Random Vns: Rui wa Tomo wo Yobu
Now, Ruitomo is one of 'those legendary VNs', the first kamige written by the Akatsuki Works team. It is well-known and often discussed amongst vets of playing untranslated VNs, and you can see how this was the formative stage for a team that would go on to make numerous great games in the future, most of them chuunige.
First off, Ruitomo isn't a chuunige, at least in the classic sense. The protagonist is a trap who is bound by an inherited curse not to reveal his true gender, and the story begins with him encountering several others that also possess similar curses, as well as powers that he doesn't possess. Ruitomo is one of those games that doesn't easily fall into a genre or sub-genre, as it has elements of action, mystery, mindfuck, fantasy, and romance all wrapped into one big bundle. So, I just have to shrug and call it a 'story-focused VN', lol (as vague a term as moege or charage, haha).
One thing that you should know about all Hino Wataru-written Akatsuki Works VNs... in every one of them a version of Akaneko (the final heroine of this one) appears, with the same personality, similar habits, and the same voice actor (Akaneko, Eru from Hello, Lady, Yuki from Comyu). Similarly, there is always at least one 'straight-man' heroine who tends to prefer correctness over everything else (Iyo in Ruitomo, Saku in Hello, Lady, Benio in Comyu, etc)
I once read a crappy review that said this was a VN about friendship *spews laughter*. Sorry, but that was one reviewer who mistook one element of the story for the whole point of it. The real central theme of this VN is isolation, social ostracism, and moral relativity. Technically, all Akatsuki Works VNs indulge in moral relativity, so you can just ignore that one, since it is Hino Wataru's favorite dog to beat. The isolation and social ostracism elements are fairly obvious from the beginning. All the heroines and the protagonist are social outcasts by means of their curses. The protagonist is the most obvious example as it forces him to lie and distance others from himself, but others have their own issues. For instance, Rui's curse, the inability to make promises of any kind, is crippling in a modern world, where you have to be able to sign a contract just to find a place to live or 'promise' to be at work on time. To one extent or another, the others' curses hold them isolated and ostracized from society as well.
Tomo is driven by a strong desire to escape his curse, intensified as time goes on by his growing fondness for his fellow curse-bearers and the guilt for deceiving them. I honestly can't help but like Tomo... he is selfish enough to be human but selfless enough when it comes to his friends to give his all for them. A lot of people who hate Akihito from Comyu will probably find Tomo to be far more pleasant, as that other's less pleasant qualities are diluted and his more pleasant ones enhanced in Tomo. He lacks Akihito's female-directed philanthropic spirit, but he does have a strong generosity of spirit to him... without the somewhat indiscriminate sexual mores of Akihito.
One thing I think a lot of people who try to read this VN have trouble with, besides the somewhat complex turns of phrase that are endemic to all Hino Wataru works, is the way so much of the dialogue between the characters, even in the slice-of-life scenes, is... oblique, requiring reading between the lines to grasp the full content. A lot of this comes from the curses, both referencing them, avoiding referencing them, and avoiding activating them. However, at least some of it is simply an extension of how relatively easy with one another the group is in normal situations, despite their often conflicting personalities. These conversations are easier to follow if you get the characters' personalities and roles in the group, but if you have trouble with that kind of thing, you'll probably be left behind at times.
Ruitomo has a definite playing order, with you being forced to play Rui's path before reading Atori's, Koyori's, and Iyo's (preferably in that order, or at least with Iyo as the last of the second three) and completing those four opening up Akaneko's path (the true path). I'll be blunt when I say that grasping the whole of the story without reading the first four paths is virtually impossible, so 'cheaters' who use 100% save files to get the true end first will just be screwing themselves over, lol.
This VN's story starts out in the middle... one of Hino Wataru's questionable habits. For better or worse, he likes to thrust you into the middle of the prologue before dragging you back to the beginning of it, and Ruitomo is the VN that suffers the most for it, in my experience. To be blunt, it is really hard to figure out what is going on during the first scene, so about one-third of the people I've talked to that tried to read this VN dropped it or stalled within the first quarter of the prologue. However, as the VN goes on, its characters, their personalities, their troubles, and their experiences grow on you rapidly, until you can't help but be entranced.
One thing that I was seriously impressed about, coming back to play this through a second time, was the meticulous way Hino Wataru designed the common route and the paths... he made sure everything was perfectly consistent as a whole, even if it didn't seem like it at first, and every single scene had at least some meaning in the greater context of the game as a whole, even if it might have seemed irrelevant or secondary in the path in which it existed. This shows off the rather impressive capacity for 'management of the details' that a very few writers in the VN world manage to display. There is a good reason why creating a large-scale story-focused VN (whether chuunige or not) tends to be rare. Most writers simply can't manage to maintain the internal consistency that you see in a VN like this one.
Overall, I was actually more impressed this time around than I was the first time I played this. It is called a kamige for a reason... brilliance of design, emotional stimulation, intellectual stimulation, etc. The fact is that VNs on this level are exceedingly rare and always worth the price I pay to buy them.
PS: I'll play the fandisc soon, though I might or might not manage to replay it before I begin playing this month's releases.
- ヤミハナ, Chronopolis, Jartse and 1 other
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