Tokage no Shippokiri (蜥蜴の尻尾切り) Review
Cutting Off the Lizard's Tail
I’m pretty open-minded. If a game’s supposed to have an interesting story, I’ll give it a shot — moe, otome, BL, mystery, guro, whatever.
Tokage no Shippo Kiri is a guro game. Actually, every game this developer puts out is guro, and there’s a funny pattern: most guro and hardcore titles get surprisingly high praise. They’re supposed to make you uncomfortable, yet tons of people sing their praises, and a lot of them say shit like “yeah it’s guro, but the story is so healing.”
I genuinely don’t get that take. Guro is just a device; the actual story is what matters. A kid named Xiaoming helping an old lady cross the street, Xiaoming on crutches after a car crash still helping an old lady cross the street, and Xiaoming with a vibrator up his ass still helping an old lady cross the street — they all mean the same thing. Sometimes obsessing over those details really is pointless. It’s seasoning. The main dish is the same.
So how does Tokage no Shippo Kiri fare? How’s the seasoning? How’s the main dish?
Short answer: it’s pretty fucking bad.
The protagonist, Shuu, is the top student in his school. He doesn’t talk to people much and always looks gloomy, like something’s weighing on him. One day on the way to school, he sees a girl jump in front of a train at the station, her body ground to pieces. Shuu seems weirdly calm about it. On the way home, he accidentally steps on a lizard’s tail, and the lizard drops its tail and escapes.
So our boy Shuu starts pondering…
“A lizard can survive losing its tail… so can a human survive losing a limb?”
“A lizard doesn’t just survive losing its tail — it regrows a new one. So if a human loses a limb, can they regrow a new one too?”
So Shuu obsesses over this every day, even ditching class to hit the library and dig through books. The more he reads, the more he discovers — turns out there are lizards that can’t survive losing their tails. Our brilliant hero applies reverse logic: “If there are lizards that die when their tails are cut off, then there must also be humans who can regrow an arm after it’s cut off.”
He doubles down and keeps digging.
Then a girl in his class named You starts approaching him, expressing admiration. She says she envies his grades and wants to ask him questions, and asks what he’s reading every day and whether she can read along. The protagonist can’t be bothered with her at all; he just nods mindlessly. Then another girl in the class, Chiaki, shows up, saying she’s always been second in the year (or whatever) and she’s pissed at this guy who casually places first every day, so she wants to study with him too. The protagonist says he’s not really studying — he’s looking for examples and methods of humans regrowing limbs like lizards. You and Chiaki don’t get it, but they join him in searching anyway. They search and search and search, and Chiaki finally gets impatient. She says there’s a biology whiz in class named Manaka Izumi who’d probably know about this stuff, but she rarely comes to school — she’s holed up at home all day — so they’ll have to go ask her.
So the protagonist takes You to see Manaka. Manaka is surprised by his idea but also calm about it. She says she doesn’t really know either, but she’s willing to help search. So now the library crew is our boy Shuu plus three girls.
One day while digging, the protagonist has a breakthrough: “Human cells can regenerate. As long as they don’t necrotize, they can regrow. All we need is a method to prevent necrosis, and we’re good.”
“Then if you’ve found something that amazing, you obviously have to test it on yourself, right?” Manaka needles him from the side.
And the protagonist actually takes her seriously. One day he secretly calls You over to his house, pulls out a knife, and tells her to cut off his pinky.
You obviously can’t bring herself to do it. The protagonist says it’s fine, it’s fine, just cut it, it’ll grow back.
So the pinky gets cut off. The protagonist wraps it in bandages. You is on the verge of trauma, worried sick. But holy shit — a month later, the protagonist’s pinky really does grow back.
“See! It really grew back! Humans really can regenerate! Severed limbs can regrow!” Our great protagonist is overjoyed, even hugs You and thanks her for supporting his research.
Then there’s more affection and lovey-dovey stuff, and the protagonist assumes You is now his girlfriend.
One day while digging through materials, the protagonist decides to go big. He tells You he wants her to become a limb-regeneration case too. In other words, cutting himself isn’t enough — he’s planning to cut his girlfriend.
You is completely devoted to him at this point, agreeing to whatever he says. Their conversation gets overheard by Chiaki, who says sure, cut away, she’ll watch.
So in some abandoned factory, the idiot You sticks out her leg, fully believing the protagonist’s “it’ll grow back” line, and lets him cut off her foot.
You pretends she sprained her ankle and goes to school on crutches every day. But almost a month passes, and the severed foot shows zero signs of regrowth.
The protagonist keeps researching. He thinks it over, then claps his hands — he’s found the root cause.
“The cross-section has to be perfect to keep the cells from necrotizing. Honestly, when I cut your foot last time, I hesitated, so the cut wasn’t clean. Let’s cut again. This time I’ll be precise and ruthless — it’ll definitely regrow.”
Our You thinks about it — well, it’s already come to this — and agrees to cut again. So back in the factory, thunk, and not just the foot: everything below the knee is gone.
You barely has one leg left. The protagonist realizes a new problem: she can’t go home like this. Her family would freak out if they saw their daughter was missing a leg. So he tells her to lie to her family, say she’s staying at a classmate’s place, and just spend the night in the abandoned factory until the leg grows back.
You actually agrees… So on a lonely night, a one-legged girl sits in a factory, freezing and unable to move.
A while later, the protagonist visits. You is thrilled to see him and asks how it’s going. He says things are looking bad — her leg shows zero signs of regrowth, and her family has filed a missing-person report, so the cops will probably haul him away soon.
“That can’t happen — we’ve come this far, there has to be a way to make the leg grow back!”
The protagonist thinks it over, shakes his head, and says maybe he should turn himself in.
You still refuses. She says she’s willing to give more for him. He says it’s too late — he’s already talked to the other girls, Chiaki and Manaka, and they know what’s going on here. It’s only a matter of time before the cops come.
Our absolutely amazing world-class girlfriend You makes a suggestion: why not cut off the other leg too, and he can stuff her in a bag and run.
So our protagonist cuts it off. You is now a complete cripple.
Then the protagonist realizes running won’t help anymore — his trail’s already been found. In despair, the equally clueless You makes one last suggestion to help him.
“If I can’t regenerate, then just eat me. That way the cops won’t find out what happened here.”
And you know the rest. Time to fire up the pot!
Just as the protagonist is enjoying his meal, the cops close in, and he bolts.
Is the story over? Of course not — the game has routes for two other heroines. You need to clear them all to unlock the protagonist’s final route.
Chiaki’s route is different from your typical galge — it’s not about her becoming his girlfriend. It’s from another perspective, starting when Chiaki notices the protagonist’s hand is injured one day. She’s been secretly tailing him the whole time, and discovers he actually cut off his own hand to test regeneration — and that it really did regrow. Chiaki decides he’s so hot, and starts fantasizing every day about him fucking her. Fucking her isn’t enough, either — she starts thinking it’d feel even better if her own hand got cut off. Her self-harm soul awakens, and she’ll slice herself right next to her pussy just to chase the pleasure. Anyway, Chiaki secretly watches the whole thing between the protagonist and You unfold, all while fantasizing and self-harming and masturbating.
Eventually Chiaki overhears that the protagonist is going to cut off You’s foot. She’s a little curious, so she goes to help. After the cut, Chiaki is not okay — on one hand she’s scared, on the other she actually finds it thrilling. Then she starts cutting herself with a knife, bleeding everywhere and still masturbating, fantasizing about the protagonist fucking her. Later she sneaks off to the factory to observe and finds he’s basically cut You to pieces. She approaches him and asks what he’s going to do. He says nothing. Chiaki suggests, why not use me as a test subject too — cut off my hand, do it quickly and it should regrow, and you’ll probably learn something.
And he actually does it!
Now, Chiaki was already cutting herself and bleeding daily for the rush, and a frail girl like her definitely can’t handle having her hand chopped off. Even so, Chiaki tells the protagonist to hurry back to the factory and check on You, saying she’ll come to the factory and lie down with her later.
So our protagonist heads back. Chiaki leisurely strolls down the street — she’s missing a hand, she’s a frail little girl — she gets anemic and faints, and a car happens to roll right over her. Chiaki is crushed, bones shattered everywhere, and even then she thinks this pulverized state feels amazing — and sneaks in one more finger session. I was completely fucking stunned. So our protagonist never sees Chiaki again, and that’s how Chiaki bites it.
After Chiaki comes Manaka’s route. Manaka’s route has even less substance. She’s the same kind of stalker as Chiaki, but Manaka is a female pervert who already loved fantasizing about men fucking her while she masturbates. After meeting the protagonist, he naturally becomes her fantasy object. So she chases him around, peeping like a lunatic while he cuts his own hand, cuts someone else’s hand, peeps while he fucks someone, peeps while he fucks Chiaki, peeps while he cuts off Chiaki’s hand, peeps while Chiaki dies — and masturbates the whole time, even trying breath-play. Then Manaka goes to the protagonist for sex, and they fuck like the world’s ending. Manaka finally goes too far and gets hospitalized, then hears that the protagonist is dead, Chiaki is dead, You is dead, and she’s the only one left. Then the story suddenly swerves: turns out the protagonist was actually killed by Manaka after they finished fucking. Manaka kept his head and dismembered the rest of him. And then this baffling route just ends.
After each heroine’s route ED, there’s a flashback explaining why she’s such a freak. Let’s start with You.
When You was little, she had a younger brother. She was a brocon and adored him. Then one day her brother died. You was devastated, lost her soul, and went so far as to masturbate with her brother’s memorial tablet! And broke her hymen doing it!
Yes! You read that right! She gave her first time to a memorial tablet!
After that, You lost her soul. She figured she’d already given herself to her brother, and her brother was dead, so she was worthless. May as well find someone, anyone, to serve. Then she happened to see Shuu and approached him to be his girlfriend, mindlessly supporting everything he did, treating him as her emotional anchor — and in the end she got cut up and eaten…
Chiaki was raised by strict parents. Study hard, don’t do bad things, don’t play with shady kids. Chiaki had no freedom and was suffocating. One day on the way to cram school, some girls dragged her off to the beach to play. The huge rush from cutting class for once overwhelmed her, and she became friends with those girls. Riding the high, Chiaki fell at the beach and got banged up all over, but she was still happy. When she got home that night, her parents didn’t scold her for skipping — they just said “as long as you’re okay.” But behind the scenes they pressured her two new friends into transferring schools. Chiaki had no friends again.
Why was Chiaki held to such strict standards? Turns out she originally had a twin brother. After he died, all the huge expectations her parents had for him fell onto Chiaki. She always felt her parents were forcing her to do things, and the pressure was enormous — she even fantasized about her father raping her. Under that pressure, Chiaki found a way to relieve it: fantasizing about people fucking her while masturbating, and cutting herself on the side. Eventually it escalated, and then she met the protagonist. Chiaki, who studied so hard, could never beat the guy who was first in the year. You already know how things went after they met. Anyway, she got run over in the end.
Manaka’s story is even fucking shorter. Manaka used to be on the school basketball team, but she was good at nothing except basketball. One day she got injured in a game — something with the bones in her leg and elsewhere — and she couldn’t play basketball anymore. She needed to recover. But without basketball, Manaka had nothing. So she gave up on herself. The team captain even came personally to persuade her to come back and play, and Manaka said shit like “fuck me and I’ll go.”
After that, Manaka completely degenerated. She figured she was worthless, stopped going to school, and spent every day at home masturbating and dicking around with random research. And then comes the main story content.
After clearing everything, the protagonist’s route unlocks. First thing that pops up is a new girl. She looks familiar.
This girl, Kei, turns out to be the protagonist’s childhood friend — they were dating. But one day Kei suddenly told him she wanted to break up. He didn’t understand and kept pressing until he found out Kei had a terminal illness and only half a year to live. To avoid dragging down his bright future, she wanted him to leave her and let her die quickly.
The protagonist obviously refuses, and keeps visiting her at the hospital every day. Kei, helpless, decides to make him give up for good — so she jumps in front of a train right in front of him.
Yeah. The girl who jumps in front of the train at the very start of the game is his girlfriend.
After the jump, Kei is crushed to pieces. The protagonist stares blankly. From that moment, he snapped — his mind broke. On the way home, seeing the lizard drop its tail, his brain goes:
“Lizards regrow their tails, so humans can regrow limbs. If humans can regrow, then Kei can come back.”
That’s what he was researching! From! The! Very! Beginning! He! Was! Insane!
Naturally, the end result is that nothing regrew except his own pinky, which somehow regenerated, and he cut two girls to death. Then comes the part where he’s eating the human hot pot, gets found by the cops, and runs. Only then does he understand: dead is dead. There’s no coming back.
“Even if the dead could come back, a dead heart can’t.” The protagonist seems to see his Kei appear before him to comfort him.
In despair, the protagonist also chooses to lie down on the tracks (probably). The game ends.
And then a bunch of dumbasses finish the game and crow about how healing it is, saying it beautifully conveys “the protagonist’s near-obsessive, insane pure love for his girlfriend,” and keep hammering “even if the dead could come back, a dead heart stays dead.”
I’d like to say, loudly:
Healing, my ass!
The whole story has zero logic, okay? You tell me how much of a dumbass a person has to be to talk a naive girl into cutting off her own hand without a second thought — and this girl is supposedly near the top of her class? Even dumber is that girl named You, who has no IQ whatsoever! It doesn’t magically become coherent just because you throw in a flashback saying she gave up on herself, okay?!
And Chiaki — she’s second in the year, her IQ shouldn’t be a problem, her self-harm and masturbation are her business, but what the hell is with her acting like a dumbass stalker? What’s with her suddenly popping up and asking to get her hand cut off too?
Manaka I can’t even be bothered. She’s just a masturbation fiend. That whole route I was skipping through her fingering herself with a water pipe, with a pen, mid-air, tricking the protagonist into falling asleep so she can rub one out on his hand — I was masturbating the whole time too, okay!
And at the end it tries to elevate things with a childhood friend who jumps in front of a train to make the protagonist give up. Never mind how Kei is bouncing around like a healthy person and doesn’t look like she has half a year to live at all. And even if you’re dying in half a year, why the hell do you have to jump in front of a train? Jumping in front of a train in front of your beloved to make him give up? That’s like a mouse licking a cat’s pussy — pure thrill-seeking. And it clearly worked: your boyfriend got so traumatized he became a lunatic.
The guro parts of this game look like cutting hands and legs, but they’re not. The real guro is all the delusional fucking. Lots of scenes make no sense — like before the protagonist has even met a heroine, they’re already banging, and then I’m told it was her or his fantasy. What does this forced H-scene insertion mean?
It means this is a nukige.
There’s also the part where the protagonist fucks the severed limb after cutting it off, plus blood all over the screen.
What does that mean?
It means this is a blood-spurting, twisted guro nukige!!
As for the healing angle: at the end the protagonist talks about his love for the heroine, and his shame toward that girl named You who selflessly gave her body to be cut, and he really doesn’t want to live.
I’d like to point out that the part where the protagonist and You fall in love has zero foreshadowing, okay? The heroine suddenly says she cares about him, with basically no transition, and bam, she loves him.
That kind of shit writing, paired with the illogical plot — you call that pure love?
Pure love, my ass.
The music isn’t good, the CVs are super nasal, and the only one I recognize, Yuika, uses the most disgusting voice for Manaka. The HCGs are massive — a fuck scene almost every five minutes, if you can even get off to it. I already covered the story. I can only calmly conclude that only brain-damaged bandwagon-hopping kids would call this game’s story “healing,” because it has no logic to begin with. No logic means no healing. The game doesn’t magically become elevated just because you slap the word “healing” on it.
And weirdly enough, in today’s anime/eroge world, the moment any girl gets dumped or hurt or dies, a bunch of kids pop up saying it’s tragic, it’s malice.
Then when a hardcore heroine gets sliced up, dismembered, and turned into a cum dumpster, and then a little sugar gets sprinkled at the end, the same crowd says it’s healing and moving.
In other words, if you throw a marshmallow into stinky tofu, the moment you bite into it, it’ll taste super sweet, huh?
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