It’s been well over a year since my first jump onto the visual novel scene with Katawa Shoujo and Manga Gamer‘s original trio of demos available for download. And while I have yet to take my first plunge into a full blown visual novel (they’re still expensive as ever), I decided to hop into Manga Gamer‘s second set of demos, including a title called Edelweiss. Going into it, and being in the oh so common school setting, I expected introductions, chatter, sarcastic humor, and probably boobies to a certain degree. And while those things were definitely present in Edelweiss, it also delivered one unexpected element that almost completely ruined the experience for me.
Starting up Edelweiss, you are introduced to probably the longest scene revolving around vomiting you’ve ever seen. Seriously, it literally takes at least ten minutes, possibly longer. But once you swim through all the vomit and bunnies, the main character and his buddies, all three of which aren’t exactly the best looking guys, turn the conversation toward sex and girls. An hour later, they’re still talking about sex and girls. Finally, you get it a break from it, only to return back to talk about sex and girls shortly after. It gets old fast.
From here, it only gets worse. Eventually they start interacting with female characters. And, instead of actually trying to be appealing to the girls, they flat out start talking downright dirty to them. Sure, saying cheesy lines of dialog like, “I’m your knight in shining armor” are mixed in there. But most are along the line of “Sure, I’ll eat lunch with you. And then next, I’ll eat you.” Honestly, if it were just one line like that, it could be easily overlooked. But a large majority of comments from his friends’ mouths are lines of dialog like this. What’s possibly even worse is that the females don’t even really react. They just sort of take it and are like, “What are you boys saying? Teehee!”
Possibly what’s worse is just how insulting they are to girls who aren’t designed to be attractive in the game. I’m not saying looks don’t mean anything or that they can’t make fun of an ugly character for their characteristics, but they just verbally abuse the unattractive girls into the ground with terrible comments like they’re not even human. They are the only females who fight back, but even then the title puts them in a negative light as if they’re stupid for doing so.
Naturally, after completing the demo, I went to the internet and complained about how unrealistic and sexist the characters and dialog were. Complaining about fake people saying fake things that upset me in a game about dating fake girls – I only address the most important topics here on Oculin’s Box. But after complaining enough and looking at exactly why I hate this group of guys, I realized something: I hate them so much because I used to know them. Thinking back to my middle school and early high-school days, where I pretty much magnetized onto anyone who even mentioned liking a video game, these were my “friends.” Or rather, more like people I had to hang out with because I was stuck at school. And I realized that, while sexist, they portrayed every single one of my “friends,” almost perfectly in this title. They were loud, obnoxious and would holler horrible statements to female students and teachers, just like the main character’s friends in Edelweiss.
Still, this doesn’t explain the complete lack of reaction all the female characters have to these degrading statements. One argument could be is that the game takes place at a previosuly all girls school (totally original idea, do not steal, copyright OVERDRIVE) on a secluded island. I guess you could say the girls were so sheltered they didn’t understand what the guys were saying. But still, I’d imagine anyone with a shred of education would understand some of the more straight forward statements, which the girls react the same to.
It’s kind of funny arguing whether or not a game is sexist when it is essentially a porn game. But I think most people who have played visual novels would agree that it’s more about the connection you make with the characters (so ronry). Even if the main character’s friends are realistic to a certain extent, I don’t exactly want those kind of characters in my entertainment. Again, I only played the demo. Maybe the girls wise-up later or your buddies become polite gentlemen, but the demo was definitely off putting due to their inclusion and the lack of a proper reactions to them. Props to the writer who pulled off perfectly mimicking a certain type of mid/high schoolers. But please, never again.
If you’re 18 or older, you can download the demo yourself over on Manga Gamer.
Tags: Edelweiss, MangaGamer, Overdrive
