I found one interesting looking game “Sharin no Kuni, Himawari no Shoujo”. Refreshed my mind on how to tinker monitor/desktop resolutions with wine and randr, and how to use a text hooker, I now have quite a nice setup to play this. My language brain seems ready for the challenge too. However, I’m not really expecting much from myself, I have basically never managed to finish an untranslated VN, because they are so damn long with my reading speed.
Pretty interesting game. I picked on purpose one that is not scifi or fantasy like many VN seem to be.
Some impressions and predictions: The death scene early on seemed a bit excessive. I think this game might have some dark twists. And there might be some twist to the protagonist who is familiar with the city but even his old acquaintances don’t seem to recognize him. The MC seems very manipulative too, although many of the VNs I have played had such an MC. Still, it’s probably somewhat unusual.
I guess Sachi got her “wasting time” punishment obligation from spending too much time on the computer. She was doing trading or something and no one realized the value of it, thought she was just a useless NEET. There was just a scene where she laughed at Kenichi’s tsukkomi to her remark about how “modern NEETs don’t even work”. I suspect Mana lives with Sachi because she has a job to oversee Sachi’s self-medication with the sleeping drugs. Pretty interesting how she’s apparently brought from another country and doesn’t go to school but works despite her young age. That certainly seems quite dark already.
I think this game has meaningful choices and routes with free completion order. If that’s the case I’ll try get Touka’s route first. (Update: That’s not correct)
Isono (the male side character) is funny, even though I don’t understand half of what he says.
I predict that Natsumi was once pregnant, as apparently at some time she needed help with household chores from Isono, and her obligation indicates something of sexual nature. Touka probably doesn’t get along with her because she is so judgemental about what is considered good behavior.
Spent the whole day playing this game. I think I cleared something like 20%.
Ugh, spent the whole day playing this game. Managed to get from start of second chapter (Sachi) to its end, but it took every hour of the day, I didn’t go outside today. How can this game be so frigging long, three more chapters like this left and I only saw one route for this chapter. That’s like 2-3 novels worth of text, right? I think there is a better ending for this chapter but I avoided it on purpose. However I felt earlier that the given choices were kind of railroaded so it could also be there’s only extra (sex) scenes to unlock with different choices.
Isono-kun cracks me up. This game often breaks the fourth wall, I think it’s quite refreshing, but feels like the technique has more risks than benefits.
I’m liking Houduki more and more, but I still think the consistency of his character was ruined in the opening where he shot a girl without a realistic reason (as I understood). After that he has been consistently extremely sharp schemer and speaker with evil aims and methods, but it feels like he has a personal moral system that avoids mindless brutality. Like I read between the lines that Mana is fine. I imagine that Houduki’s methods hurt and kill a lot of people, but there’s always some kind of justification, like enabling another person to prosper (as in case of separating Mana and Sachi).
He thinks: “3rd rate people” can be sacrificed for the sake of “2nd and 1st rate people” — that kind of utilitarism or other philophical way of thinking. It doesn’t seem to me like Houduki is doing his job for fame nor money but to exercise his own philosophy unto others, which is in some way noble I suppose. I like how Houduki manipulates the cases to present a relatively easy solution for Kenichi, but then Kenichi takes the risk and finds a better solution, which itself is a pleasant result for Houduki who is trying to grow Kenichi (to be like him, or to be as good but in Kenichi’s own way). Their relationship is that of an extermely severe mentor and a pupil who overcomes the given challenges to improve himself beyond human levels, with other people being mere pawns in the game.
I was recently reading a book about Mao Zedong and it quoted something Mao wroted in a journal of his at about 20 years old. The book was physical and translated so I can’t find the quote verbatim, I think the meaning was something like this: Weak people don’t understand that strong people can have moral systems which aren’t build around creating happiness equally for all people. Strong people might only care about themselves and if they do that in perfect agreement with their own philosophy, then they are moral people. Probably much more moral than the masses who don’t properly think about philosophy but go with the generally agreed upon principles when it is easy to do so. I think I agree with Houduki and Mao on these points, although my “preference” is that egoistic deeds and achievements that gain the approval of other people are cooler/more interesting than atrocities done in the name of purely personal blue-and-orange morality. I don’t judge Mao since I don’t judge anybody, but I also don’t quite enjoy reading any more about his “achievements”.
Feels like the plots in this game are very carefully crafted, with clues given in advance, the solutions revealed in a dramatic manner and all plot holes filled. It’s certainly great to read, but I wonder if this kind of writing resists a second reading. Since the plots make heavy use of mysteries, sudden reveals and unexpected twists, maybe it won’t work very well once you know what’s going to happen. I think I used to regard these kind of stories as of the highest quality, but perhaps I overlooked the advantages of different structuring. It seems to work surprisingly well to not carefully craft a reason for every event, but for example “in doubt make ninjas break in through the window”. That is because it’s less important to what the characters react than how they react to it. The events and subsequent character reactions should have meaning in the context of the story, but detailed logic behind the events is less important.
To give an example, in The End of the Fucking World tv-series the male main character plots killing a person, but before he can do so a chance event puts him against a bad person that he is forced to attack and ends up killing. That event has a major impact on him, but it came out of the blue, randomly. And the thing is that the randomness doesn’t really feel that bad for the audience. One can explain it away like “something else equally major was bound to happen sooner of later if that thing didn’t”, “real life is random” or “it was karma”. In contrast, if the writers had tried to create a solid reason for why that event happened, say some previous action of the MC or some other character had done something that caused the bad person to act against them, the story might feel artificially built. Taken to extreme, it could become a web of causalities, where the author is like a programmer trying to make sure everything is perfectly causal, and in the progress lose the messages of the story. After all, a proper story is not merely a sequence of events, but a sequence of events to communicate one or more ideas, the act which makes reading the story a pleasant experience for the reader.
Though don’t get me wrong, I still love stories that do such careful crafting well. I think it’s great when a story manages to please the analytical part of the brain, as well as the emotional part which is the more important goal for the story. I think an analytical person like me who is a beginner at writing might be in danger of over-dosing the spice of logic and causality and forget to put proper work into defining meaning and emotion into the work.
Finished Oone’s chapter. I peeked at some playthrough and apparently if you unlock a girl’s route, there will be scenes in the later chapters for them. But it’s rather painful because at this point I don’t know if some of the decisions I made that differed from the playthrough were wrong or just inconsequential. The visual novel format is pretty annoying, especially because the fast forward feature isn’t as fast as you’d like (why can’t it directly jump between the choice points? I might have seen some VN autosave at every choicepoint, in this game you can’t even save once a choice shows up!).
I’m aware that many players recommend playing VNs with a playthrough from the start, but I didn’t do it because I thought at worst I’d have to replay one chapter on fastforward instead of all of them. I guess I’ll just play the game through like I started, winging the choices (treat it as a game rather than a media novel), and then replay on fastforward with a guide if there’s something that I wanted to see but missed. I never cared for 100% completion of any game — if the game doesn’t convince me I’m missing something I would like, then it’s the developers’ fault and I won’t bother. Thankfully the Extras menu of this game at least shows if there is any artwork for a character you haven’t encountered so far (but as said, I can’t yet make deductions based on that because there are more chapters left and the routes aren’t contained to single chapters).
Ugh, this game’s story is so slow that I’m going crazy.
Trying to play more Sharin no Kuni, although I might not be on the mood. My early predictions for this game went pretty badly I think, so maybe it’s time to switch into hoping rather than predicting. I hope Kenichi doesn’t revolt against Houduki, but that they have an understanding in the end. So far all the officials in this game have been portrayed as corrupt and assholes, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some kind of (personal) revolt.
Ah, the badges contained listening bugs, that makes great sense. Somehow I didn’t consider that although Houduki seemed obviously nearly prescient.
Wow, when I started to play this game I wrote that it felt like the kind of story with a huge twist and now it came: The sister was there all along. Haha, I couldn’t have guessed. Even though I read spoilers that the sister comes in the 5th chapter somehow. I don’t remember if they explained before how with that Ultimate Obligation (極刑義務) you cannot communicate with anyone and everyone has to pretend you don’t exist. Hence the character was invisible to the story.
Hyouka too had a twist like this in one of the arcs, and the characters were talking how it’s a bit lame, though a cool trick (in a closed-room mystery student film, the murderer turned out to be the camera man always out of sight). The twist is a bit extreme to not break my suspension of disbelief, but it does explain very nicely a lot of things, like why Kenichi has the habit of “talking to himself”, often addressing the sister, and how Isono often claimed to be talking to spirits. I think this twist is pretty cool, but it adds to what I said earlier about how a precisely crafted story like this probably has less rereading value, as it instead aims for maximum impact on the first read. Which is quite fair, since the audience in possession of endless entertainment often don’t have time to reread even the best stories. Although, sometimes these stories are nice for one reread — for paying attention to all those clues and foreshadowing about the twists, messages and themes, but I’m not sure if this game did it so well.
Even if it doesn’t make much sense, it has pretty interesting implications when you can’t acknowledge the ultimately sentenced person. She can basically just walk into your house and eat stuff out of the fridge in front of your eyes, and you have to be like “strange, where is all the food disappearing?!”. I probably missed some details given in the story, but I might guess her great freedom had quite a bit to do with being with Kenichi and the people around her being his friends.
All the normal Obligations have the badges on sleeve that you are not allowed to remove (a nice excuse why the characters always wear the same clothes), so I find it really cool how for the sister the Ultimate obligation mark is instead tattooed in the same place of the arm. Ah, apparently it was her own choice. The character design fits her personality well I think.
AAAAAaaaaa, I just remembered the biggest mystery that this twist solved — why Kenichi was carrying around girls’ underwear and got busted in the inspection at school, and why everybody quickly forgot about the whole thing. Damn, I thought it was a pointless scene, although it could certainly have been better if they tied it to other parts of the story besides this twist.
Continuing Sharin no Kuni, looking at the playthrough (list of selections, now running short), it seems like I might finish this today.
The heroes get access to the data left by the revolutionary father, remarking that it could be used against the state (which is apparently corrupt). But Kenichi notes that it’s exactly what the father tried to do and failed. “His way of using the information was wrong.” Yes, I hoped earlier that there will be somekind of agreement with Houduki, maybe they all try to change the system from the inside (left to epilogue). Hmm, if I had to write the rest of this story, maybe Houduki and the father made a deal upon the father’s capture that Houduki would “look after” Kenichi and they would try to change the system Houduki’s way. There was no escaping that the father had to die as punishment. I think this would be good because it serve as a powerful revelation in the final confrontation between Kenichi and Houduki. Also it would explain how the father so well predicted what the son would do, his written messages being unbelievably accurate. But my main reason is still that an adult story like this should not have Houduki be an irredeemable villain. Him playing one is so much more interesting. Hah! Few dialogue lines later this is turning out to be a correct prediction: The father knew Houduki and suggests the son to depend on him if necessary, before backing off and saying he’d rather the two never meet. I’m sure I’ve seen this pattern in some other stories, but I can’t think of any examples now. “The villain is actually an ally behind the scenes, but his methods and aims are more severe than the heroes’, so to a degree he still remains a villain to the end.” Shinsuke from Gintama could be one example.
No end in sight for this game. Just long and slow torture. Now that I think, the last chapter might with good reason be the longest, even though there are no more selections left. And there may be some kind of epilogues after.
I pondered for a while about how Houduki challenged Kenichi to think how their plans were so well predicted by Houduki. At the time Kenichi guessed listening bugs and Houduki put it on the fake leg injury he had feigned to Kenichi for 7 years. But I also considered the possibility of a mole, that Isono (or maybe Ririko) had been working with Houduki. But it now really seems like Houduki is rather a pure villain so that explanation seems unlikely because it would make Isono a villain as well.
Saw this surprise coming: like Houduki pretended to have a bad leg, Kenichi pretended to have a drug habit the whole time. I’d say that’s not really good writing, but I do like how it again highlights how Houduki and Kenichi are similar in many ways, and also the treatment of drugs was pretty interesting in the game. For a long time it seemed like it was just a minor thing that Kenichi was using hard drugs, considering you never see drugs in anime and rarely in manga too. Then as this prison phase begun, Kenichi apparently began to suffer badly, so it was like a message about how using drugs may feel harmless and good until it suddenly goes really bad.
Phew, finally finished the game. Although I don’t know if I can say that since I didn’t get any heroine ending — such is the cruel world of H-game selections. Well, the real reward is not the H-scenes but the huge amount of reading I did. The difficulty level between reading manga and visual novels is great, but I finally covered it.
Okay, my final verdict is that I did not like the direction the main story went and ended at. Quite the usual good defeats evil stuff. A few really cheesy parts I disliked. But as a whole the game was a good experience and there were a lot of great small things I learned from. Thanks to this for reminding me again how “if there’s a story you really want to read, but it doesn’t exist, then you have to write it.”
There’s a “fandisc” to the game, which apparently essentially means a short sequel and a mix of little goodies. I read that it offers some closure to the game and epilogues for the heroines, so it sounds like something I should have played after the game, but I don’t know if I’ll bother at this point. Besides, no matter the conventions of VNs, I think games should aspire to be complete without separately sold expansions. Also the fandisc is rated lower than the original game in VNDB, even though usually you expect sequels to have better ratings because they are mostly played by people who like the series.