Say It In Red

Dear Listeners,
Do you remember the start of this year? Remember the crisp winter air, the bustling feet of travelers, the smell of oil and electricity that greeted us as we stepped onto the train together? It was such a great coincidence to see you there! Even though we've been classmates all this time, that morning on the train was the very first time you've ever spoken to me. That first conversation was such a tremendous, fate-defining moment for us both, it's hard to imagine that it was just a dream. We are still late for that test we didn't study for, though, so we'd better hurry.
This month, Sara and Runa return to the Tsukihime Remake and discuss the Ciel Route, focusing on the game's other heroine and generally having a raucous good time. Unlike the Arcueid Route, which had a notable absence of Ciel through most of its runtime, the Ciel Route features both heroines prominently and also brings in more of the side characters we really enjoyed from the Arcueid Route as well. While this route diverges at the point after Shiki first kills Arcueid, the tone of the route shifts even earlier as the game has already primed readers to work through the Ciel Route and try different things this time around. The result is an incredible experience that makes some significant improvements on the Arcueid route's shortcomings while also delivering some exceptional character arcs and romance dynamics. As Shiki gets closer to Ciel, we learn just how tightly his own fate, Arcueid's old wounds, and Ciel's past trauma are all entertwined. Also, Arach rules.
 As always, if you enjoy our show please consider writing us a review on your podcast platform of choice! You can always support us directly on Patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred where you will get access to all of our bonus episodes past and present, including our most recent bonus episode in which Runa tells Sara all about Storytelling and Narrative design in Trading Card Games!

Wake up! It's the year 2000 - you remember the year 2000, right? In those days, almost no one had a cell phone and the millennials that were in middle and high school at the time spent their days watching old CRT monitors, hanging out in arcades, wandering the mall after school, or murdering vampires with a pocket knife! Yeah, those were wild times back then... Kids just roamed freely, getting trapped in hotels full of zombified beasts and hanging around True Ancestors while their families wondered where they were at. In hindsight, perhaps it wasn't all so idyllic as we remember, given the grievous injuries and traumatic memory loss, but just thinking back on it fills you with nostalgia. Let's return, for just a little while, to that time...
This month, Sara and Runa make good on their previous threats and read the Arcueid Route in the original version of Tsukihime (2000)! As one of the earliest  VNs covered on the podcast, it's not only an excellent period piece in its own right but also shows just how much the VN development space, and Type-Moon as a studio, has changed in the last quarter century. From different minor antagonists to tonal shifts and drastic changes in scene and character dynamics, the original Tsukihime gives players a much different experience than the remake. Is that for better? For worse? Through playing the original Arcueid route, we compare the romance between Shiki and Arcueid, the plot beats and character arcs, and the overall feel of both versions of Tsukihime and discuss the challenges and benefits of remaking such a seminal classic of the genre. 
As always, if you enjoy our show please consider writing us a review on your podcast platform of choice! You can always support us directly on Patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred where you will get access to all of our bonus episodes past and present, including our most recent bonus episode in which Sara tells Runa all about gay hockey and the Heated Rivalry series!

2025 is Dying - Read  Indie VN's to kill it faster!
Happy New Year, Dear Listeners, and thank you for once again joining us on this delightful journey into the vast and delightful realm of Indie Visual Novels. In our Indie VN Compilation episodes, Sara and Runa each read a handful of small visual novels produced by independent teams or sometimes even solo developers, many of which are free and if not are pretty cheap, and all of which offer their own unique and exquisite delights. From VNs made for game jams to delightful gay fluff to intense vampire melodramas to Isekai'd Dark Knights to the epic highs and lows of being trans in high school, we'll tell you about some games you might have missed but definitely need to check out!
 In these Indie Game Compilation Track episodes we want to highlight some of the incredible indie VNs we've played recently and get people excited about the things happening in Indie Visual Novel development spaces. We want to not only showcase the amazing breadth of work coming from Indie developers but also talk about some of our favorite games, many of which touch on subjects, characters, and experiences we rarely get the chance to see in games from larger studios. You can find a list of each game we played below and we encourage you to play along with us, and go searching for other Indie visual novels as well!   
 Most of these games are free and if not, fairly cheap (though please tip the creators if you are able), and you can read most of them inside of an hour or two. In fact, we want YOU, dear listener, to pick at least one of these games to play after you listen, and then tell us about it! You can also check our Patreon, where listeners and patrons can submit either a short audio clip or a few sentences telling us about an Indie VN you've played and enjoyed recently! We may even include your submission on our next Indie VN Compilation Track episode (only if you want, that is).  
Games discussed in this episode:
Char's Ennui
The Mysterious Thief; Forget Me Not
Dramatic Irony
Devil's Liminal
Homunculus Hotel
Adult Life Yuri Bundle by Team ANPIM
Parfum Nostalgique
Taking my Dark Knight Girlfriend to the corner store
Cycle

Have you ever glimpsed the truly ephemeral? Is it in the melting of a snowflake upon a cool window pane? The falling petals of a flower in spring? The laughter of a child in summer? Is it the brief and fleeting connection between lovers who might only meet once every thousand years? Is it the whim of the inscrutable and inhuman? Or is it, as so often is the case, the moment when a Type-Moon protagonist feels like he's got his whole life together and everything is really looking up for once?
This month, Sara and Runa begin reading through Tsukihime ~ A Piece of Blue Glass Moon~ (2021), the remake of the vastly popular and influential game from Type-Moon, Tsukihime (2000). While the original game features more branching pathways and romance routes to explore, this installment of the remake focuses on Arcueid and Ciel's routes and for this episode, we'll be discussing Aruceid's route in particular. We begin following Shiki, a young boy who wakes in a hospital bed after a serious accident has left him near death. Throughout the world and across every surface he can see, there are pulsing, eerie red lines that cut through his vision. He discovers that, with very little effort, he can cut along these lines to utterly destroy anything with ease. Shiki Tohno, as it happens, can see Death - those lines represent the points at which anything be it human or monster or object can most easily fall to oblivion. After receiving a pair of glasses from a cool older lady who we don't meet again in this game (See Witch on the Holy Night for more info on her), Shiki strives to lead a normal, well-adjusted life with his new foster family. For the next seven years, at least, he is successful.
After receiving word that his father, Makihisa, has died, Shiki is summoned away from his foster family and back to the Tohno mansion. There he meets Akiha, his younger sister who now acts as head of the family, and the maids Kohaku and Hisui who manage the household's domestic affairs. While he struggles to acclimate himself to this new environment, he suffers a bout of what is surely Normal Protagonist's Anemia and takes a moment to sit down on a park bench. That's when his life changes course entirely. That's when he sees the beautiful vampire with bewitching red eyes cross his path. That's when he decides that now, for the first time in memory, he wants to kill.
Content Warnings
Discussion of sexual assault - 01:51:20 - 01:55:45

Yours is an old house, distinguished as much by its history as by its adamant defiance of decay and weathering. Its halls are lavish and narrow, its chambers dark and calm, and its rooms never quite feel large enough to fill its frame. One evening, the lady of the house calls you to her side. She beckons you from within her canopy bed, the drapery down and her voice unusually coarse. She says 'Come here, dear listener,' as she crawls on all fours. She says 'A little nearer...' as you part the curtains. She says 'Be still, and do promise you will not scream?' as she draws you close with one hand, and then another, and then another, and then another still. 'It is time,' she says at last, 'to share ghost stories.'
Happy Halloween!
This month, Sara and Runa discuss Iwakura Aria (2025), a game which just arrived in English at the end of summer. This tale of gothic suspense sports lavish sprites created in the style of oil paintings, watercolor and charcoal cut-ins, and a lush sense of style and design that often leaves you wondering whether you're really in 1966, when the events of the story take place, or further back in a Victorian drama. The game follows protagonist Ichiko, a 16 year old orphan who has just returned to the orphanage where she grew up after leaving her previous job due to the sexual harassment she faced from the men there. A well-dressed gentleman finds her on the street one day as she tends to a market stall for the orphanage - among the wares on offer, the orphanage staff have placed one of Ichiko's own paintings of a bluebird in flight. This gentleman, Amane Iwakura, takes notice of this painting and offers Ichiko a job working as a maid in his estate. With few other prospects, Ichiko agrees and it is at that manor where she meets Amane's daughter, Aria. Immediately struck by Aria's beauty and poise, Ichiko is flustered and feels she is blessed to be not only in such a lovely house, but to be maid to a beautiful girl like Aria. The house, however, is not without its mysteries and secrets. The distant sound of a crying baby rings in Ichiko's ears on her first nights there, though no baby resides in the manor. An umbilical cord preserved in a box on a shelf, a missing volume of architectural plans, the strange parties Amane hosts in which Aria entertains his associates, and several other curious details give Ichiko some cause for concern. More than anything, however, she is concerned for Aria who sometimes wakes cold as a corpse, barely eats, and seems so pale that even the slightest sunlight might burn her. As Ichiko falls in love with Aria, the secrets of the house and Aria's past threaten to crush them both without mercy or hesitation. 
As always, if you enjoy our show please consider writing us a review on your podcast platform of choice! You can always support us directly on Patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred where you will get access to all of our bonus episodes past and present, including our most recent episode in which our Umineko reading circle gathered to discuss the Umineko stage play adaptations!

Content Warnings for this episode:
Grooming of infants and children
Religious abuse
Mutilations, particularly stabbing with sharp implements
Incest
Sexual harassment and assault