25/11/2013

Why Sakuya Killed His Fiance, And Why I Think ''Boku ga Kimi wo Koroshita Riyuu'' Is a Mediocre CD - an essay by Eri.

Please note that this is not a review, but more of an analysis of the CD and why I think it was mediocre. I originally wanted to post it as a reply on tumblr, but it turned into a full essay and I didn't want to post a wall of text like this on tumblr.  So again, this is not an actual review. What I am doing is closer to dissecting the story (and it's flaws)

The Story
The CD starts when you 'wake up' and see Sakuya, who explains that you are dead, and that he is the one that killed you. You are currently in the afterlife. He tells you he will explain how you ended up like this, and that this explanation starts 7 day ago. After this the CD counts down to the day of your death, from Sakuya his perspective.

The first scene between the two of you is that you are shopping. You just picked up your wedding ring for your wedding, which is in 7 days. Quick calculation tells us that means you die on your wedding day, nice. While you are out Sakuya notices you coughing.

Next scene is Sakuya arriving at work and noticing that there are a lot of people absent. When he sits down a newspaper falls (out of his bag? from the desk?) and he remembers an article about an unknown disease spreading. (it is literally called ''kibyou'' meaning ''strange disease''). Sakuya re-reads the article, which states that the disease starts with a headache and that it has caused several deaths...

Next scene is when Sakuya gets home. While waiting for you to get home Sakuya watches the news and sees a report about a traffic incident. This triggers a flashback from his childhood; the traffic accident where he lost his father. Apparently they were driving to the airport to go on an overseas trip for his birthday. For some reason his mother is not there in his memories. (More on this scene later). This accident also caused amnesia - he has no memories from before the accident.

He is pulled back to reality by your entering the room. You visited the hospital on the way home (more alarm bells), it will take a few days before you get the results of your tests however. Sakuya makes you some hot milk, but you drop the mug and cut yourself. He cleans the wound by sucking it, noting that your blood 'tastes strangely sweet'. At this point I was afraid we would end up with a vampire story, but thankfully we a spared from that. It is still important later on though.

A few days later Sakuya receives a call from the hospital you went to, telling him to come alone. He is instantly worried so he leaves for the hospital right away. The doctor who called him greets him with ''long time no see''. Apparently he was an apprentice of Sakuya his father, but Sakuya doesn't remember him. The doctor tells him that having no memories is no surprise after that incident in the past.

More worried about your condition however, Sakuya asks about the test results. This is where the CD goes overboard. Apparently the strange disease always results in death, and it is not only spreading in Japan but in the entire world. However, they discovered an anti-virus in your blood. Thus, they want you to return to the hospital for tests so that they can develop an antidote. The catch is that you would become a human vegetable in the process. Sakuya immediately yells he won't allow that because you are more important than all of humankind to him. To which the doctor replies that he deliberately infected you with the disease, so that you will HAVE to come to the hospital.

Sakuya is obviously shaken by all of this, and skips work the next day. While doing this he has another flashback, but this time not of the accident but of what seems like a fire, and a woman trying to save him. Because he never saw any of these scenes in his flashbacks before he is understandably confused. This is when he realizes that the doctor said incident and not accident when talking about his memory loss.

Thus Sakuya decides to research whether there where any news articles about a fire which could be related to this. And of course he finds one that fits, it pictures a lodge (probably something like this) which is also pictured on the single family photo he has left. The news article mentions there was a fire, causing the death of one person and heavily injuring another. Because his mother is dead, Sakuya logically assumes his mother died in the fire.

(meanwhile, Sakuya has more flashbacks of a girl with a doll in a red dress, and your condition gets worse, although it could be just fatigue from overwork)

The day before the wedding however, Sakuya accidentally finds a box with all of your old dolls and plushies. Which (surprise surprise) contains the doll with the red dress from his flashbacks. This triggers him to remember everything, and to resolve to kill you. Which he does the next day on your wedding, he stabs you in the back when you give each other the ceremonial kiss.

From here on we return to the afterlife, where Sakuya explains the rest. I will do the same, but a bit more pragmatically because this essay is getting long enough as it is.


Explanation and Motives
You were friends with Sakuya when you were little, and the two of you really liked each other. Sakuya his family was on vacation near where you lived, and when the time came for him to go you didn't want him to leave. Thus you resorted to childish tricks like hiding his things so he couldn't leave (accurate child logic btw). You sneaked into the lodge at night to do so. Unfortunately you were carrying an oil lamp (or something similar) and at some point the whole place went up in flames.

Sakuya got caught in the flames and died, his mother sustained heavy injuries in her desperate attempts to save him, and would later succumb to these injuries. However his father was researching cloning, and succeeded in cloning Sakuya - the current Sakuya is a clone of the original, and this is why he has no memories from before the car accident, that was the day he was ''born''

This takes us back to the scene of said accident. Sakuya remembers this as his was father taking him on overseas trip for his birthday. It is more likely that he was fleeing overseas with the cloned child.

Although the article does not mention a second death, Sakuya deduces that there was - you died in the fire as well. This means you are a clone as well, the proof of this is the sweet taste of your blood (this is retro actively confirmed by the last scene). 

And THAT is the reason why Sakuya kills you, because the two of you are clones. Not because he doesn't want to sacrifice you to save the world, not because you caused the death of his mother and himself, destroying his life, but because you are clones. More specifically, because he is a clone and suddenly feels like he is just a shadow of the 'real' Sakuya and has no right to live. Note that he apparently decided this seconds after realizing the truth about himself. And his conclusion is to kill you, despite the fact that he still loves you and wished for you to be happy. This makes no sense to me.


The ending and its implications
After Sakuya his explanation has ended and he says goodbye, saying you will go to heaven and he will go to hell, there is a small bonus scene. At first this seems like a ''dream end'' where the entire story turns out to be a dream;

Sakuya wakes up after drifting off, mentioning he has a strange dream but can't really remember what is what about (It sounds like you are on a train or something). His finger hurts, and he mentions he cut himself this morning while making breakfast. The band-aid has slipped off, and you suck his finger to clean the wound, and mention that his blood tastes sweet. Sakuya declares this nonsense and changes the subject, saying that he is looking forward to how the wedding ring will turn out.

Now this scene was awesome for two reasons. First, it subverts the ''dream end''. This scene actually takes place one week before you pick up your wedding ring. Meaning that everything else still very much happened.

Second, you mention Sakuya his blood tastes sweet. Remember that Sakuya said the same about your blood earlier in the CD. With Sakuya definitely being a clone, this proves that you are, indeed, a clone as well.


Commentary on several of the scenes
The opening scene was pretty good to be honest. You are dead, but don't know why. The man who was your fiancé tells you he killed you. What happened? Why would he do that? The start is pretty intriguing actually. 

The first real problem is the scene where Sakuya reads the newspaper. It is so incredibly artificial it hurts. I understand that it can be difficult to introduce a topic in a CD with only one seiyuu (and thus no one to bring up the topic) but it is basically forced down your throat. Combining this with your cough from the scene before sets off an amount of red signs and alarm bells that can't be ignored. And while they don't play it completely straight, you do end up infected with the mystery disease.

Next comes the scene at the hospital. First of all, your blood having the (only) anti-virus for a disease which threatens the world sounds too fantastical to me. But there are more things wrong with this scene. I might not have much medical knowledge, but I do not see why you have to become a human vegetable from their tests. If they discovered the anti-virus in your blood, wouldn't that be all they need? Sure, giving a lot of blood (for a possibly prolonged time) would weaken you, but the worst that would happen is that you have to stay in a hospital bed for a while, not die as is heavily implied here.

(Keeping you alive is in their best interest as well, so it is reasonable to assume they would not take so much blood that they would kill you).

Another thing that bothers me is the doctor saying that he infected you with the disease when you came for a check-up. That would mean that they ran tests on your blood immediately after taking it (highly unlikely, it will probably get send to a test centre) AND immediately discovered that there was an anti-virus in it (even more unlikely, that would take extensive testing).

Also, as your blood had the only known anti-virus, Sakuya basically doomed humankind by killing you. Unless they salvage the blood from your cold, dead body or discover a new anti-virus we will all die slow and painful deaths caused by the mystery disease.


Plotholes and other rants.

  • The doctor infecting you with the mystery disease as mentioned above, as this would mean he basically infected you before he even knew you had the anti-virus.
  • For that matter, why extracting the anti-virus from your blood would result in your death.
  • Sakuya seeing flashbacks from before the car accident. Cloning duplicates the body, not the mind. 
  • You being a clone. The newspaper article does mention Sakuya his death but makes no mention of a second body.
  • Even if they only discovered your body later, how did you return to a normal life after being born as clone? There is no indication of you having a strange past anywhere in the story.
  • Why are there two clones out in the wild, both without any supervision? It is hard to imagine they would just let you go.
  • Your (and Sakuya's) blood being sweet. If you are just a clone there is no reason for this, unless they used medicine/genetic manipulation to stabilize the clones. it did make for an awesome moment in the ending though.
  • It sounds like there is no one present at the wedding, why not?
  • Sakuya is the afterlife as well, but this is not explained anywhere. I guess we'll just have to assume he committed suicide after killing you.

Ono Daisuke his Performance
While I have a lot to say about the rest of the CD, I have little to say about OnoD his voice acting. It was neither bad nor really good. I'd be surprised if such a high profile seiyuu gave a bad performance to be honest, but it didn't really move me either. 

A lot of that can be attributed to the writing I suppose; I was getting increasingly annoyed with the story and it would have taken a truly astounding performance to save it. Unfortunately there was no real room for that. 

So I'll go with ''good''. There weren't any bad moments so that makes it good, it just doesn't manage to impress beyond that (in my opinion).


Conclusion
The concept and start of the CD were promising. Unfortunately the plot ends up as too cliché, with a couple of gaping plot holes to make the situation worse.

I wanted to like this CD, I like mystery stories like this and it had the potential to be heartbreaking. Bitter-sweet would have been a good alternative, but in my opinion the CD barely reaches even that level. 

Yet, for all it's flaws, the ending is amazing. When it seemed like they were going to pull a dream end I nearly stopped listening right there. The last thing I needed after a story I hardly enjoyed was a ''just kidding!!'' moment. I'm glad I kept listening though, because it was a well executed double plot twist. If anything, I will be remembering this ending for a long time.


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Wow. I just wrote almost 2500 words on the flaws of a drama CD, haha. Even my incredibly long Wasurenagusa reviews are still only about 1500 words!

If you've listened to the CD as well and have anything to add (or counter my arguments!) feel free to post in the comments. I'm really interested in how others feel about the CD, because to me it was disappointing. 

While I had fun writing this, this post does not mean I will return to a regular posting schedule any time soon. It was more like something I needed to get out of my system. Basically this entire post is a rant that is pretending to be coherent.