*pops in the comments*
So, I had the honour (of course) to playtest Kanau (not to be mistaken with canoe) which means I can leave my review extra early, hehe.
Kanau is definitely a game worth your time, whether you played Karamu first or not (if anything, you should play Karamu first for the sake of not spoiling you its twists with Kanau, as the prequel really stands firmly on its on). For those who played Karamu, Kanau definitely brings more nuances to the characters we learned to... erm... love, of course!
Now, for Kanau: this is nothing short of a brilliant horror game, filled with psychological manipulation, disturbing imagery and meaningful developments around the theme of "broken children".
It is no secret, at this point, that Chattercap's background skills are out there: but every game seems to exceed the expectations set by the previous one, and Kanau makes no exception to the rule. The backgrounds are not only wonderfully composed and rendered, they are here tinted in surreal colours, almost as the apocalypse was nearing. I think it is a very neat choice here: the two children whom we follow during this game, Nelli and Raku, are overwhelmed by [redacted for spoilery part], and putting them in a world where the sky isn't blue and the sun doesn't shine, and of which all they can see is red was brilliant. The sheer contrast of blue and red used (with blue being of course very reminiscent of the prequel, Karamu) is an interesting one, as this story almost cements the characters' fate: because of their childhood, they become the people they are in Karamu, and this was a very good way of showing this.
Of course, the rest of the art isn't to be neglected: Kanau, just like its predecessor, is only composed of CGs and comic-book style panels. And if the art in Karamu was already beyond gorgeous, Kanau reaches new heights, not hesitating to use various compositions for the panels and various rendering styles to convey different sorts of emotions (something closer to cross-hatching for horror scenes implying a frightened character; silhouettes for characters acting beyond the limits of humanity; and the standard rendering style otherwise). And of course, the usual Chattercore flair, the live-2d-like animations are perfectly executed and really give a polish the art didn't need anyway because it is already of very high quality, but which is still very welcomed to make it a premium experience.
The writing is also, per usual, excellent: the style is immaculate, and the metaphors and similes always sound right. The dialogues all feel very natural: the children do sound like children, and the grown-ups contrast each other very well (The Mother's refinement is a striking contrast to The Father's ruthlessness, which is also a striking contrast to Carter's softness, which is a contrast to The Mother's coaxing tone...). The story also feels emotional and is a very unique and moving corruption of the protagonist. As someone who played Karamu, I was especially struck at the contrast between Kanau's Nelli, especially the one in the epilogue scene. This created a new layer of attachment to these characters (n-not that I was attached anyway... b-baka!!). I will detail more in the spoiler section, but overall, the writing is a very strong suit of the game, and will satisfy those in search of elegant and proper phrasing.
And what would be Kanau without its voice-acting! ... okay, still an excellent game, but the voice-acting is the icing on the cake, and that's the understatement of the century, as it is part of the experience. Kanau is fully-voiced and the actors, not only were perfectly cast, but also played their parts absolutely flawlessly. Carter was perfect in the role of a kind and helpless university student and Noah managed to create sympathy for his character right away! Raku was an excellent cast: the slight roughness in the voice really fitted the child he is, and offers a striking contrast with Shay's very sweet approach as older Raku: there is a Raku before Nelli and after Nelli, and even the voices show how what his word revolves around has changed. That was a very nice touch!
Zoe also offered a wonderful perfomance: if we were all convinced of her talent thanks to Karamu, she manages to portray here a very convincing and touching ten year-old Nelli, showing vocal and emotional range that is beyond impressive.
The two parents were also wonderfully voiced, and that's understating it. The Mother was a perfect balance of refinement, anger, firmness and coaxing sweetness. The Father's rage was frightening, goodness! The two of them showed different sides of toxic parenthood, and did so wonderfully!
And Shay was very good as older Raku for the few lines we hear for him!
The music was really fitting, being ominous and even nagging; the GUI was gorgeous and the coding flawless on my part.
To make it short: go play this game, it's worth your time, just take a look at the trigger warnings, especially if you are sensitive to topics involving the "breaking" of children.
Are we done? Of course not! I would like to talk a bit more about the story, but it will include spoilers.
#BOOOH EVIL SPOILERS PLAY THE GAME FIRST HOW CAN YOU RESIST BABY RAKU
So, this story revolves around child abuse and, more specifically, on how children react to child abuse and how, in the end, such abuse can corrupt what would otherwise have been healthy and happy adults. What is brilliant is that the game manages to portray two distinct situations and create two different "survivors".
Raku is the first of the two children we follow and is a rather inhumane character: his skin is literally portrayed as grey, and so is his mother's, when the epilogue scene (and Karamu) do portray Raku with a more human skin colour. This is setting the tone: Raku, despite being a child, has been deprived of his humanity (and his childhood) by a gaslighting, manipulating and strict mother. Even when Carter sees him at the start of the game, he thinks of old Japanese horror films, setting a further distance between him (who embodies the "standard healthy human" in this game) and Raku. This is a small indication at everything Raku has endured already, and of his function at the start of the intrigue: he plays the role of a helpless child to lure Carter into a place where he can murder him.
However, everything happens under the Mother's eyes, watching his every step, hearing his every word, and she ends up murdering Carter herself when Raku tries to question her.
This is an interesting set-up: while Raku is portrayed as inhumane, he quickly becomes a protagonist refusing the corruption, trying to fight against it, even following the generic advice of a Carter who couldn't even imagine the actual family situation of the boy he just met.
Nonetheless, the game shows how, despite his main efforts, Raku has already been too corrupted to easily gain back his humanity (after all, he was a monster in Karamu: he can't have healed himself in this game).
When Raku refuses to murder Carter and to eat him, his mother hurts him, leaving him with no other choice, for his own survival, than eating the man he talked with earlier. When Raku escapes and lives as a spider in Nelli's room, he ends up, for Nelli's sake, doing as his mother said, the CG in question further cementing him as a monster.
This psychologically makes sense: Raku has been raised with the idea that humans are disposable and that human life has no worth. And if he doesn't give into this idea (he acts so to grant Nelli's wish), he still acts in a way that makes his mother satisfied of it: this is the corruption he reached (even being drunk from the alcohol in Nelli's father's body, and calling himself a "demon", refusing humanity).
Nelli, on the other hand, is a more subtle type of corrupted protagonist (after all, this game sets up as the murdered she ends up being in Karamu). She is a bright child, full of life, bullying his teacher Faye Mourant with the other kids, well, nothing special. And Easter egg and private joke aside, it is true that Nelli, unlike Raku, appears as fully human and vulnerable: she is a kid doing very well at school, having dreams, even making sprouts grow in her bedroom and being nice enough to take care of a spider just because it lacks legs.
However, Nelli's father is a notorious alcoholic, abusing his wife and Nelli. This is interesting: while Raku's mother's abuse relies way more on gaslighting and emotional manipulation, and seems grounded in more complex feelings (after all, if she did keep Raku instead of eating him, she did rebel against her family too, just like Raku does in Kanau: this is an interesting parallelism between the mother and the son, showing that she understands him and therefore knows exactly what buttons to press to manipulate him), the Father's abuse is way more impulsive, only subject to his emotions. We never see him manipulate Nelli, he "just" lashes out at her and hits her. The game did a great job at painting different types of abusers and abuse.
Nelli ends up being corruputed too to some extent, when we see her wish for her father's death and we can guess the corruption goes to a further extent when it indeed happens: somehow, her wish came true, and her life has changed for the better, planting in her mind the seeds of "murder" as a solution to get rid of awful people (which she ends up doing in Karamu).
Both situations were touching and if Raku's abuse was more "fantasy"-like, it still felt grounded in some sort of intrageneration trauma. Nelli's abuse, on the other hand, was realistic and I can't deny my heart broke when she talked of one of her classmates having "such a nice dad".
Carter's role is particularly interesting: he starts the game being lost in the woods (no, not the Frozen 2 song), just like Nelli at the start of Karamu. In the little time he spends with Raku, he manages to talk about his sister (so mirroring Raku being compared with his sister) and his father (mirroring Nelli's relationship with her own). He body embodies what these two could have been, in these woods, years later, if they hadn't been corrupted by their parents.
Finally, the game offers a very interesting subversion of the wish. Both characters are seen wishing at some point (Nelli's wish being as twisted as being her father's death). This is interesting considering the name of the game, Kanau, which means, according to my very serious Google research "to come true" for a wish. And while Nelli's dream does come true, the cost of it is horrible. But personally, and it's surely a wrong interpretation as it strays away from the Japanese meaning, I like the idea of the "prophecy" somehow "coming true": not a literal prophecy, the fate put in front of Nelli and Raku by their childhood trauma; the prophecy turning Raku into a monster and becoming the "true" self he was raised to be, and turning Nelli into a murderer, becoming the "true" self marked with her abuse, not the one who manages to escape it by laughing talking about a video game, like we see her at the end of the game with a dream-like background offering a sheer contrast with the other backgrounds of Kanau.
Somehow, this feels like a tragedy: those two children, for any reason other than fate, were raised in abusive household and, while Kanau narrates Raku's tragedy, Karamu relates Nelli's.
Now, these characters just have to break free from the tragedy and from the circle they find themselves trapped in... and I'm looking forward to Hanasu!