "Heinous Crime Unit" if they can't secure heinous criminals, lmao.

We also found some kids in the shelter, who turned out to be Kamui's kids. The mothers are actually the three victims of the murders committed. I have many questions.

Btw. when is a suitable time to read the Placebo reports? After all cases, or interspersing?

 

[Kvik]

Read through case #2.

Case #2

For this case, we've been tasked to investigate a murder-suicide in an apartment complex named Typhoon. But somehow, we got acquainted with a latchkey kid named Koichi, who's living in the same building. We learned that his friend and neighbour named Hikaru went missing in mysterious circumstances.

Meanwhile, Kusabi and Sumio are on a stakeout job which was previously discussed in Case #1. I'm a little unclear who are they observing/following, though. Sumio has fallen for Ayame, the perpetrator in Case #1, Kusabi had gambled away his monthly paycheck, only to be down 100K in the hole after borrowing money from Naka. lol.

We continue to investigate Hikaru's disappearance. Koichi takes us to his secret base, which he built with Hikaru. He then elaborates some dossiers he compiled of possible local kids which may have kidnapped Hikaru. We learned a bit about his school life, friends and group/clique dynamics. One thing I find curious is that we can see spectres/apparitions? I forgot to mention this during Case #1, but somehow we can see Hikaru's ghost, which tells me that he might be already passed away at that point.

None of the suspects from Koichi's dossiers is capable of killing if there's a foul play involved in Hikaru's disappearance. I wonder how the suicide victim, Hiruma is related to Hikaru? After speaking with all their neighbour, we found that Hikaru has passed away, caused by a cardiac arrest. There was nothing conclusive in their statement, and we still don't have conclusive evidence involving foul play.

Koichi revealed that at some point, they are running away from Hiruma, but we didn't learn the reason why. Little by little, his memory came back and we learned the truth about what happened. Seems like while running away from Hiruma, Hikaru had a cardiac arrest and died. Hiruma went back to his apartment and committed suicide. The lower floor neighbour corroborates this since they heard Hiruma walking up the stairs back into his apartment that night. Koichi watched what went down, and repressed his memory, probably out of fear.

Now, this is the bit that I'm unclear. At the end of the case, Chizuru implied that Koichi could possibly be the one who threw Hiruma down the balcony, in order to get revenge for Hikaru. But, Morikawa countered that argument by saying that Koichi is the one who wants to be killed instead, out of guilt because he saw his friend died and he could do nothing to prevent it. Everything is vague at this point, we still didn't know how an elementary school kid can manage to throw an adult male out of a balcony. We never saw that autopsy report either.

The case ends with a flashback of Hikaru and Koichi in their happier time, eating lunch together at a restaurant with big smiles on their faces.

 

[Ascheroth]

Oh yeah, one recommendation I have: alternate between the Transmitter and Placebo cases, Placebo always gives a bit more insight into whatever happenend in Transmitter and gets more and more important. The initial Placebo cases aren't too interesting, which is also why alternating is preferrable to reading all of one and then all of the other.

And use CheatEngine's speedhack functionality if the scene transitions are starting to bother you

 

[Kvik]

Thanks for the tip, Asch.

I was about to read case #3, but I'll take a detour and read report #1 instead.

 

[Exzyleph]

Finished reading case 1, so here are my thoughts/questions/ramblings.

Spoiler

Kamui is probably the centerpiece of this chapter. We seemingly start by seeing him exterminate Republic, yet at the end of the chapter he is near catatonic and without strength. It is also curious that Republic, who seems more like executioners than police, would be tasked with capturing Kamui alive. And if justice is metered out by groups like Republic, how was he captured alive originally?

The answers lie perhaps in the cryptic statements that we've heard so far, as said by Natsume "Kamui isn't here. Kamui is next door. Kamui is just peeking in". Furthermore, Morikawa later describes the apprehended Kamui as "Kamui's shell", thought I am not sure I got that right. Is the killer Kamui something akin to the "entities" we have seen at every crime-scene, something that operates independently of Kamui the patient? The game does give a strong hint that both Kamui and his children have some sort of paranormal abilities, in that the children are seemingly able to identify that Ayame is pregnant with their sibling, and in that Kamui reacts when Ayame is apprehended/tries to kill herself. Moreover, how did Kamui go from seemingly being a fully functioning individual who was able to form relationships with multiple women, to the point where they carried his children, to the point where he seems completely unresponsive? There is also the question as to why INFECTED(?) civilians and killers keep mentioning Kamui, including the guy you find at the shopping center. And what the heck was that "harpoon gun" all about?

But perhaps I am making a mistake in thinking that the "crimes" are actual entities. After all, we are a lot of this from Big Dick's perspective, and we do not know his background. In fact, we are told that his background has been erased. Could Big Dick be someone similar to Kamui, another product of that program that produced Kamui? That could explain why Big Dick has "wiped out his emotions". It could perhaps also explain why Kamui did not attack him, as he did the rest of Republic. And it could perhaps explain the entities we see (the "crimes") as some sort of psychic echoes of the criminal deeds, that are picked up by Big Dick.

It is also unclear why Ayame would go to such lengths to frame Kamui, killing 3 people in the process. Was it actually of her own free will? I don't think she is responsible for the death of Republic members, but I could be wrong.

A minor funny detail was that Kamui's advert included the phrase "Kill The Past". Did Kamui play Enter the Gungeon? More seriously, it seems to directly reference what was going on at that point, with Kamui's former relations being killed one by one. The phrase "flower, sun, rain" also pops up early in the chapter, with the answer being "inside" Kamui. "Flower, Sun, and Rain" is apparently a later is a game by the same company, but it's significance here is unknown.

All in all, I am left with a lot more questions than answers at this point. Looking at Kvik's comment, it seems that we are pretty much in the same boat.

 

[Kvik]

OK, read through Report #1 (Yume).

Yume

This report detailed the experience of freelance reporter Tokio Morishima, and how he came in contact with Kamui Case. Apparently, he was the survivor of Decoyman case. He is the man found in a state of trance on the second floor of Babylon shopping centre. I didn't remember how he looks like until the introduction since he lives in Typhoon apartments on level 5.

Tokio was tasked by a person named Inohana to write a report on Kamui Uehara. I don't think we know anything about this person up until this point. Tokio interacted with Kusabi, but like all detectives, he kept his card close to the chest, and instead Tokio gets most of his leads from a colleague named Erika. Interestingly, we didn't glean anything useful from his experience in Decoyman, since he himself didn't remember what happened to him. There's a bit where he wrote some stream of random thoughts which tells me he had a traumatic experience during those lost hours in Babylon shopping centre.

At the end of the report, we observed Tokio and Erika in a chatroom. Erika mentioned that Ayame's past has been erased, or fabricated. Interesting. Just who is Ayame, then, and why is she capable of killing to a gruesome degree? Erika proposed Tokio for them to work together when suddenly, their chatroom was suddenly hacked and the hacker issued a warning to Tokio not to pursue the case any deeper and left him with a very ominous message. This hacker identified themselves as "The Bat". I think we know this moniker before, as they also sent an email to our protagonist at some point.

I'll continue with Report #2 before continuing with Case #3.

 

[Kvik]

Report #2 (Hana).

This report is mostly an introspection piece.

Hana

This report detailed Tokio's involvement with the "Spectrum" case. He also gained a new hobby in woodcarving, something that the bartender in his favourite haunt, —Jack Hammer— has suggested during "Yume". Unfortunately, Tokio seems distracted from his primary objective, that is reporting the progress of Kamui case to Inohana, despite Inohana's repeated emails to remind Tokio of his obligations. Nothing seems to go well for him since he didn't get any useful info from Kusabi, and his attempts to speak with Koichi were rebuked.

Tokio spent most of his nights woodcarving a paper-knife, and he deemed himself as quite good at it. He also frequents Jack Hammer, and told the bartender that he also carving a wood figurine of his pet turtle, Red. He seemed rather proud of Red and was offended when the bartender didn't seem to share the same opinion of his pet. He promptly leaves the bar when the bartender didn't find Red quite as lovely as he thinks it is, which I find quite hilarious.

Tokio had a moment of introspection after our protagonist visited him during the investigation, in which he was downright hostile to us. We saw what our protagonist look like from Tokio's point of view, which I feel looks quite sinister. Tokio doesn't quite understand why the sight of our protagonist has offended him so. At the same time, he seems obsessed with finding more about our protagonist and his relationship with Koichi. Finally, after enlisting the help of Erika, we learned that they have some sort of history? Tokio talks about how "three years goes by really fast", which may imply a past relationship. Maybe they were lovers in the past? Nothing conclusive, though.

Erika was able to gain Koichi's trust and was able to have conversations with him. As her investigation progresses, Tokio becomes increasingly worried that Erika has gotten too involved and wants her to stop the investigation. I feel Tokio is somewhat lacking empathy, or too detached from the nature of his job? Perhaps his experience at Bablyon has changed him, somehow.

Tokio further muses in his memo that he felt the thoughts of Ayame as part of his traumatic experience and our protagonist acts as a catalyst. Consequently, his subsequent encounter reminded him of this painful experience, somehow. Finally, at the end of the report, Erika dropped a letter from Koichi in Tokio's mailbox. Inside the letter is a confession of sorts, and a confirmation of what transpired between him and Hiruma during that fateful night.

 

[Exzyleph]

Finished the first "Placebo" chapter and I have thoughts ..

Yume

This chapter mostly summarizes what we just experienced, so I'll just focus on the relevant new information unveiled by Tokio Morishima. Unlike Kvik's concise summary of Yume, this is probably going to be all over the place.

The main person of interest in this chapter is in my opinion Enzawa, a person who is seemingly part of some sort of Kamui fandom. Not only does he have a lot of information about Kamui, but seemingly also about Ayame, and even about what she did. Where did he get that information? One possibility is that Ayame was also part of that "fandom" and shared that information with him, but doesn't strike me as particularly likely. I am more inclined to think that Enzawa is The Bat, the person who contacted both the player character and Tokio Morishima.

I initially thought that The Bat was just Tetsugoro Kusabi (aka. the person calling you Big Dick), because the first email from them call the player character "Chinchilla", but that no longer seems very likely. The Bat seems to be somebody with special knowledge, and judging by their speech patterns in this chapter, they seem akin to the possessed or the "ghosts" we saw in chapter zero and chapter 1.

I didn't immediately realize that Morishima was the person rescued in chapter 1, but we get a first-hand account of him seemingly being possessed by something. The power of crimes, Ayame, or Kamui? He sees Kamui despite knowing that Kamui was not there, making him the most obvious candidate. Howevever, the fact that Enzawa suggests that Ayame is similar to Kamui, along with the possibility that she may also be a bunker kid (due to her past being erased, like Kamui and Big Dick), makes her a possible candidate for who possessed Morishima. It is even possible that it was Morishima carried out the actual killings, while possessed.

However, I also came to think about Kamui's capture in a different light: What if, instead of him being incapacitated, the purpose or result of locking him in the closet was to amplify his powers due to the similarity to the bunkers? Perhaps Ayame did capture Kamui, only to be overpowered by his psychic powers and used by him to carry out the murders?

 

[Kvik]

Interesting theory, Exzyleph . (Yume) I don't think "The Bat" is Enzawa, although you do make an interesting proposition there. This is just my own conjecture, but the fact that The Bat knows about the nickname "Chincilla" tells me that it could be an HCU detective. Not a lot of people knows about this nickname since most of the people "in-the-know" knows our character by their later moniker "Big Dick". It's quite possibly Sumio, Kusabi's own partner. Maybe Chizuru is possible too. Additionally, I don't think any written record of our protagonist's aliases is available either.

 

[Exzyleph]

Interesting theory, Exzyleph . (Yume) I don't think "The Bat" is Enzawa, although you do make an interesting proposition there. This is just my own conjecture, but the fact that The Bat knows about the nickname "Chincilla" tells me that it could be an HCU detective. Not a lot of people knows about this nickname since most of the people "in-the-know" knows our character by their later moniker "Big Dick". It's quite possibly Sumio, Kusabi's own partner. Maybe Chizuru is possible too. Additionally, I don't think any written record of our protagonist's aliases is available either.

That's a really good point. I had initially thought that it might be Tetsu, due to the use of the nickname in the first email, but then settled on it being an outside party due to the second email. However, it could certainly also be somebody else in the HCU. That could also explain why Enzawa knew so much about what was going on, both with regards to Kamui and with regards to Ayame; he had a contact on the inside. However, at the moment none of the agents stand out to me as an obvious candidate.

If we go by the trend of everyone wanting to sire Kamui's children, then Hachisuka would fit the bill, but her nearly getting killed by Ayame kinda suggests otherwise, though not conclusively so. However, I do not recall if she was present while it was used, so I trust your list not including her ruling it out.

 

[Kvik]

Case #3 (Parade)

Wow. This is the most intriguing case so far. My theory regarding the identity of The Bat still stands. Inconclusive, still. But I have my suspicion.

Parade

OK, this case is almost entirely shown in monochrome, apart from a small cutscene at the end. We follow Kusabi and Sumio on their stakeout, they are basically the security details for the Chairman of Yukimura Conglomerate. Sumio told a fairytale to his colleagues, just to pass the time. I didn't realise it until later, but this story is crucial. This fairy tale describes a princess and three heroes. More on this later. Little good the surveillance does though since Yukimura's mansion was blown sky high moments after we took a lap around the compound.

There is no loss of life from the explosion, but the Chairman is kidnapped. HCU has been tasked to clean up the mess, lest they take the fall for negligence. After some investigation, they've discovered the bomber's hideout. However, he appears to have committed suicide. We're not sure what happened here. Sometime later, we finally have ransom note from the kidnapper, hidden in JPEG image compression. 600 billion yen in diamonds. Essentially the entire worth of Yukimura Conglomerate.

Our protagonist is tasked to handle the ransom exchange. The exchange was brief, but there's something not quite right here. We climb up to a smokestack to perform the exchange. When the briefcase changed hands, the kidnapper removed his mask, to reveal that his mouth has been sewn shut. It makes sense now why he was using a vocoder to relay the instruction to our protagonist. Almost immediately after "Kill The Past" is mentioned, they jumped down the shaft of the smokestacks, and an explosion occurred, resulting in the suicide of the second kidnapper.

The police discovered Yukimura, extremely disoriented but alive. At this point, we don't know what is the true motive of the kidnappers. As Kusabi said, they are not after the money. Days later, Yukimura called a board meeting of the conglomerate. Something obviously happened during his captivity, since Yukimura announced that they'll need to liquidate their assets. but the surprise didn't stop there. He pulled out a remote detonator, and blew up the entire office building, taking the entire board members with him.

We can theorise a bit about how the chairman was infected with this "crime" somehow, resulting in his suicide and the downfall of his company. Perhaps the kidnapper came in contact with Kamui, or perhaps the kidnapper has a strong power of suggestion? Regardless, Kusabi seems unsatisfied with the result, and he teamed up with our protagonist to dig deeper into Yukimura's past.

We came across a vault containing Yukimura company archives. A number of redacted documents in this vault yielded some very interesting findings. Apparently, there's a village called Mikumo, where Yukimura established a factory (Mikumo 77) via collusion with a government official. It was suspected that the factory's waste has produced deadly effects on the environment surrounding the village. Trace of narcotics and hallucinogens was found by an independent study. This was swept under the rug to keep the factory operational, and resulting in mass protests in the village.

Another document detailed the murder of a 7-year old girl, and another report describes the involvement of three young boys in the incident, and they suffered heavy wounds in the process. After reading these reports, something clicked in me. A girl, and three boys. Now, where have I heard this story before? Almost all the names are redacted. But why the girl's name is not? Riru Yukimura. Is she part of Yukimura's family?

Not until I read the last report things are finally making sense. In this report, the name of the three boys involved in the incidents isn't entirely redacted. Two of the boys' names ended with the letter "i" -- One of the kidnapper's name also ended with an "i". Coincidence? Almost too convenient to be one.

Finally, the "leader" of the boys' -- his name is revealed. The first name starts with an "S". The last name ends with an "i". There is someone we know at HCU with this exact name. Seems like Kusabi also agrees that the truth has began to unravel since he mentioned the fairy tale story again.

Near the end of the case, Kusabi and Sumio are both on-board a helicopter, overlooking Mikumo village. Sumio reminiscence for a bit, when suddenly an explosion erupts in Mikumo village, along with a small cutscene depicting a girl sitting in a chair when she vanished into thin air at the same time the explosion happens. In the final shot, it seems that Kusabi is taking Sumio into custody.

Whew. There are still a few loose ends here. But, I'm almost certain that The Bat is Sumio since they seem to have first-hand knowledge of this case. Let's hope report #3 didn't disappoint.

 

[Ascheroth]

Yep, case #3 is really good!

 

[Exzyleph]

In case anyone else missed this, I noticed that you can significantly speed up movement by holding down space or enter, while the movement menu is up. I think it may have been mentioned at one point, but I only realized how it worked now. In general, I have to say that the control scheme in this game is bloody awful. They also seem to have given up on a big chunk of it, with only movement and communication being used.

CASE 2 - SPECTRUM

Honestly, I am not sure I get this case and that's after went to watch a let's play of the end-of-chapter dialog. Haruma killed Hikaru in a fit of range and then Koichi tried to get himself killed as atonement for failing to protect Hikaru. Somehow this resulted in Haruma accidentally falling to his death? Not sure what to make of it. Did I miss some dialog?

We get another email from The Bat, in which he describes himself as the main character's neighbor. This reminded me of what the main character is told in the first chapter, that "Kamui isn't here. Kamui is right next door. Kamui is just peeking in". Alternatively, and less fantastically, it could be a hint that The Bat is somebody from the other team at HCU (2?). The fact that Morikawa keeps skipping work makes me wonder if he is the mole in HCU.

There is also the question why the main character keeps seeing "ghosts". And apparently he is not the only one, with another person claiming to have seen Hikaru's ghost, though it is still not clear how much we see is real and how much is imagined. If we are to believe those visions, and the neighbor, then perhaps Haruma's death was less an accident and more the actions of his ghost. But I don't know what to make of it, to be honest.

Kvik's post is a nice summary, including a lot of events that I glossed over, but I am still just as confused as before after reading it.

 

[Kvik]

Exzyleph , yeah there was a lot of unknowns in Spectrum. The conclusion is mostly speculation at best. If only we know about the damn autopsy report...

Hana provided some closure, but as you might've guessed, it won't provide all the answers.

 

[Exzyleph]

Finished up Hana (Report 2) and Parade (case 3). As I didn't have a lot to say for Hana, I'll just comebine it into one post.

Hana and Parade

First off, a really important point that I forgot to mention last time: Fuck that quiz!

Hana doesn't add a whole lot, but we do learn that Morishima lived in the Typhoon apartment complex. Interestingly, there are some strange discrepancies between what we see as Big Dick and what we see as Morishima.

In particular, it seems while Morishima lives on the 5th floor, and while Big Dick does "interview" him, the two experiences do not mesh. More specifically, the man we see as Big Dick while knocking on the 5th floor door is a young guy with light brown hair, the same guy we saw in Babylon. By contrast, Morishima seems to have much darker hair, and looks much older. They don't look like the same character at all! Additionally, while the blonde guy supplies several bits of information to Big Dick, Morishima instead quickly and rudely turns him away, and even comments on how Big Dick doesn't respond. Is what we see as Big Dick actually what happens?

In addition, the layout of the building does not seem to be the same. In Spectrum, the 5th floor includes an overlook over the inner courtyard, right next to the stairs, from where the suicide was committed. That overlook does not seem to exist in Morishima's building.


Moving on to Parade, the plot seems much simpler, though motives are unclear.

Yukimura Zaibatsu acquired a plot of land on which a member of the family had previously been killed by the HCU. They build a factory, despite local protests during which both a member of the Yukimura family and a villager(?) is killed. Eventually, it is discovered that the factory has dangerous runoff that was covered up. At some point a skeleton is discovered, though I didn't catch how that fit into the rest.

For whatever reason, the current chairman seems to orchestrate a plot to bankrupt the company by forcing it to pay an extraordinary ransom. Him helping explains how the bomb could be planted and how he disappeared. In addition, he seems to have smuggled the diamond from the crematorium and seems to be in possession of it when he disposes of the other company heads. However, that still leaves the actions of the two people seemingly helping him. The bomber who seemingly only got introduced so that he could commit suicide and the contact person at the crematorium. The latter additionally seem to mirror a sentence that was part of Kamui's media production in the first case ("KILL THE PAST") and which is later echoed by Sumio.

Sumio connection to the chairman, whom he is shown to have met, and to the village is also unclear to me. And what the fuck was that explosion/person disappearing act at the end?


Looking at Kvik's analysis, I didn't immediately think of the fairy tale while writing this, but it makes a lot of sense, in particular with the partial names of the people mentioned in the documents identifying Sumio. I am, however, not convinced that the chairman was possessed. He still comes off as involved in executing this plot to me.

 

[Kvik]

Hang on a sec.

Spectrum/Hana

Exzyleph, I think you somehow mixed up Morishima with the biker guy who lives on the third floor. This is the guy who worries over Koichi/Hikaru, and his neighbour knows him as a good kid. If I remember correctly, we weren't able to go up to the 5th floor during the first round of interviews. Only on the second round of interviews, we were able to go up to the 5th floor. I think this is after Koichi starts remembering things.

 

[Exzyleph]

Hang on a sec.

Spectrum/Hana

Exzyleph, I think you somehow mixed up Morishima with the biker guy who lives on the third floor. This is the guy who worries over Koichi/Hikaru, and his neighbour knows him as a good kid. If I remember correctly, we weren't able to go up to the 5th floor during the first round of interviews. Only on the second round of interviews, we were able to go up to the 5th floor. I think this is after Koichi starts remembering things.

I had to scrounge up some Let's Plays, but this should make it clear what I mean:

SPECTRUM and HANA

Note that Morishima is identified as such (briefly) in the first two videos.
And compare what Big Dick hears when he talks with Morishima in the 2nd video with what Morishima actually says in the 3rd video.

Morishima rescued at Babylon (Big Dick POV):


Morishima at Typhoon, 5th floor apartment (Big Dick's POV):


Morishima in his apartment, meeting Big Dick (Morishima's POV):

 

[Kvik]

Ah, I see. I stand corrected, then. Morikawa seems to be a lot harsher to us in his point of view during Hana. I wonder what caused this discrepancy.

 

[Kvik]

Report #3: Tsuki.

Probably the most comprehensive report so far. Tokio demonstrates some competency in investigative journalism, finally. Although I have a feeling that Erika is actually a much better reporter than he is.

Tsuki

During this report, Tokio is tortured by the sound of construction work. With the help of his hacker friend slash ("/"), Tokio was able to initiate contact with The Bat. Their reply contains some sort of guessing game in the form of a poem. The Bat promises to tell "a fairytale" if Tokio manages to solve the riddle contained in the poem.

Stumped, Tokio wasn't able to get ahead in solving the riddle, not until the bartender of Jack Hammer gave him a clue: the words in the riddle originates from Mother Goose nursery rhymes. Enlisting Erika's help once again, they both discovered all the answers to the riddle. As promised, The Bat tells Tokio a fairytale. The kind that we all already aware of. A princess, and three boys.

Erika once again has proven herself as a great reported. She put two and two together, nursery rhymes and the fairy tale. Mikumo village is mentioned, and just as the first part of the report ends, that's when "Parade" starts. After a lead from Erika, Tokio was able to interview a survivor from the village, and we learned the names of the kids from the internal Yukimura reports: Fuyuki, and Hiseki (The old man survivor misremember the name as Kiseki), and of course, Sumio. We also learned that the kids were tortured. One has their eyes gouged, one has his mouth sewn shut, and one has his eardrums punctured. (See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil).

We can confirm that two of the Yukimura kidnappers are the same kids from Mikumo ("Mikumo Boys"), but what about the third kid? Hiseki confessed to Tokio that he isn't The Bat, and merely uses the name as a convenience. Near the end of the case, Tokio was finally able to meet face-to-face with the third member of Mikumo Boys, Sumio. In his final memo in this report, Tokio summarises his interview with Sumio, strictly off the record. It confirms most of what we already know from Parade, and what actually transpired when Riru Yukimura was killed.

I'm continuing to case #4 soon, but that was a bit of harrowing reading, to say the least.

 

[Exzyleph]

Finished up Tsuki as well.
Kvik already covered the main plot-beats, so I'll just focus on some minor points.

TSUKI

I noticed that Erika apparently thought that both Fuyuki and Hiseki had their eyes and mouths sewn shut, something that we know both first-hand and second-hand wasn't the case, but that is probably just misinformation passing through the grape-vine.

One thing that remained unclear after this, was how Sumio was able to convince the Chairman to commit murder/suicide. We know that Sumio also met the Chairman prior to the kidnapping, but it is not clear what their relationship was at that time. A simple explanation would be that the Chairman felt guilt over what happened in Mikumo 77, but that answer does not seem satisfying to me. Had Kamui been directly involved, I might have suspected some sort of mental influence, but that does not seem to be the case here. However, there was seemingly some connections with Kamui, namely the "KILL THE PAST" motif.

We also learn that the sequence we saw at the end of PARADE was the town of Mikumo 77 being destroyed in an explosion. That, however, does not explain the disappearing girl shown in that sequence, though based on what we have learned so far I'll take a guess that it was perhaps representative of the soul of Riru Yukimura being set free/laid to rest. I believe that Morishima directly commented on something to that effect.

A final, trivial thing thing that amused me was that the name of these chapters, Placebo, turned out to be brand of cigarettes that Morishima smokes. A fitting name, considering the sheer amount that Morishima burns through.

 

[Kvik]

Case #4: Kamuidrome

I believe the title is a portmanteau of Kamui and the word syndrome.

Kamuidrome

This case is a bit of a weird one. It is centred on internet activity and internet crime, and we didn't do much investigation at all. Not even a puzzle. First, we saw Tokio has sent our protagonist an email. He's giving us a lead about a certain club where a number of "national assets" has been reported missing.

Our point of view then changes to that of Tomonori Furuya (internet handle "oldman"), where he spent his nights on the internet, talking rubbish on a random BBS and mindlessly browsing away. He then comes across a site "KamuiNet". In this site, he learned about Kamui's profile and the many crimes Kamui has committed in the past. Furuya seems to be enamoured by it.

Back in our protagonist's apartment, The Bat makes another appearance via email. He seems to dislike Tokio, and thinking of killing him because he pisses them off. Later that day, at HCU office, Naka pawned off a missing person case to us. A high school girl is missing in mysterious circumstances after visiting "Dark Angel", a black site network site, and what I can gather, an offline meet which seems suspicious.

We pay Ronny Rocket, the nightclub mentioned by Tokio in his email a visit. The club manager seems to disavow any knowledge of the site mentioned in the flyer Naka gave us, but one of his patrons provide us with another lead: the address to Dark Angel, the black site where the missing girl once visited. After a brief meeting in HCU office with Naka, he set us up with a firewall for our home PC. The following day we seem to have received a message from the black site, advising us that the inspection is in progress. Seems like Naka has signed us up for the black site. Although what kind of inspection it was is anyone's guess. Most of the times we examine our PC, there will be a note about this inspection.

Our perspective changes again. We follow Kusabi and Sumio as they are having a conversation about Mikumo and the nature of crime. As we progress through this case, there were a few conversations like this between them, although we don't know the exact place where these conversations occurred. Shifting perspectives once again, we follow Furuya as he spent his night chatting in the KamuiNet site.

This is where things got interesting. Furuya starts antagonising the chatroom and taunting one of the members to kill him in real life if they can. Another poster with internet handle "Neutral" warns Furuya that these people can actually do it for real. The scene ends just before they reveal Furuya's physical address.

Later in HCU offices, we found out that Naka is secretly an idol otaku (lmao). He spent 300K yen from HCU's budget on two passwords to pay-per-view of Sayaka Baian's --an idol-- candid footage, secretly recorded. The footage ended abruptly when Sayaka just about to change her clothes, to the displeasure of the HCU boss, Kotobuki. There's a bit of funny dialogue here. We found out later that Sayaka committed suicide because of the release of this footage has caused such a shock to her.

A little later, we follow an email exchange between Furuya and Neutral. I'm not quite sure what to make of this. Furuya probably has completely lost it at this point. Neutral wasn't making any sense either. However, it seems that they've found out Furuya's physical address, somehow. Meanwhile, the messages on our protagonist's PC is getting more cryptic by the day.

Later that night, the doorbell on Furuya's door rang. Furuya realises this might be a do or die situation. Grabbing a baseball bat as a weapon, he opened the front door. We finally meet Neutral in person, a girl named Nakama. At first, I thought she was the missing girl from Naka's case, but as we will observe later on, she is not. There's a certain unexplained connection between Furuya and Nakama. After a brief conversation, they ended up embracing and in bed together. Nakama tells Furuya that he will "transcends Kamui", whatever that means.

Furuya and Nakama adopted a new look for both of them, something that I can only describe as Halloween getup, for lack of better words. Lol. After some sort of joint-manifesto, they released a new site called "Method Tank", promising a release date of 9/9/1999. "Kill the past" is again being mentioned. On the promised day in our protagonist's apartment, we received a message to head to the Kinjo building in order to "take care of the tardy girl", along with some garbled URL.

When our protagonist arrived at the Kinjo building, they discovered the missing girl from Naka's case there. She seems familiar with Naka, and his idol predilection. She talked about going to a world in a different dimension. Not quite sure if she's referring to it in a metaphysical way, or otherwise. After saying goodbye, she seems to have disappeared.

Back in the HCU office, Method Tank started their countdown. When it reached zero, a city-wide blackout happened. Shortly after, we saw Kusabi and Munakata (who we haven't seen in any of the cases so far, I don't think?) having a meeting in the batting range. He warned Kusabi that something is about to happen. The case ends with Kusabi in the car, where he seems to have an imaginary conversation with Sumio.

As always, a lot of unknowns in this case. Let's see if the report will enlighten us.

 

[Kvik]

Report #4: Ai

Ai

We didn't glean anything extra in regards to Method Tank storyline, but this report has some juicy info regarding The Bat. As we already know, Tokio has contracted a hacker (well, the in-world term here is networker) to trace and identify The Bat. The email account they were using is simply some abandoned account which lots of people has been using (and they never changed the password for some reason?).

The following day Slash informed Tokio that they have a lead on The Bat. They also attached an underground document about the Mayoral Election for the 24 Wards. This feels familiar for some reason, but I don't know what its significance is. The following day, Tokio gets another death threat email from The Bat. He started getting paranoid and sent a warning email to Erika to stop all The Bat investigations on her end. He also does the same for Slash and gave them his mobile number.

The following day, Tokio received another email from The Bat. In it, is an ominous message. They reckon that they've dealt with Slash, and they're coming after Tokio next. They kept it really vague while sharing some somewhat personal, but still nondescript detail. Panic began to set in Tokio's mind. His attempt to find out whether Slash has been murdered didn't prove fruitful since HCU is stonewalling him.

Next, he shoots Inohana an email, trying to find however little info he can find about The Bat. Desperate times, desperate measures. He proceeded to post the message "Find the Bat, who killed Slash" in random BBSes, in the hopes that The Bat will come out of hiding. The following day, Tokio's phone rang. A surprise call from Enzawa. The timing was rather impeccable.

Enzawa has been tasked by Inohana to deliver a message. They will need to meet face to face. As Tokio arrived at the meeting place, he had some sort of epiphany. Enzawa is The Bat. We found out that Inohana is Tokio's ex-boss from the news agency he used to work at. He also Erika's husband and boss. The Bat further revealed that Tokio has been taken for a ride all along. His employer is not Inohana, but rather someone who Is part of a syndicate, and The Bat is acting as Tokio's supervisor. Inohana's name being used is simply a ruse to deceive Tokio.

We don't know much about this syndicate since The Bat kept it fairly vague, other than their aim, which is to prevent Kamui's return. Enzawa then elaborates that there are many syndicates, but his alignment is neutral, and he's "flying from one syndicate to another". Hence, "The Bat". Seems like he harbours some kind of animosity towards Tokio, and somewhat obsessed with Ayame. At the end of their exchange, Enzawa aimed a gun at Tokio, and a gunshot can be heard. The scene cuts into a pack of Placebo lying on the grass, its contents falling out.

This was not the end for Tokio, however. Apparently someone has shot Enzawa from long range before he had the change to pull the trigger, killing him instantly. Obviously shaken, Tokio sent another email to Erika, putting more pressure on her to stop the investigation on Kamui. An email exchange follows. Tokio decided to fill Erika in on the entire story. He confessed that he got Erika involved to use her as a shield in case Inohana gave him dangerous orders. Erika chastises Tokio because of this (and rightfully so!).

Tokio decided to disappear for a while until things quiet down, but Erika was having none of it. When she arrived at Typhoon, Erika immediately knew that Tokio wasn't going to run away. He asked Erika a favour instead, to look after Red, Tokio's pet turtle. At midnight, the city-wide blackout caused by Method Tank occurred. After Tokio bids farewell to Red, the report ends.

I have a feeling that Enzawa was killed by the syndicate. Seems like The Bat has become a liability somehow because of her obsession with Ayame. What Tokio will do is probably to go dark, since the killing of Enzawa obviously spooked him. There's another theory though: Tokio killed Enzawa -- although I'm a bit reluctant to pursue this line of thought since multiple personality disorder thing is a bit far-fetched.

On to the next case...

 

[Exzyleph]

Okay, so I might have gotten slightly distracted by Steins;Gate, a visual novel that I first started reading almost a year ago.
That's finally out of the way (and highly recommended!), so now I can focus my attention entirely on The Silver Case.

Kvik has already covered the events of the chapter, as well as discussed most of the things that caught my attention, so I'll just focus on a few specifics.

Kumoidrome

The email that we received in the beginning of the chapter sort caught me by surprise. This, and later events, gave me more reason to wonder how reliable a narrator Big Dick actually is. I might be proven wrong in the report, but it didn't sound like Tokio to me, based on our experience from his point-of-view. The second thing that gave me pause in this regard was Big Dick's meeting with the missing girl at Kinjo building, where he seems to meet that girl shortly before she apparently just straight up vasnishes. Was she even there in the first place?

We also got another email from The Bat. But that email address was supposedly used by Sumio and the rest of his gang, which raises the question as to who The Bat is now (or who they were from the start). Sumio himself no longer seems to be present, having possibly been arrested following PARADE, with Tetsu having what turns out be imaginary conversations with him. The naked aggression towards Tokio is also surprising and I cannot think of any person who might have that sentiment. The Bat also jokes about(?) Big Dick being a clone of Tokio, which made me wonder if there was some truth to that. Could Big Dick, whose past has been erased, be a clone of some sort?

The meeting between Neutral and Oldman is also interesting. In addition to the shared connection that Kvik touches upon, the game also goes out of its way to present them as being somehow the same: Their clothes, glasses, and even eye-color is the same, as if they are merely two versions of the same person. All of these similarities are erased when they become their personas, up and to including having different eye colors (red and yellow). Their grand plan ends with not just a city-wide power-cut, but what is revealed to be a world-wide power-cut. Interestingly, the person with whom Tetsu talks at the batting range (Munakata?) implies that it due to his "punishing" of Neutral and Oldman that this happens, which raises a whole 'nother set of questions!

Another thing that stood out was that the actual Silver Case seems to have been fairly straightforward case: Following a string of killings over the years, it was apparently the murder of an NGO leader that was labeled as such and which resulted in Kamui being apprehended, seemingly without much fanfare. Why it earned such a fanciful name is unclear, though that may be related to the murder-weapon, described as "a sharp metallic tube-like object". However, given that the source is a fan-site, it seems likely that there are important details about these murders, and in particular the last murder, that will be revealed later.

At the end of the chapter I am left with more questions and few answers.

As a final note, the first URL mentioned in the emails from the dark site is actually a "real" Kamui fan-site:
Kamuinet

 

[Exzyleph]

AI

As Kvik writes, we don't get a whole lot of information about KAMUIDROME in this chapter. Instead, it mainly focuses on Tokio's relationship with "The Bat", who ends up being somebody other than I expected (for some reason I still connected SAumio with The Bat).

Another major point of this chapter is that Tokio has been having recurring nightmares, in which kids wait to be taken by a bus to be slaughtered. All but Tokio are taken away, but Tokio is left behind because he wasn't ready, because he didn't have enough meat on his bones ("live weight"). The summary was hard to follow, but it seems like somebody helped him avoid getting sent away to slaughter. There is also the suggestion that he met another child, though their identity is not made clear.

In the previous report, he received a "joke" from The Bat, suggesting that Tokio and Big Dick were somehow the same/clones, and this made me strengthen my suspicion that there was something more to it than a joke. This notion was further supported when we learn that Tokio was adopted, making him yet another character with an uncertain past. Was he also a bunker kid?

One minor connection that suddenly came to mind when Erika showed up, was that Red might have been named after Erika and her red dress. Though I doubt it is going to be important, it may be telling us something about Tokio's relationship to Erika after the two broke up(?).

At the end of the chapter, it seems like somebody came to pick up Tokio, just after the power-cut happened: We see "Let's go..." without a portrait, to which Tokio replies "OK...".

 

[Exzyleph]

Well, that was as a weird chapter ..

LIFECUT

To briefly summarize the plot, this chapter seemingly takes places several months after KAMUIDROME/AI. Kamui suddenly escapes from the hospital and murders 7 government officials. Meanwhile, some sort of cleanup is taking place; somebody attempts to kill Munataka for saying too much and Tetsu kills Kotobuki. Two new agents (Sakura and Kenta) joins the HCU, while Sumio has been dismissed. They are all sent on a mission to kill Kamui, during which both Morikawa and Tetsu disappears, before Kamui is ultimately killed by sniper fire.

Afterwards, the remaining HCU agents are told to dispose of Morikawa and Tetsu. Big Dick receives an email telling him to talk with the informant Kinjo, whose building we visited in the last chapter. Kinjo tells Big Dick to visit the smoke shop Mulholland, where he finds an entrance to an underground area, eventually leading him to the home of the home of the Shelter children. Along the way, we learn that "Kamui" and "Ayame" are the male and female Shelter kids, manufactured and disposable humans created for harness the power of "crime". First Morikawa and then Chizuru are killed, but not before Morikawa can pass along a notebook with unknown content.

At the Shelter, Big Dick finds Tetsu who has disposed of the members of TRUMP, "Kamu's Watchdogs", and the two of them make their way to the heart of the radio tower that seems to hold the "soul" of Kamui. It is implied that this "soul" is imprinted into Kamuis. Tetsu offers Big Dick a choice, to become Kamui or to kill his past. A gunshot rings out and it is unclear what choice Big Dick made. At the end of the chapter, a close-up of Tetsu shows him to be covered in blood, either from him having shot Big Dick or from having shot Munataka, with whom he had just spoken.

There are three main points to this chapter, the first being that Kamui was the instrument of the FSO, a third and smaller faction that is attempting to wrest control from the TRO/CCO alliance. Twenty years ago, the first Kamui was used to kill the elder members of the TRO/CCO, with "silver" in The Silver Case being a reference to the fact that it was the elder members who died. However, we also learn from Naga that there supposedly never was three distinct syndicates (CCO/TRO/FSO), and that it was all the manchinations of a larger group, making it unclear exactly why those people had to be killed.

The second point is that there are many Kamui and many Ayame, 1,440 of each stock, including Big Dick, Sakura, Chizuru, and many others, most of whom die during this chapter or have died previously. It is not explicitly confirmed whether or not Tokio is another Kamui, but it seems very likely at this point. The Kamui we got to know was also not the original Kamui, as Tetsu killed that person, but seemingly just another Shelter kid who had been activated.

The third point is that the that Republic and HCU were primarily tasked with culling individuals with criminal tendencies, in an attempt at closely regulating the 24 wards. The purpose of this was note clear to me, but seems to be some grand experiment similar to the production of the Shelter kids and the harnessing of "criminal power". This brings us back to the first (0th) case, where we were told that the Wards contained 100,000 individuals. Back then I wondered if that was an exact number and that no longer seems quite as unlikely.

At the end of it all stands Tetsu, whose role in all of this is similarly unclear. Is he really driven by personal interest or is his killing of Kotobuki and many others motivated or driven by something else?

Overall I left this chapter feeling very confused. We did get some answers, and my guess regarding Big Dicks background did turn out to be true, but many more questions have been raised.

 

[Kvik]

Wew. Exzyleph got ahead of me.

Case #5: LifeCut

Lifecut

That was quite an infodump. longer than the other cases too. Lots of people to see and secrets to discover. Unfortunately, the TV tower section is so tedious because there's a lot of room to enter and not much else to do besides chasing the star markers. Exzy already covered the plot summary, so I'll just mention a few things I find interesting.

The whole case feels like everybody is "cleaning house", sort of speak. Almost everybody in HCU is belonging to one faction or another, although it's not exactly clear who belongs to which. What we do know is the original Kamui ("Format Kamui") was a contract killer at the behest of FSO, and was killed by Kusabi, with Munakata present. The thing about Kotobuki being "The man who arrested Kamui" is simply a ruse to hide the truth from the public. The three factions see value in training sleeper agents and forming some sort of population control, and thus, the "Shelter Kids" project was born. With Enzawa as the administrator of the project.

To facilitate this undertaking, a company called International Environment is established. After reading the notes in the TV Tower, it seems that they are not simply aiming to create Kamui clones, but also something called "Ocular Silverisation". I'm not quite sure that the significance of this is, but one of the notes in the tower mentioned something about "getting us closer to immortality". Again, not sure if speaking metaphorically, or otherwise. Nevertheless, the experiments are quite haunting since it mentioned about light and sound deprivation, among other mundane and repetitive things.

Ultimately, they've failed in their experiment, since one of the notes mentioned that none of the children was able to achieve silverisation. Regardless, they've seemed to be able to transfer the "Idea" of Kamui Uehara to numerous subjects. Lastly, I'm still a bit uncertain about Kusabi's role in all of this, although if I have to guess, he's a free agent and not affiliated with any factions. Also, I'm wondering how Tokio managed to enter the underground complex, and the IEDU building. Let's hope the next report can shed some light on it.

 

[Exzyleph]

Wew. Exzyleph got ahead of me.

Case #5: LifeCut

Spoiler

It looks like I missed a bunch of notes in the residential area.
I just looked at the map and saw where the four members of TRUMP were and then visited those towers, but I guess i should have done all of them in order.

I have a save from just after you enter the underground, so I'll have to try to setup Cheat Engine as described in the the OP and skip through that part so that I can revisit the residential area.

 

[Theswweet]

Oh crap, I didn't realize this was this month's until just now... welp.

 

[Kvik]

I even mention this in Discord but timezone differences is a bitch.

 

[Exzyleph]

Did a quick re-read of the bits I missed in LIFECUT:

Spoiler

The main things I took away from this was that the original Kamui seems to have had an eye transplant from an unknown source. This had some (to us) unknown but desired effect relating to "ocular silverization" and the desire to investigate this phenomena seems to have been a major impetus for the creation of the (second batch of?) Shelter kids. There seems to be two components to this effect, one relating to the expression of a certain gene (which is implied to be pretty common) and one relating to the transplanted eyes, but it is not clear what the actual silverization effect is, though as Kvik pointed out it somehow relates to "immortality".

I also learned more about how brutal the project was, with both administrators and children being "processed" if they failed to meet expectations. One log stood out to me, which talked about one administrator being processed for introducing a mistake in their testing. While a weak connection, these logs made me think of Tokio and in particular of his nightmares. Were the children taken away on the bus those sent for processing and did the person in his dream protect him from being processed?

Oh crap, I didn't realize this was this month's until just now... welp.

That's probably my fault, as I seem to have been a bit inconsistent about posting links in the main thread.
Sorry about that. I'll be more thorough in my spamming for future book clubs.

 

[Exzyleph]

Report 5 is done ..

Hikari

Like Case 5, this was largely an info-dump. Tokio returns after several months, to find a number of emails from Erica, who has taken a liking to Red. However, eventually her patience reaches her limit and she not only declares that she'll be investigating Kamui but also tells Tokio that she loves him.

It is not quite clear what Tokio has been up to in the last few months, but after he returns, he goes on something of a journey of self-discovery. Like Big Dick, Tokio has become increasingly able to perceive the "lingering consciousness" of the dead, perceiving the ghosts of The Bat and the woman killed at Babylon, as well as that of Ayame. Did Ayame die or is this showing that Tokio's perceptions apply to both the living and the dead?

In any case, we learn that the program choosing to make a female Kamui turned out to be a mistake, as male and female would seek each other out, and the effect of Ayame becoming pregnant with Kamui's child was the undoing of her programming. She was meant to kill both Kamui and Big Dick, but eventually decided against doing so.

From the woman at Babylon, we hear Tokio being described as the receiver for the message (the woman's mind) sent by Kamui (the transmitter) via Ayame (the medium). The purpose and exact nature of this relationship is not clear, though it seems to be referenced by the drink that Tokio is drinking at Jack Hammer: The Trinity, a perfect mix of 3 parts: Tokio, Kamui, and Ayame.

In between all this, Tokio dreams(?) about a meeting between him and an unknown person, possibly somebody from the syndicate that hired him in the first place. This man confirms to Tokio that he is the same as Big Dick, another Shelter Child, as was hinted by The Bat a while back, and states that Tokio's purpose is to kill Big Dick before he can become the next Kamui. However, Tokio decides against doing so, and instead decides to disappear for a while, after telling his client that he has erased everything.

We also learn the identity of the person we saw atop of the radio tower, the person whom I suspect either Big Dick or Testu killed at the end of case 5: Nezu, a genius programmer who has been treating the 24 Wards as his plaything for the last 20 years, controlling CCO, TRO, and FSO, and who intentionally designed Kamui to be a calamity with the purpose of shaking up the 24 Wards. All for his own entertainment.

Random trivia: I noticed that Red's name was seemingly not translated in a few places. Apparently Red was called 'akamimi' in Japanese, meaning Red Eared, which is a fitting name.

 

[Kvik]

Report #5: Hikari

I think we're almost the finish line, but many questions still left unanswered.

Hikari

The report has a kind of sombre tone. We see Tokio as he struggles with fending off the "ghost"/idea of Kamui/Ayame while he visited Babylon, Jack Hammer, the empty lot, and so on. The mysterious silhouette makes me think of Kusabi at first, but this person seems to know a whole lot more. Perhaps it was Takeshi Kinjo? But it doesn't make sense if it was him since Takeshi seems to like our protagonist.

In a way, the "shadow operative" telling Tokio that he was a defect from "Shelter Kids" project is kind of a misnomer since Tokio effectively rejects the programming/indoctrination, keeping some semblance of non-conformity. Side-effects notwithstanding, he was able to live a relatively normal life and able to function normally. The Bartender of Jack Hammer is quite a character too. Pretty sure he had a hand in helping Tokio to reach a decision whether to live with the "ghosts" or killing our protagonist. And Tokio's parting with Erika also feels a little bittersweet. I wonder if he will see Red again.

It's too bad we didn't see what happened to Tokio in between the blackout and him arriving at home in late December.

Case !: danwa

danwa

This is more like a bookend rather than a case. It's simply our protagonist meeting with Kusabi in a cafe. Kusabi delivering truth bombs, and yeah. It's out there. Seems like "Format Kamui" is a normal citizen. "Kamui Uehara" is an idea to establish population control and obedience. Silverisation is an immortality project. Shelter Kids project is simply a means to an end and replicating the silver eyes is their true goal. And Chizuru and Tokio are siblings, apparently. Finally, Kusabi didn't kill Kamui, the "silver" old men did.

Oh, and the Mayor of 24 Ward is previously immortal. The case ends just as Kusabi asked our protagonist for a 50K loan.

Stick around for the after-credits scene.

 

[Exzyleph]

Finished up the last of The Silver Case:

Danwa / Yami / Whiteout

Danwa sees Tetsu call out Big Dick to a diner, wanting to see how he is doing. At this point I expected that Tetsu would try to kill Big Dick, but surprisingly that did not happen. Instead, he reveals the truth of the Silver Case and the truth of Kamui. Kamui was never a hitman, he was just a civilian, and he didn't kill the Syndicate leaders. Tetsu states that it was him who did so, but it turns out that the leaders killed each other while fighting over the silver eyes of Kamui, that were somehow able to grant immortality when implanted. Tetsu shot at the last man standing, but didn't kill him since he had already implanted those eyes (or eye?). This man is the current Mayer of the 24 Wards, Uminosuke Hachisuka, who has been living using his own son's identity. Tetsu also says that Chizuru and the report (Tokio) were siblings. And then he asks to borrow 50,000 YEN .. at which point Sakura Kosaka shows up and shares that the Mayer has been killed(?) by Kamui. At this point I immediately thought of "that reporter", being the only other living "Kamui" we know of, and that did turn out to be the case.

Yami shows Tokio flying to Losspas, which turns out to be a fictional island from another of SUDA51's games. While in the air, he has a nightmare in which he receives emails from The Bat and from Slash and when he wakes up he finds an inquisitive girl by his side, Catherine. It quickly becomes apparent that she knows more than she should, is seemingly able to read his thoughts, and eventually makes Tokio confess that he took Kamui's eye from the Mayer. Tokio describes the eye as cursed and as having its own will (represented by Catherine?), but she promises to replace the curse with a blessing while he sleeps. As the plane arrives, Tokio is shown ambiguously either sleeping or dead.

The final case, Whiteout, shows the various actors moving to take out previously unknown member of TRUMP, the Joker. However, at the same time somebody is moving to take out Big Dick, who is now working with Sakura, using a near suicidal cop as their pawn. The chapter ends with a gunshot, after said cop stated his intent to kill Big Dick, but the outcome is unknown. Though so far, people pointing guns at people generally haven't had a good success-rate in this game, leaving me with little concern for Big Dick's safety.

In summary, this entire VN was a bit of a mixed bag. The presentation was amazing and there were a lot of interesting ideas, but the plot never managed to feel cohesive to me, with some chapters feeling largely disconnected from the overarching story (Parade and Spectrum). The biggest problem was probably that there were too many twists, with Kamui(s) as the centerpiece of this whole mess, and with a mastermind, Nezu, who was introduced late in the game and only after he had seemingly already been killed off, off-screen. The nature or significance of the ghosts, the lingering consciousnesses, also never became clear, nor was it clear what it meant for Big Dick to become Kamui or how he escaped this fate.

I have a basic time-line of events in my head, but I am left wondering what to make of it all. Part of my problem is probably due to the seemingly self-insert character that is Big Dick, who has no voice and who basically does nothing throughout the entire game; he seemingly just walks around and has people talk at him. I am left wondering why people even cared about that guy, Tetsu in particular. I am also left wondering just who Mokutaro and Tetsu actually are? Both seem to be deeply involved and connected to everything, but their motives never became clear to me. Tetsu in particular was just trotting around gunning down people left and right.

It was an interesting read, but I'm not sure it accomplished what it set out to do.

As a reminder, next months book club will be for Coffee Talk, a coffee brewing and heart-to-heart talking simulator about listening to fantasy-inspired peoples’ problems. As usual, I will post here once the thread goes up.

 

[Kvik]

Report #6: Yami

Yami

We are fast-forwarding to 2001. Tokio is on board an airplane. From what I can gather, he's the one who killed the Mayor at the end of Danwa, and took his silver eye. He seems to have an imaginary conversation with someone named Catherine, and he was going to someplace called "Lospass". Hmm. There's another case unlocked.

Case #25: Whiteout.

Whiteout

That was kind of abrupt. My initial read of it was that Mokutaro is the Joker, but reading Exzy's take, it makes sense to send a burnable asset to kill our protagonist. I wonder what happened with the other eye when the Shelter Kids project is being scrapped. The notes in the TV Tower seems to imply that it was used during their experiments there.

I was expecting an "epilogue" section of Whiteout. Perhaps this is when "25th Ward" will come into play.

I'll probably write a longer impression for Steam Review, but overall I'll have to agree with Exzy's impressions. There'a lot of plot points, twists and turns but it doesn't follow through with the conclusion very well. Parade/Tsuki is a very good case/report pair, and I very much like to see something similar which is standalone. The mythology of Kamui Uehara could've been very interesting to flesh out, but the narrative direction is not focused enough, I feel.

I wonder: Where does "25 Ward" sits in terms of continuity? Doing a quick wiki browse tells me "Flower, Sun, Rain" remain unlocalised and no fan translation exists. No vndb page for it either.

 

[Kvik]

I forgot to post this earlier, but I wrote a little about The Silver Case.

Steam Community :: Kvik :: Review for The Silver Case

The Silver Case is a great debut from Goichi Suda featuring a hard-boiled detective story, which also somewhat an unpolished experience with too many ideas which didn't exactly follow through with interesting conclusions. The presentation of this VN is a departure from "NVL" or "ADV" formats...

steamcommunity.com

Not sure yet if I'm joining the September book club since I'm trying to finish Grisaia no Kajitsu, but for Spooktober, for sure.

 

[Exzyleph]

I forgot to post this earlier, but I wrote a little about The Silver Case.

Steam Community :: Kvik :: Review for The Silver Case

The Silver Case is a great debut from Goichi Suda featuring a hard-boiled detective story, which also somewhat an unpolished experience with too many ideas which didn't exactly follow through with interesting conclusions. The presentation of this VN is a departure from "NVL" or "ADV" formats...

steamcommunity.com

Not sure yet if I'm joining the September book club since I'm trying to finish Grisaia no Kajitsu, but for Spooktober, for sure.

Nice review!


Grisaia is a damn tome, so I can understand not wanting to commit to a bookclub.
However, I will say that Coffee Talk is rather short, around six hours according to HLTB if you don't want to 100% it, so you may have time for it depending on your progress in Grisaia.

 

[Exzyleph]

The 13th VN Book Club thread is now up and this time we will be reading Coffee Talk by Toge Productions:

​

Thank you to everyone who joined in reading The Silver Case!
The schedule has not yet been set, but I hope that you will also join me next year in reading the sequel to The Silver Case, The 25th Ward.

This thread will of course remain open, and I hope that you will still share your thoughts if you are not yet done reading The Silver Case or if you find this thread at a later date.