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i have no idea. if i do understand i would be a very guilty man towards my cat.Fushichou wrote:...
Why is this appealing to anyone...
It manages to pull off some themes that your average harem can never do.Dan wrote:But is it any good?
You just have to pretend the furry people are actually cosplayers who enjoy looking like animals 24/7Owen_S wrote:Both Yuuichi and Risa are outcasts in a strictly social sense; he’s a former host who’s known his way around women (and a few men, he adds wryly) ever since his youth due to his parents voluntarily orphaning him through means of abandonment, and she’s an underage porn addict enthusiast who turns to films of a rather hardcore nature to seek relief from daily stresses. Both are people society likes to pretend doesn’t exist. Yet it’s in these very flawed ways their characters are written that they find themselves, and a generous helping of solace to go with it.
The way underlying symbolism is employed here to represent that of a typical nuclear family is interesting, for it’s this very family that both Yuuichi and Risa lack, the former by way of his parents abandoning him in his childhood, and the latter her parents’ thinly-veiled comparisons to her deceased sister. By taking Silvie and Mikan in under their wing, they become the parents they never had, and learn something in the process.
Yuuichi and Risa’s temporary household arrangement is, of course, something all too familiar to those growing up in a household with two parents and 2.5 kids present. In this little masquerade do they both play the doting daddy and mummy, while the two dogs take on visibly symbolic roles of daughters, even if it might be too Electra in nature for some quarters to stomach.
What’s interesting is that the moe elements present are at the very least two-fold, and what seems decorative on the outside is actually utilitarian inside; moe is present not simply because there’s a need for it–merely filling a need for moe without expanding on its presence makes a work incredibly shallow, in my opinion–but because its presence makes the story all the more better–the urge to protect is both pandering and parental, in line with expectations yet instinctive.
It’s the change that both Mikan and Silvie bring to their lives that makes it something to behold. Risa’s route is tearjerking that way, with each portion of the story put together brick by brick in an effort so laborious that it only takes the removal of one or two pieces to bring it all crashing down in a heartwrenching and painful moment.
Because what WtK does is give you the best pet in the world… before proceeding to break it into pieces, giving you the opportunity to wallow in an otherwise-impossible experience of emotional catharsis. In the span of about 20 hours, give or take, the unerringly linear and surprisingly repetitive nature of the game reveals many things about the anthropoid pets in a slice-of-life way.
Cute dogs do cute things, reveal their nature to be that of a fragile, sentient, animalistic one, before the hardest punch the game can muster is pulled, and one of them almost breaks–then said pet overcomes the odds, as do our slightly more matured characters, and they triumph. Tears flow. We get our happy end, but not before the darkest hour appears and despair looms like a black and stubborn rain cloud overhead.
The unconditional love and affection exhibited by the anthropoid pets in WtK, I think, is more than enough by way of a sufficient counter to Yuuichi’s cynical and inherently twisted view to love; he states in his non-committal way that all vows are really quite useless, and maintains that people have to learn how to live with loss and move on in life.
Yet by the end of the route he feels a sense of irreplaceable loss in the absence of the very one that he’s given that advice to. He’s scorned the system that’s been elusive all his life, yet finds that, upon meeting the one he’d never thought he’d see again, that it was right beside him all this time, and does so with much tears in his eyes.
I’m hard-pressed to think of something strictly harem in nature that delves into subject material so deep as to ponder on the machinations of Life, Love, and Everything, but WtK does all that without missing a beat. Yes, Yuuichi dances to the tune of “What is love? Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more.” No, he doesn’t merely pursue that line of thought for philosophical reasons–it’s actually within the boundaries of his character.
For Yuuichi isn’t the proverbial white knight in shining armour that’s come to rescue his girl; he’s Suzaku in his antiquated Lancelot Conquista getting a triple amputation from the Guren S.E.I.T.E.N., and he’s had that coming to him for ages. Neither are the various anthropoid pets the ones that need to be human, for of that they have plenty; it’s Yuuichi that, like the Tachikoma sings, “If I just could be more human/I’d have so many little babies/and maybe, a wife.”
