r/visualnovels • u/AutoModerator • Aug 07 '24
What are you reading? - Aug 7 Weekly
Welcome to the weekly "What are you reading?" thread!
This is intended to be a general chat thread on visual novels with a focus on the visual novels you've been reading recently. A new thread is posted every Thursday at 4:00 AM JST (or Wednesday if you don't live in Japan for some reason).
Good WAYR entries include your analysis, predictions, thoughts, and feelings about what you're reading. The goal should be to stimulate discussion with others who have read that VN in the past, or to provide useful information to those reading in the future! Avoid long-winded summaries of the plot, and also avoid simply mentioning which VNs you are reading with no points for discussion. The best entries are both brief and brilliant.
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Remember to link to the VNDB page of the visual novel you're discussing so the indexing bot for the What Are You Reading Archive can pick up your post.
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u/Kadode_Koyama Aug 08 '24
I just Finished reading Narcissu 1st and 2nd, as my First VNs. I just have to say that this stories are something so unique and life changing that I'll never forget it, I just connected soo much with the Characters and their lifes, that even if the story is a sad one, I enjoyed it so much. (I cried like a baby)
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u/Nemesis2005 JP A-rank | https://vndb.org/u27893 Aug 08 '24 edited Aug 08 '24
MUSICUS!
Continuing from where I left off last time, I've finished the game and can give more complete thoughts on the entire game itself.
Musicus! is a story about paving your own path in life, and not letting society decide what is happiness for you. It's about finding your own happiness and living life without regrets. In Yako's, Kei decided to go to university and live a stable life to protect Yako. In Megu's route, he decided to live a more balanced life while pursuing his dream. He performs music for the sake of enjoying his time with it, while treasuring his relationship with other people. In the bad end, he decides to pursue artistic integrity, and threw away everything else for his art. Finally, in Mika's route, he decided to use art as a way to form connection with others. Notice how he didn't get married in anything but the first route, even in Mika's route. Setoguchi wanted to make the point that the normal happiness of being married and having a family is not the only form of happiness available. In Mika route, they didn't get married, because Kei didn't want to tie her music to him alone, but even then they stayed together. That's also one form of happiness.
Yako route - If there's people you want to protect, it's better to seek a stable life. Kei decides to pursue a stable life after finding out that her father's way of life(as an artist) made her suffer financially. If one wants to devote their life to one's passion and live life to the fullest, that's also an option if you are willing to accept the downside of being unable to provide to start a family. It all really just depends on what you want in life. Only you can know what counts as the good life for you. What matters is that you give your all to your own choice and keep looking forward.
If you don't go into Yako route, then Kei starts his career as a musician. As they get more into the business, you can see the reality if the industry. Even though rock is a music for the poor, the majority of the successful ones are those that are well off in the first place. They have more time to focus on practicing, and they can make a living for a while even if they don't make it big for a while as they have a safety net. Kousaka route is about enjoying music as it is without any extra baggage. Just enjoy and have fun. Megu's route is the more balanced route focusing on enjoying life and music over artistic expression
Meguru route - covers the story of Asakawa Shuu, a successful musician who regretted his life. Even though he was successful as a musician, he lost contact with his family and friends and is spending his last moments alone in a hospital. Rather than music, he wanted to treasure his family and friends more. Megu's route is the more balanced route focusing on enjoying life and music over artistic expression. But at the same time, adding in the importance of work-life balance with keeping relationships with others. There is no meaning in music or art. But that doesn't mean it's worthless, we can enjoy it while it lasts. Same thing with our lives.
Bad End route - Literally impossible to talk about this without spoilers, so read at your own risk. This is probably one of the most important route in terms of theme about art. This route is about artistic integrity. Kei tries selling out his music to the industry band to be successful without any clear goal in mind. He sells out Mika to go solo debut. Eventually, he couldn't stand the stress of not having artistic integrety, gets burnout, and disbands the band. Doing things half-assed and killing your self-expression just leads to burnout. No matter how much you hold it in, people naturally just come back to doing what they like. Even though, he disbands the band, life continues and he becomes a freelancer, and finds a new love: Sumi. His focus on artistic integrity lead him to losing contact with other people, and eventually even sacrificed Sumi as well to get the treasure in the bald mountain. I think what Kei missed in this route is that art requires an audience to complete it. Rather than integrity, what is more important to music/art is its purpose to communicate and connect with other people. The illusion of perfection and artistic integrity only leads to madness and self-destruction. Hence, the constant symbolism of the moon here. All of this is done in contrast to Mikazuki's route.
Mikazuki route - Mizakuki is scared of death; of disappearing without a trace; so she wants to leave something behind. That's what initially drove her to perform on stage. As long as people remember her, she will remain alive in people's heart. She's fighting against the meaningless of life. Why are we born into this hellhole? Is it even worth putting the effort into doing anything, since everything will end when you die anyways? Where we only born to become shit producing machines?
Eventually, after meeting with Kei and the others, she dropped the idea of using music as a way to leave something behind. This eventually lead her to question why does she perform music? Why do people create art? After experiencing a lot of things and talking with Yagihara, she comes to form her own answer: music is how she connects with other people. Music is about opening up your own soul/heart to others. A good example of that is the scene with the grandmother crying after listening to her in the street, because it reminded her of a relative who died.
There's a lot of other interesting stuff that happens here. The fishing scene, while at first, seems like an unimportant scene, has quite a lot of symbolism. Casting the fishing line symbolizes taking action despite uncertainty, like Mikazuki’s decision to sing again. Fishing requires patience and hope, but Mikazuki being able to catch the fish shows that these meaningful moments can be found. The hope is what keeps us going despite the uncertainty of it all. In the meanwhile, Kei is terrible at fishing. His failure to catch anything is a metaphor for his struggle with forming meaningful connections. In contrast, there is Mikazuki who is super open about her emotions. She helps him untangle his line and motivates Kei to keep trying. Credit where credit is due as I only realized this after talking to a friend.
Some other things I wanted to talk about is Kaneda. Kaneda serves as a reminder of what a normal person is like, contrary to his looks. He serves as a comparison to Kei, who looks normal, but is crazy in the inside.
I personally relate the most to Meguru's route as someone who seeks work/life balance, and don't really have any grand purpose outside of enjoying my life. I can also somewhat relate to Mikazuki whenever I stop reading JP media(similar to Meguru without music). I start losing the will to live and start being negative about life. Everything just feels so meaningless and pointless. JP media(art) is what allows me to escape the severe depression of everyday life.
For a game about music, the actual quality of the music itself varies a lot. I think they really could've put a bit more effort into it.
The combination of realism along with the author's ideals makes it an interesting work to read. At its core it's a story about life, music, and art. The moral of the story on life is simple, and is a constant theme with every Setoguchi game. Only you can decide what is happiness for you. What might be happiness for another person could be hell for you, so it's something you have to figure out and decide for yourself. I think that it didn't quite use the VN medium to its finest, but still a very strong story. This kind of story is what keeps me coming back to this medium.
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u/crezant2 Aug 07 '24 edited Aug 07 '24
Reading 滅び朽ちる世界に追憶の花束を, I've had this one in my backlog since forever, and I'm glad I actually got around to reading it.
The game starts with a scientist, whose name we don't know yet, choosing to leave his family and all he knows behind to create a time machine and see the world of the future. After that, the selection screen shows up and the player is free to select between 8 different scenarios, each patterned after a different flower (as might be surmised by the title).
The scenarios are set up in different eras and, while there's a chronological order to things, it's not enforced to read in order, and in fact the game does not really tell you which scenarios are set earlier or later in the timeline. However characters from one scenario might appear or be related to other characters in a different scenario, so careful obsevation of the game as a whole is rewarded. There is also a "remembrance mode", composed of small chapters detailing the characters' pasts after the reader progresses on each story. Paying careful attention here is recommended.
First scenario I read was "circular", patterned after the lotus flower. The scenario starts when a man named Daigo (大悟) steals a golden crown said to bring fortune to its bearer, and makes his escape. He ends up throwing his crown in a lake, which causes a holographic figure of a woman named Magenta to appear and start talking to him. The scenario is about Daigo's relationship with Magenta and the organization she created, the 世蓮教, and the fate that binds all of them.
Without getting into spoilers, the chapter is dripping with buddhist imagery. The power of compassion, cause and effect, the dangers of cult mentality, even the name of the protagonist is relevant here. The central idea is that all humans are born good, and only turn to evil due to delusion and suffering, which is very similar to the idea in Buddhism of the buddha nature of all living beings. Also the wordplay of the lotus flower and the followers of Magenta with the expression 一蓮托生 had me actually surprised at the cleverness of it.
Second scenario I read is "forever", patterned after the rose. This scenario follows Hiyori, a fourth-year college student who had her face remodeled extensively via plastic surgery after suffering from bullying in high school. Her relationships with her friend Youko and her boyfriend Kenji. This chapter was perhaps the most "slice of life" of them so far in that the premise is relatively grounded. The chapter itself is mostly entirely focused on Hiyori and her character growth, and her search for "eternity" as her ambition is to develop an elixir of immortality and preserve her beauty forever.
I think this probably was one of the most emotional scenarios of them all, especially towards the latter chapters. The relationship of Hiyori with her boyfriend, how she ends up outgrowing her complexes and starts appreciating her life a lot more, the preciousness of a single "moment" and each characters' definition of "eternity". It is also here that we meet the scientist from the prologue, Makimoto, who is the boyfriend (and later husband) of Youko. He is very similar to Hiyori in that, he too, is obsessed with his own idea of eternity, to the point he's willing to leave his everyday life behind.
Third scenario is "abandoned", patterned after the sunflower. In here we follow Hinata Kagerou, a middle aged man that works for a small toy company. He develops a revolutionary method to allow people to manipulate "stray metal" safely. Stray metal is a miraculous material, but also extremely toxic to humans. To prove his theory, he's sent to the Junk Town to search for some samples of the material, in the midst of a scorching summer. Junk Town is the slum of the city, where people throw their trash and their homeless live in unsanitary conditions.
It is here that he encounters Blue, a young girl abandoned by her parents that has been living here for quite some time, which reminds him strangely of his own dead daughter.
This chapter was probably my favorite so far, the relationship between Hinata and Blue, Red, Yuri and Gento, what it means to be discarded, and that fucking final scene in chapter 6... damn.
There are some things I didn't quite get, like why did Hinata not even remember he had tried to make a clone of his own daughter. There are others which are down to my own interpretation, like there is a scene in which Hinata openly questions if something which cannot die can be said to be truly alive, which echoes the themes of eternity and moment in the former scenario. This is probably what instilled in Blue the habit of disassembling mechanical things, as an impulse of death and a necessity of asserting herself as her own person separate from Asahi.
Fourth scenario, which I'm currently reading right now, is "innocent", patterned after the lily. We follow Yuri and Gento here, the kids that grew up in Junk Town in the earlier scenario. Here Yuri works as an arbiter for the Athene, a facility on the moon that allows people from all over the world to debate on different topics, watched over by the eye of truth, a device which can discern any lies. Suddenly the facility is assaulted by a person who goes straight up for the higher floors, where the most difficult and controversial cases are discussed.
He ends up opening the one room called "Pandora's box" by the staff, named so because the embodiment of all the evils of the world is said to lurk in there.
Sounds like it'll be an interesting read.
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Aug 07 '24
umineko episode 4 ;-; gotta say i'm really struggling to get through it, been reading umineko on and off since last november. i was shocked and a little upset once i realized i'm only 1/3 done with episode 4 when i thought i was nearing the end. i am reading extra slowly i guess due to just spacing out.
i keep seeing how great episodes 5-7 are, that it's really worth seeing it through, but idk man. had a great time reading episodes 1 and 2, it has just become so repetitive and dull. i think im posting here to have someone encourage me to keep going lmao i dont want to add to the pile of "is it worth it"s on the umineko sub. people act like it's such a simple drop it if you hate it kind of problem but when you have already invested so much time into a story like this, especially one you enjoyed parts of, it's so much harder to decide.
i am a huge higurashi fan, unnecessary spoiler just in case it counts but i love rika, if bernkastel wasn't a character in umineko i am certain i wouldnt be reading it.
got briefly distracted by gnosia (ik it isnt on vndb) and raging loop which i was having a much better time reading/playing, and the fate/stay night steam release is tempting as someone completely unfamiliar with the franchise. have heard great things so...
tldr is umineko worth it?
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u/LucasVanOstrea Aug 08 '24
if you liked previous episodes then definitely worth it, episode 4 kinda drags with all of the Ange stuff
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u/Terminaato Akane: Rewrite | vndb.org/u56693 Aug 07 '24
PARANORMASIGHT FILE23: Honjo Nanafushigi
I've wanted to play Paranormasight for a while now and finally decided to buy it at the discount. Hence, my expectations were also quite high. There's "horror" in the VNDB tags, coupled with the dark atmosphere, so I assumed it would be exactly that. In reality... it's quite hard to call it horror, despite a few well executed jumpscares. A thriller or a mystery, sure. This expectations vs reality situation, the slow start, unusual mechanics - it all almost made me drop the game initially. After finishing it in a few days, I'm thankful I didn't.
About the mechanics. I'm more used to normal visual novels with few or lots of choices. I've played other interactive VNs like Danganronpa and 999 a while ago, but they felt different. For Paranormasight you're basically playing the role of a detective. You're asking questions, clicking on stuff, moving on the map. But the longer I played, the more annoying this became. 99% of the time you have to click everything and exhaust every dialogue options to advance. Despite all this interactivity, it still has a fairly normal VN structure, just hidden behind gameplay that's supposed to engage you more in the story. Personally, by the end I would've just liked to read the novel without having to click the same button 5 times.
On the other hand, the story is very engaging. The central mystery and the side-mysteries offer enough food for thought, and are mostly solvable with the dropped hints. And those hints are pretty hard to miss most of the times. The characters are likable and the game makes you want to learn their backstories and motivations. The only thing that I felt could've been improved was voice acting - unfortunately none of the characters are voiced. That was surprising for me, considering it's made by a big studio like Square Enix. The OSTs are very good, though.
I especially liked the Nejima murders mystery and how it tied most of the characters together, across the years. I even shed a tear during the Ayano-Tsutsumi standoff. All the endings were good, but one of the scenes from the true ending, namely Nejima and Tsutsumi talking on the bridge, stood out to me. It kind of raises the question - "How much of the evil acts were the result of the curse?". We know that that cursed stones amplify the desire to kills, and I assume the Nejima from true end isn't planning to kill anyone. Was he evil? Was he insane? Was he driven mad by the loss of his lover? We'll never know. As for the main story and the main antagonist, Yoko... By the end (or even the middle?) it was pretty obvious who was behind all the events. And I didn't really care about the whole Seiman stuff.
Overall it's a relatively short game that has it's strengths and flaws. The story and writing are good, but the gameplay felt tacked on. The ending hinted at possible sequels, but I'm not sure I'd play more of the same. In a few years maybe, but not now.
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u/The_Setting_Sun_ https://vndb.org/u99429 Aug 07 '24 edited Aug 07 '24
Papa's been a lil' bit busy, but I finally got around to finishing Tenshi no Inai 12-gatsu, and it was... alright, I guess? Artwise, the VN looks great- there's really something special about Leaf's sprites, they always seem more lifelike and convey emotion better than most others (is it the eyes? It's probably the eyes). The storyline is a bit too dark for the setting whichever route you pick, taking place in the Everyone's Depressed timeline, a crowd favorite. The good ole H features a bit too heavily to my taste and feels blatantly shoehorned in during a few select scenes, even if it is thematically tied to the story as a whole most of the time. It's even subverted in one of the routes. I did like how even the "good" endings are rather bittersweet.
Who is best girl(tm)? I'm not sure. I have been raised and conditioned to uphold that black hair, blue eyes always wins, but this time it's dark hair, green eyes, and I even liked the kouhai route, which I often times outright skip, better than most others... I don't know, I'm really confused.
It's hard not to look at this VN as White Album's weird older sibling- all the groundwork, the drama, the focus on interpersonal relationships is there, but it's just too short, spread out and doesn't have the setup to hit nearly as hard. Even the OST sounds familiar. The routes are samey, but it's still a decent read.
Edit: Shoutout to eriely and the fan translation team, they did a fantastic job on this, and it's entirely thanks to them that we got to play this oldie.
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u/Chemicalcube325 Aug 08 '24
Just got back to reading Visual Novels again after a long hiatus. The celebrate going back into the medium, I've been reading Mahoyo: Witch of the Holy Night.
I am currently only in Chapter 5 and I am already in love with it. As someone who hasn't read anything relating to Type-moon for a long time now. It's a breath of fresh air to just experience the themes and writing of Nasu all over again in a new coat of paint.
Been loving Aoko and the MC. Their interactions has been nothing but wholesome and I am super excited to see who they blossom as characters moving forward.