Kurai Heya (暗い部屋) Review
Trigger warnings: Mentions of sexual abuse, abuse of children, incest
I'll keep this one hopefully short.
Kurai Heya (暗い部屋)——lit. "Dark Room"——is a visual novel which stretches the definition as hard as the term allows. While it certainly has visuals, and a soundtrack too, they're a far cry from what most among the VN community would consider traditional.
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It was true that he had grown up lacking the proper opportunities to interact with other people, including his own cohort. But even accounting for that, was his situation really one worth anguishing over?
I asked him his thoughts on the matter, to which he gave a bemused smile, and wrote,
“Who knows? It felt normal to me, but people can get used to anything if they keep at it for long enough.”
I looked at the paper and thought to myself.
He felt comfortable calling himself normal. That struck a chord with me. Maybe this was a me problem, but I could never bring myself to think that way about my own circumstances. Musing on it now, what if it wasn't your lot in life that defined your happiness, but your personality. Think about the scenario where I grew up well-off and blessed, the envy of those around me. Would I wind up just as antsy and depressed day in, day out?
Characters in Kurai Heya are depicted as dark, wispy silhouettes on stock backgrounds, predominantly shown in dull monochrome. Intense scenes will feature flashes of color; red for moments of anger, purple for nauseating despair. And in times of hope and release, we see the natural colors of the world return, with blue skies and brilliant orange sunsets. The VN does contain two pieces of commissioned artwork, acting as the framing aesthetic of the two twins who sit at the core of the backstory to the plot, but otherwise the budget is effectively nada. Text is displayed in a fairly unique fashion too——filtering from bottom to top, like the endless printing of a long police report. Overall, the vibes are immaculate, and it does a splendid job I feel of mirroring the plot framing via its oppressive UX design.
The story is organized into a series of interviews, given by members of a family in the aftermath of an 'incident'. After the death of Hino Seitarou's mother, an eccentric genius who sealed her and her son away in a clandestine, pitch-black apartment with all the windows boarded up, Seitarou is taken in by his aunt, the younger twin of his mother, only to find her household perhaps even more warped and dysfunctional than that of his paranoid mother. The aforementioned silhouettes work wonders for this story structure, as the story keenly evokes the experience of being an investigative reporter, each testimony digging deeper and deeper into the heart of the generational trauma and the ugly scars that lay at the heart of this family. We learn about the school bullying the younger sister is facing, the lack of faith the family members place in their evasive, manic-depressive mother, and their forever absent father from multiple angles in suffocating detail. While it may be a tame premise on the surface, the sheer simplicity of the plot structure is utilized to great effect, and I found myself intrigued enough to see out the inevitable tragic conclusion.
It's telling to me that Setoguchi released this story under the pen name he typically reserves for his novels——Karabe Yousuke. Kurai Heya is not really written like a VN, and most certainly not like the eroge of its time. This is a work designed for a very specific few who want to see this kind of twisted family drama, but who want a little more dramatic flair than a mere novel can provide. I appreciate how unique it is, if nothing else, but it does speak for itself that we don't see many other examples like it. The prose is thick, laden with description and character monologue, and while as mentioned the visuals set an effective tone, they always play second fiddle to the text. This is, without a doubt, a book. Not a game.
So. What did I like about this book? I think my favorite parts were definitely the blossoming relationship between Seitarou and the younger sister, Kiiko. The two of them find common ground as an abused younger figure in the family, taken for granted and lacking the love appropriate for a child their age, and this theme struck a chord with me. Their plight and internal monologues revealed via their interviews were quite memorable. I think the story's greatest strength is that it isn't just Seitarou's story as an outsider, but about two human beings finding connection, support and escape from a place so desolate of emotion. Their relationship is quite similar to the leads in Setoguchi's other VN, Carnival, and it works quite well here too. As an emotional core, it's solid, and I was rooting for the two of them to find their freedom and grow as people together by the end.
Where the narrative lost points for me was probably the overly trite, gratuitous handling of incest themes throughout some of the plot and backstories. While I think there's a place to explore these kinds of themes from the lens of child abuse and mistreatment, I don't think Kurai Heya really justifies its application of these plot points, and it suffers as a result in my opinion. They come off more as existing for shock factor——"look how disgusting some members of the family can be"——rather than being an authentic expression of the themes of the VN, and I think these elements could have been cut to leave a stronger story. I believe they're here to give a stronger 'horror edge' to the plot, but in practice I don't think it needs them, and instead they serve to cheapen the more serious examination of child abuse and neglect portrayed throughout the rest of the text.
Lastly, let me praise the soundtrack. While it might only be a small collection of licensed tracks, they do a great job at establishing the eerie atmosphere of the story. They're uncomfortable in all the right ways, and it's the kind of soundtrack I wish Setoguchi could've expanded on compared to Black Sheep Town's more lazy, unfitting selection.
Final thoughts on Kurai Heya? I'd say read it if you're a megafan and you want to go through all of Setoguchi's works, but don't feel obligated to. Either way it'll remain there, just a little curiosity, where it belongs on the periphery of the medium.
