Say it in Red | Episode 52: Raging Loop (Part 1 of 2)

You are traveling alone on a dark highway late at night. Desperate for a place to rest your weary frame, and maybe a distraction from the terrible break-up that set you on this journey, you turn down a narrow mountain road. The pavement abruptly vanishes beneath you and a rock flies up pat your face - that's right, you're on a motorcycle. Really a bad position, if we're being honest. You search for a house light, a streetlamp, any sign of civilization at all, and then at last you see it:
The buffest deer you could ever imagine, keeping pace and locking eyes with you on this increasingly narrow trail. You can't help but feel that this deer somehow pities you as it scoffs and, finally ceasing its torment, bounds away into the treeline at your left. Of course, you couldn't have followed the deer up that steep hill even if you tried. This makes you feel a bit better about crashing down the ravine a moment later, though the menacing deer still stands out in your mind. Ah, if only I could loop through time, you think... then I could make that deer respect me. You are, unfortunately, now lying beside the mangled heap of your motorcycle at the bottom of a river. You are the protagonist of Raging Loop, and you are about to die (again). 

This month, Sara and Runa start stripping apart Raging Loop (2015) and cozy up with the inhabitants of an eerie mountain village. In the venerable folk horror traditions of many stories of city travelers stumbling into rural areas with strange religious practices, and the venerable VN tradition of time looping until you figure out how to survive such a place, Raging Loop quickly pulls readers in with a pretty compelling premise. What if you were playing a game of Werewolf, for real, and also this game of Werewolf was the result of Divine Mandate? Our protagonist, Haruaki Fusaishi, appears at first as the exact Median of all Anime Guys but really quickly shows us that he's kind of a freak with a loose moral compass. He realizes quickly that he can loop through time, starting just before he arrives at the rural village of Yasumizu, and decides to use this knowledge to push people's buttons and figure out how they work. Meanwhile, people's corpses explode in grotesque heaps, some seem to get possessed, and each night the wolves kill someone else. Each day, then, the villagers gather together and decide who they think is a wolf and hang them. Despite his new ability to re-try events with the knowledge gained from his death, Haruaki has only found deeper mysteries and a great deal of pain. What, then, will help him escape this raging loop that keeps raising loups? 

If you're playing along, for this first part we read all the way up to the acquisition of Key 16. This episode covers all the events up to that point, roughly the first two main Routes of the game with their brief tributaries, and our next episode coming out in May will cover the remainder of the game. 

 As always, if you enjoy our show please consider rating us and leaving a review wherever you listen to podcasts! Our patreon (at patreon.com/sayitinred) also hosts a growing number of bonus episodes, released around the second week of each month. Our most recent episodes include a reflection on the a full overview of Touhou and its many girls, an expedition into the House of Leaves, and most recently: A brief history of Pretty Cure. 

Editor's notes: Sara mentions that Raging Loop came out in 2017, which was the English release date while 2015 was the original release date. We also re-recorded a couple sections that had audio issues and we apologize if any of those are too noticeable!