This is fourth of ten essays contained within the second issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, a collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. We will be posting a new essay every Friday from now until September, but if you would like to read all the essays early and support the creation of more high-quality writing about adult games the full anthology is available for purchase on Itch! Anthology logo by @pillowkisser!
by @Eithi
CONTENT WARNING: THIS ESSAY CONTAINS DISCUSSION OF NON-CONSENSUAL SEX ACTS.
What Is The Rance Series?
The Rance series is a long-running series of erotic Japanese role-playing games developed by Aliceso from 1989 to 2018 spanning 13-ish games. They star its titular character, the brutish hero Rance and his faithful slave Sill Plain as they venture out in the Continent. While the earlier games feature more small-scale misadventures in a single town or village, they quickly escalate into large-scale conflicts involving the larger powers that control entire kingdoms and wars between the human powers and the monsters who rule the other side of the Continent. Throughout the games, Rance and Sill meet the people who inhabit the world from all sorts of social classes and kingdoms, learn about their situations, and usually get involved in the conflicts that arise-be it by Rance’s own actions or the actions of others.
However, what Rance wants isn’t really to help others or to fight for justice; he’s simply in it for the women. Throughout the games, Rance has many sexual encounters with the various women he meets, often in extremely non-consensual contexts, and forms friendly relationships with some of them as they become recurring characters. Yet Rance’s main interaction with sex (usually) involves rape, and it’s an aspect of his character that’s remarked upon throughout the games as he meets new people.
This element is understandably something that will turn people off from the series. It’s the main barrier for people who’re uncomfortable with rape being depicted in media even if the setting, gameplay, and designs are appealing on the outside. I am not trying to convert people who don’t like those elements wholesale into the series. Rather, I think the Rance series has a lot of interesting elements that it explores through this framework and I personally find those elements interesting, especially as it relates to how the characters form relationships where consent is dubious or non-existent.
To do this, I want to first establish some basic ideas relating to how the series operates, as I believe it’s very important to get some elements clear for people who haven’t heard of the series or only know about it through its reputation on the internet.
How Does The Rance Series Approach Sex?
Rance is a character who engages in sex in a non-consensual manner. He’s very selfish and egotistical, believing that he is the supreme, most handsome and strongest man in the entire world and all the women in the world belong to him by proxy, and he exerts this self-perceived power through sex. However, something that’s extremely clear in his character is that his belief that women belong to him does not come from an active viewpoint of misogyny nor is it any sort of chauvinistic belief; rather he simply views himself as a man who doesn’t have anything to prove to others and boasts about it constantly. He gets into fights and misadventures because other men annoy and repulse him and constantly tries to prove how much of a cool guy he is to everyone around him.
He is a little kid who thinks he’s hot stuff, and the games are about how this manchild gets into very serious situations with the same attitude of that of an elementary school kid who wants to show everyone just how cool he is.
I think it’s very important to get this conceptualization of the character clear, as a lot of people will see Rance as a character who rapes and think of him as similar to other characters who sexually assault women in mainstream media. While the games never get condescending about how Rance’s actions are not really all that heroic or virtuous, it lets the players understand how his conception of sexual relationships doesn’t really come from the act of demeaning or dehumanizing the women he meets; he just doesn’t understand how to engage with sex in a way that always involves the consent of the other party.
I think this is exemplified a lot through the agency of the women in the series itself. While there’s always one or two sex scenes involving them per game, the writing never stops to treat them as objects for the sake of Rance’s sex. The dynamics of non-consent that every character explores, as well as their own relationship with Rance and how they feel about him personally, are always at the forefront of the way the games treat sex. Outside of the sex
scenes, every woman has her own degree of agency as they require it, and during the sex they aren’t stripped of it for the sake of the sex scenes themselves. This makes them a lot more impactful and memorable because you end up forming an attachment to the girls as they do really cool stuff and their own arcs develop throughout the years.
This element, and the games’ relationship with sexual assault and non- consent is put into the forefront in Rance VI, where main writer Tori examines how Rance treats sex and how the women he has it with explore their own feelings throughout the game.
Rance VI And Sengoku Rance; Two Sides, Different Coins
Rance VI is set in the midst of a revolution within the magical kingdom of Zeth. This revolution goes through a lot of trouble but is mainly spearheaded by Urza Pranaice, a very charismatic fighter who suffered an injury and was left temporarily wheelchair-bound by it. Her first sexual encounter with Rance is on the same night she meets him, when he breaks into her room with all the seriousness of Dennis the Menace and fingers her in her sleep.
Urza doesn’t stop him however, and she lets herself be visited by Rance every night from then on after.
Urza is characterized at this stage of the story by a passivity induced from her trauma when her parents died in front of her. When we get to her sex scenes they’re punctuated by her internal dialog. Urza’s self-loathing and antipathy are prevalent throughout her dialog whenever she displays any sort of weakness, and they don't frame Rance’s actions as gallant or heroic despite her wishing that he did save her from her pain. She embraces Rance’s sex
because it lets her place her responsibility as leader on him; and he uses this newfound power to do more or less whatever he wants. However, after a certain incident involving her father figure, Urza is able to come to terms with her responsibility and feelings and rises up to the occasion as the Monster Army invades Zeth.
While female characters in the Rance series regaining their agency isn’t particularly new, Urza’s relationship with Rance and how it conflicts with her wants and the responsibility she bears is. Through this non-consensual sexual relationship Urza finds an escape from the responsibility she has to bear, and by rejecting that confort she is able to regain the agency she lost. However, I think that a very interesting element within Urza’s character is
that she never casts Rance off for doing what he did to her; because she acknowledges that she only gained a grasp of her own agency after trying to find an escape from it, and this becomes the core of her relationship with Rance and is able to become a better person through those experiences. Urza gains respect for Rance as a fighter and Rance is happy that Urza was able to grow past her weakness and become a better person.
Rance as a character becomes a very interesting figure to analyze through this to me because the writing takes its time to explore his own relationship with sex through both the actual act of sex itself and the encounters he has with people he refuses to have sex with. With the former you can see the emotional vulnerability of the women he comes across through the usage of internal dialog and narration, as well as Rance’s own conception of what sex is and should, while with the latter you can see the limits over what he deems acceptable.
This push and pull over Rance’s idea of sex is more prevalent in Sengoku Rance, as his feelings over the people closest to him are explored a lot more deeply with the character of Kouhime.
Sengoku Rance deals with its main heroine a little bit differently. Kouhime is a girl who’s below Rance’s personal age range, so we see a shift in his atttude towards her as he bonds with her and the Oda clan he takes command of. While other games explore Rance’s relationship with kids in pretty interesting ways themselves - Rance VI having a really interesting sequence involving him killing the leaders of a prostitution ring - Kouhime being so prevalent as a main heroine leads him to treat her more like a little sister than a future woman-to-fuck (though he jokes about it to himself throughout.) Sengoku takes its time to depict really quiet and heartfelt scenes where Kouhime’s innocence and determination are tested when she goes through trial after trial as the Monster Army invades her country and she has to deal with very tragic circumstances.
Kouhime then becomes the core of the emotional moments in Sengoku’s canon route. You see this little girl suffer loss and Rance helps her in a very real display of emotional vulnerability that’s not seen in any of the previous games. It reinforces the writing as capable and effective at creating characters whose suffering and vulnerability don’t just go away as the plot demands them, and lets them rise to the occasion while Rance becomes their rock to cling on to. Through this, Kouhime exemplifies the other side of the series’ writing; while the framing of Rance’s relationships with women is almost always framed through the sex he wants to have with them, we see elements of Rance’s own multifacetedness as the games explore the bounds of his character through the contexts of other characters.
Conclusion (Or, How Rance Won Me Over)
It’s through these relations and the manner in which the heroines interact with sex that I think the Rance series is at its best with regards to its sexual content. The playfulness of Rance’s scenes, when contrasted with how horrific the sexual assault scenes are with characters that aren’t Rance, make for an interesting juxtaposition that elevates the scenes that are clearly meant to be enjoyable. Throughout my journey playing the games I felt like I was learning more about myself in a way I didn’t really understand before. The witty writing and the incredible art made those sex scenes fun to read and genuinely hot to invest myself in in a way I didn’t really understand before, and opened me up to learn about myself better through the games as a vehicle.
It may sound a little bit silly, but I think that playing through the Rance games made me understand my own personal kinks and interests in a way that didn’t make me feel immediately ashamed of it and let me connect with other friends who shared those feelings as well. And that’s something I look fondly upon whenever I see that brutish hero go out and save the world.
Hey everyone! My name is Eithi and I'm a Mexican writer who is incredibly passionate about games, visual novels and their adult counterparts. My main interests lie in the world of Japanese visual novels and erotic ~otaku~ fiction and helping people understand the wonderful and awesome worlds that these writers leave for us. Big or niche, I love them all and want to write about them so much my head explodes from joy. You can find me on Twitter as misha_seraph or on Cohost as Eithi if you'd like to see more of my writing. I'm very happy with the opportunity I've been given here at the AAA and I look forward to sharing more all of you in the future!