Bae in Review: White Mask, Bad Apple Wars

[not_krys]

This was another bae where I meant to get someone else first, but stumbled upon this one by mistake, but decided to continue with it anyway. (re: See Okazaki from Collar x Malice)

 

This is the part where I’m going to get into spoiler territory, as I will be using White Mask’s real name henceforth in this review.

 

Final Spoiler Warning here~

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As this was my first route in the game, of course I’m going to start things off as blindly as possible.

I had originally meant to pursue Satoru, but a wrong turn somewhere had me going towards White Mask, the leader of the Good Apple Prefects.

I probably should have started off with Bad Apples first, in hindsight, as I was dropped into a world I barely knew about with a character that probably would have been better off locked from the very beginning.

I was basically thrown headfirst into a world I definitely wasn’t prepared for.

On the Good Apple side, we are elected as a trial member of the Prefects, basically the disciplinary group of the school. It’s basic purpose is to keep students from breaking the rules of the school and keeping everyone in line.

This wouldn’t be so bad if the fact that this school is basically a pit of depression and suffocation. No one can stand out, no one remembers anyone’s name, no one can be happy or proud of their achievements, like if they liked sports, music, arts and crafts, basically anything of enjoyment, no one can basically be themselves, becoming a shell of a person as time passes.

As a trial member of the Prefects, our heroine, Rinka, has to enforce these strict rules, or become one of the Bad Apples, a group of students that are breaking the school’s rules, to keep their individuality and working towards getting out of this hell of a school.

Rinka has to watch as White Mask ‘correct’ his fellow students, even for minor infractions, such as dress code violations, or studying materials from an outside source of the school (Satoru was a frequent victim of this treatment). When she finally can’t take it anymore, she reaches out to him and tries to physically stop him from correcting another student.

This is where her powers (the game’s built in mechanic) begin to manifest. Normally, no one in the school, NEVAEH Academy, physically touches another student because of the rare occurrence of seeing into someone’s past. It was small basic courtesy thing that the students agreed upon, as it does feel extremely intruding if you can see someone’s life and memories with a simple touch.

Rinka doesn’t know about this, reaches out to try and reason with White Mask, and catches glimpses of his past each time she touches him.

She learns about the boy, Iku Watase, through White Mask’s memories.

Side note: Unless it's just in my copy of the game, in the ending dialogue, the written portion says that his first name is Shou, yet if you listen to the spoken dialogue, you can clearly hear him saying that his first name is Iku. Though my Japanese is no where close to being fluent, I can at least understand when someone is introducing themselves. So, when I hear him saying 'Ore wa Watase Iku', I understand it as 'I am Iku Watase.' I didn't hear anything that sounded remotely close to 'Shou', so I'm not completely sure where it came from, unless the kanji for his name wasn't translated correctly.

Iku was a boy that was surrounded by death his entire life, enough to earn him the nickname ‘Reaper’. His mother died giving birth to him, his father died rescuing him from a fire, a boy at school tried to be friends with him but he ended up falling into a river and drowning, his grandpa dies mountain climbing, a teacher that tried to help him open up is stabbed by a girl that had a crush on him, the boy is just surrounded by death. It causes him to retreat within himself, trying his best to not get close to others in fear that they will be next to die.

The only problem is that people keep trying to get close to him, each of them reaching their eventual ends in one way or another. It had taken a strong toll on young Iku’s mind, wanting to love and be loved in return, but can’t because anyone close to him ends up dying.

The icing on the cake is when he just looks at a girl crossing the street. He didn’t know her, and her only crime making passing eye contact with him. The next moment, she crosses into the crosswalk, only to be run over by a speeding truck.

This absolutely breaks Iku, that he could kill someone he didn’t even know with just sharing eye contact.

The best part? The girl he accidentally lead to her death?

Our heroine, Rinka.

The details of his death are kind of glossed over, assuming he somehow got to NEVAEH Academy, and rose to become the leader of the Good Apple Prefects (because time works really, really weirdly in this game), losing himself in the rules of the school, so that the pains of the past are numbed, hopefully to never resurface again.

Enter Rinka, the new student with the power of touch, seeing his most painful memories long buried into his subconscious, now brought to the surface for the first time.

He doesn’t take well to his memory being jogged.

It’s not made completely clear if he can see the memories she sees at the same time she does, but he does seem to change under Rinka’s presence. His cold and distant exterior starts to crack, his old fears starting to resurface as Rinka grows closer and dearer in his heart. His fears reach a peak when she finds a cross necklace, presumably his Soul Totem (an item that accompanies you from your previous life to the academy). He gives her his Soul Totem in a climax of touching, where their souls are presumably at their closest. He doesn’t want anything to happen to Rinka because of the incidents in his past, so he tries his best to try and distance himself from her, even to the point of wanting to sacrifice himself to keep her away and safe.

Rinka is having exactly none of this.

She goes after him, wants to help him face his fears, and to convince him that he is very much worthy of receiving and giving love, death surrounding him or not.

Through Rinka’s persistence, he learns to accept himself and her love, not afraid to show affection for probably the first time in his life, dead or otherwise.

Through some.. Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey stuff, he finally reappears in his old life, just after the incident of Rinka being run over by a truck.

This time, however, he is persistent in keeping her alive, staying by her side in the hospital and helping to bring her back to the land of the living, sharing quite a tender moment when she wakes up.

I think the only complaint I have about this game is that the route feels far too short. Five chapters of common route (with only needing two initial choices to get on a route (one actually, but you need both to get your boy’s epilogue, lol)) while it seems the actual routes are only two chapters long.

Maybe I’m just used to games having longer stories, but this seems incredibly short.

Not a major nitpick, but still worth noting.

Overall, I get the feeling that I may have stumbled into a route that I probably wasn’t supposed to. Iku feels like a route that should have been locked, as this feels like something that probably would have been a big reveal if I had been playing this game for a while. To look into the character that’s really the most major antagonist of the game. Like, it would change my perception of him had I done his route further down the line, instead of right in the beginning.

It was an enjoyable route overall, I just get the feeling that I knew too much too soon for a route that was likely meant to be locked from the beginning.

Pros and Cons

PRO: Once he’s devoted to you, you will have yourself a dedicated boyfriend for life
CON: He’s also a worrier. And he will worry about the smallest of things, especially when it comes to you. If it comes to it, he won’t let you do anything for yourself.

PRO: He’s pretty open to new experiences, like first dates.
CON: He didn’t have much chance to experience things because he was constantly surrounded by death.

PRO: He is calm and collected most of the time, using fair logic and diplomacy
CON: He used to use shock therapy on kids that were misbehaving in school, especially one that repeatedly brought a banned book to class.

Bae Rating: 7/10.

If anyone has any special requests for baes for me to review, the most up-to-date list of games and routes I’ve completed thus far is listed on my profile page. For other reviews, check out the Bae in Summary page, where I've posted my other reviews, such as the ones for Collar x Malice.

Have a good day, lovelies, and remember to touch all the butts.