I’ve mentioned Honjou Raita Japanese artist of “Doujinshi ” essentially, self-published works.
But first, for the uninitiated, I will explain KS. Here, I’ll talk through the moments and design choices that made KS as impactful as it was, those which tainted its reputation, and the psychological mechanism I believe it exploited: the titular emotion you do not know. In the nine years since its release, I have not heard that question answered. To me, the question of whether it was good or not is infinitely less interesting than unravelling how it affected me and so many other people more than any other artwork that I know. Katawa Shoujo was flawed – very flawed in places – but it’s undeniable that it had a profound and positive impact on an enormous number of people. It was so strongly and widely praised that nine years on, bringing it up tends to elicit only jaded eye rolls, and declarations that it was never really that good. KS skyrocketed in popularity and, for a time, was discussed more than all other visual novels combined.
The catalyst for these events was the release of the visual novel Katawa Shoujo, by the now defunct 4 Leaf Studios. And curiously, most of those affected claimed to have lost all desire to masturbate a phenomenon that normally persisted for weeks and which I can personally attest was real. Thousands took up distance running, drawing, writing, and tea drinking. That Summer, 4chan’s horrible boards were inundated with the most positive community I’ve ever seen in my life people who’d developed a sudden and drastic desire to improve themselves. But he did and set in motion a bizarre chain of events that would collide with my life only twelve years later on the tenth of January 2012 a hot Summer night that would leave me in tears and inspired to improve my life. It’s strange to think that if Raita hadn’t made those sketches in the back of his pornographic magazine when I was six years old that my life might have gone very differently.
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