Cannot find some files when playing game with Japanese encoding from zip

[Kasgn]

Game: 虚ろいの都
https://www.vector.co.jp/soft/win95/game/se345955.html

Tested on Windows 10 with newest nightly build 1984 from August 3rd.

When playing the game 虚ろいの都 from a folder, everything loads and displays correctly, regardless of whether encoding is set to 932 or not.

But when you store the game files into a zip, two things can happen, depending on the encoding:

• The game loads the images correctly, but displays garbled text, when the encoding is not set:

• The game shows the text in Japanese correctly, but is unable to load some files, e.g. images like the textbox when talking to NPCs, when [EasyRPG] encoding=932 is added to rpg_rt.ini:

Can be seen right at the beginning when you start a new game.

I thought it's related to unique symbols or mixed filenames that have both English and Japanese strings.
But then again a lot of Japanese games use that, and other games I played and tested don't seem to have this issue.

[Kasgn]

Update:

Tested on Windows 10 and PS Vita.

This bug only occurs when you delete the RPG_RT.exe while packing the zip.

Since I often play on non-windows platforms on the go, I assumed I wouldn't need it.
In an attempt to save some space, I deleted the exe while packing.
Most Japanese games do work fine without the exe, but looks like easyrpg uses it here for something.
You still need to set the encoding manually though, otherwise the text won't show correctly.

Interestingly, the game plays fine without the exe and even without setting the encoding when run from a folder.
But it won't load the images correctly when zipped without the exe.
Seems like a bug(?) in the code that handles zip archives.