When Togainu no Chi Reigned Supreme

I gotta stop making assumptions about what kind of reaction I'm going to have to BL games with which I have any kind of history, especially if Nitroplus is behind it.

To cut to the chase: yes, despite preemptively writing it off at the end of my sweet pool review, I regret to inform you that I have thoughts about Togainu no Chi. And you know what that means—my review is probably going to be way longer than necessary and take forever to write.

First, though, I need somewhere to dump all my dumb nostalgia related to being a clandestinely underage fujoshi 10+ years ago when TnC was still reigning supreme in BL fan communities. It was fine to include all that stuff when talking about sweet pool because themes of growing up and self-reflection are integral to the story in that game, but these things would more get in the way of what I want to talk about in TnC.

After my temporary aside at the start here, expect the usual fare. Once again, I recommend taking a gander at 4shiki's review before mine because it is totally iconic. Sadly, I had to dig in the Wayback Machine to procure the link. 😔

On Veteran Fan Posturing and Its Effects

I want to make clear that I don't mention how long I've been a fujoshi or bygone days of certain online BL fan communities to brag or gatekeep. In many ways, I feel the need to constantly lay out my bonafides because the gatekeeping tendencies and implicit messages of exclusivity amongst veteran fujoshi when I stepped on the scene in the late aughts are a bigger part of the reason than I want to admit that I never graduated from forum lurker to forum poster back in the day.

My "thing" nowadays is being an outwardly confident, mildly bitchy, domme-ish chick, so the levels to which I was publicly insecure and openly ashamed of myself when I was bb fujoshi really hurts my brand today. That being said, it's important to be honest about the ways in which fan posturing can render fandom "leaders" unapproachable and make participation intimidating for newcomers because the effect that shit has weakens the entire community. I mean, I get a little nervous even calling myself a veteran fan on this blog because I don't feel like I have the knowledge and BDE that prominent fujoshi (gatekeepy or not) had when I was a newcomer.

Veteran fujoshi in my memory have insane BL collections, get hit after hit on their blogs if they run one, and often flex their literacy or fluency in Japanese or Chinese. Honestly, this is probably why I think I'm doing the Lord's work today when I confess I don't know jack shit about Japanese language or culture… that's something that you had to hide a ways back, or I least I thought it was better if you did!

I only landed on the veteran descriptor because when I made my valiant return to BL, I discovered that many of the websites I used to access scanlations are donezo, some of the titles on my BL masterlist [under revision, no link for now] are literally only accessible on the damn Internet Archive, and by and large I have no fucking clue what the girlies are talking about on a BL-focused subreddit for which I used to be a moderator. So, it's more something I call myself because I feel out of the loop and unsure of how to re-insert myself into fan communities than a self-compliment signaling my authority.

So, why do I still constantly yammer on about my decade-plus love affair with BL? While part of it is that knee-jerk reaction to lay out my bonafides, I do also have a desire for fandom friends who share memories of the era when I was first active as a fujoshi, even if they remember the things I talk about entirely differently.

I was spoiled during my first period of BL obsession—my sister was into BL and two girls in my high school anime club were as well. For that reason, I didn't need to rely on online communities because I was getting my fandom fix IRL… and I really miss that. I still have very supportive IRL friends who read this blog and I'm so grateful for that, but it would be nice if I felt less like I was forcing them to learn about my hobbies because I lack fandom friends.

In the grand scheme, I genuinely don't care if you've been into BL since I was born or only since yesterday; I want to connect with all kinds of fans of BL media. But I have to admit a lot of online spaces seem to skew rather young or immature (according to my judgmental self). It's very much fujoshi in that "kya kya" fan stage and I'm so not there anymore. And that's not to say that I think it's anyone's right to insist that those fans be fans in a more "mature" way; while it was a "stage" in fan expression for me, it might be someone else's fan expression forever—and that's okay!

Basically, I have intense anxiety over spoiling other people's fun with myself, so idfk, if there are any early to mid-90s baby BL fans out there who became overly intellectualizing in their 20s, please take this post as my formal request that you be my internet friend and/or penpal.

Update: Please note that while I would still love more and more BL friends, I have to give shout out to my BL bestie, who I met shortly after writing my original post. All hail FujoCon 2020 for bringing tons of fujos together!

The Meditations

By 2010, five years after TnC came out, it was still fucking everywhere. Fanart and fanfics? Too many to count. AarinFantasy English patch? Troubleshooting fans desperate for it to work on their computers. Fujoshi I knew? TnC stans. I mean, what the hell was it about TnC? Seems like one hell of a drug! ಠ‿↼

I will acknowledge in advance that TnC was constantly being revamped for different platforms well into the 2010s, so that's totally a factor in it remaining a hot topic in the BL scene for so long. It came out for PC in 2005, PS2 in 2008, and PSP in 2010, as well as having a manga adaptation picked up by TokyoPop and an anime adaptation aired on Anime News Network. However, the fact that it was deemed financially sound to produce all these derivatives speaks to TnC's huge popularity and influence. Clearly, there was demand and audience ready to gobble the shit up.

If any older fans encounter this post, I wouldn't be surprised if I get some (hopefully ironic) "how dare you" comments from those that were age appropriate around the time TnC came out, which was when I was a damn fourth or fifth grader. But please don't leave! Be my friend and teach me how to be that fucking cool! In other words, there are veteran fans out there who were playing TnC with desktops lookin' like this:

Even though your girl was definitely on the computer (and online, don't tell my mom) when we were all running XP, the computer on which my sister and I tried to download, patch, and play TnC was (unfortunately) running Vista. So, I am by no means an authority on the origins and early days of TnC in the way that I might be for DRAMAtical Murder, the game that eventually dethroned TnC in the fujoshi psyche when it came out in 2012.

But if I'm claiming TnC was only dethroned after DMMD, what about Lamento: Beyond the Void and sweet pool…? And that's an interesting question! I can only guess because I've always been a mangahead and my primary experience with BL games for years was through commentary and derivative media. Plus I'm only making this statement based on what my bb fujoshi brain perceived to be TnC's ubiquity and popularity in fan circles, which was in turn reflected in merch available for purchase, and other implicit signs.

I wouldn't say that Lamento (2006 release) and sweet pool (2008 release) were forgotten middle children in the Nitro+Chiral catalog—people were definitely into them and I was aware of them in much the same way as TnC, but I don't recall them having the same presence in fan communities. Lamento is, to me, the biggest loser in this department. Although sweet pool didn't have TnC's BDE either, it obtained almost insta cult status because it's so fucking "out there," which is why I was simultaneously surprised and not surprised that it was the first of the Nitro+Chiral catalog to be published by JAST USA.

In my mind, TnC would obviously be coming next from JAST [it did] based on its aforementioned BDE, but I think a lot of DMMD fans were taken aback by that decision. I remember talking to my sister about how surprised I was to see constant DMMD stans in the tweet replies to TnC announcements asking when DMMD was coming. (But I also saw you old school TnC fans in the replies, too!)

She had to remind me that the number of people on the Nitroplus train skyrocketed after DMMD, so a lot of them probably worked backwards through their catalog and have a deeper investment in DMMD. Even if it has a more diminutive position today, this convo with my sister got me thinking a lot on potential reasons why TnC dominated the scene for so long. (I can't answer what DMMD had besides gorgeous fucking art to dethrone queen TnC because I haven't played it yet.) I was hoping my playthrough of TnC would clue me into the whys of its power, and I think it has…

I have a working theory that I want to develop in my review related to the appeal of TnC as a super "masculine" story—street-fighting, warfare, Thrasymachan arguments about power and justice, and largely uncritical representations of non-consent as "sexy" as opposed to poignant—that gives women fans the space to openly explore narratives and sexual desires that we're not supposed to enjoy unabashedly without men leading the way. I should look into how many men were involved in the writing for this game, but either way it's a game intended for mostly women to play alone in the middle of the night for sexual kicks.

Lamento and sweet pool are definitely not traditional romance stories in application, but their narrative centers—kitty boys and school life—are a little bit more trad in the long run. Even other rugged, realism-filtered BL stories about men's men rarely go as hard as TnC. They really went for it. As an aside, I'm interested in reactions to Lamento on account of its use of contagion and infection as a plot device since it's inevitably going to be released in a post COVID-19 world. [Yeah, about that release… it doesn't look like it's happenin'. 😥 ]

The main thing that sucks about TnC is that you have to wait so long to really get into its themes of taboo and what I would say is the Burkian sublime (I'll elaborate later). These concepts don't emerge with much depth and meaning until you unlock Shiki's routes, which I finally managed to do on Monday [May 4, 2020] when I survived Rin's route. On another note, I'm thinking of making image badges to commemorate finishing the Executioners, Arbitro, Keisuke, Motomi, and Rin routes because I need a purple heart for getting through all of those. Did not enjoy.

I was fully prepared for the non-consent in all the routes, and especially so for Shiki's, so I was able to be fully fucking blown away by Shitiki. (Was that Gunji's nickname for him? I didn't quite catch it.) It was super interesting to benefit from something being fully spoiled beforehand, since I had already worked past the cringing and yikes-ing about non-con (I'm not super into it) wayyy in advance. And honestly, thank God because I've been heart eyes-ing this character's design since like 2009/2010 because I'm a big tiddy goth girl.

Playing one (1) Shiki route on Wednesday had me like:

And finishing all three (3) routes on Thursday had me like:

I've rewatched all the Shiki sex scenes, like, at least four times from my recollection library. As a more dominant female, I kinda have no choice but to stan. Are there things I still hate about these scenes? Sure! But overall I stan. I was able to seamlessly project myself onto Shiki or Akira depending on what was happening in a given moment (i.e. do I want this to happen to me or do I want to do this but with consenting parties?) and oh wow!!! 😳 Yeah, that's all I have to say.

These are my thoughts for now. I still have Nano's route remaining, which I didn't originally intend to play because I didn't think it worth my while; it was no secret that I was playing just for Shiki. But it turns out Nano and Shiki have a convo that piques my interest so much I need to see where this goes before I feel comfortable settling on any one reading.

I'm definitely considering this one a shitpost because even I don't really know where I was going with it. I guess it's just a warning that my future TnC review will likely have a separate analysis section in addition to plot summary and review/opinion sections. Plus it's another opportunity to get my shoddy recollections of the BL fandom out there for other fans to verify or deny as collective memory.

I'm really interested in this collective fandom memory stuff for some reason, especially because I can hardly remember my own fan timeline. Getting back into BL games has actually led me to believe that I've been in the BL scene longer than I originally thought; my math really isn't adding up if I think about it for longer than two seconds. We're still going to say I started in 2008/2009 though because it makes me feel a little less perverse.

Anyway, I've got to redraft an academic article by the end of May and write a report on another project by the end of June for my day job, so I don't know how soon the actual TnC review will be out. I may put off playing Nano's route until at least the end of June just so some part of the game is still fresh when I have time to write without distraction and stress. And all this is ignoring that I've still got that Love Is An Illusion omegaverse review in my sights, too. Hot damn!

Notes

Post History

This post was migrated from WordPress to Neocities in April 2022 and converted from my whack ass hub formatting back into a single post in May 2025. 'On Veteran Fan Posturing and Its Effects' has been returned to its original context with this post when the hub was destroyed. I literally don't know what possessed me to split it out in the first place. Amen.