Some of you might wonder why I’ve decided to go back to the eroge reviews here on The Grim Tower. Well, aside from the fact that as I’ve stated, they are more popular and controversial now than they’ve ever been – which works for us, because we love controversy – but there is also one reviewer that I want to contrast pretty drastically, which would be Annie Of Guardian Acorn reviews. The issue I have with her reviews is pretty simple – she wears her politics on her sleeve and these filter all too much into professional reviews of eroge products. As more of a right-leaning independent who used to be more left-leaning until the Overton window moved to the left which made today’s classical liberal much closer to that of a libertarian and the modern liberal much closer to a socialist and/or anarchist in several ways, (remember that anarchy cannot exist alone as a system and is only a step towards another form of government) I always chose to keep my politics out of my metal reviews unless the albums were themselves expressly political. There were several times where I’ve reviewed records which were created by people who drastically differ from my own political beliefs and I always treated those with care to the music at large. If it sounds good, I really don’t care what you’re singing about or what you’ve chosen to worship or not to worship in that case.
What really grinds my gears about her reviews though would have to be Starless. In particular, and I’ve mentioned this before – she equates this computer game to being worse than actual sexual assault. Having a mother who has been sexually assaulted as well as several close friends and even a run-in with being nearly molested by a gay man myself back in my teenage years, this I find to be greatly offensive. This statement alone, if not made in jest is very disrespectful to those people who have actually been through this sort of thing and I can assure you that no matter how rough any form of media can be, there is nothing even comparable to someone forcing themselves on you in an act of sex. If a video game has traumatized you to that extent, I and Ken over at Ken’s Counseling Couch (which just relaunched today, so glad to hear you’re back at it!) would highly recommend you go see a therapist or similar in mental health that can help you work through your problems. You need to identify what in the game triggered (and I use that word in a clinical sense) certain traumas that you might have went through and made you feel that way. If this is not properly worked out through the use of a mental health professional, then there are several films you may want to avoid. You should also use discretion with even this kind of material which can be highly traumatic for some people. I have described scenes from Starless to some of the people in my server and they admitted it would have been too much for them. Nevertheless, they would not have compared it to actual sexual abuse or even the equivalent of abuse.
The reason why I have such a disdain for this review is because people only have it to reference Starless. They Google it and the review comes up – that’s what the algorithm shows. A user on GOG had no idea what Starless was and this review was the first one that came up. Seeing such an incredibly biased opinion that not only compares the game to sexual assault but doesn’t take in mind the fact that our protagonist is a teenager and is going to speak like a horny teenager, (which might be considered cringe now, but actually fits the character’s personality during the time period in which it was localized) produces an unfair critique of the game. From what it sounded like, Annie has never seen any over the top and extremely violent torture-porn films whereas I myself have seen all those kinds of silly B, C, D, and even lower rated movies with similar scenarios. Nor has she seen a single episode of The Man Show where the girls jumped on trampolines. If she had, she might have understood the dialogue and tone of the main character a bit better. When a young man has his eyes set on a fancy new car, it’s because he wants something to attract women. This was a thing for horny young men in the nineties.
In fact, I played the dreaded “Escape Ending” in which the starvation and bestiality are both displayed and it was so over the top that I found it laughable. The protagonist only has dog food to eat and Marisa’s pee to drink while he proceeds to see the woman he became attached to have her way with dogs (which is actually not uncommon and more men are starting to speak up about the relations that women and dogs have been having – especially when according to BBC reports from an Only Fans investigation, a few videos of this act were taken down and are rather common on the site) as well as the hilarity of a giant pot belly pig which is right out of GWAR’s early days. After all, it was GWAR who wrote “Fucking An Animal” decades ago. Folks, they even take a little piglet and force it into her buttocks, which would not actually happen in real life. I don’t think a tiny pig would forcibly have it’s way with a human being – and that’s what makes the scene so hilarious. You can’t even take it seriously at this point. I even have a feeling that the developers and storyboard artists were laughing about it as they wrote it. There’s no way you can convince me that even half of this story was meant to be taken seriously and the fact that it has triggered western reviewers (and now I’m using that term in it’s derogatory form) is comedy in itself. Starless was meant to shock – it’s like a Cannibal Corpse album cover back in the nineties. That was the whole point. “Eaten Back To Life” was banned in several countries just because of the album cover, which even the band didn’t take seriously – except for that one guitarist, but he had a screw lose. Then of course you had gore metal and pornogrind and slam death, all who banked on the same thing – how can we shock people? Black Metal did the same thing in the nineties with their “rah, rah, burn down churches and worship Satan” stuff.
And let’s be fair, Sei Shoujo is most definitely a metalhead and enjoys his rock and metal alike. Starless actually comes from the King Crimson album, “Starless and Bible Black” which of course “Bible Black” also comes from. In Bible Black, Carcass is also referenced. Namely, Sei Shoujo’s first ever visual novel “Heartwork” was named after the Carcass album of the same title. He loved that record as much as I did. Having been exposed to content and lyrics of a certain nature for almost my entire existence on this planet, I didn’t expect Starless to really get to me as much as it might some people. The same can be said with Closed Game, Euphoria, Maggot Baits and others. Not surprisingly, guitar is also featured in all three of those games. The OVA intro for Euphoria is definitely metal and features Nemu’s voice actress on vocals. Also, the newly released Dead End Aegis features Denkare and of course anyone who followed this site back in the old days knows how much I love their metal discs. They haven’t always been metal, but Yui never had a problem vocalizing heavy tracks for Eroge games. If I recall correctly, Denkare also did the OP intro for Sakuranomori Dreamers. Simply put, metal and these games just go well together. The darker the game, the heavier the soundtrack in certain cases.
Additionally, the music in some of these games, especially during some of the sex scenes can get quite dark and frightening, letting on a familiar horror atmosphere. Horror fans can classify these games as literal “sexy horror” and people familiar with Hostel or Saw will be right at home. Euphoria is in many ways, the sexual version of Saw with a smidgen of Battle Royale attached to it. This is also the lens that (for the most part) one needs to look at these games through. It’s also why I’ve had a problem with biased reviews since the dawn of time where I’ve noted countless in the metal magazines of old. Not that I have never been biased in some of my reviews, because indeed I have – but I try not to make a habit of it. Especially when it comes to completely mis-categorizing sexual torture porn and taking it literally. You’re completely missing the point there. As it has been said, “the curtains are fucking blue.” There is no need to further dissect it into some kind of philosophical rambling, which I can guarantee you would even have the developers themselves roll into laughter. Granted there are things we can observe from any form of media, but I just don’t feel that dissecting things in such a way properly explains the product. Especially if it comes off as a biased opinion of what it is. Let’s take Chainsaw Sally for example. It’s a really awful B-Movie about a woman who takes her victims and cuts them apart with a chainsaw. I will assure you that there is no great philosophical, feminist or any kind of thing attached to this, same with Frankenhooker or Dead Girl, which is where they’ve chained a teenage girl zombie up in an abandoned area and are charging people to have sex with her (also written by the man who gave us the script for The Evil Within 2). I mean, sure – you can find philosophical musings in all of these, but you’d be missing the whole point. Aside from something deep like Euphoria and yes even with Maggot Baits, I think people who are over analyzing some of this stuff need to take a chill pill.
So that’s why I’m tossing my hat back into the ring with a review of Euphoria. Now, unlike some other reviewers, I will be spoiling the games outright and there’s a reason for that – some people NEED to know what they’re getting into. Dead End Aegis for example doesn’t quite explain that it is about magical girls getting raped by tentacle monsters and treated like cattle by their male superiors, but THAT IS what it is about and things get very dark. However, looking at the cover of the thing you’ve never guess that. It just looks like “magical girls in space.” Which is why I need to say, “hey, hold on there sir! For there be tentacles (and situations of sexual abuse) in this one, you may not want to roll into it right away!” The person may then say, “well, I like muh tentacles, but I can’t do with all that mean abuse to the pretty ladies” and then they pick something else.
Then you have Euphoria’s cover where it doesn’t specify whether that is poop or dirt on the floor, so if a person asks, “is there poop in this game?” I will say, “YES, HOLY HELL THERE IS A LOT OF POOP IN THIS ONE! IT’S LIKE A SEVEN ELEVEN BATHROOM IN THERE!” and then they might make a more informed decision. Then you have Maggot Baits, for example. The person may ask, “so does this have a lot of maggots?” and I’ll say, “YES, HOLY HELL THERE ARE A LOT OF MAGGOTS AND THEY FUCK THE GIRLS WHICH SOMETIMES RESULTS IN ONE OR TWO GIANT FUTA PENISES SPROUTING OUT FROM THEIR VAGINAS!”
These are things that people really need to know about these games, so by hiding them, we’re not actually letting them know what they’re getting into. People have already requested filters for some sections in games and I understand completely as let’s be honest – some of this shit is just too depraved for some people. Even people who love the genre. Yet circling back to my main point here, regardless of how traumatizing a game might be, I still believe it is ultimately offensive to victims of sexual abuse to compare the game in any way to something like that. Being forced against one’s will to have sex in a real world setting is going to be by and large worse in any aspect than a piece of media and this kind of irrational behavior is what leads to censorship. It’s easier to say, “Are you used to movies like Hostel or A Serbian Film?” then you might like Starless, than it is to say the game was worse than sexual abuse. Especially if you’re serious about it. And again, if you are, and I truly mean this – stop, take a breath and get an appointment in with someone who can help you work through those kinds of mental health problems. I actually knew a guy who was broken by the ending of a certain visual novel and it eventually resulted in him being admitted to a local mental hospital. I’m absolutely not kidding and he’s doing much better now. Obviously, there was more going on than the visual novel, but his response to that stimuli made it clear that he needed mental help.
There’s no denying that some of these are very dark and depraved. They’re not for everyone. Some are rather lighthearted and others merely start out that way before becoming a clusterfuck of absolute hell. It’s important to know what to expect. The genre has become popularized with novels like Steins;Gate and Doki Doki Literature Club, but I still don’t think people on the opposite end of that spectrum are ready for the more extreme stuff. And they may never be. Which is fine, because I’ll be covering it for you when I have time and have properly finished these novels, so that I can accurately detail what you can expect from these kinds of works. Again, some are silly and we’ll cover those too. Just stay tuned and we’ll have more for you in the coming weeks. As an addendum, I will also cover H-Games I’ve finished, as we have done in the past.
– The Grim Lord
Saying that Starless is worse than being raped would be a pretty extreme statement for me to make, if I ever said it. However, I did not. I said it was worse than the mild sexual harassment I received in high school. That being said, I AM a CSA survivor, though at the time I wrote the review, I had repressed my trauma surrounding that incident, and didn’t even know that was the case. If I were to have written this review today, I would not have used a rape comparison, but nearly everything else about the review would have been the same.
That being said, it’s quite hypocritical how you spend one paragraph accusing me of misrepresenting Starless while not addressing any of my criticisms of the writing, characters, pacing, and instead choosing to go after one specific quote that, as previously established, was a misinterpretation on your part. And then the next few, you start claiming how I’m misrepresenting games like Euphoria and Maggot Baits (despite the fact that my reviews of them includes strict warnings that heavily emphasize their grotesque content), because I believe there are deeper themes then first appear. It sounds more like you just disagree with my opinions on the games, and resent the fact that my reviews show up in Google search results.
It’s also hilarious that you think the developers of Euphoria and Maggot Baits would laugh at my writing on them, when people who have worked on the game’s localization have actively praised my writing on the game. I literally got an early review code for Dead End Aegis precisely because Jast’s team knew I was one of the few people to talk about the game’s deeper political themes. If anything, dismissing any deeper analysis as “the curtains being blue” (which by the way, was meant to critique teachers forcing their own interpretations as the only correct ones, kind of like what you are doing here), is highly disrespectful to the people who creates these games, who almost always have significantly more thought put into their writing and design than the people playing them.
Alright, so I understand I may have been too harsh on that first line but you have to understand that when you’ve written a review that literally tells people not to play the game, I’m going to be a tad upset about that. Starless is definitely not for everyone, but there’s definitely an audience for it.
Secondly, the localization team are not the original writers of the game. I’m talking about the original Japanese team who worked on the game, as well as the original scenario writer, Sei Shoujo himself. Has the holy girl read your review? That would definitely change my opinion there.
And yes, it does irk me when I see your review for it in the algorithm because you have already turned people away from the game. When I mentioned it on a GOG forum to people who have never played it before, your review was immediately pulled up and they said the game sounded really awful based on your review. It turned them off and I had to tell them just to go through it and discover it themselves.
Although Starless has a more than fair amount of incredible depravity, the dev logs show a team that loves these characters, the setting and the music they’ve used in it. It’s a labor of love that was nearly delayed eight times before release. I just don’t care for the fact that you were telling people to avoid it and yes, I did read that review.
As for review codes and such, I have been a journalist in the music industry for over a decade. My inbox is still full to the brim with brand new music releases. That’s not a big deal for me, I get crap all the time that I don’t have time to mess with, especially when there’s no pay involved.
I don’t have much time to even work on this site anymore because I am constantly making this content where I am live reading through these games and comics as well – there’s just not much time to cover anything in the form of a written review. Jast asked me for a review of DEA, but I’m still in the middle of it. It’s going to take a long time before I can even get to the point where I could write a review, since all my reading is more or less done live.
I think the most fair thing I can say is that perhaps you didn’t use the word “rape” here, but what you did infer was that you felt the game was either or worse or on the level of some type of sexual assault you received. I’m sorry that happened to you, I almost had a brush with it myself before I realized what was going on and had a chance to get away. Some are not so lucky.
But I just think that having that brush with this situation and then comparing any kind of computer game to it is just a bit too much for me. It’s completely fine that you didn’t like the game. Maria might be my waifu of sorts, but that doesn’t mean I exclude the heinous things she does and don’t condone them or 90% of the content in that game. But I would never go so far as to say the game personally violated me. As someone who has also been inappropriately touched and was able to stop the action, I just can’t say that this game, nor any game would be on that level. That’s just too over the top for me. I started out with Bible Black you know, that was my first iteration of these games. So I was prepared for the crazy – but never in my wildest dreams would I equate that to any form of sexual assault, be it rape or improper touching. Doesn’t matter. Your analysis rubbed me the wrong way and I’ll certainly mention that in my review of the game.