Hello and welcome to Wasted Plotential, the show where we discuss the wasted potential
of our favourite plotlines.
To avoid bogging down the upcoming A Line Through Time episode on the franchise, this
video will be where I focus on a particularly uncomfortable subject from Fatal Frame: Maiden
of Black Water.
This topic surrounds the parentage of one of the game's protagonists, Miu Hinasaki.
Her mother is Miku Hinasaki, the main protagonist of the first game and a supporting character
in the third.
So, let's quickly summarise her previous appearances first.
In the first Zero/Project Zero/Fatal Frame, Mafuyu Hinasaki goes missing in the haunted
Himuro Mansion while searching for his missing mentor.
Since their mother had committed suicide a couple years previous, Mafuyu is now the guardian
of his seventeen year old younger sister, Miku, and the two are very close.
Like Claire Redfield before her, Miku heads into the mansion to find her brother herself.
It turns out that the Rope Shrine Maiden, Kirie, who was to take part in a ritual to
keep the souls of the dead at bay, refused to do so following the murder of her lover.
Mafuyu resembles this young man and Kirie has thus taken him as a replacement.
Miku defeats her, but Mafuyu chooses to stay behind with Kirie as a spirit to keep her
company as she works to subdue the darkness.
Two years later, in Fatal Frame III: The Tormented, Miku is now the assistant and housemate of
new protagonist, Rei Kurosawa.
Those who are tormented by the death of a loved one are drawn into the Manor of Sleep
in their dreams, which gives them the tattooed curse that will kill them within two months.
This includes Miku, who lost Mafuyu, Rei, whose fiance was killed in a car crash, and
even Mio Amakura from the second game, who lost her twin sister.
Miku's regret over surviving leads to her following the vision of Mafuyu in the manor,
leaving her trapped in an endless dream until Rei is able to resolve the issue by helping
the Tattooed Priestess find peace.
This was reportedly intended as the conclusion to the story of the three leads as Mio meets
the other two protagonists, and their supernatural torment is concluded.
But the team behind the fifth game, almost a decade later, felt the need to continue
the story by bringing Miku back.
Miu is searching for her mother, who disappeared when she was three.
Now, twenty years since the death of her uncle, Miu finds her mother and discovers how she
came to be.
It turns out that, during her coma in FF3, Miku had an encounter with Mafuyu's spirit.
A sexual encounter.
And got pregnant.
With her brother's incest ghost baby.
Producing a "Yomi Ko" child significantly reduces one's lifespan.
As such, three years later, sensing the end approaching, she straight-up abandoned her
daughter to go and take part in the Yuukon ritual - an event in which a living person
is married to a dead person - so that she could be with her brother again.
Why exactly the ghosts would bother performing the ritual for her, or even how she found
out about it in the first place, I'm not entirely sure.
Now, let it be noted that I don't have a problem with incest being used as a plot device entirely.
I can't really think of any subject that should be completely off-limits in storytelling,
as long as its handled well.
However, I do take issue with its use here.
See, the game never specifies when exactly Miku started to develop romantic feelings
towards Mafuyu.
They don't say that it started after his death, or after the finality of his death really
sank in after III.
As such, we're left to assume that she always felt this way towards him.
All throughout her appearances in the first and third games, Miku wasn't searching for
her brother and mourning his death simply because he's her brother and she has no one
else.
No, it's because she wanted to fuck him.
Those previous stories are now tainted by this revelation.
Any subsequent viewings of those two stories are done with the knowledge of Miku's true
intentions in the back of the viewer's mind.
It also makes it hard to root for her, knowing that she will abandon her three-year-old daughter
because she didn't get quite enough of her brother's dick last time.
It might not have been quite as bad, had they made it clear that her feelings developed
after the third game; or better, made it clear that she didn't have such feelings and only
took part in the wedding as a formality to see her dead brother again.
But what really makes this revelation as atrocious as it is, is that I don't think it was done
because the writers felt this was the natural progression for this character's story.
Rather, I think it was done for much more cynical reasons.
In between the third and fifth games, the little sister who wants to fuck her own brother
trope was popularised in Oreimo, and then given a bit of a recent boost in Sword Art
Online (though ironically, SAO handles it a little better than most, and when Reki Kawahara
of all people handles a subject better than you do, it's time to re-evaluated your fucking
life).
I cannot see the decision to take the story in this direction as anything other than a
shallow marketing decision to appeal to the siscon crowd.
But let's just assume for a second that the writers simply wanted to explore the Yuukon
ritual and Yomi Ko with a playable character from a previous instalment, and Miku seemed
like the logical choice to them, for reasons that only make sense if you happen to be from
the moon.
Or maybe they just wanted to use the hero of the first game - their Chris Redfield/Harry
Mason - and this was the best way they could think to include her.
Somehow.
A character from IV would no doubt have been a better choice, perhaps leaving I-III as
their own story, and letting IV onwards be a new one.
But I have an even better choice than that - a character for whom this scenario honestly
seems like it was written specifically, before they replaced her with the much more recognisable
Miku - Rei Kurosawa.
Miku met Rei through her brother's friend, Yuu Asou, who was Rei's fiance.
Fiance - as in, the person she was going to marry, before he was killed in a car crash.
Doesn't the idea of a living person marrying a dead person feel like it was written with
Rei and Yuu in mind, rather than a brother and sister?
V's main heroine, Yuri, lives with Hisoka Kurosawa, an alleged relative of Rei's, who
lives near the mountain where the ritual is performed.
Imagine that Rei tells Hisoka about her experiences in the third game, since both have an interest
in the paranormal.
The subject of people being separated by death leads to Hisoka telling Rei about the Yuukon
ritual.
Rei then travels to the region, under the pretence of visiting her relative, with the
ulterior motive to take part in one of these rituals so that she and Yuu could do what
they had promised to do before his death, intending to get some closure on that chapter
of their lives, so that Yuu can rest in peace and Rei can move on with her life.
Naturally, they consummate the marriage that night.
Unbeknownst to them, however, a male spirit's sperm can actually impregnate a living woman,
resulting in their daughter, who we'll just call Miu for the sake of simplicity.
Rei then raises this Yomi Ko as a single mother.
She either never speaks about the father, or pretends she got pregnant the day before
Yuu's death, but it only showed late.
Miu doesn't learn the truth until Rei disappears when her daughter comes of age.
Imagine it's some kind of price to pay for having been given the chance to bond with
the dead and have a child.
The mountain calls her back and compels her to head towards the shoreline so she can eb
reunited with Yuu in the afterlife.
Miu goes after her, eventually having the opportunity to save her before she is spirited
away, just as in the actual game.
Only, you know, don't have the ending be tied into whether or not the player took a picture
of Miu's mother before approaching her, because that has to be the most needlessly obscure
method to get a different ending I've ever heard of.
Sometimes, all it takes to improve a story in a big way is to replace one or two characters,
so that the events fit it in better with the established personalities and storylines of
the characters involved.
By swapping Miku and Mafuyu for Rei and Yuu, for instance, you avoid the utterly damaging
incest angle, and get what feels like a very natural next step in Rei's storyline that
gives her some final closure, rather than... really not accomplishing anything by using
Miku.
And by having the mother's disappearance be a much more recent thing and outside of her
control, rather than abandoning her infant child for selfish reasons, it allows the two
to have a much stronger connection by the start of the game, which works far better
for getting the audience invested in the daughter's plight, and as a parallel to the mother's
debut story, and also doesn't ruin the character by making her a selfish, unlikable cunt.
Even putting aside how naturally Rei fits into this storyline, Rei is the only one of
the original three protagonists to not get any play outside of her debut.
Miku has returned twice, Mio returned and starred in a remake, and both have made cameoes
in other games.
But Rei is limited to Fatal Frame III and having Hisoka's design in V be based on hers.
She feels weirdly obscure, compared to her fellow heroines.
But let's not discuss the direction they took the story anymore.
Instead, let's end on a really weird detail I noticed when first playing #5.
Don't worry, it's not as messed up as incest ghost babies.
Nothing's as messed up as incest ghost babies.
Every single member of the female cast, at least once, gets summoned to the mountain
in a trance, walking out of Hisoka's home towards the mountain.
When a character is inside the house, they have their shoes off, since that's the custom
in Japan, and other countries where the people aren't savage neanderthals.
When a character is out in the front cafe or outside the building, they have them on.
Even the characters who are being drawn away in a trance.
They don't respond to other people around them, but they do have the wherewithal to
put their shoes on before they go out?
I guess spiritual possession can make a person agree to suicide, but it can't override one's
disdain towards getting their feet dirty.
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If not, then make sure to share it with your enemies so they can suffer along with you.
Also, in my version, Ren actually locks the doors when women start being spirited away.
You know, instead of being retarded.