Impressions: Bible Black: La Noche de Walpurgis (Game)

"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be killed.
He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the LORD only, he shall be utterly destroyed."

-Exodus 22:18-20

Every good hentai fan has heard of Bible Black. Hell, even most anime fans have heard of Bible Black. If you go into an IRC chatroom and say to no one in particular, "Hey, anyone seen Bible Black?" chances are you'll find a ton of people who have. What I'm referring to, though, is the Bible Black OVA series. The popularity of the series is in part due to its gorgeous animation, sounds and colours, detailed art and the fact that it has some semblance of a plot underneath all that kinky sex.

What most people don't know is that Bible Black is based on a hentai game of the same name. A game that was produced in 2000 by a company called Active-Soft. Unfortunately, the game was never licensed outside of Japan and despite the fact that Kitty Media licensed the anime quite long ago, no h-game publishers picked up the game to prepare it for a worldwide release. No one knew why this was the case. Over the years Bible Black became somewhat of a forgotten myth. A game that was supposed to be exceptionally good but was unplayable by anyone without a mastery over Japanese.

Luckily, this has all changed as Kitty Media is now expanding their business to include hentai game solicitations and Bible Black: La Noche de Walpurgis is their first gift to the world. Seeing as how Kitty licensed the OVAs, it's only right that they should be the ones to translate the game.

So, how does the legendary Bible Black -- a game that was produced more than seven years ago and set the standard for quite a few games that followed -- hold up in this day and age?


Let's start with the basics. Very often the look of a game is what draws us to it -- even more so for hentai games.


For a game that was released in 2000, Bible Black certainly looks a bit dated. The game's art is fairly simple and while the art does a good job of making the characters look attractive, it is nowhere near as detailed as some H-games that have been released in the past four or five years. I'm thinking of titles like The Sagara Family or Crescendo.

The colours in Bible Black aren't exactly what you'd call vivid but whether this is a shortcoming on the art teams' part or if it was a conscious decision made by the team to match the art with the feel of the game is debatable. In short: if you've watched the Bible Black anime and are expecting quality on par with that; don't. This game was one of the first of its kind and it shows.

Moving on, we come to sound: an area where Bible Black excels. One thing you'll notice frequently right from the time you start the game to the very end is that the music is top-notch and does an excellent job of conveying the eerie and occultish feel of the entire game. Tracks like "Bible Black" (plays during the intro and at the main menu) and "Jesus Christ" really stand out. The composer(s?) has done an outstanding job of crafting the music to perfectly match the events unfolding onscreen. Once you turn on Direct Sound from the game's options, listening to the game's soundtrack either while playing or from the "Extras" menu is a real pleasure.


But a game isn't just about music. Actual sounds themself play an important role. This is another area where Bible Black tends to impress. Every single character in the game has speech. That's right ... every single one. And that includes Minase, the protagonist -- the guy you play as. I'd like to reflect upon this for a second. This is a very uncommon feature in hentai games. Usually, the protagonist isn't given a voice. He/she has dialogue, but he/she is almost never given a voice in order to help players form their own image of what the character might sound like. Several role-playing games follow this trend, too (the biggest one being the Zelda games where Link never speaks). I'm not sure if giving Minase a voice was a good idea or not. While I appreciate that I know exactly what the character sounds like, I feel it takes away from the game's ability to immerse. Perhaps this is why most hentai games produced after Bible Black have avoided this feature.

And finally, we come to plot. The one area where Bible Black not only shines, it beats every other hentai game out there hands down (maybe with the exception of Divi-Dead, a game very clearly influenced by Bible Black). Upon playing Bible Black, it dawned upon me that the anime was never meant to be a replacement for the game. Rather, the anime was produced in order to help visualize what certain scenes from the game might look like fully animated with vibrant colours and lots of attention paid to detail. The anime was produced well after the game in Japan but everywhere else, the anime was what built up the hype for the game.


Anyone who's watched the anime will also notice right off the bat that the series was deprived of 80% of the game's plot in favour of depicting as many sex scenes as possible. Again, it is now obvious that the anime was never meant to replace the game. Rather, it was just eye-candy for fans of the title.

Bible Black is about a highschooler by the name of Taki Minase. A rather down-to-earth and logical chap, Minase has absolutely no interest in the supernatural or anything that can't be proven by Science. This puts him at odds with Kaori Saeki, the president of his school's unofficial "witchcraft club". Rumour has it that twelve years ago, a magic users club existed at their school and that they used the school basement to perform their occult rituals of devil-worship. However, all members of this coven are said to have died mysterious deaths. Saeki and her friends are intent on getting to the bottom of the mystery. In addition to having somewhat of an affinity for Black Magic (God, did I just put that in uppercase? I need to stop playing this game before it posesses me), Saeki also posesses a sharp intellect and cool, calm demeanor that often frustrates Minase.


Refusing to believe in this Black Magic mumbo-jumbo, Minase ridicules members of the witchcraft club every chance he gets until one day he finds himself down in the mysterious basement at the bottom of the school. Cold, dark and off-limits to everyone at the school (students as well as faculty), the basement is where the turn of events that kicks Bible Black's story into high gear occurs. In the basement, Minase finds a strange book ... strange and old. With extensive chapters on sorcery and magic, the book -- written in Hebrew, Latin, French and Greek -- seems to confirm the rumours of the old coven at the school.

Letting his curiousity get the better of him, Minase starts to practise spells in the book. Dangerous spells of posession and the ability to induce lust. At first, Minase's spells don't do much harm (relatively) but as he reads the book further and masters new aspects of magic, it seems he ends up hurting someone or the other no matter how much he might be trying to do good. As the days count down to the mysterious "Night of Walpurgis" -- the night when all members of the old magic club are said to have died twelve years ago -- Minase finds his mind and actions slowly slipping out of control...


And what of the coven and the mysterious basement under the school? How do they tie into it all? Will Minase be able to break free of temptation or will the book eventually posess him?

It's rare to see a hentai game with a plot as ambitious as that of Bible Black's and luckily, Kitty Media's translation does it justice. Sure, there's the occassional grammatical error here and there and while this is simply inexcusable, the translators have done a good job of making the writing detailed, accurate and -- most importantly -- crisp.

The game features an "Extras" section as well, where one can view art/scenes from the game as well as listen to the various musical tracks. Both features are a welcome addition.

All in all, I'd say Bible Black holds up pretty damn well after all this while. The game isn't the best-looking hentai game out there but it's the only one of its kind. Nothing comes close to matching Bible Black: La Noche de Walpurgis in terms of plot, depth, sound and writing. And as for the aforementioned dated visuals ... they won't bother you in the least if you play the game long enough. Indeed, I was a bit put off by them myself when I first started playing but they grew on me fairly quickly.

Bible Black is a must for any fan of interactive dating sims. Just don't expect to see happy, magical rape in here. Bible Black is cold, brutal and sometimes downright eerie.