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.