'Then he whirled around, pressing his fists to his temples, and howled — a long, roaring howl like that of a beast. A cry of confusion and desperation. A cry that tore at the hearts of all who heard it.'
     – Keigo Higashino, Yōgisha X no Kenshin, 2005 (tr. Alexander O. Smith).

Played with BertKnot.

A distinctive feature of death penalty in Japan is the regularity with which it is applied, in contrast to other countries such as the United States. Even after the moratorium that followed the LDP's fall from power in 1993, there was little change in judicial practice, with no politician willing to make serious changes on the issue. In 2009, a major judicial reform was undertaken to correct the excesses of the system, notably by strengthening the rights of the defendant and limiting the value placed on confessions, which are often brutally extracted by inspectors. Some commentators have seen the introduction of jury panels as a means of opposing the death penalty, on the assumption that citizens would be reluctant to choose it in a real case that they would have followed from within. In other words, the 2009 reform hoped to bring about a slow change in mentalities and a rejection of the death penalty through its reduced use.

     Capital punishment, public opinion and Japanese detective fiction

While the 2009 reform has been effective in changing concrete aspects of police investigations and increasing public confidence in the judiciary, its impact on the application of the death penalty has been particularly disappointing. In the 2010-2018 period, the capital punishment was adopted in 68 % of cases where it was requested by prosecutors, compared with 56 % for the 1980-2009 period [1]. This higher figure can be explained by a more careful choice on the part of prosecutors, who restrict the death penalty to the least ambiguous cases. It is worth noting, however, that juries are fairly consistent in following the recommendations of prosecutors on this issue and remain particularly conservative. Japanese public opinion thus remains attached to the death penalty and its application. This situation is not surprising: liberal nations that have abolished the death penalty have often done so against the tide of general opinion and under more progressive governments.

One feature of Japanese opinion is the moral and ethical value it places on the death penalty. It is considered both inevitable (yamu o enai) and necessary to avenge the victims [2]. Although governments are content with this situation in order to avoid reforms from above and going against the tide of public opinion, Japanese detective fiction was quick to question this phenomenon and felt compelled to take a stance on the issue. Among popular works, Kindaichi shōnen no jikenbo (1992), featuring a rebellious detective growing up in the Lost Decades, emphasises the tragedy of killing and the detective's function in society. This desire to understand the criminals serves to build a discourse in favour of rehabilitation. Alternatively, Meitantei Konan (1994) presents an idealised detective in a society where the police institution is characterised by exceptional probity: Gōshō Aoyama, despite his social conservatism, passively opposes the death penalty, as his universe seems completely unaware of the concept.

Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE, which inherits the comic and violent aesthetic of Danganronpa, also revolves around these themes, but offers an overly vague and conservative moral. The player takes on the role of Yuma Kokohead, an apprentice detective flanked by Shinigami, a goddess of death whose powers allow mysteries to manifest physically in a Labyrinth. While these powers allow Yuma to solve various cases, the price is the soul of the guilty party, who inevitably dies after solving an investigation. The events of the opening chapter lead Yuma to investigate the secret of Kanai Ward, alongside the various one-off cases he encounters. The title takes a disturbingly lighthearted approach to the death penalty, and never manages to make the moral dilemma facing the detective believable.

     A chain of references serving as a parody

This frivolity is understandable, given the game's representational choices. Kanai Ward is immediately reminiscent of Final Fantasy VII's (1997) Midgar, and RAIN CODE never hides its inspiration: Amaterasu Corporation is literally a copy of Shinra, and the similarities extend to the interiors of buildings and laboratories. The title piles up references constantly: the Mystery Labyrinth is an odd borrowing from the Palaces in Persona 5 (2016), while the cases crudely parody stratagems found in Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies (2013) or Meitantei Konan. The series of locked rooms in Chapter 1 is particularly clumsy, and the subsequent mysteries are astonishingly simple – Chapter 4 gives all the solutions to the investigation straight away, but drags on for several hours, deliberately avoiding the obvious answer to the mystery. Instead, the player is forced to spend two hours investigating a trivial murder mystery, before spending an hour and a half traversing the Mystery Labyrinth, only to suffer two more recapitulations of the investigation.

Because the progression is so sluggish and the pacing so helpless, it is impossible to take the various characters seriously. In Danganronpa, the Trial mechanic created a genuine, if clumsy, discussion between the characters, and swept the player into a storm of contradictory and naive opinions: this approach suited the game's premise. RAIN CODE tries to be more surgical, but above all it comes across as more ridiculous. The Reasoning Death Matches, similar to the Non-Stop Debates, lack substance because the gameplay has been simplified by the more action-oriented gameplay of RAIN CODE, which forces the player to dodge the opponent's sentences. To compensate for the mental strain, the game steers the player significantly more towards the right answer. The irony comes to a head when the most interesting questions within the mysteries are clearly considered too complex and are solved by simple QTEs with no choice. More generally, Kazutaka Kodaka has chosen to spend more time on mini-games, which follow each other for several dozen minutes with very little variety.

In some respects, RAIN CODE is reminiscent of the structure of Meitantei Konan & Kindaichi Shōnen no Jikenbo: Meguriau Futari no Meitantei (2009), with a series of small cases and simple puzzles, but without the strong interactions between the characters of two historical detective series. RAIN CODE only has one-dimensional characters, either because they are immediately discarded or because they have to lose their memories to justify the game's mechanics. Similarly, Kanai Ward is never built as a coherent universe with a genuine social texture. The game is content to pile on a few noir fiction clichés and offer side quests whose hollowness is rare in the medium. There is something particularly ludicrous about the way the inhabitants of Kanai Ward interact with each other, and this only serves to undermine the game's twist, whose pretentious revelation is undermined by the fact that it is one of science fiction's most famous narrative twists.

     Kazutaka Kodaka: morals and fetishisation

While Danganronpa simply highlights the tragedy of the desperate actions of high school students, RAIN CODE attempts a broader discourse on democracy, corporatism, social organisation and capital punishment. Firstly, it is hard to take any ethical considerations seriously when Yuma is flanked by Shinigami, who combines all the most outrageous elements of sexualisation – the Shinigami Puzzles, reflections of Hangman's Gambit, seem completely out of place with the beach aesthetic and Shinigami in a bathing suit. Until chapter 4, RAIN CODE never manages to get away from the idea that justice is about maintaining order and that the death penalty is a necessity (yamu o enai). Even afterwards, the title absolves the player through a series of events that allow Yuma to shrug off any responsibility. The discourse on finding the only truth – a rehash of Meitantei Konan's catchphrase, stupid as it is – is particularly hypocritical when even Aoyama's manga argues against the death penalty.

Above all, RAIN CODE spends its time sexualising female characters in all their forms, from schoolgirls to maids: at least two characters regard women as sexual objects, and are portrayed as comic devices. The game feels much more voyeuristic than Danganronpa, as there is no strong character who can really stand up to Yuma until the very end. The resolution of the final chapter is particularly muddled, attempting to rehabilitate the characters for the heinous murders they have committed based on the belief that everything fits into a carefully thought-out 'perfect solution'. That criminals had to be slaughtered to achieve this solution hardly seems a problem. The title's audacity culminates in the epilogue, where one character finds a magical and simplistic solution to Kanai Ward's central predicament, effectively rendering all the tragedies pointless.

In many ways, RAIN CODE takes its cues from Danganronpa, but in a crude and unpleasant way. The game suffers from an excessively slow pacing and always feels perfunctory in the way it treats its characters. Technically, the game is particularly abysmal, suffering from substandard graphics and a soundtrack that is nowhere near the chaotic and enjoyable explosiveness of Danganronpa. Given the disastrous and conservative way in which the death penalty discourse is handled, there is reason to fear that the very likely sequel to RAIN CODE – buoyed by its very satisfactory sales in Japan – will, if the post-credits scene is to be believed, explore the violence of the Californian riots of the 1980s and 1990s.

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[1] David T. Johnson, The Culture of Capital Punishment in Japan, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2020 [2019], p. 85.
[2] In particular, the victim's relatives can plead directly before judges and juries, explicitly requesting the death penalty for the defendant. These proceedings are marked by theatricality and intense emotions that directly and negatively affect lawyers, magistrates and jurors. On this subject, see Yūji Itō, 裁判員の判断の心理:心理学実験から迫る, 慶應義塾大学出版会, Tokyo, 2019, pp. 48-66.