Komarimono Scapegrace

Komarimono Scapegrace is an hourlong visual novel mixing silly good-for-nothing character on a travel in the Japan of the early Edo period. The edo period started 1600 something and brought a unified Japan to a more-or-less peaceful environment.

You are a good-for-nothing son, playing pranks whenever possible, insulting and humiliating people when you can and have little respect for anyone including your parents. Seeing how you are a troublemaker you are sent off to become a samurai/join the miltary.

You travel as Kuro alongside his father, visit a few hotels and places, meet a few people. Then romance and tragedy happen along the way - resulting in the end of your choosing.

So, how does this game work?

This game was made in the RPG maker. And while the window mode is that of a usual visual novel (reading and sometimes selecting an answer), you select chapters and in said chapters you cannot save freely. There are many moments where the button description for your menu pops up - and only in those moments (and between each chapter) can you save.
This means you cannot save directly before any decision you make between, and combined with the complete lack of skipping features, this makes replaying and discovering different endings .. a pain in the ass.

There are quite a few pauses during cut-scenes (well images conveying what is going) you cannot skip, or can only skip at a specific moment (in the case of a song you listen to)

Sound and Art

What is done very well are the soft tunes and the sounds conveying what is going on when the pictures alone are not enough. The music includes many traditional instruments, and will set the setting very well.

Backdrops are photographs of typically Japanese places, such as a bamboo-forest, their traditional houses, cherry blossoms and a few more.


What a lovely boy you are, can I shoot you down now?

Characters and cut-scenes of sorts are drawn by hand and range from mediocre to pretty good. There are quite a few mistakes in the anatomy, always different ones. Strangely, the cutscenes tend to be much more beautiful than the character portraits and figures you see all the time. For example, there is a stunningly beautiful lady in a kimono! Well, her face is not, but you see it only for a little while.

What it does well is convey the traditional clothing and hairdo, so it suits the game well.

The Writing

English appears to be a foreign language of the creator, and it shows. The dialogue is kept to everyday language most of the time, creating a complete clash with the traditional setting. Even the high and important members of society you meet along the way fall into this pattern.
Peasants and normal people aside, why would the commander of all units, the unifier of the nation, speak almost the same way as a snotty boy from the countryside?

The characters, too, switch between formal phrases and tone a very casual one. It makes sense in a few scenes, but is a flaw inherent in the entirety of the game.
We are in a historic setting, where moral code has had a much higher priority - this is mentioned, but rarely if ever conveyed in the way the characters speak.
The "show, don't tell" formula has its use, but weighing acts far higher than words in a visual novel will have a backlash.

There are some weird phrases throughout the game, like a guy you peed on looking "gorgeous", instead of funny or amusing. But it usually conveys what it is supposed to do.

What is more, there are many Japanese terms and Japahnese history forced into the game, which may or may not have any use. There are many terms that are exclusive to the Japanese language - such as the honorofics "-chan", "-kun", "-san", "-sama", which many of us are already familiar with.
Using other terms that we do have in our language, but are not familiar with like the suffix "-ya" for shop, has little use in the game. It will only alienate players, or force them to look them up when they come (there is even a text-file included for this purpose). Saying Udon Shop instead of Udon-ya is stylistically much much better and easier. I was familiar with it already, and it added nothing for me, either.


Yeah .. how about being thankful you get a free stay?


This game is in English. As much fun as it is to keep as much as possible, if there is a term for it in English - use the English term. If there is not an English equivalent - use the Japanese one (like futon, or kotatsu). Simple as that.
Using "ano..." and "ara" (similar to "ehm.." and "oh") does little to add, either. It seems like a bad animu cameo, when the creator seems to have real knowledge of the Japanese language (also seeing the inclusion of Kanji and general additional chapter titles in Japanese).
A paraphrase to certain terms would also help to include the readers. It's fine if you paraphrase it and then mention the Japanese term.

The Japanese setting is briefly introduced in the read me as well as the start of the game, strangely, it actually has little influence or impact on how the game is handled.
Now, the dress-code, the hairdo, the buildings, the people (samurai, geishas, travellers) all cater to the time period and do enough to introduce you to it.
Yet every now and then you are bombarded with numbers and historical facts about cities you pass through - and need nothing of it. It will never be mentioned again, and the knowledge will not help you in the game.
It is not weaven into the conversation, your father who is travelling with you does not teach you anything along the way - and then there are a couple of facts for your amusement.

They would be interesting to add as an option to ask about - or as something to look up and read up on in the menu if you are so interested. Given the way the conversation between our two characters are handled, it has no place.

The Story

The story is a both physical and mental journey for our snotty annoying brat to adulthood, to living an earnest life and living according to the right moral code.

Strangely enough, with the morals being the integral part of the game, all moral codes and all commanilities are completely ignored in the way the character talk, except for a few instances where the moral code suddenly becomes an important thing. For that scene. Or that action.

You can insult your father even as tragedy befalls him, you can curse at any and all decision, pee on bystanders, look down on people and continue to do so throughout the entire game.
Your protagonist may calm down over the course of the game as far as his actions are concerned - however, it is also hinted at the exhaustion of the journey rendering such actions too energy-consuming, rather than at character growth.

The beginning is very very slow. In fact, the whole "transformation" of our protagonist is slow and might even be nonexistant, not only in his actions, but also his dialogue. And yeah, you are not supposed to know you should join the army right away, but you do.
The whole suspense-building goes of the first chapters into nothing, as you know what is happening (bringing swords alone, cleaning them .. discipline), yet our character does not.

You then continue to pass villages and cities, not having a choice, before you reach a breaking point where you need to decide what future you want to choose for yourself.

The problem here is .. the conversations bare a few lines are completely void of any deeper meaning for the character.
You once run into trouble, your dad saves you (who would have thought playing pranks on people is looked down upon). You fall in love and talk a bit with the girl.

You learn little about the characters, why they act as they do, or what they actually believe in. You are later shown actions reflecting their previously non-existant moral code, but you have never talked about it, so it is left without any impact.
Which is also why you cannot care about your characters - you cannot relate to any of them in any way, and your protagonist is following .. who knows.

I feel 90% of the game is just going along the journey, doing some random stuff and staying at some random places. Again, it feels like the "show, don't tell formula" has been tried to be exploited and applied here.
But given that you have free choosing in your answer from respectful to snotty brat, you are void of any impact your choosing has, and the neutral actions you have for most of the game as you follow along .. say nothing. Until the end is close and you have some things.
It is a visual novel, it is a genre where you are allowed to tell all you want.


Can't see it.

There is little impact your choices have, as you will always get the same answers. It apparantly does amount to different endings, according to how many of your answer go into a certain direction.
However, I never unlocked an ending scene to view, and seeing how I cannot skip freely, I do not feel like playing again. There are different choices you can make and I can imagine the impact it will has on the future of his life. Seeing how the game worked until this point - I cannot imagine the style to suddenly change and convey profound wisdom in the ending.


The Result

This is a visual novel that tried to show and not tell, but had too little action to show off what it is all about. The language barrier did the rest and whatever growth one could have seen in the game was lost.

It is a good idea of a story, but unfortunately the execution brings it down.