Back in 2018, Kara no Shojo (or is it Shoujo?!) showed up on Steam roughly a decade after its release. Earlier this year, it was highly recommended to me as a newfound fan of visual novels.

Yet, the game wasn't exactly my type. You can probably guess what that entails from the fact that it was published by MangaGamer, the company behind other esteemed titles such as Forbidden Love with My Wife's Sister. The graphic nature of the content, combined with the skewed aspect ratio and the foreign title, created this air of otherness around the game that made it seem like a forbidden piece of lost media that only grizzled types who’ve seen some ♥♥♥♥ could play.

Indeed, on a cursory look, chasing around schoolgirls and solving serial killings doesn’t seem like the most palatable combination, no matter how much noir goodness is on offer. With this ill-thought-out combination being the most common criticism of the game I could find, Kara no Shojo was something I was unlikely to pick up. However, the recommendations kept piling up, and this surprising remaster finally created an opportunity that was too good to pass up.



Despite having quite a different name, The Shell Part I: Inferno is mostly the same game as the one I have been on the fence about. The changes here usually don’t go further than quality-of-life improvements, increased visual fidelity, and a new voice-over for the game’s protagonist. For better or worse, the same content that seemed like such a poor match in the original release was still alive and kicking.

If this new title that makes the game sound like a Tom Hanks joint didn’t give it away, The Shell heavily deals with a string of murders in post-World War II Japan, inspired by none other than Dante’s Divine Comedy. Infiltrating an all-girls Christian high school with the goal of figuring out who’s behind the disappearances of its students, it’ll be up to you, in the role of private detective Tokisaka Reiji, to get to the bottom of it all, while also dealing with Reiji’s private life and an ominous past that’s just waiting around the corner to jump at his throat.

As on the nose as it is, it’s a title that fits the game well, from the apparent inspiration to the more nuanced aspects of both works: their themes, their structure, and even the graphic descriptions that Dante’s Hell is chock full of. The most notable here is the way the game plays around with the representation of women in other classics of the Italian Renaissance, not just Dante—the female form as a prism for Christian virtues and something that has its place somewhere alongside the male-centric triad of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—and using it to draw parallels within more contemporary social commentary. It’s compelling writing, with an impressive level of thematic depth, yet the lines get dangerously blurred amidst trashy tropes.

The Shell suffers from some serious tonal dissonance; as the game sometimes switches to the killer’s POV, the gruesome visuals will be accompanied by descriptions of bodily mutilations of young girls that leave nothing to the imagination. This, on its own, wouldn’t be a problem, if it didn’t go hand in hand with distasteful sex scenes and so many jokes about incest and rape in other parts of the game that I’ve lost count. Is a good incest joke akin to a fart joke in Japan?

For a private ♥♥♥♥, Reiji sure shares his around like it’s in the public domain. Adding further to the confusion is that not not all of the sex scenes were created equal. Some are played up as a joke, while others serve as precursors to bad endings—and both of these can be either consensual or not. He enters Oba Girls’ Academy to protect its students, and the sincerity with which these interactions are written paints him as a guardian figure to all of the characters he meets. That there’s even an option to essentially exploit these relationships by having sex with the girls serves as an absolute betrayal of his character, and makes those relationships where sex would mean genuine intimacy all the more questionable. It’s not just bizarre; it gets quite gross and can’t help but completely sour any kind of legitimate storytelling the game hoped to achieve through these scenes, if it ever did. The Shell shows a lot of maturity and consistency when it comes to handling some of its other themes, yet sex and nudity are used equally carefree for shock, fanservice, and anything in between.

The actual mystery and the plot, where Reiji stands with these characters outside of mere sex, and the prose of the English translation handled by Shiravune, are of a rich quality that makes the game difficult to not see through to the end. It’s all thematically interwoven to the very core and makes for a satisfying catharsis when the threads align. Even the art direction is handled in a specific way, leaving certain scenes with a strong air of sacrament, tying right back to those same ideas. However, when looked at side by side with the missteps that were made, all these great achievements become a lot more difficult to enjoy.


Another common criticism of the original release was how difficult it was to get to the true ending, or rather, how not to end up on a bad one. Both it and the remaster are hybrid visual novels aiming for increased interactivity, primarily through investigation scenes, where you’ll take a break from reading to instead look around a crime scene, and points in the story when you’ll have to choose which place to visit next on an in-game map. Reiji also keeps track of all the evidence and people you’ve come across in his notebook, but the information therein rarely comes in handy and frequently overlaps with one another.

While these sections still aren’t very intuitive, they’ve been made more forgiving in the remaster by the removal of hidden time limits, which makes failure, at the very least, more of a consequence of your own lack of thoroughness rather than the game scoring cheap shots—even if failure still usually becomes apparent only hours down the line.

Yet, while the increased interactivity is definitely appreciated in selling that detective fantasy and making the story a bit more tailored to your personal preference, it remains superficial when it comes to the outcome of your ending. This wouldn’t be so bad if the consequences of your actions, or rather inactions, were convincing, but the differences in these endings hang on technicalities for the most part, and the logic of how one thing leads to another is flimsy at best. At the very least, you’ll almost always come out with some kind of information that could help set you on a better path, or a sex scene to drown your sorrows in.


I wasn’t sure what to make of The Shell at numerous points. As the game raises a certain standard for itself by the nature of the work it so heavily invokes, something would always feel off. While expecting it to come palpably close to that level would be ridiculous, it still shows that it can succeed in achieving a high level of thematic maturity and cohesion; one which it doesn't follow through to the end.

If you squint, maybe you’ll remember it as a solid “B-movie” game, or you could headcanon your way around its most questionable aspects and let its high notes stick with you as much as they deserve. In any case, it’ll be difficult to feel as if you’ve seen one of the genre’s brightest stars.

An international group of passionate writers and veteran reviewers, Summit Reviews aims to deliver ethical, professional, and in-depth critique across Steam and beyond.

---

A copy of the game was provided by Shiravune to Summit for the purposes of this review.

[h1]Trial by Fire[/h1] Back in 2018, [i]Kara no Shojo[/i] (or is it [i]Shoujo[/i]?!) showed up on Steam roughly a decade after its release. Earlier this year, it was highly recommended to me as a newfound fan of visual novels. Yet, the game wasn't exactly my type. You can probably guess what that entails from the fact that it was published by MangaGamer, the company behind other esteemed titles such as [i]Forbidden Love with My Wife's Sister[/i]. The graphic nature of the content, combined with the skewed aspect ratio and the foreign title, created this air of otherness around the game that made it seem like a forbidden piece of lost media that only grizzled types who’ve seen some shit could play. Indeed, on a cursory look, chasing around schoolgirls and solving serial killings doesn’t seem like the most palatable combination, no matter how much noir goodness is on offer. With this ill-thought-out combination being the most common criticism of the game I could find, [i]Kara no Shojo[/i] was something I was unlikely to pick up. However, the recommendations kept piling up, and this surprising remaster finally created an opportunity that was too good to pass up. [h3]All Shojo, No Kara[/h3] Despite having quite a different name, [i]The Shell Part I: Inferno[/i] is mostly the same game as the one I have been on the fence about. The changes here usually don’t go further than quality-of-life improvements, increased visual fidelity, and a new voice-over for the game’s protagonist. For better or worse, the same content that seemed like such a poor match in the original release was still alive and kicking. If this new title that makes the game sound like a Tom Hanks joint didn’t give it away, [i]The Shell[/i] heavily deals with a string of murders in post-World War II Japan, inspired by none other than Dante’s [i]Divine Comedy[/i]. Infiltrating an all-girls Christian high school with the goal of figuring out who’s behind the disappearances of its students, it’ll be up to you, in the role of private detective Tokisaka Reiji, to get to the bottom of it all, while also dealing with Reiji’s private life and an ominous past that’s just waiting around the corner to jump at his throat. As on the nose as it is, it’s a title that fits the game well, from the apparent inspiration to the more nuanced aspects of both works: their themes, their structure, and even the graphic descriptions that Dante’s Hell is chock full of. The most notable here is the way the game plays around with the representation of women in other classics of the Italian Renaissance, not just Dante—the female form as a prism for Christian virtues and something that has its place somewhere alongside the male-centric triad of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—and using it to draw parallels within more contemporary social commentary. It’s compelling writing, with an impressive level of thematic depth, yet the lines get dangerously blurred amidst trashy tropes. [i]The Shell[/i] suffers from some serious tonal dissonance; as the game sometimes switches to the killer’s POV, the gruesome visuals will be accompanied by descriptions of bodily mutilations of young girls that leave nothing to the imagination. This, on its own, wouldn’t be a problem, if it didn’t go hand in hand with distasteful sex scenes and so many jokes about incest and rape in other parts of the game that I’ve lost count. Is a good incest joke akin to a fart joke in Japan? For a private dick, Reiji sure shares his around like it’s in the public domain. Adding further to the confusion is that not not all of the sex scenes were created equal. Some are played up as a joke, while others serve as precursors to bad endings—and both of these can be either consensual or not. He enters Oba Girls’ Academy to protect its students, and the sincerity with which these interactions are written paints him as a guardian figure to all of the characters he meets. That there’s even an option to essentially exploit these relationships by having sex with the girls serves as an absolute betrayal of his character, and makes those relationships where sex would mean genuine intimacy all the more questionable. It’s not just bizarre; it gets quite gross and can’t help but completely sour any kind of legitimate storytelling the game hoped to achieve through these scenes, if it ever did. [i]The Shell[/i] shows a lot of maturity and consistency when it comes to handling some of its other themes, yet sex and nudity are used equally carefree for shock, fanservice, and anything in between. The actual mystery and the plot, where Reiji stands with these characters outside of mere sex, and the prose of the English translation handled by Shiravune, are of a rich quality that makes the game difficult to not see through to the end. It’s all thematically interwoven to the very core and makes for a satisfying catharsis when the threads align. Even the art direction is handled in a specific way, leaving certain scenes with a strong air of sacrament, tying right back to those same ideas. However, when looked at side by side with the missteps that were made, all these great achievements become a lot more difficult to enjoy. [h3]Difficulty: [i][b]Dark Souls[/b][/i][/h3] Another common criticism of the original release was how difficult it was to get to the true ending, or rather, how not to end up on a bad one. Both it and the remaster are hybrid visual novels aiming for increased interactivity, primarily through investigation scenes, where you’ll take a break from reading to instead look around a crime scene, and points in the story when you’ll have to choose which place to visit next on an in-game map. Reiji also keeps track of all the evidence and people you’ve come across in his notebook, but the information therein rarely comes in handy and frequently overlaps with one another. While these sections still aren’t very intuitive, they’ve been made more forgiving in the remaster by the removal of hidden time limits, which makes failure, at the very least, more of a consequence of your own lack of thoroughness rather than the game scoring cheap shots—even if failure still usually becomes apparent only hours down the line. Yet, while the increased interactivity is definitely appreciated in selling that detective fantasy and making the story a bit more tailored to your personal preference, it remains superficial when it comes to the outcome of your ending. This wouldn’t be so bad if the consequences of your actions, or rather inactions, were convincing, but the differences in these endings hang on technicalities for the most part, and the logic of how one thing leads to another is flimsy at best. At the very least, you’ll almost always come out with some kind of information that could help set you on a better path, or a sex scene to drown your sorrows in. [h3]Verdict[/h3] I wasn’t sure what to make of [i]The Shell[/i] at numerous points. As the game raises a certain standard for itself by the nature of the work it so heavily invokes, something would always feel off. While expecting it to come palpably close to that level would be ridiculous, it still shows that it can succeed in achieving a high level of thematic maturity and cohesion; one which it doesn't follow through to the end. If you squint, maybe you’ll remember it as a solid “B-movie” game, or you could headcanon your way around its most questionable aspects and let its high notes stick with you as much as they deserve. In any case, it’ll be difficult to feel as if you’ve seen one of the genre’s brightest stars. [quote][url=https://steamproxy.com/steamstore/curator/41449676/]An international group of passionate writers and veteran reviewers, [b]Summit Reviews[/b] aims to deliver ethical, professional, and in-depth critique across Steam and beyond.[/url][/quote] [hr][i]A copy of the game was provided by Shiravune to Summit for the purposes of this review.[/i][/hr]