Stuck in TV Tropes
A utsuge is a depressing game that usually ends without hope. A nakige is a tear-jerker but does not necessarily end without hope.
I hope someone sees this and make the correct changes in the page ._.
These terms were rather well described in the manga Koe De Oshigoto. The heroine was even forced to play through one of each game type. As far as I understood it, Nakige are supposed to have a degree of brightness and hope that makes you truly care when things go downhill, so that at the end you're torn between love of the characters and their efforts and sadness at how it turned out, but ultimately glad to have watched it. In other words, a Nakige is meant to be a Tear Jerker, plain and simple, making you cry because you care. Utsuge on the other hand have little if any happiness; they're meant to drown you in despair and hopelessness and make sure you leave feeling depressed. Whereas Nakige aim for simple Tear Jerker territory, the Utsuge is all about Shoot the Shaggy Dog. A part of me wants to see some mark on the examples distinguishing whether each one is a Nakige or an Utsuge. After all, what you get out of them is totally different, as different as Old Yeller and The Human Centipede.
Edited by Lyner
The only good BETA is a dead BETA.
I would like to put in a word for the reinstatement for Muv-Luv Alternative to the list. From the PTSD arc, one of the most soul-crushing sequences in visual novels ever onwards the game pulls no Gut Punches in making the player cry (either manly tears, e.g. the multiple heroic sacrifices made by soldiers named and unnamed or otherwise, for example Meiya's dying confession of love and death at the hands of Takeru at the climax of the story, synced to this track
) and rage. In addition age's skill in the usage of music to amplify the emotion of sequences (especially Tear Jerker sequences) in Alternative is, I would submit, on par with Key Visual Arts (e.g. the track I mentioned above).
I would have recommended Rumbling Hearts too, but I am less knowledgable about it. White Album 2 should qualify too, given the myriad reactions its anime adaptation engendered across the internet, and if anything, the later parts are "worse".
Edited by 202.156.33.93 Would you like to know more?
Why did Nier get removed? Its a very depressing game thats about equally as if not more Depressing than of Tales of Symphonia. Heck even Word of God says that no matter how happy the ending the entire world's always doomed.
Hide / Show Replies
Because it's not an utsuge. Qualifying for the genre is not a matter of being a sad game; in that case, any game with a Tear Jerker would qualify. An utsuge is a game with the explicit goal of making you sad or cry. Also, it's a visual novel-only genre.
It was discussed on Ask The Tropers. The end decision was to nuke all non-VN examples and then go over the remaining ones.
This happened because Tim had made a mistake.
Could someone PLEASE correct this page. Most of the games are hardly nakige and certainly not Utsuge. From VNDB: Utsuge stands for utsu game, and it means "depressing game". It is said that the purpose of these types of games is to depress the player.
Most of the time these games have no happy end, no help, no hope...
Do not mix with a similar game type, nakige.
For example on an imaginary utsuge, the heroine would be sick from the very beginning and would die in the end. But on an imaginary nakige, the game would be about a happy school romance with the heroine suddenly getting sick at the very end of the game to only recover at the very last moment. (Though there are nakige with deaths too.)
Most of the games on this page should be removed. (Da Capo!? Utsuge!? WTF!?) Most of the Key games aren't utsuge at all except for maybe Air and Tomoyo After. A real utsuge should make you despressed for days after finishing it. Not because its over but since the ending feels unfair and despressing. VN's like Kara no Shoujo, Muv Luv Alternative and Kara no Shoujo are this.
Hide / Show Replies
Maybe someone could create a separate page for nakige? As far as I can tell, there isn't one. If one is created, then maybe we could move most of the games on here over to that page.
But even so, I agree that while some of these examples can be sad, I'm also a bit surprised that some of them would even be considered for either. Was School Days really meant to be a game designed to make the player cry?
Someone please fix this page. Metal Gear Solid, and ICO are action video games (which also included a little hope at the end incidentally.) Respectfully, that's just melodrama and not an utsuge. Most of the Metal Gear Solid games ended with the character learning something, and the feeling of a new beginning and therefore hope. If one goes by the precedent of labeling this series an utsuge, someone could call the entire Final Fantasy series utsuge (which it is not), but the original usage was confined to visual novels that started tragically and ended as hopelessly, and this troper feels it should stay that way.
Non-visual novels have no place in this section and were probably placed there by someone unfamilar with visual novels. Alternatively at least create a separate section for visual novels so we elitists like me can weed out "the noobs."
Edited by charizardpal
I'm willing to fix the pages as long as they aren't going to get instantly reverted back by whoever made the current Utsuge page.
The current Utsuge page is laughably wrong and it makes me sad to even look at it. It seems like someone who never played V Ns made it after hearing the term from some random website.
Key doesn't make Utsuge, they make NAKIGE. They invented the format and their games are Nakige. Da capo? WTF?! Da Capo is 98% comedy/romance/etc and 2% problem. It's not even remotely utsuge.
Also utsuge is normally used to refer to the visual novel as a whole, not a specific route. Most V Ns have bad endings and simply having a bad ending does not make a game an utsuge. Utsuge normally is when the real ending of the game ends in a hopeless manner. It doesn't HAVE to have a sad ending but that's the most common way to classify a Utsuge. Otherwise the game should be depressing/hopeless/bleak for the majority of the game. It should leave a bad taste in your mouth after finishing the game.
Like I said, I'm definitely willing to add a Nakige page and fix the Utsuge page as long as it's not going to get instantly reverted x.x;
Edited by horseband
As was pointed out, does Gears Of War have any business being on the list?
I know it's not a Visual Novel, but would OMORI qualify?
Nyaa!