Rinka ZhongIn pursuit of a non-existent reality
Game Title:
さよならを教えて 〜comment te dire adieu〜
(‘How to Say Goodbye to You’)
Brief Introduction Of the Main Character:
Hirosuke Hitomi
The main character of this game is a patient suffering from severe mental illnesses. He imagines himself as a school trainee teacher and turns the misfortunes he suffered in his childhood into a part of his delusion. While advancing the relationship with the imaginary girl, Hitomi’s condition becomes more and more serious, while some morbid thoughts gradually deepen. After one imaginary abusive act after another, his psychological state collapses and eventually reinvents a new identity image for himself. And after this, it seems that everything returns to the usual way, and Hitomi begins a new cycle of torture.
So when we talk about Hitomi’s wants, we should separate his sober side from his chaotic side. While suffering from delusions, he needs more fixed relationships and no stimulating words from others or thoughts from himself for calming down; when he is conscious(in the past, and the very short time after he is caught by doctors), he wants to escape from criticism from others and have his own life.
What Hitomi really needs is that he should take pills and actively accept treatment rather than avoiding it. In his opinion, evasion brings lasting pleasure as he does not want to face the past and take responsibility for what he has made.
The most serious flaw of Hitomi are his mental illnesses. Some parents just consider them as some temporary emotional matters, but in fact they are some physiological lesions. The others are personality flaws like the weakness that is unwilling to face up to reality, the selfishness that is afraid to take responsibility, the incomprehensible violence and the pessimistic attitude towards the world.
Hitomi does grow, but not completely change. When he tries to protect the only real girl in the game, and gives up other fictional girls in his delusions, he does have a moment to be infinitely close to reality. The reason why he fails perhaps is that he has formed an impenetrable cycle of thought which intends to protect himself and stop any other from entering his hearts, but actually has bad effects.
How does the character’s identity relate to issues of representation?
He imagines himself as a school trainee teacher and turns the misfortunes he suffered in his childhood into a part of his delusion. For example, he projected the kitten he abused at a very young age on the hospital cat, which turned into his little sister whom he had not seen for a long time; he was once forced to leave the archery department and give up his dream, so he took the broken doll in the junkyard as his student in the department, and so on. At the same time, in order to make up for his delusional settings, he considers his sister, who comes to visit him every day, as a supervisor for a routine checkup, and his attending doctor as an ordinary health teacher.
His thoughts cross his mind as fast as a bird of prey and can not be captured at all. In an attempt to calm his mind, he vents his confused emotions that have nowhere else to go on things he is delusional about, but which seems quite incomprehensible to others.
Hitomi is the hero of this game. Although his fight against fate fails in the end, he still makes meaningful progress.
