Lucid9: Inciting Incident | Exploring Depression Through Clichés

Why you should play this overlooked indie VN gem

Prologue: Tropes, and how not to employ them

Lucid9: Inciting Incident is a game with some of the stupidest dialogue ever written. From the very start, it is constantly assaulting its reader with tropey, exaggerated, sexist, juvenile, and pretentious writing. Over the course of the game, its protagonist Yama Ishimoto made me more upset than I’d been at a fictional character in as long as I can remember.

To be clear, I think this is legitimately genius.

Anime tropes have been complained about since the dawn of time. Ingrained into any human’s knowledge as fundamentally as their first language is the language of anime tropes being bad. This is obviously not actually true, but it feels as though there’s always been a fundamental shared understanding within most online communities I’ve been a part of that these tropes are cringe-worthy and deserving of ridicule. While the intensity of this dislike varies from person to person, ranging from mild annoyance to hatred of all things anime, it’s always been kinda interesting to me to see that this is such a commonly agreed upon source of aversion. What makes everyone come together on this topic, in this way?

Barring simply a dislike of foreign things, I think it’s safe to say that most impressions of ‘bad anime tropes’ come from the worst the medium has to offer. There’s no denying it’s an incredibly pervasive artform, and as with all popular media produced under capitalism, this means it’s flooded with works that bend over to appeal to the lowest common denominator for the sake of making more money. This means that what gets pushed out involves a lot of writing that never feels like it’s being sincere when it can instead opt to be quirky and shocking, that never feels like it respects its characters as human when it can instead opt to be sexist and insistent on shallow, easy-to-digest narrative roles. That’s what sells the best to our complacent, everyday society.

But what if there was a story about this being bad?

Many have attempted to write a story that cleverly deconstructs a typical anime viewer’s expectations, most often through the format of a visual novel. At this point, there’s enough on the market that the concept isn’t really surprising anymore — an obvious example being 2017’s internet-viral dating simulator subversion Doki Doki Literature Club, but with far more attempts at this idea both existing prior and following in its footsteps. Lucid9 actually came out a year before DDLC, but I don’t see it talked about anywhere near as much. I think that’s damn unfair for the amount of passion that went into it.

Part I: Meet our protagonist

So, what sets this game apart? What makes it uniquely interesting amongst anime subversions?

If I had to summarize it, I’d say that while it’s certainly focused on deconstructing its inspirations, it’s not about that in the same way something like DDLC is. That game revels in picking apart the nature of dating sims, to the point where it’s not often about a lot else (as much as I’d admittedly have liked for it to be). But L9 isn’t a straightforward examination of tropes. It’s a deeply emotional story about depression and other social impairments — one which uses this “language” of anime trope subversion as a framing device for its characters’ issues. It’s less like the characters are written around deconstructing the genre and more like the genre deconstruction is there to supplement the characters. Well, that’s a bit abstract, so let’s focus more directly on the center of these ideas in the game: its protagonist.

Lucid9: Inciting Incident is played from the perspective of Yama Ishimoto, a high school student living what initially appears to be a fairly ordinary life by anime standards. He’s got all the staples of the archetypal friend group: there’s the known-since-childhood love interest, the comically stupid yet enthusiastic best friend, and the hotheaded and stubborn jock, as well as a small handful of other acquaintances. At least for the first few minutes, this all plays out in fairly unsurprising ways. Yama makes some bitingly sarcastic quips in class as a witty protagonist does, has a short chat with his school counselor who’s surprisingly chill about his attitude, and goes out to eat with his pals after school.

Reading these first three scenes, I got a strong impression of the writing style, and it wasn’t a good one. The writing felt amateurish, like it was written by a teenager trying too hard to be profoundly edgy and play into clichés. Yama’s ‘casual sarcasm’ relies almost solely on indiscriminately insulting his friends to the point of ridicule. His internal monologue speaks to his “100% natural disdain for humanity” like it’s a point of pride. Mr. Ryouta, his counselor, barely questions his behavior and even endorses it in a laid-back and ‘relatable’ manner. His friends engage in absurdly over-the-top competitions over restaurant food. It makes everything seem shallow. That is, until the fourth scene.

Lucid9’s fourth scene is when I realized it was genuinely competent to a degree I wasn’t expecting. It starts out with the same grating tropiness as the prior scenes, except to an even greater degree: Yama’s childhood friend Rui ends up walking him home and cooking dinner for him, and he starts imagining her in a wedding dress, acting in the most ridiculously caricatured way by essentially becoming a hyper-idealized wife who cooks for him and calls him cute pet names. I imagine this would’ve been the moment I put down the game — if it wasn’t for something I didn’t expect. First of all, the fantasy abruptly ends in Rui suddenly being about to physically assault Yama, a stark difference from its sickeningly sweet tone just moments beforehand. And it’s not long afterwards that his mood drastically changes. Suddenly he’s internally monologuing about how seeing her happy makes his stomach sink, and how he can’t stand the thought of her being in love with him because giving her “false hope” would be “cruel”. So he… proceeds to casually try to cut her out of his life.

The amount of emotional resonance this scene has compared to what came before it is whiplash-inducing. Seemingly out of nowhere, the story hits the reader with this awkward and uncomfortable depiction of a kid being afraid of expressing his own feelings and gracelessly trying to separate himself from someone he clearly means the world to. He tells her that they should stop seeing each other as frequently, that he doesn’t need her around to take care of him, that she’s being a burden by worrying over him so often, and it’s remarkably sobering writing that contrasts the frivolous nature of the previous events like a brick to the face in a water balloon fight. But more than that, it’s something that lends incredibly important context to the way those previous three scenes were written, and the way future scenes in the game are written as well.

Part II: The fear of being genuine

If I had to name two things Lucid9: Inciting Incident is about at its core, it’s the fear of being genuine and the way we project that onto others. As a misanthropic teenager who’s hinted to have some kind of debilitating past trauma from the beginning, Yama Ishimoto is exemplary of this, but it also applies to the cast as a whole. And its use of clichés to get this across is perfect because, well, practically every teenager in high school is like this to an extent. The ways people struggle with accepting and presenting their true selves during adolescence is depicted perfectly through the way the cast of Lucid9 clings onto these ‘archetypes’ of behavior as substitutes for communicating with themselves and others. I’m seriously impressed at how efficient the game is able to be with this type of commentary — it manages to weave together an individualized portrayal of depression, a larger-scale examination of perceived highschool social roles, and a meta criticism of ‘generic’ anime trappings with such deftness that many scenes feel like they’re operating on three or more layers of depth at once.

Yama goes through a powerful arc of grappling with others’ expectations of him and his own detachment from reality over the course of the story, and it wouldn’t hit nearly as hard without the setup of him viewing the people in his life from extremely one-dimensional perspectives. He sees the ways those around him present themselves on a surface level, often to account for pressure they themselves face in social situations, and decides that this is all there is to them. It’s easier for him to see others like that! It’s easier to justify dismissing interaction with people, to avoid getting hurt, if he believes that they’re exclusively the shallow stereotypes he fits them into. So much dimension is added to his overblown ‘sarcasm’ and pretentious outlook on life when considered from the perspective of him oversimplifying reality and forcing easy solutions to complex issues. Yet beneath that antisocial exterior is someone who is so plagued by guilt and apathy because of his trauma and resulting depression that he forces himself to believe interaction is worthless as a way to avoid its potential negative consequences. And on top of that, he uses this inclination for avoidance as a way to further justify the idea that he’s a disappointment who doesn’t deserve the friends he has. It’s a fascinating and multilayered depiction of self-hatred and the way it affects relationships, and I haven’t even mentioned the parts of it that would be spoilers for later in the game. Suffice it to say, Yama is a truly engaging protagonist who captures the agonizing languor of being depressed with striking accuracy and emotional weight.

While Yama is obviously the standout character here, I also found myself very attached many members of his friend group as I played. Not every one of them is necessarily impressive; there are definitely some that feel underdeveloped (an issue that’ll hopefully be mitigated by the eventual second part of the story). But there are just as many characters with solidly good writing to appreciate, if not more. My personal favorites ended up being Elizabeth Oshiro — with her projection of her own perfectionism onto others tying in well to her hidden inner insecurities, Yahiko Ikari — with his apparent dimwittedness concealing a strong desire to help people in an awkward yet genuine way, and especially Akira Karube — with her insistence on forcing the way she views people into rigid narrative roles being a fantastic foil to Yama as well as being distinctly interesting all on its own in how she uses this to try to support her friends at the expense of her own emotional health. There’s one other character I really appreciated who I definitely can’t elaborate upon until the spoiler section of the review, but all in all, Lucid9 is rather consistent in knowing how to write a cast with depth and compelling qualities. Even if you don’t enjoy everyone in the game, I can say with confidence that any given player will probably end up finding at least one character who sticks with them. In actuality, despite all of my praise for the cast up until now, I haven’t even touched upon what I think is one of the best things they add to the game, and it’s not even related to any individual one of them.

Part III: Friends are (not) forever

Although I’ve talked a lot about the individual players in this game’s plot, I haven’t said much about the plot itself. The general idea of it is that during Yama Ishimoto’s regular school life, a series of bizarre disappearances begins to occur, which sparks tensions between the students as well as a detective’s personal investigation. Lucid9’s mystery proceeds based on that premise, and it’s pretty decent! A fair bit of it is simply foreshadowing and setup for a future continuation, but the self-contained bits are strong as well, with plenty of subtle connecting details to be pieced together and deduced in satisfying ways. It’s definitely apparent that a notable amount of care went into crafting the mystery, and I respect that. On the other hand, I’m someone who vastly prefers it when a mystery exists to bolster the character writing rather than the other way around, and Lucid9 is very much a game made for someone like me. Puzzling out the plot events, while critical to eventually solving the case, isn’t front and center the same way as it is in games like the Ace Attorney series, for example. And that’s because this game really wants to stress the importance of maintaining positive relationships even when it seems impossible. To this end, it’s managed to write what has ended up being one of my favorite evolving friend group dynamics in fiction.

Indeed, the best part of Lucid9’s cast (and perhaps the best part of the entire game) is simply seeing how everyone interacts with one another. Despite what I said earlier about some of the characters feeling more underdeveloped than others, I can’t name a single one who doesn’t play off of the majority of the group in engaging ways. Above all else, everyone feels like they were written to not only believably be friends with one another, but to constantly bring out each other’s defining qualities. It’s quite satisfying to see, and it brings out some of the best dialogue in the game — even during casual moments, characters can suddenly launch into deep conversations that give the reader lots to think about while also feeling entirely natural.

There’s also the way it evolves over the course of the narrative to consider. One could totally write a full story with just the characters as they are at the beginning of Lucid9, but the writers went above and beyond in exploring them from all sorts of different angles, showing their different conflicts with both their own lives and each other. I mentioned earlier that the ongoing plot causes tensions within the friend group, and I’d like to return to that point, because L9 has one of the most moving depictions of a friend group slowly falling apart I’ve seen from fiction. All of the different characters’ coping mechanisms clashing with one another pulled at my heartstrings in a supremely memorable way. And I think a big part of that is how these traits are present from the beginning. Everyone’s individualistic quirks that seem harmless at first slowly reveal themselves as deeply rooted flaws that end up making everything more miserable and confusing for all parties involved — and it’s because those quirks are the same things that endeared me to them at the start that they become devastating to watch later on, like a trainwreck in motion that I couldn’t tear my eyes away from. Seeing Yama fall back on his classic aloofness to justify calling his friends horrible people for caring about him is something the reader can see coming from a mile away, and that’s exactly why it stings as badly as it does.

That’s not to say that the story only depicts tragedy and suffering, though. As rough as the experiences are that the cast has to endure, this is ultimately a game about a boy learning to make a positive change in his life by being honest about himself, and the importance of communicating that to those who matter the most to him. It’s about how it’s never too late for him to reach out to someone and matter to them, even if his anxiety is screaming the opposite at him. Just taking the opportunity to care, even if it sounds stupid or worthless, can make an entire world of difference. When many look at the ‘power of friendship’ cliché, what they see is a shallow motivational platitude that illogically suggests having friends will magically fix everything in one’s life. On the surface, this trope might appear to be completely worthless in practice; Yama’s had plenty of friends over the course of his life that haven’t done much to make him substantially happier or more fulfilled. Except, as I’ve said, Lucid9 is a story about learning to look beneath the surface. Quantifying relationships by a set of arbitrary social constructs as an excuse to not put in any effort is what truly makes them worthless. At the beginning of the game, it’s Yama’s school counselor Mr. Ryouta who casually gives him the push to be more proactive about his life, but it’s not because of any easily regurgitated piece of advice that Yama is able to become a better person — it’s because he genuinely reflects on the meaning behind those words and takes them to heart that he’s able to understand why they matter.

Lucid9: Inciting Incident is an excellent experience, and one that deserves a thousand times the recognition it currently has. It’s easily one of the most competent indie visual novels I’ve seen in recent years, and something I’d recommend to just about anyone willing to try it out. Not only is it an unusually powerful emotional journey, and a surprisingly clever deconstruction of character archetypes, and a pleasantly tactful exploration of mental illness, and all of the other things I’ve spent these past six pages telling you it is… it’s also free!! I have absolutely no idea how they made something so impressive cost nothing at all, but if you still needed convincing to put this game on your backlog, that should do the trick. If this review gets even one new person to try it out, I’ll be happy.

Epilogue: Some other things, all of which are spoilers

If you haven’t played Lucid9 before, you should stop reading now. That previous paragraph was intended to be the conclusion to the review made to get new people into the game, but I couldn’t go this entire time without talking about some of my favorite parts of the story, many of which would be major spoilers for those unfamiliar with it. Honestly, I was barely able to hold myself back during the previous sections… Anyways, this is the spoiler section. If you’re reading past this point without having played Lucid9: Inciting Incident, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

In Part II of this review, I mentioned how there was one other side character I found notably impressive who I also couldn’t mention. I’d assume that alone was enough for L9 players to guess who I was alluding to, but to dispel any doubts now, I’ll say it outright: it’s the culprit behind the disappearances at Yama’s school — the one whose identity remains a secret for the vast majority of the game. Someone who I mentioned endorsed our protagonist’s unhealthy behavior from the start, but never gave a clear explanation for this like I did with the other trope deconstructions.

Okay, I’ll stop beating around the bush. His name is Jirou Ryouta.

Admittedly, Ryouta doesn’t come off as a very multifaceted character at first. He doesn’t get a lot of obvious focus on his inner complexity, or even a lot of focus at all outside of the infrequent counseling scenes and his ultimate confrontation. But not only do I appreciate him for being far more interesting than he appears, I think he adds a whole extra dimension of depth to the themes because of what his existence represents.

What do we know about Mr. Ryouta? Aside from his obviously apparent sociopathy revealed at the end, he’s introduced as an almost comically laid-back school counselor. Rather than do much work, he’s more content to sit back and just make sure the “hormonal brats” (as he puts it) don’t get into trouble. He’s able to relate to Yama’s detachment from his peers more than most, making many humorous comments on it (“Your life is like a crappy anime”), but he doesn’t give much advice other than “let me know if you ever get the urge to murder someone.” The one piece of genuine advice he does give about being more proactive in life is something I’d bet never meant as much to him as it did to Yama. Isn’t this starting to sound… familiar?

Jirou Ryouta is a man who takes the worldview of Yama Ishimoto at the beginning of the game to its natural extreme. Severe detachment masked by dark humor? Reducing life to a bunch of shallow anime comparisons? Complete disregard for what should be seen as serious issues? All of these things line up perfectly with Yama’s biggest flaws, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he points out this kid in particular as being “more interesting than the rest of them”. His confrontation gives even more context to these traits, portraying him as someone who feels abandoned by society and a disappointment to those who cared about him (although it’s ambiguous who they were). Ryouta is definitely driven by a lot of malice, but he’s driven by aimlessness and detachment just as much. He can completely understand what Yama is feeling, because he feels the exact same things. Except, unlike Yama, he seemingly doesn’t have any friends to build a relationship with, and what he does have are a bunch of entitled kids he’s paid to look after. With a perspective like Ryouta’s, that’s a disaster waiting to happen.

Fundamentally, both Yama and Ryouta share the same perspective on the world, at least at the start of the story: society is awful, and people never change. The difference between the two of them is that while the former tries to make life a bit more bearable by spending it with people who matter to him, the latter believes fulfillment means dragging everyone else down to his level. Ryouta, stuck in such an insignificant position in life, longs to feel any semblance of control over his circumstances — and so, he uses his job as a school counselor to deliver his idea of judgment upon the children he oversees. It’s an immature and pathetic way of rationalizing his situation. To him, though, it’s the highest purpose he could have been chosen for, because it’s what makes life worth living for someone with so many unresolved issues. It’s also why his advice to Yama is so great: he honestly does believe what he’s saying when he tells the kid to be more proactive in life. It’s simply that his definition of ‘proactive’ equates to ‘accepting that life is horrible and becoming free of consequences’. He sees Yama as the one kid he’s actually able to understand, the one kid who can understand him. And in the end, Yama does understand him — which is what leads to him being outsmarted and killed in self-defense. It’s poetic, just the way he always liked things.

Oh yeah, there are some things I didn’t mention about the other characters in the previous sections of the review. The main thing I wanted to touch upon is how cool it is that Yahiko Ikari’s ridiculously stupid demeanor ends up being an intentional façade on his part. I briefly talked about how he genuinely wants to help people, but that seems incompatible with his outward presentation of a narcissistic idiot, right? Well, I think it’s more complex than that. My appreciation for Yahiko is a result of combining these two ideas — of realizing that acting like a narcissistic idiot is his way of making people feel happier. He puts on a persona of an extremely pathetic person so that others can laugh at him, and this is the way he attempts to improve other people’s lives: trying to make them happier by existing as an object of ridicule for them to bond over. It’s a super interesting and subtle way of portraying self-hatred, tied into his desire to be useful to others without feeling able to actually express this desire in a healthy or understandable way, which is why the story heavily implies that him acting so stupid during traumatizing events is only because he literally has no other idea for what to fall back on. And wouldn’t you know it, repressing the ability to be genuine so deeply that one’s actions cause conflict even in situations where they want to help others is a major theme of the game! I swear, it’s so awesome how thematically integrated this story is.

I also wanted to elaborate a bit more on Akira Karube, who is currently my favorite non-Yama member of the game’s cast. Akira is yet another character who embodies Lucid9’s exploration of people who use stereotypes as ways to avoid being genuine, but unlike the previously mentioned characters who mainly express this through being self-absorbed and disconnected from others, Akira is someone who copes with her emotions by being over-attached to others and disconnected from her own self. I think it makes her a fascinating foil to someone like Yama. Instead of being in Yama’s position of the ‘witty protagonist’, she sees herself as being in the position of the ‘quirky unrequited love interest’, which means she has a particularly distinct way of compartmentalizing her own feelings.

Akira is first introduced as a “meddler”. She wants Yama and Rui to get together because they’re the picture-perfect ‘childhood friends to lovers’ setup. Already, I think it’s cool how she’ll often end up making the situation more awkward for the both of them by forcing them into positions they are actively uncomfortable with, increasing tensions between the two. And it’s something she does with entirely good intentions, but it’s also rooted in this inherently unhealthy mindset of needing people to act within these specific ‘roles’ they’re placed in — shipping people in real life inherently denies them from being seen with the personal autonomy they deserve.

The thing that transforms this character from good to great, though, is how she also applies this philosophy to herself. Another major trait of hers is that she herself has an obvious crush on Yama Ishimoto. And the way she processes it is the most amazingly insane thing ever. It immediately contextualizes her obsessive pushes for Yama and Rui to get together: Yama is someone who is totally available for her to confess to, someone who she has many moments to be intimate with and share her honest feelings to, and yet she constantly pushes him towards Rui and insists he’s in love with her and no one else. This is intrinsically connected to how she sees herself as being in the objective narrative role of the ‘quirky unrequited love interest’ — it’s not her place to be genuine or actually communicate her feelings, because her job is to make others feel happy and uplifted through her ability to be silly and give them the advice they need to hear. Yama and Rui have been friends since childhood and so obviously have romantic feelings for each other; it fits every single romantic cliché perfectly. Akira sees that and realizes that this is what she must do to support her own friends, but also to suppress her own emotions. In her main story epilogue, she outright yells at Yama that Rui is supposed to be the only person he’s in love with, because otherwise, she can’t emotionally handle it. Because if life doesn’t work according to these simple and easily definable rules, then she has no way to cope with the unfairness of having nowhere to place her own emotions. Yama is clearly worried about her doing this, but she pushes him to only see Rui as his ultimate source of happiness, because that will make it easier on her. I’d even argue this improves the effectiveness of the game’s ending, which I’ll talk about after this next section.

I’ve gone long enough without mentioning the main love interest in this game, and after all of this praise for everything in it, I feel a little weird putting a section of blunt criticism right before my thoughts on the ending. But if I’m covering everything that stood out to me about Lucid9, it would feel unfair to go without mentioning that I think Rui Hayata is its worst part by far.

In a story so frequently defined by looking beneath the surface, Rui comes off to me as a shockingly surface-level character. She definitely has a fun personality, and Yama does a lot to play off of her well, but she’s really lacking in the kind of interiority that every other character has at least a decent bit of. And while the other girls in the game are written competently enough that I can’t say this is overtly the fault of sexism on the writers’ part (especially with how Yama and Yahiko are clearly written with critiques of sexist viewpoints in mind), I still think it’s a little questionable that her character revolves so heavily around being in love with the protagonist, particularly when it seems to be the only thing she can think of in her internal monologue. It doesn’t ruin the effectiveness of the story’s commentary that much, but it does make me somewhat less impressed by Yama being criticized by the narrative for viewing Rui as a one-note love interest when she ends up being… a one-note love interest. I dunno. Maybe the second part of the story will lend some retroactive complexity to her somehow, whenever it comes out.

Now that that’s out of the way, there’s still the ending left for me to talk about. I’ve thankfully saved one of the best parts for last, as this ending is one of the most unique ways to cap off a story I’ve seen from a visual novel. Throughout the story, Yama goes through some amazing development as a person: he forms deeper bonds with his friends, convinces himself of his own worth, manages to face and largely overcome his past trauma, is able to have an incredibly heartwarming conversation with his older sister at her gravestone, and overall becomes a significantly happier person. For the first time in his life, he has things to look forward to. He goes to Rui’s house the next day, ready to finally confess his true feelings to her.

And he finds her corpse in a pool of blood on the ground, along with both her parents.

Inciting Incident’s ending hits like a truck. Like a truck that was deliberately aiming for me and trying to kill me in one hit. In a sharp and agonizing contrast to the rest of the game’s emotional beats, which I’d compared to trainwrecks I could see coming from a mile away, this tragic development occurred entirely out of nowhere with no buildup… or at least, that’s what I thought. But what makes this conclusion so brilliant is that I absolutely should have seen it coming.

There’s so much of the game’s mystery that goes unsolved. The very first scene drops a hint at a larger conspiracy that never gets uncovered. It doesn’t just stop at small details, either. A major turning point of Yama’s confrontation with Ryouta is that the latter was being paid off by an unknown party to kill everyone close to Yahiko Ikari, for reasons that go completely undiscovered — and Ryouta himself even says that Yahiko’s immediate friend group was next in line! The story makes it so apparent that there’s a greater force at play that continues to want our main cast dead, but Yama never quite processes it for the same reason that the writing leads the reader to overlook it: because he thought his story was over. Because he defeated ‘the villain’ and wanted his ‘happy ending’, the way a proper story should go. After all he’s been put through, it’s because he can’t help himself from falling back on one last clichéd framing of his life that he isn’t able to predict the arrival of this final tragedy. Killers don’t take vacation days to let the innocent celebrate, no matter how much they might deserve it. Life goes on, no matter how cruel it may be. If only Yama had realized it sooner. If only he wasn’t too late.

Accompanied by beautifully sorrowful music and a breathtakingly accurate depiction of a mental breakdown, Lucid9: Inciting Incident ends on a note that’s both depressing and thought-provoking. For the past week and a half since I finished the game, I’ve only grown more impressed and emotional at its writing. It’s had a kind of impact on me that very, very few other visual novels have replicated, even my favorites of all time. Something this exceptional is admirable for an indie studio’s first VN, and I’m really looking forward to whatever they have in store next.

(Final note: There were a lot of elements of the game that I didn’t mention in this review, but I thought most of them were good even if they didn’t stand out enough to mention! Shigure in particular was a character I had a lot of fun with and thought was pretty interesting. On the other hand, I think while Airi, Misaki, and Masato serve the themes well, they could have used a bit more individual exploration. I’m looking forward to seeing them hopefully be more fleshed out in the next part of the story!)