“This is not a story of heroes”
Despite my fascination with the genre, I haven’t actually played many traditional visual novels. At most, I played Yu-No, but it’s hard to really call that a standard one due to its more adventure game elements. I’ve been meaning to branch into them more, but I never really had the time to set aside. This changed when a friend introduced me to a visual novel called Full Metal Daemon Muramasa. I knew nothing about it going into it, just that it’s considered a masterpiece in the genre, so my expectations weren’t really there. Still, I was excited to finally play a traditional visual novel and excitedly set it up. After coming out of it, I can definitely call this one of the greatest games ever made.
Taking place on an island known as Yamato, which is ruled by the Rokuhara Shogunate, the world is littered with a type of machine known as a Tsurugi. These Tsurugi are mostly used in combat, serving as a mech that certain people can summon at will, forming a bond with the mech itself, and protecting the people around them. Entire armies are full of Tsurgi’s and they’re considered pretty normal for the world at this point. Things aren’t exactly peaceful due to the oppressive rule of Rokuhara, but it’s nothing world ending, until the arrival of a Silver Star known as Ginseigo, an all powerful mech that leaves death and destruction in its wake. In comes Kageaki, a mysterious warrior equipped with the Tsurugi Muramasa, which is rumored to come with a terrible curse. Despite this though, Kageaki makes it his mission to put a stop to Ginesigo, and hopefully bring in an era of peace. The game follows this simple setup , with each chapter having Kageaki visit a different location in order to figure out more about Ginesigo’s whereabouts. Events mostly follow the same idea, usually ending with a cool fight or two, but what makes Muramasa so good is the insane amount of character depth every single character in here has. The way this game is written blows my mind, and every single line of dialogue here has so much weight behind it. Entire scenes take whole different contexts no matter how far apart each scene is. There is no definitive good guy bad guy here, no black and white, every one is grey with their own list of horrid crimes and heroic accomplishments. Sure, stopping Ginseigo seems like the right thing to do on paper, and overall it is yea, but even they get a ton of characterization into why they do it, and it makes the act of fighting against them a painful process, making you wonder if it’s even worth it in the first place. I think Kageaki is a prime example of this, due to the fact he’s our main protagonist here.
I mentioned this earlier before, but Muramasa, Kageaki’s Tsurigi comes with a curse. This curse is simply known as the law of balance, where for every “evil” soul Kageaki slays, a “good” soul must be slayed as well. This mentally tortures Kageaki, as there are moments where he has to kill people he’s grown close to in order to appease the law, no matter how much they deserved it. He spends most of the game wishing to die, wishing to find punishment in life for all the crimes that he has committed. This is a guilt he carries every single moment, tears streaming down his face during each kill, the memories of each person slaughtered constantly lingering in his mind, he understands that Ginesigo has to go, but the cost for that is too much for him to bear. This in turn creates a conflict with Muramasa, with both of them seeing each other as a tool to use, nothing more, demanding the other to fall to their will. Even during combat, they are bickering, having internal conflicts, fighting against each other, leading to fights that are always neck in neck. They have to accept each other though by the end in order to possess the strength to put a stop to Ginseigo, and we see this bond grow as the end approaches. There’s 3 different routes here as well, each fleshing out various aspects of different characters, and this is where Muramasa truly starts to hit its highs.
Before I really delve into the routes though, I wanna discuss the beginning of the game, Chapter 1. You see Muramasa can be rather hard to get into at first, as its first chapter is structured a lot like a standard visual novel plot. You play as a regular school kid, carrying out an investigation over the disappearance of his best friend, accompanied by his sleazy best friend and a girl he’s annoyed with but clearly harbors some feelings for. He explores town, meeting wacky characters, getting on random hijinx, it feels very standard and generic, and for a good bit, Muramasa wasn't clicking for me. It’s when Kageaki shows up when things start to ramp up a bit, though not at first as Kageaki is presented as a pretty comedic character, with the game not really taking him seriously at all. It’s only near the end where Muramasa starts to present it’s true colors, as the big twist ends up being that the teacher character of the game, who beforehand was presented as the kind hearted and stoic mental figure the kids looked up too, is utterly insane and wants to murder people he deems beautiful, setting the kids as his next target. Suddenly things start to get uncomfortable, we see each character get tortured beyond belief, it’s a terrifying tone shift, and it serves as a sort of test, seeing if you have the stomach to handle what lies further beyond, because Muramasa does not hold back at all, Muramsa is a cruel game that will test just how much you can handle, it demands it, and this intro perfectly encapsulates that feeling. When things finally start to take the upperhand, with Kageaki stepping in to save the day. Suddenly the dialogue becomes about good and evil, hope and despair, as you prevail over the horrors that fall upon you. The sudden shift to the more lighthearted direction again serves as sudden whiplash, taking you off guard in the moment, before taking the regions off once again with the sudden death of our main protag from Kageaki. The core theme of the game presents itself completely here, this is not a story about heroes. It’;s such a fantastic way to start off your visual novel. I really appreciate how it deconstructs the standard tropes of a visual novel, and I think it better helps show off what Muramasa ultimately wants to show off.
The first route I discovered was the Hero route, having Kageaki team up with Ichijo Ayane, a young girl with a strong sense of justice, vowing to put a stop to anyone that harms others, no matter the cause. The hero route focuses heavily on her and her motivations behind what she does, especially with Kageaki’s entire deal. In the middle of the route, Ichijo finds out about the innocent lives Muramasa has slaughtered, and this consumes her with a sense of justice, having her vow revenge against Kageaki for all he’s done, climaxing in a final battle between the two. I found her sense of justice fascinating, as the game very much paints it as wrong, with her being so consumed with revenge against Kageaki, refusing to understand the circumstances that led to this point. She pushes herself beyond the brink, mentally torturing herself to the point of just living an empty life, and by the end she becomes a hollow vessel of who she once was. One of the most fascinating aspects of this route is her trying to circumvent Kageaki’s curse. She decides to do the killings herself so Kageaki doesn't have to kill any innocents, but it’s clear this is taking a heavy toll on her, with her literally puking her guts out after her first kill. Eventually Kageaki decides he’s being too selfish with his decision, and he embraces the Law of Balance, leading to the conflict at the game's climax. This conflict ends with Kageaki's death, with Ichijo deciding to take Muramasa for herself, bowing not to stop till justice prevails throughout the entire world. We end the route seeing Ichijo overcome with guilt and despair for the innocents she has killed, clearly hating the role that she's in, but refusing to make any changes in her ways. It’s a fantastic example of the morally grey direction Muramasa takes, and was a phenomenal first route to get on my run, easily becoming my personal favorite.
Next up is Nemesis, and while I didn’t hate this route, it’s definitely what I would consider the weakest, and I found it harder to grip onto compared to the rest of the game. This route has you working with Kanae Otoi, a member of an organization known as the GHQ, as they work together to stop an impending war before lives get ruined. Much like the hero , the focus is on Kanae this time, and while she is a beauty, I found it harder to connect to her personal journey and connection with Kageaki than with Ichijo. Instead of being violent against the harm of others, she instead enjoys the act of killing, going out of the way to take part in it, wanting to better satisfy her urges. Despite this though, she still claims revenge against Kageaki, as he ended up killing a member of her family due to the Law of Balance, an act that she will never personally forgive. She’s got some great scenes here and there, but most of it was just some cool action scenes, and ultimately I couldn’t get that gripped overall. This route also contained the most annoying section in the game, the airship, as it’s just a mess of navigation and trial and error, and it felt like a massive pacekiller during my run. The final fight at least was pretty great, and there’s a fight in the middle of the chapter that challenges Kageaki’s sins and morals, easily being the highlight of the route, but ultimately it doesn't stick the landing quite as hard as the others, and it unfortunately won’t stick in my mind as much.
Conquerors is the final route here, having Ginesigo and Kageaki go head to head in one final battle. This route specifically tackles each of their bonds and strips Kageaki and Ginesigo down completely. Earlier in the game, it’s revealed that Ginesigo is actually a woman known as Hikaru Minato, Kageaki’s daughter. It’s an interesting setup because the game never outright tells you that’s his daughter, instead heavily implying it in many scenes, due to the fact that it’s specifically an incestial relationship. I think any normal visual novel would frame this as something more for shock value, but Muramasa uses this twist to further push a lot of its themes. You see, Hikaru’s relationship to Ginesigo is fascinating because it’s something that she’s not particularly conscious of. She enters the mindset of Ginesigo anytime she starts dreaming, and Ginesigo pursues her deepest desires. It’s set up a lot throughout the game that Hikaru simply went insane one day, before deciding to commit massive destruction along the world. To put it simply, this is untrue, and Kageaki is simply in denial of his daughter, refusing to see the bigger picture due to his love for her blinding him to the truth. This in turn causes Hikaru to keep committing what she does, because her ultimate desire is recognition from her father, Kageaki. Since Kageaki doesn't want to accept the full truth, he can’t fully recognize her, and this causes a sort of loop, pushing Hikaru to keep causing the destruction that she’s causing. He refuses to see that Hikaru and Ginesigo are the same, he instead wants to cling to this false ideology that they are different people, that Ginesigo is just her desires manifesting even if they are untrue. He lives by denial completely, he refuses to change and he ultimately becomes part of the problem. This ends up culminating in a final clash, where Kageaki fully realizes that he doesn't possess the strength to kill Hikaru because of his love for her. We see it time and time again he despises himself for killing anyone he grows close to, how can he possess the strength to kill his own flesh and blood? He can’t and ultimately this leads to him effectively committing suicide in the battle, sacrificing his mind to Muramasa to let her take full control and truly defeat Hikaru. Hikaru ends up REALIZING this mid fight, and she loses it completely, refusing to accept that her father is gone. Her dream, her desires, they can;t be fulfilled, she will gain no more recognition and this in turn leads to her downfall. Her defeat comes as a shocking moment because in the end, I find it hard to really call her “evil” for her pursuit. She simply wanted to be accepted as is, but she never was going to get that, she had to constantly see her father deny who she is everyday, dismissing her as insanity incarnated, thus causing her to further push her ideals more and more, ending with that break point, making her reckless, making her angry, before falling at the hands of the one she loved. That’s what Muramasa is about, it’s about the lack of good and evil, the lack of morality, it’s about love being the driving force behind every action, how people pursue their actions for love, each with their own different circumstances behind it.That’s why Nemesis has the sudden mech fight against Kageaki’s victims. They were people who got harmed from his actions, people who saw loved ones get taken away due to Kageaki’s selfish desires. You can’t truly call them evil for that because they’re fighting to take revenge against someone who took away people precious to them. It flips the perspective on every single character here, it makes you want to reflect on every single one’s motivation, and ultimately it gives me a further perspective on life itself, having me reflect on all the people I’ve met and what drives them to keep doing what they do.
This won’t be too long a section, but I wanted to dedicate some time to this as well, but after you beat the regular route, you’re presented with the epilogue, a final bookend to what Muramasa is all about. Here we see a defeated Kageaki trying to live a day to day life, racked by guilt over everything that he has done. It’s an interesting character perspective because it shows the sort of lack of growth Kageaki has throughout the game. He still lives by the idea of their being good and evil, and he still refuses to realize the moral greyness of everything in the world. It’s the ending where he fully begins to accept the truth of the world, where he has faith in his “evil” in his desires. He understands in that moment that his desires throughout this whole game were selfish, that he himself was part of the problem, but instead of refusing to see the truth and burying it deep down, he decides to just embrace who he truly is, and this leads to the happiness and satisfaction he’s been searching throughout his life. To simply deny your selfishness, to live by a black and white ideology, to live as a shell of who you truly are, that is an insult to being alive, and you’re just a pathetic coward who will never amount for anything in life.
I wanted to dedicate a section to this aspect in particular, but Muramasa can also be classified as an Eroge. There’s quite a lot of h scenes littered throughout the game, while a lot of VNs have them for shock value or pleasure, Muramasa instead uses them to further push its narrative. A fantastic example of this is the first one, which is explicitly shown as being wrong. It’s an utterly fucked situation that gets worse and worse leaving you horrified at just how far it’s going to be pushed. It sets the tone perfectly, letting you know that these scenes all have a purpose for them, and while there is a patch to remove them, it makes the game way more confusing, stripping away a lot of character depth that this game contains. Nothing is more apparent with this than the scene between Kageaki and Ichijo, a scene filled with so much depth to it, that even now I’m sitting here thinking of how much was packed inside. The way Kageaki clearly revels in it, exposing just how much he adores having complete control, a result of his sexual trauma and experiences throughout. The way Ichijo fully accepts it, embracing her position, showcasing that she holds no value on herself, only living by what others tell her to do, no matter how wrong, being an utter shell of a person because of it, refusing to express any wants or needs. All she is is an object to others, a broken vessel of who she truly can be, hiding herself in fear of what happens if she doesn't, living by others ideals no matter how harmful they can be. It’s an utter clash of each person’s trauma, each person’s ideals, each person’s motivations, and it shows full force in this scene, when nothing matters except the two of them and what they believe in. Muramasa understands what an h scene can bring to the medium and fully embraces it all, not caring how uncomfortable or unfun it can be at points, stepping forward and presenting itself full force, no matter how hard it can be to push through. It is a fantastic representation of what the medium of games can truly do as an art form, and it remains a piece of art that will never leave my head. I look forward to every single replay I have with this game, every new detail that I will learn, and I can safely consider this one of my favorite games of all time now. What an utterly fantastic experience, if you’re looking for a good story in any form, Muramasa is the game to play and I consider it a must play for anyone interested in this medium. I’m so glad to have experienced this and I’m so grateful my friend showed me just how amazing this game is. Remember, there are no heroes, there are no villains, only the ideals we live by, and you should embrace them as they are, instead of living a life of emptiness and torture. My way is the way of the sword!
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