The Shell Part III: Paradiso is a remastered release of Kara no Shoujo – The Last Episode, the closing chapter of Innocent Grey’s Kara no Shoujo series, which was originally released in Japan in 2020. Last year I called The Shell Part II: Purgatorio “a testament to the narrative potential of visual novels”, and both Parts I and II have earned a spot on our yearly list of top visual novels.
I had high expectations of The Shell Part III, and the game had an incredible foundation to build on to meet those expectations. Unfortunately, this is not the triumphant close to the series I had hoped for.
Before I continue, you should know that The Shell Part III: Paradiso contains graphic depictions of violence, sexual violence, and mutilation. No graphic images will be featured in this review, and the discussion of these elements will be light. The Steam release of The Shell Part III is censored, but an R18 patch is available for free via Johren. As The Shell Part III is the final entry in a trilogy, please note that this review will contain spoilers for the first two games.
Aftermath
The story of The Shell Part III: Paradiso begins in 1958, picking up immediately after the events of The Shell Part II. The opening hours of the narrative are perhaps The Shell Part III’s strongest. This is where we can see the series’s incredibly strong character writing most clearly. The Shell Part III excels in bringing tension and emotion into otherwise typical scenes of daily life. In dialogue between characters there is just as much weight in what is left unsaid as in what is laid bare.
The Shell Part III’s script has a delicate intimacy that brings the characters, their experiences and emotions, to life in a way that effortlessly weaves meaning into even the most mundane events. The best example of this is in these opening hours as our protagonist, Reiji Tokisaka, grieves the loss of Toko Kuchiki. Reiji’s grief is quiet, but powerful. The sweet, delicate moments of The Shell Part I that brought Toko to life now serve to effortlessly communicate that grief to the player. This is a running theme with The Shell Part III, as the strength of the two previous titles, and the characters and atmosphere they built, carry the bulk of the narrative’s emotional weight.
That isn’t to say The Shell Part III is impotent without the power of its predecessors. There are new developments with side characters like Uozumi and Kyoko, where much of the heavy lifting is handled by The Shell Part III’s script. There are new characters too, like Chie Kuboi, who have their own intimate, impactful arcs, though none of them reach the heights of previous entries, due in large part to haphazard pacing and an overall cluttered narrative.
The Remains
The biggest issue The Shell Part III had to overcome is a lack of lingering mysteries. There is only really one significant unresolved narrative thread from The Shell Part II, that being the whereabouts of Toko’s child and her kidnapper Naori Kuroya. Besides that mystery, there are also many unresolved character arcs, but not much in the way of narrative to use to resolve them. To deal with this issue, The Shell Part III crafts its own mysteries.
The story kicks into gear after the discovery of a previously unreleased Shinzo Mamiya painting. The paintings exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum kickstarts a new string of murders, with corpses mutilated to resemble this new piece. Reiji is of course drawn into the investigation, and The Shell Part III’s first real narrative arc begins. This first arc is intense and nerve-wracking, and the game’s script retains its incredible ability to put the player on edge. Passing mentions of a character’s unusual absence create gruesome apprehension, suspicion is cast on a host of characters, and seemingly straightforward answers feel like misdirection.
There is still a palpable sense of dread when the narrative shifts perspective to the all too familiar novel-like sections, depicting an unknown point of view with sparse visuals, that in previous entries was used often for the ‘murderer perspective. It’s powerful, but it doesn’t last. This tension is residual. The dread comes from knowing what The Shell is capable of, what previous entries have done. The Shell Part III soon shows that it is not capable of the same dramatic feats.
Slow Down
The Shell Part III moves too fast. The pacing is absurdly fast, especially when you consider the ambitions of the script. If you’re going to resolve multiple character arcs, wrap up a previous mystery, and also start and resolve several new arcs, you’ve got to take your time. The tension of previous titles exists in this dense, depressing miasma that grabs hold of you and won’t let go. The Shell Part III is content to jump from scene to scene, with little time to process events as you go.
The decision to expand the cast for The Shell Part III could have been interesting, and certain characters do have decently satisfying arcs, but some seem to serve almost no purpose whatsoever. One such new character is Kaede Watanuki. Kaede is Masaki Tomoyuki’s psychiatrist, filling the role previously occupied by Makoto Rokushiki. There is a lot of storytelling potential here, and I assumed her conversations with Masaki would explore his mental state and progress his arc. They don’t though. Kaede and Masaki’s conversations are dreadfully hollow, at times insultingly so. Kaede is lucky it’s 1958, if she was working today she’d be struck off on her first day. By the end of The Shell Part III, Kaede was most memorable for her pointless pontificating on the distinction between psychiatrist and psychologist, which, given some of the events she is involved in, is a complete disaster for the script.
Existing characters don’t fare much better in The Shell Part III. Masaki is a good example of this. Though there is a resolution to Masaki’s arc in some of the game’s endings, there is very little to connect that resolution to the events of the game. It feels as though Masaki skips from A to D, with only passing glances or half-hearted acknowledgements of B or C. And Masaki is one of the better examples of character writing in The Shell Part III. Other characters, like Fumiya Kuchiki, barely resemble themselves. Even the monstrously intimidating Makoto Rokushiki feels more like a narrative device than a fully formed character.
What A Coincidence
The new core mysteries that drive The Shell Part III’s narrative are, separated from the context of previous entries, perfectly serviceable. What is frustrating is how they connect to the remaining mystery of The Shell. Developments in this regard happen almost entirely by coincidence, with new characters and information rushed in to fill the gaps. This leads to a rather severe lack of tension, and the lack of development and emotional investment in new characters leaves the mysteries feeling otherwise hollow.
The Shell Part III requires multiple playthroughs to see everything, with multiple branching paths and endings. Each new playthrough showcases new perspectives on the events of the game, and this does somewhat help to patch up the flawed narrative structure overall, but it fails to add much emotional weight to events, and the new information revealed is often rather obvious stuff you’ve probably already put together.
The Shell Part III’s endings are pretty satisfying, and they do well enough by the series. The ‘Grand Ending’ was particularly pleasant, offering some beautiful closure to some of The Shell’s most compelling characters. The ‘True Ending’ brings Reiji’s narrative to an impactful, heartfelt close that celebrates Toko’s life in a lovely way. It is just a shame that these endings are attached to a particularly bland, poorly constructed narrative. They are wonderful, yes, but they’re nowhere near as strong as they could have, and indeed should have, been.
Lost Meaning
Previous entries, particularly The Shell Part II, were able to communicate powerful themes of obsession and loss, whilst also offering quite poignant commentary on post-war Japanese society. The Shell Part III does none of that. It certainly makes an effort, and those themes of obsession and loss are briefly tangible, but they get lost in a jumble of disconnected storytelling, poorly explored characters, and dull new mysteries. The Shell Part II was able to weave together several narratives into one intricate web. The Shell Part III just ties itself in knots.
It is a shame because on an aesthetic level The Shell Part III is as beautiful as ever. The series’ exquisite art and music almost feels out of place, let down by a narrative that fails to make use of them. Haunting, eerie tracks are played over scenes that lack the narrative weight to communicate those feelings. Gorgeous character art is undermined by their hollow existence within the script.
The Shell Part III’s writing is constantly falling short. It falls short of the legacy left by the first two games, it falls short of its own art and music, and it falls short of the tremendous excitement I had going into the experience.
Verdict
Reviewing The Shell Part III: Paradiso has been difficult. I’m so disappointed that it wasn’t able to live up to the high of The Shell Part II. This should have been a triumph, it should have been excellent, but it’s not. If you could somehow remove the context of the prior games, then The Shell Part III is an alright mystery visual novel with some gorgeous art and music. I can’t judge it on its own merits alone though, it has a legacy to live up to.
I do think it is worth playing through The Shell Part III to see how this story comes to an end, and to get closure for its characters. That said, there is a voice in the back of my head that wonders if perhaps this game needed to exist at all. It does exist, and so this is the series’ conclusion, there’s no avoiding that. I just think maybe I would be happier living forever in the aftermath of The Shell Part II, even if it meant leaving some loose threads behind.
Given that I’m wondering if things would be better had The Shell Part III never been created, I suppose I can’t recommend it, as sad as that makes me. I’ll always love The Shell, and The Shell Part II in particular is an experience that I’ll never forget, but I’ll also never forget the disappointment the series’s conclusion has left me with.
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Purchase: JAST USA
If you are looking for another sequential trilogy visual novel, you might want to check out MAMIYA – A Shared Illusion of the World’s End and its conclusion DoomsDayDreams. 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 Shiravune for a PC review code for The Shell Part III: Paradiso.
A man described by critics as “pretty normal” and “memorable in the abstract”. He has committed his life to the consumption of anime and games, against the advice and wishes of his family and friends. Now writing about his passions, hopefully for your enjoyment.
