by Waverly (@hotelbones)
Every week we’ll be recommending you a game, and either an album or a movie to check out. This week we’re recommending Mammon Machine’s visual novel We Know the Devil and the supernatural teen anime Mob Psycho 100.
We Know the Devil
Developed by Aevee Bee and Mia Schwartz
PC (datenighto & Steam)
With Dream Daddy injecting a surge of popularity into the visual novel genre, it seems like a good time to suggest other visual novels.
We Know the Devil is a story about three kids sent to their least favorite place in the world. Summer Camp. They have been sent away from their loved ones to this hot, sticky, mid-west abode so that they can waste their time while their parents don’t have to worry about them. It’s a place for others like them to learn about themselves and their relationship to God, except everyone on the campground seems like a demon and God is the host of a all day radio show. The group leader is faking his entire personality, the other camp groups seem like part of a hivemind. Summer camp is weird.
Yet even when the devilish campers have left, and the only activity is the wind itself, there is an evil in the air that cannot be placed. A foreboding clock begins to countdown to dawn, hour by hour, indicating that something is coming. The Devil. These are the last hours that these kids will have to get to know each other before it all explodes. Depending on which characters you decide to spend more time with, each of their lives change.
Mob Psycho 100
Created by ONE as webcomic & adapted by BONES for television
Mob Psycho 100 is the story of who can be assumed is the most powerful psychic esper in the world. It doesn’t matter if it’s a ghost that is big or small, or a another esper who challenges him, its hardly a sweat to take care of. However, Kageyama doesn’t really care about the world of psychics. He is going through the most transformative points in a person’s life; high school.
It sounds like the plot of a young adult novel, but there is one important element that differentiates Mob Psycho 100 from other stories. When Kageyama was young a conflict with some kids ends up involving his brother and sending him to the hospital. He learns that when he acts upon his emotions, his psychic powers also act in tandem. To counter this Kageyama develops a reflex that makes him unable to act upon his emotions unless he is pushed to extreme situations. He doesn’t laugh at jokes, it doesn’t matter if someone beats him up, and he isn’t bothered that his psychic teacher is using him for his powers.
Adding this reflex to the high school experience results in explosions of emotion and power that unleash Mob’s emotions through his psychic powers. Now he has to figure out how to balance a life where venting could destroy his world. Every chapter is completely ridiculous, yet somehow I find myself relating more to these emotional outbursts than many other stories I read.