Say It In Red (Say It In Red )

Good Morning, Dear Readers.

Today we present to you our final episode covering the Umineko no naku koro ni series, on Volume 8: Twilight of the Golden Witch. We've enjoyed taking this journey with you and even though there is a bit further left to go, we're already looking forward to the path ahead. Please, join us for our final Umineko tea party as we close the lid on the game board and lock it firmly.

As a warning to all listeners, this episode has massive spoilers for some of the deepest mysteries of Umineko - Please listen only when you are ready, and prepare yourselves accordingly. This includes discussions of the culprit's identity and even answers to mysteries not resolved in volume 7.

Volume 8 carries on from the very end of Volume 7 - Battler presents a game for Ange, one in which she was able to visit Rokkenjima in 1986 and experience the family conference there firsthand. The halloween party, the return of the Witch's Gold, the kindness of her family... none of it is what Ange remembered, none of it what she expected, and none of it rings true to her. As she questions her older brother and demands to know why he's showing her things which couldn't possibly be true, a single black cat opens a window and allows Ange to explore the island as she so desperately craves.

A Quiz tournament, vociferous and drunken flirtation, apocalyptic piracy, Caprine Insulaphagy, and a library heist all unfold as the final game nears its end. After spending 12 years waiting, searching, and pelted with the speculations of strangers, Ange has a single choice left to make. That choice, which determines which of Umineko's two endings you receive, will direct the course of her life in the future of 1998, and far beyond.


As a reminder, our next and final episode on Umineko (for now) is our Q&A episode which we'll be recording just a few days after the release of this episode! You can send your questions to us on twitter @sayitinredpod via DM, message us on patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred, or email us directly at sayitinred.podcast@gmail.com! Send us questions about Umineko, about our theories and ideas, about the When They Cry series as a whole, about the podcast in general, or any other visual novel and mystery related queries and we'll answer as many as we can on the air!

Thank you again for your support, and please remember to follow us and leave a review if you have a chance!



Content Warnings for this Episode
General Content Warnings for: Murder, death, child abuse and exploitation, Family trauma, Violence, Fantastical Turning-people-into-candy-and-eating-them cannibalism, dismemberment, gore, and violent murder by shotgun.
1:14:00 to 1:27 :34 - Discussing the solution to the mini-mystery game within volume 8
1:21:00 - The statement of the mini-mystery game culprits
1:47:35 - Forced Cannibalism mention
2:22:05 - Suicide and Suicide ideation

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

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!

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.

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

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! 

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.

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

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.

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!

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! 

Have you ever felt the prickling sense of a pair of eyes gazing at you from a place unseen? Have you ever had daydreams so vivid and visceral you could remember the touch and smell of them afterwards? While sleeping, do you sometimes dream in full color? Do you believe in the existence of God? Do you live in a small shipping container repurposed into a cluttered room filled with fast food trash and pristine anime waifu figurines?

This week, Sara and Runa welcome special guest Meowgon to help them navigate the first five chapters of Chaos;Head Noah. In this horror visual novel, we inhabit the perspective of a truly repulsive and pathetic teenage otaku boy who fills his daily life with MMO  powergaming,  2chan trawling, and fantasizing about his favorite 2D girls. Takumi does go to school, however, according to a strict schedule he's set out for himself to ensure that he achieves the exact minimum number of attendance days in order to graduate. He also goes out into public, to netcafes or manga shops or a game store to pre-order new Seira-tan figures. If only he had simply never gone outside, maybe he wouldn't now be pursued by the police or know quite so much about the recent series of brutal, horrifying murders taking place throughout Shibuya.

Chaos;Head Noah is a remake and update of the original Chaos;Head, originally released in 2008 and only now available in 2022 with an official English version. The game is part of Nitro Plus's Science Adventure series, which also includes Chaos;Child and Steins;Gate, though Chaos;Head stands on its own as an individual and unrelated work to the other two in continuity. The game follows the events of a series of bizarre and shocking murders taking place in Shibuya, dubbed the New Generation Madness by popular media and quickly taking hold as a prime topic of discussion on message boards such as 2chan (called @chan in the game). Takumi, a shut-in with tremendous social anxiety and a rancid view of the world (and women in particular), finds himself caught up in the mystery of the NewGen murders as he witnesses the third victim's body just after they've been killed... and, as it happens, he also received images of that murder from a mysterious chatroom lurker a full day before the killing took place. From there, Takumi's mental state, physical health, and grasp on reality begin to decline. The situation isn't helped when he realizes that the person who sent those images of the murder, images that couldn't have possibly existed a full 24 hours before the murder took place, sent them from the exact terminal Takumi uses at the netcafe and at the exact time he was there the day before the murder took place.

Things go downhill for Taku from there.

As a note to listeners who want to read along with us, Chaos;Head Noah is a horror game with a long list of graphic, disturbing, and potentially anxiety-inducing topics. While we mention a few of them in our episode, because of the wide variety of delusions present in the game and the breadth of content included, it's impossible for us to list all of the things that come up in even just these first 5 chapters. We encourage you to seek out a list of content warnings before playing.


As always, if you enjoy our episodes, please rate and review us wherever you listen to podcasts! You can also find bonus episodes at our patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred and follow us on twitter at sayitinredpod.


Content Warnings for this Episode:

General warning for murder, death, stabbing, unreality, discussion of assorted weird ableism, and gore

00:45:30, 01:49:30 to 01:52:00:  Group Suicide, discussion of moments prior to group suicide/murder

00:46:30 to 00:48:00:  Transphobia, body horror, murdered newborns, and mutilation

00:42:20:  Body Horror 

Have you ever felt the prickling sense of a pair of eyes gazing at you from a place unseen? Are you able to instantly locate the sound of a cellphone ringing anywhere in your room? Do you sometimes see faces in the patterns of woodgrain or on a popcorn ceiling? And, most importantly, has a pink haired girl every broken your arm or hurled you from a building? If so, you may be entitled to damages. 

This month, to close out 2022 and our coverage of Chaos;Head Noah, Sara, Runa, and returning guest Meowgon dig deep to excavate the remainder of the main story, play through the alternate endings, and experience the true horror of the Noah experience: The Girls' routes. After following Taku's growing paranoia and increasing entanglement in the NewGen murder cases and the vast conspiracy surrounding di-swords and their wielders, we arrive with him at the top of a skyscraper overlooking the scramble crossing as he finally lays eyes on his own sword. A mild earthquake has somehow caused a record number of casualties, Nanami has been kidnapped, and Rimi has vanished as Taku stands above a crowd of thousands, looks out across the crossing, and reaches for the outline of a di-sword. Unfortunately for him, it will be almost four more chapters until he claims it.

Chaos;Head Noah is a remake and update of the original Chaos;Head, originally released in 2008 and only now available in 2022 with an official English version. In this half of our coverage, we'll cover the last five chapters of the core game of Chaos;Head Noah, the additional Crying Sky ending, all of the Girls' Routes and their associated endings, and then the "Blue Sky" ending added to the Noah version, unlocked once you complete every other available ending in the game. After the earthquake that closed out Chapter 5, reports pour in of massive casualties with over 300 injured and over 100 dead, all from a simple 5.6 earthquake which centralized most of its damage exclusively within Shibuya. Taku, however, has far more dire things to worry about as Shogun has sent him a "present" - Nanami's severed right hand, still clutching her cell phone, and wrapped up carefully in a cardboard box. From there, things only get worse for Taku: A mysterious caller tries to force him to manifest his di-sword, his classmates sneer at him after he's humiliated on a live nationwide broadcast, more NewGen murders occur, Sena tries to kill him for inadvertently creating the formula that allows a mind control device to function, and worst of all he tries to go back home. In the end, no matter what path you take through the story, Shibuya lies in ruins.

 As a note to listeners who want to read along with us, Chaos;Head Noah is a horror game with a long list of graphic, disturbing, and potentially anxiety-inducing topics. While we mention a few of them in our episode, because of the wide variety of delusions present in the game and the breadth of content included, it's impossible for us to list all of the things that come up in even just these first 5 chapters. We encourage you to seek out a list of content warnings before playing.


As always, if you enjoy our episodes, please rate and review us wherever you listen to podcasts! You can also find bonus episodes at our patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred and follow us on twitter at sayitinredpod.


Content Warnings for this Episode:

General warning for murder, death, stabbing, unreality, mind control, discussion of assorted weird ableism, and gore.

00:36:20: Body Horror, Corpse Mutilation
00:53:30 to 01:00:00: Mind Control, Unreality, Vomiting, Infant Death, Mutilation, Suicide
01:09:00: Suicide Attempts
01:36:00 to 01:40:00: Body Horror, Mutilation, Graphic Violence, Suicide
01:50:30 to 01:52:45: Sexual Assault
01:53:00: Body Horror/Impalement
02:20:40 to 02:31:00: Discussion of the Incest romance route

What secrets lie in the corners of our dreams? What shape would our pain and trauma take if someone were to peer inside our most vulnerable thoughts and nightmares? How do you feel about cops doing magical girl poses in order to read your mind and judge you for it?

This week, Sara and Runa set off on the pulse-pounding adventure of AI: The Somnium Files - Nirvana Initiatives (2022) and reunite with some of their favorite, and less favorite, characters from the original AI game. The sequel opens 6 years after the events of the first game, following an 18-year-old Mizuki with Aiba embedded in her left eye as she investigates a mysterious corpse... the right half of a victim's body, laid out cleanly across a stadium green. Not only is this freshly dead corpse alarming, it triggers a memory in Mizuki of another incident - six years ago, when the left half of this same victim appeared before her in a studio while filming a quiz show. Both halves of the same victim were cut cleanly at the molecular level, and both halves, despite being found over six years apart, were given a time of death less than a few days before their discovery. To find the culprit behind these Half Body Serial Murders, and perhaps to find the missing Kaname Date in the process, Mizuki tracks down the ABIS investigator who took charge of the original HB case investigation 6 years ago - Ryuki. A fresh recruit to ABIS who voluntarily gave up his left eye to make space for his AI-ball companion, Tama, Ryuki then recounts the details of his investigation to Mizuki and tells her everything he found, learned, and went through six years ago...

Although AI: Nirvana Initiative is a sequel to AI: The Somnium Files, the game is designed to give new players an easy entry into the series and you don't necessarily need to have played the first game in order to keep up with Nirvana Initiative. That being said, as we've covered the first game previously on our show, this episode will contain multiple spoilers for AI: The Somnium Files including some mentions of the true culprit of that game and several key plot points there. Please be advised and definitely go check out our AI:tSF episode before listening to this one if you're curious about that game as well!

Thank you for your support of Say it in Red and as always, you can find both more information about the show as well as bonus content at patreon.com/sayitinred. You can also follow the hosts at dollsncrafts on twitter and youtube, cacklemancy on twitter and cohost, and find games made by Runa at runa-liore.itch.io as well as on steam.

Content Warnings for this Episode:
General content warning for Dismemberment, mutilation, and body horror
02:24:00 to 02:25:20 - Discussion of Eye Trauma and injury

What answers lie at the end of our dreams? Who is the culprit behind the HB Serial Murder case? Can Mizuki stop the Nirvana Initiative? And, by the way, Dear listener...

Are you a Frayer?

This week, Sara and Runa run headlong through the second half of AI: The Somnium Files - Nirvana Initiative (2022) and finally unravel (Or perhaps re-tangle?) the twist of this story. We pick up on the right side of the flowchart this time, following Mizuki as she hears about the details of the case from 6 years ago and also sees Ryuki muttering the name "Dahlia Boat" to himself in a highly distressed version of his Somnium. What follows is a winding and perplexing investigation as Mizuki stumbles upon the right half of each corpse we saw in Ryuki's path previously, encounters Tearer - the culprit - and... hold on, that scene felt a bit strange, didn't it?

Have you noticed, by now, that some of the transitions between these scenes... they don't seem quite right, do they? The flow of night into day, the actions character's take, Mizuki's rapport with Aiba - These aren't very consistent in her side of the game, are they?
What's really going on here? What's hiding in the corner of our vision, just out of sight. Who really killed Tokiko... and who killed Tearer, the culprit of the Half Body Serial Murders?

 Although AI: Nirvana Initiative is a sequel to AI: The Somnium Files, the game is designed to give new players an easy entry into the series and you don't necessarily need to have played the first game in order to keep up with Nirvana Initiative. That being said, as we've covered the first game previously on our show, this episode will contain multiple spoilers for AI: The Somnium Files including some mentions of the true culprit of that game and several key plot points there. Please be advised and definitely go check out our AI:tSF episode before listening to this one if you're curious about that game as well!

Thank you for your support of Say it in Red and as always, you can find both more information about the show as well as bonus content at patreon.com/sayitinred. You can also follow the hosts at dollsncrafts on twitter and youtube, cacklemancy on twitter and cohost, and find games made by Runa at runa-liore.itch.io as well as on steam.

Content Warnings for this episode: 
General content warning for Dismemberment, mutilation, and body horror 
Discussion of Ableism and Ableist trope

Don't we all need a vacation sometime? Isn't now the perfect moment to take a week off, get away from our busy lives, and go deep down beneath the surface of the ocean? Isn't is relaxing to spend time, trapped in a collapsing underwater amusement park, eating fried tuna and harboring mysterious 4th-dimensional beings in the back of our consciousness? LeMu vacation packages are now available, and don't worry - despite the imminent collapse of the facility, you'll have plenty of time to unwind.

Note: Please check this week's content warnings at the end of this description.

This week, Sara and Runa dive deep underwater and hang out in a subaquatic theme park in one of Uchikoshi's previous works, Ever17: The Out of Infinity (2002). in May of 2017, a group of strangers all become trapped within the deep sea amusement park LeMu as an unknown disaster causes catastrophic pressure leaks and widespread system failures. Despite their dire circumstances, the park's geothermal generators remain online and the system's AI is able to keep everything running smoothly for now. In seven days, the entire facility will collapse to the ocean floor... but until then, they've got plenty of time to play around this abandoned amusement park. Naturally, the threat of not one but two mysterious viruses is a slight cause for concern. There's also the matter of the suspicious pharmaceutical corporation that funds the theme park, as well as its top secret ocean floor research laboratory titled "HIMMEL" or Heaven, but really it's not too bad! We've got seven whole days! Surely, someone will rescue us  in that time. Surely, nothing bad will happen before then. Surely, we won't intentionally lure an extra-dimensional entity who is capable of hopping between perspectives and influencing the people he attaches to.

Ever17 is, in some ways, a traditional dating sim that allows you to choose between one of two protagonists (Takeshi and The Kid/Shonen) and it utilizes a simple point-based affection system to determine your route and ending. The trappings of a dating sim conceal an intricate puzzle box, however, and by the end you'll be hopping back and forth between characters rapidly, trying to discover the truth behind The Kid's missing memories, figuring out what year it really is, and learning why there's always still one life sign remaining in the facility even after everyone has seemingly evacuated. Ever17's themes, structure, and plot elements also connect to the most recent Uchikoshi work we've covered - AI: Nirvana Initiative, so we recommend listeners check that out before listening to this episode as well!

As always, if you enjoy our episodes please give us a rating and write a brief review wherever you listen to podcasts - we don't have an advertising budget so your reviews and recommendations are one of the main ways new people find out about our show! Also if you'd like to hear more content or find out how to support us, you can visit our patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred!


Content Warnings for this Episode:

Discussions of Sexual Assault, Victim Blaming, Sexual Violence, Coercion: 00:53:30 to 1:03:00

Major Spoilers for the game Remember11: 02:50:45 to 02:35:15

Dear listeners, do you remember your high school years? Do you ever think back on those days, in the 9th inning of Summer as school was just waiting for you at home plate? Were you ever caught up in the rush of young love and the discovery of your sexuality, wondering if you dared try to steal second base? Have you ever wondered what would happen if you asked a podcaster who knows less than nothing about baseball to write not one, but two separate opening gags for a baseball-themed episode?

This week, Sara and Runa tackle (which i don' t think is a thing you do in baseball) the absolutely delightful Butterfly Soup 2 (2022), a sequel to the Butterfly Soup visual novel we covered in our 25th episode. We return to Oakland, California, primarily in 2008 and 2009, to follow our four young queer teens as they struggle through high school, navigate their difficult family lives, process the overwhelming world around them, and get up to a lot of baseball and baseball-adjacent shenanigans. Once again, we follow Diya, Min, Akarsha, and Noelle through their days as they play Mario Golf, film group project skits, play elaborate games of gay chicken, discover useful tips and tricks to confront their internal biases and think about gender, and think about the cataclysmic gulf between their lives and the lives of their parents and families. We left these kids last time after Diya and Min had reunited after many years apart, finally confronted their feelings for one another, started dating, and got all four of the main characters banned for life from the ice cream and snow cone shop near campus. In this direct sequel, we begin by following Akarsha's rapid descent into distraught gay turmoil as she realizes she's falling hard for Noelle, who might even be straight for all she knows! What's more, Akarsha adamantly refuses to put herself at risk and expose any vulnerability, which makes her plans to seduce Noelle... a bit obtuse. Meanwhile, Diya and Min are dating happily and spending every day together in gay joy, apart from the moments when Diya tries, and fails, to connect with her own mother in even simple ways and struggles to even conceive of a day when she might come out to her. Min, on the other hand, still struggles with the abuse of her father, fears that she might fall into similar patterns of outrage and anger, and the difficulty of confronting intracommunity racism and bigotry. Noelle takes a trip to Taiwan for her grandmother's funeral and, while there, confronts the distance between herself, her parents, the rest of her family, and a culture she struggles to grasp even when she's reaching for it with both arms. Then, to make matters worse, it seems that Akarsha has saddled her with some...unnecessary feelings. How will any of this go, and most importantly: Will they win their no stakes baseball game against another high school club!?

As always, if you enjoy our episodes please give us a rating and write a brief review wherever you listen to podcasts - we don't have an advertising budget so your reviews and recommendations are one of the main ways new people find out about our show! Also if you'd like to hear more content or find out how to support us, you can visit our patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred!

Content Warnings for this Episode:
General content warnings for homophobia, parental and familial trauma, and some very rough stuff surrounding relationships with ones parents.
00:34:20 to 00:35:30 - Discussion of racism and racist harassment

Paris. A city full of historic architecture, beautiful filming locations, priceless art, and at least one group of high-class chaotic queer thieves. Dear Listener, if you were desperate, would you join them in the Parisian underworld? Would you  risk your life each and every day to pull off bigger and bolder heists? And how many hours would you spend petting Elizabeth the Cat?

This week, Sara and Runa are joined by their friend Rawles who guides them both through the life and unfortunate death of the mobile dating sim app, Lovestruck. Having closed down in 2022, Lovestruck is no longer available to play in its original form but fortunately fans have archived and preserved all of its dozens upon dozens of romance routes. The breadth of Lovestruck is far broader than we could ever hope to cover in a single episode, and the individual stories within the app are often longer than the games we've covered on this show. Today our focus is primarily on Queen of Thieves, a delightful queer dating sim starring a fresh art school graduate who gets swept up in the high-stakes world of heists, forgeries, intrigue, and flirtation with the notorious thieving group, the Gilded Poppy. With two women and four men available for the female protagonist to date, and each route spanning several hours and containing dozens of gorgeous CG scenes, it's easy for just about anyone to find a route they might love in Queen of Thieves. To read it now in 2023, however, you have to watch a video playthrough - with the app itself closed down, there's no way currently to play any of the Lovestruck dating sims in their original form.

As we discuss Lovestruck, we also take a more detailed look at games preservation, the fate of games and creative work controlled by corporate profit motives, and the possibilities for future game preservation, marketing, and dating sim development. This episode represents something bittersweet and in more than one flavor... Lovestruck may be gone, but all of its stories and the wonderful writing and queer character relationships still exist in archival form. Even so, it's hard to feel entirely satisfied and content after seeing such rich potential and knowing how rare and fragile such opportunities are for queer dating sim developers in the current games market.

 As always, if you enjoy our episodes please give us a rating and write a brief review wherever you listen to podcasts - we don't have an advertising budget so your reviews and recommendations are one of the main ways new people find out about our show! Also if you'd like to hear more content or find out how to support us, you can visit our patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred! 

All of our reading this week was made possible by the LS Salvation Squad! Check them out on tumblr and youtube for a full archive of the Lovestruck App's stories!

Dear Listeners, 
Have you ever found yourself at the end of a tiresome day with scarcely an hour for personal leisure? Have you ever sought, to seemingly no avail, a story that can slake the particular cravings of your heart? Most importantly, do you like Visual Novels? We certainly hope, since this episode finds us talking about nearly a dozen. 

It's time for our inaugural Indie Game Compilation Track episode, in which Sara, Runa, and returning guest KT Kelly discuss 11 different Indie Visual Novels (alongside a couple of RPGmaker horror entries). We want to not only showcase the amazing breadth of work coming from Indie developers but also talk about some of our favorite games, many of which touch on subjects, characters, and experiences we rarely get the chance to see in games from larger studios. You can find a list of each game we played below and we encourage you to play along with us, and go searching for other Indie visual novels as well! Our goal with these compilation track episodes, which we're hoping to do at least twice each year from hereon out, is to not only highlight some of the incredible indie VNs we've played recently but also to get people excited about the things happening in Indie Visual Novel development spaces and encourage you to go look through itch, find and follow creators, and discover small indie games that you can love with all your heart.

Most of these games are free and if not, fairly cheap (though please tip the creators if you are able), and you can read most of them inside of an hour or two. In fact, we want YOU, dear listener, to pick at least one of these games to play after you listen, and then tell us about it at sayitinredpod on twitter! 

Here's the full list of games we played, alongside their timestamps and creator social pages:

• Amelie: 00:03:10
  Game Page: https://twoandahalfstudios.itch.io/amelie
  Creator(s): Two and a Half Studios | https://twitter.com/twohalfstudios
• A Year of Springs: 00:06:40
  Game Page: https://npckc.itch.io/a-year-of-springs
  Creator(s): npckc | https://twitter.com/npckc
• Hanna, We're Going to School: 00:21:12
  Game Page: https://kastelpls.itch.io/hanna-school
  Creator(s): Kastel | https://twitter.com/kastelwrites
• Apparition: 00:28:40
  Game Page: https://cartyrs.itch.io/apparition
  Creator(s): Carter | https://twitter.com/cartyrs
• Cute Bite 00:31:40
  Game Page: https://hanakogames.itch.io/cute-bite
  Creator(s): Hanako Games | https://twitter.com/hanakogames
• Re: Kinder - 00:40:10
  VGPerson Translation: https://vgperson.com/games/
  Creator(s):  Parun
• Don't Toy with Me: 00:55:00
  Game Page: https://karmic-punishment.itch.io/dont-toy-with-me
  Creator(s): Karma | https://twitter.com/karmicpun_dev
• Milk inside off a bag of Milk: 00:57:40
  Game Page: https://nikita-kryukov.itch.io/pmkm
  Creator(s): Nikita Kryukov | https://twitter.com/nkt_krkv
• Us Lovely Corpses: 01:08:20
  Game Page: https://dmarielicea.itch.io/uslovelycorpses
  Creator(s): D. Marie Licea | https://twitter.com/dmarielicea
• Missed Messages: 01:18:45
  Game Page: https://zephyo.itch.io/missed-message
  Creator(s): Angela He | https://twitter.com/zephybite
• 77 Oleander: 01:27:00
  Note: Runa was absent for this discussion, from the emotion of [Frozen in a Spotlight]
  Game Page: https://runa-liore.itch.io/77-oleander
  Creator(s): Runa

Please check the content warnings for each game before playing.

Other games Mentioned during this episode:

• Dead Girl's Notebook, by Aria
  https://aria-of-flowers.itch.io/dead-girls-notebook
• Long Live the Queen, by Hanako Games
  https://www.hanakogames.com/llq.shtml
  
  

Shhh... keep still. Listen closely. Between the gasps of the snowstorm and the crowding underbrush, there's something lurking. Look, just up ahead - those two shadows are moving deeper into the forest. What could they be doing there, so far from the village and so long after dusk? Where could they be going, so lightly dressed in the midst of a blizzard? And most of all, do you think... maybe, they might be... girlfriends?

This week, Sara and Runa visit the snowy mountainside village of Eysenfeld in Studio Élan's Heart of the Woods, a yuri visual novel featuring supernatural romance, mystery, and some dramatic gay action. Our story unfolds as an internet broadcasting duo, Tara and Madison, make their way to a remote village in search of persuasive paranormal proof. Just before they departed, however, Madison declared that she would be leaving the show after this trip, taking her best friend and long time collaborator Tara by surprise. Before they can discuss the winding tension between them, they arrive at Eysenfeld's only train station and meet their host, Morgan - far more subdued and deadpan than either of them expected for one of Tara's ardent fans. Eysenfeld as a whole is far from what they anticipated, between the prickly reception they received from mayor Evelyn, Morgan's mother, and the dubious glances they get from all the townsfolk. Morgan is resolute, though, and offers to show them the sort of definitive proof of paranormal activity that Tara has searched for all her life. And she does. 
And now, this investigation has gone from a sleepy retreat to a fight for survival... one that Madison is about to lose. 

Heart of the Woods (2019) is a delightful queer visual novel featuring not one but two romances and a cast of quickly endearing characters. While there are some loose threads and pacing issues at times, this game is the perfect thing to get you thinking about significantly cooler weather, queer community, and ghost romance this pride month. 

You can find more information about Heart of the Woods, along with Studio Élan's other work, on their website at vnstudioelan.com!


 As always, if you enjoy our episodes please give us a rating and write a brief review wherever you listen to podcasts - we don't have an advertising budget so your reviews and recommendations are one of the main ways new people find out about our show! Also if you'd like to hear more content or find out how to support us, you can visit our patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred! 

The best proportion of coffee grounds to hot water for a single pour-over cup is roughly 1:16 by weight, or roughly two tablespoons to twelve ounces by volume. Scales are recommended for precision and large batches, but for a single cup I usually find that I'm fine just estimating and pouring the water slowly over the medium-coarse ground coffee so that it blooms and froths nicely. After that, it's just a matter of waiting a few quiet moments as the coffee drips down into the mug. It's a great time for contemplation in the morning, think back to that warm summer day a few weeks ago when you died in a horrific accident and then entered into a surreal weekly elimination tournament for the stake of your ongoing existence.

This month, and next as well, Runa and Sara are joined by returning podcast guests KT Kelly and Mari to discuss Fatal Twelve (2018), a yuri death game and visual novel focusing on twelve people who have already died. We follow Rinka, a second-year high school student at a prestigious all-girls school who hops on the train one morning only to immediately burn to death in a violent explosion. She awakens soon after as if it were a dream, but disjointed memories and the sudden appearance of mysterious books full of ornate cards aren't often kind auspices. The next week, at midnight on Sunday, she drifts back to sleep and enters a surreal space full of suspended gears and twelve podiums each arranged at the twelve numerals across the face of a massive clock. A small girl greets her and explains that she has most assuredly died, and now she's engaged in the process of Divine Selection - a contest to determine which of the twelve unfortunate souls here will get to live on, and which of those must return to the moment of their death and forgo the possibility of a future. This would all be a bit easier to navigate, perhaps, if Rinka's dear friend Miharu, a gorgeous girl who clearly has a tremendous and devastating crush on Rinka, wasn't also standing right beside her as a fellow contestant in this Death Game.

In this episode we covered the first five weeks of Fatal Twelve's story, seeing characters meet, clash, get eliminated, become racist caricatures, grow, completely miss the obvious signs that lesbianism is all around them, and learn more about the strange process of Divine Selection in which they're all entangled. As she continues learning about other contestants and trying to make headway in the game, Rinka starts to question the merit of her own life and whether she truly deserves to live if it means stealing the possibility of a future from the other contestants. Even more unsettling, there seems to be more behind this game than simply a benevolent goddess's whim to give one person another chance... Is life the dream from which death awakens us, or have we been made to dream of death to hasten its arrival?

As always, if you enjoy our episodes please give us a rating and write a brief review wherever you listen to podcasts - we don't have an advertising budget so your reviews and recommendations are one of the main ways new people find out about our show! Also if you'd like to hear more content or find out how to support us, you can visit our patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred!  

Our memories are often strongly tied to a sense of Place, the confluence of sights and sounds and scents and pathways that take us to the heartwrenching, the familiar, or the uncanny. The setting of our youth, particularly our high school days, can often evoke profound nostalgia and pathos - The halls of our old school during the culture festival, the café where we worked back then, the abandoned warehouse by the harbor, the amazing view from Tokyo Tower, the heart-pounding moment of our first confession near Tokyo Tower, the terrorist attack we thwarted at Tokyo Tower... Can we not all relate to these universal constants?

This month, as with last month, Runa and Sara are joined by returning podcast guests KT Kelly and Mari to discuss Fatal Twelve (2018), a yuri death game and visual novel focusing on twelve people who have already died. In these final weeks of Fatal Twelve we see the cast dwindle until only Miharu and Rinka remain at the very end... along with some surprising new introductions. Through the Divine Selection process they reverse the death of a friend, confront their own uncertainties, and reach more than a few different potential endings. At the end of these twelve weeks, Rinka discovers the true nature of Divine Selection and, in some cases, that is the very last thing she ever learns.

This episode covers the remainder of Fatal Twelve, starting with Week 6 and continuing through all of the game's endings. Please keep in mind that this is the second of our Fatal Twelve episodes, so make sure you listen to our previous episode in order to keep up with the full story. Also, as our hosts discovered through the process of playing this game, Fatal Twelve is a rare instance in which we will make a platform recommendation: the Nintendo Switch release, at least at the present time, has additional scenes, CGs, and content not present in the PC/Steam release including several key emotional scenes involving Miharu and Rinka among others.

As always, if you enjoy our episodes please give us a rating and write a brief review wherever you listen to podcasts - we don't have an advertising budget so your reviews and recommendations are one of the main ways new people find out about our show! Also if you'd like to hear more content or find out how to support us, you can visit our patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred!   

Content Warnings for this episode:

General Content discussion of Suicide & Self-Harm throughout
General discussion of Terrorism & Terrorist Bombings throughout

Consider the city of our Future, the hyperconnectivity of high rise corporate data centers and the grungiest retrofitted back alley """studio""" apartments you can imagine. A city which, in many ways, resembles a shining new PC case fitted around a collage of older parts ranging from a smoke and dirt encrusted motherboard to the newest GPU that barely hums under the strain of eight hour video renders. Would you enjoy your life there, in a cyberpunk city where we carry on all the problems of the modern day and amplify them with new and exciting dangers and complexities? Would you be content, waking up in Love Shore each morning, even if you weren't fully human?

This month, Sara and Runa cover the recently released Love Shore (2023), a queer dating sim centered around two protagonists: Sam and Farah. We meet them both as they're finishing a prison sentence, but prison is a very different thing for them —  they're S.Humans, after all, and rather than being confined to a cell with a thin bunk and toilet they're instead frozen in an induced state of paralysis as their mechanical bodies are rendered inactive... and their minds left to wander for two agonizing years. When they return to Love Shore, their old lives and old flames are waiting for them. Farah immediately finds her best friend, Talia, then a friendly bartender Maya, and on her way out of the hospital crosses paths with Jo, a mysterious investigator and spyware salesperson. At the end of the night though, she's greeted by a voicemail from her old doctor, Imani, who urgently pleads with Farah to find her and help her as quickly as she can. Meanwhile, Sam wakes up to his friend and former driver, Vivian, rapping at his door. After she leaves him with coffee and a welcome back to the city, Sam instantly trips back into his ex, Aziz, and then later his former co-worker Conrad. At the end of the night though, Sam hears a commotion in the shop where he works and finds a mysterious and beautiful man, Alyosha, shot through the chest and bleeding on the floor. These relationships will pull Farah and Sam into different intrigues and plots coursing through the lifeblood of Love Shore, and possibly into conflict with one another. Whether they find romance, friendship, abandonment, or death, they'll do so in the shadow of the city's bright neon lights and, often, the gaze of literal Gods walking among them.

As always, if you enjoy our episodes please give us a rating and write a brief review wherever you listen to podcasts - we don't have an advertising budget so your reviews and recommendations are one of the main ways new people find out about our show! Also if you'd like to hear more content or find out how to support us, you can visit our patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred!   

It's that time of year in the Northern Hemisphere, a time when chill autumn pushes us from the sidewalks into warm cafes for a thickly spiced latte and a hearty baked treat to ward us against the cold. Far to the South, spring arrives and the cackling trees and warming sun make a streetside coffee shop a delightful stop for an iced coffee and a delicate pastry as you pass the time. Is there anything so versatile, so timeless, and so persistent in our cities as coffee and the pleasantry of a soothing drink on a hard day? Yes, in fact.
It's Death.

In this Halloween special edition of Say it in Red, Sara and Runa are joined by returning guest and featured Melbourne Correspondent Bismuth who guides them, their Australian Psychopomp, through the laneways and backrooms of Necrobarista (2020). The game begins as a wayward and tired millennial, Kishan, wanders into a cafe and finds himself surrounded by a lively cast of people almost as odd as his present condition.  Kishan is dead, freshly so, and while coming to grips with his mortality and surroundings he also gets to know Maddy, the owner of The Terminal - a cafe that serves as the liminal space where spirits of the dead can linger for just 24 hours before passing on to whatever awaits them after the mortal world. Maddy is also a Necromancer and the cafe's current head barista, hence the title, and she spends much of her time wrangling drinks as Ashley, a teenager obsessed with robotics and caffeine and communism, fiddles with complex and paranormal machinery around the building. All the while Maddy's former boss and mentor, Chay, tries to keep everything in balance and everyone happy even as Kishan plummets into an existential crisis and paranormal debt collector, Ned Kelly (yes, the historical Ned Kelly) arrives to remind Maddy of what The Terminal owes. You see, people are only supposed to stay in the cafe for 24 hours before moving on, but Maddy and Chay aren't fond of kicking people out or keeping a stopwatch running for each and every customer. They've let far too many people stay far longer than a single day, and that Council of Death needs those hours back to preserve the balance. One way or another, the debt of time has to be paid even as those in the Terminal grapple with the weight of grief and loss seeping in around them.

In addition to this discussion of Necrobarista, Bismuth prepares an Australian Slang quiz for Runa and Sara - let's stick around to see just how many times our hosts are fooled by fake terms, misdirections, and how often they manage to mangle the meaning of this Melbourne terminology.

As always, if you enjoy our show please consider rating us and leaving a review wherever you listen to podcasts! Our patreon (at patreon.com/sayitinred) also hosts a growing number of bonus episodes, released around the second week of each month, so subscribe now to get access to even more Say it in Red to see you through the autumnal (or vernal) season.

Content Warnings for this episode:
In-depth discussions of death, mortality, and loss occur throughout this episode. 

Dear Listeners,
The days are darkening swiftly, at least for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere. Spring's Tide and Winter's Tidings wash over the world as the year draws to a close, and limited time sales all entice you to buy this year's biggest AAA games at a rare moment of discount. In this corridor of time that is so often filled with scarce moments of calm, why not take a moment to relax with a smaller game, perhaps even one that you may already own? Today, we're inviting you to check out the vast space of indie Visual Novels, and we'll even tell you about seven of them that we've played and enjoyed recently.

This episode is the second in our Indie Game Compilation Track series, in which Sara and Runa explore the depth and breadth of indie visual novels, covering games that might be too short for a full episode but still warrant our full attention and praise. 
We want to not only showcase the amazing breadth of work coming from Indie developers but also talk about some of our favorite games, many of which touch on subjects, characters, and experiences we rarely get the chance to see in games from larger studios. You can find a list of each game we played below and we encourage you to play along with us, and go searching for other Indie visual novels as well! 

In these Indie Game Compilation Track episodes, which we do at least twice each year, we want to highlight some of the incredible indie VNs we've played recently and get people excited about the things happening in Indie Visual Novel development spaces. You should check out all the games mentioned here, but more than that you should go look through itch, find and follow creators, and discover small indie games that you can love with all your heart. 

Most of these games are free and if not, fairly cheap (though please tip the creators if you are able), and you can read most of them inside of an hour or two. In fact, we want YOU, dear listener, to pick at least one of these games to play after you listen, and then tell us about it! 

Here's the full list of games we played, along with their timestamps and creators' store & social pages:

• Cannelé and Nomnom - Defective Agency: 00:04:10
  Game Page: https://pyrofoux.itch.io/defective-agency
  Creators: Yazaleea, Younès Rabii, LSKR, Arisae
  
  
• Retrace: 00:14:52
  Game Page:  https://spiderlilystudios.itch.io/retrace
  Creators: Spider Lily Studios
  
  
• Love & Dehumanization: 00:23:05
  Game Page: https://aria-of-flowers.itch.io/love-and-dehumanization
  Creator: Aria's Garden
  
  
• God is in the Radio: 00:33:27
  Game Page: https://catsket.itch.io/intheradio
  Creator: catsket
  
  
• Secret Little Haven: 00:38:40
  Game Page: https://ristar.itch.io/secret-little-haven
  Creator: Victoria Dominowski
  
  
• Stop Burying Me Alive, Beautiful!: 00:59:58
  Game Page: https://zephyo.itch.io/stop-burying-me-alive-beautiful
  Creators: angela he, robobarbie, destini islands, allie vera
  
  
• Com__et: 01:07:28
  Game Page: https://superbiasedgary.itch.io/com-et
  Creator: SuperBiasedGary

Dear Listeners, have you ever struggled to see something out of the corner of your eye? Has a local legend ever stuck in your mind, not for its content but for its puzzling omissions? Have you looked behind your screen at the figure flitting away from the light? Never fear - many listeners have reported to us that they suffer from a lack of normasight, so today we're giving you twice what you need to make up for that deficit: A full Paranormasight episode!

This month, Sara and Runa hunt through dark city streets and over the ghosts of ancient waterways while discussing Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo (2023). The game begins as many ghost stories do, with a pair of young adults wandering through the site of a local legend just before midnight. Ah, before that though, the game begins with a Storyteller helpfully introducing us to the concepts of Color Television and Telephone booths! An incredibly helpful moment, especially as the storyteller instructs us on how to use the options menu which, against your expectations, turns out to be an absolutely necessary step to continue the game's narrative. Back in this empty playground, a young working professional man, one Shogo, talks to his friend and perhaps budding crush Yoko about a strange ritual mentioned in a magazine recently - the Rite of Resurrection. Is there truly magic which could resurrect the dead? And if so, then why is Yoko so insistent upon searching through the sites of local ghost stories and discussing their origins? As it happens, these nine ghost stories (The Seven Mysteries subtitle is an intentional misnomer) hold the key to the forbidden spell to revive dead souls... and soon after midnight, Shogo becomes obsessed with obtaining this power, even if it means killing the others around the city in pursuit of it.

Paranormasight combines some of our favorite visual novel tropes with some excellent character writing and solid aesthetic style to deliver a very competent and effective horror thriller, ghost story, and puzzle box narrative. We avoid major spoilers beyond a certain point in our episode, in order to preserve some of this mystery and to encourage our listeners to play as well, so don't worry if you haven't played the game just yet!

At the time this episode comes out, we'll be just a couple days away from 2024!  Happy New Year, and thank you for supporting Say it in Red through these past twelve months. We've got a lot of exciting things in store for 2024, and you can find our schedule for upcoming releases up at patreon.com/sayitinred. As always, if you like the show please consider giving us a rating and writing a review on your podcast platform of choice, and thank you again for your support!

Content Warnings for this episode include:
Regular discussions of death by drowning, mentions of suicide, and some body horror.

You're on a narrow mountain path at the edge of dusk, on your way to a cabin that holds a captive princess. You might be confused or wary - Don't be. There's only one thing you have to do now: Continue down the narrow path, enter the cabin, pick up the knife, and listen to the voices on your podcast tell you what they think about killing the Princess locked in the basement. 

This week, Sara and Runa descend the ever-shifting stairs and discuss Slay The Princess (2023), a visual novel dripping with stylized narration, artwork, and atmosphere about the allegedly simple task of stabbing a captive princess in the basement of an isolated cabin. It's a game that you can finish in either about five minutes or ten hours and the winding array of routes and paths afforded to players make it hard to predict just what kind of experience you'll have when you start a new playthrough. Will you ignore the voice of The Narrator, discard the knife, and imprison yourself beside the princess? Will you kill her outright before she can dissuade you? Will you regret your initial choice, seek to make amends, or even prostrate yourself at her feet and beg for her almighty grace? Will you fall in love? Will you escape?

Slay The Princess has a lot of depth for a fairly short and contained experience with an excellent sense of design. Despite some shortcomings and missed opportunities, Slay the Princess manages to convey a richly varied experience from player to player. With a single playthrough to the credits taking only about two hours, it's easy to pick up, easy to fall into, and easy to revisit to find each and every version of the Princess to see what she'll say and how she'll react. Take care, however, of what you see in the mirror and what mirrors you see in the world.

As always, if you enjoy our show please consider rating us and leaving a review wherever you listen to podcasts! Our patreon (at patreon.com/sayitinred) also hosts a growing number of bonus episodes, released around the second week of each month. Our most recent episodes include a reflection on the 2008 Yuri Visual Novel Aoi Shiro, a full overview of Touhou and its many girls, and the harrowing arc of the Once Upon a Broken Heart novel series. 

Content Warnings for this episode:
Throughout the episode, discussions of stabbing, murder, and imprisonment occur as part of discussion of the game's story.

Good Morning Dear Readers, it's the wonderful day of February 29th, a day that only comes around once every four years! On this rare occasion we wanted to bring you an equally rare creation: Loopers, a kinetic novel developed by Key and written by Ryukisho07 of 07th Expansion! It's all about the wonderful day of August 1st, a day that only comes around once every four years! On this rare occasion we wanted to bring you an equally rare creation: Loopers, a kinetic novel developed by Key and written by Ryukisho07 of 07th Expansion! It's all about the wonderful day of August 1st, a day that only comes around once every 24 hours! On this rare occasion we wanted to bring you an equally rare creation:

This week, Sara and Runa enjoy the emotional ferris wheel ride of Loopers (2021), a Kinetic Novel devleoped by Key and written by Ryukishi07. The game centers around a group of teens and young adults who each fall into a phenomena known as The Spiral - a seemingly endless time loop fixed on the day of August 1st (year indeterminate). As a game that came out during the early stages of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it's no surprise that the characters' struggle to preserve their mental health and sense of reality might resonate with readers feeling as though they've lived the same day repeatedly during lockdowns. The Loopers group is led by Simon, a young man who is functionally now closer to middle-aged as he's repeated the day of August 1st for over 15 years, and his second-in-command Mia, a quiet and mysterious girl as well as the heroine of the story. They're joined by Kuro, Kai, Ritapon, Holly, and Leona before long. By the time our protagonist, Tyler, joins the spiral, however... Kuro and Kai have been killed repeatedly to force them into prolonged comas to prevent further self-harm, Leona placed herself in a coma to prevent her own psychotic break with reality, and the rest of the Loopers are in dire straits themselves. Tyler realizes that, since the greatest challenge of The Spiral is keeping yourself sane and grounded when all progress and growth is impossible, he needs to take drastic action. His solution, without hesitation, is geocache treasure hunting.

 As always, if you enjoy our show please consider rating us and leaving a review wherever you listen to podcasts! Our patreon (at patreon.com/sayitinred) also hosts a growing number of bonus episodes, released around the second week of each month. Our most recent episodes include a reflection on the a full overview of Touhou and its many girls, an exploration of Fantasy Romance webcomics and manwha tropes, and soon even a lengthy expedition into the House of Leaves.

Content Warnings for this episode:
Non-explicit references to self harm throughout this episode - we won't describe it, but please be aware that it comes up occasionally as a topic in the game.

Readers, Friends, Members of the Scientific Community! You, astute as you are, may recall a moment in the distant past in which Sara and Runa adamantly proclaimed that they would never cover Steins;Gate on the podcast - This memory which some of you may hold is LIVING PROOF of the phenomena which we will henceforth discuss in today's episode. You see, that was an alternate, parallel timeline in which we did not discuss Steins;Gate! Thanks to miracles no smaller than the manipulation of the flow of time itself, and also Sara's carefully curated Steins;Gate Abridged playlist, we have arrived at the present day, present timeline.

This month, Sara and Runa discuss the ins and outs, befores and afters, and the even the erstwhiles of the timeline hopping narrative of Steins;Gate (2009). As part of the Science Adventure series it shares some references to a previous Say it in Red subject: Chaos;Head Noah. In both games you can see characters grounded in the culture and various subcultures of specific regions of Tokyo (Shibuya for Chaos;Head and Akihabara in Steins;Gate) along with characters who engage with internet subcultures and message boards like 4Chan. Where Chaos;Head focused on the protagonist's dysfunction and delusions having an impact on reality itself, Steins;Gate focuses on a small group of university students who inadvertently create not one but two different forms of time travel. The first allows them to send text messages to people in the past, altering the conditions of reality in the present. The second allows them to send their own consciousness back through time to a previous date. Both of these methods rely on a microwave connected to a cell phone receiver.

As the club dabbles (and then fully plunges) into time travel and time alteration, our Protagonist Rintaro Okabe realizes that his dear childhood friend Mayuri seems doomed, perhaps even destined, to die no matter how they try to change the course of history. Throughout all of this, the genius girl who Rintaro is definitely not fond of and intimidated by, Kurisu Makise, is improving their time travel devices and discussing the theories, implications, and repercussions of their meddling with Time. In between all of this, they also find time to flirt while revealing themselves to each be nerds who spend a lot of time arguing about conspiracy theories on 4chan. In the end, however, Rintaro Okabe faces a profound dilemma, one that will force him to undo all of his work and truly consider the potential, and futility, of time travel.

For this episode, we followed a Steins;Gate Abridged playlist which Sara constructed - this playlist cuts out portions of the game, including sections which include significant and prolonged transphobia. We don't discuss that material in detail, but we do reference it as part of our discussions.

As always, if you enjoy our show please consider rating us and leaving a review wherever you listen to podcasts! Our patreon (at patreon.com/sayitinred) also hosts a growing number of bonus episodes, released around the second week of each month. Our most recent episodes include a reflection on the a full overview of Touhou and its many girls, an exploration of Fantasy Romance webcomics and manwha tropes, and most recently: a lengthy expedition into the House of Leaves.

CORRECTIONS:
Runa sometimes does not notice when she mispeaks before an episode goes out. During this episode, when she meant to reference the creators of the Science Adventure series, or the specific writing for Science Adventure games, she sometimes attributed things to Nitroplus instead. To clarify, while Nitroplus was involved with these games, it's more accurate to attribute these things to the core creative staff specific to each game rather than Nitroplus as a whole.

Content Warnings for this episode:

00:51:30 to 53:00 - Discussion of a character route th

You are traveling alone on a dark highway late at night. Desperate for a place to rest your weary frame, and maybe a distraction from the terrible break-up that set you on this journey, you turn down a narrow mountain road. The pavement abruptly vanishes beneath you and a rock flies up pat your face - that's right, you're on a motorcycle. Really a bad position, if we're being honest. You search for a house light, a streetlamp, any sign of civilization at all, and then at last you see it:
The buffest deer you could ever imagine, keeping pace and locking eyes with you on this increasingly narrow trail. You can't help but feel that this deer somehow pities you as it scoffs and, finally ceasing its torment, bounds away into the treeline at your left. Of course, you couldn't have followed the deer up that steep hill even if you tried. This makes you feel a bit better about crashing down the ravine a moment later, though the menacing deer still stands out in your mind. Ah, if only I could loop through time, you think... then I could make that deer respect me. You are, unfortunately, now lying beside the mangled heap of your motorcycle at the bottom of a river. You are the protagonist of Raging Loop, and you are about to die (again). 

This month, Sara and Runa start stripping apart Raging Loop (2015) and cozy up with the inhabitants of an eerie mountain village. In the venerable folk horror traditions of many stories of city travelers stumbling into rural areas with strange religious practices, and the venerable VN tradition of time looping until you figure out how to survive such a place, Raging Loop quickly pulls readers in with a pretty compelling premise. What if you were playing a game of Werewolf, for real, and also this game of Werewolf was the result of Divine Mandate? Our protagonist, Haruaki Fusaishi, appears at first as the exact Median of all Anime Guys but really quickly shows us that he's kind of a freak with a loose moral compass. He realizes quickly that he can loop through time, starting just before he arrives at the rural village of Yasumizu, and decides to use this knowledge to push people's buttons and figure out how they work. Meanwhile, people's corpses explode in grotesque heaps, some seem to get possessed, and each night the wolves kill someone else. Each day, then, the villagers gather together and decide who they think is a wolf and hang them. Despite his new ability to re-try events with the knowledge gained from his death, Haruaki has only found deeper mysteries and a great deal of pain. What, then, will help him escape this raging loop that keeps raising loups? 

If you're playing along, for this first part we read all the way up to the acquisition of Key 16. This episode covers all the events up to that point, roughly the first two main Routes of the game with their brief tributaries, and our next episode coming out in May will cover the remainder of the game. 

 As always, if you enjoy our show please consider rating us and leaving a review wherever you listen to podcasts! Our patreon (at patreon.com/sayitinred) also hosts a growing number of bonus episodes, released around the second week of each month. Our most recent episodes include a reflection on the a full overview of Touhou and its many girls, an expedition into the House of Leaves, and most recently: A brief history of Pretty Cure. 

Editor's notes: Sara mentions that Raging Loop came out in 2017, which was the English release date while 2015 was the original release date. We also re-recorded a couple sections that had audio issues and we apologize if any of those are too noticeable!

If you should ever find yourself trapped in a time looping phenomenon, there are a few tried and true strategies you can employ to survive, maintain your grasp on reality, and single out the mastermind(s???) behind the loop. First: Stock up! The mastermind of this loop will not expect you to be well hydrated, full of electrolytes, and properly equipped for mountaineering. Second: Get to know your surroundings! You've got plenty of time to study up on the most minute details of local history and you never know what obscure newspaper clipping might give you a huge advantage. Finally: Just die. Die. Die until you find the key to your escape. It's that easy!

This month, Sara and Runa finish Raging Loop as they pick up with the third main route and read all the way through to the end (and a bit further)! Haruaki Fusaishi has learned about the people of Yasumizu, he's found himself entangled in romances with two of its citizens, he's died and survived as both an outsider and a participant of the feast of the Yomi-Purge, and now... he'll take on the role of a Wolf. Despite struggling to find a scenario in which everyone could survive the first night of the werewolf game, Haruaki immediately finds himself designated as a murderer who must lie, kill, manipulate, and betray the people he's come to know so well. Despite his experience with the game and his looping abilities, he finds himself cornered and quickly at his wit's end. The wolf's side, it seems, is not as powerful and privileged as it might first seem. Beyond even that, what awaits him at the end of the wolves' victory is something more terrible than he ever considered, and more catastrophic than anyone expected.

 If you're playing along, for this first part we read all the way up to the acquisition of Key 16. This episode covers all the events up to that point, roughly the first two main Routes of the game with their brief tributaries, and our next episode coming out in May will cover the remainder of the game.

 As always, if you enjoy our show please consider rating us and leaving a review wherever you listen to podcasts! Our patreon (at patreon.com/sayitinred) also hosts a growing number of bonus episodes, released around the second week of each month. Our most recent episodes include a reflection on the a full overview of Touhou and its many girls, an expedition into the House of Leaves, and most recently: A brief history of Pretty Cure.

Content Warnings for this Episode:
Discussions of Genocide, Sexual Assault (including sexual assault of minors), and Native American Burial Ground tropes.

Dear Listeners,
Like the inevitable woe of an ancient curse, Summer is upon us once more. We're awash in refreshing recipes for strawberry rhubarb shrub, homemade swamp coolers, and the perfect accompaniment for a day indoors during a rainstorm: Indie Visual Novels. With huge bundles such as the annual Queer Games Bundle on itch, you're bound to find something that speaks to the most particular desires of your heart. Today, we're once again inviting you to explore the delightful space of Indie Visual Novels, and we've even brought some of our dear Patrons along to help us tell you about no fewer than Thirteen Indie VNs today!

This episode is the third in our Indie Game Compilation Track series, in which Sara and Runa explore the depth and breadth of indie visual novels, covering games that might be too short for a full episode but still warrant our full attention and praise.
We want to not only showcase the amazing breadth of work coming from Indie developers but also talk about some of our favorite games, many of which touch on subjects, characters, and experiences we rarely get the chance to see in games from larger studios. You can find a list of each game we played below and we encourage you to play along with us, and go searching for other Indie visual novels as well!

In these Indie Game Compilation Track episodes, which we do at least twice each year, we want to highlight some of the incredible indie VNs we've played recently and get people excited about the things happening in Indie Visual Novel development spaces. You should check out all the games mentioned here, but more than that you should go look around, find and follow creators, and discover small indie games that you can love with all your heart.

Most of these games are free and if not, fairly cheap (though please tip the creators if you are able), and you can read most of them inside of an hour or two. In fact, we want YOU, dear listener, to pick at least one of these games to play after you listen, and then tell us about it!

Here's the full list of games we played, and games our Patrons told us about, along with more information on where you can find them:

Runa and Sara played...

• Blood & Play: 00:01:49
• Co-Pilot: 00:11:01  
• Gender-Wrecked: 00:30:49
• Airtime Media: 00:16:37
• Bloom into Frost: 00:39:53
• Saint Spell's Love Guide to the Magical Student's Spellbook: 00:51:50
• 31st March, Midnight: 1:08:44

Patron Submissions

• Cel by Date: 00:08:27 (Sent in by Ioyful Knight)
• Reckless Sympathy: 00:14:05 (Sent in by Emrys)
• My Father's Long Long Legs: 00:23:54 (Sent in by Meowgon)
• Love and Dehumanization: 00:35:06 (Sent in by Case Deerly)
• Needy Streamer Overload: 00:46:45 (Sent in by KT Kelly)
• Misericorde, volume 1: 1:00:20 (Sent in by SuperBiasedGary)

"The small coastal town where you'll be staying this weekend bears the cool sea air like a mantle. Your suite, the luxurious Victorian era Revival room in a traditional Western style hotel, overlooks the harbor and the steep, switchback mountain trails that flow into town like a ruddy stream. Breakfast is served an hour past dawn and free ornithology classes are held each afternoon with the proprietress. When you leave here, you will forget some things. Don't be afraid - this is what we wanted for you. It's not the end of something. It's the start of your next journey.

Everything has a Reason.

9.5/10 stars
minus 0.5 stars because the manager got drunk and proposed marriage to me?"
- Customer review of a certain mountaintop hotel.

This month, Runa and Sara join returning guest Raven to discuss SeaBed (2016), a richly woven tapestry of memory, grief, kindness, and healing. The story begins as the lively and spontaneous Takako enjoys a seaside vacation with her long-time girlfriend, serious and grounded Sachiko. Or perhaps it begins in elementary school, when Takako and Sachiko first meet. Or... did it start when Takako disappeared? Was that four years ago? Two years ago? SeaBed quickly immerses you in the world of these two women, joined quickly by Narasaki, a childhood friend of Sachiko's who studies disorders and conditions of the brain and memory. As Sachiko struggles to recall exactly what happened, Narasaki guides her through the landscape of her past with Takako and into the strange pathways of Sachiko's own perception and memory. Soon, Sachiko recalls that Takako didn't just go missing - she died. That's when the story shifts, and we begin to see things from Takako's perspective where she's recovering from a memory condition in a seaside sanatorium.

For listeners who haven't played SeaBed, we avoid talking about major spoilers up until 00:56:00 minutes, so if you want to listen that far and see what you think, we encourage you to listen along up to that point and then check out SeaBed for yourself!

As always, if you enjoy our show please consider rating us and leaving a review wherever you listen to podcasts! Our patreon (at patreon.com/sayitinred) also hosts a growing number of bonus episodes, released around the second week of each month. Our most recent episodes include some deep dives into The Executioner and Her Way of Life light novel series and you can find today's guest, Raven, on bonus episodes for Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, a Umineko volume 1 restrospective, and an in-depth explainer about Riverdale.

August is not merely a month — it is an emotion. For some, the final month of Summer rings in its hottest days and the looming dread of a new school term. For others, it's a time steeped in nostalgia and the memories of summers' past. Perhaps your August is the feeling of bittersweet romance and the distant promise of your future. Perhaps, even, as the seasons turn you feel, more strongly than anything, a longing for 1992.

This month, Sara and Runa discuss Dōkyūsei: Bangin' Summer, a 2022 remake of a game from thirty years prior and one of the very first dating sims to gain widespread popularity and acclaim. Playing as Takurou, an extremely horny high school senior in the final weeks of his last summer break, you find yourself wandering the city to find girls, talk to girls, flirt with girls, take girls on dates, and answer quiz questions about their outfits in exchange for cash prizes. There are no fewer than 14 girls for Takurou to pursue, five of whom are his classmates as the game's title suggests while the other nine are adult women Takurou meets around town. Even in this early entry to the genre, you can see dozens of themes, mechanics, tropes, innovations, and gags that are still common thirty years later. In fact, if you ever feel that you may have a new, fresh, and never-before-seen idea to inject into a dating sim... play Dōkyūsei first. There's a high chance that one of the original entries into the genre has already beat you to the punch.

As a heads up for listeners, Dōkyūsei: Bangin' Summer is an adult game and some routes feature explicit depictions of sexual assault and violence. We've included timestamps below for the sections where we discuss these events.
You can also play the game without the 18+ patch which excises a lot of this content, though we found that playing without the 18+ patch skips large sections of certain scenes, even those which are not H scenes along with some potential graphical bugs that are solved by applying the 18+ patch.

Content Warnings for this episode
Teacher/Student route discussion - 1:36:45 to 1:45:15
Discussion of Sexual Assault - 1:46:30 to 2:06:20

How do I get to the convenience store from here? How does anyone get to a convenience store from anywhere? Where are you right now, and can I follow you for a while? I don't think I'm catching up even though I told you I was right behind you - I just didn't want you to worry or feel inconvenienced by my indecision. Hey, is it alright if we just sit here for a while? I think... yeah, even this much has worn me down this morning. Let me tell you about a game I played recently. A couple games, in fact. 

This month, Sara and Runa discuss the Milk series of games, covering both Milk Inside a Bag of Milk (2020) and Milk outside a bag of Milk (2021) and the surreal horror of mundane daily struggles with mental health, common chores, and our attempts to form connections. The first game focuses on you, the player, entering your name just before an unnamed girl entreats you to help her go to the store and buy a bag of milk. You have dialogue options, sometimes ranging from soft comfort to abject cruelty and often landing in sarcastic needling territory. As you accompany this girl, she reveals some small details about her daily struggles with life, chores, and the way she sees the world. "I'll try being a visual novel protagonist!" she says, and thus her thoughts appear as narration for us to read, even if she can't necessarily give them coherent voice. Once you've successfully helped her buy a bag of milk, she returns home to see her mother, represented as a blank, hollow-eyed mask, who tells her to go directly to bed. The second game picks up right here, immediately upon the girl's return to home as we now see her mother as a massive, formless being with sprawling arms and tendrils who injects a thin, needle-like finger into our protagonist's arm. From there, we help our protagonist, now trying out her life as an Adventure Game protagonist, search for her stray thoughts which have turned into fireflies. She longs for sleep and dreaming, and at the end of the night your choices will determine the vision she sees when she closes her eyes. 

This is, above all else, a game about plumbing the depths of your own mind, the ways we navigate society and life as we struggle with mental illness, the way we make sense of our pain and treatment, and the dreams we see when we can finally sleep. 


As always, if you like our show and want to support us, please give us a rating and review on wherever you listen! You can also support us directly on Patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred. We don't advertise, so listener recommendations and word of mouth are the best way for new listeners to find us!

Content Warnings for this episode:
Our episode contains mentions and discussions of suicide, self-harm, online harassment, and forced injection. 

1-4-2-6-2-10-5-1
Please remember this combination. When you enter the elevator (FIRST FLOOR! Don't enter from the ground level or garage!) press the play button on this podcast. You should do this alone, ideally late at night or in the early morning when no one else will try to ride the elevator with you. Make sure the building you're in has at least 10 floors. Once you arrive on the fourth floor, wait 10 minutes while you listen to the podcast and then press the button for floor 2. Repeat this for each step: 10 minutes of podcast, elevator button, wait for the doors to open and close, and then listen in the solitary, sealed room of the elevator for another 10 minutes. By the end of this, you will have heard our entire podcast, giving you a full overview of why you absolutely should not play the elevator game (unless you are a catgirl searching for your cat girlfriend).

For the height of the spooky season, Runa and Sara are discussing The Elevator Game with Catgirls(2022), in which catgirls Asahi and Kirin decide to play the fabled Elevator Game of urban legends lore. According to this game, if you enter an elevator, alone, and press the floor buttons in a particular sequence, you can travel to a strange and eerie Otherworld. You'll know when you reach that place because it will be entirely empty and devoid of life, and in the deep red sky you'll see a glowing cross. To return, you simply have to find the elevator you arrived in and complete the elevator game again... provided the elevator comes when you call it. After waiting outside in the snow for her girlfriend, Kirin, Asahi gets nervous and decides to rush in and try to find her. She quickly discovers that she, too, is now trapped within the Otherworld of the elevator game as well, which she wouldn't believe so readily had she not also had the paranormal experience of growing kitty ears and a tail months earlier. Through the process of solving puzzles scattered through the building's lobby and within the Otherworld, Asahi finds scattered notes that seem to reveal the inner thoughts and memories of the other people trapped there... including some from Kirin. 

As always, if you like our show and want to support us, please give us a rating and review on wherever you listen! You can also support us directly on Patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred. We don't advertise, so listener recommendations and word of mouth are the best way for new listeners to find us! 

Dear Listeners,

Have you ever felt, particularly in late November when the rain picks up and keeps you housebound, that you are trapped in a strange house full of people you don't entirely know? In many ways, the distance between holiday revelry and horrifying mystery is smaller than we like to think. What would happen if all of our Thanksgiving reunions took place on an isolated, stormbound island? Would everyone in attendance keep a level head if a gramophone announced the most sordid sins of their past? If nothing else, you could take solace in knowing that it would be difficult for your own holiday gatherings to turn out as badly as those on Soldier Island in Agatha Christie's influential closed circle mystery, And Then There Were None.

And what better way to experience this book, the practical foundation and inspiration for so many mysteries and visual novels, than to force one unwitting Umineko fan to read it, stop before the final culprit reveal, and then deliver all of her thoughts and theories on the air for everyone to enjoy. That's exactly what happened in this episode - Sara, along with Umineko reading guests KT Kelly and Raven, found out that Runa had never read And Then There Were None (despite having read about a dozen other Christie novels even as early as middle school). So really, there was nothing else to do but to give Runa her assignment, listen to her theories, and then see how she reacts to the final culprit reveal live on the air.

You can even read all of Runa's Culprit Theories, including some truly wild things that didn't make it onto the episode!

As we mentioned here, you can also Submit a short audio clip telling us about an Indie VN you've played, and we'll be including as many of those clips as possible in our upcoming Indie VN compilation track episode coming out in December! 

This is a public release of a previous Patreon-exclusive episode! You can, and we hope that you will, support us on Patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred where for as little as $3 a month you can get access to over four years of bonus content, along with advance schedules to let you know what we're reading in the future! And as always, if you enjoy our show please tell your friends and give us a rating and review wherever you listen.

Video Games. For years, we have wondered: What are they? Where do they come from? And what do they want from us? Today, we have answers for you... answers that would delight even that strictest of industry philosophers: Sonic the Hedgehog. These are shorter games, far less hardware intensive than the latest AAA titles, and made by passionate developers. In fact, the only thing that might not satisfy Sonic's demands is that indie developers aren't always paid more to work less, but maybe by telling you about these Indie Visual Novels we played, we can encourage more people to send some money toward these incredible games.

This month, as is our semi-annual tradition, Sara and Runa each talk about a handful of indie visual novels they've played recently, each with its own incredible style, story, and impact. Some of these games are too short to warrant a full episode of the show, but honestly it's a struggle to keep ourselves from talking about each one for a full hour because they're just that good.

In these Indie Game Compilation Track episodes, which we do at least twice each year, we want to highlight some of the incredible indie VNs we've played recently and get people excited about the things happening in Indie Visual Novel development spaces. We want to not only showcase the amazing breadth of work coming from Indie developers but also talk about some of our favorite games, many of which touch on subjects, characters, and experiences we rarely get the chance to see in games from larger studios. You can find a list of each game we played below and we encourage you to play along with us, and go searching for other Indie visual novels as well! 

Most of these games are free and if not, fairly cheap (though please tip the creators if you are able), and you can read most of them inside of an hour or two. In fact, we want YOU, dear listener, to pick at least one of these games to play after you listen, and then tell us about it!

Games included in this episode:

• Stillwater by Studio Clump (00:04:30)
• May I take Your Order by Alexis Royce (00:10:27)
• Someone Stole MY LUNCH by Studio Clump (00:17:35)
• Mushroom Musume by Mortally Moonstruck Games (00:24:05)
• Penultima by Zetareishi (00:34:43)
• Doomsday Dreamgirl by Nadia Nova (00:46:35)
• Sink Your Teeth by SuperBiasedGary (00:54:36)
• He Fucked The Girl Out Of Me by Taylor McCue (01:01:10)
• Bad Faith by Mado (01:14:07)
• Dahlia by Crystal Game Works (01:23:06)

And we also mentioned...

• Rituals in the Dark by ebi-hime (01:30:20)
• Life after Magic by Chiraishi Games (01:29:21)

Dear Listeners,

It has been ten years since that calamity. Though you survived, the memory of flame-scorched rubble haunts your dreams each night. Closure slips away from you in the vagaries of time and, a decade on, you settle back into a relatively peaceful daily routine. It would be truly terrible if you were to die multiple times in one night through no fault of your own. It would really suck if you got pulled into a death game that had an unnerving connection to the most traumatic moment of your childhood. If something that awful happened you'd probably at least want some kind of good fortune to balance it all out. Maybe getting to know a cool knight with a sick sword or something. Yeah, a cool sword could make this all alright.

This week we begin our four episode series on Fate/Stay Night, a tremendously popular and influential Visual Novel from Type-Moon and the first main entry into the vast and sprawling Fate series. Sara and Runa are joined by friend, fellow podcaster, and Fate enjoyer MK as the three of them begin unpacking the massive warehouse of material that is Fate/Stay Night (2004). Reading along in the recent remaster (2024) which is based on Fate/Stay Night's Realta Nua release (2007), this episode focuses on the Fate route which is the standard first route players experience when booting up the game. In this route, we initially follow the prologue and Rin Tohsaka, a highschooler and mage who summons a Heroic Spirit, a Servant who occupies a special Class and will be her chess piece within the Holy Grail War. After a few hours with Rin though, we shift to our protagonist's perspective: Shirou Emiya is a fairly normal high school boy apart from how he was the sole survivor of a catastrophic fire 10 years ago, and the fact that he, too, is a mage. He can only use reinforcement or strengthening magic though, which he employs to repair broken space heaters and the like for his school. One night while Shirou is at school after dark, however, he's cornered by a man in blue spandex with a giant red spear who kills him dead. It's alright, Shirou gets better - unfortunately his assailant follows him to his home where Shirou staggers backwards and accidentally summons a Servant, Saber. Looking up at this majestic woman clad in a knight's silver armor in the moonlight, Shirou enters the Holy Grail War without fully understanding how, why, or what he's supposed to do in this situation.

The Fate Route of Fate/Stay Night focuses on establishing the core ideas of the game and its world, particularly surrounding Servants, Mages, and the Holy Grail War. A real, powerful magical artifact manifests within Fuyuki City and provides the power to summon Heroic Spirits of past Kings, Champions, Gods, Demons, or even Fictional characters from the past, present, or even future. These Heroic Spirits conceal their identity and use the moniker of their summoned Class as a pseudonym - Saber, Archer, Lancer, Rider, Caster, Assassin, and Berserker. Only a Servant may touch the Holy Grail, and only one Master & Servant pair may use its power to grant their deepest wish. In the Fate Route, we also see the game's first romance play out between Shirou and Saber with mixed results. In spite of its shortcomings, Fate introduces a wealth of information and details which we'll be carrying forward into our next episodes on the remaining routes of the game. 

As always, if you enjoy our show please consider supporting us by leaving a 5 star review on whatever platform you use to listen. You can also support us on Patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred where for just a few dollars a month you can gain access to our entire backlog of bonus episodes! These bonus episodes include a wide range of topics from deep dives into games outside of the Visual Novel space to fandom histories and much more!

Also, you can check out our guest, MK, experiencing even more Visual Novel excitement on the Moonshot Network where they're

Dear Listeners,

Recently I witnessed a devastating battle in my dreams. On the floor of a figure collecting convention, an absurdly wealthy collector was completely annihilating everyone in a quiz competition about rare and obscure scale figures. Talented sculptors, award-winning painters, and industry darlings all wept in lamentation as their knowledge proved insufficient to compete with the golden-haired man who owned not only the first Saber Lily Distant Avalon figure ever produced, but also prototypes of promotional figures including the solid gold Gundam RX-78-2 as well as every single Winter edition Hatsune Miku scale figure ever produced. Then a guy who does garage kits came in and absolutely bodied him in the last round, it was incredible.

...Wait, actually I think that might have happened for real.

This month, Runa and Sara return to Fate/Stay Night with guest MK to read through the game's second route: Unlimited Blade Works. While the Fate route left them wanting more emotional resonance and less Shirou, the Unlimited Blade Works route delivers both in spades. Diverging from the Fate Route when Shirou uses a command seal to prevent Saber from attacking Archer and Rin, Unlimited Blade Works sees the two masters work much more closely together as they navigate their growing affections for one another while the Holy Grail War is going, admittedly, Pretty Bad for them. Not only do they suffer a devastating loss followed by an abrupt betrayal, the eighth servant Gilgamesh makes a much earlier entrance and quickly dominates the field. With Saber lost, Archer gone, and no command seals left, Rin and Shirou struggle to survive together as they piece together the mystery of Archer's identity, Shirou's future, and the magic that could help them win the Holy Grail War: Unlimited Blade Works.

As always, if you enjoy our show please consider supporting us by leaving a 5 star review on whatever platform you use to listen. You can also support us on Patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred where for just a few dollars a month you can gain access to our entire backlog of bonus episodes! These bonus episodes include a wide range of topics from deep dives into games outside of the Visual Novel space to fandom histories and much more!

Also, you can check out our guest, MK, experiencing even more Visual Novel excitement on the Moonshot Network where they're currently reading Virtue's Last Reward for the first time and will continue reading Visual Novels (and adjacent media) Saturdays on twitch.tv/moonshotnetwork!

Dear Listeners,

I've been having nightmares recently. Maybe I shouldn't call them nightmares, but it's hard to describe them in any other way. Each night, I fall asleep – or at least, I think I'm falling asleep – only to see the silhouette of a tall, beautiful woman open my door right before I lose consciousness. The next thing I remember is walking through my old high school and finding one of my classmates drinking another girl's blood. Terror seizes me, because I forgot to study for my blood drinking exam. I run from the room,  mostly to give the girls their privacy, and fall right into a massive pit of worms. Dread arrests my limbs, because they're all sour gummy worms and now my clothes are covered in tart sugar and sticky goo. Also all of these gummy worms are dirty now and that's just adding to the stress. Around this time, a writhing shadow covers me and I awaken in a cold sweat, look up, and see the flowchart for Heaven's Feel open on the monitor in front of me.

On this episode, Sara, Runa, and returning guest MK complete their reading of Fate/Stay Night with the Heaven's Feel route! This route immediately diverges from the others, but still remains close to the Fate route until a scene in the Matou family basement pulls us deeper into the literal pit of Sakura's trauma and despair. When Sakura confides in Shirou about the abuse she's suffered at her family home, he takes her to stay at his house to protect her from Shinji and their terrifying grandfather, Zouken. When a mysterious, eldritch Shadow begins stalking the city and defeating servants, Shirou and Saber start investigating only to cross paths with a new servant, True Assassin, at the Ryuudo Temple. While Shirou faces off against Zouken, the master of True Assassin, Saber fights his servant only to lose not to Assassin, but the mysterious Shadow. Meanwhile, Sakura has been suffering from sudden intense fevers and bouts of weakness and Shirou encourages her to remain at his home and rest. When Shinji attempts to take Sakura back to the Matou home, Rin and Shirou try to protect her only to end up facing Rider, now revealed to have been Sakura's servant all along. From there the Shadow continues its rampage, Zouken continues scheming, Shirou continues experiencing unnerving nightmares, and Sakura's condition continues to deteriorate. The final secrets of the Holy Grail War come to light in this final route, as Illya reveals her connection to Shirou, Rin and Sakura reconnect as sisters, and Angra Mainyu properly takes the stage at last.

Fate/Stay Night Q&A Episode: 

Our April Episode will be a huge Q&A Episode about the whole of Fate/Stay Night and Fate/Zero questions are up for grabs as well! You can send us your Fate/Stay Night questions here and as long as you get them to us before our April Episode, we'll do our best to answer as many as possible!

As always, if you enjoy our show please consider supporting us by leaving a 5 star review on whatever platform you use to listen. You can also support us on Patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred where for just a few dollars a month you can gain access to our entire backlog of bonus episodes! These bonus episodes include a wide range of topics from deep dives into games outside of the Visual Novel space to fandom histories and much more!

Also, you can check out our guest, MK, experiencing even more Visual Novel excitement on the Moonshot Network where they're currently reading Virtue's Last Reward for the first time and will continue reading Visual Novels (and adjacent media) Saturdays on twitch.tv/moonshotnetwork!

Content Warnings for this episode:

Discussions of Sexual Assault
Mentions of Child Sexual Abuse
Insects, especially worms and body horror related to Worms, Insects, and Parasites

This week, Sara and Runa talk about Eliza (2019) and ask important questions like: What would happen if therapy became part of the gig economy? What if tech CEOs had all of your healthcare data? What if an dubstep drop made you feel Extremely Gay?

We're talking about Eliza, a very near-future story about Evelyn Ishino-Aubrey, a woman who begins work as a Proxy for the titular therapy app. Prior to Evelyn's arrival at the Eliza office in Seattle, however, she'd spent the previous three years in a deep depression and before that, she worked as one of the chief developers of the Eliza program itself.

In this episode we'll be talking about the nature of tech companies and technology itself in mental healthcare, the competing perspectives about Eliza and its impact on the world, and then we go on like a 10 minute tangent about how much we love Nora and Rae.

Remember to follow us on twitter at sayitinredpod and check out our patreon at https://www.patreon.com/SayItInRed

This week, Sara and Runa embark on a long trip to Hinamizawa and discuss Higurashi no naku koro ni, Chapter 1: Onikakushi (2002). In this first episode of our full dive into all 8 volumes of Higurashi, we talk about the harrowing stakes of afterschool card games, the existential significance of Air Conditioning, and the startling correlation between holding a metal bat and having a Real Bad Time.

Higurashi no naku koro ni is a lengthy story spread out over 8 Kinetic Novels and we'll be covering each game in its own episode over the next few months. Higurashi was originally released in 2002 but didn't receive an official worldwide release in 2009, and now thankfully it's not too difficult to buy an official release of all 8 volumes in English (and a lot of other languages too). It's part of the When They Cry series by 07th Expansion and creator Ryukishi07, and we'll be covering Umineko further in the future.

Higurashi chapter 1: Onikakushi follows the story of Keiichi Maebara, a teenage boy whose family has just moved into the relatively rural Japanese town of Hinamizawa and quickly settles into a delightful daily routine alongside his new friends, Rena, Mion, Rika, and Satoko. As he spends time with these girls playing board games and pranks, he learns that there may have been a grotesque murder in the town just a few years ago. When he asks his friends, however, they act as if nothing like that could have ever happened. After the photographer who first told Keiichi about the murder turns up dead, and under extremely suspicious circumstances, Keiichi begins to suspect that there may be something terrible about Hinamizawa.

Has a curse been claiming the lives of residents and enemies of the town each year? Is there a town-wide conspiracy bent on silencing anyone who threatened the peace and order of Hinamizawa? Are the residents of this town really descended from demons? Keiichi digs deeper and deeper into the mystery surrounding his new home and as he does, his friends start to act more and more terrifying and things become more and more uncanny... Right? All of that really happens, right?

Or, maybe...



Content Warnings for this episode:

Broadly, we talk about Death, Murder, Violence, and some unreality themes throughout.

00:22:00: Mention of a Needle hidden in food
00:23:55: Mention of Battery/Violence
00:25:04: Needles/Syringes
00:25:30: Mention of Battery/Violence
00:40:18 to 00:40:58: Details of a murder including self-inflicted neck injury and fingernail trauma.
00:52:08 to 00:53:45: More mention of needles in food
01:17:53 and 01:18:45: Finger/Hand injury
01:44:45: Another mention of self-inflicted neck injury and fingernail trauma.
02:01:15 to 02:03:06: further discussion of self-inflicted neck injury and fingernail injury

This week, Sara and Runa continue spending peaceful days in Hinamizawa, discussing Higurashi no naku koro ni, Chapter 2: Watanagashi (2002). We pick right up where we left off in our last episode which of course means that everything is back to normal and we're back to just before the Summer of 1983 in Hinamizawa! This time we dig deep into the history of Hinamizawa's main families, the question of Who Was Phone, and the vital question of where I can get some soy sauce at like 9pm after the stores have all closed.

In the Watanagashi chapter, we see a different version of the Summer of 1983, one in which Keiichi sticks much more closely to his friends and rather than suspecting them of being involved in a criminal conspiracy or divine curse, he trusts them with all his heart. Unfortunately, Keiichi is still just a teenager and a tremendous Fool, so things once again go very badly for him. He inadvertently hurts Mion early on and then meets Mion's twin sister, Shion, who he strongly suspects is... literally just Mion with her hair down. For a while he isn't really sure what to make of "Shion" and her sudden appearances and he's convinced that this is just Mion taking on the role of an Imaginary twin sister to do things that she wouldn't otherwise be able to do, but... is that really the case, Keiichi?

As always, if you like the show please leave us a review! We're hosted on itunes, google podcasts, spotify, and several other places so please check us out and tell your friends! You can also follow us on twitter at sayitinredpod for more updates and episode information!

Content Warnings for this episode:

00:31:30 to 00:32:00: Mention of attempted sexual harrassment:

35:00 to 35:45: Gross Bathroom stuff, including but not limited to mentions of people getting sick due to a laxative and men being creepy about bathrooms.

00:51:00: Death/Murdered body mention

01:05:32: Cannibalism Mention

01:10:42: Torture/Finger Trauma

01:13:48: Stabbing

01:15:40: Neck Injury

01:16:34: Neck Injury Again

01:18:06 through 01:18:44: More Blood and Head Injury and Finger Trauma

Sara and Runa once again continue their time in Hinamizawa, enjoying the peaceful days shared by Keiichi and his friends in Higurashi no naku koro ni, chapter 3: Tatarigoroshi (2003). Once again we return to the late spring of 1983 with everyone alive, at least for the moment, for round three of our attempt at uncovering Hinamizawa's mysteries! Now, with the information we've gathered from the first two episode, we can start to answer some of the Big Questions: Why does Tomitake keep dying the same way every episode? Is Oyashiro-sama's curse real? Can you win a baseball game when all your brought with you was a golf club?

The Tatarigoroshi chapter follows Satoko closely and spends a lot of time developing the warm, surrogate sibling sort of relationship between her and Keiichi. As Keiichi learns more about the painful circumstances of Satoko's life, he becomes more and more determined to protect this small gremlin who he cares for as a younger sister.
 
Even if that means sometimes he has to face the torment of slandering the noble institution of Curry in front of Chie-sensei.
 
Even if it means letting Satoko tease him and set up traps that catch him off guard.
 
Even if it means plotting the perfect murder to erase Satoko's uncle from existence.

A general content warning for this episode: Child Abuse comes up in a lot of different forms in our discussion and it comes up even more intensely in the game itself so please take care as you read!

As always, if you like the show please leave us a review! We're hosted on itunes, google podcasts, spotify, and several other places so please check us out and tell your friends! You can also follow us on twitter at sayitinredpod for more updates and episode information!

Content Warnings for this episode:

00:02:45: Description of a corpse including finger trauma, disembowelment, decomposition, and extreme torture
00:41:20 to 00:42:00: Discussion of child physical abuse
00:56:40 to 00:58:25: Vomiting, panic attack, PTSD response due to child abuse, mention of child  sexual abuse
1:09:30 to 1:10:30: A Murder happens with a baseball bat
01:32:55 to 1:33:25: Depictions of the results of child abuse
01:33:45 and 01:36:10: Apparent suicide mention
02:09:20 to 02:15:30: Discussion of a child abuser's role in the events of the game
02:17:20: Suicide mention

This week, Sara and Runa travel to an unknown realm... 1978. More specifically, Hinamizawa in 1978 where we no longer see Keiichi as the protagonist but a new, freshly minted police investigator: Mamoru Akasaka. We've been entrusted with all of the information we might need to be able to understand Hinamizawa's mysteries, but this volume also throws a wrench in a lot of possible theories as well! Is Rika stuck in a groundhog day style time loop? Is her death in 1983 and the resulting Great Hinamizawa Disaster truly unavoidable? Just how much money has Ooishi skimmed off of discretionary funds over the years and then lost betting on Mahjong?

Higurashi no naku koro ni, Chapter 4: Himatsubushi (2003) transports us further back than we've ever been, to a time before the dam foreman was murdered and before the stirrings of Oyashiro-sama's curse took hold in Hinamizawa. As the protests against the dam reach a fevered pitch, the grandson of the Minister of Construction is kidnapped a Public Safety Police Officer, Mamoru Akasaka, is dispatched to Hinamizawa to investigate and, if possible, recover the kidnapped child safely. We already know from the first three volumes of Higurashi that he succeeds in saving the minister's grandson, but what else happened there when he was in Hinamizawa? Why is he still haunted by that case even years later? Is it possible to save someone in the past simply by learning The Truth of an incident?

As Akasaka investigates, Rika's firm declarations cast all the facts of the case into disarray and leave us all scrambling for answers...

As always, if you like the show please leave us a review! We're hosted on itunes, google podcasts, spotify, and several other places so please check us out and tell your friends! You can also follow us on twitter at sayitinredpod for more updates and episode information!

Content Warnings for this episode:

01:02:30 to 01:03:50: Theorizing about a suicide & related possibilities
01:16:45, 01:17:05 to 01:19:05: Discussion of death, syringes, and Torture from the Watanagashi chapter
01:35:50 to 01:37:00: Theorizing about the murder of Satoko's Parents

This week, Sara and Runa look through the eyes of Shion Sonozaki in the first game of the Answer arcs, Higurashi: Meakashi.  The Spring of 1982 arrives and brings with it a daring escape from Catholic School, covert grocery trips through town, and the glimmer of a gremlin's first love. In this volume we'll also finally see exactly what happened to Shion, Mion, Keiichi, and the others during the Watanagashi chapter - do we learn all the facts of the incident, though, or do we simply learn which questions we should really be asking?

Higurashi no naku koro ni: Meakashi (2004) follows Shion's perspective through events roughly the same as those in the Watanagashi chapter, revealing her innermost thoughts, her suspicions, and her actions in both 1982 and 1983. After escaping from an extremely rigid catholic boarding school, Shion hides out in a Sonozaki owned apartment building with the help of her driver Kasai. At first she only intends to lay low and, with Mion's help, pose as Mion to work part time for money to support herself for a while... but then she meets Satoshi, a kind and clumsy boy who catches Shion completely off guard.

If only their lives had been peaceful.
If only their families had been gentle.
If only Hinamizawa and its history didn't loom so ominously in Shion's mind...

With all the new information in the Meakashi chapter, we can outline Shion's actions with certainty and clearly map out the mysterious events of the Watanagashi chapter. Is that really all that we need to understand, though?

As always, if you like the show please leave us a review! We're hosted on itunes, google podcasts, spotify, and several other places so please check us out and tell your friends! You can also follow us on twitter at sayitinredpod for more updates and episode information!

Content Warnings for this Episode:
00:19:33 to 00:20:10 - Fingernail Torture
00:32:30 - forced syringe/needle injections
00:32:35 - Graphic Suicide Mention
00:48:30 - Fingernail Removal/Torture
01:36:56 to 01:40:21 - Suicide, Throat injury, self-inflicted injuries, fingernail trauma, forced injections, poisoning, Details of character death

This week, Sara and Runa podcast in the normal way, theorize in the normal way, cry about Rena in the normal way, and hop into a rollercoaster with no safety harness in the normal way! Higurashi: Tsumihoroboshi brings us back to Hinamizawa yet again as we see the world through alternative perspectives, sometimes following Keiichi and at other points, following Rena. When we can finally see the world as Rena does, will we understand the meaning behind her belief in Oyashiro-sama?

Higurashi no naku koro ni: Tsumihoroboshi (2005) leads us through an entirely new scenario - unlike the Meakashi chapter which showed us the events of Watanagashi but through Shion's perspective, we've never seen the events that of Tsumihoroboshi before. This time, we see Rena struggle to adjust after her father begins dating a new woman, Rina Mamiya, and this only gets worse when Rena finds out that that Rina is also the girlfriend of a known con artist, extortionist, and scammer - Teppei Houjou. This relatively mundane misfortune eventually leads to two murders, a dramatic confrontation within the village dump, conspiracies about parasitic aliens and clones, and a plot to blow up the school.

In the midst of all of this, Keiichi suddenly remembers a moment when Mion and Rena brought him Ohagi... during the Onikakushi chapter. What good will that memory do for him though, now that Rena is drifting further and further toward a tragic end?

As always, if you like the show please leave us a review! We're hosted on itunes, google podcasts, spotify, and several other places so please check us out and tell your friends! You can also follow us on twitter at sayitinredpod for more updates and episode information!

Content Warnings for this episode:
00:31:40 to 00:33:15: Self Harm, Parasite infestation
00:59:45, 01:02:35 to 01:03:40: BB Gun shooting, Eye Injury
01:17:45 to 01:23:40: School Hostage situation, includes soaking the room and people in gasoline, battery, threats with a hatchet
01:50:25: Mention of self-inflicted throat injury

This week Sara and Runa befriend a cute girl with horns, and then they take part in a massacre! In Higurashi: Minagoroshi we finally see the Truth of the incident at hand: Why does Rika die in every timeline, even though she's been trying for over a hundred years to survive? Why does the entire village perish in the span of a single night, but only in some of the timelines? Who is the Perpetrator, and why would they be so determined to keep Rika barricaded behind the wall of June 22nd, 1983?

Higurashi no naku koro ni: Minagoroshi (2005) is the confluence of almost every past scenario, drawing together the events from every past volume and, one by one, defeating each of the terrible fates that Rika and her friends suffered in other worlds. We very quickly meet Hanyuu, a cute girl with purple hair and horns who is, in a sense, the real Oyashiro-sama. Only Rika can see or hear her normally, but each time Rika dies, Hanyuu uses her power to turn back time so that Rika can make another attempt. After going through so many worlds Rika and Hanyuu both begin to despair, even after the miracle that took place in Tsumihoroboshi, but soon Rika realizes things are different now. All of her friends remember, at least vaguely, the tragedies that befell them in past cycles. Now that we can see Hanyuu and hear her perspective on things, and now that Rika's friends have all come together to defeat their own terrible fates, will they finally be able to help Rika escape from June of 1983?

There are only two possibilities open in the end: We will either see a Miracle take place, or a Massacre.

As always, if you like the show please leave us a review! We're hosted on itunes, google podcasts, spotify, and several other places so please check us out and tell your friends! You can also follow us on twitter at sayitinredpod for more updates and episode information!

Content Warnings for this episode:
01:05:15 to 1:08:15 - Brief discussion of child abuse
01:37:00 - LAST WARNING BEFORE WE REVEAL THE CULPRIT AND THEIR MOTIVE!
2:23:48 to 2:24:15 - Mention of vivisection & brain dissection

This week, Sara and Runa make arrangements for a festival and see the world beyond June 19th in the final chapter of Higurashi: Matsuribayashi. Now that we know the truth, how can we avert disaster? Now that we know the truth, how can we forgive each other? With the truth in hand, how much are you willing to lose for the sake of your happiness?

Higurashi no naku koro ni: Matsuribayashi (2006) is the longest and most expansive volume yet as it brings together the culprit's past, all of the circumstances leading up to June of 1983, and even sees characters who were once bystanders jump up to join the fray. All the actors are present, even though we counted out and thought would never play their part again, but is even that enough to change a fate that has held strong for over a hundred years?

As we weave together the events that make the Great Hinamizawa Disaster possible, Hanyuu and Rika begin to see a faint, narrow path toward the future. Their adversary is no longer mystery or fate but the strong will of those with an overwhelming power that has already erased Rika and her friends in dozens upon dozens of timelines. Still, despite the risk involved Rika and Hanyuu both decide to bet everything they have on this world and the belief that, by pulling together everyone who cares about them and wants to see Rika survive, they will finally see a miracle.

We're collecting questions for our next episode!
Our next episode, which will go up on Friday, May 14th, will feature a Q&A and we'd like you to send us questions that we can answer on the air! We'd like you to send in your questions about Higurashi, our theories, the village of Hinamizawa, or questions about visual novels and our podcast in general!  
 If you want to ask us our thoughts on a possible theory or interpretation,

If you want to know more about our process for approaching mysteries and how messy Runa's Meakashi notes were,

If you would like to ask our opinions on Visual Novel tropes and conventions,

Or if you're just feeling curious, send your questions to sayitinred.podcast at gmail.com, or comment with your questions on our patreon at https://www.patreon.com/SayItInRed 

As always, if you like the show please leave us a review! We're hosted on itunes, google podcasts, spotify, and several other places so please check us out and tell your friends! You can also follow us on twitter at sayitinredpod for more updates and episode information!

Content Warnings for this episode:
General CW for intermittent discussions of Parasites and Parasitic Infection
00:24:00 - Lobotomy discussion
00:30:45 to 31:30 - dismemberment and live vivisection
00:30:45 to 33:45 - general discussion of dissections
00:41:25 - throat scratching mention

Sara and Runa may have made it out of Hinamizawa, but the real terminal syndrome is the fondness we developed for the games club kids along the way! This week we're holding a Higurashi wrap party, talking about our thoughts on the series as a whole, taking a look at the anime adaptations (Both the 2006 anime and the more recent Higurashi Gou), talking about side projects like the mobile game, answering listener questions, and making some exciting announcements about the upcoming episodes and projects we've got coming up!

In addition to talking about the spinoffs and adaptations of Higurashi, this episode sees Sara and Runa discussing the intriguing, lingering mysteries of Hinamizawa such as: 

• Is Hinamizawa syndrome a medical or magical affliction?
• What would happen if the adult cast (Ooishi, Irie, Chie, Akane Sonozaki, etc.) were in the same situation as the games club kids and, as teenagers, had to confront these mysterious deaths and murders?
• What really happened in Tatarigoroshi and what do we know with absolute certainty?
• Does Tomitake have a Thomas the Tank Engine OC?
• and a lot more! Severity and gravity varies.

Also if you're reading this, it means our new schedule and special project announcement are both live on our Patreon, so you should go visit https://www.patreon.com/SayItInRed to see the exciting news!

As always, if you like the show please leave us a review! We're hosted on itunes, google podcasts, spotify, and several other places so please check us out and tell your friends! You can also follow us on twitter at sayitinredpod for more updates and episode information!

Content Warnings for this episode:
00:29:50 to 00:36:00 - Discussion of Gacha games, gacha pulls, and general gambling.

This week, Sara and Runa take the concept of a visual novel book club to its next logical step and join an exciting, breathtaking, Dokidoki Literature Club! What will happen when we spend our days reading novels and discussing manga and writing poetry with cute girls? Will we get to snack on cute cupcakes and get to know our fellow club members? Will we have heartpounding discussions about our favorite literary tropes? Well, whatever happens, I'm sure it will be extremely safe and normal!

Dokidoki Literature Club!(2017) is a visual novel that begins as a very cute, lighthearted dating sim where you play as a faceless high school boy at the beginning of a new week, unsure of what club he might join in school and without any particular direction for the time being. He quickly encounters his childhood friend and neighbor, Sayori, who coaxes him (with the promise of cupcakes) to try out the literature club. Once there, Sayori introduces him to the other current members: Yuri, a tall and introverted girl who reads intricate fantasy and sci-fi novels; Natsuki, a small and contrary girl who loves baking and reading manga; and the club president, Monika, who your protagonist notes is one of the most popular and beautiful girls in school. As you spend more time in the literature club, you'll start to grow closer to Sayori, Yuri, and Natsuki, all while Monika is getting closer and closer to something as well...

Please note that, if you haven't played DDLC before, the game features explicit images and themes of self-harm, suicide and suicide ideation, and unreality. The game itself has a more complete list of content warnings and we'll list content warnings for our discussion in the episode below, but we wanted to give you a heads up in case you plan to read along before you listen!

As always, if you like the show please leave us a review! We're hosted on itunes, google podcasts, spotify, and several other places so please check us out and tell your friends! You can also follow us on twitter at sayitinredpod for more updates and episode information!

Content Warnings for this episode:

Self-Harm - 00:26:45 to 00:27:40
00:28:30 to 00:29:10
00:36:15, 00:43:20
 
Suicide & Suicidal Ideation - 00:23:00
00:43:20 to 00:45:20

Mentions of Child Abuse - 00:26:35

Coo! Coooo! Cooo!

This week, Sara and Runa go to bird school, which is for dating gorgeous birds in Hatoful Boyfriend, a dating sim about pigeons that you can meet, befriend, and romance at St. PigeoNation's academy. What would Sara and Runa, ostensibly two humans, possibly do at a bird school though? Will they be able to handle bird P.E. with flying lessons and wing stretches? Will they join the student council and learn the intricacies of bird political parties? Will they spend too much time in the infirmary and end up as an experimental subject for a grouchy partridge!?

Hatoful Boyfriend (2011) is a delightful dating sim starring Hiyoko Tosaka, the sole human attending a school for intelligent birds. Set in the late 22nd Century, you follow Hiyoko as she navigates school clubs, electives, exams, holidays, and the milestones of high school life while trying (with varying success) to get closer to the beautiful birds who now fill her daily life. If Hiyoko spends a lot of time studying and joins the infirmary staff, maybe she can get to know Yuuya, the most suave and popular pigeon in school. Maybe if she plays to her strengths and spends all of her time running for the track team, she can finally understand the pudding connoisseur Okosan. Perhaps, even, if she spends enough time working at the library, she'll finally get the reclusive underclassman, Nageki, to open up to her and explain why he never seems to leave that one room. In addition to these pigeons Hiyoko can also get closer to Ryouta, her childhood friend with a weak constitution; Sakuya, an aristocratic fantail from france and apparent Half-brother to Yuuya; Anghel, an absolutely perfect bleeding heart luzon; Kazuaki, Hiyoko's homeroom teacher and math instructor; Azami, a cool java sparrow who rides her vintage scooter with a strong conviction to obey traffic ordinances; or Shuu, the school doctor who seems to be the center of several disturbing rumors about student disappearances and dismemberments.

Where will Hiyoko's time at St. PigeoNation's take her? To lifelong love with a childhood friend, no matter how short that life might be? To an action-packed life on the run with a secret agent? Into the depths of the school to learn the secrets, and tragedies, of its recent past? Whatever routes you choose to explore, Hatoful Boyfriend is a delightful and extremely fun dating sim full of heart, humor, a bit of pain, and a whole flock of gorgeous pigeons.  Join us as we see what it's like to go to bird school, which is for romancing birds!

As always, if you like the show please leave us a review! We're hosted on itunes, google podcasts, spotify, and several other places so please check us out and tell your friends! You can also follow us on twitter at sayitinredpod for more updates and episode information!

Content Warnings for this episode:

00:27:45 to 00:31:20 - Discussion of a teacher/student romance route
00:39:00 to 00:46:30 - Discussion of a teacher/student romance where the teacher is Hannibal Lector and wants to experiment on the protagonist.
00:42:00 - Student Murder & Cooking
00:43:00 - Dismemberment
00:43:20 - Loss of Agency
00:46:45 to end - Intermittent discussions of fatal respiratory pandemic
00:52:50 - Dismemberment
00:58:00 - Mentions of body horror
01:01:20 - Suicide mention
01:03:30 - Hostage situation
01:05:00 - Medical experimentation and Suicide

This week Sara and Runa embark on a paranormal investigation of high school rooftops, joined by special guest Mari as all three meet a couple of ghosts (who are also a ghost couple) and witness a whole host of gay teens grappling with their sexuality. Our encounter with these spectral lesbians forces us to ask some deep and thought provoking questions - How do you overcome the anxiety of confessing your love to your best friend when you're still a teenager struggling with the anxiety of daily social interactions? How do you plan to have a long-term relationship when your parents might disown you upon learning that you're gay? Is it Rock to want a girl to bully you?

Kindred Spirits on the Roof (2012/2016 English Release) is a kinetic novel that focuses on protagonist and 2nd year high schooler Yuna as she meets two ghosts on her school's rooftop, then promptly gets pulled into a year long quest to help other students at the school come to terms with and act upon the feelings they have for other girls. Sachi and Megumi, the titular Kindred Spirits, find girls who seem to have romantic feelings for their classmates, seniors, fellow club members, or friends and work with Yuna to find out how they can assist each of these girls in conveying their feelings. Sachi, who died over 80 years prior, has witnessed so many girls who fell in love and then never had the chance or felt secure enough to confess that love, and so she's determined to make sure that this school, at least, can be a place where those feelings can flourish. Yuna is reluctant at first, despite taking readily to the tasks of planning out strategies and plots to help the girls around her, and over time we not only meet a number of Yuna's classmates, friends, and fellow students but also learn more about her own life, the regrets that have plauged her since middle school, and the feelings she's developing for one of her best friends that she may not even notice yet...

Since this game is longer than most others we've covered in the past (it's roughly twice the length of Higurashi: Matsuribayashi) this episode is the first of two covering Kindred Spirits on the Roof. In this episode we cover the events from the start of the game up through the end of August in the game's calendar. Our next episode will focus on the remainder of the game and all of the extra materials that unlock once you reach the ending.

Please note that this is a game with sexual content and while we don't talk about it in detail, it is something we discuss briefly throughout the episode.

As always, if you like the show please leave us a review! We're hosted on itunes, google podcasts, spotify, and several other places so please check us out and tell your friends! You can also follow us on twitter at sayitinredpod for more updates and episode information!

Content Warnings for this episode
00:42:50 to 00:49:15 - Discussion & Critique of a student/teacher romance presented in the game

Welcome to Rokkenjima. We've been waiting for you for a long, long time. Now that you're here with us, let's begin the Witch's Game.

This week marks the beginning of Say it in Red's journey into Umineko no Naku Koro Ni, a visual novel that's extremely dear to the hosts and one that they've both read and reread many times since it's initial release. To recapture the experience of reading for the first time, two Guest Readers will join Sara and Runa for the duration of this trip: KT Kelly and Raven have never read Umineko before, have minimial knowledge of it and no significant spoilers about any of its mysteries, and are eager to uncover the secrets of Rokkenjima, the Ushiromiya family, and the Golden Witch herself...

Umineko no Naku Koro Ni is the second series of When They Cry games published by 07th expansion and written by Ryukishi07. It focuses on the wealthy Ushiromiya family as its members gather on October 4th, 1986, on the remote island of Rokkenjima off the coast of Japan. At this family conference, the adults in the family all bicker and fight over their share of the family wealth and estate as the aging patriarch, Kinzo, is said to only have around 3 months left to live. This family conference also marks the first time in six years that Battler, one of Kinzo's grandchildren, has come to Rokkenjima after a long and bitter feud with his father, Rudolf. Unaware and unprepared for the state of the family after all this time, Battler steps onto Rokkenjima in high spirits and with the hope of rekindling his friendship with his cousins. After dinner, though, it becomes clear that something more ominous is about to occur... With tensions high and the adults arguing about the division of inheritance and Kinzo's wealth, Rudolf takes his wife, Kyrie, and son, Battler, aside and tells them both that by the end of the night, he might end up being killed. This is only complicated by the letter that arrived during dinner, the letter that came with Kinzo's seal and contained a message allegedly from Beatrice, the Golden Witch of legend who supposedly granted Kinzo the gold that formed the basis for the family's wealth. The portrait of this witch hangs in the main hall of the Ushiromiya mansion and contains an epitaph, a mysterious poem that describes what seems to be a brutal sacrificial ceremony aimed at resurrecting Beatrice. The evening passes slowly as the typhoon rages outside, and when the next morning arrives, six people have gone missing and a strange magical sigil has been drawn on the garden storehouse...

Umineko is a Mystery story about a series of murders that occurs on Rokkenjima in the midst of a typhoon between October 4th and 5th. Or, perhaps it's a story about an occult ceremony to revive a thousand-year-old witch  and plunge the island into a mystical otherworld. Or, perhaps it's something else entirely?

If you've read Umineko before, join Sara and Runa as they enjoy rereading and seeing new readers experience it for the first time.

If you've never read Umineko before, join KT and Raven as they read through each volume, come up with theories, discuss their ideas, and try to understand the mysteries of the Rokkenjima massacre and the Ushiromiya family.

Please remember that KT and Raven are still reading as you listen to this episode, and help us make sure that they don't get spoiled for any of the mysteries and questions they're working hard to understand!

If you enjoy Say it in Red, you can follow our podcast at SayitinredPod on twitter, and please give us a rating and review wherever you listen!

Content Warnings for this Episode:
General warning for Murder, Violence, Death, Impalement, Shooting/Guns, Blood, and Gore.
01:09:00 to 01:12:30 - Discussion of Child Abuse
01:29:30 to - 01:35:00 Discussion of a 23yo man dating a 16yo servant of his family

This week, Sara, Runa, and special guest Mari continue communing with the spectral rooftop lesbians in Kindred Spirits on the Roof! In this episode we'll go through the ending of the game and dip just slightly into its deep well of extra content, following Yuna and the other Shirojo students through the fall School Festival and then on toward the end of the calendar year. As the school festival draws to a close, Hina comes to Yuna with a bright smile and tells her something that will send her spiraling into emotional turmoil throughout most of October...

As mentioned in our previous episode, Kindred Spirits on the Roof (2012/2016 English Release) is a kinetic novel that focuses on protagonist and 2nd year high schooler Yuna as she meets two ghosts on her school's rooftop, then promptly gets pulled into a year long quest to help other students at the school come to terms with and act upon the feelings they have for other girls. Sachi and Megumi, the titular Kindred Spirits, find girls who seem to have romantic feelings for their classmates, seniors, fellow club members, or friends and work with Yuna to find out how they can assist each of these girls in conveying their feelings. Sachi, who died over 80 years prior, has witnessed so many girls who fell in love and then never had the chance or felt secure enough to confess that love, and so she's determined to make sure that this school, at least, can be a place where those feelings can flourish. In the first half of the game, we saw Yuna work with the Kindred Spirits as they helped other girls around school to come to terms with their feelings, confess to the girls they loved, or resolve some of the barriers that kept them from opening up to others. Yuna, herself, has changed a great deal since then and it seems that she may be one of the only ones who hasn't noticed just yet...

Please note that this is a game with sexual content and while we don't talk about it in detail, it is something we discuss briefly throughout the episode.

As always, if you like the show please leave us a review! We're hosted on itunes, google podcasts, spotify, and several other places so please check us out and tell your friends! You can also follow us on twitter at sayitinredpod for more updates and episode information!

We are speaking to you over radio waves leaking through a broken keyhole. Summer is over, but that sickening feeling of sweat against your skin won't leave until we're well into October, like most things that follow you even as you flee from one season to the next.

This week, Sara and Runa go to summer camp in September! The woods! The campfires! The blaring voice of God crackling over the radio to shame you for your every inner thought! We Know The Devil is about three teens, Jupiter, Neptune, and Venus, who hate their vaguely christian-ish themed and existentially withering summer camp. Their group is always coming in last place. They're always taking the brunt of everyone else's criticism and the Bonfire Captain's unwanted attention. They're always having to deal with the smug chuckles of Group South while they climb the telephone poles to fix radio sirens. But tonight, they're going to meet The Devil. In an isolated cabin far from the rest of the campers, deep in the woods and mosquito-bitten wilderness, Venus, Jupiter, and Neptune spend the night trying to distract themselves from what they all already know for certain:

One of us is the Devil. I think... I think it's me.


We Know The Devil (2015) is a visceral and atmospheric visual novel about messy teens in a summer camp that hates them nestled in a forest that might love them far from a society that definitely wants them to shut up and fail. It's hard to describe exactly what it's about without giving everything away, but it's an exceptional horror game with fairly simple routes and an extremely satisfying narrative payoff. Please join us as we kick off the spooky season of Octember with one of our favorite visual novels of all time, and if you have a chance, go ahead and grab a copy to play it for yourself!

 As always, if you like the show please leave us a review! The best way to help us is to give us a review and tell other people about us! We're hosted on itunes, google podcasts, spotify, and several other places so please check us out and tell your friends! You can also follow us on twitter at sayitinredpod for more updates and episode information!

Content Warnings for this episode:
General content warning for discussion of religious homophobia, transphobia, and Evangelical Christianity.
00:26:02 to 00:26:45 - Mention of sexual harrassment
01:04:30 - Body Horror 

Welcome Back to Rokkenjima.
We sincerely hope you're enjoying your stay, as the storm won't be letting up for quite some time. Now, let us continue.

This week, Sara, Runa, KT, and Raven finally reach that pivotal moment in dramatic storytelling: The Title Drop!

We continue our reading of Umineko no Naku Koro Ni with volume 2: Turn of the Golden Witch where Battler takes a nap, Maria gets to celebrate Halloween Early, and we learn once again that the Ushiromiya family isn't spending a dime on therapy. A new version of October 4th and 5th greet us with new twilights, new victims, and more Beatrice content than ever before! This time, Beatrice appears on the meta-layer to taunt battler and prod him after each murder, telling him to accept that these murders were done with magic. Battler refuses to accept magic, however, and also refuses to accuse either his family members or any of the servants of being the culprit. Still, people are dying at a rapid pace... Battler, is that strategy really going to help you in this situation?

Umineko no Naku Koro Ni is the second series of When They Cry games published by 07th expansion and written by Ryukishi07. It focuses on a series of mysterious murders carried out over the course of October 4th and 5th, 1986, on the island of Rokkenjima. With the cast already introduced and the setting established, we get to see more of the past and more of each character's inner world. We see Shannon, years ago as she goes on a date with George, speaks with Beatrice on the beach, hears that Love is impossible for Furniture, and seems to take drastic measures to challenge that fate. We see Kanon, watching anxiously as he believes the witch is beguiling his sister and tormenting them both with the promise of a love that will never truly be possible for furniture such as themselves. We see Rosa, abusing Maria violently and publicly on the train ride toward the family conference, and then we see Maria, clinging to Rosa afterwards and telling her that 'It's not Mama's fault, the Bad Witch was possessing her.' Now, with Battler as both participant and observer of these mysteries, the cycle begins again. The Golden Witch Beatrice challenges him to deny her magical explanations for the elaborate closed room murders or else surrender, accept witches, and kiss her feet as her new prized Furniture for all eternity.

Please remember that KT and Raven are still reading as you listen to this episode, and help us make sure that they don't get spoiled for any of the mysteries and questions they're working hard to understand!

As always, If you enjoy Say it in Red, you can follow our podcast at SayitinredPod on twitter, and please give us a rating and review wherever you listen!

Further Reading on Okinawa and the US Military's Impact on the island

• Fears Raised that war dead remains mixed in with Henoko Landfill
• Student nurse recalls horrors of Okinawa fighting
• Indigenous Okinawans are Fighting U.S. Imperialism
• The Suitcase Murder Tearing the U.S. and Japan Apart

Content Warnings for this Episode:
General warning for Murder, Violence, Death, Impalement, Shooting/Guns, Blood, and Gore.
00:11:00 to 00:17:00 - Discussion of Military occupation and related real life murders
00:11:00 - Discussion of a 20-something man dating a 14-15yo servant of his family 
00:40:25 to 00:51:00 - Discussion of Child Abuse
01:25:00 - Disembowelment
02:43:45 - Cannibalism, forced Cannibalism, Vomiting, and Body Horror

Welcome Back to Rokkenjima.
Are you settling in to your new surroundings? Please, don't mind the thunder rolling over the cliffs and enjoy this game to its fullest.

This week, Sara, Runa, KT, and Raven meet murderous MILFs, MILF witches, and witches with a tsundere streak, all while Battler finally breaks his streak of losing heart. Sort of.

We continue our stay on Rokkenjima as we read Umineko no Naku Koro Ni, Volume 3: Banquet of the Golden Witch. As the curtain rises on a new game, we see a glimpse into what appears to be Beato's past where her teacher, the former Beatrice, tells her of the Endless Magic. As October 4th dawns again and the typhoon clutches Rokkenjima in its grip, the first twilight unfolds with a baffling series of six interlinked closed rooms and a grand witches' battle between Beato and her teacher. Battler soon learns from her teacher that there are far more options open to him and he has more ways to fight back than he realized. By the time he finds his footing, however, something even more earth-shattering has happened: Ushiromiya Eva has solved the Witch's epitaph, found the gold, and become the new Golden Witch. EVA Beatrice now descends to the rose garden and the murders continue apace, all while Beato and Battler struggle to keep up. Come, come, try to remember, Battler... what is it that you should really be focusing on right now?

Umineko no Naku Koro Ni is the second series of When They Cry games published by 07th expansion and written by Ryukishi07. It focuses on a series of mysterious murders carried out over the course of October 4th and 5th, 1986, on the island of Rokkenjima. In this, the third game of the series, we meet more demons and witches than ever as Battler becomes ever more adamant that witches and demons absolutely do not exist. He becomes more and more adamant that an additional culprit, or perhaps any number of additional culprits, could potentially exist and there could be a 19th, 20th, 30th, or 100th person on this island hiding in the shadows and waiting to act. He holds firm to his Devil's Proof, even when confronted with Beato's new tactic of employing Hempel's Raven to provide proof via the contrapositive. Then, in the midst of all this turmoil, Rosa finally confesses: There was another person on the island, Beatrice, who appeared exactly as she does in the mansion's portrait  and who lived at a hidden mansion deep in the forests of Rokkenjima. Rosa knows this for certain, because she met Beatrice 19 years ago,

And then she killed her.


Please remember that KT and Raven are still reading as you listen to this episode, and help us make sure that they don't get spoiled for any of the mysteries and questions they're working hard to understand!

As always, If you enjoy Say it in Red, you can follow our podcast at SayitinredPod on twitter, and please give us a rating and review wherever you listen!

Content Warnings for this Episode:
General warning for Murder, Violence, Death, Impalement, Shooting/Guns, Blood, and Gore. 

00:18:15 - Ableist language in character description
00:48:50 to 00:57:45 - discussion of captivity, grooming, possible incest
1:54:00 - Graphic Fantastical Torture

This week, we reach the end of the Umineko Question Arcs, and the halfway point in our journey through the forests of Rokkenjima.

The Golden Witch's game has reached its dramatic climax and Beatrice makes some of her most startling moves in Umineko no Naku Koro Ni, Volume 4: Alliance of the Golden Witch. We begin not in 1986, but in 1998 with Ushiromiya Ange in a world where only Eva returned alive from Rokkenjima. As Ange works backwards from the future to seek the truth of what happened on Rokkenjima, Battler faces one of the most aggressive mysteries yet - Kinzo descends from the study and conducts the first twilight just after dinner, and by midnight of the first day, only Battler will remain alive. While the cousins remain barricaded within the guest house, they can do little else but wait anxiously for phone calls from their relatives and head out, one by one, to meet their uncertain fate. Over and Over, Battler answers the phone and hears about Kinzo's overwhelming magical power, demons and witches holding his family hostage, and even Kyrie's testimony that magic is certainly real, and that Battler should certainly believe in it. Soon, it will be Battler's turn... Dear Readers, how do you think he'll do in his test, with Beato as his examiner?

 Umineko no Naku Koro Ni is the second series of When They Cry games published by 07th expansion and written by Ryukishi07. It focuses on a series of mysterious murders carried out over the course of October 4th and 5th, 1986, on the island of Rokkenjima.  In volume 4, the final game of the question arc, Bernkastel has granted Ange passage onto the gameboard but she becomes bound by the condition that she cannot reveal her name and identity to Battler. Still, with her help, Battler manages to gain more ground in fighting back against the mysteries of Rokkenjima and in particular, gains a powerful tool in the form of the ability to use Blue Truth. By proclaiming a theory in blue that can explain away the magic on the game board, Battler can force Beato to respond in Red or risk defeat at the end of the game. Now, at the end of the question arcs, Battler finally has the stakes in hand to skewer the witch and bring this game to its conclusion. Beato looks at him with a pained smile, taunts him through a cracking voice, and as she bleeds, Battler holds her gently and promises to kill her without fail.

Don't lose heart. We're only halfway through, after all.


 Please remember that KT and Raven are still reading as you listen to this episode, and help us make sure that they don't get spoiled for any of the mysteries and questions they're working hard to understand!

 As always, If you enjoy Say it in Red, you can follow our podcast at SayitinredPod on twitter, and please give us a rating and review wherever you listen!

Content Warnings for this Episode:
00:47:00 - Child Neglect
01:04:00 - Child Neglect and Abuse
01:19:00 - Fantastical Torture and Gore

This week,

Battler dies.

The answer arcs begin with a dramatic twist: While Battler has been ignoring the 5th game, run by Lambdadelta, Bernkastel's new piece has already announced the culprit and is preparing for their trial. Ushiromiya Natsuhi is called to the stand before the second twilight is even complete, and the Detective, Furudo Erika, has prepared an ironclad, airtight case against her. With Beato's eyes cold and unresponsive, Battler searches through this cruel 5th game for traces of her and declares that he will fight to take this game board back from the witches - This is a game between him and Beato, after all, and he promised to be the one to kill her. Is it even possible, though, to defeat the Detective within a mystery novel?


Umineko no Naku Koro Ni is the second series of When They Cry games published by 07th expansion and written by Ryukishi07. It focuses on a series of mysterious murders carried out over the course of October 4th and 5th, 1986, on the island of Rokkenjima.  In volume 5, we see the answer arcs begin with an unconventional game arranged by Lambdadelta to entertain her dearest Bernkastel. We see the island in 1985, as Natsuhi and Krauss learn of Kinzo's death and Krauss breaks down, panicking over the possible revelation of his embezzlement. With her husband indisposed, Natsuhi takes charge of the situation and forms a plan to create the illusion that Kinzo is still alive, working with the servants on staff to make sure that the 1985 family conference proceeds without any of Krauss's siblings learning the truth. That was a year ago, however, and since then, Eva, Rudolf, and Rosa have grown increasingly suspicious. As the October 4th of 1986 approaches and the pressure on Natsuhi rises, a mysterious caller contacts her just before the relatives arrive. The caller claims to be her son. The caller claims to know her favorite season. The caller claims that Natsuhi tried to throw them away and kill them, 19 years ago. Although she tries to put this out of her mind, the calls continue on into the evening of October 4th, long after the external lines have all gone dead as a result of the storm...


Please remember that other listeners may still be reading for the first time as you listen to this episode, and help us make sure that they don't get spoiled for any of the mysteries and questions they're working hard to understand!

As always, If you enjoy Say it in Red, you can follow our podcast at SayitinredPod on twitter, and please give us a rating and review wherever you listen!

Content Warnings for this Episode:
General warnings for violence, murder, gore, abuse, and torture.

Without Love, it cannot be seen!
But all Love is not equal, all Love is not blessed!
Was Love alone truly never enough?

This week, Sara and Runa finally hear KT and Raven's Full Culprit Theory: Their answers to the who dunnit, the why dunnit, and even a bit of the how. Before we reach that point, however, we discuss Umineko volume 6: Dawn of the Golden Witch!
As the story opens, we see Battler, now donning a cape remarkably similar to the one Kinzo wore in life. He finishes inscribing a magic sigil into the floor of Kinzo's study, signifying the completion of the tale of the 6th game. As he steps back and sighs, Genji tells him of Beatrice's difficulties in crafting the first four tales, her constant battle against the threat of Logic Errors, and the way she cackled proudly even after struggling for so long. And then, Beatrice herself arrives... though she calls Battler 'Father' and seems polite and demure. Battler, frustrated, sends her away harshly. What sort of resurrection was he able to achieve, after Beatrice died in his arms at the fifth game's close?

 Umineko no Naku Koro Ni is the second series of When They Cry games published by 07th expansion and written by Ryukishi07. It focuses on a series of mysterious murders carried out over the course of October 4th and 5th, 1986, on the island of Rokkenjima.  Volume 6 focuses on the events of Battler's game, after he has ascended to the post of Game Master and Territory Lord - With Bernkastel and Erika as his opponents, he proclaims that he will craft a game that will prove his understanding of the Truth and the deepest core of Beato's mystery. This game begins much like any other, but now Furudo Erika no longer has the power of the Detective's Authority... That is a good thing, isn't it?
While the family members and staff adjust to the presence of their unpleasant guest, Shannon and Kanon discuss their convictions and their respective Loves for George and Jessica. As Kanon finally confesses his love, and as Shannon steels her resolve, a pair of theatrical demons arrives to put the young lovers through a Trial of Love. Zepar and Fufur declare that only one Love can receive the blessing of a miracle! Only one Love can be made whole and strong enough to face the trials of the world! They will grant this blessing only to those who show their convictions... by completing the trials and carrying out the murders of the epitaph.

Please remember that other listeners may still be reading for the first time as you listen to this episode, and help us make sure that they don't get spoiled for any of the mysteries and questions they're working hard to understand!

As always, If you enjoy Say it in Red, you can follow our podcast at SayitinredPod on twitter, and please give us a rating and review wherever you listen!

Content Warnings for this Episode:
General warnings for violence, murder, gore, abuse, and torture.
General warning in the theory discussion section for coercion and sexual assault, grooming, and incest.
00:25:00 - Erika's use of sexual assault metaphors
02:22:50 - Beginning of detailed discussions of KT and Raven's theories pertaining to grooming, child abuse, sexual abuse, and exploitation of minors.

Dear Readers,

Be forewarned. This episode, in which we cover Umineko volume 7: Requiem of the Golden Witch, contains a tremendous amount of spoilers, speculations, and extensive discussions of the whodunnit, whydunnit, and howdunnit of Umineko's mysteries. Please take care before you proceed, and when you're ready please join us for a thorough, emotional discussion.

The game opens with a funeral - all gather to pay their respects to Beatrice, the Golden Witch of Rokkenjima. Battler lays a book within an empty casket and Virgilia offers a witch's prayer, and then one by one each member of the Ushiromiya family mourns and remembers their mysterious benefactor... including Ushiromiya Lion, the 19-year-old successor to the family's headship.
Elsewhere, we see an inquisitor from the courts of Heaven rushing through the streets, cutting down false equivalencies and tearing through heartless deductions to protect innocent bystanders from accusations of murder. We're quickly introduced to the second new character of Volume 7: Willard Wright, who serves alongside Lion as the point of view character for the majority of this episode.
Drawn by Bernkastel into a strange amalgam of fragments centered around the Rokkenjima Chapel, Will and Lion are tasked with uncovering the identity of Beatrice's killer. After asking each member of the family about their experiences with Beatrice, after discovering the truth of Kinzo's past and the origin of the gold, and after questioning the miracle of Lion's existence, Will finally comes to understand the heart of the Culprit who orchestrated the Rokkenjima Massacre. Here, at Beatrice's funeral, we will finally hear the answer to the question that has been hanging from her lips since the end of the Question Arcs:

Who... am... I?

Please keep in mind that in addition to extensive spoilers about the content, characters, and plot of Umineko, we'll be discussing a lot of topics in this episode that are both painful and in some ways deeply personal to us as readers. A list of some of those topics will be included below, as well as general content warnings. Please also be warned that, due to the nature of Umineko's mysteries, simply learning about what sort of similarities there might be between our experience and that of the culprit could constitute a huge spoiler, so take care before you scroll down any further.
























In this episode, we will discuss a number of topics including, but not limited to:
Child abuse including sexual exploitation and coercion, Incest, Transphobia both external and internalized, Intersex issues including non-consensual surgeries, Fascist war crimes in WWII, graphic scenes of violence and murder typical of Umineko, Homophobia both external and internalized,  parental abuse and a lot of very tangled, messy parent-child relationships, and a number of other familial abuse topics.

Since Intersex issues are not discussed as often both in the mystery genre and in society in general, we wanted to include some resources here.
For more specific information on Intersex issues, including the history of non-consensual surgeries on intersex individuals, advocacy, and additional information, you can visit

https://interactadvocates.org/


Content Warnings for this Episode:

00:16:55: EPISODE 7 SPOILERS BEGIN

1:09:25: Spoilers for classic game Portopia Serial Murders

01:45:00 to 01:51:30: Discussions of Child exploitation, incest, child abuse

02:29:15: Murders, gunshots, fatal face injuries

02:58:00: Specific spoilers for Twilight Mystery Solving from all Question Arc games