Sunday, September 15, 2024
Madness In the Static
We
take the familiar for granted in our everyday lives so when that is
undermined it disturbs us on a fundamental level and leaves us with
an uncomfortable sense of wrongness. It is these feeling the Denpa
genre taps into as it slowly eats away at normality and gives it over
to insanity. As a subgenre of horror visual novels it is focused
around creating fear, unease and dread in the player through its own
distinct angle. Denpa understands the importance of build up to
selling a horror experience and makes sure the baseline it intends to
undermine is cohesive so its collapse can have a far greater impact.
All the while there is a constant uncertainty about the reliability
of the narrator who is witnessing this descent into insanity and yet
they are often so certain of their correct perception it makes you
almost want to believe them. This is also a genre which loves to use
its horror to address themes which are not commonly dealt with in
visual novels and from an angle where they have the necessary
emotional impact to really sink in. Let’s watch the world slip into
insanity and find out how all of this works in practice.
A Familiar Insanity
It
is not easy to create a believable descent into insanity from a state
of relative normality for the world around the protagonist. Make the
change too fast and it will appear silly as the escalation does not
properly match the events which lead to it as the characters’
everyday lives are grounded in a familiar version of reality.
However, if it is too slow then the player will lose interest since
the content they will be playing mostly consists of mundane vignettes
which have little impact on their own. So the answer Denpa games have
come up with is to sow the ideas of uncertainty about the characters
in subtle ways over the long term. On their own they appear innocent
to the point where they can be easily overlooked, but as they pile up
it becomes impossible to ignore. This helps keep the player’s
attention through getting them to jump at shadows just like the
protagonist is doing and it maintains this source of tension until
the curtain is pulled back. Once the shift from mundanity to insanity
has been complete, the spiral towards whatever disastrous conclusion
awaits can begin. Despite the game being more direct with the events
being shown, they make sure that the player never feels in control
and lean into the feeling of being pulled along ever faster by a
force they cannot see nor have any chance of resisting. Even here
Denpa does not lose sight of the normal lives people not involved in
the insanity are experiencing which helps call into question the
legitimacy of emotions and actions of all those involved.
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| Establishing a normal is key to breaking it down |
Higurashi
takes full advantage of the necessary setup of the mundane to help
sell its characters and make them likeable so the contrast with their
insanity is more pronounced. It places these slice of life events
right next to the subtle build up of uncertainty in order to make the
player not want to believe in the feelings of oddness they are
experiencing about the characters they have come to care for and
create a point of friction it can slowly build on. Once the madness
is in full swing it can leverage the memory of those happier times as
a means through which it can continue to care about the characters
even has they do terrible things to one another. On the other hand
soundless A MODERN SALEM IN REMOTE AREA has a sense normal so
obviously wrong and twisted it is difficult to feel safe in it and
yet it still serves the same role as a source of contrast. Here the
uncertainty is out in the open for all the characters to see, but the
characters do not seem aware of them as they blindly try to continue
their lives. The player is given a noticeably higher amount of
understanding about just how many things are wrong with this place
than the characters do so the player is forced to watch powerlessly
as they spiral into the unseen danger. Despite this increased
knowledge the game is sure to never reveal enough to make its plot
twists easy to see and instead includes a few red herrings to
undermine the player’s belief in the accuracy of the conclusions
they have reached.
Unreliable Narrators
As
players we inherently put our trust in the characters we control and
choose to believe in the version of events they present to us,
especially when they are so close to our own experiences. It is this
trust Denpa exploits to further its perversion of the familiar by
taking away the one point of stability the player thought they could
rely on. This is not a sudden change but rather an encroaching sense
that the events do not quite add up, these holes build up the idea of
information being withheld and the question of why enters the
conversation. The protagonist will also starts to behave in strange
ways, they seem to lack appropriate reason for the action they take
or overreact to events so as to do things far more drastic than what
is called for in the situation. Each of these can be excused as a
reaction to the stress they are put under as the normal world around
them gives way to madness, but there is only so long that the player
can hold onto this line of reasoning before the truth dawns on them.
Once the player accepts the unreliability of their POV character they
are forced to look into the insanity they are witnessing for answers
as to what is really going on, but in doing so they are drawn deep
into the spiral towards the narrative’s chaotic conclusion. They
too begin to feel the same dread and tension the characters are undergoing
and with no one to fall back on they will directly feel the tension
of each step towards the truth.
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| Takumi is far from a normal protagonist yet manages to construct his own style of normal |
An interesting example of this
practice can be seen in Chaos Head with its less than stable
protagonist Takumi. From the beginning he is obviously not a
character who’s opinions on the situation can be entirely be taken
seriously due to his tendency to assume the worse about everyone
around him. As such a few odd things happening around him can easily
be dismissed as manifestations of his paranoia and this becomes a new
normal where the player thinks they have his delusions figured out.
So when it becomes clear that they do not have a true grasp on him
the feeling of being lost is even greater as they question all the
examples of instability they had previously dismissed. In many ways
the unreliable narrator is the most insidious type of subversion
since it eats at the established expectation from the ground up and
influences everything else above it. Now the player can never know
what normal truly is and so is left grasping at straws.
Truth At The Edges Of Reason
Being
so connected to the idea of the normal way people behave and how
scary it can be to have that suddenly change, Denpa can speak to deep
seated emotions and thoughts about our own nature. It is easy to
never think about what it means for something to be normal and simply
accept what we experience without question since a ‘normal’ by
its very nature never challenges. Twisting this normal something
unrecognisable gives a space where it can be looked at for what it
truly is in its absence. Once established this examination can be
used to drive whatever themes and ideas the visual novel is seeking
to establish as key to the ongoing narrative. Sometimes there is
value shown in the normal where it offers a place people can be
themselves without issue, as with the everyday lives of the Higurashi
cast. At other times it is a dangerous thing where the characters
have slipped through their complacency and it brings ruin to those
inhabiting it, as with the community in soundless. Another angle
Denpa likes to take with this consideration is asking what sort of
people choose to inhabit this normal and how their reasons for
deteriorating into madness reveal important aspects of the human
condition.
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| That will not help the situation... |
This last one is something Wonderful Everyday loves to
play with its different protagonists. Each one looks at the normal
world and its descent into insanity and comes to their own
conclusions about what this means and the value it has for them.
These are varied from Yuki and her distress at the slow deterioration
of the life she holds dear to Takuji and his unwavering belief that
the world is coming to an end so the normal no longer matters.
Through this comparing and contrasting of viewpoints, the
commonalities between them become clear and the game asks the player
what this fact tells them about themselves and humanity as a whole.
It provides some answers to these questions through its endings, but
leaves enough of a gap for there to be room to ponder their meaning
long after the credits.
Conclusion
Denpa
makes a strong case for the power of contrast and a subtle build up
to the unsettling parts of horror. It takes the familiar sense of the
normality and slowly twists it over a long span of time by sprinkling
just enough insanity for the player to have doubts, but not enough
for them to say anything conclusive. Once the madness is in full
swing the game can examine the idea of the ‘normal’ and question
the value and substance it has not only for the cast, but also for
the player and use this to support its core themes. Backing all of
this up is the unreliable narrator where the player slowly comes to
realise the extent of what the protagonist is not telling them and so
lose their only rock in this river of questionable information. This
is a genre of horror which seems the least scary on the surface, but
is brilliantly placed to get under the player’s skin when they
least expect it and leave them feeling vulnerable.
