Kazutaka Kodaka and Rui Komatsuzaki are two names that are often associated with one another, and the mere mention of them is enough to send some people into panic, but if you don’t know them, your reaction is probably a potent “who dat?”- I’ll tell you who: Kodaka is the creator and writer of the infamous Danganronpa series of visual novels, anime, and other random media; and Komatsuzaki is the illustrator who offers his talent to create the unique visual style of that series (as well as others, such as Akudama Drive). If, for some reason, you’re not familiar with the Danganronpa series, it involves an evil teddy bear who orchestrates a Saw-esque killing game involving highly-talented students. This series is known for its wonton violence that tugs at people’s heartstrings despite the fact that everyone always warns them “not to get too attached to the characters”, as well as the Pepto Bismol-colored blood that covers the intricate crime scenes of these games.
DR has had quite a large reach with its critically-acclaimed main trilogy, and its not-so-beloved anime adaptations and spin-offs, but the main storyline has (arguably) concluded, with the preeeeeetty divisive ending to Danganronpa V3, although some would say that there are still some stories that could be told with the established characters… But at the moment, it doesn’t look like that is going to happen anytime soon, as Kodaka has been focusing on creating new IPs with other former Spike Chunsoft employees in his new company, Too Kyo Games, which is completely respectable.
As someone who’s followed the Danganronpa series fairly closely, I was excited to hear about Kodaka’s new projects, and while this isn’t the first post-DR Kodaka project, it’s the one that’s caught my attention the most. I first heard about Master Detective Archives during a Nintendo Direct, and promptly forgot about it until I saw an advert for it at my local game store, heehee. But once I remembered, I realized, “wow, this game looks really cool!”, so I decided to buy it as soon as it came out.
I’ve been a big fan of the mystery genre ever since I got into writing, and I try to play all these weird Japanese mystery visual novels, because they usually resonate with me on a pretty deep level. It’s why I love Ace Attorney, Zero Escape, and When They Cry. These games always manage to strike a chord that other VNs (and video games in general) simply fail to capture. Sorry, Nekopara, you’re just not Denpa enough.
So naturally, I’m analyzing Master Detective Archives with the perspective of someone who’s experienced with mystery visual novels, rather than a newcomer. Although I will try to put myself in those shoes. After all, we’re all beginners at one point. With the purpose of not ruining the fun, I will completely avoid spoiling major aspects of the game, but I WILL discuss the characters at length. If you want to go in completely blind, I’d suggest just buying the game and enjoying the ride. That’s your disclaimer there.
The story of Master Detective Archives: Rain Code begins with an amnesiac young boy named Yuma Kokohead. Get used to the weird names, they don’t get any more normal. He wakes up in the storage room of a train station, and he sees a notice about him being a “Master Detective” and having to take a train to Kanai Ward, which is not a real place, but it’s apparently the name of an ethnic group of Jews. I just found out about this.
Kanai Ward is a city that supposedly harbors many unsolved mysteries, such as its unending rain and the influence of the Amaterasu Corporation, which basically runs the whole place. Amaterasu serves as your usual dystopic corporation with overwhelming influence over people’s everyday lives. It’s like Amazon if it was more overtly evil. Hence why they’re sending Master Detectives there: to uncover its shady underbelly.
So Yuma, completely lacking a sense of self, boards the train and meets various other detectives sent by the World Detective Organization, a group that operates outside the law and grants special missions to “Master Detectives”, which are detectives that have some kind of psychic power, like Thought Photography, Extrasensory Detection, and whatnot. As far as Yuma can remember, he doesn’t have one of these amazing powers, but he’ll look for his true power as he tries to gather his memories.
I’ve mentioned trains, and since this is a mystery game, it shouldn’t be shocking that it turns out to be an Orient Express kind of deal. But since it is the introductory chapter, I’m not going to go into much detail about the particular case of this prologue, but I will cover the mechanics of investigating and exploring.
Unlike Danganronpa’s first person exploration, where the other characters are represented by what’s essentially cardboard cutouts, MDA uses a third person view, and all the characters have been fully modeled in 3D. These models use Komatsuzaki’s art style in a cel-shaded way that makes them look a lot more natural than in Ultra Despair Girls, his last 3D outing. The backgrounds are quite detailed and feature a cyberpunk-esque style. Personally, I’m not too big on the cyberpunk trend because I find the combination of bright neon and dark backgrounds to be quite straining for my eyes, but I’d say this game does it in a way that’s not too bad.
In order to make it simple to investigate, objects with which you can interact are signaled with a reticle, and reading these interactions grants you experience points that can be used to obtain upgrades later. The primary investigations that you engage with are nothing out of the ordinary. You visit various locales and gather clues about whodunnit, as one would expect.
But the real meat and potatoes of this game, and what distinguishes it from others of its kind is the presence of Mystery Labyrinths: a special dungeon that Yuma can access with the help of Shinigami, a scrunkly death god with whom he formed a pact- the reason why he lost his memories. Shinigami serves as an assistant of sorts during investigations, and she’s constantly trying to be funny, to varying results. But what matters is that when enough clues are gathered, Shinigami can stop time and create a portal to a Mystery Labyrinth, which is the physical manifestation of a mystery that exists within another dimension.
In order to solve the mysteries at hand, Yuma must cooperate with Shinigami and reach the end of the Labyrinth, where the people who are obstructing the truth take the form of Mystery Phantoms. The phantoms have pretty wild and colorful designs that resemble the Shadows from Persona 5. In general, the Mystery Labyrinths appear to be heavily influenced by the Persona series, especially 4. They have all these wacky dungeon designs that shift frequently and often reflect the nature of the cases at hand. Visually, they’re flashy and fun to look at, but from the perspective of gameplay, they’re more like hallways than labyrinths. They’re not dungeons that you explore at your own pace, but linear paths that are interrupted by the scripted encounters with the phantoms and the questions needed to solve the case.
Much like in Danganronpa, the facts of the mystery are collected as Solution Keys (instead of Truth Bullets), which are used as answers to questions, or as rebuttals for the encounters with Mystery Phantoms, which are called Reasoning Death Matches. RDMs are pretty similar to the main debate mechanics of DR, but in third person and with a sword instead of a gun. The enemy throws statements at Yuma, which he must dodge or repel using the correct Solution Key that disproves the enemy’s assumptions. It should be noted that the phantoms are not actually real, so it doesn’t matter to the real world if you destroy them in a Mystery Labyrinth. This works so that a phantom cannot know something that hasn’t been established in the real world first, but they do whatever it takes to obscure the culprit.
RDM as a system is not too complex, but it is a little harder than how Danganronpa does things. You’re also graded at the end of each chapter based on how well you performed in this and other trials, such as…
Shinigami Puzzle. This minigame serves as a way to include gratuitous fanservice. I haven’t mentioned it, but in the Labyrinths, Shinigami no longer looks like a cute little ghost, but a tall goth girl with huge tits. This is great and I have no objections. During Shinigami Puzzle, she stuffs herself into a barrel with letters, and you have to select the ones that form a word you need to fill in the gaps of the mystery. If you get it right, you’re treated to a flashy modeling photoshoot of Shinigami in a bikini, followed by her shooting a giant fucking laser at whatever obstacle lies in her way. Interesting.
Besides the puzzles and RDM, there are other mechanics, such as snap judgments where you have to select one of multiple choices about the case, Spot Selection, which is pretty self-explanatory, and recreations of the crime scene. These are all quite fun, but they’re not too different from anything you’ve seen in other games of this genre.
At the end of each case, there are two last minigames that you have to face before “boom-killing” the culprit (as Shinigami would say): GOD Shinigami, and Deduction Denouement, the latter of which I had no idea was a word that existed. Thanks, France, for creating more impossible-to-pronounce terms to just say “ending”.
GOD Shinigami is a giantess vore fantasy where the reaper turns giant and has to pound, tackle, and dodge through the last lines of defense that the culprit presents. You’re rewarded with more points when you chain perfect dodges and strikes, and it’s not too difficult to do, unlike Danganronpa’s weird convoluted rhythm game equivalent.
Deduction Denouement is literally the same comic book recap that DR does for the Climax Reasoning of each case… But less charming. Mechanically, it’s identical, but it loses a lot of its charm by using 3D models for it instead of 2D comic inspired art. Plus, I found the recaps to be too long and redundant, and of course, they were unskippable. Once the recap is finished, Shinigami reaps the culprit’s soul in a very flashy display of power. These aren’t as creative as the executions in DR, but they’re still kinda cool, especially in the fifth case, which damn near made me cry. Although one other problem this section has is that the audio mixing is horrendous, and you can barely hear half of Shinigami’s weird monologue.
This serves as a perfect segue to talk about the game’s audio. The soundtrack was composed by Masafumi Takada, who composed the music for guess what? Danger Romper, of course. This is quite obvious if you listen to both soundtracks side by side, as they have a pretty similar vibe, although I would say MDA’s OST is more chill. The music fits the overall setting of the game, with strong techno influences that match the cyberpunk theme. I don’t really have any complaints about it, I found it to be very enjoyable overall.
On the side of the voices, I played with the English dub on. The cast features a very healthy mix of familiar faces and less known VAs whose talent shows quite well. All the voices fit the characters they represent, and there’s plenty of emotion when there needs to be. There is, however, a small grievance that I have with the game’s audio mixing, as mentioned before. There are multiple times where either the music or the voices have a much different volume than the rest of times, and it can be very jarring. One such example is Yuma’s stock “Huh!?” voice clip, which, for some reason, is considerably louder than any other voice line in the game. It’s obviously not a deal breaker, but it’s very noticeable, so pls fix it if you’re reading this, random Chunsoft employee in charge of the audio.
Before moving on to the characters, I’d also like to point out a couple of bugs and stuff that I noticed during my playthrough. The framerate didn’t give me any issues on Switch, even in undocked mode, but I witnessed a lot of weird visual glitches that persisted during the session where I encountered them. One such case involved Shinigami’s ghost form being surrounded by black artifacts, presumably as a result of her aura’s particle effects encountering issues. I also took notice of multiple instances of black flickering in the overworld. It’s nothing game-breaking, but it was very distracting when it happened.
But that’s enough of the technical stuff, let me discuss the main characters. First, we have Yuma Kokohead, who, as mentioned before, suffers from amnesia and having a very stupid last name. In terms of personality, he’s your standard fare from Kodaka’s protagonists. He’s sort of naive and inexperienced, but has a good heart, and all that stuff you’ve seen a million times. He’s a bit lacking, in my opinion. He naturally grows through the story, but I feel like he gets pushed around too much and lacks the drive to fight back. Admittedly, I’m not a fan of this kind of weakling character, and I feel they’re kind of cucky, but at the end of the day, Yuma serves his purpose for the story, and that’s all you can ask of him.
Shinigami serves as Yuma’s Watson through the whole story, but her personality is the polar opposite of Yuma’s. She constantly bullies him and takes every chance she gets to make distasteful jokes. I quite enjoyed her presence for the most part, especially during the Mystery Labyrinths, where her personality shines the brightest, but at the same time, I also found her to be very redundant, especially once the game introduces other female characters, because she goes into this absolute femcel mode where she makes your usual “flat chest” jokes and calls them expletives relating to prostitution. Besides that, her constant deprecation of Yuma gets old by the third case, and I found her personality to be lacking compared to other assistant characters like Maya (Ace Attorney) or Aiba (Somnium Files). However, her tits are fire, so my complaints are all moot.
Once the prologue ends, you’re introduced to some recurring detective characters that accompany you through the main plot. The first is Yakou Furio, your mentor character, who is actually not a Master Detective, and as such, lacks supernatural powers, but is still a good detective on his own. For most of the game, he serves the role of a kind boss who makes sure to take care of the other detectives. Since he lacks a power, he doesn’t accompany Yuma in any of the major investigations, but he still has a major role in the story. He’s the only one who doesn’t have twisted morals, so he’s still a good compass to guide Yuma in his journey to recover his memories, and you get to learn a lot more about him with Memory Fragments, which serve as the main collectable in the game. These shiny fragments can be found in various places in the overworld, and they can be used to view conversations between Yuma and the other detectives, similarly to the Free Time Events from DR.
The next character is my personal favorite, Halara Nightmare. They’re an explicitly genderless Master Detective with an extremely useful ability (that I won’t spoil). They value money above all else and have complete distrust for pretty much any other human being in the world. They’re a major badass who is so effective that they refuse to work if huge sums of money are not on the table. There is a bit of an elephant in the room regarding them, though. Gender. The way in which the game is written avoids using gender neutral pronouns to refer to Halara, in spite of “they/them” being used as gender neutral for other characters. This led me to think Halara was simply female until the game pointed out to me that they have no gender. I was very concerned about this choice at first, given Kodaka’s track record with this topic, but frankly? It was handled tastefully and no information about Halara’s gender or sex is ever relayed in the story, even in the Memory Fragments. I was quite satisfied about it, but if you were hoping to see the tragic story of someone discriminated against for being non-binary, you won’t find it here. And I’m glad that’s how it is, as I simply wanted a fun mystery game that doesn’t discuss the gender issues that give me headaches on a daily basis.
Next up is Desuhiko Thunderbolt, a short, blonde guy who has a similar role to Kazuichi in DR2. He comes off as perverted at first, but he’s no Teruteru. He actually has normal feelings and acts just deluded enough to be likable while still having some of the classic skirt-chaser tropes. His abilities are incredibly helpful during the case where he’s involved, but I’d hardly call them supernatural. He gets quite chummy with Yuma during the case that they work together, and I found their relationship to be fun, especially with how much Yuma tries to humor Desuhiko’s ego without showing how uncomfortable he actually is.
In the same chapter where Yuma and Desuhiko work together, another recurring character is introduced, Kurumi Wendy, who takes the role of an informant who craves the truth about the mysterious death of her friend and classmate. I’d call her the Chiaki of the game. She’s super supportive and nice to Yuma, but kinda lacks flaws and personality and comes off as the obvious love interest for Yuma. Shinigami constantly insults and body-shames her. The joke runs its course VERY quickly, but I’d chalk that up to cultural differences between East and West. Doesn’t make it any less unfunny, though.
Another one of the detectives is Fubuki Clockford, whom I affectionately refer to as Fuboobies Cockballs. Very mature, I know. My perception of this character was pretty negative at first, because she came off as a carbon copy of Sonia from DR2. They’re both sheltered “princesses” who seem to be pretty unintelligent and unhelpful, but unlike Sonia, Fubuki actually displays interesting emotions and develops a ton during her dedicated chapter. What started off as a one-note character ended up being one of my favorites in the story. Just goes to show that patience pays off sometimes. BUT, there is a MAJOR grievance that I have with a particular piece of dialogue in her chapter, where she says “I’m so naive that the servants call me dummy thicc behind my back”. I CANNOT STRESS IT ENOUGH HOW MUCH PAIN THIS LINE CAUSED ME. A video game published by a somewhat major company shouldn’t contain a meme this dated. This would be acceptable if it was a small game made by people from the internet, or in a parody game, but no, this was written by an adult with a job who somehow thought it would be funny to put in a meme from BEFORE THE PANDEMIC. Shinigami also uses the word “simp” multiple times, and each time, one of my kidneys dried up a little more. References are fine, but dead memes are where I draw the line. Simply unacceptable.
Onto the last of the main detectives, Vivia Twilight. He’s… different. I like him a lot for this reason. He’s a completely asocial bookworm who hangs out in cramped places like under pianos or inside fireplaces. For most of the story, he barely says anything, and most of it is cryptic and depressing, with his catchphrase being “I want to die someday”. Me too, buddy. Much like Fubuki, you have to wait quite a bit to see his true value as a character, and some would argue he’s the Nagito of the game, but I think there’s someone else who fits that role better. I simply don’t think he fits enough into any of the DR archetypes, and that makes him great in my eyes.
Besides the detectives, you also get to meet the Peacekeepers, which serve as the private police force of Kanai Ward. Their goal is to obstruct investigations and fabricate whichever truth that’s most convenient to Amaterasu Corp. Copaganda, this is not. They are led by Yomi Hellsmile, who is a fantastic antagonist in my opinion. Everything about him screams “irredeemably evil”, from his design to his dialogue, and I think this is a fresh change of pace from Kodaka’s antagonists, who usually have ethical reasons to do what they do. Nonetheless, Yomi is a realistic villain in the sense that he portrays the avarice and selfishness of people in power, he just doesn’t hide it because he IS the law.
The last character that I’ll be discussing is Makoto Kagutsuchi, who is a more nebulous figure than any of the other characters. I won’t reveal his exact role, but from my point of view, he’s the real Nagito-like character of this game. He’s mysterious from the moment he’s introduced, and all you know is that he holds immense power in Kanai Ward, being so important that even the Peacekeepers think twice about messing with him. His design is interesting in the sense that they totally ripped me off with the masks that reflect the wearer’s emotions, GODDAMN IT. I’m not actually mad about it because it’s used in an interesting character that I really enjoyed engaging with. He’s also introduced in a scene where he’s naked in a hot tub, and that’s one hell of a way to make a first impression about one of the most important characters in the story, wow.
To wrap things up, I would like to bring up my views on the overall story of the game without spoiling anything. The first chapter (called chapter 0) of the game does quite a great job of introducing the concept and world of MDA, and it’s “very Kodaka”. It features a very interesting mystery that wasn’t immediately obvious, unlike in the first chapter of DR1. The second chapter starts using the abilities of the Masters Detectives in interesting ways, but features the easiest set of locked room mysteries I have ever seen. Seriously, I legitimately solved them before the Mystery Labyrinth even started. This is where being a veteran of mystery games and stories starts affecting the game. In general, a lot of the murders were super easy to solve and didn’t do a lot of crazy 180s, which was a bit disappointing, but at the very least, it makes the game and genre more accessible to people who haven’t played games like these yet.
Much like in the DR series, the third and fourth cases didn’t really matter much in the long run, but helped in developing the world and still feature great character moments, even if the enigmas are piss easy. The fifth case is where the plot starts to pick up and the overarching mysteries start to unravel, reaching the final truth in the sixth chapter. I certainly felt like the middle chapters could have had more significance in the overarching story, and their simplicity wasn’t much of an asset in my opinion. The game lingers a lot in minute details and artificially extends its length with this, as well as the Side Cases, which I haven’t mentioned because they were the most disappointing part of the game to me. When I heard there would be sidequests in the game, I got psyched and expected something elaborate, like the Mementos Requests from Persona 5, which utilized the game’s unique mechanics to its advantage, but unfortunately, MDA does not do much with the Side Cases, which are easily solved by fast traveling between a couple of locations and talking to a few NPCs. I really wanted to delve into the Mystery Labyrinths for these, but their simplicity let me down.
You probably noticed that I made a lot of comparisons with Danganronpa, and while I understand that one wouldn’t like that, and think that the game should be analyzed by its own merits, I think it’s only natural that Kodaka’s previous mystery work should be used as a basis for comparison. There are obvious sources of inspiration taken from Danganronpa and even Kotaro Uchikoshi’s Zero Escape, so these sorts of comparisons are quite simply inevitable, and occasionally necessary to understand why some choices were made. Ultimately, I think this game works perfectly on its own, and you definitely do not need to play Danganronpa to understand MDA, and I would add that it is a great entry-level game for those interested in mystery visual novels, with an easy to follow plot that escalates its stakes properly and less characters to remember than other games in this genre.
I definitely recommend Master Detective Archives: Rain Code, even if its lack of complexity was a minor letdown. It’s still quite a fun game with an interesting plot and highly enjoyable visuals.
Nocverse 