Sunday, April 13, 2025
Go Do A Crime
What
exists beyond the borders of acceptable society has a taboo allure to
it and Crime is a genre of fiction which loves to take advantage of
this tendency. The Crime genre cover anything from organised crime, in
the form of groups like the mafia, to personal and violent acts such
as murder. What joins this genre together is how the acts are
specifically framed through their relationship to the normal world
and their legality. Visual novels offer a way for the genre to
leverage theses feelings from a more direct and personal angle than
it can elsewhere. In its most basic form it can exist as a simple
source of thrills to help provide stakes. When dealing with complex networks of criminal activity
there is a focus on how it effects the people involved as the
machinations around them threaten their lives. Exploring the darker
parts of human nature commonly finds its way into the genre and rubs
up against a world afraid yet mesmerised by it. Let’s see what lies
bellow the surface and explore this genre’s relationship with
visual novels.
Thrill Of Danger
Fiction
offers a means of injecting a little excitement into our lives and
the Crime genre is happy to use its illegal acts to deliver the
desired shot of adrenaline. Rather than a realistic depiction of the
activities and their consequences, these kind of titles aim for an
exaggerated rendition of them where the threat is so outside the
realm of the player’s own experiences they will not feeling
uncomfortable about the acts involved. The worlds these games
take place in are still familiar and modern enough to make it easy
for people to place themselves into the shoes of the protagonist and
enjoy this thrilling ride. Balancing these feelings requires visual
novels to contrast the personal and intimate nature of its characters
with their over the top actions in a way where the forward momentum
prevents their absurdity from being the focus as it keeps moving on
passed and does not stop until the end. They also attempt to avoid
any themes or ideas related to the illegal acts beyond a simple good
guy/ bad guy dynamic in order to not distract from the high octane
and tense tale it is weaving.
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| Dangerous and hot? |
One particular other genre of visual
novel loves to make use of this version of Crime and this is otome.
The genre is used as an easy means of adding a sense of danger to the
suitors and, by extension, stakes to personal conflicts. Since there are so many good examples of this type of Crime visual novel let’s
look at a couple of them to see it in action. Collar X Malice over
the top setting, where a terrorist group have essentially forced the
government out of Shinjuku, immediately sets the tone for the
level of believability the game is aiming for. With this established
it proceeds to have the terrorists slap a poison filled collar on the
heroine to provide a constant sense of tension. If it were not obvious this depiction of terrorists is
not remotely close to reality and ends up closer to a conspiracy
thriller, but they hold on to just enough of the associations of
their real life counterparts to not be alien to the player. Their
actions are the driving force of the plot and each suitor has a
different relationship to them in order to make their routes feel
different while forcing the heroine into new and exciting situations.
The constant threat of the collar keeps the game moving at all times
since it acts as a reminder of the terrorist’s presence
and the danger they pose. Setting expectations and controlling them
over the long term is why Crime makes for a good pairing with the
normally slower romance genre. A slightly different angle on the use
of the Crime genre in otome can be seen in BUSTAFELLOWS. Here it has
the additional function of giving the suitors a sense of danger to
them through their close proximity to the criminal world. Take Shu
who is a bounty hunter and walks a bloodstained path which intersects
with the darker half of human dealings and this makes his
interactions carry the spectre of violence even if it never actual
comes to anything substantial. It is worth noting that in this style
of the Crime genre the protagonist rarely comes from a criminal
background themselves and instead hold a set of conventionally
correct moral values to make them easy for the player to empathise
with.
Organised Crime
The
institutions which form around long term and profitable criminal
activities are another element the Crime genre loves to bring in as
one of its core pillars. These stories place groups such as
the Mafia or Yakuza at the centre of events and follows their chaos of
complex and violent inner workings. For visual novels this often
means games about navigating its messy web of families
and alliances or being trapped within its tendrils and forced to do
its bidding. Here the host of personalities already in various
positions of power before the beginning and the way they are all
stained with blood makes it a perfect playground for tense tales of
secret pacts and betrayals. The fact the characters all come from
morally questionable backgrounds makes their constant backstabbing
feel more natural since this is the only world they have even been a
part of and so it is the only way they understand how to do things.
It is presented as a mire they have been dragged down into and have
no way of getting out. As you might have noticed this is essentially
a more evolved version of the basic thriller from before which trades
its simple to understand narratives for one closer to reality with
less clear-cut good and bad guys. It is still exaggerated but tries
to balance the thrills with a sense of how dangerous the criminal
world is for those involved.
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| The dark underbelly is filled with over the top characters |
Placing the protagonist inside an
organised crime group can provide a constant sense of danger as they
attempt to avoid angering those in charge such as can be seen in
G-senjou no Maou. In this game the yakuza group Azai Kyousuke is a
part of plays a large role in the lives of those he interacts with
both because he is the adopted son of its boss and their own
connection to the underworld, willing or not. He is a person deeply
influenced by his experiences as part of the yakuza which has made
him cynical and calculated and it is only through interacting with
the heroines that he rediscovers the other parts of himself. This
change often puts him in opposition to the criminal world he is a
part of and this clash is the core of many route’s dramatic
tension. It is a group wearing the mask of civilisation to conceal
its violent nature and having the characters engage with it in a
deadly dance is a large part of its appeal. In order for organised
crime to function it needs a lot of people to do its work and Rose
Guns Days takes advantage of this feature to play off its character
centric qualities. Rather than making the criminal groups vague
dangerous entities, the title instead breaks them into the thousands
of people which make the group up and showcases the myriad of
personalities within it. Each has their own aims and ambitions which
converge and clash in equal measure to compliment the game’s
overall focus on the clashes of individuals amongst a bigger picture.
The criminal activity is downplayed with little time being given to
the actual work of those within it and it is more a flavourful
element since it does not want to in the way of the colourful
characters and their distinctive web of conflicts.
Our Most Violent Impulses
So
far the criminal activities discussed have all presented some kind of
greater aim, be the monetary or idealogical, but what about the ones
which stem from the darker part of human nature, how do Crime visual
novels engage with them? One of the common ways they choose to do so
is through the lens of a murder mystery where the protagonist and
player are slowly exposed to what can be graphic content. The
protagonist in these games is often either a police or private
detective so as to have a justifiable reason to be involved in
investigating a murder and not immediately run at the first sign of
blood or gore. It also gives them a similar moral position to the
player when it comes to the actions of the killer and they provide an
easy to understand angle on an uncomfortable subject. When it comes
to perpetrator they are often right in front of the player for most
of the game without the player realising it. This serves the double
purpose of being a big reveal and highlighting how the darker
elements of human nature hide just bellow the civilised facade we all
wear. Kara No Shoujo plays on this duality to great effect while it
presents each horrific murder and there consequences in detail. Since
this is a serial killer story the killings are a bit more dramatic
than a simple crime of passion which gives the game room to explore
around the circumstances which led to this outcome as the spectre of
the inevitable next victim hanging over events. Through doing this it
can tap into a simpler thriller dynamic to keep the player invested
and cast the whole thing through the lens of how distant it is from
our normal world.
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| Violence is often swift sudden and unexpected |
Conclusion
Crime
is as horrific as it is mesmerising and visual novels know exactly
how to get the most out of this ride of the wild side of humanity.
These games can use the genre as a simple source of thrills which
does not explore its subject matter in detail and instead wants the
player to enjoy the ride. When a title wants a web of personalities
and violence to entangle its cast within, it can call upon organised
crime as a means to tell compelling and tense stories of backhand
dealings and betrayals. The genre can even tackle the darkest aspects
of human nature in the horrific murders done for purely personal reasons
and address it head on while still being an edge of the seat
experience. Overall this is a wide genre filled with possibilities
for visual novels and offers fertile ground for you to engage with a
variety of subjects.
