Section II: Reverse engineering Katawa Shoujo
Over 2300 years ago in his book Poetics, Aristotle analyzed the most popular scripts of his time, noting the particular feelings each of those stories evoke and precisely how they evoke them. The most well-known script he analyzed was Oedipus Rex, which he determined had its story elements orchestrated to evoke fear and pity. His analysis was not merely descriptive, but prescriptive—explicitly meant to equip future authors to use similar story elements to evoke those feelings within their own stories.
Aristotle's analysis of Oedipus is the most ancient example of the simple two-step process of reverse-engineering a script. The process is as follows:
First, you identify one of the key feelings evoked by a script.
Second, you trace that feeling back to the story element in the script that caused it. In the case of Oedipus, the feelings of fear and pity were evoked most strongly during the story climax, when Oedipus has his tragic epiphany that he had fulfilled the prophecy of killing his father and marrying his mother.
Aristotle showed that by reverse engineering from the feelings evoked by a story, we can come to understand the key story element—in this case tragic epiphany—that contributes to those feelings. But despite how long ago it began, the practice of reverse engineering stories to understand and recreate their effects is now once again on the cutting edge of story analysis and creation, used by theorists and practitioners like the screenwriters in the story labs of Pixar.
Back to Katawa Shoujo
I spoke a great deal about how extraordinary Katawa Shoujo is in its emotional impact. It's so extraordinary that I've even read comments of fans saying that they're glad the creators didn't try to make another visual novel, because replicating the emotional impact of KS is impossible. But the fact that what KS achieves is so rare and exceptional—rather than indicating that no one should try to recreate that magic—makes it a much more worthy goal to pursue. Given the enormous diversity of horror movies that evoke fear, crime shows that evoke intrigue, and romance novels that evoke warm, fuzzy smittenness, it should be clear that for each feeling that can be transmitted through literature, there is no limit to the number of distinct stories that can be crafted to make audiences feel them.
So, it's possible. And although it may seem daunting and there is much to learn along the way, I find it extremely heartening to observe that KS is composed of extremely basic elements. There is nothing in it one can point to that requires a genius to create or understand. And with every moment of understanding I've had as to how KS makes readers feel the way it does, trying to re-transmit that feeling has become more alluring and seemed more and more within reach.
With an eye towards that understanding, one of the most important components of this project of retransmitting the emotion of KS is to filter through all its story elements and accurately discern which creative decisions contribute to it being so impactful. This is a crucial step because we must be extremely wary of falling into the trap of mirroring superficial elements of KS, thinking that mimicry alone will achieve the same emotional resonance. As professor at Ohio State University's Project Narrative Angus Fletcher says, "If you copy the superficial details of your favorite script, you'll end up with a cheap knockoff. But if you use reverse engineering to go beneath the script's surface, you can discover its deeper creative logic, coming to understand why the author made the choices that she did. And once you understand why the author made the choices that she did, you can then tweak and adapt and extend those choices, making new creative decisions of your own."
So, if the goal is to re-transmit the key emotion of KS, what is that emotion?
In his essay, The Emotion Whose Name You Do Not Know: A Katawa Shoujo Retrospective, Auric Orange did for Katawa Shoujo what Aristotle did for Oedipus Rex: Analyze the script to understand the key emotional evocation that drove its impact. He determined that "Katawa Shoujo achieves its resonance by evoking a specific emotion, one most often called 'Elevation,' or 'Kama muta,' ... one you feel when you see a relationship suddenly intensify – like when two people finally become a couple; or are reunited after years apart. It often feels like warmth in the chest, moist eyes, tears, a lump in your throat, 'the chills,' or feelings of buoyancy. But the most powerful form of elevation comes from watching somebody selflessly reach down to pick up someone in the absolute depth of self-loathing, or despair."
Auric Orange's essay is 60,000-words long, all aimed at explaining how Katawa Shoujo evokes this feeling he identifies as elevation or kama muta. The entire essay is brilliant, and I owe a great deal to Auric Orange for publishing it on his blog on January 4th, 2021. I believe he is correct, that kama muta/elevation is the most important emotion evoked by Katawa Shoujo, and that understanding how it evokes that emotion can help empower us to retransmit it.
Let's now analyze two early elements of Katawa Shoujo and see how they orient the story towards the evocation of kama muta: The opening scene and Hisao's heart condition.
The Opening Scene
The opening scene of Katawa Shoujo is brilliant, but in a very specific way. At a sentence level, the writing is unremarkable, but several key decisions made on a structural/story level accomplish so much more than any beautiful sentence ever could. The first thing I notice is that the writers understood that if they did not grab the audience's interest immediately, readers may quit and uninstall at any moment. This is true of most media we now consume. In his Masterclass lecture series, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin notes that if one writes a play or musical, they can generally assume that audience members won't walk out in the middle of a live show. For those watching a movie in a theatre, walking out is more likely but still uncommon. But for a TV show, YouTube video, or visual novel, the audience usually enters with no commitment, ready to leave at the first hint of boredom, so it's imperative to capture their interest immediately.
Katawa Shoujo does this beautifully. After a few lines of description, it invites the reader to share in Hisao's imminent anticipation of meeting a girl—Iwanako—who is on her way to see him. When readers learn that the protagonist is waiting to meet a girl, most will stick around to see how that interaction goes, and BAM—already there is a little bit of interest and investment. The reader is doing what all writers must get their readers to do: Wonder what will happen next. By giving the reader an interaction with a girl that the protagonist wants/likes immediately, the game signals that that's what the game is about. The reader knows that love, or at least spending time with cute, likable girls, is on offer. It whets their appetite. It makes them excited for the possibilities that come with such interactions. And then, just when they are settling into this interaction with someone the protagonist describes as "the girl of his dreams," the game takes it away. This is necessary. If we want investment from the reader, we can't make things too easy for them, or the protagonist. The reader may think they want Iwanako, but what they really want is to earn the girl/relationship on their own.
Hisao's Heart Condition
So, the opening scene establishes that love is on offer, but won't be given away freely. Those are the positive stakes, dramatically illustrating what the protagonist/reader can strive for. But the heart attack Hisao suffers in the opening scene also establishes the negative stakes, showing that his very life hangs in the balance. Think about that: In a scene that takes a few minutes to read, the story has established that the stakes are life/death and love/loneliness. That is brilliant. And it sets up a recurring thought in Hisao's mind—that he must tread carefully and his choices matter. This is something that is also reinforced by the Nurse, who is constantly warning him against being careless with his heart condition; and Mutou, who says to him: "One wrong move in this world, and you’re left behind." So the opening scene establishes the high stakes of Hisao's story, and they are echoed to the reader throughout, reminding them: Take nothing for granted; your decisions matter.
What does all this have to do with kama muta? Well, the literal and most popular translation of kama muta is 'moved by love,' and one of the most common examples of kama muta is the deepening of a relationship or the establishment of mutual romantic feelings—basically the conversation Hisao was about to have before his heart literally could not take it. So there's a little tease of kama muta to come. But this scene relates to kama muta in a more important way: What we get from Hisao's timidness as he is waiting for/speaking with Iwanako, which is then reinforced by his heart attack, is his sensitivity and vulnerability. A big component of kama muta is people helping and being there for each other—most of Auric Orange's examples of kama muta in KS are the characters being kind and caring towards each other. Establishing Hisao as sensitive and vulnerable sets him up as someone in need of such kindness/love. And, of course, it also gets him to Yamaku Academy, where he meets people who will not only show him that love, but who are themselves vulnerable and in need of his kindness and love.
So, by reverse-engineering the opening scene of KS and noticing how it connects to the rest of the story, we have observed two story elements that seem to help evoke kama muta:
1. Establish the story's stakes early—both what the protagonist can hope to gain and what they stand to lose. Have the stakes be significant and related to the human need for love and kindness. Reinforce to the reader/protagonist that their destiny is in their hands and their decisions matter.
2. Have the protagonist be sensitive and vulnerable. The stakes must matter to them. They must feel things deeply and want love from others. If the protagonist genuinely doesn't care, then neither will the reader.
These guidelines certainly seem to make sense. It's hard to imagine kama muta being strongly evoked in a story about a character who was completely confident and truly did not feel things deeply. They are also supported by looking to other works that evoke kama muta. In the opening chapter of the award-winning novel The Fault in Our Stars, it's established that the protagonist has cancer as she meets a love interest at a cancer survivors meeting. Just like KS, the protagonist is sensitive and vulnerable, and the established stakes are life/death and love/loneliness. And just as can be found in the various routes of KS, the two main characters help fill a void in each other's lives that evokes kama muta in the characters and the reader. So, by reverse-engineering the key emotion evoked by these works, we have gone from specific story elements to general guidelines. We understand a little bit more about how they do what they do, and with that understanding, we can now use and tweak those guidelines to try to achieve the same effect in our own stories.
I hope this analysis shows some of the utility of reverse-engineering from emotional content to specific story elements. These were fairly basic examples, and our conclusions are not exactly revolutionary—any book on storytelling will tell you to establish stakes. For further insight into how KS evokes kama muta, I recommend reading Auric Orange's essay. Here are some of the closing paragraphs of that essay:
"Why was KS so inspirational?
"Let’s consider that emotion that precedes inspiration: Awe. In their seminal 2003 paper on that emotion, psychologists Keltner and Haidt noted that awe is what we typically feel when faced with something “vast.” The vastness can be anything physically large, like the sky, but also the incredible “size” of a person’s skill, or the magnitude of their generosity. Keltner and Haidt claimed that when an experience of awe is novel, it can have an especially profound effect. If it exceeds the limits of your conception, it can force your mental structure to reorganize itself. Such moments can be disorienting or frightening, but they can also, in Keltner’s and Haidt’s words: 'involve feelings of enlightenment and even rebirth, when mental structures expand to accommodate truths never before known.'
"I posit that the overwhelmingly vast feelings that people experienced on reading Katawa Shoujo—particularly elevation/kama muta—triggered in them this exact kind of awakening.
"People often praise KS for making them cry, but the moments that cause that—Emi breaking down on the rooftop, Hanako breaking down at the end, Lilly breaking down in the hospital, and Rin transcending everything up on the hill—aren’t sad. They’re moments where one character is in an absolute abyss of misery, or self-loathing. They expect rejection or judgment. Instead, Hisao reaches down, to offer them love, and lift them back up.
"Let’s now roll all this into one hypothesis: With Katawa Shoujo, the magnitude of elevation went above and beyond anything its readers had ever experienced. The vastness of that triggered an awe response, as conceived by Haidt. As part of that, the awe triggered an epiphany, leading readers to experience inspiration; with an intense desire to remake the wonderful aspects of KS in the real world—its kindness, its warmth, its love, and its drive to make the most of being alive."
