From left to right: Sayuri Tanaka, Saki Sanobashi, Kimiko Hanazawa, and Hana Watanabe
Go For A Punch! Saki Sanobashi is a short Psychological Horror visual novel created by Veratrum, the developer of the Lacey's Wardrobe fangame, and like that game is an adaptation of a "haunted work": here, the 4chan urban legend of an anime of the same name, in which several girls trapped inside a bathroom go insane and kill themselves in gruesome ways.
In this version, you name a girl who, after making a post on a chatroom as EchoFlower ranting about how miserable her life is, meets up with four other girls — the titular Saki Sanobashi, Hana Watanabe, Sayuri Tanaka, and Kimiko Hanazawa — in the bathroom of the local Old School Building so they can end their lives via poison gas. When the girl realizes she left the chemicals and all their phones in her car outside, she decides to go and get it.
Unfortunately, she doesn't return, and the door is locked. With Saki and the other girls now trapped inside and unable to take the painless way out, they soon start deteriorating as they try to find a way out and discuss what led them to give up on life.
It can be purchased on Steam here
.
Warning: since the story is rather short, spoilers are unmarked.
Examples:
- Adaptation Deviation: The original 4chan post and subsequent media described the supposed anime as horrifying because of its blood, gorn, and brutality. This adaptation keeps the gore to a minimum in favor of a Psychological Horror approach where the girls' unraveling mental states are more focused on.
- Adaptational Modesty: The original 4chan post describes the girls trapped in the bathroom as being naked, but here they're clothed.
- The Bad Guy Wins: EchoFlower succeeds in driving Hana, Sayuri, and Kimiko insane and getting them to kill themselves, gets the footage from Saki, and it's implied she leaves Saki trapped in the abandoned school to die.
- Big Bad: EchoFlower, the girl the player names, is revealed to have intentionally lured the other girls to the bathroom and trapped them there so she could have Saki record their suicides for her enjoyment.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
- EchoFlower portrays herself on the forum as a tormented girl who wants to end her life and find some company to go with her in her last moments, convincing the other four girls she is a friend who will help them painlessly pass on. She's actually a sadist who locks the other girls in the bathroom to make their deaths as painful as possible, then has Saki record and send them to her for her amusement, believing her victims deserve their deaths. And the presence of Kyouko's photo, of whom she uses as EchoFlower, indicates these are not the first people she's goaded into suicide.
- Saki herself puts up a front of an understanding and supportive girl who wants to help the others escape the bathroom, despite actually helping EchoFlower set it all up.
- Bland-Name Product: Macrosoft Window, the OS that EchoFlower uses. Though subverted in that the browser she uses is Internet Explorer just like in real life, and the Word Documents are clearly labeled Microsoft Word.
- Decoy Protagonist: The girl the player names only serves as the POV character for a few minutes. After she leaves, the titular Saki winds up being the protagonist for the rest of the story.
- Downer Ending: By the end, Hana, Sayuri, and Kimiko have all been Driven to Suicide, it's implied that Saki (who helped set the whole thing up) will never be rescued from the abandoned school bathroom, and EchoFlower gets away with it all.
- Driven to Suicide: As in the original 4chan post, the premise follows four schoolgirls who decide to kill themselves, though unlike the legend, here they went to the bathroom specifically to kill themselves for various reasons.
- Hana Watatanbe ultimately hangs herself after being unable to take being trapped in the room anymore.
- Sayuri Tanaka cuts herself in her thigh and bleeds to death so that she can stop being a financial burden on her poor family.
- Kimiko Hanazawa asks Saki to help drown her in the sink because she has lost all hope of making it big in sports after a Career-Ending Injury.
- Kyouko Shikabane seems to have bled herself to death like Sayuri, though all we have is an image.
- Everyone Has Standards: Sayuri is perfectly willing to eat cockroaches to survive, but when Saki suggests outright cannibalism, she says she is not willing to go that far.
- Fan Disservice: Sayuri gets a Panty Shot when she lifts up her skirt... right before she slits her thigh so she can quickly bleed to death.
- Foregone Conclusion: Due to it being an adaptation of the 4chan legend where all the girls die, it's pretty clear that the cast will not survive their imprisonment in the bathroom and will take their lives by the end.
- Guilt-Induced Nightmare: Saki has one in which she sees Hana hang herself and attack her as a ghost, and her word choice implies she feels guilt about helping cause her death.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: In the beginning, you name the girl who sets up the mass-suicide agreement with the other four, though she actually spends most of the plot absent and you control Saki instead.
- Heroic Suicide: Sayuri believes her death will be this, as her poor family will no longer have to financially support the burden she feels she's become. She even agrees to do it in the school bathroom instead of her home so it doesn't become the site of a death, which would deter potential buyers should her family sell the house.
- Indirect Serial Killer: EchoFlower is a schoolgirl who posts on forums for depressed girls and talks them into killing themselves. She tells Hana, Sayuri, and Kimiko to meet her in the school bathroom so they can all die a painless death by chemical poison, then locks them in with Saki, her spy who she has record their suicides. And one file showing a prior victim, Kyouko, indicates this is not the first time she has done something like this.
- Murder by Suicide: EchoFlower and Saki prey on Hana, Sayuri, and Kimiko by tricking them into thinking they are suicidal just like they are, and goad them into agreeing to a plan to all kill themselves without any intention of actually doing it themselves. EchoFlower instead locks them inside the school bathroom and leaves them to go insane and die.
- No Party Like a Donner Party: Saki suggests burning and eating Hana's corpse (and later, Sayuri's) to subsist while trapped in the bathroom. Sayuri herself, who suggested eating cockroaches to survive, is revolted at the idea.
- Old School Building: The main setting is a bathroom inside an abandoned school, where the five girls plan to commit suicide via poison gas.
- Out of Focus: Hana is the only one of the four girls who doesn't get many lines and kills herself before she reveals her backstory and why she's looking to end her life. Though a later comment from EchoFlower indicates she was Bullied into Depression.
- Toilet Horror: The story is set in a bathroom within an abandoned school where the five girls go to kill themselves with poison gas. Then one of them goes back to get the chemicals in the car, and doesn't come back. The others realize they are locked in the bathroom with no hope of escape, and what little was left of their sanity quickly deteriorates until they off themselves.
- Uncertain Doom: Saki is revealed in the end to be the only non-suicidal girl who plotted the whole thing with EchoFlower, and she believes her friend will come and rescue her from the locked bathroom, but the story ends before we see if this is the case, with the implication that her "friend" might just leave her there to die.
- Villain Protagonist: The Decoy Protagonist turns out to have sadistically masterminded the girls' predicament, locking them in the bathroom after luring them in with promises of an easy suicide to watch them slowly die. The actual protagonist, Saki, is also in on it and personally kills Kimiko.
