The six "Saiko"s of Dice Psycho
Dice Psycho (サイコロサイコ, Saikoro Saiko) is a horror romance visual novel made by Charon released in 6 episodes starting from 2019 using TyranoBuilder. The final release in 2020 contains all 6 episodes and an additional route containing the True Ending and several IF endings. It is the sequel to Menherafflesia.
The story focuses on a second-year highschooler named Metarou. In the prologue, he is inside a prison cell, where his cellmate, an unknown man, asks him to make a wager with a dice. Whoever rolls the higher number will escape from the cell, while the loser will act as the bait to help the winner escape. The other prisoner rolls a 6. Without any choice but to roll a 6 to force a rematch Metarou rolls the dice...
The number rolled determines which of the six heroines' (all called "Saiko") stories will be played out. After playing through the Happy Endings of all the routes, the player can obtain the password to unlock the True Ending.
Dice Psycho contains examples of:
- Arc Number: Seven. In every route, it's stated that the opposite sides of a die add up to seven, Metarou's childhood friend/girlfriend Nana's name means seven, and in the True Ending, Metarou wins the die roll when the die splits in half, so seven dots appear. The True Ending is also referred to as the Seventh roll, with a seven-petaled flower appearing in the interface. Nana is also revealed to be the reason that Metarou is in jail, after he attempted to Mercy Kill her, leaving her comatose and brain-dead.
- Born Unlucky: 5-Saiko suffers horrible bad luck, and states she has a curse of misfortune that Metarou can choose to take on himself or try to save her from. It turns out it’s all self-inflicted.
- The Cameo:
- Matarou from Mikoto Nikki appears as Metarou's prison cellmate.
- The True Ending implies that Metarou and Nana are the reincarnations of Itarou and Matsuri from Menherafflesia
- Character Overlap: In the True Ending, it's revealed that the prisoner who made the wager with Metarou is Matarou, from Mikoto Nikki, who is still married to Mikoto.
- Childhood Friend Romance: In 2-Saiko's route, Metarou and Saiko were childhood friends, and begin a relationship after Saiko moved away to become a teacher. Except not really. The person who gets into a relationship with Metarou is Kasane, a previous classmate of Saiko's who killed Saiko out of jealousy and assumed her identity.
- Curtains Match the Window: 3-Saiko has green hair and eyes, and 5-Saiko has pink hair and eyes.
- Dead All Along: 3-Saiko is revealed to have been a corpse the whole time, having burnt herself to death years ago so Metarou would never forget her.
- Dead Person Impersonation: In 2-Saiko's route, it's revealed that "Saiko" isn't really Saiko, but Kasane, who trained to become a teacher alongside Saiko but dropped out, then killed Saiko and assumed her identity in order to have the benefits that Saiko herself had, but Kasane did not.
- Driven to Suicide: 2-Saiko kills herself rather than go to jail in her Happy End, 5-Saiko jumps in front of a train in her Happy End, and 3-Saiko did this before her route even began.
- Flower Motif: Like the prequel game, each girl is associated with a type of flower. 1-Saiko is associated with muscari/grape hyacinth, 2-Saiko is associated with rosemary, 3-Saiko is associated with clover, 4-Saiko is associated with hanabishi, 5-Saiko is associated with rhododendron, 6-Saiko is associated with zakuro/pomegranate, and Nana is associated with arctic starflower.
- Kill and Replace: This occurs in both 2-Saiko and 6-Saiko's routes. In 2-Saiko's, the woman the route is focused on is actually Kasane, who went to school with the real Saiko, then killed her out of jealousy. In 6-Saiko's, Saiko murders Nana, then goes to school in Nana's place, and everyone perceives her as Nana except for Metarou.
- Multiple Endings: Each route has one Happy End and several Bad Ends. There is also the True End route, "Prison", which can be unlocked with a password after reaching all of the Happy Ends.
- One-Steve Limit: Inverted as each of the six main heroines is called Saiko. They are written differently in Japanese, but pronounced the same way.
- Punny Name: Saiko is also how "Psycho" is pronounced in Japanese, which reflects how each and every one of the six main heroines is a psychopath.
- Serial Killer: 2-Saiko, or Kasane, murdered the real Saiko in the past, murders Nana and Yukimaru in many of the endings, and is all but outright stated to be the serial killer that Yukimaru and Metarou's mother warn him about.
- Trauma Conga Line: 5-Saiko was in a terrible accident that her family’s healthcare couldn’t pay for, she lost her parents in a house fire, and then she was consistently bullied at school. It turns out everything post-accident was carefully arranged by 5-Saiko herself in a form of Munchausen Syndrome, as she found being unfortunate and suffering made people pity her, and she wanted their attention.
