This is the first time I found myself glad it wasn’t a ghost. This is the first irony of Shadow at the Water’s Edge: considering this might be tit for tat the most explicitly and effectively frightening game Her Interactive has done, and my usual clamor for the supernatural to appear in earnest in these games that, scooby-doo-like, are constantly teetering on the cliff of indulging in it. But for once I was happy for one of these games to give me what I got, which in this case is easily the best writing in the series to date, a quietly unfolding story that first seems to be one of the failures of deep-seated cultural structuration and generational trauma that slowly reveals itself to be, while not NOT that, also one of deep and mundane inability for a small group of people to work through their own shortcomings, both to themselves as individuals and to each other as family. It’s a dark, fresh situation that Nancy walks in on, unusual for this series, where it’s much more common to parallel the modern day mystery with something in the distant past. Here, the supposed ghost that’s ruining the ryokan’s business is the mother/daughter of the main characters of the game; that wound is fresh, and open, and frankly none of Nancy’s business, and picking at it is a genuinely uncomfortable affair. There’s a real sense that Nancy is kind of out of her depth in this game, that she’s stepped in something a little bit over her ability to emotionally handle. No one has hired her, no one asked her to do this, she just kind of stumbles into somebody’s ugly past while she’s on vacation and she kind of brute forces it into the shape of one of her mysteries – seriously this might be the most unintentionally ghoulish Nancy has ever been she’s a fuckin sociopath in this game - but things can’t and don’t really resolve as cleanly or happily or whimsically as they always do for her.

This marks a moment of maturation for these games. In the past, even when we’ve tackled really difficult and sober subject matters, difficult questions tend to go unacknowledged and the themes of the work tend to get swept aside in the name of wrapping everything up in a bow (I think about the Mexican government official arm in arm with the American museum employees at the end of Scarlet Hand despite the situation of the violent robbery and exploitation of Mexico’s cultural artifacts not being even slightly different than it was at the start of the game all the time). Here there are gestures towards healing and Nancy certainly forces some wheels to turn, but nothing like the sunny rejection of any backbone the story might have had.

The second irony, then, is that all of the above is true while this game indulges in a not unexpected but certainly disappointing amount of LOL JAPAN SO WACKY racism of I guess you might, for lack of a better word, call a more “subtle” variety, coupled with overt racism like having three of the four Japanese characters in the game be voiced by white Nancy Drew Series Regulars who are all doing deeply offensive fake Asian accents. It does muddle things a bit, when you’re trying to tell an actually affecting story about how the strict social mores of traditionalist Japanese conservative politics have effectively destroyed three generations of a family, resulted in one actual death, and twenty years later almost a murder, when one of the characters driving the conflict sometimes borders on cruel stereotype. I don’t think it’s QUITE there, and it’s not as bad as some other depictions of other cultures have been, but I think that there is also a lack of care here that points to Her Interactive’s general lack of understanding of the responsibilities of the storyteller, especially in an educational role. Yes, this is a better depiction of Japan and its culture than, say, the outrageous caricatures of Ireland and its people in Castle Malloy, but the United States have done incalculable material harm to the Japanese people over the last 80 years and I think that in the context of a game like this with the kind of interests these games have, the bar for how they depict some cultures is higher than others, and if you ask me this game doesn’t QUITE clear it even as it’s not nearly AS fucked as others have been in the past.

That said it IS pretty funny that “taking the subway” is by far the most difficult puzzle in the game. That’s a solid goof, you got me there.

NANCY DREW CUCK WATCH: It’s been a minute but since she can’t namedrop him to ward off all the GAY TEENS at boarding school I do think it’s worth noting that Nancy just DOES NOT EVEN MENTION Ned he doesn’t even COME UP idk dude if I was going on a vacation of indeterminate length with my best buds I would maybe invite my boyfriend who is the fourth member of our friendgroup and is also best friends with my other two friends. Seems suspicious lol.

PREVIOUSLY: TRAIL OF THE TWISTER
NEXT TIME: THE CAPTIVE CURSE

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