1. Gameplay

2. Setting and plot
    Blood Covered and Repeated Fear  Book of Shadows  Sweet Sachiko's Hysteric Birthday Bash  Blood Drive 

3. Development

4. Media listing
    Corpse Party: Another Child  Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient 

5. Music

6. Critical reception

7. Adaptations

8. China ban

9. Notes

10. References

11. External links

• Team GrisGris (1996–present)
• 5pb. (2010–present)
• Mages. (2011–2012)
• GrindHouse (2013–present)

• Kenix Soft (1996)
• Team GrisGris (2008)
• 5pb. (2010–present)
• Marvelous USA (2011–present)
• GrindHouse (2013–present)

• NEC PC-9801
• Microsoft Windows
• PlayStation Portable
• PlayStation Vita
• iOS
• Nintendo 3DS
• Android

The PSP game was followed by a sequel, Corpse Party: Book of Shadows,{{efn|name=BookofShadows}} which was released for the PSP on September 1, 2011, in Japan, and on January 15, 2013, in North America.^[7] A spin-off game, Corpse Party: Hysteric Birthday 2U,{{efn|name=HB2U}} was released for the PSP in Japan on August 2, 2012,^[8] and will be released for Windows worldwide on April 10, 2019. A direct sequel of Corpse Party: Book of Shadows, called Corpse Party: Blood Drive,{{efn|name=BloodDrive}} was released in Japan on July 24, 2014, on PlayStation Vita,^[8][9] and was released in North America by XSeed Games on October 13, 2015, and on October 20, 2015, in Europe.^[10]

Another sequel titled Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient{{efn|name=DeadPatient}} was created for the PC by GrindHouse, a dōjin circle founded by members affiliated with Team GrisGris.^[11] It is released episodically, with the first chapter released on May 29, 2013.

The series has spawned several manga works, an anime OVA series, drama CDs, theme park attractions, and two live action films.

Gameplay

Corpse Party is a linear horror monster adventure game with some role-playing elements. It is played in a third-person view, top-down perspective. Players are tasked with exploring the haunted school grounds for a means of escape. To fulfill this task, characters must interact with the environment and surroundings such as picking up objects, talking to other characters, and inspecting documents while avoiding enemy-like entities.

The game's story is split into five chapters, each focusing on different characters and featuring multiple endings that are achieved based on the player's in-game decisions: a "True Ending" required for the game's progression; and several "Wrong Endings" that are unlocked when the player performs events irrelevant to the main storyline. Characters also possess hit points (HP), which measure how much damage they can take before dying, in some instances leading to a wrong ending. As players progress through the game, they will unlock ten optional "Extra Chapters", vignettes that focus on the game's side characters and expand the storyline.

Setting and plot

The plot of the Corpse Party series concerns a group of Japanese high school students who, after celebrating their school's culture festival, are telling ghost stories when a sudden earthquake transports them to a dilapidated schoolhouse in an alternative dimension that is haunted by the ghosts of people who have been trapped there. The main playable character is Satoshi Mochida, a kindhearted high school student who is teased by his classmates for his cowardly nature. Three of the other characters are students from Satoshi's class: Naomi Nakashima, Satoshi's childhood friend; Yoshiki Kishinuma, an intimidating yet good-natured student; and Ayumi Shinozaki, the class representative. Rounding out the group is Yuka Mochida, Satoshi's younger sister. The game's antagonist is the red ghost of a little girl who seeks vengeance for her wrongful death.

Blood Covered and Repeated Fear

Blood Covered, released in 2008, is an enhanced remake and port of the 1996 Corpse Party. It includes more characters, larger maps, updated graphics, and professional voice actors. It was later followed by another enhanced remake, Blood Covered: Repeated Fear, which was released internationally as Corpse Party.

The remake thoroughly expands the plot and setting of the original game. Here, the haunted schoolhouse is named {{Nihongo|Heavenly Host Elementary School|天神小学校|Tenjin Shōgakkō}}, a fictional Fujisawa elementary school that was torn down following the murders and disappearances of several of its staff and students. In modern-day Japan, the main characters' high school, {{Nihongo|Kisaragi Academy|如月学園|Kisaragi Gakuen}}, has been built over the elementary school site. The students are transported to Heavenly Host after performing a charm called {{Nihongo|Sachiko Ever After|幸せのサチコさん|Shiawase no Sachiko-san}}, which would supposedly allow them to remain friends for eternity.

In addition to the five protagonists of the original game, Blood Covered introduces four characters to the playable cast: Seiko Shinohara, Naomi's best friend; Mayu Suzumoto, a popular student due to transfer out of Kisaragi; Sakutaro Morishige, Mayu's best friend; and Yui Shishido, the class's homeroom teacher. Blood Covered also includes several characters from other schools who are also trapped inside Heavenly Host and affect the story. Two notable characters are Naho Saenoki, a selfish but helpful paranormalist from {{Nihongo|Paulownia Academy|桐章学園|Kirishō Gakuen}} who discovered the Sachiko Ever After charm and came to investigate Heavenly Host; and Yuuya Kizami, a sadistic student from {{Nihongo|Byakudan Senior High School|白壇高等学校|Byakudan Kōtōgakkō}} who accompanies Yuka as she is separated from her brother. The red ghost is re-envisioned as a young child named Sachiko Shinozaki who kills the students of Heavenly Hosts in anger over her and her mother's murder.

Book of Shadows

A sequel to Blood Covered, Book of Shadows features a series of nonlinear chapters that add new twists and backgrounds for various characters and details important to the storyline. The game mostly takes place during the same time the first game did, continuing from one of the "wrong ends" in Corpse Party, where Sachiko sends the Kisaragi Academy students back in time. For this purpose, she erases their memories except for Satoshi's. He tries in a desperate attempt to dissuade his classmates from performing the charm, but he joins them, not wanting to let them go alone, sending them on alternative course of actions and encountering several supporting victims in Heavenly Host.

The game's prologue, Blood Drive, serves as the set up to the eponymous sequel. Two weeks after escaping Heavenly Host, Ayumi and Naomi go to investigate the Shinozaki estate, Sachiko's birthplace, believing there is hope in reviving their dead friends since Naho and Kou Kibiki's existences were not erased like the other victims. At the estate, Ayumi discovers that she is of the same lineage as Sachiko. Hearing an eerie voice, Ayumi uncovers a magical tome known as the Book of Shadows. Ayumi and Naomi perform a resurrection spell for Mayu, but fail. As compensation for using black magic, the book unleashes its rage upon Ayumi until her older sister Hinoe Shinozaki rushes in and saves Ayumi, at the cost of her own life.

Sweet Sachiko's Hysteric Birthday Bash

On the day of Sachiko's birth and death, the curse on her weakens and she gets 24 hours to celebrate her birthday as someone closer to the girl she was before her death. She uses the timeloops as established in Corpse Party: Book of Shadows to force all survivors at that point to participate in activities she has set up. Given it's either that or die horribly again, something all are aware that they've already experienced but can't remember in full, they go along with her demands. The game features almost all characters from the previous games and some new ones. While a pseudo-horror spin-off at best, it is part of the storyline, setting up a few details to prepare for Corpse Party: Blood Drive.

As with Corpse Party: Book of Shadows, there is only one extra chapter. This extra chapter takes place during the previous game and is more conventional horror. It tells of Yoshiki's and Ayumi's encounter with four students from Sugatani Senior High School, notably Azusa Takai.

Blood Drive

Continuing from the prologue, Naomi manages to save Ayumi and takes her to a hospital. The Shinozaki estate and tome subsequently vanish without a trace. Ayumi had been severely ill for her misuse of the Book of Shadows' black magic. In the hospital, a woman claiming to be a spiritual associate of Hinoe's visits Ayumi. This woman belongs to the Wiccan Institute, an organization that worships spirits. She tells her Hinoe's last wish, which is to regain the Book of Shadows or the world will fall into the abyss. This is partially a lie, as the woman is under threat of other organizations to get Ayumi to find the book, which they wish to use for their own gain.

After being discharged from the hospital two months later, Ayumi returns to Kisaragi Academy where Satoshi and friends give her a warm welcome. However, the absence of their dead friends is a constant reminder of their inevitable reality. A new teacher's assistant, Kuon Niwa, supervises their homeroom. Later, on her way home, a black hooded boy approaches Ayumi and tells her, "If you reclaim the Book of Shadows and use it at Heavenly Host, those who have died there will be revived." Ayumi pledges that she will once more take back the Book of Shadows. The trail leads into the previous residence of Makina Shinozaki. To make matters worse, Heavenly Host's curse is expanded by the "new Sachiko", later named Sachi.^[12]

In January 2017, the game was ported to Android and iOS. The port contained various improvements to the balance of the game and improved loading times. In addition to that, the game also supports a cloud saving feature.^[13]

Development

Media listing

Corpse Party: Another Child

A spin-off manga that takes place during the events of Corpse Party. With their school, {{Nihongo|Satsukiyama Academy|皐月山学園|Satsukiyama Gakuen}}, shutting down for good, the students of a small town were heading for different directions in life, not until they decide to perform the "Sachiko Ever After" charm swallowing the entire class to Heavenly Host Elementary, along with a mysterious girl's spirit. In order to get out, they must track and get rid of the spirit.

Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient

The game takes place five years after the events of Corpse Party Heavenly Host Arc, implied to be the consequences of the Book of Shadows' powers starting to bring about the end of the world by allowing the spirit realm and real world to start to converge together. The setting takes place at {{Nihongo|Amare Patriarcha Crucis Hospital|文月大付属・{{ruby|慈愛十字|パトリアーカル}}病院|Fumizuki Daifuzoku Patoriākaru Byōin|"July University Patriarchal Hospital"}} fallen into a dark abyss. Patient records and clinical charts are scattered all over the hospital, with zombies and a bizarre SWAT team roaming through the hallways. An amnesiac girl, Ayame Itou, wakes up on an operating table and encounters the dark happenings around her.

Music

The opening for Corpse Party Blood Covered: ...Repeated Fear is "Shangri-La" by Asami Imai, and the ending for Blood Covered is "Confutatis no Inori" by Artery Vein (Imai & Eri Kitamura). An insert song, "Yami ni Nureta Catastrophe", also sung by Artery Vein, plays at the end of the game.

The opening theme for Corpse Party: Book of Shadows is "Hana no Saku Basho" by Imai, and the ending is "Pandora no Yoru", by Artery Vein.

The opening theme for Corpse Party: Sweet Sachiko's Hysteric Birthday Bash is called "Limited Love" by Imai, and the ending theme is "Tsukigen" by ARTERY VEIN. An insert song, "Hanabi", sung by Yumi Hara, plays at the final scene where Sachiko's birthday has ended and she seemed to have only a brief memory of it, before screaming in agony and reverting to her malicious self.

In Corpse Party: Blood Drive, there are two openings; the first one being "In the Rain", by Hara, and the second being "Keshin" by Imai, which plays at Chapter 7 after Ayumi's retrieval of the Book of Shadows. The ending is "Translucent Days" by ARTERY VEIN.

Critical reception

Although the series has received mixed to positive reviews as a whole, it is regarded as a "cult favorite" in Japan with a dedicated fan following.^[27][28] Famitsu gave Corpse Party: Blood Drive a score of 29/40.^[29]

Adaptations

The video game has been adapted into four manga series: Corpse Party: Blood Covered, published by Square Enix; Corpse Party: Musume and Corpse Party: Book of Shadows, published by Media Factory; and Corpse Party: Another Child, published by Mag Garden. The manga series has sold over 1{{nbsp}}million copies, as of May 2015.^[30]

One original video animation (OVA), Corpse Party: Missing Footage, was released on August 2, 2012.^[31] Another OVA consisting of four episodes titled Tortured Souls, was released on July 24, 2013,^[32] and later licensed by Section23 Films.

China ban

On June 12, 2015, the Chinese Ministry of Culture listed Corpse Party among 38 anime and manga titles banned in China.^[35]

Notes

References

External links

• Official Corpse Party English website
• Official website (manga) {{ja icon}}

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