Katawa Shoujo: HNNNGGGGGGG!!!

I know one L Per who voiced all the dialog in his playthroughs of the Ace Attorney series.

But he didn't always read out the dialogue exactly and it was often interspersed with his comments.

I'll be doing a LP series on this starting this coming Sunday, 10 Jan, 2016. After much prompting and suggesting by some of my viewers, I decided to take a look at the visual novel genre as a whole and this game specifically. Due to my schedule and other projects for my channel, I'll be regulating episodes to just Sundays so I'll be calling them Katawa Shoujo Sundays!

Thought this would be the best place to advertise this. I am going in 98% blind here so I'm not really sure what to expect, so if you'd like to see someone experience this for the first time again, might want to check it out! I heard there are multiple paths in this game but I don't think I'll have to the time to show those all off. So I'm just going to film whatever path I end up on and hope for the best!

Last note: My channel on Youtube is 'Retrochallengegamer'.

edited 4th Jan '16 4:54:19 AM by RCGamer

This should be interesting. I wonder which path you'll end up on.

(I'd say more, but I don't want to accidentally skew the result.)

edited 4th Jan '16 5:53:08 AM by KylerThatch

I'm betting on Kenji

Spoiled for the new guy. Yeah, without the advice to not hedge your bets Kenji is very easy to get. Maybe Emi depending on how adventurous you are.

So it begins...Due to my time schedule and backlog of other play series, this is going to be a Katawa Shoujo Sundays type of upload schedule for this series. First part is up and boy is it depressing right out of the gate!

It gets a lot less depressing for a while once you're into the gate.

I'm having a great time with this game actually. Its genuinely funny. Also, I'll be on holiday for about 3 weeks starting next weekend. So I'll upload one more video next Saturday, (the 23rd Jan) and then be gone for three weeks. When I come back around the 12th Feb, I'm actually going to be starting up a new schedule. Tuesdays and Thursdays will be my main challenge play series with every Saturday and Sunday will be Katawa Shoujo Weekends! So two episodes a week instead of one. So that should speed things along. Life sure can get in the way of fun, eh? :)

I like your two videos so far. You seem to be having a good time, and I think that's the most important thing for making a let's play watchable.

I noticed you had some trouble pronouncing Shizune's name, though. I think it's probably most like this:

shi: like English "she" zu: like English "zoo" ne: like the "ne" sound in "network"

I noticed you also struggled with "Shicchan" and "Hicchan". What is meant there is to hold the consonant "ch" sound longer than normal (more on this in a minute).

A word about stress: Japanese does not have stressed syllables. English is stress-timed—we spend longer on stressed syllables and say them louder. Japanese does not have stress, so each indivisible part (technical term: morae) should be said in approximately the same amount of time. One way I try to do this is by keeping time, as if it were music (i.e. using a metronome, or tapping your foot, etc.). Each mora should take one beat.

Going back to "Hicchan" and "Shicchan" above, the extra "c" in the romanization here means that the consonant in the "cha" mora is lengthened, so you insert an extra beat holding the "ch" sound.

If this is of interest or helpful, I can double check other names as well—though really, Japanese pronunciation is pretty orderly and much less complicated than English, say. Vowels in Romanization have the same sounds (with very few exceptions) at all times, for instance. Probably the only other tricky thing would be getting a hang of some of the consonants.

There's also a whole deal about pitch accent (in which morae are pronounced at different pitches, despite taking the same amount of time). This is pretty regional around Japan; I am not an expert, so I'm not going to go into it.

You may have to endure my horrible Japanese pronunciation a bit longer! :3 Seriously though, I am having a fun time and you'll see me getting more relaxed into the game as I go along. I even make some hilarious reading mistakes but I kept them in because they were funny. Thanks for the tips regardless!

For the curious, I split episodes in half or three parts depending on session length for audience retention purposes. I realized early on, having a 15-20-ish minute video was preferable than a 30+ min one in terms of getting the viewer to sit through it all in one sitting. So I apologize in advance if I cut off play sessions in the middle as a result.

Anyway, I know the girl I'm getting now and I'll let you guess who it is. :P Oh and Kenji? OMG....Kenji....I can't even....

edited 20th Jan '16 11:46:29 AM by RCGamer

You found the secret Miki route, right?

I can agree with a 15 or so minute time limit. It's about the longest length where I can decide that I have time to spare to watch it when I'm not up for an extended youtube-watching marathon.

edited 20th Jan '16 3:39:05 PM by KylerThatch

If you're watching a longer series all at once (or at least in big chunks), it doesn't really matter if you watch ten 15-minute episodes or five 30-minute episodes. If you've got a limited amount of time, watching a 15-minute episode is far easier to commit to than a 30-minute episode. And if you're recording a game like this one, it doesn't take a significantly different time to record one 30-minute episode compared to two 15-minute episodes.

I think the main reason people say they prefer 30-minute episodes over 15-minute episodes is that they imagine one episode per day (or whatever frequency) no matter which it is, so 30-minute episodes means twice as much content for any given time frame.

I normally watch L Ps at double speed anyway. Longer videos are kind of nice because it means hitting continue less if you have autoplay off. On the other hand, individual videos makes it easier to see what point of the game it is by the thumbnails (and title if applicable).

Yeah, I agree shorter is good, as well. Feels more concentrated, at least (whether that's true or not I can't say).

Do you know what girl's path you're on already, or do you merely have intentions of pursuing one in particular?

I already know. :)

And I try and edit each part that I have to split up into multiple pieces at logical points where it doesn't feel like a climatic scene but a transitional one.

edited 24th Jan '16 6:47:09 AM by RCGamer

I decided to try watching the videos, and one thing I've been wondering - why use an overlay that covers up the corner of the screen?

Anyway, I know the girl I'm getting now and I'll let you guess who it is.

You haven't actually committed to any path yet. That doesn't happen until later on.

P.S. KS wasn't "created by 4chan" in any meaningful sense. The original discussion that led to the creation of the game took place on 4chan, but the group itself (Four Leaf Studios) is unrelated to 4chan. The devs said that nothing would have ever happened if it stayed on 4chan.

edited 24th Jan '16 8:59:01 AM by storyyeller

Guess I didn't do my research well enough about the origins of the game, but thanks for filling it in for me! :)

I can't help but notice the audio sometimes cuts out for a split second. (I know it's not the video pausing because when it audio comes back, it always sounds like a word or two got skipped over.) Why is that?

It was a problem I've since figured out the issue to. OBS was transferring it to a FLV file which couldn't be read by my movie editor so had to be converted to a MP 4 file which left bad gaps in audio at random points. I've since figured out how to get OBS to convert straight to MP 4 and those audio skips are no longer present. As a matter of fact, I think by Episode 4 onwards, I had this resolved and you shouldn't have to deal with it anymore. :)

Back in action. Every weekend. Two episodes. I'm getting a feel for the characters. Not sure why, but I talk very soft and sometime monotone for Lilly. Maybe its how I perceived her when I started the voice. lol

One more episode to go before the end of Act 1 but I think we all know which girl's path I'll be on. Lilly's.

I haven't been watching the videos lately, but just so you know, Lilly and Hanako's paths don't branch until Friday (the second to last day of act 1)

I really do like this visual novel. I'm glad I'm replaying it again. It has lots of funny moments and pretty depressing moments. My favorite route would be Lilly's route.

Which route are you on right now?

I'm currently playing Emi's route. She's probably my second favorite girl after Lilly.