HiraHira Hihiru: It’s Setoguchi

So I finished Hihiru, it’s something that was written by Setoguchi and you could really tell. You probably heard of him through Swan Song more than anything else but I know him from Kira Kira. I don’t think he was ever credited in a vn that didn’t use the nvl format, and really that’s one of his strengths. I don’t think the adv format would work for him, sometimes what’s being put down is long-winded but it’s always cohesive and you know where he’s coming from. The only one that felt off so far was that fandisk for Kira Kira that I still didn’t finish, I wasn’t really feeling it and then I saw that he apparently only did the scenario draft. Anyways, generally what you get from him is a spectrum of fun, somber or stoicism on human nature.

And that’s basically what revolves around Hihiru. It’s about this disease that you can contract where you’re medically dead for a period of time and come back to life. The damage done to the person depends on how long it took for them to come back. It can’t be cured, but there’s medication to slow down the detriments it brings along. Mainly loss of brain function alongside your skin constantly degrading to the point you look like a zombie. There’s medication for it to severely slow down the process to the point they could live a normal life but the mental aspect can fuck with the routine. Because it’s basically dementia with super lupus. They have delusions, they can think something is conspiring against them or that the medication is poison and so on. So either you come back kind of ok and deal with the symptoms with medication, or you’re super fucked and become a husk of a human being.

Then comes along that some don’t want to take the medication at all, others don’t have the money to take care of these people because they’re basically outcasts and lose their jobs. And there’s others that find that the disease isn’t going to be solved with medicine and it’s more of a religious curse type thing. It used to be that the ones that were more heavily afflicted were just pushed into their own type of prison cells. Eventually there was a law made that makes it so a room has to be made inside their caretakers home and they just stay in there. And now there’s some hospitals that take care of them with the limited space that they have. It’s more like a retirement home combo’d with a psychiatric hospital. Consider it like a hospice for these people.

There’s two plots that you go back and forth. If you ever read Sorcery Jokers, it’s something like that. So there’s one plot with this doctor named Masamitsu, and the other is with Takeo who’s a student living with some of his dad’s friend and his family. Masamitsu was a lot more interesting and the time just flew by. He’s a doctor in one of those hospitals, he gets to talk with different patients. He eventually gets tasked to go around the country to take notes on these homecare cases to basically make a point that they’re insufficient to handle this disease and the government has to step it up with making more hospitals and some in-between normal life and hospital care. The whole basis is that the Hihirus aren’t really treated as humans in the public eye. And it’s understandable to them considering for the longest time, the people thought it was more of a curse and that it can even be contagious. Masamitsu is kind of a weirdo but that’s what makes him work, he has a different mindset that works for his occupation but the general populace would see him as a pretty weird guy.

Takeo does have his own plot with the Hihiru but it’s a lot more boring considering he’s just a student that’s studying law. His stuff is more spoilers so that’ll be in the spoiler section but overall his was fine. Like there’s parts that are interesting, especially when it concerns his friend and his issue with a specific Hihiru but overall you could have him removed and a lot of the context would still be around. Maybe it’s a more human approach and how all of this is affecting normal families but overall kind of whatever considering parts of his plot are just more in-depth sections of the families Masamitsu meets.

There’s a couple of choices but overall I think maybe only three mattered. There’s a specific one near the beginning where you can give this poor family some money or not because they are trying their best to support their Hihiru son but they’re all in a recession and they’re fucked. And the choice entails more if he’s impulsive with his emotions and really cares about anything infront of him, or he’s impartial and he’s all about treating his patients. This does change some dialogue in the upcoming chapters but after the next major choice, it doesn’t seem to change anything at all.

Overall:

Overall it was a pretty good time. It’s not a vn for everyone, but Setoguchi isn’t going to work for everyone anyway. This is closer to normal literature than an actual vn and I’m all for it. Then again, I have fun reading traditional books anyway. I think it’ll still work for most people that’re into vns for the plot instead of solely for the haha quirky/cute girls and hscenes. I’d give it around an 8 that’s closer to a 9. It would’ve been a 9 if it was all about Masamitsu. Most of it is pretty concise and you stay for the writing. It’s not breathtaking, there’s no impact spikes, it’s just well written throughout.

Spoilers:

There isn’t much I’ll be spoiling this time around. I mentioned choices beforehand, and I think Takeo has more choices overall. I think he has three bad endings overall but there’s one that I didn’t try so either that could lead to the same bad ending or you can salvage it to the good ending. Basically you need your friend to help you out and also not run away when shit hits the fan. Either way, Takeo’s plot hits home depending on where you are in life but the thing is Masamitsu hits the same strides. So it’s another angle of looking at the subject but it’s also not needed.

There was this whole thing about him studying law so I assumed somebody in his group was going to become a Hihiru and then this job crosses paths with Masamitsu to speed up the process of getting shit down. They do cross paths, but it was just a doctor, there’s no grandiose setup for it. And honestly that works, the plot stays realistic, this is just some random normal kid.

There’s a part where Masamitsu contracts the disease and if it wasn’t Setoguchi writing it, you’d assume he’d make some huge breakthrough to further advance the ways they’re treating their patients. But nothing happens, he just keeps on doing his job, he does appreciate the chance it gave to expand his worldview on the matter but otherwise the status quo stayed the same. And I was all for that, other vns handle these issues the same but it’s somewhat on the rare side.

The thing that made me think more often was Masamitsu’s ending. They talked about how his reports helped out his superior to get the government to actually look at what’s going around and that they made more hospitals. But the abolition of the homecare system took another 30 years. It gave me some Hamilton vibes. But it could be about two things, but it’s probably about both. At first you can say like, hey Masamitsu’s mind is still going strong 30 years later. But really it’s shitting on the government and how something that was a problem was explained and given steps to correct it still takes forever to get any traction. Or the time lapse could be hinting that Takeo had a role in getting shit done. Basically it’d take awhile for him to be of any worthwhile status and he might’ve travelled with Haruko.