TRANSMIT the PLACEBO - Let's Play The Silver Case

[Timrod]

It’s kind of funny that I’ve LPed an (ostensibly) post-modern game set in 1999, and now I’m LPing an actual post-modern game both made and set in 1999. This is The Silver Case, and it’s Suda51’s last game before he formed Grasshopper Manufacture, the studio under which Suda made more or less every game anyone outside of Japan knows him for. It’s either the first or second game (depending on who you ask) in Suda51’s “Kill The Past” series, a theme that shows up throughout most of the stuff Suda has ever made.

This game originally released in 1999 on the PS1, but like most of the other canon Kill The Past games (which include Moonlight Syndrome, Flower Sun and Rain, and Killer7) was never released in English. That changed in 2016, when Grasshopper ported it to the PS4 and PC to promote a new sequel titled The 25th Ward.

If you’ve played Umineko or Higurashi, you’ll immediately recognize The Silver Case’s narrative structure. The game has two plot arcs, titled TRANSMITTER and PLACEBO, which are meant to be played in alternating order. TRANSMITTER was written by Suda51, while PLACEBO was written by Masahi Ooka - who worked on a number of Suda’s later games up to Travis Strikes Again.

Hopefully, this will go a lot better than that other game I started LPing only to kill it before I even finished the first update.

Summary

Summary

Summary

Summary

[Timrod]

Summary

: The game starts with a short intro movie. For now, I’ll just post a couple of shots from it.

: It uses stock footage, but so did a lot of stuff in the PS1 days.

: The first thing the game asks you is who you are. I put in Timrod for this recording, but I’ll change it to whatever everyone wants if I get responses.

: The game immediately throws us into Case 0, which is the first part of the TRANSMITTER arc.

: There’s a square cursor that moves to “type” the text, accompanied by very loud typewriter noises. What they’re talking about here is the setting for most of the game - the 24th Ward of Tokyo.

: In reality, Tokyo only has 23 wards.

: By the way, if you’ve played Travis Strikes Again, you might recognize this text layout. Suda51 ‘created’ an entire system for this game he calls the “Film Window”. We’ll see that in a bit.

![TheSilverCase 2022-01-21 22-43-14-22|690x380]
(upload://ivm9RxPEh1GqeSWgWaLxcBYhh7t.png)

: All of the people we saw in the intro cutscene are members of the Heinous Crimes Unit. There’s a manual that comes with the Steam version of the game that shows how the unit is organized.

: It’s more or less directly based on the structure of the police in Japan in reality… at least, as far as I know.

: This is the Film Window. It’s more or less omnipresent and resizes to accomodate dialog portraits.

: “Fuckin’ radio. Playing nothing but shit.”

: Fuckin’ Hashino. Writing nothing but shit.

: “On nights like this, weird shit happens. That’s just the way it is.”

: The game will highlight the portrait of whoever is talking with a blue rectangle, which we’ll see used heavily in the next scene.

: “I got a bad feeling… a real bad feeling.”

: “The hell is that? Aah!!”

: “He took a shot! That fuckin’ punk.”

: Right away, you can tell that Suda understands cinematography and also how to write, and I fucking love it. I guess the way I’d put it is like this.

: When I played Death Stranding, I immediately got the sense that Hideo Kojima was kind of desperate to prove that his game was art.

: Suda instead goes “No, fuck you, my game is art and I can use the medium to do things I could never do anywhere else”.

: The downside is that Suda’s stuff doesn’t always pan out (see: Michigan) but at least he tries.

: “Where’s Sumio?”

: “He left.”

: “Oh.”

: “Something happen?”

: “A man with a gun just fired shots and fled near the river in E Ward. Call in the closest units.”

: “Where to?”

: “He’s heading west in E3.”

: “Got it, we’ll pinpoint him from here. Have you been injured?”

: “Nope ---- I dodged the slug, watched it whiz right by.”

: He may as well be saying “No, I’m cool, I swear.”

: “Huh?!”

: “Nothing yet?”

: “Got it!”

: “Where? Is it within our jurisdiction?”

: “Hold on — ‘Public Safety’? Those covert op guys…”

: “Natsume’s guys, huh… OK, call them in.”

: “Got it!”

: “Shit… ‘TGIF’ my ass…”

: “No pinpoint yet?”

: “Target pinpointed: ‘Cauliflower’.”

: “The private railroad satellite… perfect place to lie low. I’m gonna rush to the spot. Send the location to Natsume for me.”

: “Got it!”

: Random shots of the moon are a thing in the Kill The Past games.

: The manual has an organizational chart for these as well. As far as I can tell, they’re all NGOs that eventually became the government for the 24th Ward.

: This guy is Natsume, and he heads what’s basically the black ops team for the Public Safety Department.

: “We’re currently closest to the scene. We need to pretend we just happened upon the scene. HQ confirmed the target and made the decision to get us involved.”

: “That means this is a Secret Security-authorized case. Keeping our movements under wraps is our top priority, but unfortunately a jurisdiction detective happened upon the scene, making things a bit difficult.”

: “We need to keep the amount of info let out at a minimum. You may come into contact with the detective. But avoid any unnecessary contact at all costs.”

: This is Sakamoto.

: “Disposal will be a problem. Keep it at Level Y or below.”

: “Got it.”

: “I’ll explain the plan simply. Save questions for afterward. Armament of level X or below has been approved. What you carry is up to you.”

: “After entering ‘Cauliflower’ in E3, lead the target to the ‘Cauliflower’ roof. Proceed with disposal. That is all. Any questions?”

: “Chief, how should we carry out disposal?”

: “I’ll leave that up to you. I’ll provide remote support.”

: And this is Inomata.

: “I believe I said that this was a Secret Security-authorized case. Do you need me to explain further?”

: “That will not be necessary.”

: “Anything else?”

: “That is all.”

: “Just because this is your first real night doesn’t mean you need to be overly vigilant. He who masters his own mind smiles in the end. Stay relaxed until you reach the scene.”

: In this shot, Sakamoto is on the left and Inomata is in the middle. The third person is our character. Their names do come up very briefly when they start speaking, but it’s hard to capture.

: “Can’t you calm down?”

: “I’m about to lose my shit here.”

: “Then force it back down.”

: “I can’t. My mind is cutting me off.”

: “If you can’t force it down then at least control yourself. You’re gonna die—”

: “OK…”

: “I’m scared, too, to be honest. It’s my first time in the flesh, you know?”

: “Sorry, but let me focus…”

: “This is totally different from training. Remember, Timrod? Our training maneuvers up north… it was the first time you shot real bullets, yeah? But that wasn’t the first time for me.”

: “Back when I was in the syndicate. Old-school bullets. They gave them to me to take Tsubaki’s head off. Of course, they were modded to the point that they might blow your goddamn hand off.”

: Tsubaki was also the name of the upgraded beam katana Travis could get in the first No More Heroes. I don’t know if there’s some connection, or if it’s just a Japanese name.

: “I’d already thrown my life away, so I didn’t care. No matter what would’ve happened… thinking about it now, being young, I should’ve been full of hope.”

: “But it didn’t matter then. Young, old, whatever… I got handed a piece and jumped in like a maniac. Just popping caps all over the place… I missed every shot.”

: “All of a sudden I was surrounded, ten guns pointed right at me. That’s when I first met the chief. Why did he choose me? He told me to put my life in his hands, and he took me in.”

: “Same for you too, right, Timrod? Picked up by the chief… Inomata, too. Don’t think about your own life. Believe in him. We’ll carry out our lives. We’ve put our hope in him. Don’t forget it.”

: “I’ll get instructions from HQ over the radio. You guys are basically like guinea pigs. Refrain from acting arbitrarily and prioritize the collection of sample data. Any questions…?”

: Gotta love how the briefing starts with “Yep, you’re all expendable, go out there and die.”

: “That is all.”

: “Ok, sync your watches. Sakamoto, count us down.”

: “Got it. Countdown to zero—”

: “Don’t forget, this is not an exercise. You need to remember that this is the real thing. Again, this is an actual fight. Come back alive. That is all. Good luck!”

: “What a way to win us over. One of your soldiers?”

: “So it was you… I heard you were back in the field.”

: “You too, right? Looks like one final gamble to me.”

: “I don’t gamble. I’m in the Self-Defense Unit. What about you, Kusabi?”

: “I started that thing up, because of the ‘Silver Case’.”

: “The Heinous Crimes Unit, huh?”

: “I thought you’d come, too. I didn’t think we’d meet up like this.”

: “I can never go back there again. I’m not as strong a man as you, Kusabi.”

: “It’s not about that. It’s because they could use you.”

: “That’s strength.”

: “Being young and all… just like your soldiers. You’ve got your young ones to take over the next generation. There’s still plenty of shit you gotta show them.”

: “Kusabi…”

: “Natsume… it’s not just us anymore. Don’t overwork yourself. We still got a long ways to go.”

: “That may be true.”

: “How’s Sakura doing?”

: “She just turned 22. She’ll be graduating college this year.”

: “They get so big… how is she? She become a proper woman yet?”

: Somehow, it’s just like Suda51 that they’re doing this in the middle of a black op.

: “She takes after my wife - real stubborn. You know how she is. She’s not a little girl anymore.”

: “That’s a good thing. Even if she acts like she hates you, your daughter’s still more precious than anything.”

: “Really.”

: “Chief, we’re moving in.”

: “OK. Sakamoto, go in first - then Inomata and Timrod.”

: “Got it!”

: “That’s enough nostalgia for now. I’ll back you guys up, too.”

: “Thanks!”

: I’ll stop here for now, in case people want to decide on a name. Next time, we’ll see how this game actually plays and finish the prologue.

[Timrod]

Summary

: This is the update where shit’s going to start getting weird.

: “Loud and clear. Inomata and Timrod are both OK.”

: “I’ll forward you the set points. Get on your respective points and get into formation.”

: “Got it.”

: “Timrod, calm down… wait for my orders. Stay in position. Inomata, do you read me? The obstacles in front of you create a blind spot. Make sure to get proper confirmation.”

: “Don’t forget that the perp is armed, or you’ll get yourselves killed…”

: “I know!”

: “Stop fucking around, you idiot! You’re in the nucleus of the 24 Wards private railroad. Innocent citizens are gonna get killed if you start shooting like a maniac.”

: “Got it.”

: Okay, no war crimes apart from the whole being a government hit squad thing. Got it.

: “Sakamoto, go in ahead. Relieve Timrod.”

: “Got it!”

: “Timrod, listen up. There’s a plate ahead of you. Check it out.”

: “Going up to the second floor, Chief.”

: “Wait, don’t move yet.”

: “Got it.”

: “OK! Timrod, get moving. It’ll take some time before you get used to the controls, and it’ll seem complicated at first. But don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.”

: There’s a tutorial I’m going to skip in favor of explaining it myself. In the bottom-right, you can see the menu ring. There’s three commands: Contact (which is your “interact” button), Implement (for using items) and Movement. We can try contacting Sakamoto and Inomata, but they don’t have much to say.

: If you turn to the left, the “plate” that Natsume is talking about is hanging on the wall. I haven’t played the PS1 version, but I’m pretty sure that in the original game, this was how you were meant to work out the puzzles in this area.

: Speaking of which, there are puzzles in this area. Most of the puzzles were changed from the PS1 version (ostensibly to make more sense in English) and there’s a manual included with the game that gives you the solution to most of them.

: The re-release also includes a “solve the puzzle automatically” button, which I will be using extensively because the puzzles in this segment are mostly time-wasters.

: “Maybe it’s for real estate authentication?”

: “Looks like it.”

: “Chief, I’ve found a switch.”

: “Probably the lights. Turn it on.”

: “Got it.”

: “There should be a control panel nearby. Check it out.”

: “Inomata, what’s up?”

: “I think I saw someone up above. I’m going in ahead…”

: “Wait, don’t act on your own.”

: Inomata wants to go in because this is kind of a horror game and somebody’s gotta die first.

: “Sakamoto, stand down. Let him go on ahead. Inomata, I’m gonna forward you the target point. Don’t go too far.”

: “Got it! Thank you.”

: “This gonna be OK…?”

: “I don’t care. If anyone’s in a hurry to die, I won’t stop them.”

: “Got it.”

: There’s a brief tutorial (which I skipped) where Natsume teaches you how to look up and down.

: If we go around the pillar in the middle and look down, there’s something we can pick up. I’m not sure what picking these up actually does, but they’re apparently missable.

: Comic BEAM is a real manga magazine - it’s a small monthly aimed at the ‘seinen’ audience. I did a quick search and it looks like most of what it carries is stuff that’s so niche that no one bothers to fan translate it.

: This here is what we’re actually after. First, we have to look down.

: “I’ll check…”

: “Not yet — it’s probably something that’ll change the structure. It’s for decryption code input. Until we work it out, don’t mess with it.”

: “Timrod, I’m gonna go back up Inomata. I’m going up, come with me.”

: “Sakamoto, I can’t pinpoint Inomata. This room is using an absorber.”

: “An absorber… like an anti-jamming device?”

: “Seems like it.”

: “That’s what the data says.”

: “It’s designated as a structure of unknown use. This sort of accident was to be expected.”

: I’m not sure if the weird grammar is just a localization fuckup, or if it’s intentional.

: “So what about Inomata…?”

: “Back him up.”

: “Got it!”

: “You ready, Sakamoto? You take the lead from here on out. I’ll pinpoint and set our sights on the target. Lead him up to the roof. I’ll take care of him.”

: “Got it.”

: “Timrod. There’s a door lock past here. The code input is complicated, but don’t worry. We’ve already got the info required to unlock the door. A text string needs to be decrypted.”

: “But unfortunately, we don’t have the password yet. First, find the password.”

: The dialog is kinda cryptic about how the puzzle actually works, and I think it worked differently on the PS1.

: “Timrod. That control panel code is a Caesar cipher. Only engineers come and go from here. That means… they would want a code with easy to memorize rules.”

: “Caesar ciphers are decrypted by shifting letters in the alphabet. You can see how this version works using the control panel. Get to the first floor quickly!”

: So anyway, here’s how this puzzle is supposed to work. I didn’t realize this until after I finished playing through this whole thing.

: You see the word “Please” on that input screen? That’s the password. What you’re supposed to do is take it down to the computer on the first floor, which then decrypts it for you.

: Anyway, this isn’t really a Caesar cipher. A Caesar cipher works by taking all of the letters on a page and shifting them a certain number of positions down the alphabet.

: The key to a Caesar cipher is that all of the letters are shifted the same number of positions, which clearly isn’t the case here because both E’s translate to a different character.

: The cipher used here is actually a Vigenere cipher, which is a modification to Caesar that uses a codeword (or code alphabet) to determine how many positions to shift each letter.

: Thankfully, the encryption table for the Vigenere cipher was found sometime in the late 19th century. I found the decryption alphabet to see if Suda snuck anything in, but it’s super basic. The alphabet is “BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZA”.

: All of this is shorthand for “this puzzle is bunk and Suda knew it, that’s why the skip puzzle button exists” and this is pretty much the only reason I’m okay with it and not screaming.

: This door only has one thing we need behind it.

: “You did it, Timrod. Do this door next.”

: In the 90s, I can imagine that writing a program to solve the Vigenere cipher was kind of a pain in the ass. Today, it’s relatively easy - there’s dozens of solvers out there for it.

: “Her heart rate is normal… she seems to be OK. Keep her warm and she should be fine. Hm…?”

: Sakamoto does not strike me as the sharpest tool in the shed. I’m picturing this lady bleeding out from a gut shot and Sakamoto going “It’s fine, just bit of hypothermia.”

: There’s a text box here that scrolls by EXTREMELY quickly. The text reads “H E L P MIKA” except the “HELP” is spaced vertically.

: “It’s OK. We came to rescue you. You’re gonna be OK. Don’t worry. Stay calm. We’re here to help you. Everything is fine now. Don’t worry.”

: “We came to help. We’ll protect you. Just stay calm.”

: “Don’t worry ma’am, I’m from a government black ops hit squad and I’m here to help, and by help I mean I’m not immediately going to murder you.”

: “This is dangerous - until she calms down, don’t let her move. Timrod, I’m gonna go help Inomata. Let’s hurry to the third floor.”

: “You OK?”

: “Take a fucking look… I’m pretty far from ‘OK’.”

: “Are you hurt pretty bad?”

: “Just a bit… but I can’t move my goddamn arm.”

: “You fall back — can you move on your own?”

: “Yeah. If I force it.”

: “Then force it.”

: “That’s not very nice. I’m injured, you know…”

: “You acted on your own. I got no sympathy for you. We’re getting back up now. There are survivors on the second floor. Get them out of there.”

: Survivors? You mean the one survivor who may or may not have been dead?

: “Got it… you heard him, Timrod. I’m going downstairs. Our guy is in the back. He’s pretty fucked up. It’s like he’s not afraid to die —”

: “No, it’s more like he’s enjoying the risk of death. He’s laughing. About the fact that he’s about to get killed. What the fuck…”

: “Laughing all cynically like that. He can’t accept his own death. A typical criminal. Timrod, kill the motherfucker. Don’t even let the world know this guy exists. Just dispose of his ass.”

: “Hey Sakamoto… you listening?”

: “That’s my job…”

: Sakamoto, psychiatrist with a gun.

: “This guy’s pretty stiff.”

: “Is that a problem? I don’t screw around.”

: “I’m falling back. Sakamoto, Timrod - it’s up to you guys.”

: This puzzle is the same as the last two - it uses the Vigenere cipher with the same code alphabet.

: "Christ… she was so young… Timrod, the target is up above. I can’t let this guy get away with this. I’m gonna kill the motherfucker !! Let’s move !!! "

: I read somewhere that all of the dead bodies in this part of the game are characters from Moonlight Syndrome, a game Suda worked on a few years earlier when he still worked for Human.

: Yes, that Human. The one who developed Clock Tower and gave us all the amazing trainwrecks that were Clock Tower: Ghost Head and Clock Tower 3.

: If we turn around, there’s another code-locked door. If we try using the same cipher as before (or, you know, just hitting the skip puzzle button)…

: “Inomata, do you read me?”

: “…”

: “Inomata! Respond!!”

: “…”

: “Son of a bitch - again…? We’ve just gotta roll with it… I’ll go back down and revert the control panel. Once it’s been restored, open this up. Be ready.”

: As soon as Sakamoto leaves, the lights in the room shut off.

: “Inomata, where are you? Answer me. Timrod, something’s wrong. I can’t find Inomata or the woman. There’s no sign of them. Everything OK there?”

: “I’m at the control panel… I’ll fix it.”

: “Restoration complete… but, it’s no good. The password has been changed. Looks like he switched it on us. We’re screwed…”

: All that’s changed is the key to the Vigenere cipher. I’m not sure how exactly you’re meant to work this out, other than maybe going down to the computer again. The new code alphabet is “GVLXKFPSEQU”.

: “This is Natsume… Timrod? I’ve got you locked. I haven’t found the target. He may be hiding in a blind spot. Move with caution.”

: "What happened to Sakamoto and Inomata? Have they gone in for backup?

: There’s a contact point right outside the doorway, but it’s not immediately visible.

: That’s because it’s another Comic BEAM. I looked up what these do and the answer is nothing.

: “What happened?!”

: “A survivor… Timrod, leave them for now. Got it? Don’t fuck this up. The target is hiding close by.”

: Yep, just a lady covered in blood holding what appears to be a severed head. No big deal.

: I feel like Persona 5 would have been a much better game if at random points during the long, pointless cutscenes they had cutaways to stock footage of the moon.

: Just imagine that one scene with Sumire and Akechi at the cafe, only halfway through it cuts to a moon shot and then the cutscene is over. 100% improvement.

: This entire thing is more or less a giant reference to Moonlight Syndrome… at least, from what I understand. Moonlight Syndrome was never localized.

: Supposedly, the guy working on the Eternal Punishment PSP translation (more like not working on it) is also working on doing Moonlight Syndrome. I doubt it’s ever happening.

: “Timrod!! Fire!! Don’t hesitate!! Shoot the motherfucker!!!”

: I get that this is supposed to be horror but it’s kinda dumb.

: Kusabi gives no fucks about weird horror shit.

: “This falls under our jurisdiction. Don’t act without our permission.”

: I think Sakamoto is the only person on a hit squad who is going to complain about jurisdiction.

: “You hear that from Natsume? Is that it, Natsume?”

: “The chief has nothing to do with this. We hold the disposal rights for this target. This doesn’t concern you.”

: “So this is how you wanna handle it, huh? This isn’t fuckin’ high school, Natsume. Is this what you wanted to do? Answer me, BITCH!!”

: “Chief, who is this asshole anyway?!”

: “The Kotobuki Syndicate.”

: “Kotobuki?!”

: Metal Gear!?

: “Drop the shitty nicknames. It’s the 24 Wards Heinous Crimes unit - the same as you assholes. Like a disposal service.”

: “So, does that mean… it’s supposed to be OK? Chief?”

: “It’s the guy who cut off your lead.”

: “Fuck!”

: “Well, that’s just how it is. Now clean things up here. Hey, Babyface — you there, the one that looks like a chinchilla.”

: It’s not a chinchilla. It’s a fluffy, bat-like monster thing.

: “You mean Timrod?”

: “The fuck should I know? The chinchilla. Why the hell didn’t you fire? You frozen in fear or something? You’re gonna get your ass killed.”

: “My face is burned into this guy’s eyeballs. These pieces of shit are fucked in the head. So don’t even leave a bit of skull. Wipe them the fuck off of this plane of existence!”

: “Hmph.”

: “You listen up too, Straight-edge… why’re we disposing of these guys? Any idea?”

: “They’re criminals.”

: “So?”

: “This guy is a killer!”

: “I’m sick of this childish bullshit… you’re a funny guy, Natsume. You do some really unique shit. Listen up. ‘Disposal’ means cutting these motherfuckers out of this world.”

: “Get rid of their very existence, so nobody ever has to see them again. This crime virus they’re spreading around, cut it off at the source.”

: We’ve already heard in the last update about “transmittable crime”, though as far as I’m aware the game never really goes into what that is - whether it’s copycat criminals or some kind of brain virus.

: My guess is that it’s probably a reference to a common thing in the 1990s where you had advisers to Bill Clinton warning that the violent crime rate was going to spiral out of control until society collapsed.

: There’s a book called Freakonomics that goes into that pretty well, but in reality by the time those people were saying that shit (and this is as late as 1995 and 1996) the crime rate was already falling.

: “Annihilation of the self… that’s what we do — tenacious. You guys take over from here. And watch your backs.”

: “This creepy motherfucker is at it again.”

: “Look! This is what crimes brings. This is the demon brought on by their criminal powers.”

: I didn’t typo that, that’s what the game actually says.

: “Can you shoot him, Chinchilla? Can you take them on? Fire!! Destroy this very moment!”

: “I finally understand… I won’t falter again. Bring the hammer down on these unforgivable bastards! Timrod, get rid of them!”

: “So the sleeping lion has been awakened. This is gonna be a long journey…”

: And that’s it for Lunatics. Decoyman is the next chapter in the Transmitter arc, which we’ll do next time - this is the only time we’ll be doing two Transmitter arcs back to back.

[Timrod]

Summary

: It’s been a long time since I’ve posted an update to an LP and recorded more on the same day. Anyway, this is the menu for chapter selection. We haven’t unlocked the first Placebo chapter yet.

: This guy on the left is Ryu Munakata, who is listed in the manual as a special agent of some kind who works with the 24th Precinct Heinous Crimes Unit but isn’t actually part of it.

: He has a portrait, but we won’t be seeing it in this chapter, so I’ll be using a temporary one from the manual.

: “Huh? What the hell do you mean?”

: “He’s gonna wake up.”

: "Is this info from your place?

: “No… I don’t know that much.”

: “Then, what?”

: “Pocket money…”

: “How greedy… don’t overestimate civil servants. Overtime for this quarter is getting cut.”

: “Fine, never mind then.”

: “You son of a bitch, I’ll shoot your ass dead where you stand…”

: Kusabi threatens pretty much every new character we meet, as we’ll see a bit later in this update.

: “Kidding, kidding… It’s just a hunch, but… I got my wisdom teeth pulled, right? At that time…”

: “What one time?”

: “Just before the ‘Silver’ thing…”

: “And? So what? You trying to tell me that your toothaches are supposed to be… some sort of antenna for shit about to go down or something?”

: “Exactly!”

: “What kinda jerkoff in this day and age believes that superstitious bullshit?”

: “No really, I’m telling you… it’s accurate. You really should believe it.”

: “Right about now, he’s taking life slow in the clink. Probably even gone and reformed himself by now…”

: It’s not clear why they let Kamui live when the government has two different hit squads in the area, but I’m guessing that’s probably a plot point.

: “Don’t underestimate what my teeth can do! I’m telling you, they’ve got a knack for this kind of ‘second sight’ !”

: “OK then! I believe you! I don’t get it, but I believe you! So what am I supposed to do now?”

: “Hmm…”

: These shots are part of a video that’s a good 15 seconds or so long, which show nothing but a woman running through what looks like a parking garage.

: Interestingly, this was a stage in one of Suda’s later games - a game called Ranko Tsukigime’s Longest Day.

: I’d ask how it is a guy in a highly-secure psych ward got a harpoon gun of all things, but this game takes place in the same world as No More Heroes and Killer7. No really, it does.

: This particular choice is a bit strange from a timing perspective, given that we’re about to play through the events being described. I guess you could compare it to Pet Sematary in that way.

: “Excuse me?”

: This is Sumio, who is Kusabi’s partner in the Heinous Crimes Unit.

: “No, it’s nothing… just talking to myself.”

: The game gives this guy’s name as Tachibana, but he’s not in the manual.

: “He seemed totally fine…”

: “So that ‘totally fine’ patient murdered his counselor and escaped? What a lovely fuckin’ story.”

: “Any problems with the system of management?”

: “There are always two security guards present. I don’t think there are any problems…”

: “So you got two amateur-ass rent-a-cops on a crazed serial killer? That’s basically like begging him to murder someone.”

: Kusabi is such a perfect asshole character, and I love every moment of it.

: “Kamui Uehara didn’t have the capacity to take care of himself normally. He has extremely debilitating mental disorders. He does not currently possess the capacity to kill or hurt anyone.”

: “So he’s all broken down?”

: “That’s a prejudiced viewpoint. There are cases which are not directly linked to mental breakdown.”

: I think this is the only point so far where if I was writing this, I would probably have made Kusabi’s line something like “He’s so incapacitated that he got past two guards, got a harpoon gun and killed someone. Fuckin’ idiot.”

: “Well, whatever… so the main point is ‘Kamui’s not here’ then.”

: “Thank you, doctor. We appreciate your cooperation.”

: “I get it now… some detectives really can be somewhat ‘difficult’ individuals, just like on TV. This was fun ----.”

: “Same here. I guess there are quack doctors everywhere too, huh.”

: “I’d sure like to be your personal physician. Anyway…”

: Kusabi makes an excellent seven-word summary of YIIK, and also of the expansion bits of Persona 5 Royal.

: “It’s sort of your fault. You were pretty rude to him…”

: “He’s been sitting here the whole time. Fuckin’ creepy…”

: “He’s the sole survivor from Special Forces. Real name unknown. No registration found. We found signs of it having been deleted. His codename is ‘Timrod’.”

: Well, I guess we know who the two dead people from Republic are. Too bad this isn’t a No More Heroes thing where they’ll turn up alive in two games.

: “Sounds pretty sketchy to me. What a fucked up story.”

: “You’ve come into contact with him before, at ‘Cauliflower’.”

: “Oh, you mean that Chinchilla… so you’re saying only he came back alive?”

: “Commander Natsume is currently in the ICU…”

: “I know. Natsume isn’t gonna die.”

: It’s weird that Natsume wears his glasses when we see him in his tactical gear in the prologue, but doesn’t here.

: “Our goal is to bring Kamui Uehara in alive. The target is thought to be armed. We don’t know what sort of weapon. Armament level Z.”

: Considering that the last mission was Armament Level X and we only had a handgun, I assume Level Z is… I dunno, rocket launchers?

: “Bring him in…? If we’re capturing him with Z-level armaments, then why…”

: I’m picturing Inomata complaining, “Look, we’re a government-backed hit squad. We do hits. None of this ‘capture alive’ bullshit. You see Golgo 13 doing live captures? Fuck no you don’t.”

: “Save your questions for later. I’ll continue.”

: “But!”

: “These are orders from up top! Just follow them! Don’t think! Keep your shit together!”

: “Got it!”

: “OK.”

: “According to satellite tracking data, the target doesn’t seem to have left here. Lure the target to Point GF03 and secure him. Clean everything up within the 100-second countdown after we begin. That is all.”

: “About the armaments…”

: “What is it, Sakamoto?”

: “What if it’s difficult to bring him in alive?”

: “Our main goal is to bring him in alive.”

: “We… we’re gonna find ourselves at an extreme disadvantage…”

: “This plan needs a guaranteed unit survival rate of 60% in order to be approved. Fill in the remaining 40% yourselves.”

: “Got it!”

: We’ve got a squad of three guys, one of which got owned by a rando with a revolver. This is going to go swimmingly.

: “Depending on the situation, I may join you. Good luck.”

: Inomata is off-screen in this shot. The soldier in front is our character.

: “He’s only one guy. This’ll be no problem — right? Look at Timrod. This guy has wiped out his emotions.”

: “Don’t equate me with him. Frigid bastard…”

: “Then fucking control yourself. Otherwise you’re just gonna die.”

: “Die, huh… I’m gonna die? Just me…?”

: “Inomata!!”

: “Even at Cauliflower, only I got shot… by some regular citizen… that little punk bastard.”

: “It’s because you underestimate the power of crime! Even a normal citizen, if their desire to hunt a person is high enough, has the power to commit a crime.”

: “They can even be tougher than us. You get that, right? Inomata, you were bested in terms of that power.”

: Wait, is he equating crime with power levels like this is Dragon Ball or some shit?

: “It’s impossible… I can’t…”

: “You need to have more criminal power than the target. Disposal is the same as crime. Just hunt the target — keep that in mind!”

: Yes, yes he is.

: “I can’t lose! If I think of it as hunting, I can’t be beat!”

: “It’s the same as training. As far as the ability to secure a target goes, Inomata, you’re better than anyone.”

: “I know!”

: “OK… you ready, too, Timrod?”

: Just as a heads up for those who may not want to see it, there’s going to be some gore coming up. We already know what happens here and I’m ending the update after this segment, so you can safely skip it.

: “OK. Turn your radios to channel 2. We’ll move on my zero count. Execute the mission. We’ll enter formation once we find the target. Sakamoto, you move ahead until we find the target.”

: “Target found. We’re moving.”

: “OK. Spread out and lure the target to GF03.”

: “Got it. Inomata, get to my left. Timrod, follow the radar directions. Don’t be late.”

: “Got it.”

: Unlike the last gameplay segment, this is entirely on rails. The two yellow + signs are Sakamoto (on the right) and Inomata (on the left) with the red + in the middle being Kamui.

: You can see the green arrows - all you have to do is follow them to end this. I’m not sure if there’s dialog for going the wrong way or not.

: We take 10 or so steps to the North, and you can see Kamui getting closer to Sakamoto.

: “Sakamoto, you’re too close to the target. Get some distance.”

: “Got it.”

: “Sakamoto, do you read me? Get some distance!”

: “— Is this thing broken? The displayed distance and visual distance don’t match.”

: “Inomata, Timrod, do you read me? Confirm target distance with your scopes. Hurry up!”

: There’s no actual scope or anything. All we can do is keep moving.

: “Currently at… huh?!”

: “Sakamoto!! What’s going on? Sakamoto, respond! SAKAMOTOOOOOOOOO!”

: I don’t know if this was an intentional reference to Metal Gear Solid or not, but given that Suda has a game full of cutscenes where two characters have a podcast about Takashi Miike films…

: “CHIIIIEEEEF!!! Sakamoto’s callback…!”

: “… Continue the mission. Everyone keep your distance and follow the target. Keep this distance till I join you.”

: “CHIIIIEEEEF! YOU BASTARD…!!!”

: “Keep following the mission. Don’t fuck around, you idiot!”

: “FUCK OOOOOFF!!! I’LL HUNT HIIIIIIM!!!”

: Small editing note here - Inomata is using five exclamation points per sentence, but the site automatically truncates more than three.

: “Timrod. Continue following the radar!”

: Sakamoto’s dot appears back on the radar, and the arrows start directing us to him. This is where the gore warning comes into play.

: I just know Suda did this because of Event Horizon, which at the time would’ve been less than two years old.

: “FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK”

: “?!”

: “Fucking Kamui!”

: “I’m heading towards Timrod’s point. Inomata, be careful and move ahead. Inomata, do you read me?”

: “…”

: “Answer me, Inomata!”

: “…”

: “Do you wanna die?!”

: “…”

: “We’re going up against Kamui! Keep calm!!”

: “…”

: “Inomata! You, too…?!”

: “I’ll kill him…”

: “Timrod, move forward! Don’t let Inomata die!”

: You can see that Natsume is now on the map.

: “Be sure to collect my body. Even if we end up killing each other…”

: “Inomata, get back to the mission. Don’t let Sakamoto die in vain.”

: “…”

: “Disobeying orders will get your ass done! Remain calm!”

: “Chief… thanks for everything.”

: At this point, all we can do is move toward Inomata’s position.

: I wonder what kind of bowgun removes the target’s eyes.

: “Move to point GF04. Fall back. The mission has failed. I repeat. The mission has failed.”

: “We lost two; the mission failed. There are no excuses… retreat. We can’t allow any further sacrifices. I let my subordinates die like that.”

: “Timrod… laugh at me, will you? The only thing this old man can do is get his revenge. Kamui will be showing up soon. Right here…”

: “Timrod… do you know the phrase…”

: Flower Sun and Rain is one of two sequels to this game. It was released on the PS2 and never localized. There’s a DS port that was localized, except it sucks.

: “The answer is inside Kamui. Don’t let him get to you. Kamui isn’t here. Kamui is right next door. Kamui is just peeking in. You get me? Timrod. It’s time we said goodbye. Take care…”

: Next time, we’ll get a cool nickname and solve a bullshit puzzle.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Just as a heads up, this update will have Kusabi use a slur. I don’t know why they didn’t take it out for the re-release, since you already have a pretty good idea of what Kusabi’s character is.

: It’ll also contain an account of sexual assault. Both of these things will be at the end of the update, when the green security robot footage starts up.

: “The Special Forces Unit was destroyed… what happened?”

: “Tetsu, come on…”

: “What?”

: “He isn’t right…”

: “Huh? Hey, you listening?”

: “He’s in a state of psychosis. I don’t think he can speak.”

: I can speak, I just don’t because I’m still taking in the concept of LPing a game where the writing doesn’t suck.

: “Looks like it.”

: “What do we do?”

: “I guess we got no choice…”

: “Should we head out?”

: “The fuck are you talking about? Turn on the recorder.”

: “You’re right… hm? It won’t work, the battery’s dead.”

: “Well that’s useless. Whatever, write all this down.”

: “OK…”

: “Well? You even forget this guy’s face?”

: “Sumio… quit fucking around with the recorder like a little kid.”

: “Fuck off, old man. I know.”

: This is what, three times now that Kusabi has threatened to kill someone?

: “Fine, whatever, just ask the questions…”

: “I know… eight hours ago, the guy you guys were chasing. Kamui escaped to the woods near the isolation ward. Then, there was a chase. Special Forces was destroyed.”

: “Sakamoto and Inomata were killed in the line of duty… Natsume is still out cold in the ICU…”

: “Tetsu…”

: “Hm? So one more push, huh?”

: “Don’t.”

: “Why not?”

: “He’s extremely delicate. Any more and…”

: “Delicate?”

: It’s so nice to have a game that was made in 1999 where the characters have cell phones, as opposed to a game written in 2016 that has to explain dial-up.

: “Where’s Kusabi?”

: “He’s here.”

: “It’s an emergency. Get to the scene right away.”

: “Where to?”

: “Sending it over now. See you at the scene…”

: “Wait… she fucking hung up. What should we do?”

: “We go, obviously.”

: “No, I mean…”

: “What?”

: “Timrod…”

: “Hm… what do we do about this?”

: “He’s the sole witness.”

: “So we bring him.”

: “But without Dr. Tachibana’s permission…”

: “Fuck that guy.”

: “This isn’t something personal!”

: “Fuck off.”

: I really wish Suda had done an action game with Kusabi as the protagonist, because I could see there being a button in cutscenes where Kusabi tells whoever’s talking to fuck off.

: This would apply doubly to plot-important cutscenes, because Kusabi has no time for plot.

: “Seriously?”

: “Come on, we’re going! Huh? What’s up with this chinchilla, anyway…?”

: “Chinchilla? That’s kind of a shitty nickname after all.”

: I hope you’re ready for my absolute favorite bit of dialog in this game so far. If this game had been localized before No More Heroes came out, it probably would’ve eclipsed the “Mr. Sir Henry Motherfucker” scene in that.

: “In that case… maybe, like… ‘Private Dick Chinchilla’— no, that’s not it. He’s sort of a big guy… ‘Big Private Dick Chinchilla’ —?”

: "Nope, that sucks… I got it! Just shorten it to ‘Big Dick’ ! "

: “That’s a cool-sounding nickname. That’s it, then - Big Dick! What do you think, Sumio?”

: I think part of what makes me appreciate Kusabi so much as a character is having played Disco Elysium. This is basically what working with Harry Du Bois would be like.

: “That’s awesome!”

: Sumio being immediately in on it fucking kills me.

: “Let’s go, Big Dick!”

: I didn’t capture it right, but the time is 7:35 PM… which either means it’s a really long way to the sewer from the hospital or Kusabi and Sumio were in the hospital for almost ten hours.

: “Just past this sewer.”

: “Are the Unit 1 guys here?”

: “Yeah. Hachisuka and Morikawa should be…”

: “Let’s hurry.”

: “Hurry up, Big Dick.”

: The game automatically moves you to this point, and from here, shit can get a little confusing.

: You can’t immediately move north - all you can do is turn around. The trick is that each direction has different characters you can contact, and you need to contact all three.

: The game will be giving us bios of each character soon, but this is Morikawa. He’s part of the other half of the 24th Precinct Heinous Crimes Unit, and is Hachisuka’s partner.

: “We’re not sitting around on our asses like Unit 1.”

: “Who’s this guy?”

: “The witness. We brought him from the hospital.”

: “I heard Natsume’s guys all went down…”

: “Yeah, this guy’s the only one left.”

: “Some sort of superhuman?”

: “He’s Big Dick.”

: “Nice to meet you, Big Dick!”

: My new theory is that the player character is actually a sentient chinchilla, which I posed to Salty Vanilla. Here’s an early artist’s rendition of what the player character looks like.

: “Of course. So, who’s our guy?”

: “You didn’t hear? It’s Kamui…”

: “Kamui? You mean ‘Silver’ Kamui?”

: “So you remember, huh?”

: I didn’t find out until when I started working on this update, but there’s a timeline of events leading up to the start of the game on the game’s website.

: Some of it is spoilers, which is why I won’t post it here, but according to the timeline, the Silver Case happened in March of 1979 - almost exactly 20 years before the game starts.

: “I mean… how could I forget?”

: “What about this one?”

: “It’s really messed up… it’s like…”

: “It’s been awhile since we’ve had a nasty one like this.”

: “So it was him…”

: “Him? Kamui did this…?”

: “Yeah. No fuckin’ question, this was Kamui.”

: “But how?”

: “With that weird harpoon gun… he got four people with it.”

: “And he gouged out the different parts… get her down now!!”

: I remember in Disco Elysium when you had to either shoot the body down or become a racist.

: “Fuckin’ Christ…”

: Sumio and Hachisuka are over to the left.

: “Take a look. We’re just getting started…”

: “Seems like not much time has passed…”

: “Can you just keep quiet for me? Who’s this…?”

: “A special survivor. We brought him just in case. His name is Timrod.”

: “OK… Hi, Timrod. My name is Hachisuka.”

: “He’s in a state of shock. He can’t speak.”

: “Well then… good thing you brought him along then, huh?”

: I like to imagine that this is a conversation Hachisuka has every time Kusabi shows up to a crime scene.

: “It was Tetsu.”

: “Kusabi…”

: Finally, if we turn to the right from the initial view of the sewer waterfall, we can talk to two generic cops.

: “I don’t really know either, but apparently he’s some top secret serial killer.”

: “But I’ve never actually heard of him…”

: “It was all just rumors before. Nobody thought he was actually a real person.”

: “Why is this all not publicized?”

: “This world is full of the unknown.”

: “I thought it was all just made-up stories…”

: “There’s lots of stuff that little guys like you and I simply never know… crime is just like the darkness. It isn’t meant to be seen.”

: I mean, given that literal crime demons apparently exist in this universe, that’s probably a good thing.

: “That makes sense.”

: The entire time this dialog is going on, there’s camera noises and flashes going off in the Film Window.

: “Twelve hours…”

: “It was Kamui. The timeframe fits…”

: “Five hours between the woods and this. That would be enough time.”

: “Got an ID?”

: “Not yet…”

: “Let’s hurry and find where it happened.”

: “So he didn’t actually kill her here…?”

: “Nope… he did it somewhere else and then left her here, so it would stand out more…”

: “I’ll handle the ID.”

: “Do it… Sumio, take a look around.”

: “Roger that!”

: “Hachisuka! Where’s Hachisuka?”

: “She left.”

: “She left?!”

: “To attend the autopsy.”

: “Without even fucking saying anything…”

: “That sort of research is important, so…”

: “Whatever, fuck it. How about it, Big Dick? You remember anything?”

: Our movement is now unlocked, so we can go past the water.

: There’s a contact point right ahead of us. Let’s just see…

: And as soon as we take another step forward…

: “It’s a doll… right?”

: “What is this old thing doing here?”

: “No idea.”

: If you’re not familiar with Suda51, this is a hallmark of his writing - subverting the audience’s expectations by introducing a scene and then immediately discarding it.

: Ah, the tried-and-true policy tactic of not doing anything.

: You can tell a little bit about each character by what gun they use, so I’ll describe each one - just in case you’re not familiar.

: The SIG Pro is a polymer-frame handgun that was built to be a service weapon… but never really caught on anywhere except for France, where it’s the standard police sidearm.

: We’ve already seen most of Kusabi’s information, but they repeat it here anyway.

: The Colt Officer’s ACP is a short-barrel version of the M1911 developed for concealed carry and originally meant for military use. It’s not typically used by police due to a number of reliability issues.

: The SIG P229 is a concealed-carry variant of the SIG P226, and is a very common standard-issue sidearm among police and military units in the US.

: The P232 is a standard-issue gun for police officers in Japan, but is also used by a number of police departments in the US.

: “Kamui Uehara has escaped from the hospital isolation ward and has killed four people. He is currently still at large.”

: “Kamui is assumed to have made his way into the city, where he is currently in hiding. Now, three things.”

: “First off, there’s something I’d like everyone to be consistent with. The official name of this case is the ‘Kamui Case’. It’s a good, simple name.”

: “Second, I’d like you all to watch this video. Hachisuka, start the tape.”

: The video very slowly moves down the hallway as this is going on.

: “Well how thorough. Fast-forward it.”

: Kusabi understands the Hashino-Allanson Rule of Explanations well.

: “I can’t. It’ll damage the tape head.”

: Of course the futuristic guard robot uses VHS tapes. This is 1999, and everyone thinks DVDs are the next LaserDisc.

: “Whatever, let it play.”

: “Yeah, so what?”

: “What about it?”

: “This is where the female victim worked. At the time of the murder, she was wearing her own clothes.”

: “Yes.”

: “So what does this mean?”

: “So there was someone she wanted to see so badly she was willing to break the rules…”

: “She is believed to have been meeting with Kamui in secret.”

: “The fuck is wrong with this broad…”

: “Lovesick, I’d assume. She works in a hospital, after all…”

: “And? What else?”

: “So Kamui…”

: “Killed her. We’ve gotten some comments. Apparently the victim, Yuriko Sonoda, and Kamui were involved physically…”

: “So they were fucking?”

: “And it seems it was strictly one-sided, from Sonoda. Kamui was mentally ‘impotent’, so…”

: God dammit, and I liked Kusabi.

: “To a woman, he may have been the ideal man. Like a doll with no emotions, who will never betray you. The perfect man, whom you can just set down by your side forever…”

: I get what the point of this scene is - it’s that you have a bunch of clueless middle-aged guys in a room discussing a woman - but still.

: “You think so? Wouldn’t that be boring? Also, assuming all women are like that is pretty sexist.”

: “But it’d be comfortable and easy, right?”

: “Well,it would be easy, but still…”

: “Let’s get back on track. Sonoda seduced Kamui and lured him here.”

: This sounds less like an investigation and more like Nakategawa pushing a narrative, but I guess that’s what happens when you work for a government hit squad.

: “Goddamn.”

: “So she seduced Kamui, and was killed…”

: “And then she was left here.”

: “Hold on… the lead is different, isn’t it?”

: “Yes. In Yuriko Sonoda’s case, the scene of the murder and the place her body was dumped were the same.”

: Wait, can you really call it ‘dumping the body’ if Kamui just left it there without moving it?

: “In Yuka Kawai’s case, it’s two separate places. After killing her in her home, he moved the body.”

: “That’s pretty complicated for Kamui.”

: “You got something, Tetsu?”

: “No, never mind…”

: “Here is the victim’s profile. The victim is Yuriko Sonoda. Twenty six years old; female. Worked as a counselor. After graduating from medical school, she started work at this hospital.”

: “Her most recent patient was Kamui. She had been counseling Kamui since about six months ago, recently they had been in some form of contact almost every day.”

: “The cause of death is his specialized harpoon gun. The body shows signs of perforation in four places. Inside her uterus we found traces of bodily fluid thought to be Kamui’s.”

: “We’re currently waiting for a positive ID. Estimated time of death is between 10pm and 11pm on March 27th. This matches the time the tracking satellite began tracking Kamui almost perfectly.”

: “Next up is the profile of the victim found in the sewer. Yuka Kawai, 25 years old. Worked at a digital media sales firm. She was in charge of the Kamui projects.”

: “Estimated time of death is between 3pm and 4pm on March 28th. We’re waiting on test results for further details.”

: “I’ll leave the details to Naka. Next!”

: “Alright, and finally: I’ll give a simple explanation of Kamui Uehara’s history. Please take in as much of this info as you can.”

: “He’s not your run-of-the-mill criminal. This man has been completely overtaken by an evil darkness. Go ahead and toss ‘common sense’ right out the window for this.”

: Hold on, did I just walk into the writer’s room for Kingdom Hearts?

: Well, that explains why Kusabi showed us the photo earlier.

: “OK, if I may continue, with regards to how we proceed…”

: “That’ll do! Unit 2 is the brawn, and you Unit 1 guys are the brains of the operation, right?”

: “That makes sense.”

: “That’s basically right. Investigation Unit 1 is analyzing the database to try to predict how the suspect will move and where he will appear. Investigation Unit 2 will collect the data not yet in the database and investigate the areas the tracking satellite can’t reach.”

: “Everyone else, await orders… that’s all for now. Let’s get to it.”

: Next time, we’ll finish Decoyman.

[Timrod]

Summary

: “The fuck’re you talking about?! You whiny bitch! How about you try working your delicate little ass off day after day, huh?!”

: “Those are your duties, aren’t they?”

: The first line on Kusabi’s resume is “Worked ass off day after day”.

: “The data you pick up isn’t worth dick! This forensic investigation bullshit is old news!”

: “Go ahead and investigate however you want if you want to just waste time! Please just stop complaining.”

: “Complaining? Who the fuck is complaining? It’s criticism. You’re doing your goddamn job wrong!”

: “Up to now, we’ve collected 26 pieces of useful data. How about that? If you want accurate data, we’ll need 10,000 samples. Do you understand?”

: “Do you? Do you want to do this for us? Data on 10,000 abandoned buildings and empty rooms! Are you going to find it for us? If so, then I’ll handle the stakeout for you. Well?”

: “That’s enough, Hachisuka…”

: This single image could probably take the place of the entire Persona 5 Royal LP. Probably YIIK as well.

: “Yeah yeah, I got it. You want us to handle the stakeout, right? Fine, we’ll do it.”

: “Let’s go set up the stakeout.”

: “Tetsu, a moment…”

: “I got this from Munakata.”

: “Munakata? That’s rare…”

: “It’s Kamui’s hideout.”

: “For reals?”

: “My info is certain, yeah.”

: “And it’s a love letter… creepy.”

: “It was passed on.”

: Kusabi is so dense that I bet if the guy’s bullet had hit him in Lunatics, it would’ve just bounced off.

: “Sorry.”

: “Be careful. I’ll take up the rear. Let’s meet up later…”

: “Got it. Sumio!”

: “…”

: “Come on!”

: “Where did it come from? That info…”

: “Doesn’t fuckin’ matter. Come on, let’s move!”

: “It’s a stakeout. This is no time to mess around. Tetsu…”

: “Whatever. We sit here wasting time and he’s gonna get away!”

: “But…”

: “Just hurry up!”

: Yes, what about me?

: There’s two things we can do here before the plot progresses. The first is behind us.

: There’s a star marking a contact point on the bookshelf, but that’s not where it actually is.

: The actual contact point is the computer to the right, which you have to turn the camera to see.

: Hm. There’s only so many people who could’ve sent this… assuming this isn’t a ghost - that happens more often in Suda’s work (especially in the Kill the Past games) than you’d think.

: The total list would be Kusabi, Sumio, and possibly Natsume - unless this is the ghost of Sakamoto or Inomata, or any of those people Kusabi killed in Lunatics.

: I would not be surprised if Suda’s canon explanation turns out to be that Badman sent this at some point during Travis Strikes Again.

: There’s another contact point below the TV, but when we get close…

: Is this gonna be one of those things where we’re “infected” with Kamui’s crime ghost or whatever?

: Once we see the crime ghost, the phone starts ringing. You can let it ring like 20 times to get an achievement in the remake.

: If you’re achievement and/or trophy hunting, this game only has a handful of optional achievements and three of them are in Decoyman.

: One is for following the arrows during the scene where Kamui kills Sakamoto and Inomata without going the wrong way, and we’ll see the third in a little bit.

: “We’ve got an emergency, get your ass to Babylon right away. That’s Babylon, got it?”

: I’m picturing that chinchilla Salty Vanilla drew going online and trying to figure out whether he’s buying plane tickets to Iraq or Iran.

: “Kamui’s made a move. Just get there now. Babylon Shopping Center. Hurry!”

: One thing that’s kind of hard to show in stills - there are visual glitches on Kusabi’s portrait meant to show that he’s on the phone and breaking up a little.

: “Listen, we have no time… move in ahead of me. Just don’t do anything stupid. Got it? I’m counting on you, Big Dick!”

: There’s a lot of dialog here, and I think it’s possible to miss some of it if you know exactly where you’re going. I had to do this area twice because I accidentally auto-solved the puzzle.

: “Babylon is currently closed for business. If the security system is working, then the shutter for the escalator to the second floor should be closed, but most security systems have panels for unlocking. Look for that.”

: “Work it out by the time I get there. Got it?”

: The camera angles in Babylon are… not the best. Most of the time, you’re looking at a wall because the escalator blocks off the center of the room - you have to go around the edges.

: “I’ll give you the details later. Take care of the broad, Big Dick. I’m counting on you.”

: “Kei Nanami, 23 years old. She was an underclassman of Kamui’s back when he was in art school. No idea how the fuck he did it, but he apparently lured her out of work.”

: You might be wondering how she could be an underclassman at the age of 23 when the Silver Case happened 20 years before this.

: Basically, this “Kamui Uehara” is a different person than the one Kusabi arrested 20 years ago, but they refer to him as Kamui because he’s using the same MO… at least, I think.

: “Sumio is getting info on what she looks like. Talk later.”

: That big green board on the back wall is where we’re trying to reach.

: “Tetsu’s contacting her place of employment now. I’ll contact you again.”

: “Kei Nanami was supposed to go out to meet some guys with some female coworkers tonight. Apparently these guys work for a really elite company, so she got all dolled up.”

: “That’s about it… for now, keep an eye out for a flashy-looking broad and you should find her.”

: Once we get to the board, we can Contact it to access the security system. It’s kind of hard to see, but the sign has “Kill The Past” written on it.

: “Currently, that security is being hacked by Unit 1. But according to Hachisuka, it’s apparently gonna be impossible to hack it completely.”

: “The conditions I’m about to lay out are pretty much the limit. The numbers are a 4-digit combination. The security code changes every time. Input the correct code in 20 tries or less.”

: “A red lamp means a number is correct, but in the wrong location. When a location and number match, one green lamp will flash. When all four of the green lamps flash, it’ll unlock.”

: “Quit wasting time with your fucking yapping. This’ll take me a bit longer. To summarize, just get all four green lamps on. Now get to it.”

: This puzzle is usually called “Bulls and Cows” but is referred to by the game as “Hits and Blows”. There have been entire books written about it, as well as a wealth of academic papers.

: If you’ve read the Persona 1 LP, Code Breaker is a 9-digit version of this game. I’m told it was also used in this exact format in Virtue’s Last Reward.

: Anyway, the cheevo is for doing this in 5 or fewer guesses. How hard is that? Well, uh… let’s go through my winning attempt and I’ll talk about it as we go.

: In 1990, a mathematician and computer scientist by the name of Tetsuro Tanaka did a deep dive into Bulls and Cows, and wrote an algorithm that tried to solve every possible permutation of the game as efficiently as possible.

: What Tanaka found was that no combination took more than 7 guesses, and that the average length was around 5.2 guesses. This means you’ll need at least some luck to get it under 5.

: Fortunately, today’s computers are far more powerful than what Tetsuro Tanaka had in 1990, and a number of coders have made solvers for it. The solver I used is here.

: By the second guess, we have one hit and one blow.

: This solver gets it in three, which is actually pretty impressive. The other one I tried took seven attempts.

: “I found out how she’s dressed tonight. She’s wearing a red cocktail dress, black stockings, and a black coat. Finding and securing her are our number one priorities. Get on it.”

: We can go up the escalator now, to one of the more confusing bits of game design in this game.

: Even with the security bypassed, the shutter is still down. If you look, we have the ability to move in its direction.

: Doing so causes us to simply lift it up and walk underneath.

: “Another new hassle. Looks like there’s a civilian on the second floor. Secure them as soon as you find them. Don’t you accidentally fuckin’ shoot them.”

: I wandered around for a bit up here before I found what you’re supposed to do.

: One of the storefronts has a shutter that’s slightly open. You can duck under it using movement. I don’t know why they didn’t put contact points here and at the escalator to make it stick out.

: I have no idea if this is a reference to something or not.

: I think I captured this a moment too late, but he says “KAMUI” in all caps repeatedly. Anyway, meet Tokio Morishima. Tokio is the protagonist of the PLACEBO chapters.

: "Timrod, did you find the civilian? Come down to the first floor once they’re secured. Get on it.

: We now have to crawl back through the shutter and go back to the escalator.

: Unfortunately, if we try the shutter to the elevator, it’s locked again.

: “Timrod, find the emergency bell. If the building’s management system is working, the door should unlock. Now go find the emergency bell.”

: The fire alarm is on the other side from where we picked up Morishima. We can talk to him, but he doesn’t say anything.

: There’s a contact point on the wall, so let’s go check that out.

: What’s the deal with all these ghosts and Kamui anyway?

: And now Morishima’s doing it too. What the hell?

: Wait, what? We’re not Kamui, we’re an elite special forces chinchilla turned corrupt government hit-squad cop.

: “How’s it going? Search every nook and cranny. Don’t overlook even the slightest change!”

: Huh… what’s that shadow doing there? Is that supposed to be Morishima’s?

: Well, shi- wait a minute, this doesn’t match the description Sumio gave us. The person we were looking for was wearing a red cocktail dress.

: “So it’s all gone to hell…”

: “Sorry… it was my fault. I was stupid to have entrusted it to an amateur.”

: “Don’t worry about it, Timrod. It’s not your fault.”

: “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I’m not blaming you.”

: “It’s okay, Tetsu. You’ll recover. Don’t worry about it…”

: “Boss…”

: “Sorry, old man. Go ahead and give it to me straight.”

: “Hm… well, you take a break. Go cool down a bit.”

: “Roger that!”

: I’m trying to imagine what Kusabi looks like on break, and I can’t imagine it.

: “Anything we can do about it, boss?”

: “Nothing. We have to consider Unit 1, too. You want Naka to freak out?”

: “Leave it, Sumio.”

: “…”

: “Sumio… you take care of this witness. Take them along on the investigation.”

: So wait, are we part of the investigation now, or what? Why the hell did Kusabi send a witness in alone against Kamui?

: “Tetsu… take Akemi outside once in a while. You don’t often get to rest. I’ve booked you into a nice inn. Go enjoy the hot springs.”

: I give him ten minutes before he starts threatening the hot springs with a gun.

: “Old man…”

: “This is all we can do… we don’t have enough samples.”

: “Point D2-08… what about this?”

: “A place with connections to Kamui. They’re concentrated in this area.”

: “What about here?”

: “Art Studio ‘Gladiolus’… Uehara used to work here. Apart from this place, there are several other places he used to work.”

: “On his own?”

: “No. He and a woman named Ayame Shimohara used to work together. She’s still working there. ‘Gladiolus’ is open from 10:00am to 5:00 pm…”

: “We can make it…”

: “You’re going?”

: “Yeah!”

: “You shouldn’t, you know.”

: “Why not?”

: “Why deepen her wounds further?”

: “What, you understand how she feels? That’s rare for you, Hachisuka. I didn’t think you had ‘feelings’.”

: Gee, Hachisuka, I assumed you were a cold, uncaring robot.

: “We’re close in age. It’d be risky to contact her carelessly, right?”

: “How’re we supposed to investigate, then? What, you don’t like how we do things in Unit 2?”

: “Each of our roles…”

: “We don’t have time for shit like that. Especially without Tetsu here. Right, Naka?”

: “Whatever you like…”

: “Apart from this ‘Gladiolus’, Kamui is apparently involved in several other groups as well. His name is attached to eleven different digital groups.”

: This is 1999, so ten of those are Geocities webrings and the eleventh is an ongoing AIM chat.

: “Hi, I’m xxDarKamui99xx and welcome to my webpage, likes: murder, blood, harpoon guns dislikes: secret government hit squads trying to capture me, chinchillas”

: “What are the probabilities?”

: “If we focus on the ‘Gladiolus’ art studio, chances of Kamui appearing are 001.289%.”

: I feel like this should’ve been one of those Jimmy Neutron “Actually, it’s salt” moments where Kusabi steps in and goes “You could just say 1.3% and this is why I hate you.”

: “Pretty dire.”

: “What do we do?”

: “Let’s go, Timrod.”

: “You sure…?”

: “I have a hunch.”

: “Excellent.”

: “I’d like to talk to you about Kamui Uehara…”

: “Detectives? So you just show up suddenly like that?”

: “Well, yeah. Detectives don’t make appointments for this stuff.”

: I like to think that the chinchilla is in the process of taking out a tiny calendar to make an appointment when he says this.

: “Huh…”

: “…”

: “…”

: “Um…”

: “Yes?”

: “Do you mind? Can we come in…?”

: “Oh, yeah…”

: We can’t do anything in here - the first-person parts are just there to give you the opportunity to save. Interestingly, I think the PS1 version used save points.

: “Of course.”

: This pretty much confirms that the Kamui we’re after isn’t the same guy who Kusabi arrested twenty years ago.

: “No…”

: “You two used to work together… aren’t you somewhat close?”

: “We were just partners… we did trust each other, but that’s it.”

: Sumio goes from zero to “Were you two fucking?” in sixty seconds.

: “Has there been contact?”

: “What sort of contact?”

: “From Kamui. Has there been contact?”

: “To me?”

: “Yes, you.”

: “Are you seriously asking?”

: “Why?”

: “Like, here, right?”

: “Yes.”

: This kind of reminds me of Sae in Persona 5, except Hashino didn’t understand that his writing made Sae look like a dipshit. Suda DEFINITELY understands that.

: “Contact from Kamui?”

: “Yes.”

: “Nope.”

: “I see. So how’s Kamui been?”

: “Huh? What do you mean?”

: “I meant exactly what I said.”

: “What are you trying to say?”

: “He came here, right? Kamui…”

: “No way.”

: “I know you’ve met with him. With Kamui…”

: “Why?”

: “A feeling.”

: “Well, I am a detective.”

: “And that’s all?”

: “I’ve got a good nose… I have a sharp sense of smell. It smells like a man’s been here.”

: Inside, Sumio’s thinking “Damn, why didn’t I bring a dog?”

: “Lots of people come and go. Of course it smells like that.”

: “Is that so? Well then…”

: I’m going to cut this here, because Decoyman is a lot longer than I thought it was. In the meantime…

: Salty Vanilla finished our look at the canon appearance of the protagonist. They also did another picture I’ll show in the next update.

[SpammyV]

Too bad it’s the 90s so we’re not going to get the text message screenshot of Kusabi going “Big Dick’s in his Silver bum.
**case”

[Timrod]

Summary

: This computer is the only thing we can use in the room, so let’s get to it.

: “What is it?”

: “What a woman…”

: There’s a video that plays in the background here that consists of a lot of rapid-fire text. I took enough shots so that you can get the idea.

: “Plot stagnation” is a pretty good way to describe Persona 5.

: “It was made at this studio. About five years ago…”

: “Was it Kamui’s?”

: “Kamui designed it, and I put it together. How nostalgic.”

: “Kamui, huh…”

: Before we get any further into this scene, know that the first thing I did was contact Salty Vanilla about getting a version of this scene done with Big Dick Chinchilla doing the interrogation.

: “No.”

: I’d ask how she could be unaware, but then you remember that Sumio just kinda barged in here and started dumping his spaghetti all over.

: “Your relationship with Kamui. Kamui’s relationship with his three victims. There was a commonality not included in the file.”

: “?”

: “You’re beautiful.”

: I feel like Sumio should’ve let the chinchilla handle this.

: “What is that?”

: “It’s a fact.”

: “Are you hitting on me or something?”

: “After all this gets worked out…”

: “That might be nice…”

: “In that case, I want to take Kamui in as soon as possible. Please help us.”

: “With what…?”

: “You, too, are being targeted. It was thought that Kamui randomly targeted three women at first. However, when we looked into their backgrounds, we found that all of them had some sort of contact with Kamui.”

: “His counselor, his art school underclassman, and his client. They were all relatively close to him. And they were all beautiful… they may have been Kamui’s type.”

: “We think that the person most likely to be targeted next is you, Miss Shimohara.”

: “That’s interesting… does that sort of reasoning stand?”

: “It isn’t ‘reasoning’. It’s a gut feeling.”

: “Do these ‘gut feelings’ usually pan out?”

: “They actually tend to… I mentioned that I have a good nose. I have bad ears, though, so maybe it’s because of that, but my sense of smell is sharp.”

: “Not as sharp as a police dog, but… I know Kamui was here. I can almost see his image.”

: Well yeah, he worked here.

: “Really…?”

: “Yeah.”

: “How?”

: “While you were out…”

: “He broke in?”

: “It’s possible.”

: “Is that all?”

: “Or…”

: “…”

: I believe this interrogation has now reached peak awkward.

: “Maybe… he’s here!”

: “You’re pretty sharp. What a detective. You’re really good at your job, aren’t you?”

: “???”

: There’s a contact point on the closet…

: Uh… wow. Was not expecting to see that.

: “Yes.”

: “No way?”

: I’m picturing Sumio going “Dammit, every time I try to hit on somebody, this shit happens. Every time.”

: “Yes way.”

: “Kamui…”

: “I told him to stay hidden…”

: “You did?”

: “Yes.”

: “Why?”

: Uh, maybe it’s because he’s tied up and has a ball gag in his mouth? Just a theory.

: “The legend himself is right before our eyes.”

: “He’s keeping quiet.”

: " ‘Keeping quiet’ ? I get the impression that he can’t speak."

: “Aphasic deficit? Just like his medical report. Hyposthenic disorder…”

: Hyposthenic disorder isn’t a real thing - the word “hyposthenic” is just a fancy term meaning “weak”.

: “Damn. He’ll be taken away by the medical guys.”

: “We can buy time. We’ll lock down the station. I’ll prevent info from getting through to Central.”

: “Please do.”

: “We’re counting on you.”

: “What about the woman who found him?”

: “In the meeting room.”

: “How is she?”

: “Nothing particular to report.”

: “She doesn’t seem too shaken up. She’s got some balls on her, that one. She’d hold her own against Hachisuka.”

: “…”

: “Hachisuka, stay with her. We don’t know when she’ll suddenly lose it.”

: Yes, that seems like a brilliant idea. Let’s leave Chizuru alone with the lady who had Kamui bound and gagged in her closet.

: “Lose it?”

: “She says she locked Kamui up in order to kill him.”

: “Kill him? What are you talking about?”

: Metal Gear!? Actually, wait, this is only like a year after MGS1 so the meme hadn’t really set in yet.

: “Revenge. As her partner, he betrayed her. And he started killing again, too. Those three women…”

: “Then why didn’t she just hurry up and kill him?”

: “Yeah… the target of her vengeance was right in front of her. So if she wanted to kill him so badly…”

: “Killing a person isn’t so simple. Just keep an eye on her for the time being.”

: “OK.”

: “Nothing in particular. Just a few mouth movements.”

: “You can lipread, can’t you? So what’s the word?”

: “The word ‘shelter’ over and over.”

: “Shelter?”

: “I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean. Maybe some sort of guidance?”

: “The shelter area?”

: This part is a little odd, because the shelter area is something that everyone seems to know about… but for some reason, Sumio doesn’t immediately come to that conclusion.

: “Wanna go check it out?”

: “No, it may be a trap. We can’t move lightly.”

: “That’s true.”

: “A clue…”

: “If Kamui can’t speak, then further detainment may be pointless…”

: “Yeah, I agree. We’re getting nothing from Kamui. Apart from the fact that he killed someone…”

: “Then maybe we should hand him over to Central…”

: “We can’t do that.”

: “We can’t?”

: “According to Naka, Central knows we’ve captured Kamui.”

: “How does Central know…”

: “He’s here on Central’s orders.”

: “What? What’s Central trying to…”

: Something tells me Central is applying the Weyland-Utani method of dealing with a killing machine.

: “Maybe they’re purposely trying to keep him at arm’s length… in some sort of scheme.”

: “Scheme…? What is this, a TV show?”

: “So it’s the end of the line… can we get anything from the girl who found him?”

: “It would be dangerous to get her close to Kamui…”

: Why are they so intent on keeping Kamui alive when they have what’s basically a license to kill?

: “She did try to kill him, you know…”

: “Hold on… but she didn’t kill him, did she? Are we sure she really was trying to kill him?”

: “?”

: “Why would she have to lock him up in her house? And why was she the only one Kamui didn’t kill?”

: “Apparently he was passed out in front of her door… maybe he was too excited from all that action?”

: “That doesn’t make sense.”

: “That’s how he was found. I wouldn’t be surprised if he simply wasn’t able to kill her.”

: “That’s not it… Kamui has been like that for a long time now.”

: “You mean ever since he escaped?”

: “Yeah. He isn’t capable of killing anyone like that.”

: “He had a weapon.”

: “That’s not what I mean; I mean he’s physically unable.”

: “Physically?”

: Metal Gear!?

: “What about his medical records?”

: “I checked them.”

: “What did they say?”

: “A lot.”

: “No, I mean about his condition when he was apprehended.”

: “Hyposthenic disorder… incapable of living on his own.”

: “Well then, how was he able to escape?”

: “Maybe he was faking it?”

: “You think he’d be able to fool modern medical technology? He may be a criminal, but…”

: “Yes, that would be impossible.”

: “Yeah, that’s just his ‘shell’. He doesn’t have the power to kill anyone. He hasn’t killed anybody.”

: “We’re talking about Kamui, though…”

: “He isn’t some kind of ghost, you know. He’s just a man.”

: “…”

: “A legend is a legend.”

: “Well then, who… no way…?”

: “What was Kamui doing while he was on the run?”

: “He was locked up…”

: “Why would he need to be locked up?”

: “Bingo!”

: “------! Hachisuka!!”

: “Shit!!”

: Wait, where the hell did Ayame get a gun? Man, this police department sucks.

: “Oh Christ…”

: “I’ll contact the Medical Unit. Let’s go, Timrod! There’s only one place Ayame would go. The shelters!”

: I’m going to cut out a lot of this next part, because it’s very repetitive.

: The real question is why does this even exist? I don’t think bomb shelters work that way - the whole point is that they’re custom-built.

: “She’s gotta be here. Timrod, let’s split up and look for her. I’ll check around from the back. You start checking the front. Keep in contact via radio.”

: This part is a lot like those scenes in Snatcher and Policenauts where you just kinda have to dick around for a bit to progress the plot.

: The game highlights which shelter is which - numbers 1 through 4 are in the front.

: Here’s why I’m cutting a lot of this - all four shelters are exactly the same inside… which also makes you wonder why they needed an exhibition hall for them if they’re all identical.

: Each shelter has a bathroom, a TV room, and a room in the back with nothing in it. Three of them also have contact points - but the last one only appears after you’ve checked them all.

: Being a chinchilla and also a detective, obviously.

: As you can see from the thing on the top, we’re in Shelter 2. We have to go through Shelter 3, and then in Shelter 4…

: This must be one of those shelters for helicopter parents.

: “What the hell… looks like we’ll have to check one more time. Get on it.”

: Fortunately, we don’t have to check them all again - we just need to check the second one, specifically in the empty back room.

: I like to think that Big Dick the Chinchilla is trying to tell Sumio about the freaky bomb shelter kids, and Sumio’s pretending not to understand.

: “OK, that’s enough for that area. Check the two shelters to the left of the one in back. I’ll meet up with you later. Get on it.”

: All we have to do at this point is go into Shelter 5 and head to the empty room in the back.

: “What, you still don’t get it? Our mark is in the back there. Anyway, you really helped. This is my job from here on.”

: “Timrod… it sucks, huh? Not being able to protect the one you love…”

: This scene was used for a lot of the game’s promotional art.

: “I am a detective, so…”

: “Nice work.”

: “Thanks.”

: “…”

: “…”

: “Kill me…”

: Funny that we’re the one Kusabi calls a chinchilla for not immediately shooting someone.

: “?”

: “I’d be happy to have you kill me.”

: “Are you coming onto me?”

: I wonder, if Sumio goes to a dating agency (given this is 1999) does he accuse everyone of trying to kill him?

: “Yes, after this is all over…”

: “That would be great.”

: “Wouldn’t it?”

: “Let’s hurry and finish this. I can’t kill you.”

: “Let me go…”

: “I can’t.”

: “Hurry…”

: “I can’t.”

: “Even if I kill the kids?”

: “Don’t do it.”

: “I can’t do that, either.”

: “Aren’t you a man?”

: “Yeah, but…”

: “I don’t like this.”

: “What?”

: “This kind of thing…”

: “Are you nervous?”

: “That’s not what I mean…”

: I feel like both of them heard the term “shotgun wedding” once and assumed this is how it works.

: “Then what?”

: “Leaving things incomplete like this.”

: “Incomplete? What is?”

: “You’re kinda slow, huh?”

: “Me?”

: “Yeah.”

: “Slow?”

: “Slow.”

: “Things will be incomplete for me, too…”

: “I’m kinda happy.”

: “Really?”

: “Yeah…”

: “OK then, can I ask you something?”

: “What?”

: “Age.”

: “You mean, like, my age?”

: “Yes.”

: “Why?”

: “Just because.”

: “You’re asking a lady her age?”

: “I wasn’t really able to ask before, so…”

: “Same as me.”

: “You’re 26?”

: “Yeah, so there’s no need to be extra polite.”

: “Is that why you were so courteous?”

: “Well, I didn’t want to be rude.”

: “That’s weird.”

: “Yeah, it is.”

: “…”

: “…”

: “What?”

: “The kids of those women I killed…”

: “Three of them…”

: “So I got my revenge.”

: “…”

: “I was so sad… I thought about killing the kids, too, but…”

: “…”

: “I couldn’t.”

: “That’s good…”

: “I hope so…”

: “I mean, murdering someone…”

: “You really are kinda slow.”

: “Huh?”

: “I’m so glad I met you…”

: “What’s wrong?”

: “No, it’s nothing. I felt I saw something in Kamui’s expression…”

: “In this plastic mask?”

: “Yeah… he looked really sad.”

: “Morikawa, you’re such a romanticist. And good at making stuff up, too.”

: “No, seriously. Just now, look…”

: And now we’re back where we started, only almost a month later. All we have to do is move forward to end Decoyman.

: “She’ll likely get the death penalty. Kamui’s children have been put into a facility. And… the secret of Kamui’s birth has finally been discovered.”

: “Finally?”

: “Yes… it was designated top secret, so it was pretty tough. And there were casualties, but…”

: “Someone got killed?”

: “Four people.”

: “Fuck…”

: “So where was it found?”

: “An FSO paper company.”

: The game’s touched on this before, but Japan in The Silver Case is more or less run by mega-corporations.

: “You mean the Frontier Conservation Alliance?”

: “That’s their old name, but yes. The ghost of the FSO.”

: “They had Kamui?”

: “They managed him. That’s where we learned where Kamui was from.”

: And I guess we know now why they haven’t killed him - Kamui operates off the same rules as Golgo 13.

: “The file says Cape Kamui…”

: “A complete fabrication.”

: “So his ID, they just made that up?”

: “Kamui was born in the shelters.”

: “Shelters? You mean, those shelters?”

: We’re being introduced to a whole bunch of major story concepts that… we actually won’t see again for some time.

: The way I’ve seen it explained is that The Silver Case is an amalgam of a bunch of story ideas Suda had at the time, and so we don’t really pick back up on the main plot until the final Transmitter case.

: “Possibly… you hear a lot of that stuff on the east side.”

: “Twenty years ago, that project was put into action. When Kamui was four years old.”

: I know they’ve basically outright said that the Kamui that Kusabi arrested was a different person, but I can absolutely see him trying to arrest a toddler.

: The real question is if he’d threaten to shoot the toddler first.

: “So he was raised in those shelters.”

: “The shelter exhibition area opened twelve years ago.”

: “It doesn’t match up.”

: “The exhibition area was its secondary use. After it had served its original purpose.”

: “And so, Kamui’s kids found themselves in the shelters. Tracing back their father’s memory…”

: “Is that even possible?”

: “I don’t know… but Kamui is known to favor those shelters.”

: “Why?”

: “His favorite place closely resembles those shelters.”

: “Where?”

: “Solitary confinement.”

: Wait, isn’t this that scene from the Batman movie? The meme one with Bane in it.

: “As a child, he lived in a wide-open yet stifling environment. As he got a bit older, Kamui’s ‘hometown’ became the shelters. A sullen, dark world where the sunlight can’t reach…”

: “He felt comfortable in that noisy and isolated world.”

: “People are attracted to the underground…”

: “Are they?”

: “Take this job. This is a world of isolation. It’s sometimes hard to breathe.”

: “Yeah…”

: “Maybe he saw a miniature version of the world in those shelters.”

: “What are you, a poet?”

: The chinchilla has fully recovered, and is now ready for action.

: “Tetsu, you’re back on the job from today, huh?”

: “Yeah, finally back to work.”

: “It’s a stakeout.’”

: “Yeah…”

: “We don’t have enough people.”

: “Well, so it ended up not being much use, huh?”

: “Tetsu, maybe we should…”

: “Yeah, I know.”

: “Let’s hurry.”

: “I’ll show you how it’s done.”

: If it were me writing this, the next case would open with Kusabi and Sumio getting tacos with Big Dick the Chinchilla.

: Spectrum is the next Transmitter chapter, but we’ve also unlocked the first Placebo chapter. That’ll be the next update.

[Timrod]

: So uh, while I was recording, I realized that The Silver Case has trading cards on Steam. Then I clicked on Kusabi’s, and found out that each card actually has a little bit more info than usual - namely who each character’s favorite idol is.

: That means yes, I did in fact pay $0.87 for the ones I didn’t have so that I could get shots of the descriptions. That’s a tiny expenditure compared to my Salty Vanilla bill each month.

: I’m… not sure what this is meant to imply about Nakategawa. Anne Suzuki is a real actress, mostly famous for roles she played as a kid. She was born in 1987, so she would have been 12 in 1999.

: The only thing she’s been in that I had ever heard of is the 1999 film Snow Falling on Cedars, where she played the female lead in flashbacks. I have never seen that movie.

: Sayuri Ishikawa is a famous Enka singer, who is roughly the same age Kusabi is. She apparently makes a lot of appearances on Japanese TV.

: Kiyoshi Tamura is another real person - he’s a pro wrestler turned MMA fighter who retired in 2007.

: Morikawa has dreams, and that’s about the most we can say about him. He actually has a pretty amazing segment in Spectrum, which will probably be its own update.

: Kotobuki’s is the only one not to have any extra profile info. I’m surprised he’s a card and Tokio isn’t.

: There’s also Sumio’s card, but uh… his card has some major fucking spoilers for Chapter 3. I’ll post it after that.

[Timrod]

Summary

: After completing Decoyman, we unlock the first Placebo chapter. We could go right on to Spectrum, but you’re intended to play the Placebo chapters in between Transmitter ones.

: “Have you ever felt like that before? I did. I used to work as a police reporter for a pretty good news agency… some shit went down that’s not worth explaining… and after a bunch of trouble, I quit.”

: We don’t actually see Tokio’s portrait yet, but all of the portraits in the Placebo chapters are done in a different art style.

: “After quitting, I became a freelance writer. It probably doesn’t sound so bad, but… in reality… chasing after celebrity asses, sticking a tape recorder up against front door interphones, pretending to be a relative and getting someone’s registry information, I was doing worthless stuff like that.”

: That last one continues to be a problem to this day. Japan’s family registry system (called the “koseki”) has a history of issues - namely that it could be used by employers to discriminate against people.

: Up until 1976, anyone could access the registry for any reason - all you had to do was pay a fee. Theoretically, third parties (as well as employers) are now banned from asking for this information.

: It’s also an expensive headache for the government that they’ve been trying to get rid of for years.

: “But then, one day, I received a work request by mail. Set a mark on Kamui Uehara, and check out every single thing, down to the hairs on his ass.”

: “That was the job. The guy who the media is now reporting on like crazy, the one they’re calling the worst criminal of the century. That Kamui.”

: “What a mistake, right? Asking someone like me to do that job…”

: “And the fact that I was seeing triangles in circles due to being shitfaced drunk at the time, I decided to take the job.”

: “I promised to investigate everything about Kamui’s past and future, write up a report, and submit it. It was a really secretive, sketchy-ass deal…”

: “That’s how it started.”

: “It’s my workplace, and also where I sleep and get up in the morning.”

: We have control now, but as soon as we move, we’ll be in a cutscene.

: To the left is Tokio’s dining area, accompanied by his giant picture of a bat. That’s about as much as we can see right now.

: “The reason being… well, I have my suspicions. I wonder if I have any new mails? Lemme check…”

: The first two Placebo chapters are largely Tokio checking his email and typing notes into his computer.

: I’ll be typing out the emails in block quotes to reduce screenshot use, because even the smallest of these emails is like six screens long.

From: shige
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: from a friend
Date: Tue, 6 April 1999 12:02:42

been awhile.
how you been?

i heard you quit the news agency and now youre a reporter?
youre pretty busy huh.
so… how about it? 50,000 yen.

how do i put it… its like i can feel the flow of the times…
like, this year is the end of the millennium, right?
so i thought, i can’t just leave things as they are.
you could say its time to liquidate, you know?

when i remember all the jobs ive done, i think theres a lot of stuff ive forgotten.
i wanna get rid of all that, and start the new millennium nice and fresh…

so how about it? paying me back that 50,000 yen you borrowed now.

weve got lots to talk about, so lets go have a nice long drink.

oh yeah, ill give you my cellphone number. call me if anything comes up.
(10332-33234)

: The weird line breaks are how they are in the game.

: “Here, you can not only read mails received… you can also send mail,”

From: Tokio Morishima
To: shige
Subject: Re: from a friend

The end of the millennium… that’s not this year, it’s next year.
So that means I’ll pay you back that 50,000 yen and clean things up nice and tidily next year.

Sorry. Don’t mean to put you out. You’re the same Shige as always. Glad to know you’re my friend.

Talk to you later. Looking forward to seeing you next year.

: “Keep records of your own studies in the Morishima Memo (diary) —”

: Just like the emails, I’ll type these out in block quotes to save space.

Sorry, Shige. To be honest, be it this year or next year, or even next-next year, I don’t plan on paying you back that money I borrowed.

More importantly, I’ve been thinking that I really need to start rethinking our relationship, actually.

So anyways, that’s what’s up. Don’t keep sending me mails like that from now on. I don’t care how cool and friendly you are, I’m gonna get pissed. Of course I am. But the truth is, even if I wanted to pay you back, I just don’t have the money.

I mean, with this Kamui stuff, if all goes well I’ll be coming into a good amount of money, so just keep patient until then. I mean, only if all goes well, but still. And if it doesn’t go well?

Well, I can think about that when it happens. “Live in the now,” you know? Whatever the fuck that means.

: “And sometimes, you can even join chats. Basically, it’s where I keep my true feelings and thoughts collected.”

: “Normally, once you read an important mail, you act immediately… for mail, you can always read it again later… it’s sometimes good to take your time going over old mails and mails you haven’t read yet…”

: “His name is Red. He keeps silent, like an old fossil… but he’s also delicate like a clock with its minute mechanisms. We’ve been living together for just over two years.”

: “Here… there’s all sorts of shit lying around. The only thing I really even use is the phone, but whatever…”

: “What else… oh yeah… the world you can see from this window actually looks pretty nice…”

: “This park, but that’s about it…”

: “That is to say, the guy called Tokio Morishima’s, version of events in the “Kamui Case” and related happenings, in these scenarios. Basically, just think of it as a sample…”

: “The 24 wards has lots of guys just like me living here… I’m just one of a plethora of humans here. And by chance… I happened to get involved with Kamui Uehara.”

: “But like, in a really weird way… how was it ‘weird’, you ask? Keep your pants on… we’ve got all the time we need, right? First, lemme have a quick smoke and then we’ll begin…”

: This feels a lot like the intro to No More Heroes 2.

: Before we continue, I want to point out that you can contact Red at any time. There is an achievement for doing this 100 times.

: “It’s definitely a fucked up job. Right? But the client is Inohana! Yeah, a request from my old asshole boss Inohana. So of course the job is fucked up. But I’m dirt poor. So, you know… sorry, but I took the job.”

I skimmed over some info on Kamui online.

Recently I’ve been forgetting to watch TV or read the newspaper, so I don’t really know shit about Kamui. It’s hard to call myself a free reporter like this.

Kamui’s very existence had basically been almost totally covered up till recently. But now he’s apparently the most badass criminal ever, and he got arrested and escaped from the hospital and is now a serial killer.

Yeah. Great. Plus, he apparently killed two members of the Security Force (and seriously injured two more). And that’s why he’s such a big deal now.

The case in question.

Kamui reappeared on March 27th, around midnight. The Special Forces Unit began measures to capture him, but two people ended up getting killed. Two people from Special Forces went after Kamui, but he put one of them in critical condition and disappeared into the darkness.

That’s about it. Even the sports papers had him in their headlines.

After some time, the legendary criminal Kamui started up again in the HC Unit’s jurisdiction. How inflammatory and poetic.

The identity of the female body found on March 28th still hasn’t been publicized. This particular crime seemed to employ the same M.O. as Kamui’s past crimes.

Apart from this, he also killed his counselor when escaping from the mental hospital. Four people in total. Kamui was deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial for his previous crimes.

So are his recent crimes also the product of his fucked-up brains? Or does he simply like to kill? People are getting boisterous about it. The talk shows have all been featuring these quacks spouting random bullshit. How shitty the world has become.

Who was the first person he ever killed, and how did he kill them? Interesting. Also, about Kamui even further back in the day. All a mystery. What was he like as a kid? Who are his parents? Where is he from? It looks like no trustworthy info ever made it into the media.

There are plenty of records pertaining to Kamui while he was in the hospital, but it’s all a bunch of bullshit about how he was a “model patient”. The only thing I’ve found is that when he was in the hospital, Kamui was totally broken down, and was basically just an anemic bastard. I found this out from a tabloid last week.

If I was going to cover the story, then first I should talk to someone who has gone up against Kamui and survived, like a soldier from the Security Force. But how can I get in touch with someone like that…?

: Needless to say, the first thing I thought of when I saw this was “What if there was a scene where Red interviewed the chinchilla?”. Salty Vanilla is on it.

: We have two emails. I don’t think you have to read these to progress, and I’ll post the first one. The second one is like twelve screens long and about carnivorous plants.

: This quote is from William Saroyan, a writer who wrote most of his important works in the early 1940s and is considered an important American novelist. He also had a hell of a moustache.

: “I’m pretty exhausted. What time is it…? 5:40… A lot of time has gone by…”

: To progress, we have to use the phone. You can brute force your way through this chapter pretty easily because there’s only four things you can contact.

: “Erika, I guess. If I use her, then if need be I can always use her as a shield, too…”

: I have to wonder if Tokio was meant to be a kind of deconstruction of your typical western adventure game character, where they do dickish things because the plot demands it.

: Tokio does it because he’s drunk and doesn’t give a shit.

: “Hi, it’s me.”

: “It’s Morishima. I got a favor to ask. I’m looking into the Kamui case, like, personally. And I was hoping you might have something interesting… anything is fine.”

: “I just need something to help bulk up my report. Hey, are you even listening? Hey! Fuck, the bitch hung up on me…”

: What’s Tokio do? Blog about it.

I should ask Erika for help. That was a great idea, for me. I mean, it’s actually a shitty idea, but it’s the only choice I have for now. I need to keep in mind that that’s how fucked up this situation is.

She still works at the news agency. It’d be nice if I could use some of their info. I just need to put the moves on Erika…

“Put the moves” on her? She’d cry if she heard me.

: “Just nothing… seems to lead anywhere… the hell am I gonna do?”

: You can hear Tokio’s doorbell ring in the background.

: “Shut up! Enough!”

: “Please! For reals! Just get the fuck out of here! What the fuck… seriously!”

: Of course, the first thing we do is check Tokio’s email. This is pretty much the answer any time you’re stuck in a Placebo chapter.

From: Erika Yukawa
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: Mr. Genius Passionate Writer
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1999 7:08:53

Thanks for the nice morning coffee…

…Is that what you thought I’d say?

You’re the same as always, only ever thinking about yourself. Do you really understand what you’re doing? Calling me up and talking to me like that, you must think I’m some cheap woman, right?

I don’t find that funny. Your phone calls are a nuisance.

: I have the feeling that is not the first, nor the last time Erika will be getting a drunken call from Tokio.

From: Erika Yukawa
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: P.S.
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1999 7:24:37

The 24 Wards Heinous Crimes Unit is in charge of the Kamui case.

The HC Unit is a group of specialists in violent and disturbing crimes. It’s different from the more Central-related departments that always have mass media reporters hanging around in that it wouldn’t be impossible to take advantage of cracks in their armor.

If you’re going to talk to them, you should probably talk to the detective named Kusabi. He’s old school - scary-looking and self-made. I’ve met him before, and he’s a rather talkative old man. But with regards to crucial and sensitive information, he definitely won’t leak anything.

99% of the stuff about Kamui that’s going around in the media is either just rumor or pure fantasy. But since big news agencies like mine, newspapers, and TV news departments are getting all frantic about it, a lot of facts should come to light soon. So if you’re planning on just writing up a fabricated story, you’re just gonna end up screwing yourself over in the end.

Also… I have no idea why you’re sticking your nose into this stuff, and I don’t care. But I will tell you that I’m not helping you for our sake, but out of my own curiosity. I’ve decided to let you show me what you’ve got. Whatever sort of media you’re writing for, it’s been three years since you’ve gotten involved with anything journalistic as a police reporter.

To be honest, I’d been reading the articles you’ve been writing for a while now. I mean, I’d just been reading them because that’s what I was handed at the hair salon, but still. Some actor brought some female college student to a hotel and tied her up and did whatever… sure, that’s a big thing, too.

By the way, is your official title still “police reporter”?

: For reference, the scene where we met Tokio in Decoyman happened on the night of April 9th.

: This email has unicode characters in it, so I’ll post screenshots for those parts.

[] “5027-999 Plan” Almost Enacted

It was discovered that this past March 27th, the military forces of Country A and Country B almost enacted joint military operations. The “5027-999 Plan” is a scenario created for the purpose of working out what to do in case of actual or threatened invasion by Country C. The decision to enact the plan was rescinded upon the publication of comments by Country C admitting to crossing over international borders.

[] Emergency Preparations Undertaken For Missing Kamui

The suspect in the “Kamui Case”, Kamui Uehara, is still at large. With regards to this, Chief Cabinet Secretary Kitajima made a strange announcement, commenting that “We are undertaking the necessary emergency preparations, the population has nothing to fear or worry about.”

However, nothing has yet been revealed regarding Kamui’s whereabouts or the current status of the investigation.

: I did try the URL, and it didn’t work. There’s also one in that email I skipped earlier that got co-opted by some gaming blog.

: “Weird-ass name. You hungry? You want some shrimp? Some of those whiteleg shrimp you like? Sorry, but just wait a little longer.”

: “The HC Unit, huh… I’ll need my old business cards…”

: Get used to this shot, as it’ll be used frequently for the rest of the chapter.

: “He still hasn’t shown up. It’s been 30 fucking minutes already… am I getting stood up?”

: “Hey… are you the guy I’m supposed to meet?”

: Kusabi doesn’t have a portrait in the Placebo chapters, so I’m using the one from the Transmitter arc.

: “They say that it’s a detective’s job to ‘doubt’… and apparently they’re right. I tried heading into the main topic directly, but this guy dodged it.”

: “Anything at all is fine. Even just something small.”

: “I got no idea. Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you shit anyway.”

: “That’s rough. OK, I’m just gonna ask frankly, but what exactly is Kamui’s deal?”

: “Well… if I knew, I wouldn’t be in a place like this now.”

: “I see. Kusabi, you’re a veteran detective. You’ve probably got one or two reporters with whom you’re familiar. But, you know… how about switching things up once in a while?”

: “You trying to get into my pants or something? Nice, I can tell how passionate you are. OK then, so what the fuck is your deal then?”

: Kusabi only understands the world along two axis: fucking and shooting. There is no middle ground.

: “That stuff about the ‘news agency’, that was bullshit, right?”

: “Why do you think so?”

: “Because you look pretty fucked up. Look in the goddamn mirror.”

: “You’re close enough. I’m just a freelance writer. To be honest, I am pretty down on my luck, which is why I’m after info on Kamui.”

: “I wonder.”

: “You know, I don’t dislike old-school type detectives like yourself.”

: “Bullshit…”

: “Well, anyway, if you think of anything, please call me anytime. Don’t hesitate…”

: Tokio uh, sure has a choice in business cards.

: “This is part of ‘sales’, you know. I’ll be back.”

: “So I ended up being made to sit around wasting time with Kusabi. But this old guy should prove useful. It’s more of a ‘premonition’ than a ‘hunch’, but he’ll be worth hanging onto.”

: “Next time, I’ll bring him some donuts or something as a gift. A nice little present for the hardworking dicks in the HC Unit.”

: This shot of Tokio’s apartment building also gets re-used heavily.

From: Tokio Morishima
To: S. INOHANA
Subject: Doing it to death

Went to the HC Unit.

Apparently nobody knows anything about Kamui. Of course that’s bullshit, though. But we did come to an understanding. I should be able to visit again.

Anyway, that’s how it’s going. Got any directions?

: “This job is more complicated than I’d thought. But the conditions aren’t bad. Well, if they’re gonna pay me that much money, I gotta try my best not to piss the guy off.”

From: S. INOHANA
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: Message
Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 9:05:21

Someone saw Kamui Uehara. Meet with them. Preparations for coverage have already been made.

4:00pm on April 9th, 24 Wards, Hachisukacho, Block 2, cafe called “Prussian”. Your contact’s name is Kaiji Enzawa. He’ll be holding a job-hunting paper.

: Clearly, Suda51 had a very different outcome in mind for Kaiji than Nobuyuki Fukumoto did.

: “Witness? ‘Reporting’?”

: “Hachisukacho… Hachisukacho… OK, got it.”

: “Block 2, I got it.”

: I get why Suda re-used all these shots, but it’s strange to me they didn’t try to update any of this for the re-release. The 3D scenes were definitely upscaled, because there’s an option to use the PS1 visuals.

: " ‘Prussian’— the place wasn’t clean like most coffee shops. It feels more like a bar. It wasn’t bad… I desperately tried to hold back the impulse to have a drink."

: “As I was chainsmoking, the guy finally showed up. He was holding the job-hunting paper. He was out of breath, and looking at his eyes as he looked around the shop, he somehow didn’t really look Japanese.”

: “No, that’s not it. For an instant, he seemed to look down on everyone in the place, with a really peculiar expression. He definitely didn’t seem like a ‘trustworthy’ dude… that’s the impression I got.”

: “Enzawa sat in the seat in front of me. His earlier expression had disappeared, and with an attitude that made it seem as though he was born with it, he ordered a coffee in a really respectful and almost self-depreciating way.”

: “He looked like your normal, run-of-the-mill businessman in his fifties. He seemed so ‘regular’ that I was sort of taken aback. I totally thought he was unemployed, but he said something about ‘still being on the clock’ and so he only had about 20 minutes to spare for me.”

: “That was totally fine for me, though. The geezer wiped away his sweat with a hand towel… and we started talking.”

: This part’s kinda confusing, because we already know that Kamui is in Ayame’s closet. It’ll be explained in the next update. This chapter is… actually pretty long.

: “Where?”

: “This very neighborhood. You know the Babylon Shopping Center, right? Right next to there. About five days ago, maybe? He was walking.”

: “That’s a real scoop.”

: “That’s right, it’s a scoop. I spoke to the police as well.”

: “How did Kamui look?”

: “He was by himself. He was just walking along normally. It was the middle of the night. I was working late that day, and tried to get a taxi…”

: “What kind of guy was Kamui? That’s what I want to know.”

: “Like how he looked? He was like a new moon. He looked like the moon. It’s a weird simile, but that’s how he looked to me.”

: “I don’t get it.”

: I’m not sure I get it either.

: “What is Kamui to you?”

: “Kamui possesses a terrible creative power. Don’t you think so? With that creative power, he’s able to distort everyday things.”

: “Did you know that? Most people known as ‘geniuses’ are the same. The creative power of a genius holds the power to encroach upon reality.”

: Clearly, I am not a genius.

: “And so, to me, the crimes he commits are a type of creative work. Even his murders.”

: “What!? Are you saying Kamui’s an artist?! He’s just a criminal. What are you, one of his believers or something?”

: “Well, actually I really don’t like that way of putting it. You know, you’re pretty rude.”

: “Why the fuck would you believe in Kamui?”

: “Hm… I just wanted to tell you what Kamui’s like, as-is.”

: “So that asshole is just walking around freely. The world we live in… all these people who are somehow fucked up… men… women… girls… boys… all over the place… fuck Kamui’s believers.”

: “Anyway… I might as well go check out Babylon. Red is almost out of food anyway.”

: Next time, we’ll see what happens to Tokio after Big Dick the Chinchilla meets him in the shopping center.

[Timrod]

Summary

: If there’s one complaint I have about this game, it’s that this particular chapter drags on a little. When I finished recording, I was almost 5 hours in according to the save file - and I think half of that was spent on this chapter alone.

: I guess we’ll never know what really happened at Babylon, apart from that it fucked Tokio up pretty bad.

: “…”

: This guy doesn’t have a name listed in the manual, which is kind of weird given that people like the medical examiner who showed up for all of two screens in Decoyman has one.

: “You don’t look like you got dumped by your girlfriend or something, huh?”

: “…”

: Nah, Tokio’s just uh, probably losing his mind from seeing one too many crime ghosts. Someone should really call Ghost Control.

: I would absolutely not be surprised if there are professional ghostbusters in every Suda game, up to and including No More Heroes 3.

: “If, in fact, that is the case, there’s a bit of advice that we always give at times like this.”

: “I don’t wanna hear it…”

: “Oh, come on now.”

: “What…?”

: “First, you buy a knife.”

: When I was recording this, I thought this was going somewhere very different from where it actually goes, and it wouldn’t have surprised me because this is what Suda does.

: “…”

: “A cheap one will do. One that fits well into the palm of your hand is best. Then you buy some wood.”

: “Wood?”

: “Yes. You can just get a random piece from a lumber dealer. The size doesn’t really matter. About the size of a brick probably works best.”

: “Then, you whittle away at the wood with the knife.”

: “With what?”

: With the knife.

: “It’ll calm you down. This will calm you down more than anything. This is something that people around the world have been doing for a long time.”

: “The Indians did it. Same as when monks would carve statues of Buddha. You know those carved wood anteaters on people’s mantles?”

: I had no idea what the hell this guy is talking about, so I did some looking into it. It’s not really a cultural thing or some kind of fad - there’s just lots of places that sell wooden anteater carvings for some reason.

: “The ones the Eskimos made, that’s the same thing… humans may have even begun using tools because of this.”

: “In order to calm themselves down, whittling something or making something out of clay were likely the first ways in which humans utilized their creative power.”

: “And so, of course, you can make some clay into a doll or bowl, or a pot or something, too. A little golem or whatever.”

: “And so, when God was feeling a bit down, maybe he decided to cheer himself up and got some clay and created people. That’s my theory, at least.”

: “Anyway, just go ahead and try making some sort of tool, anything at all. With your own two hands…”

: You know, like… god, how many LPs in am I at this point?

: “So I should try making something with my own hands, huh? That’s some laughable shit, man.”

[] Kamui is back! Murder at Babylon Shopping Center

At approximately 7pm on April 10th, a young woman was discovered dead at the Babylon Shopping Center. The victim’s chest had been hollowed out with a sharp blade, and the M.O. suggests that the killer was Kamui Uehara, who is in hiding after killing four people, including two members of the Security Force

[] One dead; Kamui back in hiding

The victim of the murder at the Babylon Shopping Center was 24 Wards resident Kei Nanami (23 y.o.). Police rushed to the scene, but suspect Kamui Uehara had already disappeared. Although the Babylon Shopping Center was full of shoppers at the time of the murder, police have yet to find any witnesses who actually saw Kamui.

: “Kamui… what’s going on?”

From: Erika Yukawa
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: Are you alive?
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 23:38:17

So apparently you were there at Babylon. I rushed to the scene, too. I was way later, though. Then I heard that someone had been rescued by the HC Unit and I tried going there as well.

I got hold of Kusabi while trying to find out who it was, and that’s when I found out it was you. You were in a coma, huh? I was really surprised. Having an ex-coworker die isn’t exactly the greatest feeling, you know? In the end it looks like you didn’t die after all, though.

Did you see something at Babylon? I’ve heard that Kamui is hiding out somewhere in the 24 Wards, and that’s it. There are several suspicious stories flying around. Please respond when you read this.

: “??? Kusabi…? At Babylon, something happened to me… I fell into a coma… and then… Kusabi… then… and then… ah! Fuck! I don’t know!!”

: “That old man might know something. But still… he’s making me wait again.”

: “Hey…”

: “Hello.”

: “How’s it going?”

: “OK.”

: “Good.”

: “I want to thank you. It seems you took care of me.”

: “Is that your ‘thanks’? Well, it’s my job, you know.”

: “What happened with Kamui?”

: “I got nothing to talk about.”

: “So, you found Kamui?”

: “So you do know what’s up. Whatever. I’ll tell you. We secured Kamui.”

: “Huh? Really?”

: “Yeah, really. We got him in custody right now. But he won’t say shit. He’s like a fuckin’ mannequin. He doesn’t say a goddamn thing.”

: “Where did you…?”

: “This broad named Ayame was the key.”

: “Ayame?”

: “She was in a relationship with Kamui. He was in that broad’s… what’s it called again? Oh yeah, he was in her ‘atelier’. It was so simple.”

: “I can’t believe it.”

: “Why not? Are you one of those dickheads who thought Kamui would never be caught?”

: “Well, maybe. But, why are you telling me this?”

: Honestly, why IS he telling us this? We already saw it in Decoyman.

: “You said it yourself, remember? That thing about having a few reporters I’m familiar with. Actually, it’s because I have a bunch of stuff I want to ask you about, too.”

: “You know, the talking chinchilla detective. Can’t miss him, really.”

: “Big Dick…?”

: “It’s a nickname I gave him. It’s a pretty nice name, huh? Maybe you don’t get it… anyways, whatever. I’m going to a hot spring with my woman tomorrow.”

: “Don’t be sniffing around like a fuckin’ dog too much, OK? And don’t go writing a bunch of bullshit about Kamui like it was leaked. Don’t screw me over.”

: This guy in the green is supposed to be our character. I would’ve had Salty Vanilla do a version of this with the chinchilla, except they’re already busy doing… something else.

: “??? What was that…? Just now…”

No, that’s impossible. Hahahaha, totally impossible. Either way, someone’s gonna write about it. First, it’s a hassle.

More importantly, Babylon. What I saw that time… No, what I experienced. I can’t get my head around it… Anyways, something happened at Babylon. That’s probably also what Kusabi has a hunch about.

Who is this Ayame broad? Did I meet her at Babylon? That’s not it. But some sort of memory… there’s something about her inside my brain. Get your shit together, man!

That night, I was in the car and decided to go by Babylon. To buy food for Red. Babylon is just a shopping center. It’s no haunted mansion. Nothing was any different than usual inside…

Anyway, Babylon. There might be something for me there…

: “Oh yeah… I was driving just like this that one time. Then I met with Enzawa…”

: “Yeah, and then I came here. After Enzawa and I split up, I realized that I was out of food for Red… and then, I decided to stop by… then, according to Kusabi, I met with some guy named Timrod…”

: “And then… I met… that guy… only him? No… Someone was right there with me. Who was it? Was that Timrod? Who the hell is Timrod…?”

: I ask myself that every day.

: “Fuck! I can’t remember shit…”

: “I lost my lighter… what the fuck, man?!”

: “?! Who was that? That voice… I’ve heard it before…”

: “I… no, that’s not it. Someone, like… came inside my head…”

: “And then…”

: “And then… fire… it lit up…?”

: “I… met with a woman. Then with that guy named Timrod… Kamui… did I not meet with Kamui? Kamui committed a crime at Babylon and was held down by the HC Unit.”

: “No… Kamui was at the ‘something-atelier’ and he was arrested there. And then… the girl named Ayame is the key? Fuck, something is about to connect, but…”

: Let me tell you, something definitely connected for me earlier. I got a notification on my phone about this game called The Caligula Effect that I knew nothing about other than that Satomi Tadashi wrote it.

: It’s a game where a vocaloid makes a world without pain that takes place entirely in a high school. Hmm… now, where have I heard that one before?

: Anyway, the game apparently sucks, but it more or less proves that the writers for P5 Royal did exactly what Hashino would do and ripped off Satomi Tadashi again.

: “I can’t think… maybe I’ll… take a little rest…”

: Tokio, you’re already in bed. In fact, I think you just woke up.

: That’s what I want to know. Is the point that Tokio killed her somehow?

: Well yeah, and that’s why we have to kill it.

: “Or… remember… first… I bought pet food. And then… fire… yeah, I went to smoke a cigarette. And then… a woman appeared in front of me… and lit my smoke.”

: “Then… the woman was asking for help. No… it wasn’t just one person asking for help… then… that woman showed up again.”

: “HELP… that’s what she was saying. To me…? She said she wasn’t like other women… and that’s why she was asking me for help… other women…”

: “Yeah… I met with another woman, too… and then… no… at that point I no longer had any idea what was going on.”

: “When I came to… a man was standing there…”

: “At that moment… someone entered… inside me. Inside me… residual thoughts started talking to me… the woman with the cigarette…”

: “No, this was a different woman’s voice…”

: “HELP… that’s what she was saying. Over and over and over and over… when I heard that, I wasn’t ‘me’ anymore… and I realized something…”

: “That the person she was asking for help wasn’t me… and then… Kusabi rescued me.”

: “I didn’t see Kamui with these eyes. Actually, he wasn’t even at Babylon. But… why? I met Kamui… why…?”

I still don’t know exactly what happened but it’s pretty much certain. I guarantee it. But for now, Kamui has yet to say anything at all. Maybe he can’t talk.

That’s all for now.

I saw Kamui. But, in my head. As a vision. In a hallucination. But he looked like the swelling sun. Not the moon. A huge, swollen sun. Like a demon. Or, like a god.

Why? The woman. It must be. The consciousness of the almost dead, or possibly already dead, woman flowed into me.

Then Kamui is… what? He was there. He was. Was he? Really?

That’s what’s scary. I’m scared of Kamui right now.

From: Tokio Morishima
To: Erika Yukawa
Subject: “Ayame”

I want you to look into the woman named Ayame. The woman who had a relationship with Kamui. You’ve got info, right? I especially want to know where Ayame’s ‘atelier’ is. If possible, her origins as well.

Get ahold of me by mail or whatever when you’ve got something.

: “Ayame…”

From: Erika Yukawa
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: Re: Girl named Ayame
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 9:31:00

So no reply to my mails? Anyway, at least I know you’re still alive.

I faxed you a map for the request you had. The atelier is called “Gladiolus”. This Ayame woman is a relatively well-known artist among the underground culture. She made a lot of strange digital content.

Her partner for that digital work was Kamui. It’s been said that Kamui was the real artist, and Ayame was just a simple programmer. The fact that these two formed a digital unit is not yet that well known to the public. So yeah, nice work on finding that out.

But if you go to any random techno-type club and listen to the wannabe ‘artists’ and their rumors, everyone is talking about it, but still. By the way, you could at least tell me what it is you’re looking into. Or did you forget to at least thank me? If possible I’d like to talk to you directly, but whatever, for now I’ll just leave you alone.

: “Gladiolus… what a weird-ass name.”

: “So Kamui had a partner… what kind of woman is Ayame? What does she think of Kamui? After being in contact with him for so long, can she even still be normal?”

: “She’s close enough with him to be his ‘partner’… was she scared? Or was she angry? Or maybe… something must’ve happened. She felt something…”

It was basically just a waste of a piece of paper. More mysteries. This woman with no past is scary.

What is Ayame? If I knew that, then I might figure out Kamui’s deal. I also got some of the “works” they did together as digital partners. Just looked like a bunch of crazy bullshit to me, though.

: “Shit, another dead end…”

Thinking about Ayame, I remembered the women at Babylon. Why were the women afraid of Kamui? No, why were they filled with such emotion? No no no wait wait, was that really even “fear”?

Were they not actually asking for help? From who? Me? Or Kamui? Or maybe that guy I apparently met at Babylon - “Timrod”, was it? Or the guy from the HC Unit? Those women are somehow involved with Ayame. Hm…

There’s something going on here. I got my hands on a photo, and Ayame is pretty beautiful. Damn. Not sure yet, but I feel like something is about to connect, little Red!

: Honestly, I wish Ooka would’ve cut it out with the recaps of shit we already know. I could understand if this was later in the game and we might’ve forgotten, but we just did Decoyman before this.

: This entire chapter probably could’ve been half as long without them.

From: Tokio Morishima
To: S. INOHANA
Subject: Out of sight

So you heard about the Babylon incident. You hear that I was there too? If so, this’ll go faster. I just happened to see a woman getting killed there. Just that.

There’s something from after Kamui’s capture, too. He was arrested at a woman’s atelier. Her name is Ayame. She used to be Kamui’s digital partner.

Also. I’m interested in Ayame now. So that’s it for now, don’t keep sending me annoying-ass mails every five minutes. You fucking weird-ass pervert!

: Idiot, I’m not telling you shit yet…

: I’ll cut it here because there are a couple more lengthy conversations coming up. We’ll finish Yume next time, and then move on to Spectrum.

[Timrod]

Summary

: And welcome back to Tokio Morishima’s Extreme Email Simulator 1999.

: “These guys sure have a lot of shit to deal with…”

I went to the HC Unit. With the big news, the media was pushing themselves in there like crazy, so I wasn’t able to meet with Kusabi, but I spoke a bit with another detective named Nakategawa.

Thinking of Kusabi’s position, I didn’t use the name “Ayame”. Instead I asked about the guy named “Timrod” I supposedly met at Babylon, but this guy is apparently totally useless. I thought I might be able to ask this Timrod guy about what happened to me at Babylon, but…

Nakategawa looked at me funny. Like, he looked really sketchy. Apparently I’m considered to be “a reporter Kusabi knows”. That’s helpful. I mean, I still use a fake news agency business card to get by reception, but still.

So anyway, I have nothing special to report today. I need a lead on Ayame. It’s gonna be hard to get info from the HC Unit. The world has finally found out that Kamui has been arrested. The media is in a panic. I guess for today I’ll just boil up some spaghetti and watch TV or something.

: “What’s his number…”

: “Enzawa?”

: “Hm… I’m rather busy right now.”

: “Come on… I want to ask you about some stuff.”

: “Like what?”

: “Put simply, you know that “Ayame” woman, right?”

: “Yes, I know her.”

: “Then I was hoping you’d tell me what you know. I’ll compensate you, of course.”

: Compensate him with all that no money you have.

: “Ayame, huh. Ayame… now that you mention it, I just remembered that I had wanted to meet with you. I’ll be free around 5:00.”

: “OK, got it. I’ll meet you at Prussian again.”

: “That son of a bitch knew about Ayame. Is that fucked up old man OK? And he had something he needed me for? Well then…”

: “Enzawa showed up wearing the same exact clothes as before. Even the habit of wiping his sweat with the hand towel, nothing had changed at all.”

: “So, you know Ayame, huh?”

: “Of course. She’s Kamui’s ex-partner, after all.”

: “So for Kamui maniacs, I guess that’s common knowledge, then?”

: “You’re funny, Morishima.”

: “Huh? You even know that? Man, what kind of connections do you have, anyway?”

: “Among us maniacs, you’re pretty famous, you know.”

: “No fuckin’ way.”

: “Not really. So how did it go? Did you see Kamui? How did he look? What did you think?”

: “I didn’t see Kamui, and nothing happened. Sorry, but it was just some woman on the ground.”

: “That’s unfortunate.”

: “What kind of woman is Ayame?”

: “Don’t think that Ayame is just some normal woman.”

: This dialog reminds me so much of Shenmue it’s not even funny. I can even picture Tokio being voiced by the person who voiced Ryo.

: “What? Why?”

: “She’s a special woman.”

: “You mean to Kamui?”

: “I don’t get it. So how exactly is she special?”

: “Well… in a way, she may be above even Kamui. Her stage, that is. And the fact that she’s a woman is important.”

: “A man can only spread his seed… but a woman is able to choose a seed and raise it, right?”

: I’m imagining this being in Shenmue and Ryo hearing this and then being warped home immediately because Ryo cannot into sex.

: “Hey, man. I’m not asking to hear your weird-ass theories.”

: “Then maybe you’ll understand if I put it this way. Ayame’s very existence is bigger than Kamui. At the very least, that’s what I believe. Because she’s a clever and cool and noble human being.”

: Enzawa sounds like a Silent Hill cultist only dumber.

: “She’s not as savage as Kamui, not as sharp-edged, not transitory. But from the time that Ayame started having special feelings for Kamui, something started changing.”

: “These ‘special feelings’ aren’t ‘love’ or whatever. Ayame wanted Kamui. She simply desired him. And because of that, Kamui’s actions were, to Ayame, something to be hated.”

: “What Ayame desired was Kamui’s child. Ah, what the hell. That’s right. Ayame was trying to give birth to Kamui’s child.”

: Now this? This sounds straight out of Kojima.

: “Kamui needed many more women. It’s likely because he wanted to create the next generation. That was the beginning of all this tragedy. Ayame tried to prevent that.”

: “The self-preservation instincts of Ayame’s seed tried to leave behind only a single, definitive line. Like a sort of royal family. Only the unit of Kamui and Ayame – and those born from them would be chosen for the next generation.”

: Wait, is this going to be one of those things like Silent Hill 2 where it was actually about circumcision the entire time?

: “They didn’t agree on that. Which was correct, I don’t know. But personally, Ayame’s subtle yet strong spirit appeals to me. The blood flowing through her body is the most virtuous blood in this world. Ayame is perfect.”

: “Is that just your imagination?”

: “It’s the story of the truth inside me.”

: “The truth? The fuck are you talking about?”

: I like that there’s at least three different ways you can read this statement’s intent.

: “The perpetrator… huh? Hey! What the fuck are you…”

: “Of course this is all nonsense. My little joke.”

: “…What the fuck is up with you, anyway?”

: “I’m their neighbor.”

: “Neighbor…?”

: “Listen, Morishima. Ayame has been arrested. Don’t you have to go, Tokio Morishima?”

: “The perpetrator… fuck, is it really…? I… at Babylon… from that time…”

Ayame was arrested. Just as Enzawa said. It was actually Ayame who killed five people in this “Kamui Case”.

When I went to the HC Unit again, it was even more hectic than when Kamui was arrested. I could barely even get inside. Cameras, lights, strobes, mics, and reporters. I stood back and just watched from afar for a while.

After that, I was able to get Kusabi on the phone and spoke with him for a bit. Simple confirmations. He sounded fed up, but he also sounded relaxed. That guy is somehow able to calm people down.

I also called Nakategawa. He sounded pissed off. Maybe he just always sounds like that over the phone. Turns out I never saw Ayame with my own eyes. Well, Kamui neither, I guess. I’m just a bystander. But thanks to the incident at Babylon, I feel like I’ve gotten caught up in another bit of trouble. To the point where there’s no turning back.

Ayame was pregnant. That’s one fact. But what does that tell me? I can’t understand the truth.

Enzawa is wrong. Whatever he is, and whether or not it was really Ayame who killed all those people, and even if Ayame was really pregnant with Kamui’s kid, nobody understands the truth about Ayame. Maybe Ayame was just a little lonely.

: Yeah, that’s probably why she killed all those people… if she did.

The “Kamui Case” was actually the “Ayame Case”. Ayame’s motive was jealousy. I’m holding off on Babylon for now. I don’t feel like writing about it. I’m sure you understand how now really isn’t the time for that.

: “The truth is the truth. What Ayame needed was just a little bit of security… in my opinion, at least.”

: I’m not sure why they bother with these, given that we already know everything in them, but whatever. At least it’s not as egregious as Persona 5 was.

[] The real “Kamui Case” killer was a woman!

Regarding the “Kamui Case” in which five people were murdered, suspect Kamui Uehara was under questioning, but it was later discovered that the real killer was a woman named Ayame Shimohira, according to an emergency announcement from the department leading the investigation.

According to the announcement, she has already confessed, and her motive for the murders is to be revealed shortly.

[] Ayame Shimohira was Kamui’s ex-partner

Ayame Shimohira, the newly discovered perpetrator of the “Kamui Case”, was found to be Kamui’s ex-partner in creating digital art. Ayame Shimohira is still listed as a digital creator, working at an atelier named ‘Gladiolus’. However, her relationship with Kamui is thought to have ended several years ago.

: We also have an email from Erika.

From: Erika Yukawa
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: Can we talk?
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999, 12:17:07

How about it, can we talk a bit? You seem to know quite a lot about Kamui and Ayame. I see you in a new light now. At around 2pm today, can you come to the Scolba chatroom? Let’s talk there. I’ll be waiting for your reply.

: This is how you know the game was written in the late 90s, because people thought shit like email and chatrooms were fucking thrilling. Admittedly, they kinda were at the time.

: If only any of them could have foreseen the hellscape that is getting deluged with so many emails each day that none of them mean anything.

Now I have several deadlines. The client and Erika both want to talk to me. But what am I supposed to report? I don’t have anything worth reporting.

Maybe I’ll go on a trip once this Kamui Case shit is over with. I should just skip work. That would be the smartest thing to do. I’ll take Red with me, too.

: If you know anything about Flower Sun and Rain, you know that Tokio does take that trip. I do feel kinda bad because the person who LPed the DS version of that on the archive said they wanted to LP this game… which was expected to re-release in 2010.

: “OK… time to report to the client…”

From: Tokio Morishima
To: S. INOHANA
Subject: It’s a man’s world

Here’s my breakdown of the “Ayame Case”. I’ll make it brief.

With Ayame’s arrest, mostof the details of the Kamui case have come to light. Ayame helped Kamui escape from the hospital, and then killed the two Security Force members. For Ayame, copying Kamui’s M.O. in order to camouflage the fact that it was her was enough.

The HC Unit, the Security Force, everyone was fooled. So Ayame hid Kamui at Gladiolus. I guess she wanted to be near him. That, or she wanted to make sure that the world totally thought that it was him so that she could commit her murders.

Her goal was to kill three women who had had physical relationships with Kamui. Why would she kill them? I can speculate on her motive. Ayame was a calm, calculating woman. But the emotions she kept bottled up were really violent and severe. Because of this, she was really sensitive about her beloved Kamui’s relationships with other women.

So out of jealousy towards Kamui, she decided to kill the three women he’d slept with. Ayame thought of herself as Kamui’s digital partner. Her feelings for Kamui, and her desire to have a baby, were the cause. Those feelings, along with her knowledge of Kamui’s relationships with other women, pushed her over the edge.

Ayame was pregnant with Kamui’s child. That solidified her desire to murder those women. From here on, I’m going to offer up my own possible theories. I don’t have proof for this.

In order to carry out the murders, Ayame became a Kamui copycat. She basically became the same as Kamui. It was Ayame’s feelings for Kamui that made this possible. Pretending to be Kamui and killing those women… what was Ayame feeling? Sadness, pleasure, repulsion, intoxication, hatred, joy?

One thing that’s certain is that Kamui himself was not responsible for any of the stuff that happened, from start to finish. So basically this entire case was caused by Ayame’s will and actions, and has now finished.

: The way they use the term “digital partner” is also very 90s. On an unrelated note, I wound up looking up reviews of this game, and they’re… not great.

: What’s funny to me is how most of the reviewers that panned this game get shit so incredibly wrong. This game’s only problem is that it kinda drags in places.

: In contrast, you have dipshit reviewers complaining about the lack of voiceacting, the controls, or the art style being different for the Placebo chapters.

: I think what they don’t get is that the art style change is a choice meant to symbolize the fact that Tokio sees the world differently than Kusabi does.

: Gamespot also complained about the plot rambling and having nonsensical asides, but that’s part of the entire point of the game. That’s just how Suda works.

: “Turtles apparently eat an amount similar to the size of their head. But it’s pretty clear that you’ve been eating more than that. You’re gonna get big.”

: “You’re getting too fat. Huh? It’s almost chat time…”

: I missed a shot here because it goes by without warning, but Tokio lights a cigarette here.

: Was I at all surprised that Tokio’s chat name is TurtleGuy? No, no I was not. Anyway, there’s a slur coming up that I’m going to omit.

(TurtleGuy): yeah sorry im a slow walker

(erica): i dont have time for your (r-slur omitted) jokes

(TurtleGuy): but did you know that turtles arent actually that slow? my pet red can run pretty fast

(erica): can we get to the point?

(TurtleGuy): yeah whatever

(erica): i want to ask you about ayame

(TurtleGuy): what?

(erica): did you look up her past?

(TurtleGuy): yeah

(erica): its weird right? her past has been erased or else maybe whats left is just made up…

(TurtleGuy): maybe yeah

(erica): what do you think?

(TurtleGuy): about what?

(erica): just like kamui, ayame has a lot of mysteries

(TurtleGuy): like what?

(erica): like the fact that ayame was almost as capable as kamui of killing. why?

(TurtleGuy): shes capable yeah

(erica): that kind of murder isnt something done easily

(TurtleGuy): maybe her jealousy made her able to do it

(erica): dumbass. with jealousy theres no difference between men and women. a womans jealousy being worse than a mans is just bullshit made up by men

(TurtleGuy) i wonder

(erica): to be honest im not sure how much i believe the story about ayame killing out of jealousy. i think she had some other deeper reason for doing it. thats what im interested in. so if you have any info then id like to hear it

(TurtleGuy): i dont really know much about ayame

(erica) you were checking out gladiolus from the beginning right?

(TurtleGuy): yeah but it was a coincidence

(erica): why did you decide to look into the kamui case?

(TurtleGuy): cuz i was hired to

(erica): by what publisher?

(TurtleGuy): just some client. im not allowed to tell you their name

(erica): i want to hear more about the info youve got

(TurtleGuy): pretty frank arent we?

(erica): yeah. i think we could work better together

(TurtleGuy): im surprised to hear you say that

(erica): yeah, but i mean in a business capacity

(TurtleGuy): so you wanna do business with me then

: Wait, what? I guess that turns my whole “Tokio was the real killer” theory on its head.

: Even though it seems like we could move right on to Hana, we can’t. We have to do Spectrum first… so next time, Spectrum. Spectrum is a case a lot of the reviews for this game complained about.

: Anyway, have a picture from Salty Vanilla of Red interviewing the player character.

[Timrod]

Summary

: There’s a monologue right at the start of this, and I’m going to use the character’s portrait for it even though it doesn’t show up in-game.

: “It’s lonely all alone.”

: “Where’d you go? There’s nobody here.”

: “Where’d you go? Do you hate me?”

: “Where’d you go? I can’t do it alone.”

: “Where’d you go? I’ll protect you.”

: “Where’d you go? Where are you?”

: “Where’d you go? Is it that good?”

: “Where’d you go? Aren’t you lonely?”

: “Hikaru is so kind. But he’s too kind… he has no sense of presence. But I really like Hikaru, and I really have a sense of presence.”

: “But just disappearing like that… Hikaru really did it this time. Maybe… he’s trying to surprise me and is hiding somewhere. The old lady won’t tell me anything.”

: “Hikaru must really mean it this time. —Not really. Maybe the kids in class have Hikaru all locked up somewhere. That would be bad. I have to help him… things have gotten pretty bad now.”

: Maybe Hikaru is locked in a shrine that is currently being lit on fire. Anyway, you’ll recall that I said that Decoyman was pretty much the last time we’d hear of Kamui until the end of the game.

: The way I understand it is that Suda had a bunch of ideas for VNs around this time, and just kinda went with whatever.

: “He doesn’t look it, but he’s really cheerful. I’ve seen Hikaru laugh lots of times… I know Hikaru’s true personality. He laughs a lot and sounds like a frog.”

: The first thing I thought of when I read this was the “Frog Kid” episode of Always Sunny. It’s too bad that show sucks now.

: “He really says ‘ribbit’. He really does… and so — to play with Hikaru again I have to help him.”

: You probably recognize this building coming from Yume - this is in fact the “Typhoon” apartment complex that Tokio lives in, and is the setting for the majority of Spectrum.

: “I went ahead and set up the Save Hikaru Special Headquarters at that base. The base is somewhere in these apartments, but it’s a secret.”

: “The base is only for Hikaru and me, as we promised each other… lots of people live here, and there are lots of grownups I don’t know.”

: “But we can’t tell the difference between grownups. We don’t really care about those grownups. But we like some of them.”

: While doing this update, I did my weekly “Does YIIK 1.5 have an announced release date yet” check. They put up a screenshot of Michael reading a book about sending dick pics to Satan.

: “He looks scary, but he says ‘that’s dangerous.’ and worries about us. ‘Quit playing games and go play outside.’ — he says that a lot. Then there’s…”

: “I don’t know anyone else; they all look the same. —One more time, I’ll try remembering Hikaru. Where did he play? Where could he be? Where is he hiding? Hikaru…”

: There’s a bunch of stock footage of various places in Japan playing behind the portrait, which is kind of par for the course for the PS1 era.

: “Mr. Muneo says to think of them as ‘pumpkins’, but… to me they all look like really scary monsters. When you move to a new town, with all the strange monsters, it’s sort of exciting.”

: “But — everyone is mean to outsiders so it’s really scary. Hikaru looked like that, too. I really understand.”

: There’s a stock footage video of two kids running up the steps to the shrine, and it plays for a good ten or fifteen seconds.

: “Our territory… I told him that the fifth grade kids hang out on 4th Street so he shouldn’t go there alone. I showed him the shortcut home, too.”

: “After school, we play together at the shrine and the park, and sometimes we find empty lots. Usually they soon turn into apartment buildings, but they’re open for about a month.”

: It’s funny because in Connecticut the opposite is true - we have a bunch of empty buildings that eventually get bulldozed into empty lots after people get sick of looking at them.

: “We play board games at Shigenori’s house… and we play video games at Minoru’s house… I don’t really like him, but he has video games so I put up with him…”

: Oh man, I remember that kid. His name was Brian and he had a PS1 and an N64 and parents who would buy him just about anything for them. Kid was a dick.

: "I don’t go to Kojima and Nakao’s houses. Because they’re mean— "

: I don’t think I’d go to Hideo Kojima’s house. I feel like he probably has a plot room for whatever his next game post-Death Stranding is and it works like Cthulhu where if you look at it you go insane.

: “Karasawa is a good guy, and he’s rich, and we can eat lots of yummy snacks at his house. Kunihiko’s house is fun, too. Kunihiko is good at drawing, and he draws really cool giant robots.”

: “What?”

: “Ayame.”

: " ‘Ayame’? The fuck is that?"

: “The ‘Kamui Case’ perp…”

: “Are you shitting me? You falling in love with a serial killer? What are you, fuckin’ stupid?!”

: “Well, yeah, but… but she’s hot, right?”

: I think it’s safe to say that yes, Sumio is an idiot.

: “Dumbass. You’re a real idiot… she destroyed Special Forces and murdered those three broads. That’s not the kind of broad a pussy like you should be fucking with.”

: “Fuck off, old man! She’s really not so bad… stop trying to break down a person’s love like that…”

: “Forget about her…”

: “I can’t… I’ll wait. For her… however many years it takes, I’ll wait for her so we can start our second life.”

: Second Life released in 2003, so Sumio’s still got four years to go.

: “Do whatever, then… what a bunch of bullshit. Fuckin’ kids.”

: Ok, grandpa.

: “Whatever, Tetsu. I know I felt something…”

: “And you call yourself a fuckin’ detective. Listen, don’t you ever say shit like this to anyone else…”

: “—Of course. I can’t talk about this with anyone else.”

: “What a fuckin’ honor.”

: “I wanna see her…”

: “Christ… just go for Hachisuka or someone instead… you two’d look good together.”

: “No way. That’d never work.”

: Something tells me Chizuru has better taste than to date Sumio.

: “Well, whatever…”

: “Come on. It’s not that simple.”

: “I can’t. We’re on a stakeout.”

: “What…?”

: “What about Morikawa? Aren’t you two partners? Go handle it as a team.”

: “He’s not here. I can’t get hold of him.”

: “Same as usual then, huh?”

: If there’s one thing we’ll learn in this part of the game, it’s that it is a miracle Morikawa has a job.

: “OK, fine. I’ll go by myself…”

: “No. Don’t move alone.”

: “He’s right. Don’t do anything rash.”

: “What else am I supposed to do? There’s nobody else…”

: “I’ve seen plenty die thanks to that kind of carelessness. I mean, do whatever you want, but…”

: “You’re exaggerating…”

: I’m sure the chinchilla can handle it.

: “It’s better than nothing, right…?”

: “That would be better. Live in the now.”

: “I don’t really get it, but… whatever. Can you get hold of him?”

: “You can get him online. Search for ‘part-time’, he’s registered.”

: Really? I mean, I just looked and all it shows me is a list of job openings.

: “His home address should be listed there, too.”

: “OK, I’ll do that.”

: “You OK?”

: “I’m OK, thanks.”

: “You’d better hurry.”

: She really should. I imagine that a talking, crime-solving chinchilla is probably in really high demand.

: “Got it.”

: “What was that? She seemed weird just now…”

: I mean, you just told her to call the talking chinchilla detective instead of either going over there or trying to find out where Morikawa was…

Uploading: TheSilverCase 2022-03-22 11-26-34-17.png…

: We can examine the TV for the same ghost thing we got last time, and then…

: If what Tokio said at the end of Yume is anything to go by, this is the same person who hacked into his chat with Erika… and is probably the same person who sent us that message in Decoyman.

: As soon as we finish reading the email, the doorbell rings.

: Chizuru is just off to the right once you walk out of the apartment. It’s amazing that she can fit in this presumably chinchilla-size building.

: “Put frankly, I want your help with an investigation. Technically… I just want you to come down to the site. How about it…?”

: This scene would’ve worked way better on film, because you’d have Chizuru awkwardly approaching this guy who doesn’t talk or do much of anything except wander around and see ghosts.

: Anyway, we can talk to her again for a few more lines of dialog.

: “It’s in District D4. A body was found in an apartment complex. Sumio and Tetsu are on a stakeout and can’t come out.”

: “It just looks like a regular apartment building, but… these apartment complexes look nice, but — something about them is creepy. Let’s start the investigation.”

: “Don’t waste any time. Let’s hurry.”

: “How did it it go?”

: “Isn’t this your guys’ job?”

: I don’t think I mentioned it when we met this guy in Decoyman, but his name is Riley Kawabata.

: “We got the request… all the detectives are out on bigger jobs.”

: “I see… well, sometimes it’s nice to do more low-key work like this.”

: “So what’s the situation? What was the cause of death?”

: If this was being written today I swear there would be a scene where Kusabi somehow calls in and goes “I BET KAMUI DID THIS!”

: “Look, up there…”

: “Suicide?”

: “I wonder… we can’t be sure, but if there was a motive…”

: “From up above…”

: “Cervical fractures, complex fractures all over the body, and bruising. They’d have died instantly. The ground is dirt, so the cranium is intact, but… the way the bones broke… damn…”

: “Any leads on a possible murder? Any signs of a struggle?”

: I’m imagining this case except Kusabi and Sumio respond. Kusabi sees the body and immediately calls for an exorcism to remove the crime ghosts. Then they go get drunk.

: “Nothing in particular… not at this point. We’re waiting on the autopsy.”

: “I see…”

: "Hey Chizuru, what’s up with Morikawa?

: “Skipping work.”

: “Yeah… if you see him, tell him to show up once in a while.”

: “Mahjong?”

: “Yeah, he hasn’t been coming around. He used to like it more than work. But now… since he has a hot partner, apparently he’s really into his job now.”

: “Kawabata, that’s…”

: “Well, the rest is your job. The investigation depends on whether or not we find a proper motive.”

: “Got it…”

: “I’ll contact you once we get the results. A rookie…?”

: Who’s this guy calling a rookie? Big Dick is a highly experienced chinchilla detective.

: “Basically.”

: “I see… well, good luck, then. You too, rookie.”

: “Thanks.”

: The dialog here is a bit more complex than in Decoyman, in that we have to check every screen and talk to some people multiple times.

: “Did you see anyone at that time?”

: This guy’s name is Mizoguchi - he’s the superintendent for Typhoon.

: “After that, did you see anyone suspicious?”

: “I pretty much know everyone, so nobody suspicious…”

: “OK… thank you for your cooperation.”

: “No problem.”

: Now what we have to do is turn around to face the door we came into the parking area from.

: “I came as fast as I could… ‘Timrod’, right? Are you taking over for me? Chizuru basically pulled you out and forced you out here, yeah?”

: “I guess women like the younger ones, huh? That broad’s a real piece of work… kidding, just kidding.”

: “It’s OK. You don’t have to go along with his sexual harrassment… just ignore it.”

: Why does Chizuru even work for the HCU? I seriously don’t get it.

: “You worried about me?”

: “Should I be…? Doing some sort of underground job, I assume?”

: “Not even… working part-time at a convenience store.”

: “Whatever you say… just get on with the investigation.”

: “I know, I know. Where’s the body?”

: “They just took it.”

: “What’s the word?”

: “It’s looking like a suicide. We can’t be sure till we get the autopsy results…”

: “So we need to finish checking the area then… what floor did he live on?”

: “Which room?”

: “We haven’t gone in yet.”

: “Get the key from the manager. We need to check it out right away.”

: “Don’t we need permission?”

: You’re a government hit squad, so I assume no.

: “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

: “Got it…”

: This part is the only part of the game so far that I think has some design issues. It seems like we’re supposed to talk to Mizoguchi for the key, right?

: “I cleaned up the front and went out to the back garden. I was shocked… I mean… even at my age, I had never seen a dead body before. I didn’t know who it was at first.”

: “Even after calling it in, I was scared… I couldn’t go near the body, but I had seen those clothes before. Of course I realized right away that he was dead.”

: “His face was purple and blackened, so… I didn’t think it was Hiruma from the third floor… he was a good, studious kid. He always greeted me politely. I still can’t believe it…”

: That’s all the dialog he has. Let’s try walking out back to the front of the building, maybe we missed something, or we can go to the front desk and get a key that way.

: I didn’t have a guide open, but I figured this was one of those moments like in Snatcher or Policenauts where you have to ask everyone about everything and tried talking to Kawabata again.

: “Or is it just me…? Well, try your best. The HC Unit is full of weirdos. That one chick looks cute, but she does some messed up shit. I, myself, have dealt with some really fucked up autopsies.”

: “Because those guys don’t know when to stop… if you ever have any problems, come talk to me.”

: At this point, I knew I was missing something, and started looking up and down to see if I could find it. What you’re supposed to do is see that dialog box right after the conversation with Chizuru and Morikawa and see that it’s on the top of the screen. Then you look up.

: “That’s the fourth floor. Hurry to the fourth floor!”

: We can now go back to the front of the building and take a left to go up the stairs.

: You actually have to go up all four flights of stairs. There is a missable achievement (if you’re into that) for checking every door in the apartment building, but we can get that later.

: This is Suda’s love of film showing. In case you haven’t seen it, Gattaca was a 1997 film about a world with two classes of people, one of which is genetically engineered to be ‘perfect’ at birth.

: “Help Hikaru… please help Hikaru.”

: Anyway, I’m going to cut this here, because next time we have a couple of long segments… including a thing I’ve only seen in games developed between 1999 and 2003 or so.

[SpammyV]

Sumio leans against the window inside the parked police car. His gaze is somewhere in the unfocused distance, and every now and then a hint of odd expression passes over his face, or he seems on the edge of saying something. Finally he breaks the awkward silence, looking over to the chinchilla sitting in the other seat and asks, “Big Dick, what you think about like, murderously crazy chicks?”

[Timrod]

Summary

: “On a stakeout.”

: “A stakeout? This whole time? Didn’t they start like three days ago?”

: “Technically it was four and a half days ago. It’s not just our unit. The whole department is in on this investigation.”

: “Is it that big of a job? What the hell? You know what’s going on, right?”

: “Of course.”

: “So, what is it?”

: “Morikawa, you’ve got a big mouth, don’t you? I can’t tell someone like that.”

: “You Department of Intelligence guys are real dicks, huh…”

: As we’ll learn in this update, pretty much everyone at the Heinous Crimes Unit is a dick.

: “Same as the Multiregional Agents. It’s the same deal. Everyone hates us both.”

: “Don’t equate us with you guys… you career types are just jealous.”

: “With the key to the ‘Silver’ case…”

: “Hey, Naka. You trying to pick a fight?”

: “No. Pissing people off is my job…”

: “Whatever… I just need to ask the boss.”

: “Why not?”

: “It’s under Central’s command. Technically, it falls under our jurisdiction, so…”

: “Central? Moving the pieces in the background… Naka, you gathering info?”

: “Well, I am helping, yeah.”

: “Give us some info, then.”

: “Well, it depends on the situation.”

: “C’mon… don’t forget that we’re all friends here.”

: Actually, Friends is a pretty apt comparison to this game because just like Friends, everyone in the HCU is an asshole.

: " ‘Friends’…? Morikawa, you’re the last person I wanna hear that from…"

: “Yeah, I guess you’re right… so anyways… why is that guy here? Timrod…”

: Honestly, I’m starting to ask myself that, because I found out about another game I probably would’ve LPed if I had known about it at the time.

: That game is The Caligula Effect: Overdose. The game itself is shit, at least as far as I understand, but that’s not what’s important about it.

: The important part is that it’s written by Satomi Tadashi, and is basically the plot to the Maruki arc in Persona 5 Royal… written several years before Royal released. I am thoroughly convinced that the people who took over for Hashino simply did what Hashino would’ve and merely stole Satomi Tadashi’s plot.

: I might honestly scout that out, because as much as I like this game I can tell it gets boring in places.

: “Looks like the boss called him out. Apparently he’s getting this case.”

: We have control now, which allows us to, uh, turn to the right for some more cutscene.

: “Can’t do what…?”

: “Trust him. I can’t trust my partner.”

: “Is that the reason why…?”

: “The reason… do I even need anymore reasons? Partners who can’t trust each other hurt the investigation. I’m requesting reassignment.”

: “For who…?”

: “Boss, do you understand me? Of course I mean for Morikawa. Please reassign Morikawa.”

: This reminds me so much of my last job, it’s not even funny.

: “I’ve got Morikawa on another investigation. You still want reassignment?”

: “I haven’t heard anything about that.”

: “There are some things I can’t tell you…”

: “I don’t think so. I’m his partner.”

: “I guess so… OK, reassignment it is, then.”

: “Thank you!”

: “?”

: “Leave them here and get the fuck out.”

: “Me…?”

: “Yeah.”

: Kotobuki is a fucking asshole. The canon version of this scene is that the chinchilla tells Kotobuki to fuck himself and walks off.

: “Why…?”

: “I only need agents who can get the job done. Can you tell me you’re better at your job than Morikawa?”

: “…”

: “I have no need for people who can’t trust their friends. Whatever his background might be… is this not the time to trust him?”

: “Boss…”

: “Your words… and your actions, the way you think… it’s about time you rethought all of it.”

: “What do you mean…?”

: “You’ve been here a year… I let you in on recommendation from the mayor, but maybe he’s gone senile. You can’t see reality with just pride.”

: “You need to understand that the times are changing…”

: Look, we don’t need forensics, we need exorcists and people who can point at a corpse and blame Kamui.

: “I understand… I’ll think about it and give you my reply.”

: “Think long and hard. Don’t worry about the time. If you see your father, tell him I said “Hi”…”

: “Excuse me…”

: “Hachisuka… there’s no need to rush it.”

: “You’re all flushed - what’s up?”

: “I’m sick of this… how come you’re allowed to work the way you do?”

: “Did the boss say something?”

: “He says you’re better at your job than me, and that the way I think is the problem…”

: “Isn’t that the truth?”

: “Are you serious?! How can you say that when you shirk your responsibilities in the field?”

: “Why? I have my own way of investigating. A career type like you can’t do it. This is my investigation. Don’t come in and start bitching.”

: “We’re no longer partners, got it?”

: “Well what a shame. Breaking up with the starlet of the HC Unit. I’ll be so lonely. I don’t know if I can take the solitude.”

: “What is your problem? Are you that dissatisfied? Do you want to work with me? Then don’t treat me like a sidekick! I don’t waste time investigating like you do.”

: “Really…? What can you do with that wannabe profiling shit?”

: “It’s the real thing… don’t underestimate the deeper side of crime. Data is the most crucial evidence of all.”

: Let me just say that this whole thing seems like an argument that’d be more appropriate to, say, a game like The Great Ace Attorney than a game set in 1999.

: “You saying that because of your pride as a career type? Or as a woman?”

: “I’m saying it as a professional!”

: “A professional career woman… what a fucking joke.”

: “The way you geezers investigate is old!!”

: “…”

: “That’s the truth. Nowadays, with criminal cases getting worse and worse, it just isn’t useful now… Hachisuka, you understand that, right?”

: “You’d better get out of here before that pride of yours gets destroyed.”

: “These days, profiling is archaic… it’s obvious which is ‘old’, isn’t it?”

: “Fine… I’ll investigate my way. I’ll find out what really happened in that apartment. I’ll find the answers you can’t…”

: This entire conversation doesn’t make a lot of sense. Morikawa and Chizuru both know that the chinchilla was brought in specifically to investigate this as a murder case.

: Then again, there’s a lot of stuff that gets retconned or changed between now and the sequels, which are a lot weirder than this game is.

: “Do whatever!!”

: “Hm?”

: “I don’t care what you do in private… but please keep romance out of the workplace.”

: “Me?”

: “It looked like a lover’s quarrel to me… it isn’t very pretty.”

: “Me and Chizuru? Are you misunderstanding something?”

: “If that’s the case then that’s fine… but it feels like remnants of sex are in the air. Morikawa, you’re a grown man, so…”

: “What the hell? You’re imagining this bullshit. Naka, you’re kinda fucked up.”

: “Really? My instincts are generally pretty spot-on with this kind of thing.”

: “What makes you think so?”

: “I was an undercover specialist in the Department of Intelligence. So I’ve broken up plenty of love affairs.”

: He was with the Government Anti-Horny Squad.

: “So you’re actually a hard worker, huh?”

: “Yeah, I’m kind of a social outcast, so… I could start up my own private detective agency anytime.”

: “That’s scary… I’ll be careful.”

: “Naka… you’re actually in love with Chizuru, aren’t you?”

: Well, I guess this outright confirms that Nakategawa is a pedophile. No wonder Tokio didn’t like him.

: “Oh, OK then.” (I can imagine…)

: Was Kotobuki possessed by a crime ghost?

: “I want to thank you on behalf of all of us.”

: “Boss, let’s get down to business.”

: “Hm… OK, I’ll be frank. I’m designating you Heinous Crimes Unit Special Agent. But whether or not to accept it is up to you. Do you want the position…? Decide now.”

: “You’ve been scouted. That happens a lot here. Everyone here was scouted by the boss.”

: Clearly, Kotobuki makes nothing but good decisions, like hiring a pedophile.

: “From what I’ve seen, I don’t think you’d be able to live outside of this world. You could say you’re built almost like a criminal. Tell me if you have any reason to turn this down.”

: “That means you’ll be living in this world now. That get your stomach all upset?”

: “There’s one way to turn it down… right here and now, the Firebird Splash. Do it. What do you say? OK then, welcome aboard.”

: I thought a “Firebird Splash” was some kind of mixed drink, but as it turns out, it’s not. In reality, it’s a wrestling move. I should’ve suspected that given Suda’s love of pro wrestling.

: The Firebird Splash is basically a jump off the ropes followed by a full front flip that ends up with the wrestler bellyflopping on their opponent.

: It was a signature move for a wrestler by the name of Hayabusa (real name: Eiji Ezaki) who would have come back to Japan from wrestling in Mexico right around the time this game takes place.

: “We’re buddies now. I may have pissed you off before, but let’s forget about all that now… looking forward to working with you.”

: “You’ve just started, but… the case of that apartment complex. Take over the case with Morikawa. Morikawa is already investigating. Timrod, you give him support.”

: “What’s the situation?”

: So yeah, this is the part I don’t get. Everyone in the building knew they were investigating it as a homicide, but kept telling Chizuru they weren’t.

: “I’ve checked out all the background info. The victim, Kenichi Hiruma, didn’t have any clear motivation to kill himself. I’m treating it as a homicide.”

: “Don’t let anything get by you… what about Hachisuka’s report?”

: “Still the same…”

: “Go easy on her… how was the crime scene?”

: “It didn’t look like a suicide after all.”

: “Why not?”

: “Just my gut feeling.”

: “That’s good… but don’t rely on that too much.”

: “I’ll be careful.”

: “Boss, have a look.”

: “…”

: “The kid living in those apartments? He was peeking from his balcony. That kid, huh…”

: “Timrod, keep in contact with him. He may prove to be a crucial witness.”

: “What about this ‘Hikaru’?”

: " ‘Help…’, huh… Morikawa, look into this too."

: “Got it.”

: Huh… they’re still investigating the Silver Case? I thought Kusabi solved that 20 years ago.

: “Nothing new to report.”

: “Even something small is fine… make sure to keep delivering your reports. I’m counting on you.”

: Even though there’s a contact point over the door, we can’t leave yet. We have to talk to Nakategawa for some reason.

: “I don’t like how the Chief Director thinks. What…? Stay out of my way.”

: “I’ve got some minor business to attend to… I’m taking the car. Sorry, but get a cab or something.”

: We want to go right to the 4th floor, where we met Koichi earlier. I investigated all the other rooms on the way up - there’s no dialog or anything. The 5th floor is locked right now.

: “Please, come on in. It’s a bit messy but come on in!”

: “Man, it was awesome. It felt like getting an electric shock all through my body. Like some sorta sixth sense, you know? It must be some kinda superpower.”

: “So, I guess that means that I’m a superhero then, huh? Right, Sumio? So that means you got a superhero for a partner. Must be sweet.”

: “That’s ‘telekinesis’… yaaaawn. I’m so sleepy.”

: “Hey!! Concentrate on your job! You’ve been slacking a bit recently, huh? What, you pick up a bit of know-how and think you’re a veteran now? Hah! Don’t make me laugh.”

: “That’s why you kids these days are shit.”

: “I’m 26… I’m not exactly a ‘kid’…”

: “Horseshit… is that the only excuse you got? The only real shit you’ve seen is a bunch of kids’ play. I’d say it’s six cups of sugary coffee.”

: “1 cup for adjustment, 2 cups for a slight tweak, 3 cups for your youth, 4 cups for diabetes, 5 cups to get back to reality, and 6 cups to get defiant. Basically --just a load of shit.”

: I feel like between Sumio talking about falling in love at gunpoint and Kusabi rambling, these two were made for each other.

: “Tetsu…”

: “What!?”

: “You’re super bored, aren’t you…?”

: “I want you to find him. Hikaru… he disappeared. We always used to play together, but… all of a sudden he just disappeared. Nobody else has noticed.”

: “Everyone in my class just totally forgot about Hikaru. Isn’t that mean? So I thought about it, and something’s definitely fishy. Everyone’s plotting something.”

: “They took Hikaru and hid him somewhere. That has to be it. Everyone hates Hikaru for being an outsider. Hikaru was getting bullied a lot. Everyone always does that to transfer students.”

: “When I was in second grade, I transferred here, too… for my first year, nobody would even talk to me. The same thing happened to Hikaru, too. So I’m protecting him.”

: I swear, if the end of this story is that Koichi killed him…

: “So everyone doesn’t bully him. Kojima and Nakao are really mean guys — so I’m sure they planned something. They wanted to bully Hikaru even more. I won’t let them get away with it…”

: “My mom…? She’s at work. She does a ‘grownup job’. So I’m always by myself at night. It’s not lonely. I cried a lot when I was small, but now I like being alone.”

: “But now I have Hikaru right next door so it’s really fun. He always plays the songs I like. Hikaru’s room is on the other side of this wall, so if he turns it up I can hear.”

: “I was always with Hikaru. We found fun places… it’s complicated. Hikaru’s house is, too…”

: “He parked in the parking lot in a foreign car. Hikaru’s mom’s boyfriend was driving the car, and the three of them moved in. Even then, Hikaru seemed really lonely.”

: “I think it was because he didn’t like his mom’s boyfriend… I know how he feels. Mom’s boyfriends can be good guys… but some of them are really mean and violent.”

: “But since they’re stronger, you can’t fight back. I think Hikaru must’ve felt the same way. Yeah, that was it.”

: To understand what’s going on here, you have to understand a little bit about Japanese politics and the economic climate of late 1990s Japan.

: Between about 1986 and 2012, the divorce rate in Japan shot up around 66%. This naturally meant a large increase in the number of single mothers with kids. In comparison, the divorce rate in the United States actually lowered over the same period.

: Japan was (and still is, from what I understand) basically completely unequipped to handle such a situation. Joint custody doesn’t exist in Japan, and child support is basically impossible to get - it requires that the mother prove to the court where the father works and where he keeps his money.

: At the same time, you had shit like employers asking potential employees for a list of the people who lived with them as a condition of employment - which made it easy for them to discriminate against single parents. Even when they do get hired, single mothers experience a larger wage gap than usual and have a harder time finding full-time employment.

: As a result, by 2017, 55% of all single-family households in Japan were living below the poverty line. I can’t imagine that number has gotten any better since COVID hit.

: This, by the way, is one of the reasons for Japan’s low birth rates. There are groups working to try and get Japan’s Diet to do something about it, but as far as I know they haven’t.

: “But I’ve been telling Hikaru. It’s nothing to be ashamed of at all. Even if people say mean things, just ignore them and keep going. You agree, don’t you?”

: “People don’t need to feel sorry for us…”

: “He looked really embarrassed and was hiding behind his mom… hehehe. I thought he looked so cute somehow. It turned out he was the same age as me and lives in the same district.”

: “So I told him we’d go to the same school. I said ‘I hope we’re in the same class’. Then Hikaru smiled. He laughed like a frog.”

: “I taught him all about these apartments, like the baker, and I introduced him to the guy on the second floor. We ran around the building together…”

: “Oh yeah! I’ll tell you our secret. You know the parking lot down there? There’s a secret base there. We tried lots of times and failed a lot, but… we finally finished our first secret base.”

: “This here…”

: “Wow, cool! It’s a secret robot base!”

: “Wow, this is so cool.”

: “It’s the special edition of TV Dream. Did you buy it, Koichi?”

: I looked this up, and as far as I can tell it’s not a real magazine.

: “Yeah. I’ll lend it to you.”

: “Really? For reals?”

: “Also, I have a plan.”

: “What is it?”

: “We’re gonna build a secret base, just like the robot one.”

: “A secret base…?”

: “Yeah, our own secret base!”

: “Wow, that’s so cool! Let’s do it!”

: “You’re in charge of the blueprints. I’ll be in charge of construction.”

: “Yeah, let’s do it! I’ll check out TV Dream for ideas!”

: “Yeah! OK, then I’ll gather materials for the base.”

: “OK, I’ll start designing it… hey, when do we start?”

: As much as this is kinda cliche, especially for stuff coming out of Japan, it’s at least not as bad as Persona 5 was with the anime garbage.

: “Right away!”

: “OK! Let’s get started!”

: “So… we made a second secret base. But I can’t tell you about that one. Are you gonna come again tomorrow?”

: “I’m gonna make sure to find the guy who did it. So help me with my investigation, OK? I need a really good assistant. Otherwise… I won’t be able to help Hikaru.”

: “Promise, OK? I’ll be waiting here… my mom is gonna come home, so you should hurry up and go…”

: Before we go, we can go into the back of the apartment and see Koichi’s room. I believe this is required for the achievement.

: I’m not sure if those figures by the door are just random designs, or if they’re re-used from something else.

: Well, looks like we’re done here. It’s probably just a kid being a kid, there’s no need to spend valuable chinchilla-hours investigating.

: Welp. Next time, we get even more proof that the main character is actually a chinchilla and get in a car chase.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Last time, Big Dick the Chinchilla went to Tokio’s apartment building and saw a ghost… and now, we’ll just promptly ignore that. You think Big Dick still cares about ghosts? Nah.

: “50,000…”

: “Tetsu? You listening?”

: “50,000! Shut the fuck up!”

: " ‘50,000’ what…?"

: “A horse?”

: “The fuck am I supposed to do for this month? Huh? What the hell am I supposed to tell Akemi…? Sumio, what day is today?”

: “It’s July 3rd…”

: “The 3rd? We just got paid… 22 more days… the fuck am I supposed to do? What am I gonna do?!”

: The extra-judicial murder police clearly don’t pay very well.

: “That’s, uh, not really my…”

: “I had a bad feeling about it. The name ‘Sprite Over’. You know Sonobe in Accounting, right? That fucking idiot told me. Said he had a ‘lead’.”

: This reminds me of the accountant from my old job who went missing for like a week, and then called management from Brazil to tell them he wasn’t coming back.

: “Said the Tsubaki Syndicate had fixed it. I mean, it makes sense if you think about it, right? How else is that fuckin’ idiot supposed to win?”

: “A digital check on the best nine. That’s what I thought. I fuckin’ knew it.”

: “Well, you believed him, yeah? So what are you gonna do for the rest of the month?”

: “Sumio, don’t say shit… just lend me some cash!”

: “Nope!”

: “C’mon, buddy… please, I said the magic word!”

: The best part about this is that you know there’s no way this is the first time this has happened.

: “Please, try asking someone else… check with Nakategawa over the radio or something. That guy’s rolling in it…”

: If you’ve played Disco Elysium, you’re probably wondering if Kusabi is about to join the exclusive club of cops who ask dispatch for money over the radio… and yes. Yes he is.

: “And show Naka that I’m weak? How the fuck am I supposed to ask a bitchy little queen like that to lend me money…?”

: “Here, I’ll turn it over to him…”

: “The fuck’re you doing, man…? C’mon… Naka? Sorry, I know you’re busy… I’m gonna ask you straight-up. Can you lend me some cash? Yeah, 50,000…”

: As much as the reviewers complained about scenes like this, I think this scene is actually pretty good. It tells us a lot about Kusabi and his relationship with Sumio, and doesn’t take that long to do it.

: So yeah, Big Dick saw a ghost and just didn’t give a shit. I wonder if Kusabi asked him for money too.

: There’s no weird jump scares here this time, just a strange email we can (but don’t have to) read before going out.

: The first thing we want to do upon getting here is go up to Koichi’s apartment on the 4th floor.

: We then get a note telling us… okay, let’s see. We need to put a watering can, a syringe, and a flower into a garbage can and then hide it from a giant head. Got it.

: Now, you’d think the first thing we’d want to do is see Mizoguchi, except…

: He’s not in. We still need to check this to set a plot flag, but what we really have to do is go to the second floor.

: If you go back to Apartment 101, Mizoguchi still isn’t there. This is another weird plot flag where we have to go to the parking lot and confirm the door is locked first.

: Yep, its locked. Back to 101 we go.

: “The parking lot? You can’t get there? Why not? … Ah, it’s still locked, isn’t it? Hold on a second. OK, can you open it with this? Yeah, just stick the key right in. I’ll go get the key from you later.”

: We now have the key. This is one of the only times in the game we’re going to need to use an item.

: Tokio’s car isn’t here, which means we’re probably going to see a whole lot of driving segments in his next chapter.

: Off to the side are some garbage cans. Now, you’d think that the answer would be to just walk up to them and try to Contact, except…

: You have to look down first. This one is kind of annoying because the contact point will show up even if you’re looking straight at the cans… only you can’t actually contact them.

: Now, we’re meant to believe that an adult human male fits through that hole. I think this is definitive proof that the protagonist is, in fact, a chinchilla.

: The view on the left is constantly rotating, though there isn’t much in this hole in the ground.

: “Isn’t this place cool? I worked really hard. Together with Hikaru… we’d start when it started getting dark and dig holes a little at a time.”

: Isn’t this just the plot to Holes? When did that come out, anyway? I feel like it’s right around this time frame.

: “Digging holes is fun. Guys like holes. Both Hikaru and me. I feel like digging these holes helped us grow.”

: “I got this from a computer company that went out of business. I don’t know how to use it, but it’s our secret base’s control panel. One day I’ll switch it on and use it for investigations.”

: Koichi clearly has a bunch of waking up to haunted emails and videos of carnivorous plants in his future.

: “Um, for this case… the perpetrator was really dumb.”

: “The solution is coming up after the commercial break… this has been ‘Columbone’. Hehehe, don’t I sound like him? I’m good at impersonation.”

: “OK, so… this is what I think about the perpetrator. I gathered some witnesses. By my reasoning, I narrowed it down to five people… hehehe. I’m like a bookie at the races, huh?”

: I mean, I guess? I don’t really know what Hideo Kojima looked like as a kid.

: “He’s big and he’s really mean. He lives in front of Midori Park, but he always brags about it. Because he has a big house.”

: “And since Hikaru and me only live with our moms, he makes fun of us… this guy, I thought about killing him. I don’t even know how many times.”

: “I’ve played with him before, but it wasn’t fun at all. Hikaru must’ve felt the same. So we always ignored him. He was crap, so he never played baseball, and everyone stayed away from him.”

: “Hikaru was crap, too, so he always got picked on. I always call Hikaru to play right away and bring him back… this guy’s the biggest suspect.”

: “We take the same route to school, and we’re in the same group. And he’s the group leader, but he always acts really big.”

: “He treats me and Hikaru and Shigenori like we’re his lackeys. He says lots of mean stuff. But one time I couldn’t take it anymore and we got in a fight.”

: “I always knew it, that this guy wasn’t so tough. But he acts so bossy, so it got me really mad. I couldn’t beat him, but… it was a tie. He got a bit better after that, and Hikaru supported me, so he’s holding a grudge. He’s another big suspect.”

: I’ll be honest, I almost fell asleep while recording this part. From what I understand, a lot of people consider Spectrum to be the weakest part of the game.

: I mean, this whole thing feels outdated even for 1999 - this feels more like 20th Century Boys, which takes place primarily in the 1970s.

: “He’s good-looking. He’s best at baseball and he has a sense of justice - and everyone likes him. But during baseball, his personality changes.”

: “Hikaru is bad at baseball, so Shimizu always gets mad at him… when we played against the sixth graders, Hikaru joined the game – and at a really important point, when he was pinch-hitting, he couldn’t get a hit…”

: “It was Shimizu’s decision to have Hikaru pinch-hit. But he couldn’t get a hit… so he blamed Hikaru for us losing the game. Also, um… also, he’s really stuck-up.”

: “He’s really arrogant. Since he’s really confident, he forces people into stuff. When I go up to bat, I’m a southpaw, but he won’t let me bat lefty. He makes me bat right-handed.”

: “So… I’m actually better at baseball than Shimizu. I’m actually the best in our class, but everyone discriminates against me. I can’t pitch, but I’m a better fielder than anyone else.”

: “I’m always in the outfield and if I bat lefty then I can get lots of hits, but… so Shimizu is another possibility.”

: “He’s kinda stupid. He’s big! He’s so much bigger than everyone else. He really hulks out sometimes. Seriously, he gets all violent like a monster and his face gets super red and he gets angry.”

: “He’s really strong. Unless we all hold him back he won’t calm down. Motonobu has it hard himself. The guys in the East district always make fun of him…”

: “We live in the West district, and so does Motonobu, but we play around places close to home, so we’re actually kinda friends… I feel sorta sorry for him sometimes.”

: “Kids act like they’re fighting a monster and come after him like that. Motonobu is really stubborn and he won’t give up… so we get done in even more.”

: “Koike and Takepin always make fun of him, and Takepin got Motonobu really angry. He kept calling him a stupid idiot, and then he’d run away, and Shimizu and Koike would beat on him.”

: I’m also not really sure what the point of all this is, but then again, this is Suda we’re dealing with.

: “Motonobu has a short temper so it’s his fault, too, but… when Motonobu gets excited, he gets really weird… so he’s even bullied Hikaru before. I hope it wasn’t Motonobu…”

: “There’s Aonuma and Tsukada and Satomi,and Aonuma is like their boss. They’re really powerful now, because they’re friends with the Misuhashi group in the sports center area.”

: “The Aonuma group lives close by, and they’re always grouped together and talking badly behind people’s backs. These girls really discriminate against people, too, and their parents tell them not to play with ‘single mother kids’.”

: “The girls in the East district are much nicer. Sakurai and Osawa and Yasuda live really far away, but they invited us over to play and their moms are really nice.”

: “I was really happy… maybe they feel sorry for us? But I don’t care. Even though it was New Year’s, they came to my birthday party and were super nice to me and Hikaru.”

: “But the girls in the West and East wards don’t get along at all, and they face off in groups. Sometimes, we get mixed up in their power struggles, and Aonuma tells us to join them…”

: “When I take Sakurai’s side, Aonuma bullies Hikaru. Aonuma is really good at dodgeball and she could beat Hikaru in a fight, so Aonuma is always making Hikaru cry.”

: “So I stand up for Hikaru and make Aonuma cry to get revenge. But she still bullies Hikaru behind his back. Girls can be really dirty, but I still think that Sakurai and them are way better.”

: “The Aonuma group might be keeping Hikaru locked up somewhere. These girls are also top suspects.”

: I thought about this whole scene last night, and at first I couldn’t figure out what the point of it was - whether this was Suda trolling or what.

: Then it kinda hit me. You have Big Dick the Chinchilla knowing that Hikaru is dead, but not really knowing how to break that to Koichi, so he’s just sitting there awkwardly the entire time.

: Speaking of which, since I don’t think anyone who reads my LPs follows me on Twitter, I decided against LPing YIIK 1.5 They just did a reveal of it last week.

: The reason I’ve decided against it is that I feel like I really wouldn’t have much more to say about it than I did the first two times.

: “We might be able to help Hikaru… promise, OK? I’ll get hold of you again later.”

: “Seriously, man… and how did it somehow get up to 100,000?”

: “Whatever. He says he’ll spot me, so…”

: “You’re gonna pay for it later…”

: For some reason, I have a feeling that Kusabi lost the other 50,000 betting on the same horse.

: “I’ll deal with that when it happens. Live in the now, man. In this moment, right now.”

: “I envy you… you’ve got guts.”

: This reminds me so much of CITY by Keiichi Arawi, which has two characters that are more or less Kusabi and Sumio only they’re female college students.

: “Don’t flatter me. Just live how you feel.”

: “I was being sarcastic…”

: “But anyways… how long is this stakeout gonna go on?”

: For reference, Kusabi and Sumio have been out there for almost six days at this point.

: “It can’t really be helped.”

: " ‘Can’t be helped,’ huh… ‘Can’t be helped’…"

: "That’s right. ‘Can’t be helped.’ "

: “Back when I was in Regional… the old man told me. 'Detectives don’t use the words “can’t be helped” '. ‘Don’t ever say that in front of me again.’ He looked like he was gonna stab me.”

: If only Hashino’s boss had been more like Kotobuki, Persona 5 might have been tolerable.

: “So Sumio, don’t ever use that phrase. If we give up, we lose. That’s a detective’s job. Burn that into your brain.”

: “OK then, if I decide I want to die, then I’ll use those words…”

: “Oh yeah, don’t worry… I’ll kill your ass.”

: “…”

: I’m not even going to apologize for this, because I absolutely could not refuse.

: Just like yesterday, we can look at Big Dick’s computer for some cryptic bullshit.

: “I’ve done OK with the gathering. That boy have anything to go on? You don’t need to rush it. Take your time. Something’ll pop up eventually.”

: “Chizuru? Well, women are complicated. Us men can’t really understand them. There’s a program. A really specific, original one. Chizuru is especially complicated.”

: “She’s half-assedly sticking her nose into forensic investigation, so she’s being pressured by all these unspecific personalities. Protecting her own self-consciousness is all she can do.”

: Wait, what. When did this become Persona?

: “Her job is to take in other people’s consciousnesses, you know? So basically, she’s like the fortunetellers on Mt. Osore. It’s a really tough job… it’ll get better once the storm blows over…”

: “She just needs to be left alone for a bit. She’s not a little kid anymore… once she remembers that she’s a professional cop, she’ll be back.”

: “Anyway, Timrod, you’d be solidify your position here while Chizuru’s out. Let’s go… Timrod, we’re gonna check out the area around the complex. See if we can get any info from the locals.”

: “It isn’t glamorous work but this is important too.”

: “Really? The results of our questioning have already disappeared from backup. That’s in the past.”

: So you’re saying that… you killed… the past?

: “Leave your stupid comments in your pocket! I’ve got my way of doing things. Let’s go!”

: Morikawa is exercising the little-known police right to piss wherever you want.

: Chizuru speeds by in her red sports car.

: “Wh- what?! Timrod, move out! That’s Chizuru!”

: It is my headcanon that Big Dick refuses to drive whatever it is that Morikawa drives and instead has a chinchilla-sized convertible.

: I would have had Salty Vanilla draw that, except cars are apparently hell and a half to draw.

: “Heh, he’s pretty good. So what do you want? I’m off duty right now. I’m just a civilian…”

: You might ask why Chizuru isn’t wearing her glasses, and the answer is I have no idea. I can’t even drive without mine.

: My theory is that she’s like Senator Armstrong in Metal Gear Rising and disabled her lesbian inhibitors via nanomachines.

: “What is this, desperate driving? And you were such a good girl… want me to make you feel better?”

: “Whatever… I told you. I have my own way of doing things. So? Is this your new partner? Good timing…”

: “By the way…is it some kind of structural problem that the steel is cheap and there are old marks everywhere?”

: “…”

: “Can I talk to you in private?”

: “I’m fine…”

: “I’m not.”

: “In that case…”

: “Do you understand?”

: “I don’t care. This shouldn’t be the time for thinking.”

: “Well, more than anyone, you should…”

: “Your father, huh?”

: “Timrod, can you head off to the scene on your own? Sorry, don’t ask… start questioning people thoroughly. Check every apartment. The inner garden, too. Try going back again.”

: I’m going to end this here, because there is a lot of optional dialogue up ahead. Next time, we should be able to finish Spectrum.

[Timrod]

Summary

: After we finish talking with Morikawa and Chizuru, we’re dumped right back at Typhoon. There’s a LOT of optional dialog here. You can book it right to Koichi and skip all of it.

: Weirdly, I didn’t get the achievement for exploring the entire apartment complex, even though I’m 100% positive I did. I actually went through this segment twice just to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

: Anyway, we can now access the 5th floor, where Tokio lives. We’ll start by talking to him.

: “You doing stuff like this with a face like that? Hm… have we met somewhere? Maybe not… I know about the kid below dying. I’m not totally unrelated.”

: “But I have nothing to talk to you about. I heard some noise on this floor… but I was in a bad mood. Unfortunately, what happened right near me may as well have happened in another world.”

: If it weren’t for his friendship with Red, Big Dick would absolutely tackle Tokio right here. Anyway, we’ll move on to the third floor from here - because Koichi is the only person on the fourth.

: This guy doesn’t have a name, but I like to call him Mr. Very 90s.

: “Hiruma always came home late. Probably had some kind of flashy job. I never really ran into him much. I think he was at home during the day a lot. I could hear noises sometimes.”

: “But I’ve never really seen him going out anywhere. It’s so creepy… that stuff that happened next door, and the kid upstairs dying. I’m considering moving out of here soon…”

: “I mean, wouldn’t you? Kids around that age, they play around a lot and yeah, it can be troublesome, but… if they get yelled at every time then they’ll have nowhere to play, right?”

: “They were building something out of cardboard in my space in the parking lot. You know, like you do when you’re a kid. You played like that too, right?”

: “Remembering the old days makes me feel really nostalgic. I didn’t want to break their thing down, so for the time being I just parked on the street.”

: “Ended up getting a ticket… oh, by the way, Detective… could you maybe say something to the Traffic Unit or someone? Tell them about my situation…”

: “It’s a good enough excuse, right? At that time…? I have to answer again? Both of us work, so we eat out every day.”

: It’s kind of funny that of all the things in this LP, I probably don’t have to explain what Blockbuster was, thanks to all that news coverage of the last remaining one in Bend, Oregon.

: My only memory of being in a Blockbuster was going there with my dad one day as a kid and having him talk me out of renting Castlevania 64. That was a good decision.

: This one I’ll probably have to explain though. Millennium was a TV show that could only exist in the late 90s. It was written by Chris Carter, who also wrote The X-Files.

: It ran on Fox for 3 seasons, from 1996 to 1999 - which is kind of amazing given the sheer volume of shows around that time that ran on Fox for maybe two episodes before being cancelled.

: Anyway, from what I’ve read about it, Millennium was this heavily disjointed show about an FBI agent who joins the “Millennium Group”, which is actually some kind of post-apocalyptic Y2K cult, in order to investigate and profile serial killers.

: The show kind of took a turn into basically being a second X-Files, then veered away from that, and then got abruptly cancelled. The writer brought it back for a single episode of The X-Files, and that was pretty much that.

: “Oh yeah, I have the receipt. Here, it says the time was 11:40, and I rented two videos, see? At this place, if you rent two or more new releases, you can keep them for three days so it’s a bargain.”

: “So we came home just past 12:00. So how about it…? That’s a good enough alibi, right? You see this kind of thing on TV and stuff.”

: Checks out, I guess. I was also wondering why it is that everyone in the apartment complex is home today - that’s because July 3rd was a Saturday in 1999.

: “Oh, and here, we went by the convenience store, too. This was 11:52… after that the two of us just watched videos… oh yeah. I heard this from my wife, but…”

: Believe it or not, this is going to be important. Not for the case itself, but for another largely optional thing we’ll be doing this update.

: “It makes us feel a bit closer, doesn’t it? What, that wasn’t funny? Well, this is all I have to talk about.”

: Next up is the other occupied room on the 3rd floor. There’s three rooms, but one’s empty because it belonged to the dead guy.

: “Ah, about the jumper from the other day, huh? Anything strange? Hm… I don’t think so… Oh yeah, I did hear a sound. Maybe that was the sound from when the guy jumped?”

: “Otherwise, that’s about it… oh yeah, also, just before then, it looked like Hiruma had just gotten back. Yeah, I could hear his footsteps.”

: “It’s pretty quiet here, so adult footsteps really reverberate. What else… I did hear the sound of a motorcycle. That was definitely the younger guy on the second floor’s exhaust, I’m sure of it.”

: “But you know, that guy on the second floor? He looks kinda sketchy, but he’s actually a good guy. Look into him and I’m sure you’ll see… but, wasn’t that a suicide?”

: We’ll go down to the second floor next.

: “A detective? The guy on the third floor, that was a suicide, right? I don’t play with those kids, but I’ve talked to them a lot. Kids do stupid things, so I’d tell them to be careful…”

: “When I’m working on my bike, they’d come right over. I told them about how the engine is built, stuff like that… I doubt they understand, but anyway. They seemed really happy.”

: “My mom works nights, my little brother was studying for exams, and I was out on my bike. Those are basically our alibis. Hiruma on the third floor… I don’t really know him.”

: “He didn’t seem like a very nice guy, though… what a shock… the other kid has been really depressed, you know? I don’t even know what to say to console him…”

: “Oh, by the way… that night, I saw Hiruma on the street in front of the complex. I ride a motorcycle, you know? I didn’t talk to him or anything, and the parking lot’s in the back, so that’s it, but…”

: There’s two more people we can talk to on this floor - one of them is the woman we met in the last update when we were looking for the key to the parking lot.

: “His apartment was kind of dark and smelled like cigarettes. He lived in this building by himself, right? You know… there was definitely something creepy about him, but to think that he killed himself…”

: “The kid on the fourth floor, right? At the Kobayashi place… how unsettling. My kid is still small, so he wasn’t really the age to be playing with the older kids.”

: “But to think what could’ve happened… really, how sad… the child’s mother has been really upset… the building manager, Mizoguchi, probably knows better than anyone about the residents here…”

: “We don’t really interact with the neighbors, so you should probably talk to him…”

: There’s one more person on the second floor, and then we can go talk to Mizoguchi and the one guy on the fourth floor.

: “About the other day? I don’t know anything. But more importantly, do something about all the illegal parking out front. What? Anything else? Leave me alone. I have a bad headache.”

: “About the dead guy? How should I know anything about him? I don’t care, OK? Can we stop now?”

: “What’s the matter, detective? You want to ask me some questions? Well, OK then, come on in.”

: “Honestly, I’ve been troubled myself. The landlord and management company are always bitching. I mean, this sort of thing happens no matter who works as building manager, but still…”

: “As for me, all I know about the people living here is whatever is written in their documentation, and it’s not like I had any sort of personal relationship with Hiruma, so…”

: “That night? Yeah, I was awake. I remember hearing a sort of bang. But I never thought, you know…”

: We already know Mizoguchi’s version of events, but I think they’re missable if you look up and see Koichi right away when you’re here with Chizuru.

: “Recently more residents have been taking their trash out at night, and it’s a hassle to warn them about it every time… so I thought that’s what the sound was. At first, at least.”

: “Then when I went out to clean up in the morning, I saw what had happened… Koichi? Oh, the kid on the fourth floor, right? Poor kid… the kid next door died suddenly.”

: “Sounds like they were playing together and he suddenly had a heart attack. Whatever it was… at that age, the shock must’ve been really bad.”

: We can go to the parking lot. There’s nothing there but a jump scare.

: “What are you doing? What’re you doing over there? Hurry up and come here!”

: Wait, is this actually going to be a case of “a ghost did it”? Are we going to arrest a ghost? Anyway, there’s one other person we can talk to on the fourth floor.

: “Oh, the suicide from earlier, yeah? What a bunch of trouble. When stuff like that happens, the value drops. Huh? The value of this place, obviously.”

: I’m not sure why you’d care what the value of the apartment building is, unless this guy is one of the owners or something.

: “That night? I was at home. I ate dinner, watched the sports news, did some work I brought home… the economy is bad all over.”

: “I envy you guys. It’s not like you have to worry about going bankrupt or anything. Now is the time to spend. Use up all the company’s budget… do whatever you want, you know?”

: “Cause trouble for everyone else and then let another department wipe your ass for you. Anything I noticed? Nope, nothing, really… Oh yeah. I think it’s the guy on the fifth floor, maybe?”

: “Yeah, I heard footsteps. Footsteps going up to the fifth floor. No, it’s probably not even related, but just in case. I’ve never actually met the guy on the fifth floor.”

: Cue Big Dick trying to explain that he has it on good authority from a turtle that Tokio didn’t kill anyone… at least, not in the past couple of nights.

: “I mean, it was the first time I ever got the sense that he actually lives there, you know? Oh yeah, also… this is just my own personal idea, but…”

: “I see Hikaru’s ghost pretty often. You don’t believe me, do you?”

: We have to go all the way back to Koichi’s room, at which point…

: “Hikaru was really terrified. He was really scared of something. Especially that day…”

: This is a video, so it’s a good time to talk about something I saw last night.

: I checked the Twitter feed for one of the people doing the Eternal Punishment PSP translation, and… it’s not great.

: As of about three weeks ago, it was in a “playable alpha” stage without the extra Tatsuya part translated, and it sounds like they just used the PS1 script for the game itself.

: That’s bad enough, as the PS1 script was a fucking abomination, but now the development status is listed as “on indefinite hiatus”. Fuck that shit.

: “Hehehe, you don’t know what that means, do you? Huh? What? What’s that? I wonder who that is… who was it… something doesn’t feel right.”

: “The sun was bright and was reflecting on the apartment building. I know… from the third floor of the apartment building… he was watching! Watching Hikaru!”

: “Hurry up!!”

: “Koichi, no!”

: “He’s coming! He disappeared!”

: “Huh?”

: “On the stairs!”

: “Help…”

: “Run!!”

: “I’m sorry… I don’t feel so good… please leave me alone for a while… please… I want to be alone.”

: For the second time this case, we’ve gotten to a point where something might be revealed, only to go back to the office. This time, though…

: If you’re playing this for yourself and want all the achievements, you’re going to want to save here.

: “Chizuru is off the case and I tried letting you move on your own. That made things much easier for me, seriously. It was like a refreshing vacation.”

: “I was getting way too burnt out… anyway… how do you like investigating? You having fun? You don’t need to answer. Everyone has their own opinions…”

: “Let’s get down to business… that kid, Koichi Sugita. He’s the key to this case. It’s clear that the after-effects of the incident are still there. But he has no subjective symptoms.”

: “That kid has it shut away deep in the back of his memory. Taking our time and getting him to bring those memories back would be best. But that’ll take too much time.”

: “So what do we do? We need to force the truth onto him. That’ll shake his memories loose. It’s about time we found that ‘truth’…”

: “We’ve been investigating for four days. That’s more than enough time to get a good feel for this case. No… not really a ‘feel’ for it. Whatever. Anyway, I want answers.”

: Clearly, this means we’re going to call in Koichi for questioning, or, I dunno, have Kusabi threaten Hikaru’s ghost.

: “Timrod, I kinda wanna see what you’re made of, too. You’re being tested… what’re you gonna do? How about a simple 3-choice game? Like a quiz. That’s fair, right?”

: “But I won’t go easy on you… the boss used to do karate, so I’ll call this…”

: This is a very dumb pun of sorts, so let me explain. Kumite is a karate term used for sparring with an opponent, but is most often used in the context of competitions. It’s a very real thing.

: There’s a school of karate in Japan called Kyokushin, which has this idea of the “100-man Kumite”, in which one person takes on 100 opponents in a row. I’m not sure how much of it is real.

: All of the sources I was able to find on it come from the Kyokushin school itself, which is usually not a great sign for proving that something isn’t staged.

: “You’ll get 100 questions in a row. No breaks. Everyone has passed this. By the way, I made it to 300-Question Kumite. Tetsu made it to 500-Question Kumite.”

: “The boss decides at the end whether or not you’ve passed. You can only take the challenge once. If you make a mistake, you’re out. The borderline is also up to the boss.”

: “Anyway, it’s basically a matter of motivation. This is all I can tell you. Let me know when you’re ready. I’ll wait till you get focused.”

: The game makes it sound like you’ll have an opportunity to save here. You won’t.

: “Ready…? OK then, here we go! Oh yeah… I forgot. You’ve got a time limit of ten seconds per question.”

: I do have a recording of me doing all 100 questions, but I didn’t get shots of all of them.

: Some of them are plot-related. We know the answer here is Mizoguchi, because he discovered the body around 4AM, several hours before Chizuru and Big Dick showed up.

: Some of them are are about mid-90s pop culture, with a couple of questions about the PS1. Remember, this was a PS1 game.

: The answer to this one is C, though it really shouldn’t be. We need a goddamn Tim Curry Batman movie. I feel like Tim Curry would probably play Batman, the Joker, and Robin simultaneously.

: This one’s A, but only because of the “found in the Mediterranean” part. Kitti’s hog-nosed bat is technically smaller, and also extremely endangered because fuck Myanmar.

: This one’s also A. The only fifth-generation console to release later was the Nintendo 64, which released stateside in 1996.

: It’s A.

: Ignore the highlighting on these, by the way. I was more concerned about getting the screenshots at all than everything lining up. Answer here is Okinawa.

: This one’s C. Dr. Pepper was formulated in 1885, while Coke was formulated a year later.

: Really this one should be A, because a movie where Gordon Gekko gets access to a time machine and goes back in time to save the secret Wall Street quaalude mine would rule.

: Anyway yeah, it’s C.

: I’m going to skip to a few of the more interesting and/or plot related ones.

: This one is B, but I feel like he’s missing that Hikaru is also dead.

: This question is the third one that’s likely to trip you up - there’s one about the first Japanese Formula 1 driver before this that I honestly didn’t know.

: The answer is B, even though that’s not his real name. His real name is Chad Rowan, though he went by the name Akebono Taro when he was active.

: He retired not long after this game released, in 2001, after years of issues with his knees. His story after that is kinda sad, though - he got married, and as a result lost all his fans in Japan because sumo fans, like idol fans, are assholes.

: He opened a restaurant that folded, tried to get into MMA and got knocked out in one round by Bob Sapp, and then did some stuff with New Japan Pro Wrestling before having a heart attack in 2017, which he survived. The sumo stable he wrestled for folded in 2021.

: Answer here is B. For reference, 101 is Mizoguchi’s room and 501 is Tokio’s.

: This one comes right before the question about Akebono, and it’s another one no one outside of Japan is likely to know unless you’re a major Olympics fan.

: The answer is B. A waza-ari is one of two ways you can score in judo - it’s basically saying “You kicked this guy’s ass not but hard enough to instantly win” and you need two to win a match.

: The other scoring method is an ippon, which is essentially a perfect-form “You kicked that guy’s ass and no one has any questions about it” throw.

: Weirdly, the answer here is A… even though we’ve been investigating this as a murder the entire time we’ve been here.

: It’s Princess Mononoke.

: Here’s another question no one in the West is likely to know. It’s green tea, though I typically end my sushi meal by wishing I’d gotten something else.

: I don’t think it’s possible to LP three Persona games and not get this one.

: Since “A ghost did it” isn’t an answer, the answer is B.

: The answer is B. Tatsumi Fujinami is a big name in Japanese pro wrestling - he’s been in the business since 1971 and still shows up in New Japan Pro Wrestling to this day.

: He was also in Yakuza Kiwami 2 and in a couple of WWE games.

: The answer Suda wants here is A, but that’s mostly his opinion. Supposedly, Ridley Scott wanted Deckard to be a replicant, but couldn’t put it in because it went against the entire point of the film.

: I had to put this one in because I talked about Yamato a bit in the Persona 5 Royal LP, since Okumura’s shadow is heavily based on the villain from that.

: I haven’t done this multiple times, so I don’t know if this will accept any of the three answers, but the correct one is apparently C.

: I have to give the localization team points for putting A in, even though that whole joke is kinda stale these days.

: This one is a dick. The answer is A - a lot of NGOs have a “PKO” (Peacekeeping Operations) branch, but good luck googling that one.

: This one I’m doing because Ryoma Sakamoto (the correct answer) also has ties to video games. If you’ve played Live a Live, specifically Oboro’s chapter, he’s a party member in that.

: He’s also the main character of Yakuza Isshin, the samurai-themed Yakuza game that is probably never coming to the West.

: That last part is kind of ironic given that he was one of the most pro-Western figures in the Bakumatsu era, to the point that he was assassinated because of it.

: It’s a little hard to find information about his honeymoon, so I’ll explain - Ryoma Sakamoto was famous for his letters, including one he sent to his sister about it.

: This one’s super easy, given that we’ve seen Sumio call him “Tetsu” several times. That and, you know, the name cards in Decoyman and Lunatics.

: I think Kawabata mentions this when you first investigate with Chizuru. It’s the 5th floor.

: It’s Sumio. Sumio and Kusabi are Unit 2.

: The correct answer, or at least the one the game’s looking for, is A… though that last flashback with Koichi definitely makes that pretty questionable.

: Remember this one? I told you it was important! It’s A.

: And here’s the last question. It’s A.

: I’ll post my recording at the end, because at this point I had already played through the entire case and spoiled who the killer is.

: "Nice, you passed! Congratulations. The boss will fill you in on the rest…

: “There are no such thing as ‘points’ in our work. Don’t be swayed by all the white noise. You did great, Timrod. You did just great. The boy must know the truth…”

: “This is your final job. Get rid of this darkness. The boy hopes for that as well. Go on…”

: We’ll finish Spectrum this update. There’s not that much more left.

: The game warps us right to Koichi’s room, and…

: “Oh yeah, I remembered something else. When I went to eat with Hikaru. Hikaru came with my mom and me to the Cherry Grill. I ordered my favorite onion soup…”

: “Hikaru copied me and ordered the same thing… and he said it was good… we also ate Caesar salad and hamburgers, and Hikaru laughed like a frog again.”

: Damn. Usually I only have enough motivation to do the burgers.

: “He looked so happy when he was eating. That was our last dinner… the next day…”

: “That guy’s always watching us… this time he chased after us… we escaped into an alley… a narrow alley would make it easier…”

: “And then… and then Hikaru ran away down a different alley…”

: I’m not sure if this part is stock footage or not.

: “When I turned around I saw his face… I ran as fast as I could… I had to get away… I didn’t wanna die… I left Hikaru on his own… I couldn’t save him…”

: “Timrod kind of…”

: “Wow, so he did it, huh?”

: “Regarding that, what’s up with this, anyway? How long do we have to do this?”

: “What’s the problem? We’re detectives. Back when I was in Regional, it wasn’t like this.”

: “Back in the day, right? The kind of stuff you were doing, I couldn’t handle it! What the hell is the boss thinking?”

: “Just shut the fuck up! This is some fundamental shit! Quit bitching about every goddamn thing!”

: I have to wonder how much of this is Suda talking through Kusabi.

: “Fuck off! This is bullshit!!”

: “The fuck you say to me?! You little punk bitch! The fuck you think you’re talking to…?”

: “Fucking old-timer. I’m talking to a fucking old-timer. Is that a problem? Huh? Is it?”

: This feels kind of ironic when you realize that Sumio is solidly Gen-X.

: And there it is. This is what, the fifth time Kusabi has threatened to shoot someone?

: “Something just glittered…”

: “Yeah, something did, huh…”

: “What is that…?”

: “The fuck…?”

: Why do I have the feeling that Kusabi is about to dodge another bullet?

: “No, I don’t have conclusive evidence. But he had a motive.”

: “That came out of nowhere… you look all refreshed.”

: “Do I?”

: “Whatever…”

: “Koichi kept the fact that Hiruma killed Hikaru all to himself, all bottled up inside. He thought he’d be killed, too. An elementary school-aged child, with all that fear…”

: “But the police ruled Hikaru’s cause of death an accident. He’d always had a weak heart.”

: I like to think Big Dick goes “Wait, aren’t you guys the police?” and then Morikawa shrugs.

: “Knowing that, Koichi made up his mind to get revenge for Hikaru… to protect himself, he’d kill Hiruma…”

: “That’s not it… Koichi didn’t try to kill him.”

: “Well then…?”

: “He went off to get killed. He wasn’t able to save Hikaru, and was upset about that. Hiruma had problems with his autonomic nerves. There was no place for him at home or at work.”

: I’d say it’s kinda shitty to blame it on a disability, but then Persona 1 kind of did the same thing.

: “So Hiruma saw those two kids having fun and that set off a jealous rage. And then Hiruma approached Hikaru. Koichi tried to protect Hikaru, but Hikaru was killed right in front of him.”

: “Oh my god… how could… a little kid like that… in that little body, with all that fear and anxiety built up, he did that for his friend?”

: “It’s hard to believe…”

: “Hikaru trusted him, and he didn’t want to betray that. Being his age, he didn’t want to give up on personal trust. What do you think…?”

: “We had the same time as those kids once, too. But as we grow, that sort of primitive mindset becomes a hindrance for living in society…”

: “Everyone sheds those hindrances and focuses on only the mindsets necessary for surviving in society.”

: “Mistaking shedding those hindrances for ‘growth’ and sappy shit like ‘believing in people’… we got rid of that stuff years ago. I just don’t get it. Right, Naka?”

: “As long as I’m doing this job, I can’t sympathize, but Hiruma’s crime cannot be forgiven. Taking advantage of Hikaru’s weak heart to apply extreme pressure on him and force his death.”

: “Even more so than his sin of destroying those kids’ futures, I can’t forgive Hiruma’s very humanity itself. But what’s most surprising is the face that such a pure heart still existed in this day and age.”

: “Yeah…”

: “Yeah, it’s like an actual miracle. To think that kids like that still exist.”

: “He did it to keep his promise to Hikaru… but, I wonder if Hikaru ever forgave Koichi?”

: “Who knows… but I want to believe that it reached him. That Hikaru was watching over everything. Right, Timrod?”

: Big Dick is gesturing wildly and asking how none of them have seen the jumpscare ghost child in the five days they investigated the crime scene.

: “Onto that clear, pure mind…”

: To end the case, all we have to do is go to the interrogation room and talk to Chizuru.

: “I caused you a lot of trouble and got kind of hysteric, getting shot by that woman, being bothered by Morikawa’s actions, and my health hasn’t been very good.”

: “My hair is all messed up and I hadn’t slept much, the boss’s cologne stunk, Sumio’s not here, and with missing my bus and my friend getting married my parents have been bugging me.”

: “I’ve had to visit some real dicks in the hospital for work, so… I’ll go on a date with you to apologize, I want you to forgive me…”

: Next time, we’ll do Tokio’s second chapter.

[Timrod]

@SpammyV

Sumio leans against the window inside the parked police car. His gaze is somewhere in the unfocused distance, and every now and then a hint of odd expression passes over his face, or he seems on the edge of saying something. Finally he breaks the awkward silence, looking over to the chinchilla sitting in the other seat and asks, “Big Dick, what you think about like, murderously crazy chicks?”

This is actually the basis for one of the pics I’m having Salty Vanilla do… sort of. You’ll see.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Hana is a bit shorter than Yume was, at least from what I recorded.

: You can hear Tokio’s doorbell ringing, followed by someone pounding on his door. For reference, this is the same day Big Dick and Chizuru show up at Typhoon to investigate the murder.

: Presumably, the person ringing his doorbell is one of the generic cops, because Big Dick and Chizuru didn’t show up until after 3:00 in the afternoon.

: One thing that has changed is that Tokio now smokes every morning after he wakes up. He didn’t do this in Yume, so I guess this is a side-effect of all the weird murder ghosts.

I bought some materials. A block of rosewood.

I put it on my desk and stare at the reddish wood. Rosewood is pretty hard so it’s probably not very good for beginners. But with this wood in front of my eyes, I somehow start feeling nostalgic.

I decided to make a paper knife. I’m going to use a knife to make a knife. Like stone carving stone. Or like dirt digging up dirt. Like a star begets a star.

: It’s funny because today we have people using knives to make knives out of paper. Interestingly, I didn’t know for a fact that video existed, but somehow I just knew it existed.

: There’s nothing super important in Tokio’s email today, just this and another one of his carnivorous plant newsletters.

: “Maybe I’ll go check it out later…”

: “I started.”

: “Started what?”

: “Whittling wood. I’m making a paper knife.”

: “That’s good. Making a paper knife is like an introduction to knifework.”

: Soon, Tokio will have his own Youtube channel of nothing but him making improbable knives out of household objects.

: “I see. I didn’t know.”

: “There are many things in this world that one doesn’t know.”

: “You know…”

: “Yes.”

: “You can really get lost in it. When whittling like that, the time just flies by.”

: “Because it’s such a primitive thing. I know what you mean.”

: “So, like… it’s the same as eating food or fucking women, huh?”

: “Yes. But for women, whatever you do, you’ll never understand them, but with whittling, the more you do it the more you get the hang of it, the more you understand the wood’s features, right?”

: “I see…”

: Tokio gets woken up pretty much every day by his doorbell, which is a bit odd. At this point, the cops have already left and the only people poking around are Big Dick and maybe Morikawa.

: “Goddammit, shut up! Just fuck off… I feel like shit…”

From: S. INOHANA
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: Contact Request
Date: Thu, July 1 1999 9:18:45

How’s the Kamui investigation going? Hurry up and send reports on Kamui’s past and the recent movements of the HC Unit.

You need to be submitting regular reports. If you end up breaking your contract, you will be dealt with accordingly. I have no intention of coddling you. Get your work done as you’ve been paid to do.

: " ‘Kamui this, Kamui that’… just shut the fuck up…"

: “Huh…? Timrod…? What the hell is he doing…? Wait, huh…? Why do I know that his name is ‘Timrod’…?”

I saw something rare this morning. Some HC Unit-looking guys were hanging around my building. The guy I apparently met at Babylon. That Timrod guy, he was there.

Apparently someone in my building died last night. According to the info I got from a news site database, a younger guy who lived on the third floor jumped and killed himself. Sounds like it was right around the time I was at the bar. I feel weird.

Someone died in my building, but I didn’t see it. I didn’t hear the sound, I wasn’t told by someone else living here; I first knew of it via my computer. It doesn’t feel real. Anyway, that Timrod dude is one repellent guy.

: It’s because he’s a talking chinchilla.

: “Oh yeah… was he there too?”

: “He was there…”

: I think Tokio needs glasses, because this looks nothing like how Kusabi sees himself or how Big Dick sees him.

: “I’m on a goddamn stakeout.”

: “I can see that.”

: “You’re just as fuckin’ cheerful as always. You got nothing for me? ‘What are you watching’ or ‘What do you talk about during times like this?’ or some shit like that. You know, reporter questions.”

: “Hm… OK then… what’re you watching?”

: “Can’t tell you.”

: “Um… by the way…”

: “Hm? Ah, this guy? You’ve never met before, have you? OK, I’ll introduce you. This is Ballsack.”

: “Just kidding… this is Sumio. Be cool with him.”

: “Tetsu, come on back… we’re on a stakeout…”

: “He’s a serious dude, as you can see. A bit of a hardass, but still…”

: “Um…”

: “What?”

: “Are you just bored, or…?”

: “The fuck does it look like…?”

: “Looks like it to me…”

: “Huh… so I look bored, huh…?”

: “Yeah…”

: “Oh do I…?”

: “Yeah…”

: “For reals…?”

: “Uh…”

: “What?”

: “You’re dragging it on.”

: “Sorry… I’m so fuckin’ bored.”

: “I bet.”

: “So what do you want? I don’t care that you came all the way here. I’m not giving you shit.”

: “What’s the HC Unit been up to recently? A guy in my building killed himself… and the guys from your unit have been creeping around. I got a bit of info on you from them…”

: “Hm… that’s where you live? The HC Unit does all kinds of shit. So then, did you meet Hachisuka, too?”

: “Oh, her. No, but I saw Timrod.”

: “Big Dick?”

: “I told you, didn’t I? He’s Big Dick. Detectives need nicknames.”

: “What’s he doing?”

: “The fuck should I know? He’s kind of a weirdo…”

: " ‘Weirdo’? For example?"

: “He’s like a quiet, introverted teenager. But more importantly, are you rich?”

: We’ve seen this a bit in Decoyman, but Big Dick is canonically a silent protagonist, which is why a lot of people find him to be a little unnerving. Personally, I think it’s more because he’s a talking chinchilla.

: “Huh? No, I’m pretty broke.”

: I actually burst out laughing when I saw this while recording. I wasn’t surprised, but damn, I think Kusabi is more of a Hobocop than Harry DuBois is.

: “Me? If you’re gonna give me some info, then…”

: “That’s bribery.”

: “If you wanna talk bribery, I’ll talk bribery.”

: “Fuck it then. OK, you can go now.”

: “OK, whatever. See you… if you’ve got money problems, please call me anytime. For the time being I may be able to help you out, so…”

: “OK, if I change my mind.”

: “Call me, OK? See you later.”

: I was sitting here recording this, and as soon as I saw the conversation was over I went “Tokio’s gonna go home and blog about it, isn’t he?”

It took a whole pack of smokes to clear up my head. Looks like I’d been overlooking too many things.

When I first noticed that Timrod was here in my building, he was watching a kid. An elementary school-age kid. That somehow stuck with me, so I decided to ask a lady in the building whom I sort of know about it. Today, that kid dropped something and I went after him but couldn’t catch up… that’s what I told the lady to get her to tell me about the kid, and she apparently believed it right away.

His name is Koichi Sugita, and she told me he was friends with that Hikaru Kobayashi kid who died of a heart attack awhile ago. What does Timrod want with this Koichi kid? What is happening here? Something sketchy is going on.

I’m not sure whether I should get any further involved. Anyway, if the HC Unit is involved, at least I can use it as an excuse with my client.

: “I feel like shit… I’ve been smoking too much…”

When I opened my window late at night, it was raining silently. My paper knife is almost ready. It’s coming into shape. The knife I’m using to carve is just a regular climbing knife. It gradually spreads out from the base and has levels, which I use to carve the edge of the knife. At night, when I gaze at it, it glistens, silver and cold.

The carving knife is getting a bit blunt, so I’ll need to buy a sharpening stone soon. I need to master sharpening methods, too. Looks like starting something new can branch off into other unexpected things.

: “This paper knife, what do I even use it for…? I’m going to sleep.”

: “Huh…? It hasn’t gone off today…”

: “OK then… let’s see… I gotta talk to Kusabi.”

: “You again, huh? Oh yeah. Don’t worry about the money thing.”

: “Oh OK, that’s unfortunate. By the way, about Timrod…”

: “Your tone is a bit familiar there, boy. Whatever. Just watch yourself. So anyways, what about Big Dick?”

: “Do you know about his involvement with a kid named ‘Koichi’?”

: “Not my job. Whatever Big Dick does has nothing to do with me.”

: “But the HC Unit is working that suicide case at my building. That means it was a murder or something, right?”

: “Who knows… ‘the truth’ has been pretty much worked out.”

: “What has?”

: “The speculation on all this drama.”

: “Huh…”

: “I get worn out talking to you. We’ll talk some other time.”

: “Kusabi…”

: “Huh?”

: “I’ll call you again.”

: I’m gonna cut it here, because I kept recording and there is still a LOT of dialog left. I’ll leave you with this sketch from Salty Vanilla of Big Dick on a date with Chizuru.

: Don’t worry about the martini, it’s just sunflower seeds.

[Timrod]

Summary

: And we’re back with Tokio Morishima’s Extreme Blogging Simulator.

The kid was born with a weak heart, and he is thought to have suffered a heard attack suddenly while playing. A neighbor noticed and called an ambulance right away, but the kid died in the hospital while undergoing emergency treatment without ever regaining consciousness.

The assumed suicide, Kenichi Hiruma, lived in room 301. He was 24 and apparently worked as an advertisement artist.

And that Koichi Sugita kid lives in room 402.

: Wait, so now we have two people who are both ostensibly killers who are in the advertising business? I mean, I assume that’s what Kamui did with Ayame.

: Do we know that Kamui didn’t escape again, and that Hiruma isn’t just Kamui in disguise?

: “Should be OK, right?”

: The moral of this entire segment is that Tokio is kind of socially inept.

Timrod… why do I care so much about this guy? I think it’s his mysteriousness that bothers me. When I got all fucked up at Babylon, Timrod was nearby. The impact of that whole situation is still strong inside me. Some sort of irrational fear and Timrod’s existence have linked together somehow.

Something like that.

Will the client be interested in this stuff? I can’t stand that motherfucker. I’m sick of just tailing people like an asshole. Whatever. I’ll keep on going for the time being.

: “Now that I think about it, I’ve never really thought about what kind of people live in this building… even living in the same building, strangers are strangers, I guess…”

: “Huh? Ah… ah! H-hey… Hey, wait!”

: “…”

: “You don’t have to run, OK? I just wanna talk to you…”

: “What do you want to talk about?”

: “Huh? Um, well… Koichi, you were friends with Hikaru, right? So…”

: “I don’t have anything to talk about, so… bye.”

: " ‘Bye’…? Hey, wait up! So I got nothing… shit."

: I’m still not sure why the writer didn’t just do this part first, and then have Tokio blog about it afterward.

: “Maybe I’ll try asking Erika…”

Now the HC Unit is on the move. Which means it may not have been just a simple suicide. Remember Timrod? He’s been hanging around. Looks like he’s been watching over this kid named Koichi Sugita. I don’t know why.

It’d be easiest if I could speak to this Koichi kid directly,but it doesn’t look like he’ll talk to me. I have no idea how to deal with kids, you know? You interested in helping me out? I’ll be waiting for your reply.

: “If only Erika takes me up on this… OK, let’s see…”

: “How’s the paper knife?”

: “Oh yeah, I finished it. It’s pretty cool.”

: “Hey, that’s great.”

: “Now I’m working on my second piece.”

: “What is it?”

: “I’m making a turtle. A turtle figurine.”

: “That’s unusual.”

: “I’ve got a pet turtle.”

: “You told me.”

: “Wanna see it?”

: “See what?”

: “My turtle. I got a photo of him.”

: “Sure. Show me.”

: “Here it is.”

: “Let’s see… augh! This is rather nasty!”

: “What’s nasty about it?!”

: “I mean, the patterns… and this face…”

: Red is actually smiling - if you compare it to the shots of him in Tokio’s apartment, you can see the difference.

: “Is this him ‘smiling’?”

: The newspapers the next day have a headline about a local bartender being mauled by a chinchilla.

: “Whatever. You hurt my feelings. I’m going home. Fuck, man… I can’t believe you don’t see how lovely he is…”

: If you’ll recall, this is the day that Big Dick goes through the entire apartment building and talks to everyone.

: Tokio’s doorbell rings and there’s a knock at the door.

: “Shut the fuck up! Motherfucker!”

: Salty Vanilla’s kind of busy, but if he had the time I would’ve had him do a picture where Tokio opens the door and sees only the green battle aura thing, then looks down and sees Big Dick.

: “Timrod…?! Why is… he…?”

: “What…? What do you want? Waking me up this early… what, you wanna talk more? What the fuck? You know… your face really pisses me off. Don’t come back again… just fucking go away…”

: “This motherfucker… how can you just stand there so stoically? Normally, being told something like that would piss a person off, right? Huh? Come on, get mad. Say something. Try getting pissed off.”

: One thing I think Suda does mistakenly is conflate a silent protagonist with someone who is emotionally dead - there’s plenty of games that have shown you can have a silent protagonist with emotion.

: Transistor is a pretty good example of that, even though the actual game was kinda meh. So is GRIS.

From: Erika Yukawa
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: Doing OK
Date: Fri, 2 Jul 1999 23:21:02

Hm, dealing with kids, huh?

I checked the incident out myself and I basically get it. It looks like the HC Unit is on the job after all. OK, I’ll take it.

: I, uh… don’t think water is capable of rotting. The stuff IN the water is, but the water itself isn’t.

: “I just don’t get that guy.”

From: Tokio Morishima
To: Erika Yukawa
Subject: Re: Doing OK

I’m typing this while looking out the window. Looks like you were able to talk with the kid, huh? It’s been a while since I’ve gazed at you like this. You’re too far away so I can’t see your face, but I can still tell it’s you.

You two are bathed in the evening glow, and this sounds weird, but you look like an actual mother and child. So this is the kind of woman you’ve become. Able to smile and laugh like that. Three years goes by really fast.

: I feel like Tokio and Sumio could form some kind of club.

The stars know everything. I remember a song like that. But the fact that they know everything is a sad thing. There are more things in this world that it’s better not to know. I finally understood that after I turned 30.

When I realized it, I was a crime reporter, and it was my job to know things I’d be better off not knowing and selling that info, which made me realize I was unhappy. That’s why I quit. Erika was just the trigger for that.

But after I quit the news agency, I couldn’t think of anything I could do for work besides reporting on things. It’s good to be introspective sometimes.

I have something positive to talk about as well. The turtle I’m carving is coming along well. I have a knack for this. Although I can’t draw for shit, I was surprised that I was actually good at this. But it’s looking more like a scrub brush than a turtle, which bothers me.

: “Shit. I’m really into this…”

: “Do you know how to sharpen?”

: “You mean sharpen a knife, right?”

: “Yeah… at first, I kept trying to sharpen mine properly, but I kept rounding it off. Blunting it. I tried a sharpening stone, but… however I’d sharpen it, it kept getting blunt.”

: I tried knife sharpening once, and let me tell you, it sucks.

: “I see.”

: “But it’s easier to get better at stuff you like to do. Recently, I finally got the hang of it. Now my knife cuts 120% better.”

: “You can tell it’s been done properly if you can place a tissue on the knife and it cuts through it just with gravity.”

: “I’ll try that.”

: “Are you making that turtle figurine with your knife?”

: “No, I bought a carving knife for that.”

: “So you’re really getting into it.”

: “I want some sort of merit, you know?”

: “Merit…”

: Metal Gear!?

: Some kind of merit, yeah. People need some sort of merit… same as a knife."

: “Ah, like a knife that can’t cut, right?”

: “Yeah, a knife that can’t cut is useless to a person. A blunt knife is like a wild animal, you know?”

From: Erika Yukawa
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: Koichi
Sent: Sat, 3 Jul 1999 22:58:34

I met with Koichi today. I spoke to a kid playing by himself in the complex’s park, and it turned out to be him.

Anyway, I played with him for a while and avoided asking questions for the time being, and he’s a good kid. He did try testing me out a bit, but it’s clear that he’s clever enough not to just act out without considering those around him. It looks like I’ve managed to gain his trust.

I’m seeing him again tomorrow. It’s a Sunday so I’ll go in the morning. I plan to ask him about Timrod, etc., then.

: “First off… looks like it’s coming along well…”

: “Haah… I slept a long time. Quiet mornings are nice… shit, it’s already the afternoon.”

From: Erika Yukawa
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: Koichi
Date: Sun, 4 Jul 1999 13:29:23

I just met with Koichi again. I’m writing to you from a cafe.

When I went to the park today, Koichi was crying by himself. I tried asking what was wrong, but he wouldn’t say anything. He looked really worried. So I tried asking again why he was playing by himself yesterday… then he told me about Hikaru. The kid who died of a heart attack. But it looks like Koichi doesn’t know that Hikaru died.

Or rather, it seems he doesn’t want to accept the fact that he died. He says Hikaru went off somewhere. 'I wonder where he went?" He says Hikaru went off somewhere and needs his help, and he has to do something about it, but he doesn’t know what to do.

I told him I’d help, too, but I felt a bit bad about it. Sort of guilty. I mean, I’m pretending to be his friend just to get close and ask him about all this stuff, you know? But I don’t think Koichi has anything wrong with him. He’s just in shock. His best friend, Hikaru, died… that’s why Timrod offered to help him, I think.

Koichi needs a person like that right now. He needs someone. It looks like his parents aren’t much help. Maybe that’s just how things are nowadays. Oh yeah, I also heard about Koichi’s secret base. A secret base just for the boys. It’s also his special place with Hikaru.

There may still be something else, and I worry about him, so I’m going to go check on him again.

From: Tokio Morishima
To: Erika Yukawa
Subject: Re: Koichi

What is that kid trying to do with Timrod? And does he know anything about that guy who died? I’m worried that you may be taking what that kid tells you at face value. Can you not talk to other kids and moms or whoever, too? Your attitude is kinda…

: “If I send this mail, I’m gonna get bitched out again…”

From: Tokio Morishima
To: Erika Yukawa
Subject: Re: Koichi

I read your mail. I understand the situation. If possible I’d like you to keep in contact with Koichi. Mail me again if you find anything out. Guilt, huh? I think I know what you mean.

: “Putting yourself too deep in the shoes of the other person can be problematic. Well, whatever, it’s probably not gonna work out for now… I just hope it doesn’t turn into a hassle…”

: You may have noticed that this chapter kinda drags, even though it’s not as long as Yume was. Honestly, they could’ve cut probably half of this stuff - but the actual meat of this chapter is coming up.

: By the way, there is one thing I should point out. The Steam version of this game has achievements for completing each chapter.

: The completion count for Spectrum is just over 25%. The completion rate for Hana? 19.9%. Part of that is probably people not understanding how you’re meant to read through the cases, but still.

The stars know everything. But if I were a star, I don’t think I’d know anything at all, to be honest. Guilt? that’s not something you should feel with only a halfhearted understanding of a situation. We aren’t stars.

Wood and a knife and a sharpening stone. These guys are honest. They don’t know anything, but if you speak to them, they are sure to reply with something.

: “… Erika…!”

: Erika has a dialog portrait in this chapter, which we saw very briefly in Yume but which hasn’t come up yet. Unfortunately, it has the phone static effect on it.

: “It’s… been a while.”

: “So I finally get to see you.”

: “You could’ve seen me anytime, if you had wanted to.”

: “I guess so…”

: “Well anyway, more importantly…”

: “Is it about Koichi? I’m getting confused. What were you expecting from Koichi?”

: “Expecting…? I’m not really sure.”

: “He’s a good kid.”

: “I see.”

: “He’s really pure, which is rare these days. But after what happened with Hikaru… he’s hurting…”

: “I wonder?”

: “He still can’t smile, you know. I mean, he does, but… you can tell he doesn’t mean it. It hurts to watch.”

: “But like… kids aren’t really as ‘pure’ as you think, you know.”

: “What do you mean?”

: “Exactly what I said. Kids are, like… they watch adults really closely.”

: “And?”

: “It’s hard to explain, but… that’s why he ran away from me. You got close with him. That’s because you looked like a kind person. To put it in a different way… that’s what I was trying to say.”

: “He thought I’d be easy to deal with… is that what you mean?”

: “Basically, yeah. All kids are like that. Especially that kid, or at least I assume so. Kids are like a mirror that reflects adults just as they are. That’s why I don’t like kids.”

: Didn’t Morikawa say more or less the same thing to Chizuru at the end of Spectrum? I don’t exactly see him as “pure”.

: “The same as the pain you saw in him.”

: “That’s really cynical. You’ve forgotten what it was like to be a kid yourself.”

: I dunno. I mean, I remember what it was like being a kid, and it’s a lot like being an adult except you can’t buy all the video games. I don’t know if kid me would’ve liked this game or not.

: “Have I?”

: “You don’t understand the kid’s feelings at all. You’re just trying to use him, right? Trying to get some info… that’s all…”

: “Well, yeah. That’s true.”

: “I’m not like you.”

: “So is that…”

: “Children are weak, right? They have delicate feelings. So adults need to put themselves in kids’ shoes and try to understand them.”

: It’s funny because I thought no generation would be more opaque to adults than mine, and boy was I wrong on that.

: “Well what a textbook comment.”

: “You know, you haven’t changed in the slightest…”

: “I may have gotten worse. But… just let me say this. The purity of children is also a really terrible thing.”

: “I’m leaving.”

: “Huh…”

: “Bye.”

: “Huh.”

: “What the fuck is wrong with me?”

: You’re kind of an asshole and also kind of socially inept to the point where I wonder why you do what you do.

: “I wouldn’t know.”

: “I mean, I never really was the likable type.”

: I dunno, I think Ooka did a pretty good job of making Tokio likable. He’s definitely not the Disgaea 3 cast, which left me hoping the entire game that they’d just die off screen and get replaced by someone better written.

: “Hm.”

: “The only ones who’ll pay me any attention are my turtle and you.”

: “Hehe.”

: “I’m gonna go home and sleep.”

: “I see. Oh, you’re leaving already…? Goodnight.”

From: Erika Yukawa
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: Koichi
Date: Sun 4 Jul 1999 18:21:16

I came to check on Koichi again this evening. He looked like he was really depressed for some reason.

Maybe something happened. He wouldn’t tell me the reason, but he eventually started smiling again, so I think he’ll be OK. I tried asking if he’d show me his secret base, and after thinking about it for a while he finally said OK.

When I thanked him he smiled, so I felt sort of happy myself. Doing this sort of job, smiles become a rarity, after all. But I’m rather worried since when he smiled, I could see a shadow of sadness in it. We decided to go together tomorrow. I’ll tell work that I have a meeting or something.

: I mean, it depends on which Devil May Cry games are canon.

: “Without even noticing it she’s started getting attached to him. So how about Timrod? He’s… he’s also…”

: “Hey.”

: “Are you done with the stakeout?”

: “I wish. I just took off for a little bit.”

: I wish there had been a line here where Tokio asks Kusabi who’s replacing him if the HCU only has four active detectives, and it cuts to a shot of an empty car.

: “I wanna ask you something.”

: “I bet you do. That’s the only reason you come by.”

: “What’s the deal with that Slappy Nuts guy?”

: “Who the fuck is that?”

: Slappy Nuts is an alternate universe where Big Dick is a squirrel and not a chinchilla.

: “That one guy… Timrod.”

: “Ah, you mean ‘Big Dick’, huh? His ‘deal’? Nothing in particular.”

: “I’ve been wondering about him.”

: “He’s just a regular guy. But he has his strange parts, too. All-around, he’s kinda weird.”

: “Is he a private citizen?”

: I actually have a story about this from a few months ago. I was calling this local supermarket because they take sandwich orders by phone, and somehow their phone system put me on their PA.

: I know this because I can hear my voice in the background, so I go “It’s okay, don’t worry, I’m the government” and hang up. I don’t know why I did it, I just kinda did.

: “Back in the day, he was a member of the Security Force.”

: For reference, the ambush where Sakamoto and Inomata died was only around four months before this.

: "The Security Force… you mean like, the… "

: “Yeah, that one. During the Kamui Case, he was the only one who survived the first capture attempt. After that he got scouted and was officially assigned to the HC Unit as an investigator.”

: Didn’t Tokio see this in one of his news emails? I swear he already knew this.

: “Does he have some sort of special skill?”

: I transcribed like 99% of the dialog in a garbage anime JRPG, which… actually, make that two garbage anime JRPGs.

: “What, because he was scouted? Or because he survived? I don’t know shit about that. But apparently he’s actually pretty tough.”

: “Haah… so he’s completely different from someone else I know, huh?”

: “Me? You talking about me? I’ll shoot you in the face, you fuckstick.”

: “Don’t be r—. So this Timrod, he’s been looking after that kid this whole time, huh?”

: I omitted a slur.

: “Apparently.”

: “About this Koichi kid… do you know anything?”

: “I’ve told you before, I don’t care. I think… I think Big Dick attaching himself to that kid means he must be one interesting little dude.”

: “I see… thanks, that helps.”

: “Anyways, I’m getting back to the stakeout.”

: “OK, don’t let The Man get you down.”

: “Fuck off.”

: “Yeah, thanks…”

: I’m going to finish Hana this update, because I kind of already posted it by accident and there’s not really enough for another full update.

From: Erika Yukawa
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: Koichi
Date: Mon 5 Jul 1999 23:15:00

I waited at the agreed place today, but Koichi never came.

So I thought about what you said. Then I went to speak with his elementary school teacher and his mom. His teacher was Ms. Kitajima, about 30 years old. She didn’t look like she’d be popular among students, but she does seem to be the type who gets her job done properly.

According to her, Koichi is a regular kid, with a regular sense of right and wrong, who plays regularly, ad who isn’t very good at his studies. He sometimes looks rather smart, but there you go. Anyway, he’s pretty far from the ‘center of attention’ in class, and is somewhat of an outsider.

But he has his own strengths. Apparently Hikaru was even worse at his studies. And it looks like he was bullied as well. Koichi was really close with Hikaru, and was always standing up for him. I was lucky to be able to meet with his mom. She works as a hostess. But she seemed really proper and respectable, and she seems like maybe she was just a regular cook or something who happened to also be a hostess.

She didn’t give a bad impression at all. Koichi has been living alone with his mom ever since he was three. His parents divorced early, but apparently that doesn’t bother Koichi at all. Apparently he’s never even met his father.

With that, I didn’t feel it necessary to think about Koichi any differently. I still think that he’s a really good kid. I didn’t get to go see his secret base today, but still.

: “…”

: “That’s what’s up with him. Do you get it?”

The truth and facts don’t matter. I need to work out the core of this stuff. If I can just find that, at least I can avoid choosing the wrong path.

I learned that when I first started doing this. I didn’t have any idea what it meant, but I kind of do now. If you just try and push through, stuff will work out somehow. There was a reason why I was worried about Timrod, and why I was avoiding him. When I felt the remnants of that woman’s thoughts at Babylon, Timrod was beside me.

So Timrod became a sort of catalyst, and I felt like it was his fault I felt that fear… and I secretly harbored those thoughts all this time. Subconsciously. When I heard that Timrod was the survivor of that Security Force group, something finally clicked inside my head, and the puzzle pieces all came together.

: And now, just before the end, we have what’s probably the most important email Tokio is going to send in this chapter.

It was probably a hacker or a cracker. Can you dig up who this guy is? At the very least, I’d like to get his mail address. This is a job request. I heard that you were the guy to go to for stuff like this. If you need any other data apart from the log, I’ll provide whatever I can. I’ll be waiting for your reply.

: “Just one more time… OK, that’s it…”

: “…What the…”

: As soon as we exit this email, the phone rings.

: “OK OK, I’m coming.”

: “It’s me.”

: “Ah…”

: “I was waiting at the agreed place yesterday.”

: “Again? Fucking Christ.”

: “Yeah… and that Koichi kid showed up and handed me a letter saying anything… I stuck it in your mailbox, so later on when you get the chance, take a look at it.”

: “A letter? OK. Hold on.”

: “Hello? Hey, Erika… bitch hung up…”

: “Goddammit. Passing me this kind of shit…”

: This is another part that’s a little counterintuitive. You would think “Oh, this must be like the note Big Dick got”, except it’s not an item we can use. Instead, we have to sit at Tokio’s computer first.

You’re such a good person. But you looked lonely so I decided to hang out with you. You sort of reminded me of Hikaru. But there are lots of lonely people, so I can’t spend time with all of them. Also you smelled really nice so I wanted to play with you a bit more.

I’m sorry I couldn’t go yesterday. Take care.

: “…”

Because of my personality, while I acknowledge his purity, I can’t accept that what he did couldn’t have been helped. Not now or ever.

Everyone feels like killing sometimes. Especially in that situation. Adults, kids, old people, men, women. Whether you actually kill someone or you’re able to avoid it, that’s a different story. Private citizens are expected to choose ‘not to kill’. That’s how it is standing on the side of the system. Someone incapable kills a person. The killer is then automatically expected to be punished. Because of their inability to not kill.

So this kid was lacking in his ability to not kill. But in his case, his purity was the trigger. That’s something that’s specific to these times. But is that true? Isn’t the desire to kill also originally born from ‘pure’ feelings? That’s why I don’t think that it couldn’t have been helped.

Koichi’s feelings for Hikaru were pure and brutal, and Koichi’s killing of the guy who killed Hikaru also came from pure and brutal feelings… I wonder what Timrod thinks?

: Timrod thinks this is kind of an interesting parallel to Morikawa, who went “It doesn’t really matter if Koichi killed him or not” - especially given that Morikawa is a cop and Tokio isn’t.

: I also think that if Koichi hadn’t killed that guy, Big Dick would’ve mauled him.

From: S. INOHANA
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: Contact Request
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 1999 10:00:12

What’s up with the Kamui investigation? Send a report on Kamui’s past and the recent movements of the HC Unit. I was contacted.

: “Shut the fuck up…”

: “What kind of kid was I? Hey Red, when you were a kid… wait, how hold are you? Hey, Red… hey… HEY DUDE…”

: Red’s sleeping.

: Next time, we’ll move on to Parade.