tw: rape
the story starts out with a woman being raped. yeah, it starts just like that.
it's not an extremely long scene, but it's unavoidable and literally the start of the story. im not kidding, when you open the first release version
of the visual novel you get blasted with a sex scene in the face.
later you know that this woman is actually a robot. for a second you think - "oh, ok. it's very weird that someone
programmed a robot to simulate a woman being raped, but, ok."
then, you find out that this robot, actually has one of the 5 pieces of kong ruili's soul, the protagonist's sister, who was brutally murdered while being gang raped.
and these robots where made to recreate ruili's last moment's everyday, where they are constantly raped by their owners.
it doesnt end there: after killing 4 out 5 of ruili's murderers, the one left is liu haojun,
ruili's ex-husband and kong taoluo's ex-best friend. and he tells us why he killed ruili:
because she wanted to! he says ruili asked for this, because she didn't really love liu haojun, she was actually in love with her brother.
so, she thought that she was worthless and didn't deserve to live because of this, so she asked liu haojun to rape her and kill her, to separate her soul into
different robots so she could relive her last moments of torture everyday.
then kong taoluo and liu haojun fight each other to death while ruili gathers the last piece of her soul, and becomes her "old self" again. (but she's a robot now) in the end, shows that
kong taoluo died, but ruili got to him in time and moved his conciousness into hers, so they live together in a incestuous heaven inside her mind/brain/cpu.
who's ruili?
kong ruili is one of the two main characters from a japanese visual novel, written by gen urobuchi and published by nitroplus, kikokugai, also called the cyber slayer.
this novel is about revenge, crime, cyber warriors and martial arts. kong taoluo, martial arts master and former assassin in a high ranking society, returns to shanghai, after being assumed dead and being betrayed by the syndicate and his best friend. after finding out his sister was murdered, he sets out on murdering those who wronged his sibling.
warning:
this visual novel contains rape, violence, blood, torture and incest. in the future, i'll add a download link to the remake of the novel and translation (for preservation purposes), but you can find it online with some digging. read it at your own risk!
why ruili?
mostly it's because of her cute design. but i enjoyed her throught the story, as a little sister and as a full grown woman, specially her girlboss end. alsom she's a robot. idk, she's just really neat to me. ah, she made me really like yukari tamura. she did a great job as ruili!
is kikokugai that good?
it sounds really cool right? but i'll be honest with you - not really. you'd be better off reading other visual novels. however, i did find it entertaining, because let's be real, cyber punk shanghai with martial arts and transhumanism sounds pretty cool. but the story gets pretty ridiculous:(see below)
personally, as a woman, i refuse to believe another woman asked, nay, begged to be raped by her husband. but maybe incestuous freaks are that dramatic, idk. but personally, i like to believe that liu haojun was just lying, and he killed her to torture her by not being in love with him. seems more plausible to me than... the final thing.
so,
should i read kikokugai?
sincerely?, no, not really. if you're really interested, and can stomatch the ridiculous plot and the rape, maybe go for it. i'd only recommend it to people who are already into visual novels and would like to read something new. (although this story is so niche that only visual novel nerds will end up reading it) story starts really good and interesting, has a good momentum and interestingly written fight scenes, but the setting is extremely bleak and depressing that only few can stomach. the story drags a little towards the middle but picks up once you get to liu haojun. the soundtrack is really good tho.why do i like kikokugai so much?
i have to be honest, it was just incredibly entertaining. read this one a while a go and it just stuck with me. i love reading stories that are bleak and depressing, and this does just that. it's bleak, traumatic, depressing, and i really love it. you can really feel and understand the pain of the protagonist - he lost everything, his friends, the society he lived in, his own family. it's painful, sincerely, i'd do the same for my sister too if i was in the same place. even if she was in love with me and that's weird as fuck. other than that, the characters are really captivating, specially ruili, to see her growing up extremely fast right in front of your eyes, to be able to become herself again, just so she can leave her trauma behind. i really loved the setting too.it's a captivating story, but unfortunately, i think the main reason why i think i could be better is just the fact that liu haojun blamed his own wife for her death, that she asked for this, which to me, i really like to believe that he's just lying. but glad that after this gen urobuchi started hating women a little less.
tl;dr: kikokugai bad and violent and hates women, but ruili cute soft and warm
