Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly (2003) pt. 3 of 3 - spoilers & conclusion

In parts one and two of my Fatal Frame II analysis, we got caught up with the plot all the way up until the third act before diving into the successes and failures of its story, atmosphere, and game design. This time around, we'll be getting into spoiler territory as we talk about the ending and everything we couldn't discuss before.

When our twin protagonists reach the escape tunnel they were seeking when last we left off, they find it lies behind a locked gate. Bummer. Luckily, we find evidence that the locked gate is controlled by a mechanism inside the “Old Tree,” so that’s where we’re headed next.

Once Mio and Mayu reach the Old Tree, however, Mayu becomes overwhelmed with exhaustion and decides to have a lie down. Observant players will probably understand this to be foreshadowing for our final protracted scavenger hunt. 

But for now, Mio doesn’t know where to even begin with the mechanism that works the escape tunnel, so she seeks out Itsuki to ask him if he knows how. When she arrives at the storehouse, however, she finds not Itsuki, but his strung-up corpse. Turns out, when Itsuki attempted to help Yae and Sae escape all those years ago and Sae was recaptured, Itsuki hanged himself from the ceiling of the storeroom where the angry villagers had locked him up, believing his plan had been a total failure. 

Yeah, I know, this was definitely in the books considering Itsuki was a player in events that took place long ago and thus, probably wasn’t still among the living and certainly not a child, but damn. Now it’s abundantly clear that we are utterly alone and have been from the very beginning of our journey, especially given Mayu’s worsening condition.

But we don’t have time to reflect on that right now, because it's here in the storeroom that we learn the details of our final scavenger hunt, and boy is it a doozy. We have to visit Osaka House for the third time, Kiryu House for the second, and the quiet cemetery near the Old Tree for the very first. Christ, and I thought the final fetch quest from the end of the previous game was annoying. No use crying about it, I suppose. We’re so near I can almost taste it. 

All of that done, all family crests obtained, and the mechanism that locks the escape tunnel disengaged, we head back to collect Mayu, who seems alright again.

Before the twins can make it to the tunnel, however, an angry mob of ghostly villagers appears from out of nowhere, surrounds Mayu, and whisks her away right before our eyes while the rest set upon Mio to prevent her catching up with the kidnappers. We fight them off as best we can and give chase, but a sinking feeling of doom seems to blanket everything as we close in on Mayu and realize that she’s once again acting super possessed and seems to be willingly going along with her captors. It’s also worth noting that one of the game’s three endings can be achieved at this point, but I’m going to save that discussion until the end when I can compare and contrast all three.

This is the point where the themes of the game really come to the forefront and you begin to truly understand what the narrative is actually ‘about.’ We begin to hear things from Mayu’s mouth that may be Sae’s influence or simply her own buried desires. She loves her younger sister so much and is afraid of being ‘left behind’ (remember the incident in the sisters’ childhood?) She dreads the thought of growing apart from the one she loves more than anything else in the world and the two of them becoming different people. Back when Yae and Sae attempted to escape, a part of Sae had hoped that her sister would sacrifice her so that the two of them could become ‘one’ as the ritual says, and it’s heavily implied that Mayu feels similarly about Mio. This is also around the time that we learn that according to All God’s Village tradition, the ‘eldest’ sister is actually the youngest by modern standards, and so Mio doesn’t have to worry about her older sister as much as she thought. Rather, Mayu ought to worry about her. But Mio could never be convinced into doing something like that, right?

While absorbing all of this and making our way toward our sister, Mio must do battle with the patriarch of the Kurosawa House and Master of Ceremonies Mr. Ryokan Kurosawa. He puts up a decent fight, but is no match for Mio’s maxed-out Camera Obscura. Now, there’s nothing left but to descend into the bowels of the Earth, much like in the first game, and save our sister, though it’s hard to shake the feeling that we’re being led into a trap. We are following a ghostly procession of figures in full ceremonial garb, after all. We're briefly interrupted by the Kusabi, seriously pissed after the last time you evaded him, but he’s a pushover and goes down quickly, leaving us standing with nothing left to do but collect Mayu and get the hell out of here before it's too late.

However, when Mio arrives at the mouth of the Hellish Abyss, Mayu is waiting patiently for her, along with the spirits of everyone in the village. We’ve finally arrived, and now the ritual is ready to begin.

Mayu sums up everything I was babbling about earlier: “We were born together… but we have to live and die separately…” 

She seems ready to confess something, but Mio interrupts her. “Mayu, we'll be together. We will.”

But Mayu only shakes her head. “We can’t be together forever… but with this, we can become one.” Oh no.

Ceremonial drumming begins, the fires dance, and the Hellish Abyss waits patiently. Our twin protagonists then wordlessly get into position without a hint of hesitation or awkwardness. Mio doesn’t even seem in control of her own movements. The two of them are no longer Mio and Mayu; they’re Yae and Sae, finishing something that was started long, long ago. Mayu places Mio’s hand on her own throat and asks her to kill her. Mio, as if possessed, obliges without protest.

When she removes her hands from Mayu’s throat after a moment, she’s struck by the red marks that are left behind. Suddenly, they lift off into the air, becoming a Crimson Butterfly. Our audience of ghostly villagers begins to celebrate and a pair of mourners collect Mayu’s body as Mio steps back, seemingly shocked and appalled by what she’s done. The Mourners carry it to the mouth of the Hellish Abyss and then discard it. 

Mio begins to weep hysterically, chasing after the Crimson Butterfly as it leaves the cavern and makes it make up to the sky. Soon, the two of them are passing through the same woods they started the game’s narrative at as dramatic pop music flares up. Mio calls after her sister again and again, apologizing profusely, only to lose sight of the butterfly as it joins a multitude of others and ascends into the night sky. This should look very familiar to fans of the first game. And the third. And the fourth. THE END. 

Wasn’t that a nice little story? No? Well, what did you expect? Remember the ending from the first game? Just be glad you’re following along with me because if you somehow missed the subtext going on here, this whole story would seem almost like a joke: a shaggy dog story of epic proportions, but I think that’s why I kind of love it.

But wait, there’s more. In the tradition of the previous game, there’s a secret ending and a super short secret chapter that can be accessed provided you play through the entire game on the Hard difficulty after first finishing it on Normal and getting the canon ending. Meeting those requirements, Mio’s meeting with her older sister does not go according to plan, and Mio manages to goad Mayu into attacking her, triggering a new and improved final boss fight.

What really makes this secret chapter pop, though, is a somewhat obscure revelation it imparts, firstly because it requires beating the game twice, once on a higher difficulty, and secondly because it’s literally obscured by the method it's transmitted to the player. The soundtrack for your fight against Mayu/Sae is scored by voiceover of the two girls both describing their forbidden desire to have their younger sister sacrifice them violently, where the two monologues are remixed randomly so that it’s not clear who is saying what at any given time. Careful listening, however (or just an audio rip on Youtube) reveals a shocking twist that I had zero idea was a part of this game’s narrative, despite my previous history with it: Mayu threw herself down that hill all those years ago! She mangled her leg on purpose in a bid to make Mio a slave to guilt and keep her from being able to have a life of her own. It really changes everything, doesn’t it? It’s definitely a far cry from the first game’s simple alternate ending that removed far more than it added.

This is made even clearer by the actual ending cinematic itself. After Sae has been defeated with the Camera Obscura, and Mayu is now free from her influence, the twins both topple over and nearly spill into the Hellish Abyss. Thankfully, Mio manages to catch her sister just in time to avert disaster. Not so thankfully, however, she forgets the little detail about not looking into the Hellish Abyss under any circumstances, and so she’s stricken instantly, permanently, blind. Luckily, this isn’t a problem because now she has Mayu to take care of her for the rest of her life; a life that has barely even gotten started. Everyone lives and gets exactly what they want! Yay, happy endings! I mean, Mio isn’t really saying much but I guess she’s cool with the situation. Say it with me one final time: THE EN-

Oh wait, sorry. I’m still not done because we’ve yet to talk about the ‘bad’ ending, and something that is arguably not even a real ending, but certainly worth discussing. At the point where the escape tunnel is unlocked, only for Mayu to be kidnapped and taken to the Hellish Abyss by spectral villagers, Mio has the option to just abandon her older twin and say screw it to the whole affair, quite reasonably so, I'd say. Needless to say, she suddenly wakes up, still sitting on the log from the beginning of the game, as if no time has passed. Very Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. She realizes she's been dreaming all along. She’s relieved, only when she turns to Mayu, she realizes that her sister is no longer by her side. In fact, she's nowhere to be seen. She is truly gone, and she’s never coming back.

Of the three endings, I think my favorite is easily the Hellish Abyss ending, a twisted little capper for an equally twisted narrative. It has that ironic horror quality where you don’t whether to laugh or scream, and it ties everything together quite well. Whereas the previous game and later ones too would have a canon ending and a ‘everybody lives!’ ending, this is a much more interesting variation. Sure, our protagonists are both still alive, but in many ways, this ending is far darker than the original, especially when you take into account the gleefully cheesy j-pop that plays through most of the final cinematic of the canon ending.

It is worth noting, however, that the ‘false’ ending, where you abandon your sister, is not only a unique and never-repeated touch that I really like in theory, it also makes for a chilling finale. I really think the creators of the game fucked up when they opted to have this ending terminate not with end credits, but a GAME OVER screen. Sure, you don’t want to scare off players who don’t know any better, but really. It’s pretty obvious there’s more to see if you go through with it, but it also provides a genuinely interesting end to the story, and the idea that someone could conceivably be tricked into thinking that it was the actual ending of the story could only make it more interesting, but I digress.

So, now it’s time to start wrapping up this behemoth review, and honestly, I don’t even know where to start. It’s a great horror yarn, head and shoulders above many of its contemporaries, but as is expected of video game writing, it’s far from perfect. The way the horror at the center of the story is treated so seriously and the way the writers so shamelessly stuff in gruesome violence, teenage angst, and supernatural spooks can often seem overwrought. In some ways, this works to create that classic Fatal Frame feel of moving through a nightmare world where things don’t make sense and everybody is half asleep; and yet, in others, I begin to feel like I’m reading something written by a twelve year old and posted to r/nosleep or something.

One thing that continued to strike me while playing was this game’s repetitive qualities, usually reserved for the gameplay rather than the narrative. And while the first Fatal Frame certainly wasn’t innocent of this (“MY EYES! MY EYES!” etc) Crimson Butterfly takes this noisy, chaotic aspect of the series and cranks it to eleven. Seriously, nothing is worth saying once that can’t be said over and over again, during combat, when listening to audio logs, or while reading journal entries and documents. Some of this is clearly meant to act as a series of motifs that make the ending feel more satisfying than it otherwise would have, but honestly it's a bit too blunt and hamfisted.

As I mentioned earlier, the ending can either seem like a joke or a carefully constructed conclusion depending on whether or not you’re privy to the game’s manic depressive subtext. When I first played the game, I remember being shocked that the ending was so… well, I suppose it was shocking in the sense that I was expecting some twist or deviation from the ritual to close us out, but nope: everything goes according to the documents you’ve been reading since the very beginning of the game. Nowadays, I can recognize that the game’s tipping of its thematic hand just before the ending is what makes the difference and keeps it from feeling empty, but there are lots of players who won’t see things this way. In fact, one of the most common complaints about these games is that there is no ambiguity as to whether or not any of the supernatural stuff is real and that each game ends with things working out after the sacrifice goes through. Still, like the first game, it hooked me once I realized what the thrust of the story was actually about, and I realized that we were in the realm of metaphor. It’s something like an especially grim fairy tale or folk tale, much like the first, only darker, full of angst, more depressing, and much scarier. Just don’t think too much about what the Crimson Sacrifice itself represents, what with the one twin mounting the other and very intimately strangling the other so that the two of them become ‘one’ again. Yikes.

Going back to spicing things up, however, it is worth noting that the story has more going on than is initially clear, but discovering that stuff is nigh on impossible without the help of internet sleuths. You see, there are two what I would call ‘secret twists’ in the game. The first is the twist that Mio is the one that will have to sacrifice Mayu. The game, mostly through documents, tries to fool us into fearing our sister just long enough to be shocked when it turns out that we're the ones Mayu ought to be afraid of. They accomplish this with mentions in the lore of which twin counts as the eldest, but none of it works because we don’t know which sister is oldest anyway. I mean, most players would probably assume Mio is the oldest, since she’s the protector and the one toting her helpless sister around everywhere. In the Japanese version, the one thing that made all of this actually connect is Mio’s insistence on referring to her sister by a term of endearment that roughly translates to ‘older sis.’ By contrast, the English translation just kind of throws out this detail and the twins refer to each other by their names the entire time, subtly burying something that could have gone a long way towards spicing things up.

But that’s nothing compared to the other secret twist. This twist is actually intended to be a secret, as it's hidden behind a secret final boss fight that can only be attempted once the game has been completed twice, once on Normal and once on Hard. I’m referring of course to the revelation that Mayu injured herself as a child in order to keep Mio close. This was a great twist! I mean, it doesn’t change anything really, but it’s interesting. And hey, it provides a solid incentive to play the game twice, in addition to the normal Fatal Frame incentive of being able to actually understand the details of the plot! It’s just too bad that, even if one were to meet those requirements and make it there, they would still be unlikely to catch it given that the delivery method for it isn’t a cutscene, but rather a monologue that plays behind a frantic final boss fight, noisy in and of itself. Should something this good be made so inscrutable?

But I guess that’s Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly in a nutshell. It’s far from perfect, and you have to put up with plenty of rough edges to get to the good stuff, but for patient horror fans, that’s kind of par for the course. I mean, every game can’t spin a narrative like Silent Hill; and Resident Evil, despite better design in nearly every sense of the word, never tells a story anywhere near this interesting throughout its entire franchise. It’s dreamy and more than a little nihilistic and depressing, but for me, that only increases its appeal.

Gameplay-wise, this game is a hard sell. It’s bigger and better constructed than last time around, but it’s still far from on par with its contemporaries. The combat is as enjoyable as ever, but the act of progressing through the game is just miserable, especially when the game starts getting stingy with direction.

The presentation is much improved over its predecessor, with a little added warmth alongside Fatal Frame’s usual earthy shades and abrasive sound design that's as strong as ever. Crimson Butterfly doesn’t rely on cheap jumpscares to scare the player, instead wielding its disturbing narrative like a club and utilizing good old-fashioned atmosphere to seal the deal. Every element of the presentation and the story goes towards creating this cloying, claustrophobic feeling that will either aggravate you or enthrall you, depending on your taste in horror.

Fatal Frame II is the only game in the franchise that I had ever played before, and so I feel somewhat bad coming to the conclusion that it's probably the best in the series, but hey: what do you want from me? The first game obviously had a little ways to go before it was quite ready for prime time, and I can’t even begin to get into all the ways later games would attempt to fuck things up, at least not until next time, and so that’s where we’re at. And besides, Crimson Butterfly is a survival horror game that hails from what I consider to be the "golden age" of the genre, which is more than enough reason to check it out. In the end, Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly is well worth any curious horror fan’s time. Just don’t expect a happy ending.

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