That’s right, your eyes do not deceive you! The last (but certainly not least important) character to join the cast of SHINRAI Saku – Blooming Beyond Despair… is none other than one of the original SHINRAI‘s victims: Kotoba! So consider this the first official confirmation that he did indeed canonically survive the events of that deadly Halloween party. Even if he clearly didn’t do so unscathed, neither physically nor mentally…
For the longest time, I’ve been going back and forth regarding Kotoba‘s ultimate fate. In the original novel version of SHINRAI, written all the way back in 2011, he actually survived. When we went on to turn the story into a visual novel, however, I thought it’d be kinda interesting to leave it up to the player’s actions and so we added two possible outcomes depending on a series of choices, one in which he dies in the fire and one in which he is rescued just in time. Within the game itself, I never made a clear statement as to which of those two outcomes was the canonical one, as I myself was no longer sure about it at that point. Which was why I decided to simply leave it up the to player’s imagination instead. As such, SHINRAI‘s sequel, Withering Without Hope, was supposed to be written in a way where things were left vague enough for both possibilities to be true at the same time. Eventually, though, I realized that I had to open this Schrödinger’s Kotoba-Box and give a definitive answer, especially for the sake of handling characters like Taiko.
Now you can also hopefully better understand why I chose to take this entire matter out of WWH and put it into Saku instead. I couldn’t just handwave it with merely a couple of lines, but I also didn’t want it to take the focus away from the new story, the new cast members and the new murder case. In fact, I think there is a very interesting tale here to tell that does deserve a focus of its own. I mean, nearly losing his life through being set ablaze by one of his classmates… that sure would deeply affect Kotoba, right? And I wanted to explore the ways it would. It’s certainly way more interesting than if I just had said he’s dead and that’s it. But in what ways exactly the events of the original SHINRAI had an effect on him, well… that you will have to find out in Saku!
Anyway, that’s about all I want to say on our final cast member for now. Although one thing I want to add (or rather reiterate) is that, even though all the intro cards have been revealed now, there are a couple more characters you’ll get to meet again, namely Mika, Rie and Runa. Given their importance to the original, I obviously couldn’t and didn’t want to leave them out of Saku. Their appearances are handled a bit differently, though, and won’t require any “full” sprites like it’s the case with the others. But what precisely I mean by that is something you’ll also have to wait and see. Hopefully very soon!
But for now, please enjoy the rest of your weekend, have a “frohen Nikolaus” if you celebrate it and, until next Saturday, take care :3
