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Girl of the Bakehouse
Girl of the Bakehouse (面包房少女 ~ Withered) is a Chinese short kinetic visual novel (without branching story) made by MICA Team and sold at doujin conventions in 2009. It doesn't use sprites and instead relies on full background illustrations with the text displayed on the bottom. It received a separate release for its soundtrack titled Withered.
MICA made plans to release a sequel and HD version of Bakehouse, but eventually released Codename: Bakery Girl in 2013, an evolved version of Bakehouse with gameplay and a more involved lore and story.
Story
The game opens with a bombardment sequence viewed from an aircraft camera.
From 2079 to 2083, humanity was engulfed in the largest conflict in its history: the First Antarctic War fought between the Coalition and their technology superior enemies of the Antarctic. Various other events are mentioned in the story, like the New Berlin Airlift Operation, the use of experimental weather weaponry by the Coalition during the Suppression of the British Isles making temperatures in Northern Europe comparable to the Antarctic, and the Chemgate incident revealed by journalists.
Inspired by the career of war reporter Kumik Fadis, who became famous for his photograph “Gazing by the Bridge” in 2059, featuring a woman named Miss Estee that Fadis later married, photo reporter Mendo is authorized by the Antarctic military to leave the Fort Ladisberg HQ and follow their troops during the war of attrition in Europe. He finds his own fated model in a small captured town in Northern Europe during Christmas celebrations, a girl called Jefuty.
Soon after, Mendo becomes severely ill and is left by the army in the care of Jefuty's family, who work as bakers. When he recovers his senses again, he learns that Jefuty's parents have been killed, leaving her and her brother Kamon to live their aunt Vena. Mendo also lost his parents, who were civilian technicians working in Coalition territory, and were beaten to death by rioters near the start of the war while Mendo watched from an evacuation boat. When Mendo shares their story with Jefuty, she asks if Mendo wants to take revenge like her.
Jefuty mentions that her parents were killed with their refugees convoy when Antarctican attack helicopters dropped bombq while she was away two months prior, and Mendo realizes he was responsible for the attack. Shaken in his conviction that he should remain uninvolved as a battlefield reporter, he decides to repent by getting Jefuty to Antarctica and calls a favor from his sister Susan. A few days later, Jefuty tells Mendo that she stole a gun and bullets from the Antarctican army to take revenge. Mendo first considers dissuading her like his foster father Colonel Mitas did to him after the death of his parents, but empathizes with her rage and instead decides to help her.
Jefuty and Mendo plan the assault on the local garrison and enter the Antarctican camp two weeks later, hiding the dismantled gun in Jefuty's bread basket. Despite being deathly afraid, Jefuty refuses to back down and they use a wooded hill and the sounds of the nearby airstrip as a concealed position. Jefuty shoots and kills one of the soldiers from a distance, and they slip away in the chaos as the camp tries to respond to the unknown attackers. The incident is chalked up as an isolated guerilla attack. After her first kill, Jefuty cuts her hair and kills three other soldiers and wounds another one over the next two months. The attacks are interrupted by the arrival of Major Charles, tasked with tracking down the guerilla. Charles is held as a war hero but also put on the backline due to his mistreatment of populations in occupied territory. With only one week left before the trip to Antarctica, Jefuty refuses to leave before she used her last bullet, despite the increased military security.
Mendo confesses that he was the one who asked the attack helicopter to strike at random to take pictures, accidentally hitting the refugees hidden by fog and killing Jefuty's parents. He asks Jefuty to use the last bullet on him so she can complete her vengeance, but she refuses to. Shortly after, Mendo is informed that a high-ranking officer will be visiting the town two days before they leave for Antarctica, and they decide to make him their last target. Intending to strike during the officer's speech to the town, Jefuty and Mendo take position in the bell tower, realizing too late that they won't have an escape route. After taking the shot, Jefuty hides the rifle in a crack in a wall and kisses Mendo when the soldiers enter, convincing them that they were only two lovers who had hidden away for a private moment.
That night, Charles orders the soldiers to pull the town people out of bed and assemble them at the town square, before killing them one by one until the murderers come forward. Mendo tries to confront the Major, who reveals that he knows about the refugees incident Mendo caused, and Jefuty understands that he was also involved in the death of her parents. When Charles is about to kill Kamon, Jefuty confesses and is taken away by Charles' soldiers. Charles later explains to Mendo that he was in command of the attack helicopter and accessed to Mendo's request to open fire the day they accidentally killed the refugees. Charles offers that by sacrificing Jefuty, they will eliminate the last survivor and won't be found culprits of the incident. Mendo then reveals he has recorded and transmitted their conversation to his agency, and threatens to leak the incident and ruin the Major's career unless he releases Jefuty.
The next day, Mendo and Jefuty are about to enter the Red Cross helicopter that will take them to Berlin when Jefuty steals a gun from a guard and kills the Major before the guards retaliate, killing her. With her last breath, she kisses Mendo and says she's glad to have finally avenged her parents. Five years later, Mendo visits Jefuty's grave and wonders if she would still have gone on a rampage without his help.
Development history
MICA's director and scenarist Yuzhong first shared his work on a visual novel project in April 2008 in a series of posts on Sina Blog, showing in-progress artworks, the title “Epiphyllum~昙花” with the tagline “A girl who performs Siting[sic] Quartet No.14 in D Minor, D.810 “Death and the Maiden” ,but[sic] only by herself forever” and an expected release date of February 2009 for ComiCon 4. The cover and CD soundtrack were announced in a 19 June 2008 post. A 22 December 2008 post jokingly announced PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game with a cover art closer to the final release. A 14 May 2009 post revealed the final title and cover as well as the soundtrack, titled Withered. Mail reservations were open and 400 copies of each were made for ComiCup 4 on 28 May 2009 and ComiCon 4 on 7 June 2009 (despite the copyright on the cover stating 2008). While no concrete figures are known, Yuzhong said he was satisfied with the sales in a 10 June 2009 post.
In a 2 June 2009 post, Yuzhong explained that someone at ComiCup 4 motivated him to create a full-fledged strategy game.[1] In the following years, MICA and Yuzhong would produce the Guns&Girls doujin series and work on a sequel and an HD remaster for Bakehouse, which eventually led to the release of Codename: Bakery Girl in 2013. The new game reuses Mendo and Jefuty's names as well as details such as Jefuty using a bolt-action rifle, Mendo's foster father being a Colonel, a Major as an antagonist and a sniping sequence from a bell tower, but the two stories are otherwise completely different.
A scene inspired by the infiltration of the Antarctican camp plays in Act 8-4E of Girls' Frontline. A scene in Reverse Collapse: Code Name Bakery is inspired by the cover of the “Epiphyllum” prototype: the character is named Cloud and is Jefuty and Mendo's daughter in a doomed future.[2]
Credits
The names of some of the staff are provided in English in the opening credits.
- Producer: Yuzhong (羽中)
- Story: Hannibal
- Key Illustration: Yuzhong
- Animation: Hannibal, spend6A
- Programming: Congyun ((幽蓝) 从云)
- Music: 乐痕, volcksonia, 大葱, komine
- Voice acting: 水树碎, Michael.bao, Yuzhong
- Theme Song: 久远~Withered
- Composer/Arrangement: 乐痕
- Lyrics: komine
- Vocals: 水树碎
- Insert Song: 赞美诗
- Composer & Vocals: 水树碎
- Arrangement: 乐痕
- Contributing artists: 噶哦, 霊の影, xxzshlg, ideolo, 静默の風鈴, 傲雪银弓, jefuty, 黑猫的亡灵
- Post Production: 东吴流水, 静默の風鈴, Michael.bao
- Special Thanks: 澄空工房, 同人游戏制作联盟 (CAC), VIVA-TEAM, RG制作组, 幽蓝Blue Serene
Gallery
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Promotional artwork. -
Promotional screenshots. -
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Non-final cover using the Epiphyllum title. -
Reverse Collapse: Code Name Bakery scene inspired by the “Epiphyllum” prototype.
External links
- Full playthrough (CN)
- Full playthrough (Fan-translation)
- Fan-translation in text
- Playable translation
References
- ↑ Archive of Yuzhong's Sina blog
- ↑ Reverse Collapse: Code Name Bakery, Chapter 5, Act 1
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