I’ve released my new visual novel, Sister Other Paranoia.
Through this game and the NEEDY anime, I feel as though I’ve finally completed my own “atonement”—purification ceremony I needed in order to move forward in every sense.
Ever since the release of NEEDY, I had completely lost faith in people. I kept wondering why anyone was talking to me and what they wanted from me, what would happen if I continued down this path, whether there was any point in repeating the same things, and whether there was something I could create now that I wouldn’t be able to create at any other point in my life.
I became almost obsessively fixated on expressing these conflicts exactly as they were: clumsy, awkward, and imperfect. I stopped dressing things up or trying to look cool and decided to expose everything completely, “raw.” Being exposed like that is bound to alienate a lot of people. Even now, I keep hearing that this game is “not for everyone.” There are undoubtedly many people who simply won’t click with it. And that’s only natural. People instinctively brace themselves when confronted with a naked blade. Unless you happen to be on exactly the same wavelength, it doesn’t even warrant an evaluation. I’ve always been a contrarian by nature, deliberately going against the pleasure principle and moving in the opposite direction from the fundamentals of entertainment.
This game is especially so. I took responsibility for every aspect of it from beginning to end, and it’s the first game from my own company. I started the company with my friend HAYAO, brought back people I had worked with on previous projects, and somehow managed to spend a year making one game ourselves. In other words, it’s a concentrated distillation of my essence, with no room for anyone to hold back or cater to others. That’s why so many people will inevitably be left behind. Something that doesn’t dress itself up as casual or pop simply doesn’t capture the hearts of the masses. If something is inherently “denpa,” it almost feels wrong for it to receive a conventional kind of acclaim.
I felt like I was going insane if I didn’t tear down everything I had built up at least once.
No one will ever truly understand me. There has never been anyone else in exactly the position I’m in. And precisely because of that, I felt I had a duty to leave something behind now—to quietly place it somewhere in the history of subculture.
I’m someone who should probably have lived a far more underground life from the beginning. At my core, I’m nothing but a warped subculture nerd who can only be described as fundamentally “denpa.” I’m certainly not the kind of person who should be singing love songs to a million people.
I simply want to send a poisonous signal to the people I truly want to reach—to the version of myself who used to be a shut-in, digging through the depths of his room for bizarre, obscure, rare works and grinning to himself over them.
I’m a gloomy, bitter, self-deprecating, arrogant piece of refuse, constantly being tossed around by suicidal thoughts. I’m, in essence, always an “enemy” of society. There are things that only someone like that can write. But they aren’t things the world asked for.
Little by little, I became obsessed with making works that deliberately filtered out their audience. Someone I know described the NEEDY anime perfectly by saying, “That’s Folie à Deux, isn’t it?” It made me genuinely happy to hear that. A work that has to see something through to the end, no matter how much people around you complain about it. That was exactly the image I had for Joker: Folie à Deux. It was a necessary process for me—and for a handful of fanatics—to confront reality and provide an answer to the phenomenon I had set in motion.
This game is even more inward-facing and self-indulgent.
My conclusion is that it is “something like a suicide note.” When I played it myself upon release, I felt that was the most appropriate way to describe it. Even if I were to die someday, perhaps it would leave behind some small trace of what I had been thinking and what I had been struggling with while I was alive. Perhaps it was something I needed to leave behind so that, should I ever take my own life, I wouldn’t have any regrets.
I’m sorry for dragging so many people and readers into something like that.
But I’ll continue creating works from here on out. Through these two works, I feel that I was able to fully express the emotions that only the person I was after the release of NEEDY could have written. In the long run, I think that was important. Through the NEEDY anime and this game, I deliberately exposed my raw self for everyone to see, almost like an act of self-harm. In doing so, I gradually narrowed down my circle of friends and fans, while trying to figure out where the people who still wanted to receive the signals I was sending were, and how those signals were being received.
Perhaps it was one grand test—and an act of self-harm—to see how much I could be loved without lying when I stripped away all the casualness. But you know what? I like it. They’re children I brought into the world myself, and I can trace the scars I gave them and derive pleasure from it. The deeper the wound, the more the brain’s narcotics are released.
Users. Viewers. Readers.
Call them whatever you like. But this self-indulgent style of mine, which puts the recipient second, is exactly like a shut-in hiding inside his shell, desperate to be loved. Whether the response is praise or condemnation, either way it cuts straight into me. Because I’m completely unguarded.
I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused everyone. But in exchange, I do believe that some truly unique things have been born from it. I’m this kind of selfish person. And I’m honestly rather pathetic. I’m also pretentious, and something of a religious zealot. And, of course, there are plenty of things that simply come down to a lack of ability on my part.
Still, this has finally allowed me to make the decision to move beyond my past.
By completing something that could serve as a substitute for a suicide note, I was able to kill the person I used to be.
Through these two works, I’ve also gained the confidence that I can devote myself completely to art and artistic expression. I could die for that.
Starting with my next project, I’ll probably bring back some of that casualness and pop appeal. That’s also a part of who I am. Being completely exposed isn’t the entirety of what it means to be human. Putting on the armor we call “fashion” and using it to protect ourselves is also part of our humanity. Perhaps the person I become from here on out will be just a little lighter, having shed another layer of skin.
Even so, I may still be just as inherently twisted and self-indulgent as ever—so much so that I can’t completely hide it.
Either way, I suppose I have no choice but to keep making things. To keep writing. That much, at least, I know instinctively.
Because I was born to be this kind of creature.
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