"If someday, I no longer had this beautiful voice, would you still, even then, love me?"

This line is what started this all. A lot of factors inspired the inception of Kirei as a concept but all of it can definitely be traced back to this one Kagamine Rin and Len song and pv. It's called Shikiori no Hane— "Seasonal Feathers" or "Feathers Across the Seasons" or "Wings of the Four Seasons" in English.  

This devlog is going to break down every little aspect to this song that allowed for Kirei to flourish in its storytelling. Of course, beyond this piece of media, there are other cultural things that informed the team's decision-making when it came to the story as a whole but it's definitely worth thanking this song for laying the groundwork and setting up that spark that has been there since 2019.

Give it a listen too because it's such a beautiful work of art.

The Grateful Crane

The song really is what introduced me to this folktale to begin with and it was pretty interesting from the start. I was still in high school when I found it and I had this habit of injecting logic into things that are probably just magical and didn't need them. After all, they were just old stories passed down and they're probably meant to have mystique surrounding them.

This little habit of mine led me into conceptualizing the birdfolk, though. They're somewhat divine and immortal. They have magical abilities of transformation that they can use at will to interact with human civilization. For fun design purposes, I thought it would be cute for their hair color to follow the colors of their feathers as a way to differentiate them from regular humans.

Beyond that though, I didn't really think of lore or culture or worldbuilding bits about their society until I met Moku. That's what they're really good at, to be honest. Originally, I thought the birdfolk traveled around and are scattered all over the land. I like the direction we ended up going with later on especially since Moku's insight is super helpful since this is based on their culture and they also have a History degree.

Hello, this is Moku with the History degree. (I say this like I’m proud but it’s not a fancy or prestigious degree unfortunately haha)

I plan to do a devlog in the future trying to make excuses. . . I mean, talking about the historical aspects of ‘Kirei’ and what sources we used, but for this log, I will just stick to talking about how it started and the concept behind it. 

The original concept and idea of the game came from Skai and the song above. We always talked about doing an original game project sometime, and when we started discussing the idea properly, Skai brought up the idea they had about ‘Kirei’. 

As someone who loves historical fantasy and wood-block prints, the idea was very intriguing and I was onboard straight away. Shortly after being introduced to the idea, we quickly started brainstorming about the lore of the world and character ideas together, and here we are now.

Fun fact, all the bird characters all have a Japanese folklore they take inspiration from, some more than others  - maybe introducing those could be an idea for a future devlog too.

Atmosphere and Ambience

The PV to Shikiori no Hane starts with a wide shot of their tiny village with snow falling all around. It sets this quiet peaceful tone that later is followed by the characters who show up: the poor couple huddled up by the fire. The quality of the art is in this sketch-like soft and yellow-tinted art style almost to simulate the feeling of being printed on parchment. This later informed the team's decision into going in an Ukiyo-e inspired art direction.

Even the production of the song inspired the soundscape of the VN. Although, there were definitely other tracks that were used to help our composers come up with the beautiful OST. Perhaps I'll release those in a playlist at a later date when it's more relevant to talk about.

Anyway, just like in The Grateful Crane, the story starts in winter. It's a small village with protagonists in poverty. Since the winter season is visually characterized by lots of whites, blues, and greys, it really amplifies this washed out sort of numbness to Nikko's emotions. Her general demeanor towards the world is biting cold like the ice that blankets her home.

Ukiyo-e prints (Japanese woodblock prints ) is an art genre which was established in the early days of the Edo period (1603 ~ 1868) and flourished throughout the whole time period. Though the technique is still used to this day, Kirei mainly uses the mid to late Edo period, which is when most of the historically famous Ukiyo-e artists lived (like the Great Wave off Kanagawa was also printed at this time as well!). 

From this, I think the overall vibe the game gives off is that it takes place in 17th - 18th century Japan. But source and inspiration wise, we didn’t really limit the information we used to things from that era, and we did take our creative liberties here and there. I personally think the creative freedom helped us build a historical but still unique world, instead of a world that felt too formal or dull because it was restricted to making the ‘historically right choices’.

. . .Also for me, it reduced a lot of stress since I didn’t have to worry too much on getting a fact wrong or thinking of how someone might be able to refute the theory I was using. Thank you creative freedom. 

The Title

So why Kirei (綺麗)? Why focus so much on the idea of beauty in such a "cheerful game" as this?

Again, it all comes back to the song. I quoted a part of the lyrics at the beginning of this log and I'm going to talk about it now. See, the most striking parts of the lyrics are whenever the chorus is repeated. It always starts with a hypothetical.

"If someday, I no longer had this beautiful voice, would you still, even then, love me?"

"If someday, I no longer had these beautiful fingers, would you still, even then, love me?"

"If someday, I were no longer a human, would you still love me?"

In every verse he mentions things he notices about her that he thinks are beautiful: her voice, her fingers, etc. Since she's a bird, she wonders if she loses those things would he still love her in the same way.

This raw and anxious pleading energy just seeps from these lines after the human man always calmly tells his wife about the beautiful parts of herself. It's both, in a way, heart shattering but also just admirable and lovely.

That's why beauty is such a huge thing for this story. Literally, the game page's first line is: “If one day I lost these feathered limbs, would I then be beautiful?” It's a nod to those lyrics I picked out but in a different context.

I really like that mix of emotions and the questions about the self an society it evokes and I wanted to explore it further. However, instead of retelling the same folktale again, I thought: "What if they had a daughter?"

If Shikiori no Hane's main issue is "retaining beauty equates to being loved" and the beauty in that context is being human, then Nikko's main issue is "being loved equates to becoming beautiful" because she has never felt beautiful her whole life due to the standards society has imposed upon her.

On a side note, I read a comment on Youtube somewhere that this was the song equivalent of the "Would you love me if I was a worm?" meme and I thought it was funny.

When Skai pitched the idea of the game to me, they already had an idea for the title too. We stuck with that original title, and the game stayed as ‘Kirei’. To be honest, I don’t think I could have ever came up with a more fitting title for the game. 

I do remember looking up the Kanji for Kirei and worrying about which kanji to do, but I couldn’t find myself doing that in past logs, so I might have just dreamed about it. Or I am just suppressing the memory. 

Anyways, would I still like myself if I were born a bird? I don’t know. . .  I feel like I won’t. . . Whatever. . .  Just forget it. . .

Words from The Team

Thank you so much for sticking with us! Weaving stories is tough work, just as meticulous as weaving fabric, and we'll need just a little more patience to make everything as perfect as it can be. My favorite part is still yet to come and I can't wait for folks to love it as much as I do! I'll continue doing my part in making sure the writing shines its brightest. Stay tuned for more to come shortly!

I feel like I have written most of what I wanted to say and am now worrying about future devlogs, but for now, I am happy I had the chance to talk about the behind the scenes related things of the game.

Thank you for reading all this way and hope you have a good day!