Wow. Someone equipped Tatsuya with an ANGST +100 accessory between Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment. He wasn't this bad in Tsumi. I swear.

Tatsuya is the mysterious (or not-so-mysterious) Deja-Vu Boy (JP: Deja-Vu-kun) that Maya bumped into at the train station, triggering a chain of events that would have serious repercussions for Life As We Know It. Maya eventually discovers that he's the angsty younger brother of Suou Katsuya and a senior at Seven Sisters HS. He keeps popping up just in time to save Maya from danger, and he keeps saying that he's sinned and need to be punished, blah blah blah. I don't know if he needs a therapist, a confessor, or the number of a good S&M club.

In addition to Maya, Tatsuya also shows up to save three other high school students that, technically, he shouldn't even know. One is Lisa Silverman, the up-and-coming idol singer who happens to go to his school. Another is Mishina Eikichi, the gang leader over at the delinquent high school Kasugayama HS, and the third is Kashihara Jun, another student from Kasugayama. How does he know them?

To first-time players, the question is, "Who is this guy, and what the hell is he talking about?"
To gamers who have played the prequel, the question is "So what went wrong?"
To everyone else: "Nice PANTS, Tatsuya!"

"This Side Tatsuya" is the boy who grew up on this side, with no memories of everyone else. "Other Side Tatsuya" is the Tatsuya from Tsumi. And regular Tatsuya is the fusion of the two, the guy we see during the game.

If you've played Tsumi - or finished Batsu - you know that after the Grand Cross took place and the Oracle of Maiya was completed, the four children - Lisa, Tatsuya, Eikichi, and Jun - made a pact with Philemon. Philemon would go back in time and erase their meeting at Araya Shrine, which would create a parallel timeline from that point onwards. Everyone would exist in this new world, but the catch is that they'd naturally have forgetten ever meeting as children, and would be strangers to each other.

So they did.

Q: What kind of person is the Batsu world Tatsuya?
A: It's just like Anna said in the game - "He's a total bad boy, but he's really very nice." Though what does she mean by "total bad boy", I wonder. *laugh* A 'bad person' does things like steal or pick fights without caring who the opponent is, but I don't think he does things like that. For example, it's sort of like if he was in a regular fight, he'd probably go easy on the other person, but in the case of a fight against an opponent that required him to draw his sword, he might go so far as to break their arms or legs. At a glance, from the eyes of adults in society, it might look like he went too far, but to him it's acting in line with his own beliefs of justice. But that's not particularly merciful, so he probably has a bad image in the eyes of people who only look at that part of him. I think he also operates a bit outside of society's rules.

Q: What kind of daily life does the Batsu world Tatsuya have?
A: Because he's a bad boy *laugh* I don't think he goes to school very much. He probably spends most of his time going to clubs and such with the people who tag along with him - with Anna and others. They're not groupies that hang around with him, it's more like they're people who empathize with Tatsuya's way of life and gather around him on their own. People who are sort of the dropouts in society must feel comfortable around his casual attitude and speech. But Tatsuya himself is a lone wolf. On the days he doesn't go to school, I think that he bums around at clubs, works at a part-time job, or goes out riding on his motorcycle. Well, he doesn't want to be cared for by his family, and he thinks that he wants to quickly become independent, so he basically works a lot at a part-time job. I don't know what kind of job he does, though. *laugh* In Tsumi, Tatsuya is dexterous, so he works part-time at a motorcycle shop, but Batsu Tatsuya is more clumsy, so...I wonder what he's doing? Maybe he's surprising us and working at a convenience store??? Well, I'll leave that part up to your imaginations.

Q: Has he ever met his friends from the Tsumi world?
A: He hasn't. Naturally, he goes to the same school as Lisa, so he's probably run into her a few times, but he's never met Eikichi or Jun. This is because Nyarlathotep was connected to this world before the event happened this time. He was making things happen so that they wouldn't meet up with each other.

I was confused about what the last sentence meant; my impression had been that Nyarly was actively trying to make them remember so his power would increase. Then Kya suggested that he didn't want them to meet until he was ready - if Tatsuya was the "trigger," then after his memories returned, Nyarly would actively bring them together. It's an interesting theory, at least.

When Tatsuya meets Maya and regains his memories at the beginning of the game, it represents a significant time paradox. Tatsuya's remembering two realities, and that causes a weakness in the current reality. [They call him the Paradox Boy in English...as I recall, he was the "特異点少年" in Japanese. That's "Singularity Boy," basically. A 'singularity' is a single something that's unique or unusual (I like to think of it in terms of mathematics or physics), but 'paradox' isn't a bad substituation at all.] He alone remembered the other reality when all of them met at the train station (if you've seen the end of Tsumi, it's clear that Eikichi, Lisa, Jun, Tatsuya, and Maya were all at the station) because of his selfishness on the Other Side.

Q: What's that mark on Tatsuya's arm this time around?

A: That is a mark that was made by Nyarlathotep on Batsu Tatsuya's body when the Tsumi Tatsuya within him remembered the existence of the Tsumi world. When he remembered, Nyarlathotep appeared before Tatsuya and said, "If your other friends remember the existence of the other world, this world will be destroyed." It was a challenge from Nyarlathotep. Tsumi Tatsuya began to run around and fight by himself in order to not let that happen, but the mark is something that was made at that time.

As you might have gathered, the Other-Side Tatsuya is a lonely guy, and these people were his only friends. When they were resetting the world and all his friends disappeared, Other-Side Tatsuya couldn't bear to lose his only friends, so he willfully refused to forget everything. Therefore his memories were only thinly buried, and when he bumped into Maya, it all came back - a fusion of Tsumi Tatsuya and Batsu Tatsuya.

The two people really are different, despite the same name and same soul.

Q: How are the Batsu world Tatsuya and Tsumi world Tatsuya different?
A: I don't think it's exaggerating to say that in a way, they're completely different people. This is because while they are the same at the beginning, they lived completely different lives from the reset point 10 years ago. I think that the Tsumi Tatsuya's meeting with Maya and the others 10 years ago was an event whose effects reached so far as to have an effect on the formation of his personality. But that did not happen in the Batsu world. Therefore, the Batsu Tatsuya does not have the "I don't want to be left all alone, so I won't befriend anyone" trait that the Tsumi Tatsuya does. Though he doesn't laugh hysterically, when something fun happens, I think he smiles like everyone else. In Batsu, there was just the event with Tatsuya's father, therefore he kind of became a bit of a bad boy. While he does have a wild side, he basically just has a strong desire to separate from his family and live independently. I think that he might have his life together a bit better than the Tsumi Tatsuya.

Well, Tatsuya realizes that the current mess is basically his fault. With the fusion of the two worlds imminent, it seemed that not only would Maya-nee die again, but the entire world would be destroyed outside Sumaru City. So it became REALLY IMPORTANT that he not screw up again. And because it was entirely his fault, he resolved not to involve the others in his mad dash to correct his mistakes. Part of that is the urge to keep them safe, part is the fear that meeting up with them would aggravate the Paradox, and thirdly - it's probably his damn pride that prevents him from asking for help. In Tsumi, he had to learn to depend on his friends, and now he's learning that lesson again.

I find it amusing that he's referred to as "the kid" in this game. In most series/games, the hero is 16-18, and is treated more or less like an important adult with deep thoughts and fully mature opinons on life. But Tatsuya is a child compared to the other party members, and is treated as if he really doesn't know much about life. Which, if you think about it, is quite true. Even Maya, the youngest of the adults, is a full five years older than he is. He's shifted from the pseudo-leader in Tsumi to the child trying to learn from adults in Batsu.

One of those adults is his older brother, Katsuya. He's had a prickly relationship with his niisan ever since their father was arrested. Tatsuya's extremely independent, and Katsuya's love is rather smothering at times.

Q: Does he hate Katsuya?
A: While Tatsuya doesn't hate Katsuya, I do think that he feels uncomfortable with him. Katsuya is the same kind of person in both worlds, so he often interferes in Tatsuya's life either way. As you'd expect, Tatsuya doesn't like that. The second half of Tatsuya's 10th year was also depressing for both parents and brothers, to say nothing of the incident with Tatsuya's father. I think they got along well when they were very young, though. After all, they went together to the festival at which the event happened in the Tsumi world. He certainly must have been a child who loved his big brother. What separated him from his big brother was, of course, the incident with their father. Tatsuya didn't understand the circumstances of the incident, so he felt that he was betrayed by his father and rebelled, but Katsuya, who understood the situation, probably scolded him...if you look at it from Tatsuya's point of view, Katsuya was his father's ally, which made him a traitor as well. Moreover, because he had trusted his older brother up until then, these thoughts were even more powerful.

Then there's Maya-nee. Tatsuya wants, more than anything, to protect her and keep her from dying a second time, because she's very special to him. But the question is...

Q: Are his feelings towards Maya love?
A: In a way, yes. Maya was Tatsuya's first love, but even so, because it happened when he was 8 years old, his feelings were more like the admiration of an older sister. Normally, time would pass and that would develop into feelings of romantic love towards other women, but in Tatsuya's case, that first love was a big sister figure that he couldn't protect, so those feelings towards Maya still trail on. Therefore, while he has special feelings for Maya, he doesn't look at her as an eligible woman. Specifically, he probably decided on his own that it would be disrespectful to date her. My feeling is that it is the most important for him to see her smiling happily nearby.

Tatsuya's obviously very fond of his other three friends from the Other Side; he has pretty damn good timing to burst in and save Eikichi and Lisa. It's actually kind of interesting to have him talking in the game; you never know what he says to his friends in Tsumi, so when Jun's having one of his Psychotic Moments and Tatsuya tells him, "Don't worry, it's not your fault," you get a different impression of Tatsuya than you do when he merely goes "....." and flicks his lighter. He's a nice boy, just not...particularly talkative.

I'm not sure why Tatsuya doesn't have his father's watch to give Jun on This Side. He gets Jun's lighter, as he did on the Other Side (and this apparently is important, he's holding it up in his character design). By the way, those three kids are shocked when Tatsuya knows their names, not just because he's a stranger who knows who they are, but because of the way he addresses them, as if he's very close to them. So when Jun goes, "How do you know my name?" on the blimp, it's not just that Tatsuya called him Jun - it's also that he called him Jun, instead of Kashihara-kun, or Jun-kun, or anything like that. Lisa reacts the same way to being called by her first name.

In the end, Tatsuya learns to depend on his brother and the adults again, and they work together to defeat Nyarly. Of course, at the end, Tsumi Tatsuya has to go back to help rebuild his own world, leaving behind only Batsu Tatsuya, who remembers nothing.

Q: What happened to Tatsuya in the Batsu world in the end...?
A: I'll leave that up to your imaginations. Well, my personal opinion is that just like in the ending, he decided to become a police officer and worked hard towards that goal. But since he hasn't really been going to school up until now, I think that's going to be relatively difficult for him. In spite of saying that he wants to become a police officer, he doesn't know specifically what that entails. I think he'll probably be shocked when he hears from Katsuya that there are tests involved. Something like, "I see...huh, is that so..." *laugh* Surely, Katsuya will act as his private tutor, and Tatsuya will study his butt off. I think he'll also come to reconcile with his father little by little, even though Batsu Tatsuya doesn't know the real truth behind the incident. I think that he'll most likely not ask anyone about it, instead inferring what happened. Well, in the end, that's what I've imagined, anyway.

[ OTHER SIDE]