#dazai also just wants to help others as a way to feel human too y'know. so chuuya was the perfect excuse but then uh oh

[popsicleofdeath]

I finally watched Caligula the anime and honestly I really wanna play the game in hopes that it does the potential for the story better. There are so many nice concepts, but the emotions don't fit well it's like you got these bland empty slates that have an occasional focus. Which is something that you can get away with in a game where you only really look at one character at a time.

It does have a lot of similar themes and feel as the Persona series has, especially 1 & 2 (not surprising because the same scenario writer did those two plus Caligula Effect) and I definitely like the Persona games more than any of the anime adaptations.

But I worry it'll go harder into some of the very poor conclusions some of these characters come to with dealing with their trauma.

[spoilers under the cut]

I can appreciate the fact that it doesn't like rank peoples traumas and when a character tries to do that sort of thing they shut it down, but boy do they not manage to come to a lot of mediocre to bad conclusions. (If anyone happens to read this not knowing anything about the anime or game please know there are A LOT of main characters and a lot parts that I did like. These are just some of the things I didn't like and fear the game would double down on. Which if it's anything like Persona's social links...it could go either way.)

Like one characters conclusion for her her Trauma (which is that she's ashamed and been made fun of for having a fat mother and subsequently afraid of becoming fat to the point that one of the first things we actually see her do is go off on how much she hates fat people) is that she needs to apologizing for wishing away her mother. No level of y'know accepting different body types or exploring the fact that being fatphobic is shitty and not only hurt her and her mother who she supposedly loved and y'know anyone who is fat. Or even addressing the external issue either: all the people made fun of her for having a fat mother (im gonna assume that one is distinctly more of a cultural issue that doesn't translate well to the American view)

Or another one who cut himself essentially for control over his own life. They don't seem to acknowledge that that's a very bad solution and mentality and in fact frame it somehow as positive. Or even that the biggest reason he wants to return to his life is to have those scars back? And somehow focuses on self inflicted scars as being the milestone for him to start taking back control of his life from his mother (which I found odd to because his way it doing that is to...... ask her. Like when he talks it's framed as a very abusive power imbalance that he feels his only option is to slash open his cheek..and then he goes solving the problem by saying "hey so, can you maybe be a bit less controlling?" There is no follow through with how they set it up.) The framing of self inflicted wounds themselves being for the better is not something I'm for. Like even if it had been some sort of. "I like the scars because they've healed like I'm doing" but it doesn't.

And then you have my personally least favorite of them all who's trauma is that his closest friend killed herself. But that itself isn't want the issue he has is. No his "crime" as he calls it is that she asked him to kill himself with her and he was too much of a "coward" Which as a starting mentality I get it. Especially with already being depressed. But the thing is that again. It isn't something where his mentality changes. It's not any sort of desire to have saved her or done something to help her. He still just believes he should have killed himself with her so she didnt have to die alone and he has to carry the weight of that crime his entire life. He's just decided to live with it instead of lock himself up in his room. But the way it stands is that he only even wanted to go back to real life because one of the villains was made him realize that the life he had wasn't real life and subsequently turned the supposed perfect world into his personal hell so he's kinda like. Guess I might as well deal with reality because this is worse.

Which brings me to the villian who made his life hell. She was the other friend of the girl who killed herself. And the reason she hated the dude was becauses she wanted to kill herself with their, but she wasn't asked. It's the weirdest form of glorifying double suicide. Like it feels like they were pulling straight from Dazai Osamu's No Longer Human but ignored how the book moved forward from it and instead decided to get stuck on the double suicide and glorified it from there very seriously. To the point that these two characters were symbolically falling to their deaths before (because of other plot) they were finally sent back to reality.

And then in general a lot of the villains had very bad undertones (beyond the fact that they were villains.)

Like the first one you meet. She's a cute little girl who likes cute things and sweets. And then her big trauma is that she is in real life a male really gross food blogger. It adds more to the fatphobia that is all over the show, but it also plays into the "trap" troupe and adds to a lot of general transphobic mentalities which of course is even worse because she's one of the villains.

And finally. This is the last one that really got to me. Is the surprise twist villian character (who following all the logic set up in the anime. Is pretty obvious in my opinion).... her trauma is brought up in like one bit and brushed aside. She's missing her legs below the knees and because of that she says that everyone hates her. There's a lot there which I'm not kidding gets only like 30 seconds focus. And like. That's super fucked up. Like. They're gonna make the one character they have that is physically disabled a villian. And not only a villian, but a villian with absolutely no depth of character and no resolution. Like she's literally there for cheap shock value.... that's it. That's absolutely it. Her character is outsider best friend (brushed to the side) and then villian ready to murder all the protagonists for the fun of it.

Honestly all the villains have pretty much no actual substance beyond cheap shocks at the expense of anyone who might be facing similar issues. The story spells it as hurting people trapped in escapist fantasies, but maybe half the villains even get the luxury of that being addressed for them personally.

There's so much in that could be so good but honestly the amount of either bad or just boring bits outweighs the actual good content the show is trying to work towards... like honestly. I think it would be 1000x better if the cut the cast and some of these half baked attempts storylines that the can't or won't follow through with.