Arisato Kazuma

     Hadaka Shitsuji

Content warning: Contains thematic spoilers for Arisato's route, as well as mentions of codependency and suicidal ideation. Source material is 18+ and wildly unpleasant, do any research with caution.

Backstory

Man. I can't even defend this one. I started the game As A Joke on October 10th and it did not even take a week before I got completely obsessed with him. I am still beyond apalled and embarrassed of myself but none of my friends were surprised in the least. Everybody knew this would happen but me. OTL

About Arisato

Arisato is selfless, good-natured, and earnest at heart. He's a butler at Kamishiro Estate, but due to his inexperience and clumsiness, he mostly does odd jobs and is in charge of cleaning the estate. He is eager to offer his services and wants to someday be a gracious and elegant butler.

At the same time, his overwhelming sweetness is also a mask to cover up some of the more unhealthy aspects of his personality. After growing up without knowing his biological parents, Arisato has a deep-set fear of abandonment, and will do everything in his power to get attention from people he has formed an attachment to. He will try desperately to appeal to their good side; failing that, he will purposefully make mistakes, act out, or even threaten to hurt himself in order to keep their attention on him. He seems to value positive and negative attention equally, as long as the object of his affections will not ignore or abandon him.

Arisato has been shown to have some issues with memory and perception. Other characters describe his tendency to 'rewrite' hurtful memories and his selective amnesia about certain events. He will always hurt or place blame on himself before others, and has a victim complex; it's a bit unclear as to how much of it is is purposeful and how much is subconscious. He also has recurring suicidal ideation and mentions killing himself multiple times throughout the game - once again, it is never explicitly made clear how much of this behavior is coming from genuine pain or if he's doing it to garner sympathy. He seems quite comfortable describing situations of his own death but never takes any action to physically harm himself. In the 'true' ending, Arisato ends up fetishizing the concept of his own death after being brutally mistreated by the protagonist of the game.

About My S/I

Not gonna lie here; there is literally no lore. It is as simple as 'I should have been in that mansion instead of Tomoaki'. It should have been me!!! I would be so nice to everybody!!

She is literally just a normal and polite young woman who tries to get along with everybody, but really hits it off with Arisato. Well... more like she kind of completely falls into his trap before she knows it, but. Same difference!!

Lore

As mentioned above, there is no deep lore here. I just hate Tomoaki and I should have been the one to live in that mansion for 30 days instead of him. I would be so nice to everyone and nothing bad would happen ever!!! We can all be friends!!

Everything is peachy keen for a while until Arisato starts getting attached to my S/I, and then of course he starts doing Arisato things to get her attention, and it completely works. She feels so bad for him and wants to make sure that he feels safe and content, so things naturally progress until she's basically at his every beck and call without even realizing that this is the case. Her need to take care of him eventually turns into having feelings for him and there's a lot of confusing back-and-forth where she feels guilty about it, but eventually it all works out. Cutesy codependent realness!!

What I Love About Him

♡ We have some similar issues when it comes to self-worth and getting attention from other people, so I think this means we would understand each other very well and there wouldn't be a lot of stress or anxiety between us. There's something very comforting about that.

♡ A very small thing, but... I think the way that he pronounces the 'su' in 'desu' is soooooo cute it's unbelievable. (n_n)

Extra

♡ Unhinged illustration and official art collection page located here!

Songs that remind me of us:

♡ Kitty / The Presidents of the United States of America (I have no idea why I'm gonna be real)