Katawa Shoujo has some really interesting characters and stories that introduce and develop each character really well. A few months back I embarked on going through the characters I liked, but never actually finished it. I have finished three of the five routes and with that want to explore some themes I've found going though them.
The next few posts will be mainly focused on Katawa Shoujo and the three girls I've finished their routes to. Just as a heads up, there will be spoilers and the current one will be Emi spoilers.
At first glace Emi seem like the friendly track women, that gets along with everyone. Take a walk down the path of Emi and be welcomed by the wonderful bumps and turns as you try to get to the end.
When we get into the nitty-gritty of what is Emi's path I find that the overall theme for her is deception. Emi has a way of hiding the things that are bothering her and pretending that everything is fine. It all stems from her lack of trust in people, which disables her from getting close to people despite her popularity in Yamaku.
The first signs of Emi trying to deceive Hisao was something small, which is pretty bad, she was experiencing pain in her leg and didn't want Hisao or the school nurse to know. Her determination to run got the best of her and she ended up with an infection, which resulted in her not being able to run for a couple of weeks.
It is a frustrating characteristic in a person because you can clearly see something is up, but they will not budge a little in actually telling the details. This is a whole goal of Katawa Shoujo as a whole, to get close to a girl, and Emi made it difficult and even pushed Hisao away when he was just curious about what was bothering her.
That frustration was reduced when we actually found out why Emi was so stubborn when it came to not telling things about herself, which is because the same car accident she lost her legs in, she also lost her father. She doesn't want anyone close because she was afraid of losing them as well, which is understandable.
This was the main thing that Hisao and Emi needed to work though to get the good ending. As a result, this can be considered the overarching theme of Emi's route and depending on how you deal with it, you can get either get the good or bad ending.