A Panel Shaped Screen is a monthly column where Giada Zavarise explores how comics and videogames inspire each other. This month, Giada examines the differences between cult horror visual novel Song Of Saya and its American comic adaptation.
Seeing Song Of Saya (Saya no Uta) featured on Steam is like finding a dead body on the shore.
It’s a terrific visual novel, this one, but one always recommended in whispers. A horror love story festooned in blood and gore, and with a list of content warnings longer than my games backlog. It can be completed in a single sitting, but will haunt you for years. Its presence on a mainstream storefront feels viscerally wrong, like something dark and rotten that should not have been brought to light.
And yet, this is not the first time Song Of Saya got introduced to a bigger audience. Because a decade ago, it got an American comic adaptation.