Stella of the End: Quickie Review

So I finished Stella and it’s going to be a short one considering the title itself is short and it’s not like it’s inventing anything new.It’s fine, it has its strong moments but it takes a lot of leadup to make it work and it can be pretty annoying at times.

So the main cast just consists of Jude and Phia. Phia is some newtech android that wants to be human and Jude’s the guy that took the job to get her to his employer. Think of it kind of like the Transporter movie but it’s actually about transporting this time around. So it’s basically just going from place to place, she keeps developing throughout the number of crises that happen on the way. And that’s basically it, the first half was a drag and sometimes even annoying but it eventually became pretty fun at the latter half.

The best way to explain it is by comparing it to that Walking Dead game from like a decade ago. Almost everybody and their mom either played or watched a playthrough on youtube. At first my mind was comparing Phia to a fusion of Clementine and fucking Kenny Jr, or Ducky. I don’t think I ever met anyone that liked Ducky, but he’s just a naïve little kid that was also annoying because he didn’t think before doing shit. Which some kids naturally do. And that’s kind of Phia, she has no skills and her naivety keeps putting them in danger. But really, she’s more like Ben. She’s just good-hearted but fucks up more often than not. Unlike Ben, she eventually grows out of it and the story naturally becomes better because it stops being like an escort mission. Consider it like she upgraded from being an RE4 Ashley to a The Last of Us 1 Ellie where she didn’t suck yet.

I’d consider this more of a starter vn like the other two key vns: Harmonia and Planetarian. Each one kind of has their own strengths and downfalls. Harmonia’s ending makes sense but is lackluster. Planetarian needed more time to bake while Stella has a rough time in the 20% to 50% section of the run. I’m giving this a 7 but I’m pretty sure most people would put it as an 8 just due to the ending. I don’t fault them, it’s the last experience that’s ingrained to you so it makes sense. Overall the content is kind of simple in the sense that there’s not much to think about. The setting itself and the reveals are fun but the characters themselves are straightforward and there’s not much in there to second-guess yourself. What you see is kind of what you get. And that’s pretty much what I expect from the writer, Romeo. You’re either amazed on how he could pull off some of these titles or you’re just cruising along and having a fun time.

Spoilers:

There’s not much to talk about it terms of spoilers. The parts where I was talking about how when she’s annoying is when Jude keeps telling her that specific places and people are dangerous. And she doesn’t listen like a normal kid wouldn’t. So she sees this kid up above and found an entrance and ran after her. Jude caught up in time and the girl wasn’t anywhere so it was kind of close call but right after that time she gets captured. It goes through this whole sequence of Jude gunning people down and they were basically trying to break her legs so she could be another sex slave or something. So she gets saved before than happens, more people getting gunned down and she’s still trying to negotiate when clearly these are just people reverted to their primal state. Anyways, she gets yelled at, a lot of time passes and she finds an sos type call and she wants to help. And Jude is like, BRUH. And they get captured again, lol.

Not to mention that I don’t know how those initial people were actually surviving out there with the population that they had. It was mentioned that this train is going back and forth and it’s for delivering food to the lower sections. But everybody up there is dead so you could say that oh it’s the AI that’s synthesizing food but it later gets brought up that the AI no longer sees humans as human so how’re they getting food.

They did reference Tomorrow’s Eve by the end and that was kind of interesting. I never read it myself, I only knew it from something else I’ve read about Pinocchio and how it’s the inverse idea. Basically saying what if they start with the flesh and what remains to be human is their mind. It’s one of those things where it’s placed by the end to make the reader think about the whole setup retroactively. And that’s either a hit or miss, I think the concept itself was pretty clear early on and the use is stronger when things are ambiguous.

I appreciate that they didn’t delve further by the end where everything is basically resolved emotionally and it’s just them travelling and just expanding her horizons. The sections would’ve been great but you could see how it’d all work to the point it’d just be a mood piece. It was basically still well written and you understand the emotions they were going through just with the excerpt given.
And that’s pretty much it, I guess the last thing I’d mention is that the new baby crimson eye is cute and I wouldn’t mind a fandisk of just the new three interacting in a one time job.

Jack Jeanne Review: Amazing but with a caveat

So I finished Jack Jeanne and I had a great time with it. It’s made by Broccoli, where if you’re old enough you’ll either get hit by nostalgia from either Galaxy Angel or the Digi Charat show/ Party Night.
It’s just kids going through theatre with different plays. They struggle getting into character, to break through self imposed ideals and they’re just training in general. The pacing and the voice acting hard carries this vn considering some of the downsides I’ll go over later. There’s 4 classes; One that specializes in dance, another for vocals. One for geniuses and another where it feels like it’s for the rest but I assume it’s for the people that seem to have multiple talents. At first I thought maybe it was the class that’ll specialize in acting but I guess that wasn’t the case.

It’s technically an otome game but I guess I have a weird way of seeing what is and isn’t an otome vn. Outside of the rigid definition of maiden game where the mc must be a girl and there must be cute boys to choose from, I consider if the plot itself is written in a way to specifically market to women. Like pretty much all the yuri parts I’ve read felt like they were written for dudes. I’m assuming some bl titles will sell better for dudes and some for women. I technically read one a decade ago by accident and the plot was actually great there too. Tangent aside, this is more of something you can read with your friends or family and not seem weird. Consider it like you’re reading a vn based on Haikyu or something. Honestly, I’d give this a 10 if it was just a kinetic experience.

Some of the character art is kind of jank but it’s an art style that can differentiate from the rest and I’m pretty cool with that. The worst offender is probably Suzu and that’s probably your first route if you’re going for all of them. I’ll go over the routes later. The antagonist is probably the 2nd worst offender but honestly it really fits with what he’s going for.
The character traits are kind of templates, you’ve seen most of them.

You got Suzu, the sporty/charismatic loud one. Yonaga is the timid smart one that could be transferred to Amber if he wanted to after the first year. Fumi is the dancing fuckboy that has more going on. Kai is the gloomy supportive one, he generally elevates the rest of the cast. Mitsuki is the no nonsense one, he does vocals. Then there’s Neji, the weird one.
I thought Neji was going to be my favorite character considering I normally enjoy the weirdo of the group. I guess it kind of was, if you just consider the main cast but he wasn’t my favorite route. Which is also generally the case, their routes aren’t usually the best but they’re usually fine and important. Though he is my favorite to listen to and whenever he’s singing.

My favorite character ended up being this side character from the vocal class, Kiito. At first I thought maybe it would’ve been Otori who’s kind of like the asshole at the start. Honestly he deserves more screen time but it was generally a fun time when he was around. I think a lot of it is that Kiito and the people around him reminds me of myself and a couple of other friends so it was a comfort pick. I think most people would gravitate towards Kai and his route. But when it’s about acting, then Yonaga eventually steals the show. That helps a lot with his character because otherwise he’s one of the more boring ones.

The vn loops between training on the weekdays to raise your stats, hanging out with a set of options on the weekend and later enacting the play you were training for in a month or two. You generally have three rhythm like games you have to play. They’re pretty easy so I’m not actually sure how many you can fail before you fail on getting a route. But considering they give you the option to restart from the beginning of the play if you don’t get max rank in the finale, they probably do the same anytime the play is actually important. Either way you hang out with a specific character long enough to get their scenes so they can become a route you can choose whilst also levelling up the stat that represents them. The characters and the stats are in a linear line so you shouldn’t be confused on who links to what. I think you need to hit the cap of the stat to get the best ending, otherwise you’re stuck with the good ending which I assume just means you don’t get the epilogue.

But the routes themselves are really what hampers the vn. The routes themselves aren’t really special, they consist of maybe 5% each and that’s still adding that the final play itself is around 80% the same. There are enough differences that make them unique but it consists of you needing to replay the whole common route again. This includes making different training choices and doing the rhythm games every time, so if you go for 100%, you’re playing those games like 130~150 times. I got really good at them after awhile to the point I can watch youtube and get an SS score at the same time on expert, lol. This really pads up the playtime from like 40~50 hours to around 70 or 80 hours. Honestly, it’s one of the few vns where I’d say it’s just better doing one or two routes and just leaving with that. The best ones being Yonaga, Kai or the main character’s route. You get the most mileage out of those and you can come out of it with a 10 and a lot of saved time. You can’t unlock the true best ending this way but I don’t think you’ll miss a whole lot. You can probably just look it on youtube, it’s under 10 minutes long.

The routes:

So like I said before, the routes are pretty short. Each one starts during Christmas and ends in like 2 and a half months. The play itself is the same with some deviations because whoever you choose gets a lead role so some of the plot has to be changed. The antagonists and their plays also change depending on your route alongside what gets focused on.

Suzu’s route is the worst one because it’s basically just a starter route. It has more of the otome feel and I didn’t really care for it. I do feel like there’s a lot of potential in some of his scenes but they didn’t focus on him or his pov while that was happening. I think it would’ve done a lot better in a tv show. On the other hand, this route does cover the other class’s first years so you can still get something from here.

Yonaga’s route is one of the best ones. The dude is a straight method actor and you go through the benefits and how it can fuck you up at the same time. But it eventually gives focuses to everybody in the class and it was done stupidly well. It’s a more inclusive approach where it focuses on the characters you already know and how he’s proud of knowing them and amazed on what they can do.

Mitsuki’s route is also one that doesn’t really have much to write home about. But it does cover the feelings of the 2nd years and considering that covers Kiito, I can’t really bash it.

Fumi’s route is more on his feelings towards his family and the business. Basically the conflict of wanting to be free and enjoy how he wants to dance but also respecting the traditions of the family’s style. It also pays more attention to Otori, not a whole lot but I appreciated it

Kai’s route is similar to Yonaga’s route. The difference is instead of being like the child in awe of the rest of the group, Kai’s proud of what’s basically his children and how much they’ve grown. Outside of that, the route is more about himself but also gives some focus to the main character’s brother and this weasel you see around in the common story. It’s probably the best route in the bunch but he’s basically the dad of the group.

Neji’s route is interesting but also kind of shallow. It’s one of those things where he deserves more time to make the content shine considering what’s happening.
The main character’s route is probably the best case scenario if you just want to do one route. You have enough time in the weekends to hang out with all of the side characters and get all their cgs while also not losing much in the main cast in terms of team dynamic. It covers why she’s there and what’s going on underneath the base plot. It’s also where you can get a bad ending and join the antagonist. It’s not amazing but one of the effects was pretty cool.

Overall:

Overall I’m giving this a 9 but really it deserves something closer to an 8 with how much time they make you waste just to see the other routes. But it’s really not an indication of the writing but a poor hindsight of what you’d consider quality of life improvements. If you pick one of the better routes and just leave it at that, then I feel it’d be a 10. It’s kind of different than a case like giving Little Busters a 10 because of Refrain because you’re still forced to do all the routes to get there. But really, this is more like I understand why some people give it a 10 more so than me giving it one. The quality is more so on the pacing than the plot itself. There’s been titles with a good premise or has great moments all around but the pacing is somehow dreadful and I can only read bits at a time. It’s just an enjoyable time with a properly placed high impact moments just to keep you going.

Spoilers: Nitpicks/Confused on

So this isn’t really a complaint because the title itself didn’t feel like it wanted to even go through drama. It excels at common man conversations and topics but generally a lot of the drama felt either shallow or quickly fixed. Sometimes even forgotten in cases like Mitsuki, where he joined the drama school to get away from his mom. It never gets brought up again after the initial scene with them. This also happens with Neji, whereas his initial conflict is done well but how he loses all inspiration that leads him to lose all his instinctual talent and asks the rest of the team to actually teach him. Basically he’s a genius that never went through the process of gradually improving his skills, and it wasn’t really touched too much but the premise of him getting everything back like a light switch was kind of boring. The concept of why it’s back makes sense, it’s perfectly logical but it’s a boring way to read through.

I feel like I must’ve messed up somewhere and didn’t get all of Otori’s scenes because he has a lot of potential but becomes more of a background character that has a name. I get that it’s a consequence of him not asking for help a lot so it’s like his way of doing things doesn’t meld well with the class’s dynamic but there could’ve been more to him outside of Fumi’s route. And considering they handled the rest of the side characters well enough, I think this is on my end and I missed something.

The last bit is on Tsuki, the MC’s brother. You can tell he’s the weasel kind of fast but then gets more solidified in Kai’s route to being confirmed in the final ending. I’m usually a fan of implied story telling but I think I’m missing a piece of the puzzle. I’m assuming it’s a reference to old theatre considering a lot of the stuff going around are references to it already. So something like because he has the same talent that the MC has, he must’ve given to much of his own self to keep being human. Or it could be referencing the play Chui does throughout the routes and he’s the character that sacrificed it all to achieve what he wanted but I’m leaning towards the first one.

Spoilers: Stuff I liked about the plays/characters

My favorite plays were the 2nd and 3rd one but more so the 3rd. Each play has something unique to it and it’s generally getting carried by the voice actors. The themes of the plays are kind of interlinked between them all but the general one is increasing their repertoire of roles and creating rivalries.
Part of the first play is to setup the foundation for Suzu and Yonaga’s rivalry that ferments at the start of chapter 2, explodes in chapter 3 and becomes their main theme going on for the last two chapters. It’s one of those things where they’re both envious of what each other has and how if they had X then they’d have less of a hard time trying to keep up with the seniors and Kisa. It’s not written in a heavy or dark tone, it’s something they go through and it’s something they acknowledge of each other where they see each other as something to jump through before competing against Kisa who they both see as more talented and further ahead.

The 2nd play introduces the vessel and flower concept where one role is to prop up the other. But outside of that it’s to shakeup Kai’s way of thinking considering he’s imprisoning himself into the vessel role. This leads to the 4th play and also the 5th play during his route where he gets roles that either take the lead or have something that makes the play more thought provoking. Because in the end of the 4th play, he’s the last shown character wanting his own mugwort. The mugwort is part of the play, don’t worry about it, but it’s basically saying he’s also in this town and therefore he also belongs in its debauchery and wants to keep on going, he’s one of them. Basically saying he’s done staying in a passive position.

Fumi kind of has the same thing happening in chapter 3. Where it becomes a theme of freedom to do what they want to achieve on stage and how to expand what the audience can expect. This also sets up his own rivalry with Kisa, mainly considering she’s the first one to light a fire up his ass after Tsuki.
You can consider the cast on the 3rd play to represent the quartz class in general. Fumi’s enormous talent forces him to responsible on carrying the rest of the class and how that shackles him. How Kai’s Jack Ace is basically made because Fumi is around. At the same time you have Kisa and Suzu/Yonaga killing the old way of doing things. By the end of the play, Fumi still wins whilst losing the majority of his baggage and constraints, which are represented as dolls that became human that fended off the antagonists. So Fumi’s basically saying I still have the experience to keep myself at the top but I finally got someone to fight for this pedestal. So he finally has a reason to keep on improving just to fuel the competition between the class.

Kisa’s theme encompasses all of the plays but they’re more apparent in chapter 4 and 5. More so on 4 where it reaches a boiling point and it’s basically the highlight for Mitsuki as well considering he’s kind of just been there as an vocal advisor until this point. He eventually becomes the class leader and that generally Mitsuki’s thing. He never really cared to be part of the group and was fine just being in his corner even though Fumi and Neji kept pestering him to join on random crap. So it’s the point on just as how the first years and the third years reached out to Mitsuki, he also finally wants to do the same thanks to Kisa and can accept her even though he figured what she was doing.

And Neji is actually an interesting one because it’s one of those that you wouldn’t even think about until he brought it up. So in every play, he always plays the weirdo or a character that does whatever they want that brings them joy or success. He’s a weirdo so you wouldn’t really think much of it. It was already brought up that he takes lesser roles that handle the same considering he’s doing basically everything else. But then it gets revealed in his route that his dad was having an affair with a lady of a similar demeanor. He was basically traumatized to the point that he’s scared of women and the only female role he can play is one that makes fun of his dad’s mistress. And the funny thing is that the dad was no longer able to write anything and Neji believes it’s because all of their thoughts are getting funneled to thinking about their love interest. The dad eventually dies by drowning so Neji’s basically scared out of his mind about ever finding someone he loves because he considers him the same level of genius as his dad. So in his logic, he’d also lose his ability to write or get into character and he knows that will set him off to throwing himself into the same ocean as his dad. The problem is like I said before, all of this happens really quickly during his route.

Tsukihime Remake: A lot more spectacle but it has a different feel to it

So I finished the Tsukihime remake and overall I had a fun time with it but I still kind of prefer the mood of the original.
The remake only covers the first two routes and they’re generally just more polished or they cover a couple of things the reader might’ve thought about if you played the original. Though that’s also kind of an issue because it becomes kind of excessive for my taste and some people I talked to. It’s not just more, it’s a lot more. I think these two routes alone are longer than everything together from the original. And depending on the person, it’ll eventually come to a point where you’re just asking for it to wrap it up. More so on Ciel’s route than on Arcueid.

Basically Arcueid’s route has the same story beats outside of one of the main altercations. That does lead to new scenes that expand from that place. Overall they’re pretty good but one of them was kind of off but I’ll get to that in the spoilers. Overall it’s pretty much the same, just with a lot more budget and some info dumps but I might’ve just forgotten about them in the og.
Ciel’s route got a decent overhaul. And that’s fortunate because even though I liked Ciel as a character, chunks of her original route was kind of dogshit. They still use the pivotal scenes, there’s just a lot more scenes added to make it flow better. To the point that it started to be bloated. Her route is almost twice as long as Arcueid’s and honestly it should’ve been leaned down. And the worst example of that is on the new finale that I’m kind of not a fan of. The original ending is technically mostly still here in the normal ending but just done better with a different outcome.

There’s a decent chunk of new characters for the clergy faction that gets introduced in Arcueid’s route and gets fully realized in Ciel’s route. There’s two others that I’d assume are saved for Akiha’s and Kohaku’s route later down the line and another one that I have no clue why she’s even around. Like she shows up maybe twice and in one bad ending. At first I thought it was indication to one of the vampires but that ended up not being the case. And she doesn’t really have a connection to the next three routes, there’s a possible link to something else but I’ll put that in the spoilers. The clergy faction is great, I found it one of the highlights of both routes.

Overall, there’s nothing overtly wrong with the remake. The people that already read the original might enjoy the higher budget, some might enjoy the added spectacle. It just has a different feel than what it was in the original. The remake is just more of a spectacle, there’s more action setpieces. There’s more shit blowing up, the sequences are longer and it’s what you can do when you have a budget to use. The original was more in his head and that he stepped into a world that he had no control or say over. He was basically just a bug in comparison and I’ll go over a bit of that in the spoilers. The funny thing is the best scenes from the original are still here in the remake. I talked to a few guys and I mentioned that the remake felt diluted. It’s basically incorporating more of an epic fsn-like feel to the original. So it’s more that the focus is now spread between the horror aspect, the crazy action and the normal SoL it had. There’s just a lot going on and the horror aspect is just not as clear as it used to be.

As an example, both versions has the scene with this chair. That scene was memorable in the original, and I think it even became a meme for a bit. It’s the same scene in the remake, but I’m remembering how long the fights are in the next section instead of the chair. Overall, I think most people would give this a 9 or maybe even a 10 if they’re generous. I kind of want to put it at a 9 too but the last ending kind of ruined it. I’m still putting as a 9 in an objective level. But it’s more of an 8 for me personally. It both improves and fucks up Ciel’s route at different points but it’s mostly that the mood of the new Tsukihime is just different and somewhat stretched and I enjoyed how it originally was. It’s still a better score than I gave the original though.

Spoilers

So for the first bit, they pretty much removed Chaos. And I loved Chaos as a concept because whilst what he did was crazy, it’s pretty down to earth compared to the vampire that replaced him, Vlov. And it’s a good example of spectacle vs just basic horror trope. It’s no longer a dude that hosts a shitton of animal monsters and a huge pain to kill. It’s now a guy that can basically cremate everybody in the whole hotel without trying or leaving any damage. Or somehow cause an citywide ice age. Shiki in the original was freaking out when he did some rad shit and he doesn’t understand how what he did was even possible with his body. The remake with Vlov made him look like a super soldier instead. He was still surprised, but for like a moment and then it was just something to be expected. If we go by movie standards, the og was like a civilian going against the Hulk whilst Shiki in the remake felt like Hawkeye or something. The magnitudes between powers are still huge, but it wasn’t to that depressing amount. It also led well to Nanaya when he finally gets talked about. The remake felt more like that’s just how Shiki is, super prodigy that can adapt and copy moves on a dime.

A lot of this is me being petty because I really liked Chaos. The action scenes with Vlov were cool, it’s just not what I’d want in Tsukihime. And I guess a good part of that is that I can get that from a lot of places. If internal monologues and horror themes were more prominent that action, then I’d probably be super for the remake’s changes.

So quite awhile after, there’s a scene in the same place that Vlov died where Ciel tries to stop Shiki since the dude is basically frying his nerves and crap and they’re talking about how they enjoyed their time together. The funny thing is with the choices I picked, I think Shiki only interacted with her maybe three times. I feel like they did hang out more in the original and with Satsuki but that might’ve been with other routes.

So the two important characters from the Clergy is Noel and Mario, before it was just Ciel. Noel is great, she’s fun and has a couple of misdirects on what’s she about. She’s pretty close to what Taiga is if she had two personalities. How she ends up is pretty boring and is honestly not a fight that improves the title. She gets her ass beat, she crawls away but can’t go back to the clergy infirmary because she thinks she’s infected and turning into a vampire soon. So one of the other new characters show up and provide her some meds to keep levelling up her vampire rank but each shot might just kill her soul. I think she gets up to rank 6 and then there’s a long ass fight with Shiki and her right after the fight with Ciel and Shiki that came from the og. I think it would’ve been more fun that she tried taking another shot out of newfounded hubris and just dies. I feel like that’s closer to what would happen to Noel. Sure, that actually did happen by the end, but that was more out of desperation. I get what they were going for, I just don’t think it worked well.

Ciel has a new true/happy ending and the sequence is stupidly long. It’s the best example of what their spectacle is about but it’s also so grandiose that the horror aspect was mostly thrown out the window. Consider it like a random person busting through your door at night with a shotgun vs the Shagohod going through your house. Technically both would be horrifying but the 2nd one just leads to your brain shutting down to how ludicrous it is. It’s still a fine sequence and I like how it ended but it’s no longer simple and clean.

Inochi no Spare Review: Kind of conflicting but overall ok

So I finished Inochi no Spare and at first I was going to mention the Yoko Taro thing again but actually David Cage is a better example this time around. The difference between them are the scenes that are used as stepping stones. Basically if you place one of those scenes in the void, the David Cage ones are usually a mess. The point is that Inochi no Spare has some pretty good scenes but the majority is kind of generic and sometimes maybe even below average. Though really there’s nothing in here that you’d find new. It felt like there were two writers, one that handled like six scenes and another that did the rest alongside the SoL scenes. Part of it might be the fantranslation and I can’t verify it but honestly I don’t think so. The flow of the plot was all over the place to be solely just on the tl.

The vn itself is like 10 hours long so you can get it done in a day or two. It took me around a week because the midpoint drags on for quite awhile and the first batch of hscenes happen around there as well. The basis of the vn is that there’s a rare disease and there’s no cure. Once it spreads throughout your body, you’re going to die in a couple of days. So you’re basically just on a timer. You can have a heart transplant and that somehow fixes it all. In this case, Meguri’s parents had a designer baby so they can use its heart once Meguri’s heart becomes too shit. I think they’re three years apart at minimum, maybe 4, so I’m not sure if it’s even possible due to the size difference.

The plot revolves around the two sisters. One wanting to die on her own terms and wanting the other to live on. The other wanting to die to save the other. So basically a lot of bashing heads and conflicting ideologies. Or at least that’s what the title would entail but everything is rather shallow. There’s some interesting ideas but they never go to deep into almost any of it. The amount of screen time allotted to just the two sisters hashing it out is maybe close to one hour. It’s kind of understandable in the sense that Meguri doesn’t want to trauma dump the sister but then it’d be better to show her hesitance on that instead of using it all on SoL scenes with Ryuuj(the male lead). It’s understandable that most of the screen time is spent with the two main protagonists, no shit. But it’s just like I said about things being shallow before, it’s just more apparent with the sister dynamic. It’s also the same deal with Ryuuji, there was a lot that could’ve been done on how his family treated him. With some restructuring, this could’ve been two different vns that hit specific aspects. Or even just having clear segments in one vn but you’d probably find it hard to make it flow well enough. Though on the other hand, moving it all into segments would probably make all of Ryuuji’s flashbacks feel less intrusive.

The ost is fine, some of it is forgettable. There’s a few tracks that I liked better than the vn itself and they were probably proud of those since there’s multiple renditions. The art is fine but half of it is spent on the hscenes. Maybe one or two more should’ve been centered around the sister but there’s enough that she doesn’t feel pushed to the side. But really that’s more on that sometimes there’s long spans of no cg but that’s also fine. There’s some plots that I really liked where I can barely remember more than 4 cg for it. There’s more things to talk about but I’ll just cover it in the spoilers.

Overall

Overall it’s fine. It starts out great with showing what the disease evolves to, and it ends well enough with what happens in the final minutes. There’s a couple of pretty decent scenes in the middle and a lot of other scenes that had potential. But they’re either paced weirdly or just approaches the subject, wets their toes and then run away. This could’ve been shortened down to around 5 hours without much changes but really I would’ve given this an 8 if they spent less time on some of the SoL aspects and instead hung around when something interesting was getting brought up. But with what it is, I’m placing it as a 6 that’s closer to a 5 but has moments where it’s a high 7. All in all, I think this is one of those titles that get better the more time has passed just because you’ll forget all the sections that either dragged on or didn’t go too deep. You’ll basically remember the basics and the ending.

Spoilers

The vn itself has a decent amount of flashbacks at that start. Generally that type of thing isn’t done very well and it’s the same case for this one. The constant back and forth in the first half is just kind of a pain. It’s akin to when you’re writing something and you keep going back because you realized you need more context. But instead of restructuring everything to make it work well, you put a side note. Basically it’s hard to do because it messes up the flow but also doing a huge dump is a pretty ass experience too so I think it’s just better to lessen the occurrences of it.

Another thing is that it tries to psyche you out a little bit. Where it makes you believe one thing but then gives further context later on. And normally that’s absolutely fine, because it’s done in a way that is affecting the main protag. So in this particular case, the guy gets his own attack during the night under the girl’s house. And it kind of makes sense to hide it from her family but he also hides it from her. So it’d be a cool story beat but actually both him and her know their own afflictions and that gets explained in another flashback maybe 3 or 4 scenes later. So you’re getting hyped for the reveal but it’s just him not wanting to worry her. And there’s some reasoning behind what I was thinking, it looks like something was getting setup.

The amount of scenes between the sisters are kind of minimal, it might cover 10~20% of the scenes. And that’s already kind of counting the times where it’s a scene about the family. There are some scenes specifically set with just the parents but it’s maybe down to 3. And that’s kind of weird since the title talks about them, the spare life. So you can assume that the male protag’s heart also ends up being compatible. And that’s something I’ve seen in a different utsuge title, or it could’ve been something really stupid like swapping hearts somehow fixes it. But honestly that’s a horrible idea, lol. But nah, the dude has the disease too, and it would be hilarious if there was a bunch of scenes with the sister after that flashback. So it’s not like the writer wanted to mess with you, it just wasn’t a big deal for them. And that’s generally a hit or miss in this title, it sets things up but you won’t know if it’ll come through or not.

I think almost every setup with her parents were done well alongside anything that was about the dead brother including the Harmonica. Honestly outside of the ending, the best parts were probably when Ryuuji and Meguri’s dad are bonding. Anything to do with his side of the family is pretty shallow and there were times where I didn’t even understand the point of it being a thing. Because it’s more a setup for other scenes but then those upcoming scenes don’t even hit a boiling point. Basically if you remove x and it doesn’t worsen the eventual clash, then it’s a useless piece. Anyways, one of the parts that I felt missed out the most was a segment near the end where she questions if she actually loves the guy or if she’s just using him out of convenience/or self interest. And this would’ve been great but this gets resolved in what I feel like is maybe 20 minutes. This section alone could’ve been one of the highpoints in other vns if done right, but it just ends with a “even if it was, I don’t mind”.

Loopers Review: Ironically funny to me

So I finished Loopers and I wasn’t really aware of how short it is. It took like 4 hours and I probably could’ve finished it in 3 if I concentrated on it. Also, this will have spoilers here and there. The short of it is that it’s fine. It’s purposefully rushed here and there but it hits its beats and ends well. This could’ve been like 12 hour vn to fully flesh out the rest of the cast but overall it’s fine. Maybe wait for a small sale where it’s at 15 dollars otherwise there’s a lot of other stuff you can buy that’ll give you more for your buck.

The scenario was written by Ryu7 and that’s why I ironically like it but I’ll get to that it in a bit.
There’s a couple of concepts you associate with him. The major one is this guy loves time loops; where it’s an actual loop and the characters know that it’s happening or everything gets reset. He has a few that aren’t like this and my favorite title of his doesn’t do it all, it was called Rose Gun Days. Another is that half the cast is kind of whacky and the last being that he needs an overbearing editor because this dude can just keep on going about the most mundane shit sometimes. And the more you read his stuff, the more you’ll notice that each vn has like two phrases that you’ll see every so often.

So what’s so ironic on this one is that it really feels rushed for something written by Ryu7. It’s like they got an editor that really hated his guts and just kept on beating his ass anytime he tried to deviate from the main aspects. So if it’s not about Tyler or Mia, then fuck it. I’ll go over a few examples but it needs context. So it starts out with Tyler and somewhat with two side characters that he finds by coincidence: Hilda and Leona. They’re like childhood acquaintances, anyways Tyler is into this geohunting thing which is basically finding treasure. Think of it like pokemon go but it’s a physical treasure where you have to give something to take what’s in the box once you find it. Anyways, shit happens and they find themselves looping the same day and soon after joins the Loopers group where Simon and Mia reside. This covers maybe the first 4 or 5 chapters and everything so far feels like Ryu7, it kind of stops after this, maybe give or take a chapter.
Also while I’m here, the mic quality kind of varies between characters. Tyler yells a lot but it always feels like Hilda’s mic is the one peaking and I had to shove her volume down a few ticks. The peaking also applies to another character later on but it’s not important. Tyler did a great job though really almost all of the characters aren’t given a chance to try out a vocal range anyway. I think Simon is probably the only one that has a popular VA.

Anyways, after this most things get kind of rushed but it all feels intentional. It brings back a memory about this talk Yoko Taro had where he plans his plot in reverse. So he wants you to feel sad, so he gets the mc seeing his dog die. So now he has to put in scenes about them bonding to make that effective and so on. And that’s basically what this plot goes through but swap it with Tyler and Mia. Some are kind of basic links that any plot has, like ok here’s the setting that was made to get these characters to interact with each other. And honestly they basically outright tell you what’s happening and how it ends in the first five minutes. Anyways, so there’s a lot of stuff that gets rushed. Like there’s three characters that are basically dying of boredom and they might go crazy in a few days. That gets resolved in minutes; ok now that they’re good, let’s have them interact and get closer, done in a few minutes. Ok we’re looping the same day, some characters can do whatever they want and do all these activities that they wanted, done in like 10 minutes. Almost everything is done quickly because it’s not really important. They could flesh everything out to make a larger impact but they’re confident enough that they think it’ll work out without it. And there’s other sections that get resolved faster because it’s just a stepping stone for other stepping stones. The farther it is to having an impact on the final hour, the less time it’ll have.

But really I had more fun just going through it and imagining that the editor is just deleting chunks of exposition and set pieces and say it’s not important enough. Like anything that was of major importance had some time put into it. But everything else was mercilessly cut down. It’s like how I found dragon ball gt funny, because it felt like a spite driven project even though it was all just marketing. You want Goku to do everything, well fuck you here’s only Goku now take it. And that’s a good chunk of why I liked the last chapter of Umineko, because it just felt spite driven. And a good chunk of Loopers felt like a shitpost to people like me that complain about padding. I’m giving this one a 7 even though normally I’d put this closer to a 6.

Symphonic Rain: Down Memory Lane

Note: I’m not going to skirt around spoilers all that much. It’s a great vn and honestly just go buy it and play it blind.

So I’m not sure if this one is coming out first or if it’s Kira Kira. These aren’t reviews for a couple of reasons, it’s more like an overview on why I like them so much. So it’s more based on feelings than being analytical or anal about random crap. Though a huge chunk of it is mainly because some of these are going to be about vns I might’ve read years to a decade or two ago. At first I was going to call the series something like “Recollections” but I feel like Down Memory Lane is a better title.

Symphonic Rain was one of those titles that I was actually kind of worried about. It’s one of my favorite vns and more often than not I’d say it’s my top pick. I still remember a good chunk of it but I’ve had doubts that maybe my score is heavily based on nostalgia. But I got the steam version and it’s still as charming as I remembered it being. Sure I’m not a huge fan of the new character art, but that’s based more that I felt the original felt perfect for what it was going for. It had a melancholic feel to it. It’d be a different case if they changed the backdrops along with it now it’s just two styles clashing with each other. In a technical sense, you can consider it a valid stylistic choice if you consider the character brightening up the protag’s overall melancholic world but I don’t think that was the case, lol. If I had my preferred choice, then I would’ve loved to have it all redone by the guy who handled Katahane and Hinatabokko.

Anyways, it’s kind of hard to explain what I really liked about Symphonic Rain because most of it just melds with each other. The pacing of the plot alongside the relaxed ambiance of the town and how the ost couples with it seamlessly. Having both some story points that are obvious whilst having some subtlety for others. How some can see where the plot is going but others can enjoy how everything makes sense when everything gets revealed. How the insert songs just bash you in the head with what each character is going through. How the town itself can be considered a character.

The plot centers around two things:
A town that never misses a day of rain.
A kid named Chris that plays this magical instrument called a Fortelle. It’s finicky and it sounds better the more emotion you can dump into it. Chris is in his last year and has to find someone to perform with him for the final exam. If he does well, he’s going to get a lot of offers for work. On the other hand, the kid isn’t all that up for it and drags his feet to get a partner.

You get three options to start with. Torta who’s the childhood friend. And then Fal and Lise. Lise is the most blunt one plot-wise and it’s there more to just tell the reader that some real shit is happening. Torta should be left for the end and Fal is actually a pretty interesting character overall. The three of them are foils for Chris to a varying degree.

And this is basically where the spoilers are going to show up. I’ll go through the four main characters and then I’ll go over Chris. A few things about the other characters will be saved for the Chris section.

I think the girls have two insert songs each, one that they make you play and it’s basically their performance piece for the plot. And the other after you finished their route. There’s also the op that represents them all and the ed which centers around Chris. I think all of the songs kind of spoil what the characters are about but honestly you’re concentrating on the minigame so I’ve seen a lot of people not notice it, lol.

So for Fal, you have Rain Musique and Melody. Rain Musique is infamous for how stupidly hard it is compared to the rest of the songs you have to play. It’s honestly just stupidly obnoxious, the bpm is somewhat high and 3/4 of it consist of two input presses. On the other hand, the obnoxiousness of this track is a perfect representation of her character and what they’re going for. And what’s funny enough, she’s the best route to start the vn with, so you’re kind of fucked.

This is mainly with memory and the fantl, the main sections are the “Look at me, listen to me” and the “Love me, the real me is right here”. And that’s what made her overall interesting. She’s the one that most would have differing opinions by the end because she turns out to be kind of a shitlord but that’s what made the route fun to go through because you can go either way with how she feels. So let’s say 80% of the way through, Fal tells him that she’s just using him to get the high end offers. And that’s mainly because Chris is maximum depresso espresso and those emotions amp up his playing. And the reasoning behind it is because she’s always been used herself. Because she was an orphan and she’s just getting funded and raised because they believe she has talent and can profit from it. It’s been awhile but I think it was more towards fame than money. Basically she’s a stupidly damaged human being.

The thing is, there’s a split between the readers on what she feels. Some believe that she actually does love the guy, just in a warped mindset. I’m in that group. I’ve seen people on the other side but I forgot their argument but I think it was based on a section in her second song, Melody. Melody goes about her hesitating between her dream and her newfound love. And I think by the end it was more akin to her “dream” being kind of vague on what it actually is. So it goes back to either just using him, dumping the initial dream and having the relationship as the new dream. Or the one that makes sense to me where she’s combining the two and making a new dream of having both. But that’s what make her interesting, it’s not totally clear since she’s kind of fucked up. But they have their own way of handling their lives, making it ungeneric. So the concept is mainly “Hey I’m going to keep you around until you stop being useful and I’ll keep getting better so you’ll have a reason to keep being with me too”. So it’s some comical version of a marriage vow. She was just raised poorly and has massive trust issues so she goes with her roundabout way to start a relationship. She’s more centered around having and weighed down by her baggage but using what she knows to trudge along. In comparison to Chris who’s basically stagnant.

Lise’s songs are kind of boring. But that’s only because they’re kind of semi happy. Where Lycéenn is like, “yeah today is kind of shitty but there’s always hope for tomorrow. And I think the second one was called Hello with “Like a bird I’ll fly to you” being the final verse. And it’s mainly something around “I’m happy I found someone that understands me and I can experience all the things I want with”. On the other hand, Hello is really catchy and it sounds similar to some jingle when I was a kid. Her foil towards Chris is more on that she is eventually hopeful for tomorrow and facing what comes next after spending time with him. She found a safe space in him and he found somebody to distract him from his problems.

She’s kind of the weakest of the batch but her route is still pretty decent if placed in a different vn. And I’ve seen this setting here and there.
She’s mainly here to show comparisons towards Arietta and how shit is happening in the background. They already hinted at it here and there and this was the last stop where they shoved it onto your face.

Then there’s Torta, I kind of go back and forth if she’s my favorite character or not. Usually I’d say it’s Phorni but I got a soft spot for this one. Her two tracks is Secret and Always Smiling. They’re contradictory to each other and I feel it works better because of it. Secret is just her holding her feelings back and yet hoping that Chris will eventually look at her instead of her sister. I think there’s also a bit where she’s teetering between showing and telling him everything but she’s kind of a coward. Always Smiling is more on acceptance that it’s just not going to work out. That she went far enough and sometimes people don’t need to know everything. How she’ll hope to recall these happy memories but close them back up before she starts crying. Just so she can always be smiling infront of him and the others. She can technically be placed anywhere in the route order but she works best as the third just because it flows to the first ending. How her route ends is kind of weird and it would’ve been better off to just integrate Al Fine and this one together. But then you’d be missing out on the 2nd song.

She’s kind of like Fal but the meters are reversed. She’s weighed down by her baggage but still goes on supporting Chris and hoping he’ll get through it all instead. She has a lot of self doubt and wonders if this or that is the right way to do things. And that’s what her songs are about, she has contradictory thoughts and keeps looping but overall still keeps Chris’s wellbeing at the forefront. Like the difference between her route and Fine is just that she stops looping and just tells him everything, lol.

Finally there’s Phorni with “I’m always close to you” and Fay, and they’re just as contradictory as Torta’s. Or rather, they want something but they end in acceptance. I forgot which one is the first one, I thought it was Fay but the game has the other one unlocked. The first one is obviously about wanting to do something and be close to Chris. And she keeps going at it. She knows her time is limited but wants to be there with him and last as long as she can. Chris is oblivious to all of this and it makes the english verse kind of heart wrenching where she tells him she’s alright and she loves what she’s doing. And the second half is her apologizing that she had to go and asks for him to live on. Fay centralizes on “I don’t ask for any rewards, only love”. It’s generally about that she’ll support Chris on whatever life decisions he makes even if it breaks them apart. It could be construed that the requirement is that he has to love her, but I think it’s more on something around, I love you so I don’t need anything as long as you’re doing well. I don’t have much to say about Phorni. She’s usually my favorite character but I can’t really explain it, a good portion of it is that she’s just charming. It’s more of something you have to experience for yourself.

So now that I got the songs and the girls out of the way, I can talk about Chris. To even be anywhere close to a 9 in my books, the protag has to be their own character. They’re not an avatar for the player, they’re not some rando that just so happens to know how to fix everybody’s problems or just randomly attracts everybody in their vicinity. There’s a place and time for that and I can enjoy it, it just won’t be in the higher parts of my lists. Basically they need their own issues and have them develop in their own way by either self reflection or by figuring it out and getting help whilst helping the rest of the cast. And holy shit is Chris a mess. And that’s kind of to be expected once everything gets revealed.

From what I remember, his girlfriend got hit by a car, she’s in a coma. The dude is on full on denial and espresso depresso to the max. Gets gaslit that she’s actually fine and just learning how to make bread via these letters that are actually being written by his girlfriend’s sister Torta. And that they’re just in a long distance relationship, which would be technically true considering she had low musical talent. This town is constantly raining but it’s actually just his psyche. Generally the town is fine so be just assumes everybody is used to the rain and only the tourists care about it, but that’s actually the times it’s actually raining. There’s times where the rain lets up but that’s generally when he’s in a good mood or something nice happened to him. It’s one of the more subtle signs of what’s going on but the signs just keep being more blunt the more time passes. Eventually Torta asks the girl on whatever route you’re on for a talk. Chris assumes it’s some girl talk but it’s about his condition. After that, the girl’s stop wondering what he means about the rain and are seen with umbrellas.

In some cases, I can see Chris as like a Silent Hill 2 kind of thing. The main characters are kind of losers that are in some form of denial here and there. They’re in places that’re unnatural but are really formatted slightly based on their psyches.
Lise becomes a substitute for Arietta in her route, except Chris never came to acknowledge that Arietta was in a coma. He subconsciously knows he failed and is trying to get it right this time around.
Torta’s ending, or rather her second ending is about Chris figuring out what happened, to accepting everything and continues moving on with his life with Torta.

Then there’s Fal’s ending, which I’d say is one of the more interesting one of the initial three. Sure Torta can build up some intrigue to what exactly she was going to tell Chris. Sure Lise is super blunt and makes you wonder when Chris is going to realize what he lost. But Fal’s ending is one where it doesn’t tell you outright unless you have an inkling of what’s going on. And it’s super possible even if you do her route first, but you’re most likely not unless you’re taking every new subject matter into consideration. Which that in itself becomes a problem the more you read since almost nothing ever gets to surprise you anymore. Anyways, the whole ending is them getting the offers Fal wanted and they’re taking the train to get out of the town.

From what I remember, this goes through a tunnel. So the town is raining, they get on the train and have their talk. I don’t remember a lot of it but I believe she gives the 2nd half of her necklace and what they’re going to be doing. The necklace were a pair of wings and she needs him now to keep on flying. The train finally goes through the tunnel and Chris notes that it stopped raining. And if it’s the initial route, you can assume it’s just because he’s out of the town. But it’s actually that he finally started healing and moving on. It’s not as great as the Torta/Fine ending since he doesn’t confront his past issues onscreen. But if you hit all the right circumstances of having it be your first route and also either knowing what’s going on or reflecting back after you know what’s going on, it was a really fun time.
I also don’t remember what the game forces on you if you just meander around and actively try to be a loner, so I was trying it out and it does seem like Fal is the answer for that.

So overall, it’s my favorite vn more often that not. Part of it is just how I felt during those times and I could say that there’s other vns that are higher on a technical level. But those rarely come back to mind like this one does. Really it’s a combination of a charming background setting; a musical score that supports the feeling it’s going for; and a main character that’s heavily flawed but is enjoyable enough to see them get through it. But seriously, I still remember the majority of the soundtrack and it was over a decade ago. There’s a lot of vns from last year that I remember shit from their ost.
This one is done, it ended up being a lot longer than I was hoping for.

Nukitashi Review: Fun when it stops trying to be serious

So I finished Nukitashi and it’s kind of just not for me so this will be a shorter one. Also, I’m just going to spoil what I’d consider minor stuff since it’s a pain to talk around it.

I had to power through it after a few hours because it’s like that kid in school that keeps on repeating the same joke when the humor already died out. I eventually started liking it again but that was after going through Nanase’s route. And I think that’s maybe the worst part of the vn for me, because really it’s just a watered down version of the true route. The reasoning behind that is that I’m not a fan of the main protag, Jun. Really it depends on who he’s interacting with; he’s funny with his sister and a few other characters; but he’s just an insufferable twat when coupled with others like Nanase and more so with people he’s against.
You can say that there’s a genre loop going on but I kind of doubt it was super intentional or enforced because otherwise I’d have to say it was done poorly. There was a meme about this title being about plot disguised as a meme disguised as a porn game. But really, you can add a few more where it’s plot and memes keep swapping around to keep you guessing which one is the actual focal point of the title. It ends up being plot during the true route. But if you divvy it up, I’d say there’s around two to three times more attempts on joking around than actual plot. To the point that some reveals felt really ass to me because I wasn’t sure if it was going to be a punchline for new jokes. Like a good part of the revealed plot points are kind of shallow and I wasn’t sure if that was part of the joke or not.

So the plot centralizes on this island where everybody is forced to bang after they’re old enough. Jun and his sister move back to the island due to some issues and now they’re trying to dodge the guards and the student council because they don’t want anything to do with their customs. To eventually combatting them and trying to change the laws of the island.
That goes through the common route, three routes and the true route.
For some reason Hinami’s route is labelled third even though hers is better left for last because it uses points from Misaki’s route. I’m assuming the order was more based on the gradual shift of what Jun finds acceptable. So it goes from extreme straight edge, to at least acknowledging the other side and what they’re going through; to going full retard and say “fuck it I’m going to have to bang everybody to get what I want”.
The funny thing is the antagonistic characters are generally more interesting to the point that these would be the actual routes in a different vn. Mainly because they can be more dramatized than the main cast. Really, the whole cast is grouped into one focal point that they’re all considered a minority in some degree. So while Jun considers himself and his group a minority due to not wanting to be forced to bang whomever, most of the residents in the island were a repressed minority from the mainland. Others are there for financial reasons, others are there due to abuse. But either way they’re all just ideas that’re either barely touched or not at all.

I thought my favorite character would be Nanase but it ended up being Teshima but that’s mainly because I find him funny and his shittalking reminds me of a few people. I was going to say it’d be Misaki but I think it’s more just her route in general where everything becomes retarded. Other than that, the student council is what’s interesting but also they barely get any screentime outside of maybe the one in Hinami’s route. Like they would’ve fit in with the Majikoi cast without much trouble. I hear the sequel actually covers them so maybe I’ll buy it when it comes out and hopefully it’s not ass. But for now, basically anything plotwise is kind of ankle deep.
Hinami’s route is probably the most well written but that’s mainly a victory by default. Nanase’s route wasn’t great and the other two are kind of balls to wall crazy. Funny enough, those two are the high points of the vn and I’d most likely put Himani’s route as just decent/above average if it was in any other vn.

Overall

Overall I’d give Nukitashi a 7. It’s main selling point that it transforms a nukige scenario into a workable plotline. So it’s basically that the title is uncommon so it’s kind of semi-refreshing experience but more so if the title was just shorter or have a better written route for Nanase. Considering until I hit a second route, I was leaning closer to a high 5 than a 6. I think more people will give it an 8~9 solely because it ends strongly and I know people that have that as a huge part of their scores. It’s like making the final exam consist 70% of your grade type of shit.

In the end, it told its story and I got what it was going for. But I don’t know why it had to be this long and it kind of suffered for it. Repeated jokes, repeated combat and escapes. Like it was to the point that some repeated jokes became a referential joke. It just wanted to be placed in too many categories and didn’t pace them well enough to be overall enjoyable and instead have spikes of it being amazing with a lot of lulls.
But that’s just me, I would’ve preferred to either focusing more on the plot to the point it’s just the common and true route and putting the necessary info from the routes to make a few things make sense. Or make every route as stupid as Misaki’s route and just have it be a funny experience.

Spoilers:

The main issue I had with Nanase’s route was two things. There’s a reoccurring joke where Jun gives her backhanded compliments because he’s socially inept. Where it’d be some like, hey that was pretty smart for a slut. But just put anything in there and that’s like 20 encounters. Other than that, it brings up the point that he doesn’t really hate people banging but rather hates himself and the people from the island due to them just following the flow without thinking if what they’re thinking is right or not. Mainly because this is some obvious shit but then bringing this back up in true route in a better written way. Still not the best but it still devalues what her route contains.

Another thing that I didn’t put into the score too much was how much you just have to not think about it for it work. Because a lot of is jokes, which weren’t for me but also a lot of these could’ve been ignored or used as a bigger punch line. Though more people would probably be annoyed if they read that punchline. Anyways, so you’re forced to bang. But you can’t be just banging one person, you have to do anyone. But what if someone has some really weird fetish and there’s only one person that fits in there. Now you’re forcing that person to not indulge in their fetish. Also they’re all on the pill to not have kids. But also you can’t be gay and I don’t see the reasoning why when they’re all doing some really weird shit in the background. So the punchline could’ve been that all that was acceptable and the characters just didn’t read the fine print. And some readers would be mad at that but also knowing how insufferable Jun is, he’d probably still fight against it with something like they’re still forced to at least find somebody maybe they’re not even fully into just to skip the orgies. There’s a lot of these small issues or even other parts that don’t make much sense plotwise but you just don’t think about it. Because why’re you taking parts seriously when most if not all routes are saying you could just skip half the conflict if you make Jun mindcontrol everybody through his dick.
A funny callback was during the finale, where he’s screaming out he’s homo eructus and envisions his whole body as a dick. Which can be pushed back to Misaki’s route where bs rumors go around where he’s putting his feet and his whole head into their gashes.

Clannad: Tomoya is best girl/Dandelion Girl

So this is going to be one I’m probably not going to do right. This is my third one on Clannad, and it’s probably going to be my last on it as well.
I made one on what I find is the best route order
And another where I called it the rambling because when you start the vn, I consider Tomoya to already be in NG+. And it’s one of the things that barely addressed in the anime from what I remember. Because right in the first run, Tomoya and Nagisa already know about the dream and the tale, when it hasn’t really happened yet. The tale gets repeated constantly throughout the plot and I’ll get to it eventually. And this isn’t something new, at least at this point, Maeda just likes doing this. It’s just that this is one of the more subtle ones, while Little Busters is extremely blunt. But I’m not going to go extremely in depth with it since it’d just be me repeating.

The topic on this one is mainly that the plot is about Tomoya. Sure, the others have varying levels of importance, but it’s about Tomoya. The other part is this guy expanded upon Dandelion girl, something that’s like 10 pages long into something that I believe is over 2000 pages. That’s some huge ass expansion. And I guess the last part will be about some of the characters alongside on what changed in the anime. So to me, Clannad is just about a few things; that change is inevitable and you shouldn’t be afraid of it, the importance of bonds even outside of the familial ones, all wrapped up into an expanded piece of Dandelion Girl. It’s just that it’s stupidly long. I can probably take out the twins and either Yukine or Sagara and everything I liked about Clannad stays intact. Hell, Kappei, Sunohara and Toshio could’ve been integrated into the main plot like Yoshino. And I guess you could put Sagara inside Tomoyo’s route.

So the problem is that there’s so many routes, and for the most part they’re all based on forming a relationship/bond. It’s understandable to think that, oh it’s about the girls, but that’s just a short payoff to keep you going. And depending on the route, I can see people saying it doesn’t do that good of a job, at least until you finish it all. Because it’s like any other long term goal where you set milestones for yourself. And some of them, like working out generally gives you the side benefit of having better mental health. It’s not what you were going for but you’re glad that it happened. And that’s Clannad, because yeah the goal is always to get to the end of the route, and that’s generally the happy ending. And that’s generally after resolving whatever issue that the female character is going through. But in Clannad, that’s the main character, he’s not an insert character, he has his own shit to go through. And until he’s content with himself, the ending can’t happen. Tomoya is best girl, after a lot of work.

So let’s go with parts of the anime. It actually did a good job and also fucked up a couple of things at the same time. Like Kotomi is really integrated in the anime, whilst in the vn she’s specifically just in her own route for the most part outside of maybe choosing some options where you meet her but then rarely hang out with her. And I think that it only makes it so she’s option for some of the events, not that she’ll be included with the rest of the cast for as many things that the anime did. On the other hand, the anime had to get rid of a lot of character routes in one go and it was laughable on how bad it was. I don’t think Kappei is shown at all, and he’s one of the better routes. Maybe the minor routes weren’t covered, or I might have forgotten about it.

It’s been pretty much over a decade over all, I’m surprised on how much I remember from it. A lot of what the anime did well was that it had a stronger emotional impact, and part of that is because Tomoya actually has voice lines this time around. Like Yukine hits harder in the anime, but then again that scenario was kind of changed anyway. It wasn’t really what it was trying to do in vn, it was meant to be a more somber experience while also comparing her brother’s circumstance with Tomoya. There’s a lot of resemblances, he’s the main character after all. Kappei’s legs and Tomoya’s shoulder, Yukine’s brother’s delinquency and him, Yoshino’s path of self destruction and what he’s going through. His father and him, the lack of parental guidance and what Furukawas and Toshio’s providing in the background. The main characters are kind of different but still hold a situation for Tomoya to develop and get out of his rut, either getting encouraged by Tomoyo or having a more inept character to the point that he has to step up instead.

But anyways, I went on the tangent for too long, back to the anime. The worst part of the anime is how they used the orbs. In the anime, it’s just a mcguffin, and it’s hard to make it work when you put Yukine and Sagara, the two that handle what it’s about, by the end. In the vn, it’s a gradual process, you get one for pretty much every route. Sure, you could mess up and not do those two until the end as well, but you still know you’re getting them from each ending, you just don’t know how and why. Now I forgot how the orbs are made, I think it was just making a hard to create happy moment. It doesn’t really matter here because I find Tomoya’s growth to be equally important. And like I said before, it can’t end until he’s also happy.

So I’m hitting the end, so it’s time to go into Dandelion Girl. It’s really short, and it’s used as a reference in Kotomi’s route, the story is probably named but I don’t remember. The general plot is that a lady with dandelion colored hair comes from the future and meets a guy on a hill. The guy feels like he met her before. They meet up a few times throughout the days, the guy is married but is kind of getting into this lady. She confesses and then promises to meet another day, but the time machine is breaking apart. He doesn’t see for the rest of his vacation, goes back home and while some of the feelings is awry, he still loves his wife and how she’s still lovely and charming in his eyes. Only to find out that his wife was the girl, she just travelled back when he was young. So he races off to the bus station to meet her and say everything is ok. There’s stuff that’s important that makes parts of the plot work, like how there’s time cops and that travelling back in time is illegal unless it’s part of your job, so the wife never gets photographed to avoid detection. Or that the guy sees her as somewhat of a child because of the age difference so that’s probably something to do with her going back when he was young to be around the same age. But it doesn’t really matter, outside of how he feels that while time has gone forward, he still sees elements of what he loved and after he realized it, he goes after where she is. And that’s the last section of the vn. It’s Tomoya finally getting out of his rut and knowing what he wants and how to do it. Sure the magic orbs did most of the work, but Nagisa wouldn’t come back if it wasn’t for Tomoya. They even give you a choice to say you’re not ready.

It’s just dandelion; the illusionary world is the time machine, the ending is Tomoya getting where she departs, about how they’ve finally accepted that things can’t be stopped. And I’m not counting this one since it’s pretty generic, but the first place they meet is on a hill, lol. But in the end, it expanded so much more of than that. When dandelion is a short piece of two main characters, Clannad is a whole family’s worth of people. And in some cases, the anime did it better, where most of the cast is hanging out after graduation. Where the vn in after story is mainly Nagisa family, Sunohara, the fuko family and Tomoya’s own family.

And that’s basically it; I think the vn put more emphasis on Tomoya and how through cementing his feelings to this town and the people he cares about, he accepted who he was and what he wants in life even if there could’ve been a better outcome for others. The anime also shit the bed with the last two episodes. Honestly, the two episodes should’ve been added after episode 20. It’d just be two episodes of hijinks between Ushio and returning characters.

And yeah, if you cared more on the girls, then I can see why you don’t like the vn all that much. There’s way better vns for that, this isn’t really for that. Honestly Key usually doesn’t do that part amazingly, it’s always the over encompassing plotline that they do well. Is it too long, does it have padding? Yeah it does. I wouldn’t call it a bad thing in this case, but it normally is. It’s just a huge payoff and it made it worth it.

Also, I forgot to mention that the anime did a great job of just ripping out the vn scenes about Tomoya with his dad Naoyuki, and just slapping it in here. I think most people remember episode 18 the most, the one where Tomoya and Ushio hug it out. Some remember Nagisa’s death the most in episode 16. But episode 19 just edges out to be my favorite episode. Where Tomoya gets his shit together and that the healing for the Nagisa family can finally start. But mostly it’s the last chunk that just emphasizes on Tomoya realizing how much his father cared about him. Yeah, he’s a total fuckup but it’s not like even had the opportunity to confide in others. From all that we know, he was pretty much alone with no business opportunities or friends. He did the best that he could.

Ars Magna Review: Trekking in crap to reach a decent ending

So I finished Mars Agna recently and it’s kind of ass more often but there’s bits here and there were I was enjoying what it was trying to do. I had a heads up this time around but I forgot who it was. The gist was that I should’ve tried any other localized title instead. The issue is that I’m not a fan of tentacles so that was basically a pass for all of them from what I can tell. So I had to settle for this one and hey, maybe I liked it a little more than I would’ve due to low expectations.
Funny enough, the worst part is the first few hours because they were dreadfully boring. So that was a clear sign for people to drop it, but I’m a dumbass that rarely drops anything. If you can get past that initial hump then you might be fine. Unless you also finish the chaos route because that section had no love and it’s like 90% backtracking and I’ll get to that in the spoilers. Otherwise the actual ending kind of made up for it. I wouldn’t say it was worth it nor would I recommend it but I came out of it with a somewhat positive outlook.

The general gist of the plot is you’re a rando in a land that’s getting screwed over by this dust crap that’s basically making the land uninhabitable a bit at a time. Some people train to become alchemists and while they can choose their own factions and studies, the basis is to figure a way for humanity to keep on going. So the cast are basically just students alongside some mentors going through their own adventure to resolve the ongoing crisis.
The main thing is I just don’t like the main character, there’s nothing really interesting about him and it wouldn’t be that hard to make it work. There’s a decent amount of characters going around and you should at least find one or two that you like. The main 3 are Aria, Celes and Enri. So the childhood friend, the princess and I guess the best way to go about it without spoiling is she’s the protag’s companion/partner. It kind of sucked that I was more interested in the side characters but maybe I’d feel the opposite if the roles were swapped. As an example, I liked Sasha who was basically Cele’s knight/bodyguard but maybe I’d be bored of her if she and Celes swapped places. I did like Aria though, her and Celes have pretty popular VAs. Outside of those, I was a fan of Fren, Johanne and Albert. Sonia had her moments but I feel like they could’ve done a lot more with her. But really, none of them are really all that developed, they all got their archetype that they fill in and that’s it.

The crafting is barebones and honestly would’ve probably been better just to put it in the trash and just made like little side quests that unlock the new tiers of weapons. There’s these crests that you get by chance when killing enemies and you apply them to your units for some extra buffs. Most of them are kind of useless and can be ignored outside of maybe playing this in the hardest difficulties where maybe the extra damage based on the nature property of the enemy. The annoying ones were mostly the boss specific ones where they may drop but probably not and some of these are like 20k hp bosses. One I gave up on and just cheated the boss hp to 0, lol. And I think I had to do that maybe 4 times to even get it and that’s with like 4 mimics to raise drop rate chances.
By the end the only character I had built up was Celes who was basically the designated tank. The others just had a mishmash of stuff and honestly just stacking some mp regen on all of them is enough to carry you throughout the game in normal mode outside of a few fights that were honestly poorly designed. And the reasoning behind that is there were maybe 2~4 bosses that can oneshot you and it was kind of funny at first until you notice that the next stage is back you stupidly easy and just auto through the boss fight. The battle system itself is kind of ass because it’s like a dungeon crawler type battle system but you can see every node so there was no need to plan how to move around. Basically it’s no Bunny Black or even Moero Chronicles in terms of combat and traversal. It’s not awful but it’s more like this could’ve been a 10 hour plot vn and I’d give it a higher rating. Like I’m not even sure how long it actually is because of how many times I just left it open while I was doing other things. It kind of feels like a 25 hour vn that expanded itself to 50, and even then I skipped the post game dungeon because from what I can tell, there’s no longer any more story content. Just challenging fights and a shit ton more crests to collect.

There’s this adventure mode that you can unlock after beating either route and that basically just skips the fights and traversing the map. Which is a nice feature to have, unfortunately I don’t think it gives you an option to switch it off. Nor does it let play any maps that you didn’t actually play yet. So technically I didn’t beat the final boss, it wouldn’t even let me since I finished the chaos route first. Part of me is irked on it, but I also didn’t want to play it anymore anyway but I’d just like the option, lol. Or maybe instead of adv mode, it’d be like oneshot so you can at least see the new monsters.

The cg spread is kind of funny too but it’s from ninetail so it’s not like I’d expected something else. There’s like 98 cg and 53 of them are hscenes. Ten are from the chaos route and I think Law has 15, the rest are in the common route. And that sounds like the remaining is a relatively healthy amount of plot cg, but 30 of the remaining 45 are just action stills, lol. Some of those hscenes take forever to finish and it’s kind of weird that the chaos route has less of them.
And while I’ll be talking about the chaos route in the spoilers, the main point is that I don’t know what they were even going for. It’s more cringey evil instead of something well thought out. The sad thing is the components needed for it to work exist; they’re just in the common route and in Law. An easy comparison is this was Jared Leto’s Joker, instead of choosing one of the great Jokers. It’s not like you even get a unique plot point in here, it’s also revealed in Law.

Overall

Overall, there’s a couple of interesting scenes where they cover the different college factions, especially the one which I think was the Grayman college. And their whole concept was trying to evolve humanity to the point that it can live with the dust instead of trying to find a miracle to clear it all out. The whole last chapter or so was pretty decent especially the latter half. It actually has a lot of similarities to a different title I really enjoyed but it’d basically spoil this title. The difference was the characters were a lot more charming in the other one whilst this one is more horny. It could’ve been like a mid 7 if they streamlined some of the plot, reduced some of the gameplay backtracking and kept it around 20 hours. Hell, all of the hscenes could’ve stuck around to for that fanbase but I’d appreciate those being shorter too. I remember Dohna Dohna had a shit ton of hscenes but they worked because the timing of all the moving pieces made the pacing not shit.
And that’s kind of a general theme, slight changes here and there would kind of make it a decent experience. It wouldn’t be an 8 or anything but it could be like a mid 7. My general outlook is something around a 4 for the beginning alongside the chaos route. A 5 in most areas except for a few interesting ones where I’d place it as a 6 or 7. And then the last chapter where I’d put it like a 7 that could’ve been an 8 if the main character was fully voiced. Overall I’m giving it a 5 that could’ve been a 7 with some changes.

Spoilers

So this is the spoilers now, for the most part this just goes through some of the issues I had with the chaos route and how it was handled alongside a few other things.
But basically I have to go through a few story beats for it to work. So Shin, the main character has this philosopher’s stone embedded into him after an event where he was fighting like a dozen ash demon wolves. The ash demons are just random crap that took too much dust and converted to it. It’s not guaranteed but by the amount of shit you fight, I wouldn’t question if you’d assume so. When they mutate, they call the phase as eclipsing. He’s in a college(which is basically a faction) and they want to harmonize with nature and the gods. The gods are just beings that have functions but there’s primordial gods which basically control water/fire/wind/earth/sun and there’s a 6th one which is basically moon/knowledge. They’re also just called origins.

Anyways, the philosopher’s stone can convert dust into extra power that also kind of fucks him up. It’s essentially corrupting little by little. These gods are eclipsing and Shin’s faction wants to revert them back to normal. It’s a whole process that takes awhile and during that time, the cast is going through each origin. They generally have a goal or some circumstance happens to meet them but you generally have to help them fend off this other group called the destroyers that want to fuck up the world even faster. So fast-forward going through the first 4 origins, and I believe the fire one at least twice but I think it was three times. Anyways, they kind of figure out how to cure the eclipse but it needs the philosopher’s stone alongside making contracts with each origin. So if you’re trying to cure a fire based god, then you need a contract with that origin. The way to make a contract is by banging them, and I forgot to mention that Shin’s body is getting corrupted and that gets alleviated by him banging the 3 main girls and sometimes the others. It’s important for the chaos route but it’s still kind of dumb because the concept is that he has to do it with someone else otherwise the corruption doesn’t spew out. But it’s not like he has to cum in them so it’d be a super easy fix even ignoring the more obvious choice of just having random people be in line to handle the corruption. While yes it’s fucked up, he is basically reverting some nature functionality back to working.

Anyways, so now they’re going back to all the origins to get the contracts and the team is generally getting tested. Fast forward to the chaos route, you’re now going back to the origins again but this time to corrupt them, lol. So at the minimum, you’re going to the same places three times, I think the volcano is 5 times. This is some skyward sword level of tracking.
And after all that backtracking the route is basically over in like two missions. You’d assume they’d bring back the Grayman faction that were basically trying to do what Shin accomplished, but nope. They could’ve put them in there just for Shin to use them as pawns but they’re just forgotten. And that’s kind of a thing with the side characters. Shin sublimates some them but just nukes his dad. He could’ve been used to develop Faust’s scene but that wasn’t the case. Honestly I wouldn’t mind most of this if these things didn’t get covered in the law route but it does, lol. Why the hell did you make the Grayman part exclusive to Law. Why is anything covered in chaos gets better explained in Law. You even get less hscenes.

So ranting aside, the law route was actually pretty fine. You don’t have the backtracking and it covers anything you might’ve wondered throughout the plot. You meet the Grayman faction again and they basically transformed. The cast refuses it but actually incorporate Grayman’s data and use it to progress their own. The dust is really phantom particles where is basically radiation. So all this corrosion disease and mutating animals make sense. The last origin was called Astarte and it’s basically turning a valve on and off to have a test environment to evolve humanity. Basically a nuclear warhead blew up the valve so Astarte had to cover the hole. These apostles that humanity thought saved them were actually the ones who fucked everything up and this would’ve been a great place to add the chaos/law split. Instead of him going cringey and just learning that like 20 minutes before the ending.
There’s a lot of other cool shit happening but it’s akin to a movie before mostly generic and have a great last twenty minutes. On the other hand, the epilogues are kind of boring. I guess I liked Enri’s the best and that’s kind of funny considering she was nowhere near my favorite character.
Overall, I had a lot of fun with the last couple of hours. There’s a decent bit I skipped because otherwise I spoiled everything. Does the ending warrant the 50 hours, no.

Tamayura Mirai: I bought it for Hanako, worth

They say that a sorcerer from a distant land once lived in Fukano a long time ago. Of course, most people don’t believe that. However, travelers can tell that this place isn’t typical city. The ground beneath my feet is ebbing with spiritual power. Proof of the ties between humans and those who are not. Fukano is a town shrouded in trees and surrounded by mountains bursting with energy of an otherworldly nature.

I feel like this gets repeated at least six times through Tamayura Mirai to the point that I started looking at it as a meme like how the color red is used in Comyu. I finished this today and its actually pretty decent when you consider that it was like 15 dollars during opening sale and you can do a lot worse. But that’s basically what it is, there’s nothing that hasn’t been done before but it’s still a fun ride for the most part. The succubus route is kind of like some other ones that I’ve read but actually weaker. I feel like it could’ve gone longer or have some interesting turns with some of the extra cast but there’s not much, but I’ll get to that in the spoilers. The tsundere one works the trope like all the others, though it’s also the only one that actually continues the plot out of the three initial routes.

And then there’s Hanako, honestly I think this is the second title that I bought solely because there’s a character design that I like. And just seeing the banner, it’s probably obvious which one Hanako is. Her route was also just there but sometimes that’s fine. There’s vns specifically just trying to sell you a character and I wouldn’t mind more tomboys and snarky assholes with short hair. Honestly I wouldn’t even be mad if it was just Hanako for this price, sure you lose a decent overall plot and I’d have a lower rating of it but I’d still be content on what I got.

The funny thing is that the common route is the best thing going for it. Nothing is really original but the chemistry between the supporting characters is at least fun. So for an example, one route has a small section with two iron pots trying to console each other and trying to find a compromise on their situation and that became my favorite part of that route outside of like 1 minute by the end. These are rando characters that only get introduced at the beginning of the route.

The plot is that main character is a sorcerer but really his role is more akin to peacekeeping. It’s just that the only one up for the job are basically people that see and hear spirits. And at that point, you’re probably going into the sorcerer role. So the plot is generally just the guy trying to keep things in balance and not have everything blow up in the town. I think I said it before, but these are the best parts of the vn. It’s nothing new but it’s enjoyable and I’m much more a fan of those sections than the romance sections. Sure there’s parts where it can shine but overall it was kind of barebones.
I think I breezed through the common route in like a day and was then hardstuck in a specific h scene for 3 days because I kept getting bored and went back into monster hunter. Hell, sometimes I just went back to finishing up some work. Without the hscenes, I might’ve been able to finish it all around 15 hours, but I somehow also finished Clannad in like 55 hours so maybe it’s more like 20~25.

So overall, two routes handle plot, two are selling points. But the gist is that each route could’ve branched more and had chances to do so but just didn’t. Each character has 5 h scenes and it’s actually way too much in some cases. Some are the length of two other scenes too, and that’s relative to the length of these scenes to the point that you can say they’re three times longer than a normal hscene from a different vn. I wouldn’t say it’s bad as Primal Heart because at least they gave plot and/or sol a lot more screentime. The more egregious ones are the 3rd of Midari(the succubus route) and Shiro who they chucked all 5 scenes into her route and actively hurt the flow of the plot. And that’s kind of funny considering they only put three in Yukina’s route and set the other two into the extras menu. And that should’ve been the case with Shiro, though the vn would’ve flowed better if they all just had like 2~3 scenes.

Overall

Overall, I liked Hanako. The part right before you hit a route is a good enough hook to keep you going to the end. The finale was decent, it’s been done better and I think a good part of it was I was already fatigued from the hscene spam in that route. There’s parts where they info dump you and it’s possible to get somethings confused during that section considering they reveal everything in like two scenes instead of it going in a more natural pace. I’m giving it around a low 7 but I felt it closer to a 6.

Spoilers

The spoilers are mainly for small sections of a few routes and the info dump that kind of confused me for a minute and I had to go back to their previous conversations.
So Midari had a lot of comedic opportunity but they didn’t really go for it. And that’s kind of fine, I’ve already seen that in other vns but the issue is more that nothing was given in return. So you’re just left with a netloss. Basically she had this whole family that could’ve been incorporated in the epilogue but nothing was ever done with it. The biggest point would’ve been the father where I was assuming that might’ve been the first sorcerer but that didn’t end up being the case.
There was nothing really wrong with Hanako’s route. The only thing I might’ve liked is if they gave more sections around the Guardian and I think the bird’s name was Rin. Either way, it’s not necessary but that section in the common route was the closest to Hanako and just having one scene by the end would’ve been nice. They also could’ve incorporated the Kappas a little bit but that was almost nonexistent as well.

There’s nothing wrong with Yukina’s route, it has the least hscenes and the plot flows well. It info dumps enough for her specific route and foreshadows a few things that are needed to follow along the final route. I guess a weird thing is there was a decent amount of talk in common about getting her a wand. But from I can tell, you don’t really need a wand and they don’t explain it outside of that it makes it easier. The MC generally uses whatever branches he can get which was normally like 100 year old ones but did just use himself one time. And it came to the point where it’s like: does it just use more mp, is it just harder to control, does it negatively affect your body? What’s the end goal after taking off the training wheels. Sure, I think they just wrote around it because all they really wanted was to show was that super tree that Yukina got the branch from. Where the tree was wrapping around the other and coexisting and basically just there to symbolize the relationship between Yukina and her friend, alongside mirroring that relationship with a few other batch of characters. So I guess the better outcome would’ve been to say that the branches are for upcoming sorcerers and the protag just didn’t need any.

The worst part was the passage of time. So it ends up being that there was actually three sorcerers. Just that he reincarnated himself with the help of his little devil friend Pheles. Just so he could finish his research to get Shiro back to the living without messing up her soul. And that was mainly due to him getting cancer in his previous life. But in the middle of Yukina’s route, Pheles mentions that she’ll get his soul soon enough or that time is near and he knows it. So for a couple of minutes, it sounded like he has cancer again or that his reincarnated self has a limited amount of time compared to normal. Which would be kind of fucked up for Hanako and Midari’s routes. But that’s not the case and I guess the point was that Pheles and the MC knows that getting the Otsuki or whatever it was called is basically the end of the line.

The idea of Midari’s dad being the first sorcerer is also dead because apparently the protag’s soul ends up being the first sorcerer’s. This also leads to a few leading questions like if the Guardian and Hanako know the MC’s circumstances and it seems like no but could connect the dots if they cared.
One last thing but isn’t really important for the rest of the plot. But the families are kind of pieces of shit and I assume it was just kind of written weirdly. So there’s this character Kouthat takes care of the town’s kids as like a daycare. She gets sick and gets sent to the hospital, the kids are sad but some dilemma happens and the protag has to go out but keeps Yukina there to take care of those kids. But the question is where are all those parents, it was already evening. There was a few times where they were still there during the night too. I assume some of them are orphans but they mentioned that’s not all of them. Really it’s just a plot device to keep Yukina away from helping plot development.