Highly worth playing! I feel like this is the computer games enthusiast equivalent of enjoying a really sensitive and heartfelt cartoon (what comes to mind being Steven Universe or MLP). More to the point, there's often a lot of machismo jeering over seeing such displays of honesty and communicating sensitive information as crude and childish. I feel like by taking something so personal and painful like being trans in japan it displays a least to me how both at complete aversion to honesty or instead just sugarcoating the text as 'wholesome' and saying nothing else obscures the genuine bite underneath the surface.
Nobody in one night, hot springs gets violent or angry. Nobody dies if you make a wrong decision. The stakes are low and mundane but the rewards within the story system themselves are very high. The rewards outleap the risks in leaps and bounds, but shame creates a distortion effect where the rewards do not seem remotely worth it.
In America, where I'm playing this game from, the shame of asking a service place for particular accommodations is miniscule at best. 'Karen' customers in America come out of especially consumer privileging relationships with the service industry. American culture puts emphasis of shame instead to authenticity, employment dependency, and educational accommodations. There's a degree where which in private life there's a demand to be your 'authentic' self and that if you fail to meet up to the grand grin of authenticity you're not being a people person. However in employment life there's a degree instead to service the customer and the employer, to be everybody but yourself. Transphobia is most felt as an adult in America from the effects of employment discrimination like this.
I bring this point up mainly in relation to the zenful construction here, this cultural distinction is anticipated. Yes these considerations from the protagonist Haru are genuinely not that big of a deal to an American. For the people in Japan though these considerations are no laughing matter, bothering the system by asking for those accommodations is impolite and rude, which is a huge deal. The general impulse to a lot of these questions is 2nd hand cringe in japan, a higher likelihood to not make trouble. I believe part of what is great about this work is that it exposes within this cultural difference an implicit understanding just how hard and just how internal this process is.
I think the focus on specifically Japanese leisure experience reflects this to. The ginseng tea, clothing, and baths all have a quality of relaxing a tension. When Haru does get in a bath she mentions that she can feel the muscles in her body getting less tense. A lot of shame and self loathing itself marks itself in the body, its no surprise that Haru speaks often of being worn down and sleeping so much, and being 'too tired to talk about transgender stuff' if you refuse a lot of it. That effective connection between stress, shame, and discomfort and active bodily pain through not being able to be involved in the same leisure activity as everyone else speaks to a specific pain in discrimination that isn't generally touched on.
That's ultimately what makes the 'wholesomeness' of this text most worthwhile. It educates in the most non-intrusive way possible, hearts are deducted if you don't correct people for misgendering Haru or correcting people asking deadnames. You as the player are then implicitly encouraged by the games mechanics to go back in time and pick a different option. The game is encouraging you as much as possible to experience more. Going for the good endings is novel and going for the bad endings is just kind of boring. That doesn't mean people who got bad endings first in one night, hot springs are bad people. Instead I'm attempting to point out that such a mundane and transparent story with simple mechanics can reveal the concerns of the culture it spawned from.
There's a few different stories about particularly American reflection of trans shame. For purposes of here I'll highlight one He Fucked The Girl Out of Me, a text all about how labor relations and poverty create the blocks for shame. There is something very clearly vile and violent about that story, being around seedy people you have to fake fawning to. I believe that just as a lot of Japanese people would probably learn a lot about their cultural differences by playing that game, people outside Japan can see what one night, hot springs puts forward. Both reflect how trans people are suppressed and do it by focusing on the struggles of the mundane. Of having a tension in your muscles you cant get rid of.
Most importantly, what I love about these 'wholesome' texts is specifically how they try to bid and build networks of solidarity. In one night, hot springs being a good ally is about speaking up for discriminated people and motivating them into having a better time without pushing them, it's about communicating honestly about difficult topics. I believe that stories like this help us slowly push past the flaws of our own nation's culture and slowly build towards a necessary global solidarity.
This is why I take 'cartoons' more seriously and love them so much. The moral of the story is more complex the more you think about its wider implications and applications. Anybody who liked this game, you basically just played a really cozy episode of a TV cartoon, so think twice next time before you make jokes about bronies, otaku, or even 'disney adults' etc. They are not immature adults, they are people trying to interface with characterization and moral messages that are focused on solidarity and connecting with others. Tragic or violent art is often too stressful and reductive to those interests and so art very similar to this make it to their top 10s instead.
Nobody in one night, hot springs gets violent or angry. Nobody dies if you make a wrong decision. The stakes are low and mundane but the rewards within the story system themselves are very high. The rewards outleap the risks in leaps and bounds, but shame creates a distortion effect where the rewards do not seem remotely worth it.
In America, where I'm playing this game from, the shame of asking a service place for particular accommodations is miniscule at best. 'Karen' customers in America come out of especially consumer privileging relationships with the service industry. American culture puts emphasis of shame instead to authenticity, employment dependency, and educational accommodations. There's a degree where which in private life there's a demand to be your 'authentic' self and that if you fail to meet up to the grand grin of authenticity you're not being a people person. However in employment life there's a degree instead to service the customer and the employer, to be everybody but yourself. Transphobia is most felt as an adult in America from the effects of employment discrimination like this.
I bring this point up mainly in relation to the zenful construction here, this cultural distinction is anticipated. Yes these considerations from the protagonist Haru are genuinely not that big of a deal to an American. For the people in Japan though these considerations are no laughing matter, bothering the system by asking for those accommodations is impolite and rude, which is a huge deal. The general impulse to a lot of these questions is 2nd hand cringe in japan, a higher likelihood to not make trouble. I believe part of what is great about this work is that it exposes within this cultural difference an implicit understanding just how hard and just how internal this process is.
I think the focus on specifically Japanese leisure experience reflects this to. The ginseng tea, clothing, and baths all have a quality of relaxing a tension. When Haru does get in a bath she mentions that she can feel the muscles in her body getting less tense. A lot of shame and self loathing itself marks itself in the body, its no surprise that Haru speaks often of being worn down and sleeping so much, and being 'too tired to talk about transgender stuff' if you refuse a lot of it. That effective connection between stress, shame, and discomfort and active bodily pain through not being able to be involved in the same leisure activity as everyone else speaks to a specific pain in discrimination that isn't generally touched on.
That's ultimately what makes the 'wholesomeness' of this text most worthwhile. It educates in the most non-intrusive way possible, hearts are deducted if you don't correct people for misgendering Haru or correcting people asking deadnames. You as the player are then implicitly encouraged by the games mechanics to go back in time and pick a different option. The game is encouraging you as much as possible to experience more. Going for the good endings is novel and going for the bad endings is just kind of boring. That doesn't mean people who got bad endings first in one night, hot springs are bad people. Instead I'm attempting to point out that such a mundane and transparent story with simple mechanics can reveal the concerns of the culture it spawned from.
There's a few different stories about particularly American reflection of trans shame. For purposes of here I'll highlight one He Fucked The Girl Out of Me, a text all about how labor relations and poverty create the blocks for shame. There is something very clearly vile and violent about that story, being around seedy people you have to fake fawning to. I believe that just as a lot of Japanese people would probably learn a lot about their cultural differences by playing that game, people outside Japan can see what one night, hot springs puts forward. Both reflect how trans people are suppressed and do it by focusing on the struggles of the mundane. Of having a tension in your muscles you cant get rid of.
Most importantly, what I love about these 'wholesome' texts is specifically how they try to bid and build networks of solidarity. In one night, hot springs being a good ally is about speaking up for discriminated people and motivating them into having a better time without pushing them, it's about communicating honestly about difficult topics. I believe that stories like this help us slowly push past the flaws of our own nation's culture and slowly build towards a necessary global solidarity.
This is why I take 'cartoons' more seriously and love them so much. The moral of the story is more complex the more you think about its wider implications and applications. Anybody who liked this game, you basically just played a really cozy episode of a TV cartoon, so think twice next time before you make jokes about bronies, otaku, or even 'disney adults' etc. They are not immature adults, they are people trying to interface with characterization and moral messages that are focused on solidarity and connecting with others. Tragic or violent art is often too stressful and reductive to those interests and so art very similar to this make it to their top 10s instead.