משתמש:אילן שמעוני/ערך euphoria

תבנית:Nihongo is a Japanese eroge visual novel developed by ClockUp. It was first released on June 24, 2011 for Microsoft Windows. The plot centers around six students and a teacher who wake up in a mysterious white room and are forced to participate in cruel games involving rape and torture, under the threat of execution. A six episode OVA series adapting the visual novel was produced by studio Majin from 2011 to 2016.

euphoria is noted for high production values and profound, captivating plot, and is notorious for extreme cruelty. It is this combination that preceeded the game and made it known before its translation to English. Significant number of players expressed regret playing it because the cruelty far exceeded their capacity.

Gameplay

The gameplay of euphoria is described by the developers as an "Immoral Hardcore ADV". The HD remaster version of the game gives the player the option to turn on or off the display of "cut-in effects", "grotesque scenery", "scat", or "orgasm faces". After the player completes at least one of the games routes, a Bonus section menu becomes available allowing the player to view to unlocked scenes, gallery images and Staff Comments.

Plot

The protagonist, Keisuke Takato, wakes up in a clinically-clean facility. He tries to investigate and meet girls that are his school-mates and a female teacher.

A robotic-sounding voice announces the group that they participate in a rape "game". Keisuke is designated as "unlocker", the females as "keyholes". The robotic voice states that there will be 5 turns, in which the unlocker chooses a keyhole, and will enact upon her a given act of rape, torture and degradation using provided items or "keys'".

One of the girls refuses to participate, and is promptly tortured to death. Kaisuke has dark desires and is sexually aroused by the painful execution. Nemu is aware of his desires, and tries both extortion and temptation to have his dark desires take over, turning him to her pleasure toy.

As the game develops, Kaisuke is presented by choices that determines the development of the plot. Five different expanded plots are possible by choosing the same girl to all the five turns, otherwise the novel gets to a meaningless ending. The different plots are cross-referencing and gradually tells the full horrific story behind the death-game and reveals the real history of the main characters. Some order is imposed upon the reader: before reading the Kanae route, also commonly referred to as "the true ending", One of the other routes must be completed. Reading all the other girls routes provides much information that falls into place during the "true ending", but is not mandatory.

Nemu and Kanae are the key characters among the participants. After completing the facility tasks Kaisuke finds that the school became a nightmare of rape and death, orchestrated by Nemu. Choosing Nemu's path leads to out-of-character end for her - after rarely exposing empathic facet of hers, Kaisuke refrain in the last minute to kill her, gets stabbed to death from behind, and Nemu is lamenting him, crying that he should have killed her.

Kanae's route reveals that the facility rape game was held while the participants were held in a virtual reality, but the school game was mostly real. A company arranged the game for the rich and powerful for their amusement, and Kanae is the lead scientist of the project. Kaisuke comes to know that Nemu actually did her best to save his life, trying to lead him to kill her out of hatred and contempt.

Characters

Protagonist

תבנית:Nihongo

The main character, a second-year student at Rokukeikan Academy. Member of the school astronomy club. Keisuke is horrified when he discovers that scenes of torture, gore, excrement and death arouse him sexually. However, Keiuske kept his moral core and tries to bury his extreme sadism, as well as doing his best to hide this.

Throughout the novel Keisuke longs for normal life, where he will not face his dark urges. This is put under heavy stress, as the game owners force upon him to act upon his dark urges to save the life of his peers. In one of the endings of the novel Keisuke succumbs to his urges and keeps an horrific "pet collection", which is the girl characters that he rapes and tortures repeatedly.

Revealed the end is that both Keisuke dark urges, as well as his memories of Kanae and Nemu are in fact false, planted by Kanae.

Main characters

תבנית:Nihongo

תבנית:Voiced by

Keisuke's classmate, a second-year student at Rokukeikan Academy. A sado-masochist, she is cruel and sharp witted, using extortion and temptations to manipulate Keisuke to be taken over by his dark urges. She is also in command of the death and rape horror that took over the school.

At the end of Kanae's route, also named "the true route", it is revealed that Nemu was forced into a tight corner by Kanae Hokari: either she makes Keiuske kill her, or Kanae will execute Keisuke. The entire cruel and sadistic facade was Nemu's attempt to make Keisuke hate her and kill her, thus saving him from execution by Kanae.

Revealed the end is that Keisuke memories of Nemu are in fact false, planted by Kanae that deleted his memories of Nemu being his childhood friend.

תבנית:Nihongo

תבנית:Voiced by

Keisuke's childhood friend and classmate, a second-year student at Rokukeikan Academy. Emphatic and merciful, she trusts Keisuke to the point where she regards him as family. Keisuke is horrified by the possibility that she will find out about his dark urges, which Nemu uses this to manipulate him.

At the end of the true route Kanae is revealed to be the true antagonist. A twisted scientist, she orchestrated the entire horrible death and rape regime in the school and in the facility, in order to drive Nemu to deny reality and collapse into a state of hallucinogenic world of bliss - which through virtual reality will serve the rich and the powerful. However, Kanae takes that well beyond her work, and ends up in acts that testify her twisted mind.

Revealed the end is that Keisuke memories of childhood connection with Kanae are in fact false, planted by Kanae. Kanae also altered all the other student's memories to remember her as a fellow student.

תבנית:Nihongo

תבנית:Voiced by

Member of the discipline committee, a second-year student at Rokukeikan Academy. Composed and peaceful, she's often regarded as being the loner of the group, despite frequently participating in volunteer activities.

After the facility ordeal is over, it is revealed that Rinne peaceful facade hides a religious fanatic that leads a cult of worshipers, and that she is Keisuke daughter that for religious reasons seek to have his child, the promised messiah.

תבנית:Nihongo

תבנית:Voiced by

Member of the same astronomy club as Keisuke and Kanae, a first-year student at Rokukeikan Academy. The youngest of the characters in the group. She is selfish, infantile, dim witted, prone to hysteria and is always obsessed with food, and refers to herself in 3rd-tense.

Among all the main characters, Rika Makiba is the only one that does not hide any altered ego and is just as she seems. Unlike the others she has no ulterior motive to accept the death-game.

Being, as she herself admits, weak and feeble-minded, in most of the routes she breaks and become an accomplice to Nemu's regime and to Rinne's cult. In Rinne's route she commits bloody suicide when Rinne is kidnapped and taken from her. In her own route, after suffering Keiuske's rapes, humiliations and torture, she develops Stockholm syndrome and falls in love with Keiuske, but keeps a clear mind enough to acknowledge that this is wrong. However, after Keiuske totally revert his position towards her, expressing care and does his best to protect her she accepts her feelings, and grows beyond her helpless, mindless previous self.

תבנית:Nihongo

תבנית:Voiced by

An English teacher, she is newly put in charge of the third-year students at Rokukeikan Academy. Due to her beauty and kind nature, she quickly becomes popular among students. She does her best to prevent conflicts among the others, but Keisuke thinks that her efforts are mostly ignored and perceives her as weak and lacking.

After the ordeal in the facility Natsuki is revealed to be a trained assassin, hired by the company that orchestrated the horrors. In her own route she uses both her skills and her position to take Keiuske out of the death game as her mate.

Minor characters

תבנית:Nihongo

תבנית:Voiced by

The class rep of Keisuke's class, a second-year student at Rokukeikan Academy. She is very serious and firm towards others. As a consequence for rebelling against the mysterious voice, she was disqualified from the game and tortured to death. Seeing her long, horrendous dying Kaiuske discovers to his dismay that it arouses him sexually.

Adaptions

Anime

The eponymous OVA series based on the video game produced by studio Majin. It was directed by Kunio Ayano and Oji Hakudaku, written by Romko Hachite and designed by Citizen. It has a total of 6 episodes, each lasting 29 minutes. It contains scenes of sexual content and violence. Mostly the anime doesn't follow the virtual novel plot, it rather display scenes that could fit into each of the plot lines.

Novel

On October 28, 2011, a novel based on the plot for the original video game named euphoria: Another Room was published by Paradigm. It was written by Ei Asou and illustrated by Shigeo Hamashima. Apart from having the same characters, it bears little resemblance to both the virtual novel and the anime.

Reception

Visual Novel

euphoria is renowned for the quality of the plot and being very immersive, and is notorious due to extreme content that includes explicit torture, gore, coprophilia and rape, including rape of underage character (Rika Makiba). Euphoria is one of the few visual novels that were widely known outside Japan even before its 2015 translation to English. The premise of the story has been compared to series such as Gantz and Saw.

Many of the reviews describe the novel as deep, praising the quality of the characters, the philosiphical questions raised and the overall experience.

The production quality also received praise regarding the voice acting, the music score and the art

Many of the reviews used strong superlatives both positive ("beyond horror", "beyond impressive") or negative ("Traumatizing", "rape of the soul", "burned into the mind"), safe to say the reviews in general portray novel to stand out, both positively and negativly.

External links

• Visual novel official website (ביפנית)
• Visual novel official website (באנגלית)