Say it in Red | Episode 34: Chaos;Head Noah (Part 1 of 2)

Say It In Red

Have you ever felt the prickling sense of a pair of eyes gazing at you from a place unseen? Have you ever had daydreams so vivid and visceral you could remember the touch and smell of them afterwards? While sleeping, do you sometimes dream in full color? Do you believe in the existence of God? Do you live in a small shipping container repurposed into a cluttered room filled with fast food trash and pristine anime waifu figurines?
This week, Sara and Runa welcome special guest Meowgon to help them navigate the first five chapters of Chaos;Head Noah. In this horror visual novel, we inhabit the perspective of a truly repulsive and pathetic teenage otaku boy who fills his daily life with MMO powergaming, 2chan trawling, and fantasizing about his favorite 2D girls. Takumi does go to school, however, according to a strict schedule he's set out for himself to ensure that he achieves the exact minimum number of attendance days in order to graduate. He also goes out into public, to netcafes or manga shops or a game store to pre-order new Seira-tan figures. If only he had simply never gone outside, maybe he wouldn't now be pursued by the police or know quite so much about the recent series of brutal, horrifying murders taking place throughout Shibuya.
Chaos;Head Noah is a remake and update of the original Chaos;Head, originally released in 2008 and only now available in 2022 with an official English version. The game is part of Nitro Plus's Science Adventure series, which also includes Chaos;Child and Steins;Gate, though Chaos;Head stands on its own as an individual and unrelated work to the other two in continuity. The game follows the events of a series of bizarre and shocking murders taking place in Shibuya, dubbed the New Generation Madness by popular media and quickly taking hold as a prime topic of discussion on message boards such as 2chan (called @chan in the game). Takumi, a shut-in with tremendous social anxiety and a rancid view of the world (and women in particular), finds himself caught up in the mystery of the NewGen murders as he witnesses the third victim's body just after they've been killed... and, as it happens, he also received images of that murder from a mysterious chatroom lurker a full day before the killing took place. From there, Takumi's mental state, physical health, and grasp on reality begin to decline. The situation isn't helped when he realizes that the person who sent those images of the murder, images that couldn't have possibly existed a full 24 hours before the murder took place, sent them from the exact terminal Takumi uses at the netcafe and at the exact time he was there the day before the murder took place.
Things go downhill for Taku from there.
As a note to listeners who want to read along with us, Chaos;Head Noah is a horror game with a long list of graphic, disturbing, and potentially anxiety-inducing topics. While we mention a few of them in our episode, because of the wide variety of delusions present in the game and the breadth of content included, it's impossible for us to list all of the things that come up in even just these first 5 chapters. We encourage you to seek out a list of content warnings before playing.
As always, if you enjoy our episodes, please rate and review us wherever you listen to podcasts! You can also find bonus episodes at our patreon at patreon.com/sayitinred and follow us on twitter at sayitinredpod.
Content Warnings for this Episode:
General warning for murder, death, stabbing, unreality, discussion of assorted weird ableism, and gore
00:45:30, 01:49:30 to 01:52:00: Group Suicide, discussion of moments prior to group suicide/murder
00:46:30 to 00:48:00: Transphobia, body horror, murdered newborns, and mutilation
00:42:20: Body Horror