Hair-raising memories, carved into my wimpy head

I’m quite late into this, really.

I honestly did not plan on joining in the spooky ani-blogging moment of the year because I’m truly a wimp. But the thing is, I’m still alive! So I might as well share my personal experience of derp and fear which have all led me to almost soiling my pants every damn time.

 

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When ‘Shadow’ is more than just a two-dimensional silhouette

 

I have completely forgot how I was even bothered to play Fate/Stay Night visual novel, let alone managing to discover Fate franchise at all. It had been fun, really fun.
Though, if there is one thing I wish I can forget, it would be the fact that I somehow braved through Heaven’s Feel route despite knowing full well that I am weak against dark themes and even slightest horror!

Quite a spoiler ahead so, yeah… You know what to do.

In order to read through the final route, Heaven’s Feel, you have to first finish both Fate and Unlimited Blade Works routes. Obviously I have done that. Fate, or you could just call it Saber’s route since she was the main focus, was the most straightforward the game could be which was good to start with; starting with big bangs hardly work anyway. Unlimited Blade Works had the Holy Grail war derail from its rules and all, so it was spicing things up.

The soundtracks are there for you to listen while reading this, so do it…

 

Heaven’s Feel for me really, was in more ways rebelling than Gilgamesh himself, to the point that it even proved superiority by eventually deleting him from the final boss status.

Emergence of the Shadow

 

It was from this moment I had started feeling unease. The endless tension was packed with unwanted twists. I could no longer hoped that the story would just went on normally anymore then after having seen the shit Sakura had just pulled.

Something about the ‘shadow’ freaked me out, not that the contents of the game’s text were helping me in any way. Not much was revealed until I got deeper into the route’s progression and just for a while…

…only for a while, I giggled as an instant reflex.

The ‘Shadow’

 

I mean, just look at it.

….pretty fancy for a tampon, right?
Well, no. Not really because the music played quite a big part in my mental manipulation.

 

That laughter of mine slowly turned back into crumbling fear as I hid under the blankets, reading the text made up of mostly torturing words, covered in bold red. It’s amazing how one can feel with their senses—visual and audio recognition. I already knew that I was weak against horror type ‘entertainment’ but even then I still wanted to know more. Because having finished two previous routes, there was a massive insurance that the end had existed—there would be an end point to suffering.

Now that ufotable has Heaven’s Feel adaptation ongoing and the first movie has already been released. I have not seen the movie yet but here I am really hoping that they can truly transfer The Shadow’s horrifying nature from the visual novel to anime. Like, holy mother of God, I wasn’t anywhere close to pissing in my pajamas. You know why?
Because it was frightening, even my piss was too scared to come out. I am sure that you are all used to the pissing pants joke by now, but have you thought about the possibility of an opposite? It really can happen, yo.

Also, for just about anyone who has played the visual novel: when you hear this soundtrack, I know what most of you are thinking…

“Should my right hand get to work now?”
It’s surprisingly nice to have scenes like these, saving me from the horror within.

Lastly, for the fans who’ve enjoyed the first movie: please look forward to the second part of the trilogy!

 

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I think I have PTSD, but I don’t

 

Is it odd that I was made to hide under the blankets by eroge of all things?
Well, obviously I am not a fan of gore. Mirai Nikki has put a final nail in the coffin for me and my courage’s true end came after first episode of Tokyo Ghoul.

This actually, hugely affected my overall taste not for just anime but any medium of entertainment in general. And there I thought that I could get away from being horrified by consuming comedy, romance and drama genre shows/games, but boy I was wrong.

This instance of fright was also from a visual novel, though it was of a completely different genre. Allow me to (re)introduce you to Grisaia no Kajitsu, probably best known for having mad but lovable ‘bitches’ with some ridiculously twisted backgrounds.

I know what you are probably thinking: Isn’t this just a trashy harem eroge?

 

I’m quite glad that I have come to know of its existence. It has a protagonist who only is not dense but happens to be among the most badass among all harem protagonists. Matching his ability to handle things harshly, the female heroines are also ‘something’; their circumstances are at pure level of over the top which instantly reeks thrills.

The person who came up with this idea was probably on seriously good drugs.

Also, if the things I have said about the game has your interest already then the things I have to say below are hardcore spoilers for the final part.

In my personal horror-meter, Amane’s route would have topped it. However, the best ‘fright’ moment I’d gotten from the VN was no other than Sachi’s scream is despair when she, for the last time, suffered a PTSD attack.

I remembered having played this game late into the night (literally, like 3 in the morning or so), just like how I play any other games or watch anything. My room was large and dark which was actually a perfect setting to scare the living shit out of me.

Here is a pure spoiler as to what led me into watching this scene and to later have my soul rushed outta my body:

Sachi was a good little girl who’d always obey her parents. But because her parents are both working extremely hard, they have very little time for her. For each of her birthdays passing by, she’d never spent her time with her parents (a little sad, don’t you think?). One (birth)day Sachi disobeyed her parents’ order to stay home and went out, searching for them when it got late into the evening and they had yet to return to the house. It was the one mistake she’d wish she never made because of that very decision to not stay at home, fatal accident happened at the road crossing which led to the death of her parents. Sachi, being the sole survivor, was given an unfortunate glimpse of her parents in flesh just moments before they died. All of this led to her having troubles sleeping as she never stopped imagining what her mom’s final expression meant. It could have been a lovely parting message, or in the case of her past traumatic symptom, a death threat of revenge.

 

Because the background music for this VN is top-notch, the piece used for the very scene did NOT help in the slightest. If anything, it amplifies the fear factor in Sachi’s shriek by folds. Man! And I had my laptop sound on almost max, too!

 

Here is the crisp and clear version… I am never going to listen to this at night in the dark.

 

And here is the link to Steam page for the game. Despite it being extremely long and riddled with typical flaws of an eroge, the most frequent complaint I have seen for Steam’s version is that… it has the hentai parts cut out. So if you want to experience some sexy parts of the game then you know what to not do.

 

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Pretty sure this is really a kid’s show, right?

 

Well guess what, yes it is. I’d watched it when I was around four or five years old. But just because it is a kid’s show doesn’t mean that it cannot be scary!

Last but not even the least in my list of shits that scared the living hell out of me, here is Teletubbies and…

…the f*ck… Noo-noo?

I never knew its name until right now. Because I have to write a post about this freaking thing, I had to look it up.

 

Turns out that I am far from being alone in possessing fear for this child-like monstrosity. So I don’t even need to explain why a vacuum cleaner can come off as spooky, no matter what time of the year it is for me.

And I’ll be really honest again, I don’t remember much of the Teletubbies and what it really was (or still is) about. But never would I forget seeing this ugly ass thing because every time it showed up, I made sure that I was safe from anything that could have touched me. And because this thing is a vacuum cleaner, even my kid self was smart enough to have figured out that if horror movies were real, it would have approached me from the floor.
What did I do then?

I watched the show while cuddling like a ball on my sofa throughout its run.
That’s right, I had played The Floor Is Lava game throughout my kiddy years, before Homer Simpson had made it on air in 2004.

Looking back at the show now, clearly nothing about it is giving me the frights now but Noo-noo continues to exist as a living meme. Well, it ain’t like he wasn’t already a meme back in the past.
It’s a thing with kids’ shows. What we would have considered to be normal is probably now…

Now it does, with either ‘suck’ or ‘slow’ option, too!

 

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And that’s my frightening experience, shared with you all! I hope that you can now feel better about yourself after having known that there is always someone more of a wimp than you are.

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