TRANSMIT the PLACEBO - Let's Play The Silver Case

[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.

[Timrod]

: One thing I didn’t get around to was talking about the music in this game, some of which is actually pretty good. As far as I can tell, most of the music in the remake is taken directly from the PS1 version - except the title track, which was remixed by Akira Yamaoka (better known for his work on Silent Hill).

: I didn’t buy the soundtrack on Steam, and I wouldn’t recommend you do it either should you play this for yourself, because the best tracks aren’t on it - those being the title tracks for each chapter.

: Sadly, none of these tracks play during the game itself - they’re only on the chapter select screen. Most of them are remixes, though some are much sneakier than others. Lunatics is a remix of Kusabi’s theme.

: Decoyman’s theme is a remix of a track called “His Room” that plays when you find Kamui in Ayame’s closet and at a few times near the end of Decoyman. They’re so similar I’m not going to bother linking the original.

: Also, you might notice the person uploading these is the person working on the Eternal Punishment translation. He’s been busy doing a podcast about Suda.

: The Placebo arc chapters are also remixes, but they’re much better disguised. Yume is a remix of Tokio’s theme, but you might not recognize it right away.

: If Spectrum’s theme is a remix, I can’t tell what it’s a remix of.

: The theme for Hana is easily my favorite out of all of them. It sounds like an early Chemical Brothers song. And with that, I’m all caught up - we’ll see Parade’s theme when we get there.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Welcome to Parade. You’ll be able to tell pretty quickly what Suda’s gimmick with this chapter is.

: I’d dialog portrait this, except knowing who’s talking here is a spoiler.

: Is this gonna be some kind of Persona ripoff because I swear…

: Parade’s gimmick is that it’s entirely in black and white. We’ll finally get to find out why Kusabi and Sumio were on that stakeout.

: The background this time is random crosswords. I didn’t know Suda was into Radiohead.

: “Where the hell did that come from…?”

: “It’s a type of fable or myth. A story you can lose yourself in.”

: “I don’t like kids’ shit like that. I’m not interested.”

: “I bet.”

: “Then don’t ask.”

: “Well, there’s this one nice story.”

: “I don’t give a shit. At a time like this…”

: “But this is just the right time for this kind of thing, isn’t it?”

: “I’m gonna die, seriously… just keel over and die. That stuff makes my brain itch. Makes me wanna scratch it out with a fork.”

: Oh my god, it’s like Kusabi somehow understands Persona 5 Royal nearly 20 years before it was a thing.

: “Come on, just listen…”

: “Sorry, I’m going to sleep…”

: “That’s fine. I’m just gonna go ahead and talk.”

: “Sounds like a great lullaby.”

: I wish Kusabi was real and also that he had been on the writing team for Persona 5. Or even better, Ni no Kuni 2. Just imagine Evan doing his whole “I want a magic fantasy kingdom where everyone lives happily ever after” and then immediately getting punched in the face.

: “You know, recently… some people say fantasy is like brainwashing. Giving kids sweet dreams for the purpose of controlling them.”

: “When you put it that way, that sounds right.”

: “Originally, they were pretty messed up stories.”

: “Like ‘messed up’ how?”

: “Realistic stories, without all the happy stuff.”

: “Well, that sure sucks.”

: “That’s why they got turned into happier stories.”

: “Is that all?”

: “No, here’s where it starts. So anyways, when I was a kid, there was this fairytale I heard – it’s an old folktale from my hometown, but…”

: “Hm.”

: “Once up on a time, there was a princess. A beautiful princess. A terrible giant serpent fell in love with her. The serpent ruled the land, no, he had taken over the land.”

: Isn’t this just the story of Kushinada and Susano?

: “He invaded it?”

: “Yeah. The serpent turned the king to stone. The greedy serpent wanted the princess… so he took her away…”

: “Pretty standard shit. Go on, go on.”

: “To rescue the princess, they ventured to the huge castle.”

: “Well of course. I’d do the same thing.”

: Kusabi would shoot the serpent in the face and that’d be the end of it.

: “The heroes combined their powers and fought the serpent. And then…”

: “What happened?”

: “They defeated it.”

: “Fuck yeah!!”

: “Everything was fine and good.”

: “Is that the end…?”

: “Well, mostly…”

: “What the fuck? That’s just a normal-ass fairytale. That sucked.”

: “You liked it, right?”

: I’d like to think that Big Dick sees Kusabi losing interest and goes “And then the heroes took 50,000 yen from the serpent and gambled it on some horses” and suddenly Kusabi is totally into it again.

: “No, that’s no good. There’s no twist.”

: “It’s not over yet.”

: “What?”

: “Well then, what the hell happens?”

: “The princess was dead…”

: “What the fuck?! What do you mean?”

: “She was killed by the serpent.”

: “Man, FUCK that serpent! The fuck kind of story is that?”

: “And one more thing - there is no serpent.”

: “No? Why not…? That stuff comes up in stories all the time.”

: “Of course there isn’t. There’s no such thing as a ‘giant serpent’.”

: I imagine Kusabi looking at Big Dick here. “Damn! We’ve got talking chinchillas, but no giant serpents carrying horse racing money? What the fuck kind of world is this!?”

: And yes, yes I am getting Salty Vanilla to draw that. They’re going to a con later this month, but I have this I can post.

: “Well, yeah…”

: “It wasn’t a serpent, but a human. The heroes were people, too. Humans killed another human, for revenge.”

: “That’s just a crime…”

: “Yeah… fairytales are crimes. The unrealistic fantasy that happens in real life is crime.”

: “…”

: “Tetsu.”

: “Huh?”

: “I have a question. If it was you, the heroes who got revenge… what would you do?”

: “What would I do? I wouldn’t do shit. Why?”

: Why do I feel like this entire thing is an allegory for something?

: “They killed someone.”

: “Well… they did murder someone, yeah. There’s no differentiation in crime. Doesn’t matter what kind of reasons they had.”

: “Yeah, I agree.”

: “Right? That’s how it is. The only way it can be…”

: “Tetsu…”

: “Huh?”

: “You can go to sleep.”

: “You’re sharp.”

: “Sorry, I’m tired. From that story…”

: “It’s not a very pleasant story, is it?”

: “Yaaawn…”

: “Tetsu?”

: “Zzz…”

: “He’s asleep. It’s time… Timrod, time for patrol. Go look around. Let me know if you see anyone suspicious. Got it?”

: What we’re doing is walking a circle around a building that’s off to the left, that being the Yukimura villa you’ve seen at the top during all of the stakeout segments in Spectrum and Hana.

: “The Yukimura mansion is up the hill.”

: Something about this reminds me of the mansion stage in Killer7.

: “The Yukimura mansion is on the left. ‘CONTACT’ it.”

: “Looks like nothing’s wrong. Let’s check the other side. Go up over the hill.”

: One thing I didn’t realize until afterward is that you can’t even see the house from the spot where the car is - at least, if you assume the 3D visuals are canon.

: God dammit Sumio, I know how to walk in a circle.

: “Go down the hill.”

: “Once more, ‘CONTACT’.”

: “No problem. Nothing out of the ordinary. OK, get back to the car. We’re going downhill.”

: “Nice work. Get in the car. Hm? What? Tetsu!”

: “What the hell is wrong with you?”

: “That—”

: “What?”

: “That!”

: “The hell are you talking about?”

: “It flashed!”

: “It did…”

: If you look in the game itself, there’s a wall where those stairs are.

: “Yeah…?”

: “It exploded.”

: “Yeah…”

: “What do we do?”

: “About what?”

: “This scene.”

: “Scene?”

: “I’m asking what you’re gonna do.”

: “I mean, nothing…?”

: I like to think that Big Dick is trying his hardest not to look at the explosion while also trying to find his sunglasses.

: “I won’t forget it. —Ever.”

: “It’s OK.”

: “Tetsu, it was me. It’s my responsibility.”

: “Well…”

: “I’m sorry.”

: “Exactly. It’s not my fault. It’s yours.”

: Kusabi has found a convenient scapegoat, and now he’s gonna run with it.

: “What the…?”

: “It’s fine, it’s the truth.”

: “Yeah, it is. It’s Sumio’s responsibility.”

: “Are you serious?”

: “Serious as a heart attack.”

: “You asshole!”

: “Listen up, Sumio… this kind of thing…”

: “…”

: “You clean this shit up. You’re gonna settle this case.”

: “Tetsu…”

: “Those are the guys from Central. A group of expert criminal investigators. But these days… traditional crime rates have dropped, and things just aren’t done their way anymore.”

: “They’re basically a band apart from everyone else. This case is comparatively close to an orthodox kidnapping, so these guys showed up.”

: You might wonder why he says “kidnapping” instead of “bombing”, but you’ll see in a minute.

: “Sumio, keep quiet. You don’t know when the same thing’ll happen to you. If crime changes, investigations change, too. It’s stupid to assume that all the old ways are somehow inferior. Am I wrong?”

: Unless you’re Chizuru, apparently.

: “Sorry…”

: “Well, it’ll be interesting to see how far ‘Afro’ goes. This’ll be something to watch.”

: “It’s starting…”

: “There’s something I’d like to get straight. Anyone referring to me as ‘Afro’ will be dealt with immediately. Watch yourselves.”

: “You hear that…”

: “He’s really into it…”

: “That’s enough pleasantries. Let’s get down to business. Two months ago, a note appearing to announce a crime was sent to the Yukimura Zaibatsu. It was stuck inside a newspaper. It was a really crude note.”

: Hoo boy. That whole sentence is weird and needs a bit of deconstruction. In real life, no one would have been using the term “zaibatsu” in 1999.

: In case you don’t know, the zaibatsus were a group of mega-corporations that existed in Japan prior to World War II. Each one was a group of companies owned by a single family at the top.

: To say they were a big part of Japan’s economy is an understatement. They WERE Japan’s economy, and were also Japan’s government. At one point in the 1930s, there were two political parties in Japan.

: The first party was more or less owned by Mitsui (now known as Mitsui-Sumitomo Banking Corporation) and the second was owned by Mitsubishi.

: Anyway, in real life, the zaibatsus were broken up at the end of World War II, mostly because they were anathema to the world view of the United States… at least, the United States in the 1940s.

: Of course, like most things the US does, they didn’t quite finish the job. While the zaibatsus no longer exist, there’s now this thing called the “keiretsu”, which is sort of similar but generally less powerful.

: That’s not to say the keiretsus aren’t a problem, because they absolutely are.

: The zaibatsus still exist in The Silver Case for reasons that only really get explained in Killer7 - where it’s revealed that in the Kill the Past universe, Japan secretly controls the US government.

: “It was found to be a code only understandable by Chairman Yukimura. At Central, we asked the Area 24 Precinct, who have jurisdiction, to watch over the chairman’s residence.”

: “And, as you know, although it was under watch, the chairman’s house was blown up.”

: This also isn’t without precedent - in real life, Mitsui’s Director was assassinated in 1932 along with the head of the political party Mitsui owned.

: “He’s looking at us.”

: “What a dick… being a dick is par for the course for Afro.”

: Look, it was one building, can’t you just let it slide?

: “Thanks to inexperienced investigators, this case has entered into new territory. We haven’t found any victims in the remnants of the explosion, and so we think it was purposely done while nobody was home.”

: “However, Chairman Yukimura has been missing since the day of the explosion, and so this case is now assumed to be a kidnapping.”

: “Finding Chiarman Yukimura is our top priority, along with finding the bomber. Each investigator is to follow Central’s orders and carry out the investigation.”

: “Everyone! On the name and honor of the Central Police, I need you all to put out your best to solve this case and bring Chairman Yukimura back alive. That is all…”

: Sakaguchi and Kotobuki look like, twenty years younger in this shot than they really are.

: “Yeah.”

: “How is your band of killers growing up?”

: “None of your goddamn business.”

: “I see you’ve scored a comfy position.”

: “Yeah, you, too…”

: “Me? Oh yeah… whatever you say, Kotobuki.”

: “You sound desperate…”

: “I am desperate. Keep laughing, Kotobuki. I’m on this. Whatever you have to say, I’m watching over this investigation personally.”

: “Do whatever. I don’t give a shit.”

: “Kotobuki… nobody wants anything too overdone.”

: “…”

: “You reap what you sow. Your dogs were always a bunch of pit bulls. Show them your ass and you’ll get bitten.”

: “…”

: “I’m warning you as a friend.”

: “You sure are a pleasant motherfucker.”

: “Just watch your back.”

: The manual lists this guy’s name as Michiru Kosaka. I’m not sure why he has a portrait that matches the Transmitter art style and Sakaguchi doesn’t.

: “A video from the perpetrator…”

: “It’s here!”

: “Play it immediately.”

: Yukimura is a cheap blow-up sex doll? Damn.

: Oh. The video shows the chairman struggling with the ropes, but you can’t see it very well in screenshot form.

: “Is this it?”

: “Yes, that is all.”

: “What was their purpose…? What do they want? What the hell does this video even mean?!”

: “From the video, we can confirm that Chairman Yukimura is still alive. However, there’s nothing about what the suspects want…”

: “Those motherfuckers!”

: “Sakaguchi…”

: “It’s a greeting from the suspect. It’s some grabby self-assertion.”

: “For what purpose…?”

: “It’d be easier if we knew. But…”

: “What is it?”

: We’ll go just a little further, because Parade is a rather long case, and the next part has a lot of stuff I can just cut out.

: Wait, didn’t we blow that up in Persona 1?

: I’m going to go ahead and say there is no fucking way this shot isn’t a reference to Die Hard.

: “This isn’t something that can be solved with huge actions.”

: “What do you mean?”

: “No meaning… but thanks to this, look at how many people have been hurt. Right there…”

: “…”

: “What’s up…?”

: “No, it’s nothing. This building just looks like a ghost or something…”

: “A ghost, huh…”

: Kusabi’s trying to work out how he’s going to arrest a building.

: “Yeah, it’s actually sort of calm…”

: You know, like plaster their name all over everything, or have gold-plated toilets.

: “Like build this building?”

: “The more it stands out, the more people know what you got.”

: “I see…”

: “Also, it has sort of a sense of guilt. Somewhere in there…”

: “Hm…”

: “Big Dick! Quit fucking around. Let’s go!”

: We have to use the desk on the left side, as opposed to the one directly in front of us.

: “Hey lady, where’s it at?”

: “Sorry… we’re with the police.”

: “Thank you.”

: “Thanks.”

: “Here it is.”

: “Ah…”

: We can’t go anywhere but through the door.

: “It’s the ‘President’s Floor’…”

: “A show of wealth?”

: “Yup. It’s all imported shit. Someone’s got good taste, huh. Fuckin’ hell…”

: “OK, let’s go.”

: “I’m Kosaka, from Central.”

: “Hi…”

: “I’m Kodai and this is Kusabi, we’re from HC Unit 2.”

: “Nice to meet you. And this is…?”

: “This is Timrod, he’s new.”

: “My pleasure.”

: “…”

: “Any news?”

: “Nothing yet, but…”

: “But?”

: “Actually… we had everyone gather up top, but as you can see…”

: There’s a good… 20 or 30 screens of these board members arguing. I’ll cut most of it.

: “The hell is that?”

: “They must really want to kill the chairman.”

: “They’re fighting over succession, huh?”

: “Any leads on these guys?”

: “Anyone related to the company is currently being thoroughly checked out.”

: “What do you think?”

: “It’s too early to say…”

: “How about it, Tetsu?”

: “They all look suspicious. A bunch of goddamn weirdos.”

: “As you know, our investigators are quite ‘old-fashioned’…”

: “Are you Afro’s little bitch?”

: “I won’t deny that. I do think that our methods of investigation are somewhat old — but I don’t think it’s due to Sakaguchi’s wishes.”

: “Then what?”

: “There is no one single ‘official’ way to investigate. Nowadays, efficiency is what matters. But there are some things that get overlooked due to efficiency. Filling those areas in is Central’s job…”

: “Is that the general consensus?”

: “Yes.”

: “Fine with me… you guys take this over. You’ll need it sooner or later.”

: “…”

: “How is security here?”

: Part of me wishes there was an anime of The Silver Case, but I know if they made one these days it’d probably be one of those CG monstrosities and look like shit.

: “We’re watching over every possible route in. We’ve got Snow Tower on lock.”

: “Got it.”

: “…”

: “So that’s how it is.”

: “Huh? Oh, yeah… looks perfect here.”

: “There don’t seem to be any problems.”

: “Yeah, the problem isn’t here.”

: Next time, we’ll arrest a suspect, and shit will only go downhill from there. By the way, Salty Vanilla finished the piece I posted the sketch of last update, so have Big Dick and Chizuru on a date.

: Oh, and here’s the chapter theme for Parade.

[Timrod]

: If you’re wondering why we just jumped from being in the Yukimura building to here, that’s how it is in the game. You didn’t miss anything.

: “Move carefully…”

: “Whatever, hurry the fuck up!”

: There’s only one thing we can do here, and that’s go south through that door. Don’t ask me how Big Dick gets through it with that desk in the way.

: “…”

: “He’s totally emaciated.”

: “The bomber, Hanao Hiseki, killed himself. Our one and only lead…”

: “Time to put some work into it, I guess.”

: “Tetsu, you sound like it’s someone else’s problem…”

: “Huh? Well, I mean it isn’t ‘my’ job, so, you know.”

: “…?”

: “It’s not my turn to shine yet.”

: “Why not?”

: “You don’t wanna get in the way now, do you? We don’t need anymore breaks.”

: “What is it?”

: “It’s here!!”

: “Son of a bitch!!! Put it up on the screen, now!!”

: You can hear a lighter going off in the background and an exhale.

: The blow-up doll is covered in some kind of liquid from above.

: “What the hell is this…? What does this mean? Is this some sort of riddle?”

: “Maybe it’s a threat?”

: “So ‘murder’, huh… where’s Kosaka?”

: “At the satellite.”

: “Give it to Kosaka!”

: “Sakaguchi, how’s it going?”

: “Is this Kosaka?”

: “Yes.”

: “Did you see it?”

: “Yes, from over here.”

: “What do you think?”

: “What do they want?”

: “They must want something.”

: “What is it?”

: “At this point…”

: " ‘This point’ is the last one! There is no ‘next time’! Feel it, Kosaka! Feel their voices! What they’re trying to say… what they believe in… search out their screams!"

: “I’ll do everything in my power!”

: “Good!! I’m counting on you, Kosaka…”

: “This is the first case I’ve ever seen that needed this much legwork.”

: “Really. I don’t even know what to think.”

: “We’re screwed at this point.”

: “Us, too… our research guys have nothing. Nothing from the body of the bomber, Hiseki, nor from the items left behind…”

: “How about Tetsu’s side?”

: “No idea…”

: “Nothing here, either…”

: “How about you, Tetsu?”

: “He’s all shut off.”

: Kusabi is in the HC Unit 1 office.

: “This is Kosaka from Central. Is this Kusabi?”

: “?”

: “Actually, this is top secret, but…”

: “It’s just some dickhead… Hey! Whose radio do you think this is?!”

: “I know I’m not supposed to contact you here. I have no excuse.”

: “The hell do you want?”

: “That Kosaka guy, what a fuckin’ dick. Just cutting me off like that?!”

: “Yeah…”

: “It’s fine. Hachisuka is working behind the scenes. Timrod, find an open desk.”

: This is one of the few things in this game I think truly needed a re-design. You see how all of the desks are apparently empty?

: If we try contacting these computers, directly in front of us, the game will act like it’s doing something and then dump us back at the contact menu.

: Instead, we have to turn to the right and contact this computer, which for some unknown reason isn’t occupied despite there being no visual indicator that it isn’t.

: “Just hurry the fuck up.”

: “Wait a second. We can’t just go off.”

: “Huh? What do you mean?”

: “It’s not like I have some special skills or anything…”

: “Oh really?”

: “You didn’t know?”

: “Then why did the old man put you here?”

: “Because I’m more ‘common’.”

: “Common?”

: “Yeah. That’s what the boss said.”

: “The fuck kind of standards are those?”

: “They needed regular people.”

: “So what, you’re some kind of neutralizer?”

: “Basically, yeah.”

: “And you’re okay with that?”

: “I mean…”

: “What…?”

: The same video we saw in the conference room plays again.

: “Watermark?”

: Metal Gear!?

: “If you look through the picture, a code appears.”

: “What, like invisible ink?”

: “Exactly. Like modern-day invisible ink.”

: “Huh?”

: “To be more specific… this picture uses discrete cosine transformation for image compression. Burying data inside the DCT coefficient renders it invisible to the naked eye…”

: This might sound like something Suda made up, but it actually isn’t. It’s hard to explain what the Discrete Cosine Transform actually is - everything I found about it has a bunch of incredibly dense math.

: The easiest way to explain it is like this. The DCT is an algorithm that takes an image or audio file, runs it through this complex math equation, and then outputs a lower-quality version of the file to save space.

: In fact, you’re seeing the DCT in action right now - this site compresses my original screenshots (which are in .png format and are 1:1 copies of what I see on screen) into .jpgs which have lost some of the original data.

: One other thing I’d like to add is that hiding data inside the DCT coefficient is very much a thing, but most of the implementations I could find of it stopped being updated in like 2003.

: I want to talk about this a bit too, because this is actually something that doesn’t exist. The largest diamond ever mined is called the Cullinan - it was mined in 1905.

: The Cullinan weighed around 1.25 pounds before it was cut, and a quick search tells me that its estimated value is around $400 million.

: Keep in mind that diamond prices are jangly key man bullshit - they basically sell for whatever the person grading them thinks they’re worth.

: Anyway, 600 billion yen is around $4.625 billion US dollars at current exchange rates and about 11.5 times what the Cullinan was worth uncut.

: “Tetsu…”

: “These guys are greedy. Get hold of Kosaka right away.”

: “600 billion by tomorrow… is that even possible?”’

: “No idea. Maybe selling that building would bring about that much in?”

: “That wouldn’t be enough.”

: “Well then, Yukimura’s finished.”

: “But…”

: “Difficult. Things have gotten pretty shaky.”

: “The fucking hyenas…”

: “We’ll continue to negotiate. If that doesn’t work out…”

: “The government can pay. Get a mortgage on all Yukimura-owned land, there should be no problem.”

: This seems crazy until you remember that the zaibatsus probably are the government.

: “OK then…”

: “Go ask Tsubaki. It should work out somehow.”

: “We’ll have to deal with the aftermath, but…”

: “I don’t care. A man’s life is at stake. Necessity knows no law.”

: Funny how the cops that have a license to kill suddenly give a shit about human life when it’s a rich person.

: “Understood. I’ll get right on it.”

: “Do it.”

: “OK… be careful.”

: “See you later…”

: “Big Dick… no, it’s nothing… never mind.”

: “One hour ago… there was a phone call from someone assumed to be the suspect.”

: “A phone call here?”

: “Yes.”

: “Could they trace it?”

: “No…”

: I was going to say something about them having a spy satellite, but then I realized the spy satellite didn’t know that the person it was tracking wasn’t Kamui.

: “I see. – What’s up with Sumio?”

: “He went back to HQ.”

: “At a time like this…?”

: “Looks like they’re ready.”

: It looks like Kusabi’s going senile, but I left the dialog on this line while I waited for the video to play while recording to ensure I didn’t miss anything.

: “The items specified by the suspect.”

: “Specified? What do you mean?”

: “All they said was that we’d need this…”

: “What about the rest of the equipment?”

: “It wasn’t allowed.”

: " ‘Wasn’t allowed’ ?"

: “They said if they saw anything, they’d kill the chairman.”

: “Yeah, that makes sense.”

: “?”

: “Why Big Dick?”

: "Chief Director Kotobuki’s insistence.

: Kotobuki clearly realized that this is a job for a highly trained chinchilla.

: “The old man?”

: “Yes. I was told by Sakaguchi.”

: “Whatever… Big Dick, go get a real good look at their faces, burn them into your eyeballs…”

: “…”

: “Anyway, just be sure to come back.”

: “Until we get the signal from the suspect, please go ahead and rest.”

: “Weren’t you at HQ?”

: “They told me to wait here.”

: “I see…”

: “Any contact from the suspect?”

: “No movement at all.”

: “Everything feels really heavy now.”

: “Seriously.”

: “Here it is!”

: “Where?!”

: “This radio.”

: If you’ve played No More Heroes, you probably remember the weird text-to-speech voice that Suda used. This uses the same thing.

: “What’s it mean?”

: “Let’s dance…”

: “He’s fucking with us.”

: “Timrod, you’re up. Transporting a 600 billion-yen diamond… it’s a big job. I’ll guide you over the radio. Work out the rest on your own. Timrod, it’s all on you now. Don’t mess this up.”

: I don’t know if this is supposed to be Big Dick’s car or what, but it looks like something a chinchilla would drive.

: “Why do these assholes know about our radio frequency?”

: “They must be a pretty technically-skilled group.”

: “Or it’s an inside job…”

: “That can’t be possible. Those radios are set to a very specific frequency specified by the suspects.”

: “So of course they know the frequency, then.”

: “No… actually, it’s quite a difficult range. It’s not the sort of range that could be easily used to communicate.”

: “A real veteran then, huh?”

: “Timrod, move in accordance with the instructions.”

: “No instructions from the suspect yet.”

: “Where would he be headed moving in this direction?”

: “The industrial zone.”

: “If he enters into a highly concentrated industrial zone, it will be hard to pinpoint them.”

: “I guess it’s gonna be up to Big Dick then…”

: “Here it is!”

: “What’re they saying?”

: “I guess they want him to get off.”

: “Timrod, get off at the next interchange.”

: Big Dick does some sick drifts in the Chinchillamobile. Somehow, he knows exactly where he’s headed based off “go to the crematorium”… even though what we’re headed to really isn’t a crematorium.

: “OK!”

: “Emergency communication! Surround the trash processing plant. Set a three-kilometer perimeter. Don’t let a single ant get through. Keep it totally locked down!!”

: “They’re jamming the signal… I can’t reach Timrod by radio.”

: What we have to do here is take the left turn.

: This puts us in front of one of the incinerators, at which point we get the message…

: Turn left and move one space, and we get…

: When we move to the next tank, we get this message before we can turn to face it.

: Okay, that makes sense, because that’d make us face the last incinerator…

: I… guess we’re going back the way we came?

: Or we’re going to face away from the incinerator. That works too.

: Nope! This is just Suda trolling us. What we actually have to do is go back to where we came in, and then take the right path instead.

: This leads us to this cable box. We can try to contact it, but nothing happens.

: Remember how Kosaka had that pocketknife and the stun gun on the table?

: In a rare use of the Implement command, we have to use the knife to cut open the cable box, in a move straight out of the beginning of Resident Evil 2.

: This leaves us with a contact point that also doesn’t do anything if we attempt to contact it.

: This is what the stun gun is for.

: “Timrod, where are you now? What’s the situation?”

: “We’ve got him. This position would be… smokestacks? What’s the suspect thinking? Where are they gonna trade…”

: “They’re using the smokestacks to… Timrod, they’re not here. Check the surrounding… the radio’s out again…”

: I’m not entirely sure how this guy gets the briefcase with the diamond in it, or how a diamond that big would fit in that briefcase, but okay.

: Yep, that guy just jumped into a smokestack with the diamond. I’m sure he has some plan to get out, and…

: Uh, do smokestacks work that way? I didn’t think they actually shot fire like that.

: For some definition of ‘unharmed’.

: “Is this OK?”

: “Isn’t it? We got the chairman back unharmed.”

: “Yukimura is stuck with a 600 billion yen loss.”

: “Yukimura’s finished, I guess.”

: “Finished? Why?”

: I was kind of curious as to how much of a hit this would be to one of the big Japanese companies in reality, so I looked at two of them: Sumitomo-Mitsui and Mitsubishi, both of which were formerly zaibatsus.

: According to Fortune, Sumitomo-Mitsui had revenues of $36.8 billion in 2021. Of that, their profit for the year was around $4.8 billion. Would a $4.6 billion loss sink the company? Probably not. It’d hurt a lot, but they’d most likely survive it.

: For Mitsubishi, we’d need to look at their 2020 numbers, because Fiscal Year 2021 is kind of an outlier. They usually have around $5 billion a year in profit, so they’d likely survive as well.

: What if we adjusted for inflation?

: If we did that, both Sumitomo-Mitsui and Mitsubishi would be in trouble - they’d have lost their entire profit for the year and it’d wreak havoc on their stock price. Would they go under? I still doubt it.

: Both companies have hundreds of billions in assets, as Japanese companies tend to sit on massive piles of cash, and could probably survive it.

: “In Yukimura’s current situation, he can’t handle something of that scale.”

: Either 1999 is a real bad year for Yukimura, or they’re a really shitty zaibatsu. I mean, you probably control the government and you can’t even take a $4.6 billion hit?

: “Right? So he’s finished.”

: “The wounds the suspect inflicted were deep… I guess that was their target.”

: “Most likely… rather than money, screwing Yukimura over may have been their real goal. The guy jumped into a smokestack. As for the guy thought to be the actual perpetrator, we have no ID on him… there weren’t even any bones left.”

: “We have no way of finding out what it is he was after.”

: “What about the diamond?”

: This is another thing that I thought was fake, but is actually quite plausible. Because diamonds are pure carbon, they bond with oxygen at high temperatures and vaporize into carbon dioxide.

: This process starts at 763 degrees celsius (1405 F). According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, most trash incinerators are operated well above that.

: The average incinerator runs somewhere between 980 to 1200 degrees celsius (1800 to 2200 F), and an industrial trash plant is probably going to be on the high end of that.

: " ‘A diamond doesn’t turn to ash.’ Or, ‘didn’t turn to ash’, rather."

: “What a waste…”

: “From Central?”

: “My name is Kosaka. Is Kusabi here?”

: “He’s in the back room. Go on in…”

: “Thank you…”

: “Hey… what’s up, you guys get it cleaned up?”

: “Yes. We’ve finished removal.”

: “Where’s Afro?”

: “He went back to Central. He said to send you his regards…”

: “Regards for what?”

: “I believe he’s trying to scout you…”

: “Tell him I’m too expensive.”

: “I’ll tell him.”

: “I’m kidding.”

: “OK…”

: “How’s your stomach?”

: “Like a medal of honor. Thank you.”

: I’m not sure if this is saying that he didn’t try seppuku, or that he did but stopped early enough to not die from it.

: “And?”

: “I just thought I’d say hello. Thank you for all your help.”

: “Thank you.”

: “Let’s get together again sometime.”

: “It would be an honor.”

: “It’d be better if that time never came, but…”

: “I agree. Crime can ruin one’s heart. Even innocent bystanders can be greatly affected.”

: “Reducing that exact thing is our job.”

: “You mean covering it up?”

: “Close, but not exactly.”

: “Using ‘disposal’ as a method of solving crimes… but I’ve started doubting my opinion on the matter. The idea of bringing everything to light is…”

: Speaking of which, Kusabi hasn’t killed anyone this entire game, apart from that one guy from Moonlight Syndrome in the intro case.

: “Grave?”

: “No… so far, the case we’re working on has yet to claim a single person’s life, and we’re on our way towards solving it.”

: “Yeah.”

: “Maybe the perpetrator’s motivation was simply to act? To me, it feels like it was some sort of demonstration.”

: This part I’m a little confused by. We’ve already seen Morikawa and Nakategawa outright tell us why the crime was committed - it was done to ruin Yukimura’s company and him in the process.

: I think it’d be pretty clear to both of them, especially given that Kusabi is usually the one spearheading the investigations.

: “They’ve committed plenty of crimes with plenty of victims. But without showing their motive…”

: “There are many crimes for which the purpose isn’t clear.”

: “What’re you trying to say?”

: “I don’t know. I don’t know, but…”

: “…”

: “I feel like the fact that the perpetrator has put together such a huge-scale puzzle means they’re trying to say something to the world.”

: “You think too much.”

: “Do I?”

: “They’ve left some sort of message. But at the same time, they’ve left others with scars. The information distributed by the media is going to cause a great number of people to fall victim to their crimes.”

: “So I feel that covering up the very crime itself is a necessary evil.”

: I’m not sure whether this chapter would be better or worse without this part. I mean, I know why Suda is probably doing it - this is meant to be a character moment for Kusabi - but still.

: " ‘Evil’, huh…"

: “And… by covering everything up, we take away the chance for certain people to assert themselves. That is to say… the chance for the weak to fight back. They’ll be left with no way.”

: “Hm…”

: “Whether or not that’s actually necessary, I just don’t know anymore.”

: “Sounds like you’ve gotten in too deep. I get what you’re trying to say. But that’s some naive bullshit. You need to get rid of any superfluous emotions. Totally nuke them.”

: “Just look at what’s right in front of your eyes. Keep your eyes on the prize. Stare down the enemy in front of you. That’s how you investigate.”

: “Am I wrong?”

: “You’re right. I think I’d been getting a bit soft. I will repent. I’ll throw everything I have into this investigation.”

: Next time, we’ll finish Parade.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Right after the scene with Kusabi and Kosaka, this happens. Sumio is apparently talking to… who is that?

: “Nope.”

: “Sumio? I saw him.”

: “Where?”

: “Here.”

: “When?”

: “Yesterday.”

: “This motherfucker… forget it.”

: “Sumio went out.”

: “Where?”

: “No idea…”

: “…”

: “Oh yeah, that’s right…”

: “Today? Isn’t today Saturday?”

: “It’s apparently a secret meeting.”

: “So they plan on making some huge decisions behind their employees’ backs, huh?”

: “It’s always the uninformed lower-downs who end up getting screwed.”

: “Hopefully that’s all that happens…”

: There’s going to be a lot of screenshots here, because there’s a lot of dialog from characters who don’t have dialog portraits.

: Well, now I guess we know who Sumio was talking to.

: Did we really save this guy just so he could…

: “What has?”

: “Snow Tower.”

: “I have no words…”

: “The Yukimura Zaibatsu has been destroyed. The remaining land and buildings have been sold off to the government. All the proceeds will go toward paying back Chairman Yukimura’s ransom money…”

: “So it all went exactly as the perpetrator planned.”

: “As if they were specifically targeted, only the management was killed in the explosion… Central is gonna be treated like a joke.”

: I mean, most of the board members seemed like assholes, so…

: “Us, too.”

: “Things are going to get rough.”

: “It looks like Sakaguchi took the fall. He took full responsibility to ensure his subordinates’ jobs…”

: “What about that one guy? The big one.”

: Nobody cares who he is because he hasn’t put on the mask yet.

: “Kosaka? He went with Sakaguchi of his own volition.”

: “Where?”

: “A new assignment somewhere out in the sticks.”

: “I see… Tetsu is gonna be sad.”

: “Oh, you were here?”

: “Naka. I wanna look into Yukimura’s business.”

: “For information on the company you can check the Internet…”

: I’d say that people capitalizing “internet” is a late-90s/early 00s thing, but the Associated Press was still doing it up to 2016, even though most newspapers had already stopped by then.

: “No, I mean all of it. This case isn’t over yet. I wanna bring up all of Yukimura’s history. Let’s give the souls of the dead some fuckin’ peace.”

: “We’re gonna take these materials and check them from cover to cover. It’s a pretty ridiculous amount. Don’t start bitching about it.”

: As soon as we take a step forward, we get a security card - you don’t need to contact anything, it just gets put in your inventory. There’s a door to our left and a door to our right, so let’s do those first.

: The left and right rooms are basically the same - they have model buildings and photos in them, as well as the model city in the center. I used to work at a place that had a room just like this.

: We can contact the edge of the city model - I think there’s a plaque if you look down. I’m going to transcribe the text on these the way I do the emails in Tokio’s chapters.

Announced in 1974
“NEmoSweet” Series
1st Period “Advance”

Cutting-edge features for the modern age. Total comfort and high-level safety measures. Yukimura Group’s “NEmoSweet”.

The Yukimura Group: A conglomeration that cares about the future.
[7400]

: Then there’s this slightly different model in the other room.

Set for release in 2002
“NEmoSweet” Series “Royal”

People’s lifestyles change with the times. But life’s true necessities never really change. The Yukimura Group presents a whole new lifestyle. “NEmoSweet-Royal”.

The Yukimura Group: Bringing the future closer.
[0026]

: You might have noticed that there’s two numbers at the bottom of each of the building descriptions. Those are the code we need to progress - but there’s no obvious place to enter it.

: What we have to do is go back into the main hall and try to use the card on the front desk.

: The code is 7426, which you get by removing the zeroes in each of the two numbers and putting the other number where the zeroes were.

: This leads us to a room full of filing cabinets that houses one of the more annoying bits to do if you’re screenshot LPing this game. There are nine documents hidden in here, eight of which we can get to.

: Each document is numbered, and there’s an achievement for reading all the documents in order. They’re split up into two sides from where we start - there’s four on the left side and four on the right.

: Each side has two screens, with a contact point on either side of each screen for a total of eight. I’ll refer to their positions first by aisle, then by “front” and “back”, and then by “left” and “right” based on where they are from this screen.

: Document Number 1 is in the right-side aisle, front half, on the right. Don’t worry if all these documents don’t make sense - this will be covered in Tsuki.

confidentialdocument#1

Date: 07/16/1970
Case name: Relationship between the Yukimura Zaibatsu and attorney XXXX
Processing: Deletion
Reporter: XXXX
Report:

Re: induction to factory construction plan for Mikumo Village #32 “Mikumo 77”, apparently a large sum of money was exchanged between the Yukimura Zaibatsu and the attorney XXXX in the name of “political donations”. Information received from source XXXX.

The day before entering into an open investigation, XXXX gives orders to stop. On the same day, XXXX and XXXX from the XX Unit are ordered to fully investigate “Mikumo 77” and the Yukimura Zaibatsu, and constant reports are demanded for Yukimura’s background check.

From this day forward, anything pertaining to this case is to be considered highly confidential. Report provided by XX to XXXXX in the XX department.

: In case you’re wondering, the “XX Unit” in this document isn’t the Heinous Crimes Unit, as this dates to before the Silver Case.

: Document 2 is in the right-side aisle, back half, on the right. This puts it directly behind where Document 1 is.

confidentialdocument#2

Date: 11/02/1975
Case name: Influence of protests against construction of “Mikumo 77”
Processing: Deletion
Reporter: XXX
Report:

Group opposing the construction of “Mikumo 77” has lost final appeal to Supreme Court. Subsequently, construction has been legally approved, and is set to begin at the beginning of the year.

At dawn on 10/31, the representative of the group leading the appeal is reported missing.

On 10/31, the anti-construction group held a meeting, which representative XXX attended. After the talks, which lasted till late at night, XXXX, heading home with XXX, reports that XXX said they would go propose a mutual compromise with Yukimura.

Afterward, XXX went missing, and has apparently not returned home. Additionally, at the meeting, XXX was significantly drunk, and it is possible that some sort of accident occurred. However, according to XXXX, when they last saw XXX, XXX was no longer that drunk

Also, XXX was preparing to head to the Yukimura mansion. So it is plausible that XXX went to the Yukimura mansion. The XXX investigation is set to continue through the week.

: I got a little confused with this one when I was recording, because I couldn’t tell if they were saying that a representative from Yukimura had died mysteriously or what.

: This is basically Yukimura admitting they killed a guy to try and stop the opposition to their factory.

: Document 3 is in the left aisle, front half, right side.

confidentialdocument#3

Date: 05/17/1977
Case name: Inheritable heinous crimes
Processing: Deletion
Reporter: XXXX
Report:

While undertaking Yukimura’s background check, information was received from a surprising source. Inside “History of Inheritable Heinous Crimes” stored in the HC Unit materials room, the XXXX family line was discovered. The XXXX family line is old, and was able to be traced back 13 generations.

Among those, including the historic criminal XXXX, were 8 names. Additionally, the land on which the “Mikumo 77” factory is set to be completed this year was found to be the spot on which XXX was shot to death by the HC Unit.

It is unknown whether Yukimura purchased this land and built the factory knowing this fact. However, it doesn’t seem to be a simple coincidence.

Many residents are already filing complaints about the factory. There is a rumor that waste from the construction site has been flowing into the XX River, from which residents get their drinking water, and the village has requested a water quality inspection from the government.

: I thought the criminal they were talking about is Kamui, but that’s not possible - the Silver Case happened in 1979.

: Document 4 is in the right aisle, front half, left side.

confidentialdocument#4
Date: 02/16/1979
Case name: Suspicions regarding waste from “Mikumo 77”
Processing: Deletion
Reporter: XXX
Report:

In accordance with requests from residents, the water quality inspection of the XX River has been performed. The inspection is rumored to have stretched out two years due to XXXX controlling things behind the scenes.

Regarding the water’s safety, the XX Division of the XXX Department of the Ministry of Health and Welfare has given the ‘go’ sign. Harmful materials were not found among the materials from the waste. It seems there is no problem with water quality. At one point, residents staged a demonstration in front of the factory, but with word of this report spreading, the situation has calmed down.

Recently, standoffs between residents and the factory have been occurring frequently. Some residents’ behavior has been extremely inflammatory, and some of it is considered to be somewhat extraordinary. It is well-known that this has been caused by the discord between the residents and Yukimura, but this should probably be tranquilized by us before it gets further out of hand.

: This right here is why I wanted to present these in order. The next one is in the left aisle, back half, on the right.

confidentialdocument#5
Date: 07/28/1978
Case name: Suspicions regarding waste from “Mikumo 77” (Edited)
Processing: Deletion
Reporter: XXXX
Report

In the report from 02/16/1979, it was stated that the water from the XX River had nothing wrong with it, but the XXXX group performed a separate top secret inspection, and it was reported that the water was found to contain harmful materials from the factory waste.

Waste water was collected and checked for confirmation and an inspectionm was requested within the department, from which the following was found.

If these results are factual, then the factory would prove to be extremely dangerous to the Mikumo village. Measures must be taken immediately. Just in case, a waste water sample is being sent together with the report.

: I’m… not necessarily the biggest fan of this particular report, because you can kind of infer a lot of this from the previous one. Anyway, one big thing to note:

: The previous report was dated 02/16/1979, while this one was dated 07/28/1978… meaning Yukimura knew about the chemicals but covered it up.

: Speaking of which, Angiotensin II hormones are a real thing. They’re produced naturally by the body and constrict blood vessels as a way of regulating your blood pressure.

: You might think something this egregious wouldn’t happen in the real world, especially not as late as 1999… except it actually does, even to this day.

: Document 6 is in the right-side aisle, back half, on the left. This, along with the last three documents, are THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THIS CHAPTER.

confidentialdocument#6

Date: 08/09/1979
Case name: Mysterious points re: the Riru Yukimura murder case
Processing: Deletion
Reporter: XXXX
Report:

At dawn on 08/07, the body of a girl estimated to be 7-8 years old was found. Approximately five days had passed since the time of death, and decomposition had been progressing. The body showed signs of violence, leading to the decision to treat it as a homicide case.

Today the body was identified. The girl’s name is Riru Yukimura. Age 7. She lived with her parents, members of the Yukimura family line, in the Mikumo village, and her parents were in charge of factory management.

With regards to the Riru Yukimura murder case, several mysterious points have been brought up.

1: When the body was discovered, injuries suggested the actions of a single individual deviant, but the subsequent autopsy report indicates the possibility of multiple perpetrators.

2: The time of death was determined to be right in the middle of the parade (demonstration) put on by the residents, but there was not a single witness.

3: Although the 7-year-old girl was missing, the missing persons report and search request was not filed until three days after her disappearance.

4: Around the same time as the crime, three children who live in the village were apparently badly injured in a strange accident. Details are unclear, but the name of one of the boys involved has been found. The children involved were known to be friends of Riru Yukimura.

Residents were extremely uncooperative regarding the investigation into Riru’s murder. This is likely also due to the discord with Yukimura.

: Translation: Yukimura was such a dick that he sent his own… niece, I guess? to a town where he knew his company was dumping toxic waste in the water, and where she was eventually murdered.

: Document 7 is in the left aisle, front half, on the left.

Report:

Upon the arrest of the suspect, the investigation of the murder of Riru Yukimura has finished as of today.

With the self-surrender of main perpetrator XXXXXX, the case was solved and closed swiftly. Two accessories, XXXX and XXX, are said to have died while avoiding capture. Details have been reported in the HC Unit case file.

: And finally, Document 8. It’s in the left aisle, back half, on the left.

: Once you read the final document, a wall opens up in the space between the two sets of shelves in the left aisle.

confidential document #9
Date: 11/04/1979
Case name: Discovery of skeletal remains
Processing: Unreported due to death of person in question
Reporter: XXX

Report:

On 10/23, Mikumo village XXX resident XXX was XXXXXXXXX, and skeletal remains were discovered. Results of an analysis of the clothing worn by the remains proved that the body was that of XXX, missing since 10/31/1977.

The boys he was after. It is thought that he had been in contact with the boys in order to publicize the truth. Part of the report said to have been fabricated by investigator XXXX states the following.

: Before we get to the obvious thing, I’d like to mention that this report contradicts an earlier one - I’m pretty sure the remains they found belonged to the activist who went missing in 1975.

: Suda does this a lot - in fact, he released two lore books for Killer7 that contradict not only each other, but themselves.

: Anyway… SuXXio XXXXi… where have we heard a name like that before? There’s no way it’s…

: “What is this, a fucking fairytale? Protests… marches… kids… parades… a princess and some heroes… and a huge serpent… so there really is a fairytale town. Mikumo 77…”

: “Hey Big Dick. What can I do?”

: “Ah, the twilight town. Everyone has come into contact with this town at some point.”

: “How nostalgic…”

: “It’s been, what, like 20 years?”

: “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

: “Well… it looks like during that time, this became the kinda town nobody wants to come near.”

: “That’s right. This town has been waiting for us.”

: “Took enough time and effort.”

: “You happy now…?”

: “Sorry…”

: “Looks like there’s gonna be fireworks. Wanna go watch them?”

: “Tetsu…”

: This whole thing gets explained in Tokio’s upcoming chapter, but I like to think Kusabi used his license to kill in order to kill an entire town. Totally works that way.

: “Yeah…”

: “Why are you going this far?”

: I’m not so sure I buy this. I mean, this entire thing was one giant revenge plot against Yukimura for killing Riru and fucking up Mikumo Village. It feels more like Sumio was honoring the past than killing it.

: “What’s in the past?”

: “All of me.”

: “Fuckin’ idiot… you’re a fuckin’ idiot, you know that…?”

: “Finally… I’ve become an idiot.”

: “Let’s go.”

: “Yes.”

: “Keep confident.”

: “Yes.”

: “Stare hatred right in the face.”

: “Yes.”

: “Move forward.”

: “Yes.”

: “Sometimes the past is important. Your real fight starts here. If you feel like you’re gonna buckle, just remember…”

: “Who the hell are you?”

: “As of today, I’m your new partner, Kodai.”

: “Kodai? Never heard of you. You get the wrong unit or something?”

: “No, I was assigned here.”

: “I got no use for career types. Fuck off.”

: “Actually, I’m just a high school graduate.”

: I thought this was weird, since as I understood it, most police detectives have college degrees. I actually took a course meant for that in community college as an elective (I did my first two years there).

: The answer is apparently that it depends on where you are and how high you plan on going up - some places want an associate’s just to join the force, and expect a master’s to make detective.

: “Oh yeah? Then why’re you wearing that suit?”

: “Just personal preference.”

: “What the fuck? You look r—”

: Omitted the slur again.

: “Do I?”

: “That ain’t gonna work.”

: “Huh.”

: “What’s your name?”

: “Huh?”

: “Your first name. The one your mommy and daddy gave you.”

: “It’s Sumio. Sumio Kodai.”

: “Alright, Sumio. Follow me!”

: “To where?”

: “I’m fine, thanks.”

: “Just come with me. I’ll hook you up!”

: “Really, it’s fine!”

: “Hurry the fuck up!”

: “I really don’t need one!!”

: “Tetsu, we got a call!”

: “Where?”

: “The Tsubaki Syndicate.”

: “Let’s go, Sumio!”

: “OK!!”

: “You ended up never buying me a suit, huh?”

: “Whatever, just walk!”

: “My suit…”

: “Yeah yeah, I’ll buy you one.”

: “Awesome…”

: “Once you’re an old man, that is.”

: “Keep confident…”

: “Stare it down…”

: “Live positively…”

: And that’s the end of Parade, our third case out of five. Next time, we’ll move on to Tsuki.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Welcome to Tsuki. This chapter is where Tokio’s story really starts picking up, to the point where I kind of wonder what the point of Yume and Hana even was.

: Once the building shows up, there’s a really loud jackhammer noise that starts playing in the background.

: “What the fuck… shit… a nightmare…”

: Tokio smokes a lot more in Tsuki than he did in Hana or Yume.

: “9 o’clock…? It’s not morning yet… I’ll sue your ass…”

: Let’s check on Red.

: “He looks terrified…”

: And, of course, Tokio’s inbox.

From: Slash
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: Found The Bat
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1999 3:21:14

Attacking Scolba is actually pretty hardcore. So it took some time, but by reverse-hacking the system I was able to pull up the user access logs. There were all kinds of things in place. People using proxies and jamming things up, but with their raw IP data totally visible, etc. So anyway, here’s what I found out.

: If this seems cringy and dated, keep in mind this game was probably being written within three years of the original release of the movie Hackers.

: As soon as we finish reading the email, the construction noise starts up again and we’re kicked off Tokio’s computer.

: “And it fucking starts again…”

: And now, one of Tokio’s more memorable lines.

: “Goddamn… this is so annoying, I can’t take it. …Wanna go for a drive?”

: Come to think of it, isn’t this how Francis York Morgan crashes his car in Deadly Premonition, by being on his laptop while driving?

Maybe he’s special, or maybe all turtles are like this, but Red seems to be a real coward. He just wants to spend his days floating around, and if anything disturbs that, he gets all sensitive and starts flapping around in his tank, and then stops eating. He’s a hassle, but he’s still lovable.

How about The Bat? The only thing I know is that he’s one fucked up dude. I doubt whether he actually has anything to do with Kamui. Why did he break into the chatroom that one time? Either he’s a hacker using Kamui as a front, or a cracker who actually believes all this Kamui bullshit. One or the other.

Other assumptions:

Real name: “Komori”, or something “bat”-like in Japanese. That’s why he uses the name “The Bat”.
Age: Little punk around 14 or so.
Blood Type: AB
Personality: Like a rat or a bird or something. Has a mix of indecision and cunning.

Fuck, I’m bored. Anyways, I got his email address. I doubt he’d reply, but I’ll try getting hold of him.

: “Placebo… I’m getting sick of this shit.”

From: Tokio Morishima
To: junk@kipple.ne.jp
Subject: Hello, CQCQ

To The Bat,

This is Morishima, the guy you picked a fight with a few days ago. You shouldn’t have busted into our chat like that. Now I have your mail address. I don’t know who you are, what you’re trying to do, or whether you’re a crazy fuckstick or a full-on crazy fuckstick.

Get back to me. Let’s talk about your homie Kamui.

: “Anyway…”

: The construction noises start back up.

: “And it fucking starts again… Jesus fucking Christ, man…”

: “This… motherfucker… head… hurts…”

: Poor Red.

: You can probably tell from the subject line of the email who The Bat actually is, but it’ll be real clear a bit later.

From: junk@kipple.ne.jp
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: parade
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 9:00:00

~Guessing Game~

What’s the answer?

[#1]

At the last moment, an intrusion,
an old witch, a wink.
Oil fries, nobody’s there.
Just Joan the slut.
Mom, dad, yourself.
A stick, a log, a stone, dead.
Made a slave by the bad guy.
It’s gotta be you or me…

Who’s missing?

: This riddle is going to be repeated a few times, so I’ll just refer to it as “Joan the Slut”.

: Incidentally, when I read this while recording, I immediately thought of the infamous “It’s just me, Gabe Newell” video.

[#2]

Old Mother Twitchett
likes kisses.

She turns over
her long tail
and with one eye,
stares.

Give her a kiss
on her cute little mouth.
As thanks,
she’ll share her tail.

Old Mother Twitchett… who is it?

[#3]

There was a crazy family
riding a crazy horse
running like crazy.

Where did they get to?

[#4]

Some brothers picked up a corpse
and buried it in a stone grave.

Who killed and ate the kid?

: “What the hell is this…? The Bat’s address… a guessing game? The fuck is this about?!”

: “Oh my god, shut the fuck up! Fucking seriously…”

: “This kind of thing pisses me off. OK, fine… so I have to play a game, huh?”

: To be fair, this is pretty much how I react to any game that has a dumb bullshit puzzle.

: Tokio opens his blog post with the “Joan the Slut” riddle copied verbatim, so I won’t bother reposting it.

At the last moment… is it me or him?
An intrusion… is it me or him?
An old witch… maybe him?
A wink…?
Oil fries… what the fuck?

Who’s missing? Who the fuck?

I don’t fucking get it!!!

: “Yup.”

: “Your husband, huh… he ‘used to’ smoke these… so you mean he’s…?”

: “If they sell them there.”

: “Yeah, I guess so. I’m going home… the construction should be done for today by now.”

: “But like… I hate playing games. Fuck… why the hell do I have to do this…?”

: “Ah. Hold on… maybe Erika could… yeah, she’d be better at this than I would.”

From: Tokio Morishima
To: Erika Yukawa
Subject: Just Guessing

I got a weird email from that guy called The Bat. I’ll forward it to you. What is this guessing game? Do you get it?

I have no idea. Let me know if you figure it out. Also, from now on, I’m gonna encrypt my mails. I’m using a program I used to use at the news agency. Are you able to read this?

From: Tokio Morishima
To: S. INOHANA
Subject: Get It On

Has a guy called “The Bat” ever been involved in the Kamui case? He’s able to mess with systems on the net, and apparently doesn’t want people digging up stuff on Kamui. He contacted me online and told me not to fuck with Kamui.

He also sent me some sort of riddle. He also seems to know about that thing at Babylon. Let me know if you know anything.

At the last moment, an intrusion, an old witch… is this some sort of poem? Searching all over the net got me nothing. Nothing in the encyclopedia, either. Nothing in the newspaper database. Not even anything in the fucking Farmer’s Almanac.

Construction is finally finishing tomorrow. About fucking time.

: “Are you even awake…? OK brother, I’m gonna go to sleep, too. Getting woken up like this every goddamn morning… we need us a fucking break, you know?”

: “Sleepy… sweet dreams…”

: “Hm…? It’s already night… it’s been a while since I slept like that…”

: “Morning, sleepyhead. Hehe…”

: Looks like Red’s doing a lot better with the construction done.

From: Erika Yukawa
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: Re: Just Guessing
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 22:10:48

This guessing game is a riddle. You’re probably supposed to look for keywords from this text. I don’t know the answer, though.

More importantly, who is “The Bat”? The version of that encryption software you’re using is too old.

From: S. INOHANA
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: Investigation Required
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999

Looks like nobody named “The Bat” was involved with the Kamui case in the past. But I agree that he should be marked for the future. Find out who he is and report quickly.

It’s about time you sent some info worth the price I paid you.

: “Keep looking, keep looking, keep looking… maybe if I get this quiz right I’ll win a trip to Hawaii. Fuck! Fuck this… I need food.”

: I think I said this exact line at least twice during the Persona 5 LP.

: “At the last moment, an intrusion…”

: “Excuse me? What does that mean…?”

: “Fuck if I know…”

: “Is it about someone’s personality?”

: “Like someone who’s intrusive?”

: Like a certain turtle-hating bartender who should shut the fuck up before he gets mauled by a chinchilla again?

: “Like ‘someone who intrudes at the last moment’…”

: “So you’ve been listening, huh? But no, it’s not about someone’s personality.”

: “I guess.”

: “It’s like this…”

: Tokio repeats the entire “Joan the Slut” riddle here, so I’ll cut that.

: “I’ve heard that somewhere before…”

: “What, seriously?”

: “What do you mean?”

: “Old word games. In English. Some of those words come from these games.”

: Here’s what I like about this: when I was recording this, I actually went “Wait, is this a real thing or is this something Suda made up, how the fuck are you supposed to even get to there from Joan the Slut?”

: He managed to make it work even in English without it being painfully obvious the way a lot of that kind of stuff was in Persona 5.

: "OK then, can you figure this out? It’s a riddle… the question for this one is, ‘Who’s missing?’ "

: “The blind man.”

: “Really?”

: “Definitely. The blind man is missing.”

: “You’re a genius.”

: “I like to do what I can.”

: “I’m going home.”

: “What does this mean, and what is The Bat trying to do? I still have no idea.”

: “If there’s one thing that I know for sure, it’s that my nerves are totally on end, and I want to pluck the feathers from that “Bat” or “Chicken” or whatever-his-name-is asshole, and those feelings are growing by the day.”

: “I’ll get Erika to help again…”

: “Those goddamn pig-fucking asshole sons of bitches are finally finishing that construction.”

: Well, that confirms it. The Bat is almost certainly Sumio. It makes sense when you realize that Big Dick also got all those weird emails, one of which referred to him as “Chinchilla” - a name only Sumio and Kusabi would know.

: “A fairytale? What a fucking dickhead…”

From: Tokio Morishima
To: Erika Yukawa
Subject: About The Bat

Remember when our chat at Scolba got disrupted? Around the time of the Kamui case. You got dropped from the net and couldn’t get back in. When that happened, some guy replaced you and interrupted our chat.

The guy’s handle name was “The Bat”. He started talking to me suddenly and told me not to look into Kamui. For some reason he also knew about Babylon. So I hired a certain net detective to find his mail address for me. I mailed him, and got that weird riddle mail.

I figured out the first one. I also figured out how to solve it. Probably. It’s from some old Mother Goose thing. You know Mother Goose? With the right materials, the remaining three should be solvable, too. Feel like getting together to solve some riddles? Get me back. Let’s hook up and win that trip to Hawaii.

: “The noise is finally gone… looks like the construction is finally finished.”

: “She bought a Mother Goose book. We put the book and the mail from The Bat together and started looking for the answers to his little game.”

: “Without titles, it was hard to search them out, but this is what the first one is based on…”

: This is apparently a nursery rhyme dating back to the Victorian era, but damned if I could find anything on it.

: “What a fucked up poem. So here’s the riddle…”

: He repeats Joan the Slut again, verbatim.

: “The ‘blind man’ is missing. So literally, the blind man.”

: “Even the bartender knew this rhyme. That dude’s surprising.”

: “Maybe he really likes Mother Goose?”

: “I wonder… he does seem a bit weird. So next is this one.”

: Tokio repeats the second riddle, the “Old Mother Twitchett” one.

: “I’ve heard that before.”

: “Really?”

: “Old Mother Twitchett, right…?”

: “Yeah.”

: “Hold on…”

: “Oh, I’m waiting.”

: “OK, so… Old Mother Twitchett was… hm… ah, here it is. It’s from this poem, look. What was the question again…?”

: “Who is Old Mother Twitchett?”

: “Ah, I see.”

: “What is it?”

: “The direct translation of the original poem says this:”

: I also looked this one up, and did find a single website that had a version of it. Warning: Some godawful goddamn 90s-ass web design.

: “What the hell does that mean?”

: “The poem itself is a riddle.”

: You know what I just fucking remembered? Remember Gabriel Knight 3 and the godawful geometry management puzzles? That came out the same year this game did.

: I can only imagine the kind of bullshit puzzles that Jane Jensen would’ve put in this if she worked on it. You know what, fuck it, give me a 24th Ward Heinous Crimes Unit novel by Jane Jensen.

: “A riddle, huh?”

: “Listen. One eye, leaves its tail behind… therefore… Old Mother Twitchett is…”

: “Huh?”

: “A needle and thread… so what about the question…?”

: “I don’t know… but it looks like it means that a needle kisses thread.”

: “The fuck kind of kiss is that?”

: “Let’s leave that for now. The answer for #2 is ‘needle and thread’. What’s next?”

: “Um… here’s the third one…”

: Tokio repeats the third riddle from earlier.

: “A crazy family… there’s gotta be a poem with a crazy family and a crazy horse somewhere.”

: “Another fucked up poem.”

: “Quit complaining and search for it.”

: “Whatever.”

: “I can’t find it.”

: “Me neither.”

: “Wait, hold on…”

: “Waiting.”

: “It must be this.”

: “Which one?”

: “It’s a bit long.”

: This is the only one of these I had heard of before, and it’s only because of The Wolf Among Us. Too bad Fables was such a piece of shit comic.

: “Hm. That sounds right.”

: “So where did the ‘crazy’ family end up?”

: In what’s probably Telltale’s worst game outside of Hector: Badge of Carnage.

: “Hell.”

: “That’s the answer. Nice work!”

: “Now for the final problem.”

: Erika repeats the last riddle, which we’ve already seen.

: “Some brothers picked up a corpse and buried it in a stone grave.”

: “There should be a similar poem somewhere…”

: “Come on, hurry up.”

: “You keep looking, too.”

: “I am.”

: “Brothers and a stone grave.”

: “Brothers and a stone grave…”

: “Picked up a corpse…”

: “Is this it?”

: “What?”

: “I’m not 100% sure.”

: “Show me.”

: “OK, here it goes. The poem says…”

: “That must be it.”

: “OK, now we’re getting the hang of it.”

: “So who ‘killed and ate that kid’?”

: “Mother and father… so, ‘the parents’.”

: “Right.”

: “Awesome.”

: “Wow, we got all four.”

: “Let’s try lining the answers up.”

: “I have no idea what that means.”

: “Me neither.”

: “I wonder if this really means something?”

: “What is he trying to say?”

: “The Bat… is it really worth chasing after him?”

: I mean, it kinda depends what Batman we’re talking about, because half of everything Batman kinda sucks.

: “I don’t know… but I feel like it is.”

: “A gut feeling?”

: “Something like that.”

: “But after all this work… what if it’s just some creepy loser messing around?”

: “Don’t even say that.”

: “I mean, these answers, they don’t seem to mean anything.”

: “I know. But there must be something. There’s meaning in there, somewhere…”

: “Do you really think so?”

: “Yeah!”

: “You think it has something to do with Kamui?”

: “I think so, yeah.”

: “Why?”

: “I think so…”

: “You think so?”

Maybe I’m letting The Bat get to me too much.

Like Erika says, maybe he’s just some crazy fuckstick with no relation to Kamui… but for some reason he took the trouble to hack that chatroom and follow me on the net. The Bat gets to me because I’m scared. Even now, I’m still somehow scared of Kamui. In the same way, I can somehow feel a kind of terror in this guy, too.

Erika doesn’t get that. Because she didn’t talk to The Bat. Either way, I got my keywords. Now I just have to wait for the door to unlock.

: We’ll see what The Bat’s response is in the next update.