‘Madmen, too, are able to see and hear things that are imperceptible to ordinary people.’
– Ranpo Edogawa, Oshie to Tabi-suru Otoko, 1929.
Played with BertKnot. The game and this review mention medical, psychological and incestuous abuse.
Terrified, dazed, empty, dilated, mournful; the eyes in Kindaichi shōnen no jikenbo (1992) have always been particularly powerful emotional vessels. In contrast to Meitantei Konan (1994), where the pupils are stylised and exaggerated, the delicate, restrained strokes in Kindaichi evoke a particular vulnerability. People are sensitive to exaggerated outbursts of passion, and the silences speak volumes when a panel is focused on demented eyes. The completely black pupils of the suspects and culprits offer little insight into their inner feelings. This veil remains impenetrable for the detective who, insofar as he can guess the modi operandi, never manages to fully circumscribe the tragedy of the murders. On the contrary, he crystallises and exacerbates it by bringing the truth to light in front of the audience.
The common heritage of Japanese detective and horror genres
There have always been links between horror and detective fiction, but this is particularly true in Japanese literature: under the influence of Ranpo Edogawa, the definition of the detective story (tanteishōsetsu) expanded to include the heritage of the horror, fantasy or criminal genres. He further states: ‘the appetite for detection (tantei shumi) corresponds to the appetite found in detection novels; it can just as easily be called the appetite for the bizarre. [Appetite for detection] is the quest for the bizarre and the enjoyment of the strange' [1]. The proliferation of intricate stratagems in shin honkaku stories supports this view. The detective and the reader become voyeuristic witnesses to strange crimes. Despite the sordid cases he has solved, Kindaichi continues to visit remote islands where mysteries abound – at least until Kindaichi 37 sai shōnen no jikenbo (2018). In turn, the horror genre has itself been inspired by crime fiction, and this aspect is particularly evident in the Zero series. Not surprisingly, series co-creator Makoto Shibata mentions Seishi Yokomizo, whose success coincides with Shibata's youth, as a notable source of inspiration. [2] Yattsu haka-mura (1951) evokes particularly difficult circumstances and builds on the traumas of a society; its horrific aspect was exacerbated by Yoshitarō Nomura's 1977 film adaptation, to which Shibata refers. The fourth entry in the Zero series reinforces this link between horror and detection, in a triangular collaboration between Tecmo Koei, Grasshopper and Nintendo.
The player alternates between Ruka Minazuki, Misaki Asō, Madoka Tsukimori and Chōshiro Kirishima, all of whom explore the island of Rōgetsu to discover what happened ten years ago. As children, five girls were kidnapped during the Rōgetsu Kagura, a traditional local festival, before being rescued by Kirishima. Ruka, one of the victims, still has some vague memories of these events, but is unable to comprehend what happened during her abduction. Even more perplexing, ten years later, two of the victims have been killed, their faces distorted with horror. To uncover the truth, Misaki and Madoka decide to go to the island to investigate the psychiatric hospital they were admitted to in their youth, followed closely by Ruka and Chōshiro.
Masks and faces: a medical horror
The Zero formula is immediately apparent in the title, with rather slow-paced characters exploring a given location and using the Camera Obscura – or, in the case of Chōshiro, the Spirit Stone Flashlight – to fend off attacks from the ghosts that haunt the area. However, the title relies much more on its underlying mystery and an atmosphere that deliberately plays with a heterogeneity between elements of Japanese folklore and more Western features. Haibara Hospital is a huge, sprawling complex with architecture reminiscent of Meiji-era buildings, complete with a shrine and a traditional cemetery. The remaster retains this approach, with an emphasis on old VHS-inspired colour grading. The traditional horror of Zero is here tinged with corporate themes and mixed with technological and medical modernity, none of which can explain the madness of Rōgetsu's inhabitants.
In fact, the game's plot revolves around Moonlight Syndrome, an affliction that only affects those who spend time on the island: in a benign stage, the disease makes the patient more melancholic and daydreamy, before destabilising their rationality and memories, leading to violent outbursts. In the last stage, they blossom and their faces and eyes become distorted to anyone suffering from the Syndrome. It is immediately clear to the player that Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is inspired by Higurashi no naku koro ni (2002-2006), with many overlapping elements, both aesthetically and thematically. In the tradition of Goichi Suda's 'Kill the Past' titles, Mask of the Lunar Eclipse explores questions of identity and memory, under the haunting gaze of the moon. The madness that moonlight often embodies in Suda51's titles blends with Zero's own themes, which have always emphasised the debilitating weight of tradition and ritual on Japanese women.
In a historically patriarchal society, the place of women in horror stories is significant. As vengeful spirits, they regain a semblance of agency once they have left the world of the living, but have not yet fully reached the realm of the dead. Japanese art has long used these female figures, who are prominent in noh theatre, particularly in stories of avenging spirits (onryō mono) such as Kinuta (c. 14th-15th century). These plays convey codified rules of ethics through recurring elements such as masks that capture particular emotions. These masks are omnipresent in Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, where they conceal the identities of the characters and act as an unsettling veil behind which distorted faces can hide. Even when the various ghosts are not wearing masks, their frozen expressions of horror act as a mask for the protagonist, who is unable to understand their emotions and the reasons for their presence on this deserted island.
Anarchic repetition as a device in horror and detective fiction
It is only through the notes found throughout the hospital and left by the ghosts that the protagonists and the player can understand what is happening. Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is the first official translation for the game, a welcome release after the inconsistent quality of the fantranslation, but it struggles to convey the desperate madness of the diaries. The interplay of lowercase and uppercase fails to mimic the lacunar horror of the Japanese characters, but this is offset by the odd nature of the notes and their repetition. The events that have taken place on the island of Rōgetsu are not inherently complex, but the way in which information is presented to the player tends to make them nebulous. It is sometimes difficult to place events in time, as the protagonists do not seem to be reliable narrators, suffering from recurrent and disjointed flashbacks. Gérard Peloux has analysed the serial reading of Ranpo Edogawa's works as an 'actualisation of the monstrous'. By this, he means that the repeated appearance of characters in different short stories leads to an automatic reading that compels the reader 'to follow the text in its various excesses, even if this means leaving aside elements of introspection and narrative verisimilitude'. [3]
In Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, the repeated battles against the same ghosts and the diaries, which highlight the same events but from a slightly different point of view, help to normalise the dramatic and horrific tension of the game. The player's awareness is tempered, and they become less sensitive to actions that are purely medical abuses. Just as the hospital staff generally remained impassive in the face of the atrocities committed – before breaking down –, the player is caught up in a voyeurism typical of the detective. The various protagonists have gone to the island in the first place as witnesses; apart from the keys they borrow to open the various sections of the hospital, they hardly touch the furniture and pass no judgement on the events that have befallen the Rōgetsu Isle.
Atmosphere and social discourse: successes and shortcomings
This is both the strength and the weakness of the title. The player is effectively drawn into a story that mixes medical experiments and ancestral curses; the game manages to evoke a strangeness carried by the faux-silence of the abandoned Haibara Hospital; some unexplained appearances really work, such as the wheelchair, to name but one. On the other hand, Mask of the Lunar Eclipse struggles to develop a coherent social discourse. Of course, as in all Zero games, women are at the centre of manipulations devised by men, but the title fails to emphasise the medical and corporatist horror of the Haibara, nor does it find the right tone when it alludes to incestuous themes. If the game's aesthetic hints at modern inspirations in Japanese crime fiction, especially with the rise of works with social themes (shakai), the discourse of Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is generally lacking. This reserve may be justified by an insistence on the quest for identity and family, but it makes the reference to Ryukishi07's works somewhat awkward, since social themes are at the heart of his writing process.
Nevertheless, the title is carried by some clever and particularly effective scenes that contribute to a very interesting atmosphere. Sakuya's convulsions or the interplay of shots and reverse shots work very well, as do the long corridors that alternate between architectural styles. It is difficult not to read the characters' long wanderings as a journey into purgatory or the jigoku. The back and forth reinforces the Buddhist aspects of the plot and the cyclical nature of the curse that afflicts the Rōgetsu Isle. As such, it would not be far-fetched to consider Mask of the Lunar Eclipse as a modernisation of Teinosuke Kinugasa's Kurutta Ichipeiji (1926). The film is also set in a psychiatric hospital, and the interweaving of hallucination and reality is reflected in the game's storytelling structure, not to mention its obsession with masks. Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is thus part of a long tradition of Japanese horror, and attempts to innovate with the possibilities of the interactive medium.
The game is not without its faults, however. In addition to the underdeveloped themes, the gameplay suffers from imprecision, with some shots being deemed inaccurate even when the subject is clearly in focus. With the ghosts' hitboxes being slightly below their heads, it is common to miss a shot while trying to maximise points by taking it as late as possible. In the later chapters, some encounters can feel too repetitive, especially as they no longer help to advance the game's narrative. The absence of random encounters may explain the choice to multiply ghost appearances in the last third of the game, but this only serves to slow down the progression in a rather superfluous way. The remaster adds costumes, following a rather obnoxious fanservice trend that goes against the message of the series. These are optional, naturally, but they highlight the failure of the video game industry in terms of representation.
It seems to me, however, that the decision to slightly embellish the graphical aspect with a better engine, while retaining some of the original textures, really works. This creates a worrying contrast between the game's graphical style and the somewhat austere cutscenes. Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is a very pleasant opportunity to experience a new Fatal Frame in the West. The title never reaches the horror heights of the first trilogy, but it proves to be an atypical curiosity that tries to move the series towards other narrative horizons. Some sections would have benefited from further development, but the spirit of Zero still inhabits the title – for the better.
__________
[1] Edogawa Ranpo Zenshū, vol. 4, Kōbunsha, Tokyo, 2005, p. 146.
[2] ‘Interview with Makoto Shibata and Keiichiro Toyama’, 3rd October 2016, consulted on 28th March 2023.
[3] Gérald Peloux, L’acte de lecture dans l’œuvre de Ranpo Edogawa (1884-1965) : une réflexion sur la littérature d’avant-guerre au Japon, PhD thesis, Université Paris Diderot, 2012, p. 218.
– Ranpo Edogawa, Oshie to Tabi-suru Otoko, 1929.
Played with BertKnot. The game and this review mention medical, psychological and incestuous abuse.
Terrified, dazed, empty, dilated, mournful; the eyes in Kindaichi shōnen no jikenbo (1992) have always been particularly powerful emotional vessels. In contrast to Meitantei Konan (1994), where the pupils are stylised and exaggerated, the delicate, restrained strokes in Kindaichi evoke a particular vulnerability. People are sensitive to exaggerated outbursts of passion, and the silences speak volumes when a panel is focused on demented eyes. The completely black pupils of the suspects and culprits offer little insight into their inner feelings. This veil remains impenetrable for the detective who, insofar as he can guess the modi operandi, never manages to fully circumscribe the tragedy of the murders. On the contrary, he crystallises and exacerbates it by bringing the truth to light in front of the audience.
The common heritage of Japanese detective and horror genres
There have always been links between horror and detective fiction, but this is particularly true in Japanese literature: under the influence of Ranpo Edogawa, the definition of the detective story (tanteishōsetsu) expanded to include the heritage of the horror, fantasy or criminal genres. He further states: ‘the appetite for detection (tantei shumi) corresponds to the appetite found in detection novels; it can just as easily be called the appetite for the bizarre. [Appetite for detection] is the quest for the bizarre and the enjoyment of the strange' [1]. The proliferation of intricate stratagems in shin honkaku stories supports this view. The detective and the reader become voyeuristic witnesses to strange crimes. Despite the sordid cases he has solved, Kindaichi continues to visit remote islands where mysteries abound – at least until Kindaichi 37 sai shōnen no jikenbo (2018). In turn, the horror genre has itself been inspired by crime fiction, and this aspect is particularly evident in the Zero series. Not surprisingly, series co-creator Makoto Shibata mentions Seishi Yokomizo, whose success coincides with Shibata's youth, as a notable source of inspiration. [2] Yattsu haka-mura (1951) evokes particularly difficult circumstances and builds on the traumas of a society; its horrific aspect was exacerbated by Yoshitarō Nomura's 1977 film adaptation, to which Shibata refers. The fourth entry in the Zero series reinforces this link between horror and detection, in a triangular collaboration between Tecmo Koei, Grasshopper and Nintendo.
The player alternates between Ruka Minazuki, Misaki Asō, Madoka Tsukimori and Chōshiro Kirishima, all of whom explore the island of Rōgetsu to discover what happened ten years ago. As children, five girls were kidnapped during the Rōgetsu Kagura, a traditional local festival, before being rescued by Kirishima. Ruka, one of the victims, still has some vague memories of these events, but is unable to comprehend what happened during her abduction. Even more perplexing, ten years later, two of the victims have been killed, their faces distorted with horror. To uncover the truth, Misaki and Madoka decide to go to the island to investigate the psychiatric hospital they were admitted to in their youth, followed closely by Ruka and Chōshiro.
Masks and faces: a medical horror
The Zero formula is immediately apparent in the title, with rather slow-paced characters exploring a given location and using the Camera Obscura – or, in the case of Chōshiro, the Spirit Stone Flashlight – to fend off attacks from the ghosts that haunt the area. However, the title relies much more on its underlying mystery and an atmosphere that deliberately plays with a heterogeneity between elements of Japanese folklore and more Western features. Haibara Hospital is a huge, sprawling complex with architecture reminiscent of Meiji-era buildings, complete with a shrine and a traditional cemetery. The remaster retains this approach, with an emphasis on old VHS-inspired colour grading. The traditional horror of Zero is here tinged with corporate themes and mixed with technological and medical modernity, none of which can explain the madness of Rōgetsu's inhabitants.
In fact, the game's plot revolves around Moonlight Syndrome, an affliction that only affects those who spend time on the island: in a benign stage, the disease makes the patient more melancholic and daydreamy, before destabilising their rationality and memories, leading to violent outbursts. In the last stage, they blossom and their faces and eyes become distorted to anyone suffering from the Syndrome. It is immediately clear to the player that Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is inspired by Higurashi no naku koro ni (2002-2006), with many overlapping elements, both aesthetically and thematically. In the tradition of Goichi Suda's 'Kill the Past' titles, Mask of the Lunar Eclipse explores questions of identity and memory, under the haunting gaze of the moon. The madness that moonlight often embodies in Suda51's titles blends with Zero's own themes, which have always emphasised the debilitating weight of tradition and ritual on Japanese women.
In a historically patriarchal society, the place of women in horror stories is significant. As vengeful spirits, they regain a semblance of agency once they have left the world of the living, but have not yet fully reached the realm of the dead. Japanese art has long used these female figures, who are prominent in noh theatre, particularly in stories of avenging spirits (onryō mono) such as Kinuta (c. 14th-15th century). These plays convey codified rules of ethics through recurring elements such as masks that capture particular emotions. These masks are omnipresent in Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, where they conceal the identities of the characters and act as an unsettling veil behind which distorted faces can hide. Even when the various ghosts are not wearing masks, their frozen expressions of horror act as a mask for the protagonist, who is unable to understand their emotions and the reasons for their presence on this deserted island.
Anarchic repetition as a device in horror and detective fiction
It is only through the notes found throughout the hospital and left by the ghosts that the protagonists and the player can understand what is happening. Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is the first official translation for the game, a welcome release after the inconsistent quality of the fantranslation, but it struggles to convey the desperate madness of the diaries. The interplay of lowercase and uppercase fails to mimic the lacunar horror of the Japanese characters, but this is offset by the odd nature of the notes and their repetition. The events that have taken place on the island of Rōgetsu are not inherently complex, but the way in which information is presented to the player tends to make them nebulous. It is sometimes difficult to place events in time, as the protagonists do not seem to be reliable narrators, suffering from recurrent and disjointed flashbacks. Gérard Peloux has analysed the serial reading of Ranpo Edogawa's works as an 'actualisation of the monstrous'. By this, he means that the repeated appearance of characters in different short stories leads to an automatic reading that compels the reader 'to follow the text in its various excesses, even if this means leaving aside elements of introspection and narrative verisimilitude'. [3]
In Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, the repeated battles against the same ghosts and the diaries, which highlight the same events but from a slightly different point of view, help to normalise the dramatic and horrific tension of the game. The player's awareness is tempered, and they become less sensitive to actions that are purely medical abuses. Just as the hospital staff generally remained impassive in the face of the atrocities committed – before breaking down –, the player is caught up in a voyeurism typical of the detective. The various protagonists have gone to the island in the first place as witnesses; apart from the keys they borrow to open the various sections of the hospital, they hardly touch the furniture and pass no judgement on the events that have befallen the Rōgetsu Isle.
Atmosphere and social discourse: successes and shortcomings
This is both the strength and the weakness of the title. The player is effectively drawn into a story that mixes medical experiments and ancestral curses; the game manages to evoke a strangeness carried by the faux-silence of the abandoned Haibara Hospital; some unexplained appearances really work, such as the wheelchair, to name but one. On the other hand, Mask of the Lunar Eclipse struggles to develop a coherent social discourse. Of course, as in all Zero games, women are at the centre of manipulations devised by men, but the title fails to emphasise the medical and corporatist horror of the Haibara, nor does it find the right tone when it alludes to incestuous themes. If the game's aesthetic hints at modern inspirations in Japanese crime fiction, especially with the rise of works with social themes (shakai), the discourse of Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is generally lacking. This reserve may be justified by an insistence on the quest for identity and family, but it makes the reference to Ryukishi07's works somewhat awkward, since social themes are at the heart of his writing process.
Nevertheless, the title is carried by some clever and particularly effective scenes that contribute to a very interesting atmosphere. Sakuya's convulsions or the interplay of shots and reverse shots work very well, as do the long corridors that alternate between architectural styles. It is difficult not to read the characters' long wanderings as a journey into purgatory or the jigoku. The back and forth reinforces the Buddhist aspects of the plot and the cyclical nature of the curse that afflicts the Rōgetsu Isle. As such, it would not be far-fetched to consider Mask of the Lunar Eclipse as a modernisation of Teinosuke Kinugasa's Kurutta Ichipeiji (1926). The film is also set in a psychiatric hospital, and the interweaving of hallucination and reality is reflected in the game's storytelling structure, not to mention its obsession with masks. Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is thus part of a long tradition of Japanese horror, and attempts to innovate with the possibilities of the interactive medium.
The game is not without its faults, however. In addition to the underdeveloped themes, the gameplay suffers from imprecision, with some shots being deemed inaccurate even when the subject is clearly in focus. With the ghosts' hitboxes being slightly below their heads, it is common to miss a shot while trying to maximise points by taking it as late as possible. In the later chapters, some encounters can feel too repetitive, especially as they no longer help to advance the game's narrative. The absence of random encounters may explain the choice to multiply ghost appearances in the last third of the game, but this only serves to slow down the progression in a rather superfluous way. The remaster adds costumes, following a rather obnoxious fanservice trend that goes against the message of the series. These are optional, naturally, but they highlight the failure of the video game industry in terms of representation.
It seems to me, however, that the decision to slightly embellish the graphical aspect with a better engine, while retaining some of the original textures, really works. This creates a worrying contrast between the game's graphical style and the somewhat austere cutscenes. Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is a very pleasant opportunity to experience a new Fatal Frame in the West. The title never reaches the horror heights of the first trilogy, but it proves to be an atypical curiosity that tries to move the series towards other narrative horizons. Some sections would have benefited from further development, but the spirit of Zero still inhabits the title – for the better.
__________
[1] Edogawa Ranpo Zenshū, vol. 4, Kōbunsha, Tokyo, 2005, p. 146.
[2] ‘Interview with Makoto Shibata and Keiichiro Toyama’, 3rd October 2016, consulted on 28th March 2023.
[3] Gérald Peloux, L’acte de lecture dans l’œuvre de Ranpo Edogawa (1884-1965) : une réflexion sur la littérature d’avant-guerre au Japon, PhD thesis, Université Paris Diderot, 2012, p. 218.