Kisaku

vndb • erogamescape

Intro:

Kisaku is the third and final mainline game in elf’s Itou-ke series, also known as the oyaji series. Originally released in 2001, it was rereleased with animation in 2011. The writer is once again Hiruta Masato.

Story: 8/10

Kisaku, the youngest of the Itou brothers (i.e. the -sakus), sets out to do his family name proud and in fact prove that he is the most “kichiku” of them all. This means rape, lots of rape, accomplished through only the most sophisticated and artful of blackmail (taking creepshots of the girls and threatening to spread them around.) He takes a similar approach to his brother Shuusaku by finding employment as a dorm’s custodian, though perhaps less fortuitously in a company dorm for a pharmaceutical company. So it’s not just a bunch of young girls. But he has freer reign to search the company and the surrounding town for rape targets and the blackmail material to carry out his wicked plot.

As much as I enjoy closed settings like the girls dorm in Shuusaku, setting an Itou brother loose on the public is such an enticing premise. And Kisaku makes fantastic use of the broadened possibilities. Have you ever wanted to see what it would be like if a -saku went on a trip to the beach with his targets, or was forced to attend a fancy company party, or stumbled upon another (obviously infinitely more plebian) rapist’s crime in progress? Have you ever wondered what would happen if an Itou went to a fucking omiai? These are just a few of the situations depicted in Kisaku, and each and every one of them is delightful to read. Though it may be odd to say, Kisaku is such a fun character, in his thoroughly twisted way, that you can add him into any situation, shake, and pour out a scene that is a joy to savor. Kisaku, the game, is a straight run of pure entertainment and humor.

Once again, the interactions of the glorious bastard of a protagonist are the draw of the game, but if anything they’re even better. Not only is there a wider range of situations, there is also a cast beyond just the heroines, including a surprising number of male characters. I was more than a little skeptical when a bunch of salarymen started showing up early in the game, but scenes between Kisaku and the male cast turn out to be in no way inferior to those with the heroines (though I’m sure Kisaku himself would disagree, and curse me or spit on me for suggesting such a thing.) There is some amount of office intrigue going on at Sugimoto Pharmaceuticals, but this is of minimal interest compared to Kisaku making penis jokes and how both the male and female characters react to the general uncouthness of his character.

Kisaku also fixes what was probably my biggest issue with Shuusaku’s story. The heroines actually have stories now. They have their own circumstances and as you encounter them, and rape them, you learn more about what they have going on in their lives. Some of their stories even reach conclusions. These plots are not especially substantial, the organization and length of the game would prohibit anything too in-depth, but they add enough to be satisfying enough. As I said, only some of the stories play out in full; often they end abruptly and a bit unfittingly, or plot threads are left hanging. Still, for a simulation eroge whose main focus is sex and dark humor the story is enough to round things out.

Like Shuusaku, Kisaku has a true route you unlock after succeeding in “capturing” all of the heroines in one playthrough. This is something I anticipated and looked forward to. Besides the family lineage of the Itous, it was my main reason for playing. I expected something similar to Shuusaku, and broadly speaking it is very similar in terms of tone, theme, and mechanics. The actual story is different, however, it is by no means a retread. But it’s very disappointing. No other way to put it. What’s there is great, quite heartfelt, but it’s much too short. While, like the other stories in the game, it is sketched in relatively brief scenes, there’s more substance to it than any of the other arcs, and it feels like it is building to something major. Then it suddenly ends. I actually thought I had accidentally stumbled into some sort of side-end to the true route. I started getting worried when a vocal ED began to play, a worry which grew as credits rolled, and by the time I checked the ending list there was an unmistakable bitter taste in my mouth.

The actual end itself is fitting for Kisaku but it definitely feels like there could have, and should have, been more expanded upon. Also, the end doesn’t address the meta element of the game (like Shuusaku, it breaks the fourth wall in small but regular ways, like the oyaji rapist talking to you directly.) Save for a single line, which, when taken with the theme of the end, could serve as a suitable resolution to the meta and an address to the reader. So I suppose I can think my way into appreciating how it was handled, but it still feels underdeveloped, especially when the rest of the ending feels the same way.

Gameplay: 7.5/10

The gameplay is generally the same as Shuusaku’s, though thankfully greatly streamlined in ways that make it far less frustrating. You once again plan out the protagonist’s schedule, with the idea being to have him be in the position to acquire blackmail material to use against the girls. Kisaku is more patient than his older brother, so the time scale is blown up: instead of planning out one hour at a time in four 15-minute chunks, you plan out a month at a time in four weekly chunks. There are fewer options: at most you can go to three locations, and while each location has two options, to either try to acquire material or complete some secondary task, the latter option is used much less often. The camera system, where you had to place and later retrieve cameras, is removed, which by itself eliminates the bulk of the tedium and frustration of the previous game. Now you simply have to be in the right place at the right time and Kisaku personally takes the photograph then and there. And the “right time” is quite forgiving; I’m not sure what the time window is, my guess is it varies for different events, but it’s very broad.

While the core gameplay is simplified, and indeed is pretty simple, there are enough wrinkles to keep things interesting. Many of the heroines have unique conditions that have to be met before you can get significant material on them, or before you can confront them with your pictures, and in one case before they even appear. Some heroines become unavailable if you don’t blackmail them in time. In some situations you have to make the correct choice to be able to get a suitable picture. There are a few special events that allow you to get primo material, sometimes enough to blackmail a heroine with just the one photo, but this again requires making the right choice. It’s not very hard but it keeps things from getting monotonous. The conditions required for the heroines, on the other hand, can in some cases be legitimately difficult to figure out. I had to look up hints for two of them. One of those I should have been able to figure out, but the other was quite obscure and requires you to do something Kisaku specifically tells you not to do (OK, once again my fault for listening to him.) The game has a hint corner, but it only shows up when you get a bad end when you fail to blackmail a heroine, so it’s not helpful in cases where you can’t even get to that point with a girl.

The main gameplay is engaging enough to carry you through at least a couple playthroughs, which is how long it took me to just barely beat the game. It has that fun addictiveness of hunting down fanservice shots of the girls, and remains untainted by frustrating tedium. Kisaku also has minigames. The two more substantial ones, bowling and tennis, are legitimately fun. They have the perfect amount of depth for a minigame. The others are too simple to be fun or not, but they offer a little bit of interaction to keeps things fresh.

Characters: 8/10

Kisaku is basically Shuusaku. He’s hilariously lecherous and legitimately despicable. He excels at talking himself out of any situation with a silver tongue that can convince anyone that they don’t hear the clear malice in everything he says to another human being. And he can convince the reader to enjoy tagging along with his indisputable evil. There will never be another rapist eroge protagonist like the Itous. Kisaku is an eroge icon and just about single-handedly carries the text of the game. One difference between Kisaku and his brothers are some brief glimpses of something beyond the evil with Kisaku, moments when he unintentionally, but clearly not entirely so, does something good. I’m still not sure how I feel about this contamination of the Platonic ideal of the evil rapist; I don’t know if it makes him less special or more. And I don’t know if I can, or should, feel for the guy.

At this point I won’t call the heroines stereotypes like I have in the past two games. Most of them have their share of stereotypical qualities, but rare is the eroge where that can’t be said. And like I said before, they’re fleshed out with actual backstories. A worse issue is that many, probably most of them, are dull. Some are dull on their face, and a couple who were initially interesting to me dulled as they underwent character development with repeated rapings, which was disappointing. The “development” the heroines go through at Kisaku’s hands tends to actually flatten them out. They start to take on a more one-note personality as they destabilize psychologically, and when each one reaches a breaking point it’s like hitting the bottom of a few inches-deep pool. The exceptions, the receptionist Momoko and the slightly slutty tsundere Madoka, I liked quite a lot, despite Madoka initially being unappealing to me.

The male characters lack depth across the board, but they each have their own personalities and quirks. They pretty much all have something that creates a certain sort of entertaining chemistry in interactions with Kisaku. Almost none of them are likable, which is fine since they aren’t meant to be and don’t have to be. The notable exception here is the president of Sugimoto Pharmaceuticals, who’s just a swell, jolly guy and has the best chemistry with Kisaku, who he showers with affection. Sugimoto is also the character who doles out wisdom in the tips corner and he was undoubtedly the best choice for the role.

Sound: 6.5/10

You’re stuck with the same two tracks as Shuusaku like 99% of the time. At least I think they’re the same, one definitely is, but they don’t stick with you enough for me to be sure. One track is for the rape, and one track is for everything else. So again you spend most of the game listening to one single song. There’s another track for the first-person ero scenes, and I’m not sure if it’s the same as the one from Shuusaku, and really it doesn’t matter. None of these songs are very good. There are one or two tracks that are specific to the true route, and these are actually good.

As mentioned above, there’s, surprisingly, a vocal track for the ED of the true route. It also oddly plays in one of the non-true ends that isn’t the main non-true end. Anyways, it’s a pretty good song and stylistically interesting, kinda a bluesy rock number with male vocals, and it fits Kisaku, the game and the character. It’s by the band Ningen Isu, who I think are relatively popular (I’ve heard a few of their songs, which were more metal than Kisaku’s ED, “Imomushi.”)

The voice acting for Kisaku is great. The other characters, female and male, have good voice acting too. Not a whole lot to say about them, they’re thoroughly competent but are outshone by Kisaku. The female voices in the ero scenes are completely un-hot. They sound like they’re being tortured, probably because they practically are.

Art: 8/10

The artist is the same as Shuusaku, yet for some inexplicable reason the art quality seems slightly worse. There is still ample 90’s anime joy to be had, but there’s now a slight roughness that’s a bit chafing. As usual, there are plenty of fan service CGs, which never get old to me for some reason. I don’t know why but they’re nicer to have than outright porn CGs.

Speaking of porn CGs, the CGs in the porn often have awful composition. A lot of the images are arranged in such a way that you see almost as much of Kisaku as the girl. I don’t want to see old, gray man-ass. This is almost Western-real life-porn-tier. There are first person images for every scene (see below) but these have even worse composition. So often you hardly see anything. If the first-person view when you’re having sex in real life was so un-arousing no one would ever fuck and our species would have died out long ago.

The re-release of Kisaku has added elf animation. While this version of the game was released solidly into the era of elf animation (it came out between Ningen Debris and Boku no Kanojo), you might run into difficulty differentiating it from the AE-animation of lesser brands. The immediate, and probably accurate, explanation for the animation being much worse here is that they’re adapting existing art to animation rather than working with art that is designed to be animated from the beginning.

Ero: 6/10

I’m adjusting my ero score upward from how I actually felt about it because I think the ero in Kisaku would be more appealing to someone with the right fetishes. Namely, sadism. The sex in this game is deeply sadistic. Not often physically sadistic, rather it is consistently psychologically sadistic. I’m sure some of you are into that. Kisaku knows just how to verbally berate the heroines in the ways that strike at their core, and to engage in acts that are humiliating even if of limited physical pain. But reader beware, there is quite a bit of piss (no big deal) and even some farting and shit (as in shit shit; a big deal.) Kisaku cracks jokes throughout the sex, but here the cruelty especially shines through so at most I could chuckle. There is something of an evolving dynamic as you go through the various scenes with a heroine but it’s a lot shallower than Shuusaku, to the detriment of both the characters and the sex.

As mentioned above, and like in Shuusaku, there is an option to see ero scenes from a first-person perspective (cue the meta), but unless I missed something the conditions to view scenes in this way is obscure. The first person ero scenes are much less interesting this time around. A lot of the text is directly carried over from the Kisaku scenes, so the overall feel of the scene remains the same. And like mentioned earlier, the CGs for the first person versions of scenes are usually atrocious. They’re animated too, despite there rarely being any point or benefit to doing so. Just seeing the back of the heroine’s head move forward and backward doesn’t really do anything for me.

Overall: 79/100

Pros: Excellent, deliciously twisted humor; courtesy of the most vilely entertaining rapist protagonist in eroge; gameplay is simple but addictive; heroine arcs help fill out their characters and the game; art scratches that 90’s anime itch

Cons: Non-Kisaku cast is unmemorable; true end has wholesomeness but lacks payoff; ero scenes and CGs don’t do the trick

If you took Kisaku and swapped out its true end for Shuusaku’s you’d have a legitimate masterpiece. Kisaku’s gameplay and humor are so fun I would regularly sink 3-5 hours straight into it. While the cast could have been more likeable and had more depth, in practice this doesn’t detract from the game nearly as much as you might expect. They more than serve their purpose as foils for the main star, Kisaku, to play off of. And though the sex scenes aren’t very arousing, they also serve a purpose, in how they establish the darkness of the game and the true depths of Kisaku’s depravity. In practice my only true complaint against the game is the stunted true end. To be fair, after Shuusaku I went into Kisaku expecting something as amazing from its true end. Kisaku’s is more like a nice little bonus, but even viewing it solely in the context of this game, it needed to be more than that. It’s too hollow of a prize for the accomplishment of beating the game, and the main non-true end is itself hardly an ending, seeming to hinge on the expectation that the real ending is yet to come, in the true end. So this one criticism of mine is unfortunately a pretty fatal flaw for the game.

Otherwise, Kisaku is something of a masterpiece of ero”ge.” It excels in its gameplay, text, and dirtiness, and brings all these elements together to create an amazingly consistent entertainment. I think this type of pure entertainment was more of an aim of eroge in the 90’s and has since been lost in favor of a bifurcation of overly ambitious stories and underachieving moe games. There’s something to be said for a game being fun, and Kisaku is top-class at this.