Kansei picks up literally the day after the events of Jisei, built like its predecessor in Ren’Py, and puts its returning protagonist under new pressure almost immediately. The nameless wanderer from the first game gets handed a name here, Kangai, meaning something close to deep thoughts or strong feelings in Japanese, given to him by one of his new companions after he refuses to share his real one. William Auten, the chairperson of Auten Engineering, turns up dead under suspicious circumstances not long after Kangai arrives at his estate, and Kangai gets pulled into investigating alongside a group of kids with strange abilities of their own. Some of them might be more dangerous than the killer everyone’s supposedly hunting together.
Kansei turns out to be the actual name for the shared psychic ability running through the whole group, Kangai’s own corpse-touching power among them, and the title doubles as both the game’s name and the in-universe term for what makes this cast different from everyone around them. Aki can speak directly into other minds, useful for talking to a fellow kansei without a word passing between them out loud or nudging an ordinary person toward a decision they didn’t quite choose on their own. Naoki’s eidetic memory makes him the group’s default choice for undercover work, while Li Mei absorbs the emotions of everyone around her closely enough that she has to actively sort out which feelings actually belong to her.
Investigating means exploring locations for physical clues and talking through suspects for whatever they’re willing to give up, all of it tracked automatically in an in-game notebook that kept every lead organized without forcing me to take my own notes on the side. Reaching the real ending here takes more commitment than a single playthrough, since the game requires clearing two separate endings before it unlocks a third, true resolution. I appreciated that the structure didn’t just gate that final answer behind a hidden choice nobody would stumble onto by accident.
Aki Mizutani runs the investigation agency with a brash, outgoing energy that puts her miles apart from her own twin brother Naoki, whose sweet, shy demeanor hides just how essential his memory makes him to every case the group takes on. The two of them share enough of a family resemblance, right down to strands of white hair neither one can fully explain, that Liam mistakes Naoki for a girl the first time they meet. Li Mei sits apart from both of them, living under the same roof but wrapped in enough mystery that even Aki and Naoki seem reluctant to explain what she actually does. All three of them work under government probation, with Detective Gurski standing in as their handler, a status that came up naturally once Kangai started asking why a police detective kept showing up alongside a trio of teenagers. Watching the three of them work a case as a unit while clearly still hiding things from each other gave the group dynamic more tension than the murder mystery alone would have managed on its own.
Auten’s own household turns out to be just as tangled as the psychic team investigating it. Sophia Millerson runs his day to day affairs, issuing statements and press releases whenever he doesn’t feel like talking to anyone himself, and knows enough about Auten Engineering to make her impossible to rule out. Liam Auten’s party-happy nephew energy reads as either real carelessness or a very deliberate cover, especially once rumors surface about arguments between him and his uncle over exactly that behavior. Kevin Nealy’s money-first attitude as the company’s fresh-out-of-college IT guy gave every conversation with him an edge I never fully trusted. Marissa Klein’s chipper reporter instincts made her impossible to read too, since chasing the next big scoop and actually caring about the truth aren’t always the same motivation. I won’t say who actually did it, only that the household’s web of motives held up under scrutiny far longer than I expected going in.
Ayu Sakata wrote and programmed the whole thing for Sakevisual under its Green Tea Line banner, the second of five installments originally planned for the wider Jisei murder mystery series. Kansei carries the fuller subtitle The Second Turn and originally released in 2011, setting up a third entry, Yousei, that picks Kangai’s story up even further once it arrived in February 2013.
The original release runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux for around nine dollars, carrying a rating of thirteen and up for its depictions of crime scenes and blood. An HD version later reached Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox in January 2022 through publisher Ratalaika Games, following a similar console push the first game had already gotten a couple years earlier. That gave the series a life well beyond the PC and mobile audiences it started with.
M. Beatriz Garcia’s character designs stay consistent and expressive across a cast this size, giving even the more minor suspects enough visual personality to keep them distinct during interrogation scenes. Creative Freaks handled the environment art, and Auten’s estate in particular holds the kind of detail that made exploring it for clues feel worthwhile rather than like busywork between conversations.
Marc Conrad Tabula composed the score, with a group called Aural Wave contributing the opening theme, and the music stayed unobtrusive enough during investigation scenes that I never felt rushed while working through a room for clues. Full English voice acting covers the whole cast. Chris Niosi’s read of detective Gurski sold his laid back sarcasm well enough that I looked forward to any scene that pulled him back into the investigation, even with how much more he clearly knows than he lets on. Micah Solusod and Apphia Yu voice Naoki and Aki with a sibling chemistry that matches how differently the two of them come across on the page, and Cherami Leigh gives Li Mei just enough restraint to keep her mystery intact. Zach Holzman, Karen Hayman, Matt Alan, Melissa Johnson, Kira Buckland, and R Bruce Elliott round out Kevin, Sophia, Liam, Marissa, Chance, and William respectively. That fuller cast never feels like it’s coasting on a smaller budget than the main four leads got.
By the time I’d cleared enough endings to reach the true one, the group of psychic kids I’d started out suspicious of had become the part of the story I trusted least to walk away from clean. Getting through the full mystery with voices on ran somewhere between five and six hours for me, and that runtime never once felt padded given how much of it went toward actually working a room for clues rather than watching cutscenes play out.
Verdict
The kansei ability at the center of this cast turns out to be as much a liability as a gift, and Kansei spends its five to six hours proving that point through Auten’s household as thoroughly as through the psychic team investigating it. M. Beatriz Garcia’s character art and a strong English voice cast, led by Chris Niosi’s Gurski, carry a case built on real, tangled motives rather than one obvious villain waiting to be unmasked. Sitting right between Jisei and Yousei, it holds its own as the series’ middle stretch instead of just marking time between the two more talked about entries.
