Live Playthrough of Kusodeka Bayashi: Breaking a Family Curse with Ear-Splitting Festival Music

The protagonist is Yu-kun, a young boy whose father brings him to visit his grandparents' house. With a second child due soon, his mother stays home, so father and son come alone. Yu-kun says he'd be happy either way, but if he had a little brother he could play with like a friend, they could play "Buster 5," based on a hero TV show. His father replies, "Daddy and the others will make sure of it."

When Yu-kun asks about the jizo statues lining the road, his father tells him the legend of the "Ikigimo Jizo." A vengeful deity dwells on Mount Sodehiki. That deity was originally a kind woman who served a princess as her nursemaid. Learning that the princess had an incurable illness, the woman asked a fortune-teller how to cure her and was told, "Obtain the raw liver of a newborn—and it must be from a girl." After much anguish, the woman settled on Mount Sodehiki, and whenever she found a pregnant woman, she cut open her belly. But the babies that came out were all boys, and the woman gradually forgot her original purpose, becoming the mountain's vengeful deity, obsessed with the raw livers of baby girls for their own sake.

The story goes on. This vengeful deity possesses living people and makes them give birth to hundreds of children at once in the afterlife. Yet every child born is a boy, and once she realizes this, she flies into a rage at their crying and casts them into the Sanzu River. The Ikigimo Jizo is said to have been built by the vengeful deity to soothe her grief over the children who die because of her own obsession, and the local residents, fearing her curse, have long enshrined it. The subtitles render the vengeful deity's name inconsistently, so it can't be made out precisely.

To reassure the frightened Yu-kun, his father says, "It's just an old legend, and Grandpa is really strong," adding that Grandpa could easily beat even "General Black Metal," the villain from Buster 5.

The commentator explains that the controls are standard: WASD to move, the mouse to look around, and E to interact. Saying he has "important business with some friends," the father heads off to climb the mountain in the evening, so they part ways partway there. Yu-kun receives a backpack and a cell phone and sets off alone for his grandparents' house.

Along the way, he passes an acquaintance who says they're heading to a rave party, as well as another acquaintance, Tetsuo-san. The commentator describes it as "a surprisingly funky rural town," and presses on, reasoning that if Tetsuo-san is here, they're probably on the right path. After waiting for a train to pass at a railroad crossing, Yu-kun spots his grandmother standing in front of the house.

Inside, he sets his backpack down on a floor cushion, washes his hands in the washroom, and then eats curry. But there's no fukujinzuke. The commentator launches into a rant that fukujinzuke "with greatly reduced sodium" is curry's true partner, and that the sweetness of chutney is mere child's play. On the TV, Buster 5 is fighting General Black Metal. After he carries his plate to the kitchen, the kettle comes to a boil and its whistle goes off. Next he heads to the bath, but forgets his underwear and has to go back once.

When he goes to the bathroom again, Yu-kun encounters something terrifying. His grandfather offers to explain what's going on, so he goes to his grandfather's room, where the story of the family's ancestor, Sanemori, is revealed.

Sanemori traveled the country taking on requests to deal with supernatural phenomena. One day, he heard that pregnant women were repeatedly vanishing in spirited-away incidents on Mount Sodehiki, and he headed to the mountain. Said to have been carrying musical instruments weighing about eight times his own body weight, Sanemori became utterly exhausted, slowing to a pace so sluggish that cows overtook him. Just as he was beginning to resent even the large drum that was the tool of his trade, he came upon a ramshackle hut with a light on.

A woman lived alone in the hut, and she prepared a bed and a meal for him. After the meal, she said, "I have important work to do, so please don't peek," and disappeared into a back room. Sanemori noticed silks and woven fabrics piled in the corner of the room, out of keeping with the woman's way of life. He supposed travelers had left them as thanks for lodging, but he had nothing to give. So he decided to let the woman, tired from her work, hear some hayashi music, and while getting ready, he carelessly opened the door to her workroom.

In that instant, a reddish-black darkness enveloped the surroundings, and the woman's true identity as the vengeful deity was revealed. Realizing he himself had been spirited away, Sanemori shoved aside the approaching woman and ran to his instruments. Like a one-man band, he played a furious hayashi with far too many instruments and far too much volume for one person to play alone. Seeing the vengeful deity suffer, he played with even greater force, and with an all-out shout, he blasted her all the way to the banks of the Sanzu River and succeeded in sealing her behind a door.

Right after he breathed a sigh of relief, the vengeful deity's voice echoed in Sanemori's head, proclaiming a curse that would last for all generations to come. It consisted of the following four points:

• The family's first child will always be born a boy
• If a second child is not born before that boy turns six, the boy will die
• The second child will always be born a girl, and will become a vessel for the vengeful deity to possess, used as a tool to produce raw livers
• No member of the family may ever leave this land

Sanemori had left his wife and three-year-old son in the capital, so he brought them to Mount Sodehiki and began living there. Worried about the six-year deadline, he quickly had a second child, and just as the curse foretold, a girl was born. Peaceful days continued, but one day, when that daughter turned twelve, she suddenly vanished.

According to the commentator, this curse still lingers on the family today. The terrifying woman Yu-kun encountered in the bathroom is apparently his father's younger sister, Naoko-san, who has been possessed. The grandfather's room also contains a text translating Sanemori's music theory into modern terms. It states that unless the hayashi is so ridiculously loud that a sumo wrestler, dispirited by a powerful curse, would flip over and bawl, it cannot generate the power to resist. Worn out by the sudden turn of events, Yu-kun falls asleep here.

When he wakes up, Yu-kun appears to have been spirited away as well. After he gets a flashlight, his father contacts him, telling him to "bring the phone and come to Grandpa's room." The backpack with the phone in it is in a corner of the living room, and since the vengeful deity is patrolling, he has to retrieve it without being noticed.

On the first attempt he gets caught, and the commentator brushes off the retry with "...and then I woke up." Next, he circles around through the kitchen and puts the kettle on the gas stove. The plan is to grab the backpack while the whistle draws the vengeful deity's attention. It works, and he escapes into his grandfather's room.

According to his father on the phone, "Kusodeka Bayashi" is the ultimate hayashi, fusing Sanemori's hayashi with the power of heavy metal. Playing it in front of the seal will let him pass through the Sanzu River and return to the world of the living. The audio is on a music player in his father's room, and the instructions are to open the doors plastered with paper talismans using Kusodeka Bayashi.

The father's room is decked out in metal, and the commentator calls it "good taste." What Yu-kun finds is an iPod-like player with speakers, which can play a selection of several songs. The song titles are garbled, as if UTF-8 and Shift-JIS had been mixed up.

Playing music in front of a sealed door opens it. However, each song lasts only 60 seconds, so he has to make progress exploring within that time. The vengeful deity is also suffering from the loud volume, and he uses that opening to find the correct route. The doors bear stickers with the same artwork as the album covers—a hannya mask, a daruma, a Noh mask—and the mechanic is to choose the corresponding song for each door to proceed.

At one point he reaches an area where it's easy to get lost, runs into dead ends, and is pushed down to just 30 seconds remaining. Panicking, the commentator says, "I never rushed this much even escaping Karnak Castle in FF5," and makes it to the exit. Beyond the door opened with the daruma song, everything is bright red, and seeing the masses of red spider lilies in bloom, the commentator concludes that they've reached the Sanzu River.

The commentator says that they don't usually play horror games much because they're too scary, but that having this hayashi playing somehow gives them some peace of mind. They also praised the lo-fi sound quality of the background music. Finally, Yu-kun opens the gate to the underworld, located in a hall-like building, with the Noh mask song, and returns to the back of the house.

The commentator speculates that the people who had been bustling around on the way into the village were preparing for the final battle with the vengeful deity. The villagers declare they'll do everything they can to take Naoko back, and the commentator reacts, "That's pretty thrilling." Once Yu-kun has greeted everyone, the battle to take on the vengeful deity begins.

The final battle suddenly turns into a rhythm game. The commentator calls the intro, which opens with Grandma's koto, "the best," and lets the performance play for a while. After the vengeful deity is defeated, Naoko-san returns, and as the adults wolf down curry, Yu-kun also eats his beloved curry, saying, "Curry is best when everyone eats it together."

In the epilogue, a baby boy is born into Yu-kun's family. The family is overjoyed at the birth of his little brother, and his grandparents are scheduled to visit the next day. Yu-kun says that when his brother grows up, he wants to play Buster 5 with him, and that he'll of course play General Black Metal. The reason, he says, is that Dad and all the other grown-ups were so cool the other day.

In their overall assessment, the commentator says that on top of the outstanding background music, the balance of horror and comedy was just right, making the game fun to play from start to finish. They concluded by saying that their desire to keep listening is also ridiculously huge, so they're hoping for a soundtrack release or something similar.