Butterfly Soup: Thoughts and Feelings
- JB
- Mar 25, 2020
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 31, 2020
I often long for games that give me giddy, joyful happiness. The feeling where you giggle along with the dialogue and scramble to find your phone and record what’s going on so you can share it. The kind of game that makes you cry when it’s over even though you know you’re going to play it again very soon. Butterfly Soup, a visual novel by Brianna Lei, is the most recent addition to that short list. It’s a beautiful, charming game full of soul and wonderful characters that will stick with you for years to come.
Butterfly Soup is set in California, in about 2008, at a high school in an Asian American neighbourhood. It follows 4 girls – Diya, Min, Akarsha and Noelle – as their friendships develop and change over the course of a term. The story focuses on each character in turn, both at the current point in the story and with prolonged flashbacks to their childhoods (and feature adorable drawings of the girls as children) You get to sit in on their conversations, classes and chat logs and see relationships develop (or be hinted at) The backgrounds are pastel dreamy for some conversations, and seemingly stock images for outdoor scenes, but the characters are so well drawn and the dialogue so engaging it never threw me out of the narrative. It’s a gorgeously written yuri visual novel, and I very much fell in love with all of them.
Despite it’s very appealing visuals and music, the story doesn’t shy from difficult situations and themes. There are fairly frequent racist interactions that each of the girls face, usually as they’re walking to school. This is especially poignant as the game is set in 2008 and Obama had just been elected. Diya, who is essentially the player character, repeatedly states that she assumed ‘racism was over’, with the election the star on top of the tree. Butterfly Soup also looks at parental expectation within certain communities, specifically Taiwanese families through the storyline of Noelle. The ‘hardworking Asian student’ trope has been done so much, and often badly, but here it feels genuine as she struggles with her own expectations, her parents, and balancing her fledgling friendships. We get to see her feelings of responsibility, pride, resentment and bitterness towards her parents, and how she’s internalised their behaviour even though she didn’t want to.
Dialogue excerpt:
White guy: "Konnichiwa!”
Min-seo: "This is America! SPEAK ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER!!!"
Noelle: "That's...not the right way to think of it."
Min-seo: "It's kinda funny, He had two chances to get it right and got it wrong for the both of us."
Noelle: "Like you and your math test."
Min-seo: "Oh, shut up."
Butterfly Soup also shows some of the diversity of cultures that in white media are umbrella-ed under ‘Asian’. Just within the 4 main characters, their heritage is Korean, Taiwanese and Indian. This is down to Lei’s own experience with Asian representation in the media; “Growing up, there weren't a lot of teen dramas or coming-of-age stories that dealt with the problems I faced as an Asian-American. The few things that did star Asian-Americans were usually really...I don't know how to put it, but one-noted? For example, if the author was Chinese-American, all the important characters would either be Chinese or white. I grew up surrounded by other East Asian and South Asian kids who were suffering just as much as I was, and we found solace in that.”
Their different experiences in life come up naturally, as they would in regular conversation, as they each learn more about the others. In this way Butterfly Soup challenges the notion that all people of colour are aware of every other culture, as they’re all ‘other’. They’re just kids, and they learn as they go, just like everyone else. It is also never a point of contention between them to progress the narrative, however it does lead to some humorous situations at a buffet, which I will let you discover on your own.
Butterfly Soup’s main story arc however, the blossoming romance between Min-seo and Diya, is the main event, and is set around all of the girls joining the school baseball team and scratches that sports anime itch. Both characters are incredibly sweet to each other however struggle in their own way; Min-seo's struggle with female expectation and her continuous fight against it (and everyone but Diya), and Diya’s social struggles to overcome her own shyness. Their chemistry is palpable and endearing, with their dialogue bouncing between genuinely funny and heart wrenchingly touching. Refreshingly there is no stigma from any of the characters about their sexuality, and any kind of closeting doesn’t step into the narrative of the game. The most you see is Diya’s realisation that she’s a lesbian, but predominantly you are witness to a very innocent love story. There is no moodiness or difficultly to Min-seo and Diya’s romance and love asides from regular teenage nerves; its there, and it’s real, and it’s kind.
Longing is felt throughout the game, not just between the characters for friendship, love or acceptance, but longing in general for the innocence of high school. It is clearly a place where they all want to be and enjoy spending time there, even if it’s more for the company rather than the learning. Lei even added a title card, “I really miss high school”, at the end of the game, and you can feel that sentiment throughout, tying the story together. No one’s schooling experience is perfect, especially if they’re under intense parental pressure and existing in a society where they’re seen as other, but Butterfly Soup shows us 4 girls who are trying their best against a world and system that does not benefit them due to their race and their sexuality. But they are trying, they’re having fun, falling in love, and they’re getting through it.
Though Butterfly Soup is a short game coming in at about 4-5 hours, I’ve not felt such genuine joy with a game for a long time. With incredibly empathetic characters and a riveting narrative, it’s one of the best visual novels I’ve experienced in a while. If you’re looking for something wholesome and charming to play, look no further than Butterfly Soup: you won’t regret it, and will probably fall head over heels just like I did.
Butterfly Soup is available on itch.co for free and name your price, with an additional (and very good) art book PDF available for $5. It was published in 2018 and created by Brianna Lei.
PS: I recommend spending some time going through fan art, it’s all so GOOD <3
Images:
1 – Updated character designs by Briana Lei. Source - https://brianna-lei.tumblr.com/post/167138475689/diya-and-noelles-updated-character-sheets-all
2- Gameplay screenshot of Diya and Min-seo
3- Gameplay screenshot, from R to L: Noelle, Akarsha, Min-seo and Diya.
References and sources:
Butterfly Soup & Art PDF:
"Make a game someone would kill a man to play" An interview with Brianna Lei of Butterfly Soup
Dialogue from Butterfly Soup Wiki:
I agree it just felt so ... pure