I hadn’t followed the development of what’s commonly known as ‘that 4chan eroge about disabled girls’ but since the finished product isn’t really anything like that, maybe I was better off in blissful ignorance after all. The initial reactions at its full release, claiming it was tasteful and respectful towards its subject matter, were what caught my interest; reading the developers’ blog archives, I realised that it evolved independently from the infamous /a/ board and I eventually came to the conclusion that it’s not an eroge about disabled girls either.
It’s no more an eroge than Tsukihime and F/S N are if I’m honest. I would’ve thought the story-to-smut ratio would have to be lower for it to qualify since, like those Type Moon forays into the genre, Katawa Shoujo involves a lot of reading to get to the H-scenes so it’s plot-driven before anything else; outside of fiction written for a young audience, characters end up in bed together every now and then in many romantic drama stories anyway.
I’ve been interested in twentieth-century history for as long as I can remember – before my fascination with Japanese popular culture even began I was drawn to the issues surrounding the atomic bombings of 1945. Fumiyo Kouno is one of many writers and artists who have taken on the subject but her approach is one that conveys the human cost of the events in an unusual way. Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms is a short, surprisingly sweet but nevertheless powerful work.
