Tokubetsu na Bonjin no Seikatsu
No, the title isn't the name of a VN... at least as far as I know. It essentially means 'the lifestyle of a special normal/average person'. This is the wording that came to mind when I thought about the standard charage protagonist...
Now, slice-of-life is by nature just that... a slice of the characters' lives outside of whatever conflict or set of events that determines the flow of the story. There are slice-of-life moments in almost all VNs (except for a few sex-only nukige, mahou shoujo rape VNs, and a few other types). So, I can honestly say that I have nothing against slice-of-life in and of itself.
No, my problem is with 'normal' life. To be blunt, I don't see the attraction of everyday life in a high school, even with added moe events and the like. Oh, in moderation it can add flavor to a VN... but it is also one of the types of scene that is most likely to get boring the longer you experience it. It is this aspect that makes so many charage into kusoge. I don't mean that all charage are kusoge because of an excess of this type of slice-of-life. However, roughly two-thirds of all charage make this mistake... of granting the reader a near infinite amount of pointless ichaicha (flirting, being lovey-dovey) in the heroine paths, forcing the reader through endless irrelevant interactions with other characters in the course of the common route (often without comedy or conflict to break it up into manageable 'bites'), and damning the reader to experience typically formulaic routes to falling in love with and getting together with the heroine.
In other words, the problem with charage isn't so much the basic subject matter... it is the inability of many of the writers to 'spice' it enough to keep it from getting boring and tasteless. I've experienced charage that bring to life this kind of subject matter to a surprising degree, leaving deep impressions on my psyche. It is these that keep me coming back to sift through the garbage for gems, even as the mountains of crap stain my brain with puerile attempts to recapture a youth that never happened or could happen.
Understand, when I say 'spice', I don't necessarily mean the fantasy/sci-fi stuff I adore... it can be something as simple as the protagonist having a solid goal in life, being capable in a certain area, or growing immensely as a result of events in the game. As an example, even setting aside the wacky setting, the protagonist in Noble Works is overall capable and his personality quirks born from his years of poverty and near-isolation are what turned it from what could have been your standard half-baked attempt at an ojousama-themed game into something worth re-reading. It would have been all too easy for Gin'iro Haruka to fall into the trap of dehumanizing the protagonist, thus ruining things totally, but they gave him depth as a human being (albeit as a 'supportive friend/boyfriend/husband) that made experiencing over ten years of his life multiple times interesting.
In other words, this is another rant on how removing the humanity and any roundness from a VN protagonist will also ruin the VN as a whole. I'm currently going through one of the many charage in my backlog (Yuyukana) and the protagonist from this one is a classic 'I have no idea why everyone is angry at me' normal/donkan/harem protagonist of the type mass-produced since just after the turn of the century. Experiencing this VN is bringing back to me (as if I really needed to be reminded me) how much of an abomination this particular cliche is. Why is it so hard for charage-writers to comprehend that the perspective you have on the story is as important as the heroines and side-characters?
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