Say It In Red

The mansion in the mist returns this week and we find ourselves once more following The Maid through the memories of The House in Fata Morgana. Will we find the truth buried in these halls, we will learn Her name and call out to Her, we will escape the darkness of time and memory...
But first, we will forget.

This week, Sara and Runa return to finish their stay at The House in Fata Morgana (2012/2016), in which they cover not one but five additional doors and learn of the intertwining threads that bind the fate of all who roam its halls. Finally, after all of these hours of searching, we'll properly meet the game's three main characters for the very first time: Giselle, Michel, and Morgana are all assembled here now to guide you, beguile you, and accompany you through the halls of the mansion that slips through time. At the very end of everything, once Michel has reclaimed his memories and Giselle remembers her name, what will become of the Witch that torments the souls trapped in this house?  What fate awaits those, bound by the fervent wish of Eternal Reconstruction and inevitable tragedy? Let's find out together, and as we pass through each door we must entreat you sincerely... no matter what, do not let go of Her hand.


Before you proceed, Dear Listener, please keep in mind that this episode will contain not only spoilers for The House in Fata Morgana but also discussions of a multitude of traumas and horrific experiences - as with our Umineko episodes, please refer to our content warnings below.


Content Warnings for this episode:
General Warnings for discussion of Torture, cutting/bloodletting, ingestion of blood, mutilation, and public degradation/humiliation

1:06:00 to - 1:08:00 Umineko volume 7 Spoilers
1:20:00 to - 1:30:00 Discussions of transphobia, misgendering, familial abuse
1:27:30 to - 1:30:00 Crucifixion and posthumous torture

As always, if you enjoy our show please be sure to rate and review us wherever you listen! You can also follow the podcast twitter at sayitinredpod and you can find bonus episodes at our patreon at patreon dot com forward slash sayitinred! 

Good Morning. You're finally awake, aren't you? Yes, that's good. Hehe... we were worried, for a time, that you might sleep the whole week away. How glad we are now that you are here with us, within this manor, within this era, as we explore its halls and gather your stray and errant memories. Just make sure that as we travel, you never let go of our hands.

This week, Sara and Runa begin their adventure into The House in Fata Morgana (2016), a gothic visual novel that will take players through a mysterious manor, guided by an equally mysterious Maid, as you observe the tragedies that unfolded in its hallways over the centuries. In this first of two episodes, we open the first three doors of game and bear witness to the lives of the former occupants, their hopes and struggles, and their unfortunate ends. We begin in 17th century England, with the illustrious Rhodes family and its two flaxen-haired children, Mell and Nellie. We then open the door to the early 18th century on the coast of Europe's mainland, in an era when the manor lies abandoned and a Beast has become its master. From there, we greet the 19th century and venture into New York City where an ambitious man shuts his wife away and dedicates himself to the pursuit of wealth and power. Throughout each tale, the Maid appears to serve the household and its Master. Throughout each era, a mysterious White-Haired Girl arrives at the manor and invariably meets a tragic end. What will we find at the end of this journey, when we at last can remember our name... and hers.


Content Warnings for this episode:
Sibling Incest
Torture and Cannibalism
Verbal and Physical abuse
Racism
More Racism
Gun Violence


As always, if you enjoy our show please be sure to rate and review us wherever you listen! You can also follow the podcast twitter at sayitinredpod and you can find bonus episodes at our patreon at patreon dot com forward slash sayitinred!

Launch protocols accepted. Pilot vital signs within nominal range. Catapult locked: Mission Accepted. The battle at hand is already underway - Which future are you planning to fight for? Who are you planning to fight for? What can you do, alone in space against the eternal, ever present pull of Earth's Gravity?

This week, Sara and Runa are joined by tabletop developer and mecha enthusiast Bismuth to discuss the Worst Girls Games 2018 title, Heaven Will Be Mine. Join us as we fly over space colonies and dig through the history of the mecha genre, queer theory, the Space Program, and our own childhoods in an effort to answer one of the greatest questions of all time: How much are giant robot fights just about making out? As it turns out, the answer is almost 100%.

Heaven Will Be Mine (2018) is a visual novel developed by Aeevee Bee, Max Schwartz, Alec Lambert, and with development and publication by Pillow Fight. It's a game about giant robots, about space, about interstellar conflict and the existential threat of truly inhuman, alien beings. It's also not really about any of that, at least not any more than it's about gender, queer liberation movements, Gravity, Culture, romance on the battlefield, mecha fights as communication and flirtation, and the all-encompassing desire to be a horny goblin when you see a hot girl on the other side of the war. If all of this sounds a bit abstract and difficult to parse, that's because Heaven Will Be Mine is a game rich with layered meanings and abstractions that are both literal and allegorical, narration that is both physically impossible and emotionally true, and conversations that may take you a few passes to fully grasp. The writing is brilliant and draws you deep into the realm of space at the same time as it gets you thinking about otherness, the force of expectation exerted by a dominant culture, and the relationships you've built between the people who surround you and cross your path. This game is about queerness, community, and what paths we should take forward into the future together even when that future is at times bleak and uncertain. Please join us as we unpack the three pilot routes and three endings to this game, discuss its implications, and sigh fondly over Luna-Terra's cool scars.

 As always, if you enjoy the show please support us by giving us a rating and writing a review wherever you listen! You can also follow the podcast's twitter at sayitinredpod on twitter and find bonus episodes at patreon dot com slash sayitinred!

Content Warnings for this episode:
There are specific no content warnings for this episode but there are spoilers for the original Gundam series, Evangelion, Gunbuster, Diebuster, and Gasaraki in this episode.

Links:
Aeevee Bee's interview in Rock Paper Shotgun
The Waypoint Radio Plus episode discussed here is Waypoint Radio Plus episode 101, which at the time of this episode's publication is only available to waypoint plus subscribers.

Even in the last week of August, sometimes the summer feels like it'll never end.  The warm breeze slipping through the screen door at night, the buzz of car engines and cicadas, and the flood of light that pours across the streets after sundown... Even on its very last day, summer can feel eternal.

This week, Sara and Runa visit the disco, tour the city, and experience romance in the 80's in A Summer's End - Hong Kong 1986! Join us as we follow Michelle, a 23-year-old office worker living with her mother in Hong Kong (and as the game's title implies, we're right at the start of August in 1986). Michelle lost her father when she was still in school and since then, she's become more studious, more serious, more dedicated to her work and more focused on providing for her mother and advancing her career. A single accident causes her to break her new heels on the way to work one morning, though, and this threatens to throw off the rest of her entire day - Michelle swears it's caused her usual 0.01% text entry error rate to more than triple. After suffering through the entire day wearing convenience store flip flops that clash horribly with her 80's business blazer and plaid skirt, she takes her boss's recommendation and heads across the city to find a cobbler. That's where she meets Sam, and that's where Michelle's entire life, her steady routine of going in to work each day and returning home every evening gets disrupted. Sam is gorgeous. Sam looks handsome in a t-shirt and overalls and stunning in a jacket and mini-skirt. Sam invites Michelle out without the slightest hesitation in her voice. Michelle keeps swearing that the next time she sees Sam, it will be the last time the two of them ever have to speak... but each time, she ends up spending more and more time at Sam's side, in her shop, beside her at a disco club, in her apartment, and eventually in her bed. What is it that Michelle wants, truly? What choice will she make, when faced with the prospect of life with Sam and the threat of losing the stability in her life? At the end of the summer when Hong Kong is as vibrant as ever and political turmoil looms the city, Michelle and Sam watch the stars and consider what it would mean to have a future together.

As always, if you enjoy the show please support us by giving us a rating and writing a review wherever you listen! You can also follow the podcast's twitter at sayitinredpod on twitter and find bonus episodes at patreon dot com slash sayitinred!

Content Warnings for this Episode:
Discussions of homophobia and misogyny as explored in the text
Discussion of Misogyny, Suicide, and death by disease in our summary of the 1935 silent film, New Women: 00:51:00-1:00:00

Dear Readers,
That about sums it up.

In the second and final part of our Tokimeki Memorial coverage, Runa and Sara finally managed to get a confession of eternal love from Shiori Fujisaki. The cost? Well... what price can you put on the time you spend in the virtual high school of your youth? Especially when that time is flying by at 400% speed and you're constantly jumping back and forth between weeks in order to manipulate the random chance of the Universe.

This week, we're once again joined by Cristaly and KT as we cap off our discussions of the SNES port of Tokimeki Memorial, playing with the recently released fan translation patch that came out earlier this year. For more information about the game broadly and its overall structure, check out our previous episode, Say it in Red Episode 28! In this episode though, we talk about the remaining routes of the game including the secret dating option, the continuous uphill path of trying to date Shiori, and some of our overall impressions of the game as a whole. Runa and Sara lay out the various strategies they used to finally meet Shiori under the Tree of Legends, KT tells us about Rei Ijuin, Cristaly explains the incredible design and features of Tokimeki Memorial Girls' Side, and everyone remembers the Konami of the 90's with a sort of fond, bittersweet nostalgia.

As Runa mentioned in this episode, you can also find her latest game, the horror-mystery Visual Novel 77 Oleander Avenue at runa-liore.itch.io/77-Oleander!

As always, if you enjoy the show please consider giving us a rating and writing a review! It'll help us out tremendously. You can also support us on Patreon by visiting Patreon.com/SayItInRed, where you can also get access to tons of bonus episodes and other content! Follow the podcast's twitter at sayitinredpod on twitter for more up-to-the-minute updates, and thank you again for listening!

Content Warnings for this episode:
1:10:00 to 1:15:00 - General discussions of transphobia, homophobia, and gender essentialism when discussing Rei's dating route.

Oh hey, it's you! I bet you wanna know what all the girls in our school think about you. Sure Sure Sure, you know I've got your back! Let me just flip through my notes.............
..........
..........
..........
Tokimeki Memorial? Yeah, here's all the info I have on her!

This week, Sara and Runa are joined by fellow 90's dating sim enthusiasts KT and Cristaly to play through the groundbreaking, foundational, and immensely engaging classic Tokimeki Memorial! As a young boy entering high school, it's your goal, your truest desire, to date your neighbor and childhood friend Shiori Fujisaki. You've known Shiori for years, you've had a crush on her for longer than you can remember, and as you walk home with her after your entrance exam she tells you the legend of a tree that can grant young couples a lifetime of happiness. The trouble is that you're... kind of lame. In every way. High school won't last forever and you've only got three years to study, work out, shower and flip your hair, hone your artistic talents,  build your spirit, and become someone worthy of standing at Shiori's side. She wants you to, after all, but she's not going to accept anything less than her exceptional standards. Surely, knowing how much she expects from you, you won't be swayed by any of the other cute girls you meet along the way... will you?

Konami's Tokimeki Memorial (1994) is quite possibly the single most influential dating sim to ever exist. It's impact reaches across genres, across mediums, through the decades, and even if you've never played Tokimeki Memorial yourself we can guarantee that you've played games influenced by it. In the game you play as a boy in high school trying to date girls and while our main character is focused on Shiori, players may quickly find themselves drawn to one of the other cute girls who run into you (sometimes literally) as you go about your high school life. The core of Tokimeki Memorial is simple and ingenious: Choose activities to raise various stats, and based on those stats you may either encounter new girls, trigger events, or do better during exams. Every Sunday afternoon, or on holidays, you can call someone as well - either your assigned Best Friend Yoshio, who can give you information about how each girl feels about you, or one of the girls you've met to ask her out on a date. This very simple gameplay loop is extremely effective, catches hold of you quickly, and keeps you hooked through three years of high school while you date girls, avoid bombs (girls bomb you if you neglect them by the way, this is just a known fact), and wait with bated breath to see who ends up confessing to you under the tree of legend on graduation day.

Come, the spring of your youth is upon you! And just how long do you plan to keep Shiori waiting?


This is the first of our two Tokimeki Memorial episodes so look forward to the next Tokimemo episode coming out in July! As always, if you enjoy the show please rate us and write a review if you have time - it helps tremendously and we read and appreciate each one! You can also find more information by following us at sayitinredpod on twitter, and unlock bonus episodes and other content by pledging over at our patreon! 

Did you know that your Irises aren't fully identical? Each of your eyes contains a slightly different pattern of color and lines that formed long ago,  each one unique even within the same person. No matter how many eyes you search through in the world, it's possible that you'll never find one with an Iris pattern exactly like your own. In this way, our Irises could serve as unique identifiers in the same way that retinal scans and fingerprints already do, which leads us to an important and definitely relevant question: if the cops tried to use your eye to charge you with murder, would that be fucked up or what?

This week, Sara and Runa reach the conclusion of their playthrough of AI: The Somnium Files as they finally play through all of the B side routes, unlock blocked pathways, discover the identity of a Mysterious Person 'X', and learn the valuable lesson that all along, it's the MILF right beside us that we should've been swooning over.

If you haven't checked out our first episode on AI: The Somnium Files, then you should definitely go back and give that a listen before continuing: There will be both spoilers here for the game in general and elements of our discussion that pick up where we left off in part 1.

As we mentioned in our last episode, AI: The Sominum Files (2019) is a sci-fi crime procedural,  psychological thriller, Kotaro Uchikoshi puzzle, and at times a gritty Noir drama following Special Inspector Date Kaname as he tracks down clues about a series of brutal serial murders. In the B side routes of the game, surprisingly few murders occur by comparison - Shoko Nadami still dies at the very start of the game, but while many other people are put into serious danger and the threat of death looms closer than ever, the New Cyclops Killer doesn't claim quite so many victims here... What could have caused this difference? Why does Date sometimes remember the events of previous routes just when he needs to recall that vital information? Why does Date see Iris's frozen corpse in Mizuki's Somnium? Who is So Sejima's son? And, most of all, how many times will boss pull Date aside and say those three special words that every supercop wants to hear: 'Psync with them!'

Also, please listen through to the end to enjoy hearing Runa's live reactions to the Nirvana Initiative trailer, which she had heretofore never before seen. You can watch along and listen to Sara and Runa's reactions in real time by watching the version of the trailer in this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isYEhEMpHfk

 As always, if you enjoy the show please give us a rating and review wherever you listen! You can also follow the podcast twitter at sayitinredpod on twitter, and you can also find more episodes and information on our patreon at patreon dot com slash sayitinred!

Content Warnings for this episode:
General: Repeated mentions of eye trauma, eye removal, and murder will occur all throughout our AI: The Somnium Files episodes as the crimes at the center of this game involve these elements. Our discussions in this episode also include numerous mentions of ableism within the game and the genre, particularly surrounding mental illness and conventions of its use in explaining criminal behavior.

01:06:45 to 01:08:00 - Description of Eye dislocation and Eye Trauma

What did you dream about last night? Do you remember it clearly? Was it a dream of a fantastical, impossible place? A nightmare woven from old memories? The precise scene filled with highly accurate evidence that a police detective can use to catch a big break in a serial murder case, maybe?

This week, Sara and Runa dive deep into AI: The Somnium Files and experience Forensic Dream Investigations first-hand. In the perhaps not-too-distant future, we follow Date Kaname and his AI eyeball partner, Aiba, as they arrives to a surreal and abandoned amusement park. The sky is dark overhead, rain falls steadily, and atop one of the merry-go-round horses Date finds the corpse of the first victim, Shoko Nadami. This opens the investigation into the mysterious New Cyclops killings, chasing down the culprit (or culprits?) responsible for a series of increasingly twisting, baffling murders. At the end of it all, what awaits Date and Aiba is...

AI: The Somnium Files (2019) is a sci-fi crime drama, psychological thriller, and Kotaro Uchikoshi puzzle wrapped up in a slick, saturated, and highly stylized presentation. The game follows Date Kaname, an investigator for the MPD's Advanced Brain Investigation Squad (ABIS) alongside his partner, Aiba, who mostly hangs out in his left eye socket since she's an Artificial Intelligence housed in a prosthetic eye. Six years ago, Date lost his left eye and all memories of his prior life in an incident that probably won't be at all important to the ultimate unraveling of this game's deepest secrets, maybe. After the initial investigation at the abandoned amusement park, they find Mizuki - The 12 year old girl who Date has taken care of for the past four years, and also the daughter of the Shoko Nadami. Through their investigations, Aiba and Date piece together the timeline of Shoko's last moments, uncover the links between a net idol and this case, and then try to help Mizuki recover from the trauma of seeing her mother's death. The best way to do that, as it happens, is through the game's central mechanic: Psycing.

Whenever Date and Aiba psync with another character, they can dive into the Somnium - the dreamscape of that person's mind made up of an assortment of their real memories manifested in strange, surreal patterns. While some of these Psyncs are relatively direct memories that Date and Aiba are investigating in search of concrete evidence, others are more abstract locations full of someone's trauma, half-remembered moments, and deep secrets. In this first of two episodes on AI: The Somnium Files, we cover every A route path (with the exception of the AB route, which is locked until we get further into the game).  We see a fanboy and stalker come clean about his role in covering for his idol's suspicious activities, we watch Mizuki become an action hero and Date finally become a Dad to her, and we flail around as everything, and everyone, falls apart. What will Date and Aiba find at the end of all this? The truth about six years ago? The identity of the killer? Or, perhaps, will it be something that shakes the  city and the MPD to its foundations...?

As always, if you enjoy the show please give us a rating and review wherever you listen! You can also follow the podcast twitter at sayitinredpod on twitter, and you can also find more episodes and information on our patreon at patreon dot com slash sayitinred!

Content Warnings for this episode:
General: Repeated mentions of eye trauma, eye removal, and murder will occur all throughout our AI: The Somnium Files episodes as the crimes at the center of this game involve these elements. Dismemberment, mutilations, child abuse, and child neglect also come up frequently.

Strike! You're out! Because you were too flustered talking to your crush in class and now everyone at baseball club knows you're gay!

This week, Sara and Runa experience the unbridled joy, the tumultuous ups and downs of high school baseball for a group of queer Asian-American kids living in Northern California - In short, playing through Butterfly Soup. While one of our hosts knows a fair amount about baseball and the other knows almost nothing (though a fair amount about Blaseball), Butterfly Soup is full of extremely relatable and at times painfully familiar experiences. As we follow a group of awkward teens navigating high school in 2008, we shift through the perspectives of Diya, Min Seo, Akarsha, and Noelle to see how each of them is dealing with the stress of life, parental expectations, trying to sort out their sexuality, and also oh my god where did you get that knife put that down!?

Butterfly Soup (2017) by Brianna Lei is an amazing, concentrated hit of dopamine paired with a postcard from your high school self, all wrapped up in a perfect pastel color scheme and paired with a recorder cover of My Heart Will Go On. Set largely in the fall of 2008 in Oakley, California, the story follows four girls through their awkward and anxiety-filled daily lives. Filled with a pitch perfect balance of humor and poignancy and set against the backdrop of the political news of the late 00's as gay marriage rights were heavily embattled on the local and national stage, Butterfly Soup is an amazing experience that works both as a timeless coming-of-age story and an excellent period piece capturing the experience of a queer Asian-American teen growing up when Proposition 8 and the San Francisco marriages were in the headlines.

As the story kicks off,  we first meet Diya: a tall, strong, and athletic girl who's also timid and bad at interacting with just about everyone in most circumstances. She opens up more easily to her friends though, especially Min Seo, who she's known since childhood. Min Seo is short, rowdy, aggressive to the point of violence, charmingly over-confident at times, and completely smitten with Diya.  Early on, however, Min Seo's parents move away to Florida and she and Diya are separated - just before they part, though, they promise to keep playing baseball so that they can one day be reunited on the field.

Back in high school, in 2008, Diya meets up with her friend Akarsha, who is an endearing memelord wearing an iconic 90's windbreaker, and then later with Noelle, a girl who tries to be strict and rational but often fails miserably as she gets drawn into bickering with Akarsha or supporting everyone's antics. Their daily lives are stressful but routine for a time, until two major events shift the trajectory of Diya's life: A baseball club starts recruiting at school, and then at this baseball club meeting she reunites with Min Seo. Oh also she realizes about this time that she's a Lesbian, which is just one more thing to figure out as she tries to make it through the year.


As always, if you enjoy the show please rate us and write a review if you have time - it helps tremendously and we read and appreciate each one! You can also find more information by following us at sayitinredpod on twitter, and unlock bonus episodes and other content by pledging over at our patreon!

Gather, if you please, Dear Readers, and join us for tea as we answer your questions and chat about our lingering thoughts on Umineko in our special Say it in Red Umineko Q&A Session and Wrap Party!

This episode, we'll be talking about the breadth of Umineko and responding to the questions our listeners have sent in - Please take care as there will be spoilers for the entirety of Umineko sprinkled throughout.

As we sit down together at under the rose garden arbor for the last time, at least for now, please join us as we open sealed envelopes containing KT and Raven's guesses as to  Sara and Runa's favorite Umineko characters; Assign one another Umineko Witchsonas; Answer your burning questions on everything from the Umineko side stories to the future of the When They Cry series; and generally become unruly and unrestrained. 

There are no specific time-stamps for content warnings for this episode, but please bear in mind that as part of our Umineko discussions we briefly mention child abuse, exploitation, murder, violence, gore, fantastical cannibalism, and Homestuck. 

As a reminder to all listeners, our new schedule is available at twitter.com/sayitinredpod or at patreon.com/sayitinred for  patrons. A new bonus episode will be going up soon, containing all of Sara and Runa's full autopsy of their time in the early 2010's Umineko fandom, and further bonus episodes will become available in the coming months. Until then, we hope you join us for our next reading and please be sure to follow  the podcast on twitter. 

A link to the Umineko Stage Play information: https://natalie.mu/stage/news/465420