Randomly saw something about this series, and after reading a quick summary thingy, I stumbled upon the image below:

 

Oh, that's terrible and you should be ashamed.

I see your Katawa Shoujo pic and raise you three.

 

The fuck?

/tenchar

 

It's Katawa Shoujo.

It's an American-made (but Japanese styled) visual novel that had quite some controversy surrounding it. You (Hisao) get confessed to by your crush and your heart swells with emotion. Oh wait, that's actually your heart giving out due to your arrhythmia showing up for the first time. After a stay in the hospital, you go to a new school (that looks suspiciously like Brown University) that caters to disabled students. There you can pursue one of five love interests: (in order of the pic above) Rin, a girl with no arms; Lilly, a blind girl; Shizune, deaf; Hanako, who has massive burn scars all along the side of her body; and Emi, who has no legs.

Despite this description however, it isn't a 'sleazy guy seduces crippled girls' game. The characters have their problems, yes, but they are their own problems that have nothing to do with their disabilities, and it gives the message that they are people too, with their own problems and lives. Great game overall.

Oh, and two points of controversy: The game was made by 4chan (though the touch of /b/ is NOT felt), and the name. "Katawa" is a Japanese word for 'crippled' that is so offensive it has been banned from television. Katawa Shoujo roughly translates to 'Gimp Girls'. The creators refuse to change the name.

 

From what I read, I think that Shizune is both deaf and mute. There was also a sixth girl with ADHD or something, but as displayed, she isn't considered as significant.

Either way, morbid-ish or not, I found the image I linked amusing in context.

 

It's not that she's mute. It's just that since she's deaf, she can't hear what she sounds like, which means (as it does for most deaf people) that her speech sounds a bit weird. And with her competitive personality, she couldn't stand that. So she only communicates through sign language. Also she never learns to lip-read for some reason.

And the sixth girl (Misha) doesn't actually have her own route. She's Shizune's best friend and translator. She doesn't actually have a disability as far as has been explained, but rather that she got into the academy on a scholarship or something.

 

Schumer scoping the chicks, lol.

 

She (Misha) is actually there to learn Sign Language, I believe, so that she can teach it at a school in the future. Or, possibly, she intends to become a teacher at the academy. To be fair, there is a sex scene with Misha, but it results in Shizune's bad ending.

Also, Rin master race.

To prevent any further derailing;

 

http://i.imgur.com/wc9TIHZ.png

Also, that sounds like the worst fucking thing ever, why do multiple people even know about it?

 

Because of the feels, man.

 

I think that's between feels and duuuude.

 

To be fair, it can sound like a terrible, horrific concept of a game. Just by going off of the description, you get the impression that you are a sleazeball going after disabled girls for an easy lay. It's REALLY not the case. It's actually very touching and makes you care for them--not pity them. They aren't so much disabled people as people who happen to be disabled, with their own problems that have nothing to do with their disabilities.

Honestly there isn't much I can say to convince you guys. I had the same trepidations as you before actually playing the game, and it was only after I played it that I got over them. Here's an eleven-minute review for a better description than what I can give.

 

You're actually asking me to spend eleven minutes on that?

 

Yes, with good reason too. The first route that I played, Hanako, kept me up all night. In the morning I was sitting on my kitchen floor crying my eyes out over a girl that didn't even exist. When I finished the route I started crying again, but I was happy and because I realized just how much I was wasting away my life. A couple weeks later I signed up for the Marines Delayed Entry Program. This has been so prevalent in other players that a college proffesor has begun a study of the game.

http://ks.renai.us/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5462

On topic:

http://trueprince.devianta******/art/You-are-awesome-253589106?q=gallery:trueprince/29186173&qo=13

 

It's good writing and what adult content it does have is not the focus and is handled more tastefully than plenty of stuff that has made it into the library here.

If the medium it is presented in somehow changes that for you, your loss I guess. Not exactly something I expected to see on a fanfiction forum.

 

Think of it less like a dating sim, more like Fate/Stay Night. There's sex, but it's not the focus, which is mostly on getting to know the characters and helping them through their various problems (most of which are only tangential to their disabilities).

That said, it's an interesting game but not something I'd recommend to most. I'm not one for romance stories so I found myself getting bored half way through each of the routes, especially once you know the general stories of each character.

 

I googled it and got the encyclopedia dramatica summary which explains pretty much everything I need to know.
https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Katawa_Shoujo
I'd also take fanfiction over a dating sim any day of the week. If that was meant to be a "lolnerd" type of comment, I'd point out that reading fanfiction about something that affected you greatly at a formative age doesn't seem nearly as bad as a hentai visual novel starring highschoolers. Maybe that's just me.

On topic, Mr. Bean shows Reddit how to deal with the hug/handshake confusion:
http://25.media.tumblr.com/a7eb2b145c8a64f06fb317ee1a8f8b34/tumblr_mgznrcIflT1s2gg27o1_400.gif

 

In my... defense(?)... I've only spent a few minutes reading a synopsis linked from somewhere else, then saw the image shortly after. Never have actually played a visual novel before, for more than a few minutes. [They] seem somewhat interesting, though, and I've probably been prevented from doing so more by a lack of translations(and effort to procure them), than anything else.