Collar x Malice Review
Dec. 19th, 2021 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrThis is a Japanese f/m dating sim about being a cop working against terrorists. It's pretty fun for what it is but it's...sure a game with that premise.
Content notes for the game: Violence, death, suicide, child harm, fantasy slavery, stalking and sexual harassment (just secondary characters), terrorism, life under a scary quarantine (not disease related), unfortunate treatment of mental illness, uncomfortable depiction of cyberbullying and gaming addiction, PTSD, probably other things I'm forgetting
Also there is a shooting minigame which requires some timing. I got the hang of it pretty quickly but if you can't you're locked out of all the happy endings.
I've put the rest of my review under a cut just because 90% of people will already have checked out by now. But there's no spoilers, just more discussion.
So! The heroine Ichika is a kind, idealistic 21 year old rookie cop in Tokyo's Shinjuku ward, which has recently been put under quarantine due to a series of murders by a mysterious terrorist organisation, Adonis. Adonis claims to want to 'renew' Japan and create justice by punishing 'sinners'. They put a poisoned collar on Ichika, saying she'll be killed if she tells the police or fails to 'pursue justice'.
In order to remove the collar and save Shinjuku, Ichika teams up with a group of past and current cops who are all trying to solve the various mysteries around Adonis. (And who all happen to be cute 20-something dudes with angsty backstories) In the process, she falls in love! Or dies horribly, etc.
Mineo Enomoto: Earnestly boyish idealistic dumbass
Kai Okazaki: Eccentric and friendly on the surface, weirdly intense and coldly pragmatic underneath.
Takerua Sasazuka: Tiny tsundere nerd mean dom
Kageyuki Shiraishi: Uncomfortably cold and weird on the surface, a woobie who just doesn't understand people underneath
Aiji Yanagi: Reserved wry dad of the group, simmers with repressed angst
I posted pictures of the main cast, a character guide, and links to my reactions posts on my masterlist post.
The original game was well made and well written, with nice art, good voice acting, engaging characters and arcs and fun romances. The English translation is unfortunately pretty patchy, with name inconsistencies, spelling mistakes, transcription errors etc. It didn't massively affect my ability to understand what was going on but was pretty annoying.
It's romantic but not very sexy (though there's apparently a bunch of sex in the sequel). While some of the guys are morally ambiguous or asshole-ish they all try to be good boyfriends and are ok on sexual consent for the genre, past some like...dubcon handholding. In typical Otomate fashion, it's both moderately (fem)slashy and heteronormative as hell, even by otome standards.
The plot is enjoyably ridiculous if you like over the top melodramatic otome, and sometimes Quite Problematic, but has moments of complexity and insight. There's a bunch of twists and mysteries to solve, which don't always entirely make sense but kept me entertained.
There's a lot of violence, death, and angst. Various plotlines deal with dark topics as in my content notes. This treatment is generally compassionate but often pretty tropey and unrealistic.
But the politics! Ahh! I have so many mixed feelings! If you aren't the sort of person to get het up about political subtext/messages you'll probably be fine and can stop reading. But I am totally that kind of person, so.
I bought the game somehow under the mistaken impression it was set in an alternate universe with psychic powers, but it is set in regular modern Japan. And while I can't judge how it would feel for a Japanese player, it was certainly uncomfortable in parts for me. I'd have enjoyed it a lot more if it was set in space or something.
Given that the game came out in 2016 I was worried the anti-police terrorists were intended to evoke Black Lives Matter or muslims etc. And it's quite possible they ARE and the subtext just went over my head, but asides from some vague quasi-socialist rhetoric afaict they draw more on Japanese fascist groups and religious cults as well as just generic villain tropes.
But it still does that "the only people trying to significantly change the status quo are terrorists" thing. It felt like the unstated assumption is that hierarchies, including things like sexism, aren't bad, they just require responsible and decent behaviour from those with power.
The game explores ideas of justice, forgiveness and atonement. Adonis mostly focusses on murdering people who did terrible things and got away with it due to police corruption or indifference, and we see all the various perspectives on that: the original victims, the police, the original perpetrators, and the vigilante terrorists who decided those perpetrators had to die. The game is generally compassionate to everyone involved, and leans very much into atonement, forgiveness, and moving on, and pushes against the idea of labelling anyone an Evil Criminal Who Should Be Permanently Removed From Society. It does not ever sympathise with anyone who commits sex crimes, only their victims, though that sympathy gets a bit Tragic Victim.
It also very much comes down on the side of relying on the police and rule of law to solve pretty much everything, even some problems it would make more sense to leave to like...social workers. There's a bunch of starry eyed idealism about how the Police Are About Helping People, and while it acknowledges the poor job the police do of achieving that ideal in practice, it doesn't really offer any solutions to being screwed over by those in power beyond putting up with it and moving on with your life (good), or becoming a vigilante murderer (bad).
It says individual police officers have a strong responsibility to do their best, and resist bad orders, but mostly you just have to hope the people in charge decide to do a good job. And the only people questioning the basic structure of the legal system are, again, vigilante murderers. It brings up the question "If everyone deserves a chance to atone, how is it ok to have the death penalty?" but then actively avoids answering it beyond "That's the law! So it just is!". And while I did really like how it is compassionate to the many understandable reasons someone might have for becoming a "criminal", and how such people deserve compassion and the chance to atone and be part of society, it says the best way to achieve that is always to send them to prison for a while.
While it very much says terrorism is bad, it's pretty compassionate to the individual terrorists. Which mostly worked for me but sometimes I just really didn't feel like sympathising with characters who'd done such awful things, and I can see it being very uncomfortable for other people, like the "genocidal war crimes are bad, but genocidal war criminals are sad woobies who need a hug" in Code Realise was uncomfortable for me.
So yeah. MIXED FEELINGS.
But asides from all that, a pretty good game!
Content notes for the game: Violence, death, suicide, child harm, fantasy slavery, stalking and sexual harassment (just secondary characters), terrorism, life under a scary quarantine (not disease related), unfortunate treatment of mental illness, uncomfortable depiction of cyberbullying and gaming addiction, PTSD, probably other things I'm forgetting
Also there is a shooting minigame which requires some timing. I got the hang of it pretty quickly but if you can't you're locked out of all the happy endings.
I've put the rest of my review under a cut just because 90% of people will already have checked out by now. But there's no spoilers, just more discussion.
So! The heroine Ichika is a kind, idealistic 21 year old rookie cop in Tokyo's Shinjuku ward, which has recently been put under quarantine due to a series of murders by a mysterious terrorist organisation, Adonis. Adonis claims to want to 'renew' Japan and create justice by punishing 'sinners'. They put a poisoned collar on Ichika, saying she'll be killed if she tells the police or fails to 'pursue justice'.
In order to remove the collar and save Shinjuku, Ichika teams up with a group of past and current cops who are all trying to solve the various mysteries around Adonis. (And who all happen to be cute 20-something dudes with angsty backstories) In the process, she falls in love! Or dies horribly, etc.
Mineo Enomoto: Earnestly boyish idealistic dumbass
Kai Okazaki: Eccentric and friendly on the surface, weirdly intense and coldly pragmatic underneath.
Takerua Sasazuka: Tiny tsundere nerd mean dom
Kageyuki Shiraishi: Uncomfortably cold and weird on the surface, a woobie who just doesn't understand people underneath
Aiji Yanagi: Reserved wry dad of the group, simmers with repressed angst
I posted pictures of the main cast, a character guide, and links to my reactions posts on my masterlist post.
The original game was well made and well written, with nice art, good voice acting, engaging characters and arcs and fun romances. The English translation is unfortunately pretty patchy, with name inconsistencies, spelling mistakes, transcription errors etc. It didn't massively affect my ability to understand what was going on but was pretty annoying.
It's romantic but not very sexy (though there's apparently a bunch of sex in the sequel). While some of the guys are morally ambiguous or asshole-ish they all try to be good boyfriends and are ok on sexual consent for the genre, past some like...dubcon handholding. In typical Otomate fashion, it's both moderately (fem)slashy and heteronormative as hell, even by otome standards.
The plot is enjoyably ridiculous if you like over the top melodramatic otome, and sometimes Quite Problematic, but has moments of complexity and insight. There's a bunch of twists and mysteries to solve, which don't always entirely make sense but kept me entertained.
There's a lot of violence, death, and angst. Various plotlines deal with dark topics as in my content notes. This treatment is generally compassionate but often pretty tropey and unrealistic.
But the politics! Ahh! I have so many mixed feelings! If you aren't the sort of person to get het up about political subtext/messages you'll probably be fine and can stop reading. But I am totally that kind of person, so.
I bought the game somehow under the mistaken impression it was set in an alternate universe with psychic powers, but it is set in regular modern Japan. And while I can't judge how it would feel for a Japanese player, it was certainly uncomfortable in parts for me. I'd have enjoyed it a lot more if it was set in space or something.
Given that the game came out in 2016 I was worried the anti-police terrorists were intended to evoke Black Lives Matter or muslims etc. And it's quite possible they ARE and the subtext just went over my head, but asides from some vague quasi-socialist rhetoric afaict they draw more on Japanese fascist groups and religious cults as well as just generic villain tropes.
But it still does that "the only people trying to significantly change the status quo are terrorists" thing. It felt like the unstated assumption is that hierarchies, including things like sexism, aren't bad, they just require responsible and decent behaviour from those with power.
The game explores ideas of justice, forgiveness and atonement. Adonis mostly focusses on murdering people who did terrible things and got away with it due to police corruption or indifference, and we see all the various perspectives on that: the original victims, the police, the original perpetrators, and the vigilante terrorists who decided those perpetrators had to die. The game is generally compassionate to everyone involved, and leans very much into atonement, forgiveness, and moving on, and pushes against the idea of labelling anyone an Evil Criminal Who Should Be Permanently Removed From Society. It does not ever sympathise with anyone who commits sex crimes, only their victims, though that sympathy gets a bit Tragic Victim.
It also very much comes down on the side of relying on the police and rule of law to solve pretty much everything, even some problems it would make more sense to leave to like...social workers. There's a bunch of starry eyed idealism about how the Police Are About Helping People, and while it acknowledges the poor job the police do of achieving that ideal in practice, it doesn't really offer any solutions to being screwed over by those in power beyond putting up with it and moving on with your life (good), or becoming a vigilante murderer (bad).
It says individual police officers have a strong responsibility to do their best, and resist bad orders, but mostly you just have to hope the people in charge decide to do a good job. And the only people questioning the basic structure of the legal system are, again, vigilante murderers. It brings up the question "If everyone deserves a chance to atone, how is it ok to have the death penalty?" but then actively avoids answering it beyond "That's the law! So it just is!". And while I did really like how it is compassionate to the many understandable reasons someone might have for becoming a "criminal", and how such people deserve compassion and the chance to atone and be part of society, it says the best way to achieve that is always to send them to prison for a while.
While it very much says terrorism is bad, it's pretty compassionate to the individual terrorists. Which mostly worked for me but sometimes I just really didn't feel like sympathising with characters who'd done such awful things, and I can see it being very uncomfortable for other people, like the "genocidal war crimes are bad, but genocidal war criminals are sad woobies who need a hug" in Code Realise was uncomfortable for me.
So yeah. MIXED FEELINGS.
But asides from all that, a pretty good game!
