Siren 2 - TV Tropes

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Siren 2 is a PlayStation 2 game released worldwide in 2006, except for North America. It's a sequel to Siren 1, but the stories don't directly link with one another.

In the year 2005, a blind romance author called Shu Mikami returns to his hometown of Yamijima Island, in the hope of recovering his traumatic childhood memories from there. Nearly thirty years ago, in the year 1976, records show the island was struck by a mysterious phenomeon that cut off its electricity supply from the rest of Japan, and was then hit by a sudden tsunami that wiped out the island's town and villagers.

Shu is joined by a cast of characters who are riding on the same boat, including: occult magazine journalist Mamoru Itsuki (looking to investigate the folklore of Yamijima for a story); Ikuko Kifune (a teenage dock worker); Soji Abe (an ordinary guy on the run after being falsely accused of murdering his flatmate); and Akiko Kiyota (a psychic who guided Soji to Yamijima for answers).

As the boat approaches the island, it is suddenly swept up in a tsunami of blood-red water, and the cast find themselves scattered on the island. Along with a group of JGSDF soldiers (whose helicopter is caught in the tsunami and forced to make an emergency landing) and some Yamijima residents, the cast struggle for survival and answers against the zombie-like Shibuto creatures that slowly emerge to overtake the island.

Much like the first game, the central gameplay gimmick is "sightjacking", where playable characters can tune into the point-of-view of the enemies roaming the area, and use this knowledge to gather information and avoid them. Siren 2 develops this idea further by allowing certain characters to influence or control the creatures they sightjack: for example, the blind Shu needs to sightjack his seeing-eye dog Tsukasa to navigate levels.

A movie adaptation, known as Siren, was released on February 9, 2006 to coincide with the game's Japanese release.

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Siren 2 provides examples of:

• 100% Completion:
  • Getting 99 Archive items unlocks a video showcasing what happened to Soji after the events of the game. This also unlocks the final Archive item.
  • Completing all time trials on any difficulty unlocks a video which shows what caused the explosion near the end of the game. Soji caused it when he throw an almost-finished cigarette into the toilet. Turns out that there was a build-up of methane, which caught fire and destroyed the mines and the tower.
  • Completing all objectives in the regular levels unlocks the secret level "Annihilation", where you must keep killing enemies within a time limit. If you did this on Hard difficulty, you'll unlock a second secret level, "Memento", where you play as the Shibito Nikitaka.
• Alternate Universe: After Mother is destroyed, all the surviving protagonists are sent to a version of their world where she never existed, save for Yorito Nagai who ends up in a completely different universe where the Yamibito are normal and humans are the dangerous monsters - or at least that's how they see it, considering the sight drives him to immediately go on a killing spree.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The second game goes even further to offer more helpful features to alleviate the intense difficulty of the first game, while still making it reasonably challenging:
  • A pulsating sound will occur whenever an enemy is nearby, giving the player an opportunity to hide and plan ahead.
  • Upon collecting a Secondary Objective Key or Archive Item, they will not disappear from your inventory if you die.
  • The Stage Select feature, which had to be unlocked after completing a certain amount of levels in the first game, is available right away.
• Bittersweet Ending: The threats of Mother and Otoshigo are ended and the island is purified - but only four characters make it out. Ikuko and Mamoru make it out alive, back in the real world and Yorito is stuck in the land of the Yamibito - only he doesn't take it as well as Suda did in the first game, and the poor man loses his mind at the sight of it. Abe also manages to live in the Golden Ending, and since the new timeline results in the girl he was accused of murdering never being born in the first place, he gets his own happy ending as well.
• Bolivian Army Ending: At the end of the game, Private Yorito Nagai is swept into what seems to be an alternate dimension populated entirely by Yamibito. The sight drives him insane, and he starts shooting wildly as we fade to credits.
• Bottomless Magazines: As Ichiko Yagura is taken over by Otoshigo, she has periods of murderous insanity, wherein she (somehow) gets a machine pistol with infinite ammo. Yorito Nagai also gets a machine gun with infinite ammo for the battle against Otoshigo. Shibito also have reserve infinite ammunition for any guns they have as in the first game, which considering you can actually drop and replace your own weapon(s) allows for a very slow and very dangerous manner in which to replenish your own ammo.
• Cherry Tapping: Most of the cast get a shove move when trying to attack without a weapon; this only does "stun" damage unless you manage to shove an enemy off a high-enough ledge. However, Misawa and Yorito can attack Shibito with a punch-punch-kick melee combo, and Soji can do a lightly damaging kick, both of which are technically capable of killing Shibito/Yamibito; that said, the low damage of these attacks and the fact these characters always start with weapons means they rarely see use.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Takeaki Misawa was the soldier who was part of a JGSDF SAR team that responded to the Hanuda disaster after the events of Siren and was the one to rescue Harumi Yomoda.
  • Shu Mikami's father Ryuhei was an acquaintance of Tamon Takeuchi's father, Omito.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Yorito Nagai kills Otoshigo by weakening it with bullets, causing it to crash into a fuel tank, then setting it ablaze by hitting it with an electric lightbulb attached to a generator. Mamoru, Ikuko, and Kanae (formerly Akiko) arm themselves with the YamiNaki shards to fight Mother. Kanae stabs herself, weakening Mother through their connection, and Ikuko uses her powers to freeze Mother, allowing Mamoru to strike, sending her to the ground, where Ikuko can hit her. Finally, Mamoru lands the finishing blow, and the threat of Mother is gone forever.
• The End... Or Is It?: At the end of Siren 2, Ikuko and Mamoru seem to have been shunted to a world free of Mother's influence...but then Ikuko shields her eyes from the light, just like one of Mother's avatars would, as the music turns somewhat menacing and a slight hint of an evil smile starts to creep onto her face.
• Enemy Civil War: The Yamibito and Shibito will choose to attack each other before attacking the characters later on in the game.
• Fairytale Motifs: Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid plays a significant role in the game.
• Improbable Weapon User: Over the course of the game, Mamoru Itsuki, Ikuko Kifune, and Akiko Kiyota all pick up mysterious fossils known as YamiNaki or Annuaki shards. These appear to be fragments of the ancestor god of Mother and Otoshigo, and in the second battle, they actually transform to resemble glowing swords. Also, at one point while playing as Ichiko, you can kill a Shibito and grab the item he was holding, a trophy about half Ichiko's height, which doubles as an Archive Item and a melee weapon.
• Invincible Minor Minion: The corpses of the Shibito and Yamibito are simply possessed by new Shiryo or Yamirei within moments, which apparently heals the body. Explained by the island's belief that if corpses aren't staked with Mekkojou branches, they will be unable to go to Heaven and their bodies will be possessed by evil spirits.
• Kryptonite-Proof Suit:
  • The "doves" Mother sends out are modeled off the anatomy of a human being (Shu's drowned mother, whose corpse into Mother's dimension), and so possess a degree of resistance to sunlight that she and her Yamirei lack. This wears off after extensive time in the sunlight however, even if the dove tries to stay in the shade.
  • Otoshigo's Shiryo die upon exposure to bright light (such as a powerful flashlight), but by possessing corpses they create Yamibito, who are more resistant, only being stunned by light exposure.
• Market-Based Title: Outside Asia, the game is known as Forbidden Siren 2.
• Not Quite the Right Thing: Yorito Nagai sees Takeaki Misawa, his JGSDF superior (who has been acting increasingly unstable) holding Ichiko Yagura at gunpoint. So he shoots him in the back. This comes back to bite him twofold.
• Ret-Gone: Played with. The defeat of Mother shunts all those in her presence into an alternate world free of her influence. This has an unexpected benefit for Soji Abe, when the woman he's accused of murdering never existed.
• Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: During the few levels where the Shibito aren't outright replaced by the Yamibito, the two will typically attack each other before they go after the player. Additionally, Ikuko can temporarily possess any enemy through sightjacking and take out other enemies with them.
• Sinister Geometry: The Yamibito apparently grow shrouds from their bodies that they use to cover up a building's windows and other places where light might get in.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Siren 2 explores this with both the Shibito and the Yamibito. In Yorito Nagai's ending, he ends up trapped in a world full of Yamibito. This causes him to snap and fire at all the Yamibito around him in blind rage. However, the Yamibito of this world were just normal people living their everyday lives. An archive entry, a picture diary drawn by a Yamibito child, revealed that he was just as alien and terrifying to them as they were to him. There's also a secret mission where the JGSDF helicopter pilot Nitaka Ichifuji, who turned into a Shibito, helps a fellow Shibito recover a steam iron left by a loved one.