So I finished Shinjuku Somei recently and there’s iffy parts all around but I still enjoyed it. It’s written by Kataoka, he wrote a decent bit but the classics over here is Narcissu and Winter Polaris. I talked about Winter Polaris before and how I really liked it but Soumei isn’t like Winter Polaris or Narcissu. It’s closer to Christmas Tina in the sense that it’d be stupidly easy to adapt it to an anime.
I read Christmas Tina awhile back and I was considering talking about that one while I’m already here but I decided against it. It’s a lot of I liked x but y was really annoying and repetitive type of thing. The main aspect was the lack of proper communication, there’s some social class issues along the way but it was mainly about these two being frustrated that they convey their points across and both thinking the other is being an asshole. I think I remember someone saying that it was really well received for Chinese readers and apparently that’s the case with how they advertised it on Steam.
Shinjuku Somei
Anyways, Shinjuku Somei is about an immortal guy named Torao that made a deal with a spirit when he was going to kick the bucket. He doesn’t understand the rules behind it and now has a ghost buddy named Rinne. She has no memories so they’re basically going around trying to figure out what’s what. The problem is the town is s shithole and the second is now he can’t leave the town either.
It’s a town where you’re basically screwed if you have to live there. It’s a melting plot of most crime syndicates and while it’s in Japan, they don’t really consider it part of their country. Death is a commonplace event to the point that the cops don’t even care unless they have life insurance. And that’s because life insurance fraud is the new big payout for all of the mafias around this town. The insurance fraud is a reoccurring theme. But really it’s more that the syndicates find that as a not risky way to gain massive profit.
It’s a vn with multiple perspective bouncing around. At times you’re following an agent, other times a syndicate leader and there’s quite a couple of them but there’s no need to talk about them all here. Mainly you’re going through Torao’s perspective. He runs the crematory and can see if it was part of an insurance fraud scheme or not. This makes all the big players fucking mad because they’re losing a lot of their margins so they try to off him every so often because of it. So the whole plot is a merry go around of the organizations, Torao trying to figure out the immortality bit and the daily life of characters that you meet along the way.
It’s like a classic action movie; it’s a fun time but it’s not something you go back and think about. It’s kind of like a rose gun days without the overflowing charisma from it. Part of that could be from the localization, it’s not great and especially not at the start. But also the main character doesn’t fit Leo’s shoes anyway. To be fair, this is also like a 10 hour vn compared to maybe around 20 to 25 hours if we’re just talking about the first half of Rose Gun Days.
It’s kind of on the pricy side without the sale or having already owned Christmas Tina for the extra discount. Though technically you’re getting a decent bit more art out of it and there’s one or two voice actors that are pretty popular. There’s a couple of times where people talk in english and that was hilarious. Most of everything is in japanese but there’s some chinese here and there. There were mentions of Koreans, Russians and Brazilians and a couple of others but sadly none of them show up. Also, everybody this time around actually had pretty good mics compared to Christmas Tina where Jing would peak every time he started yelling.
Overall
Overall it’s a fun time. It’s more of an easier ride compared to some of Kataoka’s other works but it’s also something that can attract a wider audience. The translation is kind of stilted at times but that’s generally when Torao is around, but that’s also kind of his character outside of teasing Rinne. A lot of the added characters throughout the plot is kind of shallow. You don’t really go in-depth with almost any of them and that’s kind of a shame. You could question if any of them are even necessary but overall the setting is the town itself and how what we value is dependent on the culture on a broad sense. Whilst also showing the common trope of weighing down a scale and how much you can sacrifice for what deem important.
I don’t think even a perfect localization would make it into a 10, it purposefully kept itself lighthearted compared to what it needed to be for some of the ideas it tried to portray. Technically they would have to hammer down and give maybe half more content to cement what it was going for if they also wanted to keep the sections that provide levity for its breathing room. I’d give it like a higher 7 or maybe even an 8 just from how I enjoyed and how I didn’t feel like I had to power through sections. But in terms of writing and how it presented what it was going for, then it’s around a 6.
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