Tatsuhiko Takimoto - Welcome to the NHK!

“Satou?”

“What?” I asked without turning around or slowing down.

“So, you’re actually a lolicon?”

I felt as though my heart would stop. Pretending I hadn’t heard, I walked even faster.

Misaki continued, “It’s fine if you are a lolicon. In fact, it might even be more convenient for you. If you say you’re a lolicon hikikomori, it’d be the absolute best. You’d be at the very lowest rank of human society, after all.”

I stopped walking and turned around.

Misaki wore her habitual smile. “Yeah. Thinking about it, lolicon is better. That way, I think you’re even more perfect for my project.” She jumped lightly, excited. It seemed, once again, to be somewhat forced.

In the calmest voice I could possibly manage, I stated, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Anyway, I’m not a lolicon hikikomori, you know. I’m a creator! I was just taking reference pictures.”

“Hm…”

“It’s true.”

“Well, let’s meet again. Don’t do anything that would put you on the news, okay?” With that, Misaki marched away.

It was a May afternoon.

The second Golden Week [21] Holiday week in Japan, April 29-May 5. had arrived, I recognized that the rainy season had ended in a flash. [22] The rainy season usually lasts from June to July in Japan. The days passed and passed and passed at an amazing speed.

However, over the course of a month, all sorts of events had occurred.

For example, one night recently, I happened to run into Misaki at the convenience store. She handed me a piece of printer paper. It appeared to be a contract. “Contract” was written on the paper in black ballpoint pen.

Just a week before that, I’d made plans to meet the girl I’d known from my high school literary club. We went to a cafe in Shibuya and had a little chat. I was a bit nervous, but nothing of note happened.

On top of that, my father was laid off during a “restructuring.” My allowance would stop the following month.

Likewise, my next door neighbor, Yamazaki, also seemed to be facing all sorts of unexpected hardships recently. “My father, who works in the primary sector, has been hospitalized with liver trouble,” he explained. “I’m the eldest son. Should I take over the family business?”

In reality, it seemed like he had no choice. I thought his best decision would be to go home right away and run his family’s dairy farm and winery. Apparently, he had some deep issues with his parents.

“Even though they have money, they wouldn’t help me continue my education. They sent an application to a dairy school without even asking me. And so I worked part time for a year at convenience stores and as a security guard to earn my tuition for Yoyogi Animation Institute. They’ve got to be kidding, coming to me with this now!”

I didn’t really understand Yamazaki’s anger, but becoming furious allowed him to put off thinking about these problems. He acted as though he would simply not commit to anything, even if everything caved in around him. I decided to follow his example and just avoid reality for the time being.

Speaking of avoiding reality, there was still the issue of the erotic game we’d been planning. We were trying to push forward, even now, at a time when our project was almost utterly meaningless.

Truthfully, I should escape from my hikikomori life as quickly as possible and focus on trying to get a legitimate job; but for some reason, I put on a smile and told Yamazaki, “I’d like you to just leave me alone about the Lolita stuff, okay?”

“Sure. We can work with your tastes, Satou. I honestly thought we would be arrested at our little elementary school picture-taking event the other day.”

I don’t care about anything like that; I have to find a job now or I’m finished! I wanted to scream, but once again, I smiled and went along With him. “I’ll write the scenarios today.”

“I’m counting on you. The quality of the game all depends on your scenarios, Satou.”

“I know. I’ll do my best when writing them. I’ll put all my energy into making this erotic game!”

Yeah, this is the peak. Bravo! Or rather, that’s awful!

Nothing is better suited for escaping from reality than making an erotic game. After all, the genre itself aspires toward limitless escapism.

Yamazaki, seated at his two huge computer towers, started another speech. “That’s right. Escapism is the very essence of the erotic game. As creators, we have to offer the player an enjoyable escape from reality. The real world is overflowing with painful things: girls who make asses out of guys like us, girls who make fun of guys like us, that bitch who cheated on me with the manager of the convenience store, the community college student who toyed with my adolescence… all those painful things make this world a difficult place.”

The second half of his speech had described pretty concrete situations specific only to him, but I let him continue. Pausing briefly to drink his oolong tea, Yamazaki raised his voice even higher, intoning, “In short, real women are worthless. They are incredibly close to monsters. And so …”

“So?”

“So, as erotic game creators, we have to create perfectly convenient female characters, the kind that don’t exist in reality.”

Convenient female characters…

“I mean, characters who start liking the protagonist without any real reason, ones who get close to the protagonist out of pure good will, those kinds of characters,” Yamazaki explained. “Characters without any hidden motives whatsoever, who would absolutely never betray the protagonist. The kinds of characters who could never exist in the real world.”

“If you introduce characters so far removed from actual life, won’t the overall realism of the game be compromised?”

“It doesn’t matter. Players aren’t looking for realism in erotic games. Even if we stupidly tried to introduce realism, players would just get sick of it, eventually. If someone wanted to fall in love with a realistic character, they could go speak to a real woman and not have to play erotic games.”

“I see.”

“There are still techniques you should use to create characters,” he warned.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if you just stick in a regular female character and announce ‘she is a perfectly ideal heroine!’ there’s no ring of truth to that claim. You have to use strategies in terms of situational and character-based set ups to reinforce the fact that your ‘ideal heroine’ is, indeed, ideal.

“For example, one technique is to make her a childhood friend. If you make the main character’s childhood friend into a heroine, you can develop a believable bond, because they’ve been close to each other from youth. From this fantasy, you get a convincing argument for her as a perfectly convenient, ideal heroine.

“The second technique is to make her a maid. If you make a maid your heroine, then, due to the nature of her job, a master-servant relationship develops. From this fantasy, you again get a convincing argument for her as a perfectly convenient, ideal heroine.

“Finally, the third technique is to make her a robot. You make a robot into the heroine. Because robots cannot oppose humans, the sense that she cannot have ulterior motives or that she cannot betray her owner, making a convincing argument for her as a perfectly convenient, ideal—“

“B-by robots, you mean…?” I interrupted.

“I mean a regular robot. You make a robot the heroine of your erotic game.” It was a fairly surreal conversation, but Yamazaki’s expression suggested that this was all completely natural.