Mojika: Truth Rears Its Ugly Head, or simply Mojika (Minikui Mojika no Ko), is an adult psychological thriller visual novel initially released in Japanese by Nitroplus through its sub-brand Nitro Origin back in July 2018. It is a modern story about a hideous boy who uses his power to read people’s thoughts to exact revenge on the people who oppressed him. JAST USA announced an English release for Mojika back in July 2023 as part of their Anime Expo panel. Currently, it is available for purchase through the JAST website or Steam.
Mojika is tagged as an utsuge, which is a term used to describe games with stories that are utterly depressing. It also has a large number of adult scenes, with most depicting either physical or psychological abuse. Looking at the synopsis, it honestly feels like the main character is out for the blood of the game’s five heroines. It doesn’t feel like I’ll be rewarded with a good time at all reading this. But the concept of being able to read minds and rumors about its incredible presentation are pretty intriguing, so I decided to pick it up anyway! It’s far from my first screwed-up title after all! Surely it’ll all end up fine and dandy.
What kind of ugly truths will we be witnesses to? Let’s peer into the world of Mojika and find out!
A Cramped World
You play as Tanezaki Suteru, a student of the prestigious Kibo Academy who finds himself a constant target of the student population’s incredibly cruel bullying. Day in and day out, his classmates vandalize his possessions, mock his physical features, and pray for his early demise due to what they call “a face that no one will ever love.” In constant fear of being tortured and humiliated, he constantly lays low to avoid the gazes of everyone who scorns him for simply existing. As a result, Suteru has frequently contemplated committing suicide to end his suffering once and for all. Despite this, he has never pushed through with the idea because of one person—his fellow classmate Miyu, who just like him, is at the bottom of their school’s hierarchy.
Although they’ve rarely talked to each other face to face, Miyu often messages Suteru comforting words whenever students bully him. In his world with a limited radius of 120 centimeters, she shines as his beacon of hope and inspires him to continue living despite all the difficulties. But one day, he receives a fateful message from Miyu. “Meet me at the back of the school after class; I have something to tell you.” Suteru feels how out of place the message is compared to their ordinary exchanges, but not wanting to disregard her, he marches on with a heavy heart to meet her. They meet, and Miyu confesses her feelings for him. Of course, Suteru isn’t naïve. He is aware of how this can be orchestrated by the very same bullies, but his heart yearns for the truth. He is a user of wordsight, an ability that allows the user to read someone’s thoughts by looking at their face. And so, he looks up to grasp the truth that he has been avoiding all this time—Miyu’s real, honest thoughts about him.
This is Mojika, a story of Suteru’s mad quest for revenge to unveil the ugly truth only he can see.
The Truth Can Set You Free
Mojika’s main premise revolves around Suteru and his desire to take revenge on the people who have oppressed him throughout his stay at Kibo Academy. Initially subservient, after finally buckling under the pressure and using his wordsight to peek at Miyu’s thoughts, what he witnesses fuels him to finally take action and usurp the status quo that allows people like him and Miyu to be treated as if they weren’t human. Fittingly, this creates a narrative that places an unmatched importance on truths and lies and how Suteru can effectively wield them through his special ability. It’s a pretty interesting anchor for the story, especially given the mechanics that decide your choices in the game.
Despite the grand and noble desire to eliminate oppression in their school’s system, Suteru’s methods are far less kind-hearted than what you’d expect from your typical main character. At its heart, Mojika is still a revenge story against people who’ve done inhumane things to Suteru, which consequently reflects in how he perceives his revenge should be. The visual novel is littered with vivid depictions of physical and sexual violence, a clear indication of what kind of character Suteru is. Whether it is because of his environment or his own nature is something to be discussed, but regardless, it makes Mojika a game that’s hard to recommend to the faint-hearted. It’s hardly for those who want to have a good, comfy time. Tread carefully!
The Voice Inside Our Head
Having characters with inner monologues is a pretty common thing in any form of media; it helps viewers peek into the motivations of both the protagonists and their enemies, humanizing them and making it easier to get emotionally invested in a story. When presented in an overwhelming amount, however, it sometimes creates a feeling of padding in the text itself, compromising how “good” it feels to read it. Mojika, being a story about reading inner thoughts, has an absolute abundance of this. What separates it from others, however, is how it presents these thoughts in the game.
The visual novel uses a strict first-person POV to tell Suteru’s story, which means that for the majority of the time, we as readers are only able to see what he actually looks at. Text only appears as a single line on the screen at any point in time as well, which further reinforces the feeling of everything being in the moment through Suteru’s eyes and mind. Given that he usually looks at the ground, however, a lot of shots end up depicting the floor, people’s shoes, and the general backdrop of a scene which makes it a pretty bland product to look at. But whenever Suteru looks up to use wordsight on the people around him, the general dynamics of the visual novel change.
Words suddenly gain a lot more weight, and the screen, which was previously devoid of pretty much anything, is suddenly filled to the brim with the roaring thoughts of the character in front of him. They literally pop out of the backdrop as animated letters, creating an intriguingly overwhelming read given everything that bombards you. Suteru’s thoughts, the weirdly intense music, and the visual effects that emulate eye strain all come together to create a unique experience that emulates Suteru’s struggles pretty well, an experience only possible through the unique format of a visual novel.
What is Reflected in Your Eyes?
As mentioned earlier, Mojika presents branching choices in the story in a way that’s unique to itself. Instead of the typical list of dialogue options, the decisions you can make in the visual novel are presented in a way that echoes the importance of wordsight in its narrative—it makes particular use of pupillary reflexes, a real world bodily function that helps regulate how much light our eyes take in. While reading through the game, I was suddenly presented with a scene where the background was suddenly surrounded by a black, circular border. With the sound of a throbbing head constantly being hammered through my ears while I looked at a gradually darkening screen, I realized that Nitroplus was trying to emulate a sort of stressful, dizzy spell that people go through when they strain parts of their body. It dawned on me that this was part of their efforts to make the experience of seeing through Suteru’s eyes as authentic as possible.
With no list of buttons available to click within the scene, it left only two possible options—you either raise your head by clicking the screen repeatedly, or you passively let the opportunity pass you. Similar to the very first scene, what inevitably will influence the story is Suteru’s decision to use his wordsight or not to peek at the truth. By presenting it in this manner, the developer manages to heighten the stakes of the scene through sheer visual and sound effects without even considering the current plot point. As a reader, it made my heart pound to the beat of Suteru’s blood pressure, making me feel like I was in his position at that very moment. All things considered, it’s an incredible way of making the read even more immersive. It makes Mojika worth recommending for the experience, even if only for this particular point alone.
Manifesting Intrusive Thoughts!
Mojika, as an adult visual novel, offers a copious amount of H-scenes that dabble in the psychological themes of truth and lies. With wordsight being a thing even during sex, the adult content ends up feeling a little bit more impactful than normal. Even during these intimate scenes, as a reader, I was given multiple opportunities to perceive the truth in Suteru’s partner by simply looking at their face. What do they feel about the predicament? Are they faking their feelings? Do they have underlying desires? These are only examples of what words can manifest as the heroines’ thoughts, and honestly, it makes the erotica a lot more dynamic.
For people who are not interested in viewing adult content, save yourself the trouble and skip purchasing Mojika. The visual novel’s story only really works if readers can witness Suteru in all his debauchery. His motivations, alongside the overall setting, wouldn’t really work without the sex.
A Mind Preoccupied
Despite all the praise I gave Mojika so far, I feel like its end product is far from what it had potential to become. Of the five endings in the visual novel, there’s only really one where I feel that I was paid back for all the investment put into establishing a revenge storyline. And even that one’s a stretch given the game’s branching storyline. If we consider the common route as canon due to being the foundation for Mojika’s five routes, then there’s one character that I feel becomes incredibly inconsistent in terms of their motivations and characterization.
As for the other heroines, their routes felt unsatisfying largely due to how Suteru becomes, for lack of a better term, “lost in the sauce”. For all of the routes, as Suteru pursues his revenge, his experiences with the featured heroine ultimately sidetrack him from his initial goals for himself. Suddenly, the driving force behind what started the entire visual novel becomes secondary to some plot device hidden within the heroine’s subconscious mind.
To be honest, it’s not as big of a problem as I’m making it out to be. In fact, most of the routes were still enjoyable in an utsuge way, if you can appreciate a depressing read. What really irks me about this is how it feels like the potential for a complete, well-rounded conclusion to each character’s arc is undermined. All this love being put into the game, but right at the end, it consistently manages to screw up its cathartic pay-off by deciding to take a left turn on a road that only goes straight.
It honestly feels pretty disappointing for a visual novel with one of the most unique presentations ever.
Art and Music
Mojika features a total of 106 unique CGs, with a large portion dedicated to adult scenes. There are only a few of them that feature safe artworks of the characters, with most, if not all, still having some variant of the sexual kind. Moreover, the visual novel boasts 29 H-scenes, with most of them featuring subjects of humiliation, sexual assault, violence, and blackmail. This is no surprise, of course, when you consider that the game’s main artist is Hamashima Shigeo, an illustrator known for her work on the Clockup titles “Eroge! ~Sex and Games Make Sexy Games~”, “Maggot baits”, and the ever-popular “euphoria”. Her expertise in both his artstyle and the fetishes featured in Mojika, built from years of experience in the industry, give the visual novel a vibrant, almost melancholic feel despite the bleak yet commonplace theme of its setting. In a way, it’s able to portray realism without sacrificing its anime-esque style. The only catch is that because of Mojika’s insistence in forcing a first person POV, I rarely got to appreciate his work on the heroines.
Speaking of visuals, for most of my time reading Mojika, the screen displayed some variation of the ground with the occasional visible shoes and background accessories. Hell, I’d feel lucky if I was able to see above the heroines’ ankles without entering either a branching point in the story or an H-scene! Because of this, it feels like a “bow your head simulator” for a large portion of the game. While it’s definitely a novel experience that I very much enjoyed, I still think that it could have been done a little bit more differently to showcase the illustrator’s beautiful work. That’s why we read visual novels over, well, novels.
As for the music, Mojika features a total of 17 tracks, with the last option in the sound library being the opening movie of the game. Each track is named after a certain kanji character, which if you listen to it, makes a lot more sense if you think of them as inspirations for the music. I’m a sucker for vocals in visual novel OSTs, so my favorite amongst the bunch is definitely Ren (憐), the opening track. But for the most part, all of the tracks felt unique and fit really well into the scenes where they were used.
The most memorable part of the OSTs for me is probably how a lot of the tracks sound like dissonant tones. For scenes featuring stakes, the tension feels a lot higher because of how the music gives images of entities clashing against each other, probably due to the sharp and violent textures of the tracks. Coupled with sound direction that maximizes even silence as an element of the scene’s atmosphere, there’s not much I can find fault in within Mojika’s sound design.
Verdict
Mojika: Truth Rears Its Ugly Head is an utsuge that dabbles in the psychological tug-of-war between knowing an ugly truth and being fed beautiful lies. By presenting the characters at both their best and their worst, the visual novel manages to weave a quest for revenge centered around manipulation and violence into a story that tries to relay a message about facing the truth. It’s depressingly heavy in its content, but hopeful in what it tries to achieve. Because of the themes, however, it’s definitely not a game that will be appreciated by everyone. Tread carefully as you engage its subject matter; you might learn things that’ll make you less happy.
With beautiful art by Hamashima Shigeo and an amazingly unique visual direction, Mojika, despite its lackluster conclusions to its routes, manages to shine amongst its kin as a visual novel that can offer an experience not quite like anything else. By introducing dynamic inner monologues and employing a strict first-person POV that compromises the time readers have to appreciate its art, the game manages to create impactful scenes without needing some sort of grand reveal by employing animation techniques applied unto parcels of language. Just don’t think too hard about why Suteru had to suffer across routes—it might take away from your satisfaction.
If you’re craving a depressing journey towards liberation with a dash of the supernatural, then Mojika might be worth a try. I definitely recommend it even if only for the experience, but at the end of the day, there’s only really so much I can do as a reviewer. Get your own copy and see for yourself the truths the game has to offer.
MOJIKA: TRUTH REARS ITS UGLY HEAD IS RECOMMENDED
Want to check out more visual novels? Why not check out our review of The Restless Sheep & The Lone Wolf -A Tale of Cutthroat Lovers- We have also covered a wide variety of visual novels both original to English and localized from Japanese, which you can check out here.
Many thanks go to JAST USA for a PC review code for this title.
Visual novel reader that wishes there were more than 24 hours in a day. Gacha victim, TCG enjoyer, and VTuber simp. Still trying to live happily.
