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

When I first wrote this page, I said that there was no special lore, and that it was a simple cut-and-paste operation where my S/I gets the ad in the paper instead of Tomoaki. But this actually is not true!! After a while I decided instead that it would make more sense - and also be far more horrible-slash-interesting - if she was a maid at the estate. She gets hired to be the interim gardener while Ichinose is sick in the hospital.

She is a really sweet and naturally clumsy girl, so Arisato gets really attached to her right away. And she likes him back, too - if they were in a normal situation, I'm sure they would make a very cute and sweet couple!! But Unfortunately They Work Here.

Lore

As is the way of this horrible game, Tomoaki makes it his mission in life to psychologically break everyone he comes into contact with. But with the addition of an object of affection for Arisato, the way that he goes about it is different, and instead of torturing Arisato at 100% strength, he splits it up to torture both of them at 80% strength. Tomoaki already hates Arisato, and thinks it would be useful for someone to occupy his time so that he doesn't show his face around the estate.

So, in a way, their relationship is spurred on by Tomoaki, but in deeply horrible ways that I cannot really describe here. Suffice it to say that when he's done with them they can't stand to be without each other. It would be impossible to say that they're happy, but they are as happy as they can be in such a situation, and they really do love each other!! So much so that they sometimes get too scared to leave each other and they stay stuck in Arisato's room for several days without leaving. They get extremely despondent if they have to leave each other alone for any reason and will start crying or panicking if it goes on too long, but when they're together they're very sweet and close. Sometimes they're allowed to go out in the garden together and they really enjoy the fresh air. After ensuring that the two of them are sufficiently codependent, Tomoaki grows bored with them and mostly leaves them alone, giving them free reign of the house as long as they stay out of his way.

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) And his other little noises. hauuuuu~

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)