cw: murder, slight body horror ala Jeff the Killer
So Minoru wasn't actually long at all, I was surprised that I finished it this morning (October 8th) before my classes.
And yeah my opinion on the first ending hasn't changed, didn't expect it too, but it has made me view the whole of Emio's story differently. I really feel like this game has a good story that weirdly fumbled on the delivery because of the decision to split the experience into two parts like this.
There's like no way that when Yoshio Sakamoto was thinking of this game's story over how many years that he would have known that the game should be split into a normal game and then an OVA for the second part. And I'm really really cautious about even calling it something like a "second half".
Also feel like while I'm super focusing on the ending of this game in both of my posts, because I mainly wanted to get to the bottom of the question of it being "divisive" as posed by the promotional material, I do really really enjoy the rest of Emio. I feel like I've barely actually talked about what I felt playing the rest of the game and all that was really positive, there's only about like two parts I felt I got unfairly stumped on due to the game itself. It's just that I really also wanted to champion Emio as my GOTY or something while playing and was defending my excitement for a visual novel to my skeptical friends.
But I guess it's like a Game of Thrones situation, the journey can be as fun as possible but if the destination doesn't feel like it justified the journey or in Emio's case feels like a last second betrayal of the player's agency by revealing literally everything to the player via un-interactive cutscenes it feels like nothing you did to get to the ending really mattered.
In Minuro the player matters even less, the prospect of being able to play as Utsugi was something I was admittedly intrigued by at first despite my feelings of the initial ending, because I was really curious what he was up to the entire campaign and thought there'd be some tough case cracking and interviewing to do. But then the gameplay of Minoru is the most bare minimum gesture towards gameplay possible and the fact you're playing as Utsugi is barely relevant. Just like the ending to Emio it feels like Minoru is just there to funnel the player towards the room the ending happens in, or in this case the OVA.
The animation itself is really nice tbf, I can't deny it's awesome seeing a fully animated half-hour OVA done in the new Famicom Detective Club style, that's something really special and if I was in charge of the project there's no way I would have turned down doing something like this either. But I feel ultimately a lot of the story and it's reveals suffer for it since all the interesting stuff is locked behind an unsatisfying 10 minutes in Emio and then a really cool but entirely uninteractive second "campaign". I think really that betrayal of agency is what puts me off about this game's endings.
[^ This little zoom-in on Minuro looking shocked geniuenly made me laugh really hard I love it lmao]
Like it does answer questions but it doesn't feel satisfying that it feels nothing I did as the player led to those questions being answered. There was hardly any information found out about the original three victims during that one section during the library. It feels like that's the exact spot where there would have been revelations on the original case but hardly anything is learnt about these three girls until the final hour after everything had ostensibly been wrapped up.
I also wrote some notes about Minoru as I was "playing" it, the first one being that Utsugi mentions finding a mechanics uniform neatly taken care of in an abandoned building which I wrote down that that would have been a perfect kind of discovery for the player to make while investigating. And that is the only note I made on the gameplay other than my thoughts I already wrote.
As for the big long cutscene it's basically fine, just like with Emio's ending Minoru has the issue of taking agency from the player and just having the story happen at the player. I mean the game *literally* sits you down to reveal everything at you in the beginning of Minoru, you don't have any input over the situation.
I don't have as much to say about the story reveals in the animation that doesn't seem like repeating myself from the first part. Minoru absolutely had his joker moment and the moment I saw the emphasis on the clippers I wrote "omfg its the goddamn clippers" followed by "there it is". So yep big Joker moment, followed by my note "how does he not get infections like that".
I really *really* don't like the joker-ification of Minoru, like him becoming some jeff the killer looking guy For Real is not only way too big of a leap for a story that is otherwise incredibly grounded but also feels like an odd flanderization of Minoru's actions as well? From what I can gather from the ending the "divisive" part of the ending is supposed to be that last question from Utsugi if the player thinks (but doesn't get to answer) Minoru deserved what happened to him but making him The Actual Fucking Joker visually completely dehumanizes Minoru and he's just become the urban legend itself at that point.
[^ I'm seriously asking how he's been able to live his life in secret looking like this without any nasty life ending infections for over 18 years, I don't think the details of his appearance are literally ever brought up after Junko's initial shock]
And that's another thing about this ending, Minoru *is* Emio, the urban legend, in his letter manifesto thing that gets cut to several times during the ending he literally monologues about doing the exact same thing that the urban legend says Emio does, there's no room for interpretation and completely kills the mystery about what parts of the urban legend were exaggerated and which were rooted in truth. Because apparently basically everything was exactly true in the exact same way it was told to the player in like Chapter 2. The only parts that aren't true are parts of Emio being an evil spirit or supernatural in some way but I don't think the story ever expects you to believe that because of how grounded everything is.
Ayaka is the only victim that gets characterization and had some intrigue to the situation around her death, after Minoru kills her he literally just goes into admitting that he's going to start killing every sad girl he sees and giving them paper bags. He literally became the urban legend I was under the assumption was exaggerated in some way. Also it's incredibly hard to feel any sympathy for him when it's shown that he's not above doing it again, first he was going to kill Megumi and then tried killing Junko. I'm not sure why I should be feeling bad about Minoru's current state when the nicest thing he's shown to have done as an adult is at the bare minimum not kill the child he abducted and raised as himself.
Especially that last scene with him as an older guy and he's totally bald and scary looking about to kill Junko, it's such far removed imagery from the rest of the game idk it's wild. It would have been way scarier if he just looked like a normal guy, the the killer had laid low but otherwise looked like he could have been anybody else, it would also make him at least somewhat more empathic to see this sad older man instead of 40 year Jeff the Killer.
And about him not being over killing more people, it feels really weird that there hadn't been any killings in 18 years that line up with his methods. It feels like that pause in activity is there to facilitate mystery around Eisuke's situation and supposed connection to the case but in the end once the big twist about that has been revealed by Junko it doesn't feel like Eisuke ever mattered at all and this is all about Emio now so the plot just ignores explaining Minoru's seeming absence and reverts him back to killing on sight because scary.
...Aaaaalso Minoru himself is heavily autistic coded and I don't know how to feel about that, his hyper-fixation on cars is especially repeated many times. Not going to make any claims, (I do love how accepting the Todorokis were of him at least) but as someone who also has a flat affect and trouble being expressive it doesn't make me feel that great at least.
Final thoughts: if I could imagine some ideal way to handle Emio's story it would have been to just give it three to four more chapters before the finale and keep that mystery and sense of progression the penultimate chapter had going. As it is it feels like the player hardly made a dent in this case, Utsugi is the one who found out literally everything about Minoru's past to anime-episode level accuracy, and all of Junko's involvement is revealed by her in the last 10 minutes and reveals that the player had essentially been on a wild goose chase as she did her own work which led to the ending. The only thing the player contributed to the ending was showing up to see it.
I think the game should have also ended in a way where that final question of Minoru's morality and what the player thinks of him should have been asked when he was alive. Killing Minoru and *then* revealing everything about him just doesn't have the same impact. The most I felt for Minoru was when you meet the Todorokis and there's still deniability that he was entirely responsible for the murders, or maybe I just felt less and less as the joker reveal happened and it felt like the plot really jumped the shark in a weird way. But yeah, give the player the question at let them answer, it doesn't need to affect anything besides maybe Utsugi's response but I feel that would leave a much bigger impact on the player than simply having it be a vague question after absolutely everything had been tied up. Anyways yup that's basically it for my takes on this game, might look at other people's takes now but not sure I'll be making any more posts on this game after this one.
P.S. another note: "its really funny that Minoru is scared of Tsubasa, same lmao"
UPDATE 10-17-24:
Okay so doing a little bit more thinking and I feel like this story would have been served much better if instead of dumping everything into literally the last hour of gameplay they instead took the budget and allotted runtime for the anime section and split into maybe 1-2 minute sections per chapter to show a flashback to Minoru's childhood to explain the plot while the player is still actually playing and invested in the gameplay.