133 | Mystic Messenger: The Secret Endings, Seven's Valentine's After Story, & more

[straightforwardly]

► Note: There are multiple parts to this entry, but they’re pretty much all about Mystic Messenger. So if you don’t care about this game, feel free to skip over this entry entirely. I just had a whole lot to say, and it was easier to split it up into parts.

► So, I’ve done all the secret endings now, and… wow. Wow. What a ride. It was… emotionally draining, to be perfectly honest, but mostly worth it at the end? First: Saeyoung’s route? Definitely the true ending— the secret endings (thankfully) continue on where his route left off.

I have to say, I’m delighted that Saeyoung and Vanderwood ended up teaming up together. I liked their interactions before already, and Vanderwood’s outsider perspective on everything that happens definitely added a much-needed dose of levity to… pretty much everything that happens in the first secret ending. Holy shit, V. Holy shit, Rika.

I did have to laugh when he went to Saeyoung for a job in the second secret ending— for a moment it was like old times, though I do understand why Saeyoung wasn’t so thrilled to see him, considering the whole “planned to kill him and kidnapped his beloved brother” thing.

Also: yes, I’m referring to Vanderwood as “he” again. I got confused all over again by the secret endings: first when Zen & Jaehee referred to him as a “he” in the chatroom, and then again later one when Jaehee says “she” when talking about him to Saeyoung, but according to the the wiki the mix-up is a combination of Saeyoung’s teasing and translation errors, so: he.

But back to V and Rika… seriously, holy shit. I’m not too surprised that Rika turned out to be alive— I’ve been suspecting it since… Yoosung’s route? Jaehee’s route? I’d need to go back and check my write-ups to be sure, but since fairly early on in my playthrough. Still, things didn’t play out quite how I expected. V and Rika’s relationship… I know I keep saying this, but holy shit. They might have loved one another, but I get the feeling that they might have actually been the worst thing to happen to one another. (I did eat up their flashback interactions with a spoon, though. It hit just the right tone of unhealthy for me to adore it, though I still can’t quite ship it, considering all that happened afterwards.)

V really took me by surprise, though. I go into more of my thoughts about his actions below, but for now: I think he had good intentions executed very, very badly. His death did surprise me— that is to say, I knew it was him who’d been shot the second Saeran fired, but before then I hadn’t expected him to die. Rika’s reaction was...not entirely unexpected, but

At this point, I’m going to have to go into some of the things that I really didn’t like about the secret ending. First… their treatment of mental illness made me a little bit uncomfortable? I think I could actually handle what went on with Rika re: her depression and paranoia— and the bit about how she tried to appear so happy and bright so that no one (especially Yoosung) would know the truth did ring very true to me. Mental illness as a reason for villainous actions... is troubling, but, again, I could handle it even if I was a bit uneasy about it. But what really got to me was a single line: Zen, when he was encouraging Yoosung to send Rika to some natural healing retreat, said something about how he knew someone whose son was “healed” of many of the side-effects of autism by the same retreat and UGH UGH UGH UGH UGH.

On the positive side, I do like that the game tried to have a more realistic progression of Saeran’s healing, and that not everything was automatically sunshine and butterflies just because he’d been freed from Mint Eye. It was very hard to read at times— see what I said above about emotionally draining— but it made the moment where Saeyoung first makes it through to him very, very satisfying.

I also disliked how, after a whole game about the ways lies and secrets can hurt people, and Saeyoung himself saying that the RFA would be open with one another from now on, he, Jumin, and Jaehee (and the MC)... proceed to continue keeping huge secrets from Zen and Yoosung? Saying that V had committed suicide (the exact same lie V used about Rika!), and pretending like Rika had lost her ability to speak long before and that’s why V hide her away, not letting them know about anything Rika did with Mint Eye… It also makes me wonder why Yoosung forgave V at his funeral, considering that from his perspective V not only lied about everything, but particularly lied about Rika dying, forcing him to unnecessarily mourn the person he cared about most.

I was also initially a bit annoyed that Rika was so easily forgiven for, you know, running a brainwashing cult. But then I thought about it a bit more, and realized that it makes sense, considering the above lies. The ones who don’t know anything about what Rika did (Yoosung and Zen) are the ones who try to protect her, while the ones who do know (Jumin and Jaehee) only allowed Rika to stay with Yoosung long enough so that they could try to gather enough evidence to bring her to justice. But their attempt failed, partially because of Zen’s psychic dream, but also because of Saeyoung, and his motivations make perfect sense too. Maybe he wouldn’t have sympathy for Rika herself (I would be surprised if he did, actually, considering what she did to his beloved brother), but he would be motivated by the need to protect Saeran, which preventing the information about the cult’s activities from getting out would do. So I was satisfied by the logic of those events.

The last thing that bothered me was how, for a while, it felt like the whole RFA was breaking apart, which, considering how much the (canonical!) found family aspect of the group appeals to me, really broke my heart. Zen and Yoosung, forewarned by Zen’s dream, sending Rika away so that Jumin and Jaehee can’t get to her is probably the example that sticks out to me the most. They should be working together, not treating their fellow members like enemies. But by the end of the secret endings, it didn’t feel so dire anymore: that whole chat about the party, and then all of them coming together for a group photo made it feel like those ruptures had healed, or at least were beginning to heal. Which satisfies me, though I wish there hadn’t been a need for that healing in the first place.

► Here, have some meta about the overall themes of Mystic Messenger. This was originally part of the above write-up, but then I decided that I didn’t want it to get buried with everything else that I wrote, if only so that I can find it more easily in the future.

Comparing V and Rika’s story (as well as what happened with Rika and Mint Eye) to Saeyoung and Saeran’s, or Saeyoung and the MC, or, really, the MC and any LI, I feel like this game might be trying to say something about the concept of “saving someone”. I haven’t thoroughly organized my thoughts, but: both V and Rika tried to take on the entire burden of “saving” another on themselves; the person being “saved” had less input in the matter. Their actual techniques were different from one another’s, but the basic idea behind it was the same (which makes sense— Rika learned everything about how to “save” someone from V.)

As a contrast, the MC and Saeyoung (in regards to Saeran), don’t do that. They “save” people by being there for them: they serve as a source of support and encouragement for that person, but they don’t overwhelm them. See Saeyoung giving Saeran space when he needs it, or the MC doing the same for Saeyoung. Neither of them makes any decisions for that other person (the end of Jaehee’s route is a particularly good example of this, though Saeyoung refusing to force medication on Saeran without his consent also ties into this), but they do give them the emotional support they need to make a decision. In short, they put the person who “needs saving” at the center, not themselves.

This is a very rough explanation, and I’m sure there’s a lot more nuance to tease out, but I think I’d need to play through the routes again first if I really want to dive into the idea.

► After beating the game, I finally felt free to really dive into the guide books/character information books that came with my VIP package. The “top secret! Spoilers ahead!” one turned out to be a bit disappointing: it was mostly production notes, which is something that I’m not particularly interested in. But the guide book had tons of interesting information. I’m not going to go into everything that stuck out to me, but there are two things that I wanted to share:

First, heights! I initially only checked it out because I was curious about where they all were in relation to me. According to the online calculators, Jaehee’s the only one shorter than me (she’s tinier than I thought— only 5’4!). I half-expected the others, but I was surprised that even Yoosung’s taller than me, though not by much. But this is all tl;dr— it’s not my main point in bringing it up.

When looking at all of this, I noticed that the RFA members’ heights go from tallest to shortest in this order:

Jumin - Zen - Seven - Yoosung - Jaehee

Which makes a weird sort of sense to me, considering their respective personalities. So I thought about that for a little while, and suddenly it hit me: there’s a direct correlation between how tall each character is, and how possessive they are of the MC.

This amused me far more than it probably should have.

The second thing I wanted to share is this: Seven is canonically bisexual! Or maybe pansexual…? Whatever; regardless of the precise label, the point is, he’s interested in both women and men! There was a character interview for each character (with the same questions for each character), and here’s one of Seven’s answers:

Q10: What do you look for in a woman?
Does it have to be a woman? Why are you limiting my potential significant others! lolol Whether it’s a woman or a man, what’s important is that we share the same sensibility! If that person lets me deactivate my restrict jokes switch, then I’ll definitely go for him or her.

omg, I adore him. ♥ ♥ ♥ Definitely my favorite character at this point.

► Finally, at the end of last night I was in the mood for something sweeter after all of the angst of the secret endings, so I decided to play Seven’s Valentine After Story. This was a great decision; his was easily the best of the three I’ve played so far! HE MADE THE MC A VALENTINE’S DAY SCAVENGER HUNT. Best boyfriend, or best boyfriend? Haha, I’m not even interested in dating, and it still managed to make me feel a little wistful. I actually squeed out loud when I saw the first two gifts— well, I say “squeed”, but that’s not precisely accurate; I don’t actually know how to define the sound I made, other than that it was definitely positive.

Also, Cheritz should make that alarm clock and that plushie into actual products. I know I’d buy them in a heartbeat! Everything about this was so cute. The cutest! Again, way better than Zen or Jaehee’s. I loved that you actually got to see all of the RFA members along the way. And there were multiple endings, too! It was just such a delight to play through. ♥