Kana: Little Sister

The Good
First off : I do not generally care for hentai or anime in general- the only reason I played this is because I tried 'Katawa Shouju,' enjoyed it, and saw this mentioned as another game I might like. Also, I like bishouju pics, when they're not all rapey. So I played 'Kana'.

'Like' may not be the right word for it: this thing left me raw for a week afterward: it's like a shot of straight bourbon to a man dying of thirst.Of the 6 possible endings: I've played only 2. I don't think I could bear to play the others yet: it would be too much to take at one sitting.

Note: I'm a trauma nurse and former combat medic: when I say something is 'too much to take at one setting', I feel I can speak with some authority. IF you're not emotionally tough, you may find it rough going, but it's worth every second.

It's a beautiful, bittersweet story- it put me in mind of the movie 'Casablanca', of all things. There are many games which reference 'duty' and 'courage', (often in the title) but they're in the context of blowing shit up (usually Nazis), but you've got a sick girl on dialysis who just wants to be normal, and a brother who wants to give her the world. I think the visual presentation is well done: the younger Kana is aggressively cute, and when she's an adult, she's drawn in a very subdued manner, something which makes her character more believable and lends the game more emotional impact, not to mention making her heartbreakingly beautiful.

When Yahtzee does his snarky video game reviews, he often comments about the idea that "Games Are Arrrrrt", and I think this is kinda what he has in mind. No zombies, no nazis, no Mario, no catgirls showing you their internal organs - just love, duty, and simple courage in the face of death. It doesn't get a whole lot more profound than that.

The Bad
Some of the dialogue and translations were a bit clunky: I get the feeling I was seeing cultural differences here though- things which make perfect sense to a Japanese citizen but are bewildering to a gaijin like myself. (I wonder if American games are sometimes confusing to the average non-English speaker?), the music didn't do much for me, though I get the impression that's a cultural thing - some of the plot devices were a bit contrived- maybe the writers were backing away from the controversial aspects a bit to make room for the rest of the story; straight-up incest certainly isn't a problem in other titles I've seen, but I think it may have been too much for this little story to cope with, given the

It's also a 'mature' game in the truest sense of the word; not for the sex (I suspect my youngest son has seen far worse), but for the lessons- a young person may not be able to understand some of the deeper topics. (though maybe they should)

The Bottom Line
It's an incredible love story told in the medium of a hentai game.

Please Get It - you may not like it, but I doubt you'll forget it.

The Good
First and foremost, I liked the touching story. It is very well thought-out, the plot will make you surprised many times and the story is serious. This is not just a hentai game with a good story, "Kana - Little Sister" is a great story with hentai scenes playing their role in the story development.

The graphics are good, music is good as well (it is in CD-audio format, so you can play it ouside of the game) and occasional sound effects add nicely to the game.

The replayability is great. Although there are only two main female characters (those that you can have sex with :) ), all endings are very different, suprising and original.

The Bad
The characters images don't have alpha-channel transparency, so they have somewhat noticable jarring edges when they are superimposed on the background (see the 2nd screenshot).

There are about 25 points in the game where you make decisions (during 5-10 hours of gameplay), but I would like to have a bit more control over my actions. However, it is understandable, as you can't have both interactivity and great story at the same time.

The Bottom Line
Playing the game is like being a part of a great story. This game can be played alone, with your SO or even with your opposite sex sibling. :-)

The Good
Man, where can I start with this one…

This may be the longest thing I ever write because this could be one of the most important games to ever appear in the West. It should be anyway. This game could potentially be the saviour of gaming over here, if only our developers would grow up a bit.

At the time of writing, Kana ~Little Sister~ has just one other review on Mobygames. That really says something about just how many people have played it. 99% of gamers over here have never even heard of this game. Computers aren't taken seriously as a form of entertainment outside of Japan, and so we have the lunacy of Doom being blamed for child murderers, and stupid games like Soldier of Fortune being classed as "mature". Kana is one of the only "mature" games I think I've ever played. I remember reading journalists and even games developers saying that fear is the only emotion we can successfully produce, I even said that myself in my System Shock 2 review!; how naive I was, and how unfortunate it is for the state of the industry over here that this is the general consensus among developers!

It took me 7 months to get this game. I'd never bought anything online before and had no idea how to do it (Kana isn't for sale in any shops in the West); not to mention I was a year too young to buy it legally and I still lived with my parents and if they saw it they'd have gone flippo. I eventually summoned the courage to ask a mate to buy it for me, which he did, albeit with some funny looks and thoughts that I might be a pervert. 2 weeks of agony finally resulted in the game arriving. A week later I'd completed one of the 6 endings and life has never looked the same since.

Kana ~Little Sister~ is absolutely wonderful if you hadn't already guessed. Currently, I don't think you'll find a review on the net that isn't positive. There aren't many games that you can say that about. Also nearly every review has the reviewer admitting he cried like a baby during many scenes in the game, so now it's my turn:

When I completed Kana ~Little Sister~, I cried, I felt physically sick, and I had to go for long walks in the dead of night for the next week just so I could sleep. I must do some volunteer work before I die. "Games can't do emotion yet", we said. Idiots.

OBVIOUSLY what you're all thinking right now is…"So Ed, what's the deal? Is this the best game ever then? I thought you said Deus Ex was! Are you admitting you're wrong?" -- The thing is it's impossible to compare. Kana has no animation, almost no sound effects, no voices, the game requires no skill, it hardly even requires you to touch the keyboard if you so desire, and there's loads of reading, and yet…I get choked up just thinking about how immersed I was in the whole experience, and how much I love the whole thing. Deus Ex, materially, has about 50 times the content. But I couldn't give a damn about any of the characters, and it's hardly had a positive effect on my life. I couldn't possibly say either game is better; although, whilst anyone who calls themselves a gamer should play Deus Ex, Kana will appeal to anyone who has a soul, gamer or not.

You may have noticed I've written quite a lot without explaining anything about the game whatsoever. 'Visual Novel' is a good word to use for Kana; gorgeously rendered CGs fill the screen and the text comes on top of them, this is accompanied with some music. There are 30 save slots. You can read profiles of all the major characters, relive any endings you've already seen, look again at all the CGs you've seen, and listen to the music separately. The CD even works in your hi-fi / stereo so you can listen to the music there too. What more needs to be said?

I am torn between trying not to spoil any of the game for you and telling you all of my wonderful experiences. I'll only give you one, at least it'll give you some idea of what's in store. This is one of a thousand beautiful moments from Kana…

You're walking home from school with Kana having just been to her parent-teacher night (your parents couldn't make it, and you were considered mature enough to cope). You're in your early teens and Kana is a few years younger at this point in the game. As you walk through the streets, Kana looks anxious. It is, after all, quite late and the sun is going down and she's not used to walking home from school at this time. She is glad of your presence though. After you chat a while, Kana spots a cat in the shadows. As the cat comes out into view you see it's extremely malnourished and has a broken leg; the atmosphere changes. Kana, who has the prospect of death as a part of her life, is at once sad and fascinated. She wants to follow the cat down the alley that it's just staggered into. You are unsure; despite her illness, Kana should still spend her life with a certain kind of innocence. Where there is innocence, surely there's hope as well? Reluctantly, you accept. You walk into the alley and after a bit of looking around, find the cat lying down outstretched. It's died. Kana cries. You tell her to back out of the alley. She does, and you then spend a moment making a grave for the cat and burying it. After that you leave and walk home in silence, probably with you feeling worse than Kana.

The endings are brilliant. Western developers seem unable to understand the importance of endings. A great ending can blind the player to the slow / bad bits of the game and make them remember the experience in a much more favourable light; although somehow I doubt that's what's happened here. A bad ending can have the opposite effect. Even my favourite games - Deus Ex, System Shock 2, and Grim Fandango - have endings that aren't very good. DE has 3 and they're not very good or long. SS2's is rubbish. GF's is ok but not long enough. None compare to Kana. The "normal" ending (an incredibly modest claim), is utterly heartrending and lasts at least 10 minutes with the credits. Ending #3 lasts nearly 40 and is just as good! You can even save the game mid-ending in case that seems too long to sit through. I haven't even seen all of them, I want to keep that air of mystery a little while longer.

Also, the songs in the game are fantastic and…

OH JUST BUY IT!! JUST BUY THE GAME!!!

The Bad
The fact that the game can reduce you to a gibbering wreck may be looked upon as a bad point. Other than that, the biggest problem in my opinion were the erotic scenes.

Those Japanese eh? What are they like? They make a wonderful game of power, depth and beauty and then they undermine it completely. The creators of "Kana" are D.O, which stands for 'Digital Objet' (I think 'Objet' means 'Object'. It means that in French at least) That name pretty much sums up the current attitude to 'hentai' in the West, although I will personally crucify anyone who calls Kana a hentai game. Even the blurb on the back of the box sounds like it's trying to sell incestuous porn rather than a beautiful love story. The front of the box has 'erotic' written on it, and this game is sold next to utter filth like 'Tsuki - Possession'.

The sex in the game, like all bishoujo games, is explicit. While Kana somehow benefits from raw sex, since this is a very raw and emotional game, the developers are cutting out a large percentage of people who would otherwise buy it. X-rated films never succeed in the box office and the same rule applies here. Some scenes seem to be trying to arouse you, this is ridiculous. I can't imagine anyone playing this game to be sexually stimulated and the scenes occasionally feel out of place. The sex is not usually happy sex anyway, it's not like in Seasons of Sakura, it's often ugly. It seems to be like a temporary release of painful emotions which neither person can express, like that movie Last Tango In Paris, than a union of love. That's not a bad thing, in fact it's very good, but why does it have to be written like a porn movie?

This is the best bishoujo / h****i game out there by a mile, so any bad criticisms would have to be leveled at the whole genre. One thing that they really need is smoother transition between music tracks. Kana frequently goes from a heartbreaking scene to a 'happy' one, and the music goes from melancholic to jaunty in a second. Your mood, however, hardly flips around like this. I don't know how they'd do it but we need music that smoothly changes and knows which scene has come before it, music that really plays to your emotions. Of course, all of these games suffer from this problem but it's more noticeable here because bad things can happen any second, and Kana frequently jumps forward in time too.

Then of course, there's the translation. While Kana is one of the best translated games I've seen yet, there are still misspellings and other mistakes. It didn't bother me much to be honest, but I really wish bishoujo games would come up with some more inspired dialogue. Some of it is quite good, but a lot is fairly formulaic, and there are too many cases where a character just repeats the person's name because they don't know what to say (you'll see what I mean). But like I said, they're all like this. Translated games currently suffer from stale dialogue, hopefully this will change.

The artwork is mostly good and sometimes very good like in many of the sex scenes, but occasionally quite bad. One CG in particular is bizzare in that Taka's hand is clearly coming out of Kana's chest. It's not supposed to look like that but when you see it, you'll see that the way it's been drawn was probably not an accident. The artist was probably hoping you wouldn't look too closely. Also, considering the amount of people in the world who draw Manga these days, you'd think someone...somewhere...would've figured out a way to draw a person's nose viewed face on. An X-Box version of "Kana" was in production but the graphics were redrawn to be even worse! Why?! Still, it was cancelled, which may have been for the best.

Also there are only about 25-30 points in the game where you have a choice to make. This may not be enough for some people. It didn't bother me at all.

That's about it. People have said they didn't like the way the characters stood out against the backgrounds so much. Once again, I didn't care.

The Bottom Line
It's highly unlikely I'll ever do a review this long again, but you never know. I'm aware that most of the games I've reviewed on this site I've raved about. This is because I only play good games, 'nuff said. Still, it's going to be hard for me to love a game more than this one. Kana ~Little Sister~ is by far the best game that you'll never play. I appreciate how hard it is to get hold of it but please try. I've been using the word "game" all the way through this review, only because there is no other word to use. But "game" is really stretching the limits of the English language a bit. Kana isn't a game, it's not something you play to have fun with. You're not really playing it for entertainment, it's there to have you ask yourself the fundamental questions again - Are you really living your life the way you want to? Why don't you help those who are worse off than you? Why don't you make something with your life, why stop trying?

Kana should always be remembered as one of the pinnacles of computer games to remind us that we potentially have a medium that is a better story teller and is more involving and moving than books, theatre, and TV and movies put together. D.O, despite their name, should have plaudits rained on them until they're so rich that their great grandchildren need never get a job.

Thank you for reading.

Now go away and buy the game.

[FOOTNOTE - 23/8/2005]

It's been almost two years since I wrote the above review and I've finally got all the endings. "Kana" is now finished for me. I've seen all the CGs, read all the words, heard all the music...

Going back to this game after you've left it for a long time is like going back to your childhood home and walking through all the rooms. You can feel the history in the air and all the memories coming back of the stupid things you did. For a moment, you're transported back to those times, and then you think of how different things will become and how in just a few short years you'll no longer be sleeping in that bed, or seeing that view from your window, or playing in that garden with those friends. It all becomes more precious because the outcome is already decided and you can just enjoy the moment without having to worry about anything. This is at the heart of bishoujo gaming and to a lesser extent, all gaming - when you play one for the first time, every second of the story is something you want to treasure because you know that great things will happen to the character you're playing and you can enjoy the ride without having to worry about doing things. Unlike life.

Bishoujo games are little dream worlds and they live or die by the extent that you are willing to throw yourself into them. I've kept my original review fairly unaltered because I want it as a record of what was going through my head the first time I finished the game. I hope I can be forgiven for failing to be objective at times because I feel my gushing emotion will tell you more about "Kana" than an emotion-free review could. I've added this little footnote because in retrospect I think made a mistake in saying "Kana will appeal to anyone...gamer or not". It won't. This is still a bishoujo game. It's a male fantasy. "Kana" is made for the sensitive college-age male. People like the protagonist of the story, in fact. Visual novels are roleplaying games in their purest form. You play them to do the same thing actors do when they act - to be psychologically transported into somewhere more exciting. Somewhere where you know great things will happen. The more you identify with Taka and the more you're prepared to be "in" the story, the more wonders you'll gleam from "Kana". The more you can do this, the more you will have a real sister, who you'll watch grow up, who you'll love, who will likely die.

This is why people talk about being 'healed' by "Kana". It makes them experience things that life isn't giving them the chance to do. It reminds them that they're not alone. It helps them deal with grief. It reminds them that, yes, love can be that strong, that incredible, that miraculous. And fundamentally, it gives them a place to pour out the potential for love that's inside them, and encourages them to love in this selfless way in real life. "Kana" may be crude at times, the translation may be diabolical at times, some of the CGs might be badly drawn, 'Miki' might have green hair and giant heaving breasts, but this is a game that helps people. It can teach. It can heal. It's art, and OK it's not Shakespeare, Beethoven, or Van Gogh, but it's done what every artist hopes to do - it's spoken to people. It's taken bits of their lives, messed around with them, and given them back. It shows us the agony of life and it shows us the ecstasy at the same time. In other words, it shows us the beauty. What other country but Japan could make ordering drinks at a cafe with someone you love seem like heaven on earth; and also make the pain of losing someone you love seem like heaven on earth? The pain is the happiness. The happiness is the pain. How am I supposed to explain it in words? You can't explain art. "Kana" burns itself onto your memory. It's unforgettable.

I know how pretentious this may sound. As if adding a footnote to a review wasn't pretentious enough. I'm not denying that "Kana" is related to all the masturbatory-fantasy games that it inevitably gets linked to anyway, but you only have to read other people's accounts of the game to see that I'm not alone in being so affected. In the end, that's all that matters - what YOU get from the experience.

I just hope that all the people out there who need the experience are going to find this.