Terror City Shinjuku: let's talk about Collar x Malice

This is a VN I had been curious about for a while, but didn't know anything about. It was in the batch of otome games I installed along with my vita emulator earlier this year, but it took a few months for me to get around to it…

At first, I didn't know whether I loved the opening or thought it sounded like shit. I had my vkeipilled friend listen to it and together we both reached the conclusion that it's a good song. I'll let you judge for yourself.

The character designs are great—I generally associate modern-day settings with boring clothes, but everyone is dressed to the nines. Even the side characters look cool. The UI is also incredibly stylish.

I'm especially fond of the TIPS popup.

Anyway, let's get to the story itself. Shinjuku is quarantined after a series of monthly terrorist attacks called the X-Day Incidents—murders announced online and left unsolved as all suspects were found to have airtight alibis. Ichika, a rookie police officer, finds herself embroiled in the middle of it all when she gets attacked while responding to a call and wakes up in an empty church with a collar around her neck. An eerie robotic voice starts coming out of it, telling her it contains a deadly poison, and instructs her to find the truth of the incidents herself—or face death. She then joins forces with a ragtag detective agency made up of former cops investigating the X-Day cases (well, former cops and active police profiler Shiraishi, plus the security police guy keeping an eye on them)—at the start I was expecting a more death-game-like development, or at least something like the collar giving Ichika orders all the time, but that's not really the case.

I enjoyed the gameplay focus on investigating and figuring stuff out. It's also very funny that there's an achievement when you get something wrong for the first time. Like "wow congrats here's your dumb idiot award". There’s also a shooting mechanic, which I found really cool. Missing a shot can also give you a bad ending, so aim well!

The screen is so cool but I forgot to take a screenshot myself so I had to grab this one from the switch version

I picked Mineo for my first route because I was wondering what the deal with his eyepatch was—later on when he started talking about how he likes the Sengoku period I was like, “wait, does he wear the eyepatch because of Masamune Date?” and when his next line was exactly this, I laughed. Character and romance-wise, he's very fun, but the story just solves itself so fast, it feels anticlimactic. I don't like cop stories so it's inevitable that I wouldn't enjoy this that much, but this one was really rough.

I liked Sasazuka way better, which was quite unexpected. The way he always teased Ichika was somehow endearing, and I liked the dynamic they had going on. I also felt that his route had higher stakes, and it had my favorite “collar removal" scene (for lack of a better term) out of the bunch.

I had my eye on Kei for a while but he didn't, say, capture my heart as much. Honestly, he's kinda scary…I guess I like him more at a distance. I also felt like his route dragged on a bit, but it wasn't bad. His route was also the first one where I felt that the tragic end felt, well, actually tragic, which wasn't the case with Mineo and Sasazuka—it’s a bad end, so at least give me a cool and bloody cg, dammit.

What I enjoyed the most of these first 3 was the way the cases were interconnected—you might discover the motive for case A in one route but the actual culprit in another route, and vice-versa.

Now, at this point I didn't like Shiraishi one bit. In fact, I found him deeply aggravating. To tell you the truth, I wanted to smash him over the head with a brick. When Ichika said that she fell in love with him just a tiny bit under the moonlight, I said “well I didn't!” So now I'm wondering, when did it happen?

As the route went on, I could feel him worming his way into my brain like a parasite. I just knew I would end up crying over him at least once(and I was right). Slowly warming up to each other, slowly finding out more about him, and finding myself overwhelmed by the desire to give him a hug—it’s not the first time I character I started out loathing turns out to be my favorite, but it always makes me a bit mad. Like I lost some sort of battle. Well, whatever. It’s my favorite route in the entire VN. And then there's that fucking ending. I couldn't believe it. It's like that was the only time I actually listened to the ending song properly. In my head it now belongs to him exclusively. When Ichika got her memory back in the epilogue I felt that same incredible rush I got from the ending of Steins;Gate. It was like getting a new lease on life I was so happy…!

His tragic end was also insanely good—possibly the best moment of the whole VN.

I'm hiding the CG here because it's obviously very spoilery.

I mean just look at this CG. I need to inject it into my veins

You know, when I first saw Shiraishi in the opening, I thought “he seems like the type of character one of my Tumblr mutuals would be insane about”—and then said Tumblr mutual turned out to be me…

Ok insane Shiraishi rant over. Back to the schedule. Yanagi’s route is the longest, and he even has his own prologue. I expected to like him much more than I actually did. He (and his route) didn't do much for me. It felt so nothing, especially compared to the route just before it.

HEAVY SPOILERS AHEAD

Now, I knew Saeki was the culprit as soon as he first appeared. It was nearing my bedtime so before I turned off the game that night I hastily scrawled his name on a post-it note and stuck it to my laptop, as if my memory would reset when I fell asleep and I needed to know not to trust his lies. I spent the entire game staring holes into him whenever he was onscreen, to the point where I thought it might not be him after all because I couldn't possibly have gotten it right. It couldn't be so obvious. When you have to type in the name of who you think it is, it was such an odd feeling. It couldn't be anyone else other than him, and yet…

I kind of wanted to be wrong, for some reason. As I said, it's an odd feeling. He (Saeki, I mean) also gets an extra chapter after you clear the game, which to be honest I could not have cared any less about.

As for extras, all characters get a little NVL story from their POV, plus something like a I want to say a date simulator? It's like a series of vignettes that follow over the course of a day. Hello, holding hands, a little argument, I love you, good night—nothing special unless you really like the character (see, for example: I went back to it to have Shiraishi say goodnight right before I uninstalled the game).

As I previously said, I don't like cop stories, so it was a given that I would not completely love this VN, but it was still a fun experience (even if the writing annoyed me sometimes).