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Sayonara o Oshiete さよならを教えて ~Comment te Dire Adieu~ [Craftwork]


kivandopulus

9733 views

Sayonara o Oshiete has a good number of English reviews (1 2 3), plus reddit comments (4), but what strikes me is that all of them are positive despite some noticed flaws. But as a plotge fetishist and pragmatist to the bones, I demand demolition of fake idols. This bastion shall fall today.

Video playthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh8pCRc3CEs&list=PLs4Gp5VU4Fv8rKP5oDa1nzt0KevjFrmhw

bandicam%2B2019-02-09%2B22-09-17-539.jpg

1) Sayonara o Oshiete has a synopsis, but does not have a story. Deal with it. Nothing happens, like absolutely. Protagonist just visits three students out of five after school before going home. He sees some delusions involving the students. Getting into heroine route only tells us about each heroine specific theme. Just as theme starts to uncover there's the same abrupt end for each heroine. Credits.

2) Heroines totally lack charm. Sugamo Mutsuki is presented as a pure angel and supposedly main heroine. But pretty much the first H scene almost made me throw up. There's no realism or depth in the heroines, just specific theme and some cleverly written dialogues paired up with actually eminent voicing. 

3) Protagonist is no good. He can be renamed and is an abstract mass of destruction delusions. He's impossible to sympathize with. 

4) H scenes. Roughly only half of them are shocking, but the rest are quite conventional. And that's a huge problem for me. It looks like game bears some idea half of the time, but also wants to appeal to as many players as possible and becomes a plain nukige. From idea point of view For Elise ~Elise no Tame ni~ was perfect. H events in delusions were 100% appalling. Sayonara o Oshiete is basically about same horrible delusions, but with very sexy heroines sprites and often appealing H events. There's not enough real trash in H events.

5) Loli abuse. Can't deny - all loli scenes are drawn in a very traumatic way here. But I just detest any loli H events, especially such hardcore ones.

 I've seen transformation of nukige genres since the 80s. There has been shift to museum type vns, then to training SIMs, then to devil games, and currently I cautiously try to grasp when the shift to corruption visual novels happened. And Sayonara o Oshiete is the first candidate so far to be grandfather of all corruption games. With the half-measures Craftwork actually managed to depict sexy destruction, and that's no way a compliment considered that I detest corruption games the most.

Horrible as it may sound, I'm relieved to see game translation project stalled, because completion  would cause an outrageous reaction and backlash at Japanese developers due to very troubling content involving loli characters.

The only definite strong sides of Sayonara o Oshiete are first-class voicing and great song theme. Visual and textual decisions are questionable. But for me the number of negative elements outweighs it all. The only lingering taste after the game is nausea, and I hope to forget it as a nightmare asap.

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"Sayooshi is garbage, all hail Nijuuei" should become a galaxy brain meme in these forums.

Update: It is definitely overhyped, but i didn't dislike nearly as much as you did. Shion, Aruiwa handled that kind of story in a more exciting way, but Sayooshi makes up for it for some really good directing (between the filters and timing for the effects). H-Scenes were a lot like It's my own invention from SubaHibi in the sense that they were too silly to be taken seriously.

Edited by onorub
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I was semi-content with Mutsuki and Nozomi routes that can be called main heroines routes (angel/devil). Then happened Mahiru route that disgusted me with loli abominable scenes. Miyuki and Koyori routes were just plain unimpressive. I saw all the endings in one day, and the repetitiveness and deteriorating quality with each route grieved me more and more. Koyori as the last route was the worst for the number of visual atrocities. I really wanted to throw up afterwards. Only night's sleep calmed me down. I don't want to belittle directing, text, atmosphere and really immersive voicing, but I try to evaluate any game by the story, the ideas it promotes and the thoughts that it provokes. And looking back at Sayooshi, these aren't its strong points. I'm especially offended by the fact that heroines themes with their core ideas get interrupted at the highest points of their routes. The moment you're really sucked in it's gg, time for ending that has nothing to do with the recently experienced "something" that you started to understand. It's good while it lasts, but it leaves you with nothing afterwards. It's quite the opposite effect from the one that Tsui no Sora produces.

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I was open to criticism of Sayooshi as I am in agreement that it isn't perfect. But I couldn't find myself agreeing with any of your criticisms. It seems more that you dislike it because its popular in the small, but vocal crowd of English speakers who read retro Japanese VNs. And I can relate to that sentiment, if Doki Doki and Fate Stay Night for example weren't so popular I wouldn't mind them as much either. There is something particularly frustrating about disliking something that everyone else seems to adore, so I sympathize with you in that regard. 

What I will say, is that I think the reason Sayooshi gets adored so much (by me included) is because genuine denpa isn't a very popular genre. Sure you have VNs like Suba Hibi and others that have denpa segments, but its rare to get a VN where the denpa is the primary focus. And for those who love that genre, Sayooshi scratches in all the right places (for most of us at least). 

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High popularity raises demands for the game. So popular games should not be afraid of some criticism. 

For me Sayoshi is one of attempts to create a meaningful and interesting corruption nukige. I used to search for such game as well. For Elise, euphoria , Maggot Baits, Kansen series... I did not find a single one that I would like, so I lost any hope in nukige. 

But prologue of Sayoshi is absolutely magical. I can rewatch these two starting hours over and over. Video of prologue got 36k views and 24 comments which is an absolute record for my tiny channel. If only the rest of the game was like that.

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5 hours ago, kivandopulus said:

High popularity raises demands for the game. So popular games should not be afraid of some criticism. 

For me Sayoshi is one of attempts to create a meaningful and interesting corruption nukige. I used to search for such game as well. For Elise, euphoria , Maggot Baits, Kansen series... I did not find a single one that I would like, so I lost any hope in nukige. 

But prologue of Sayoshi is absolutely magical. I can rewatch these two starting hours over and over. Video of prologue got 36k views and 24 comments which is an absolute record for my tiny channel. If only the rest of the game was like that.

Hearing all these comments and posts made on this game in 2019-2020 makes me glad I'm not the only one who recently got into this game, having just heard about Sayooshi last week.

Anyways I think many of your points are valid. I agree wholeheartedly that the H-scenes are over-the-top and were most likely added for shock value. It gets to the point where a good number of these scenes become drivel, almost filler to pad the game. However I would disagree they are completely meaningless given they are strongly reflective of the protagonist's deteriorating mental state and do bear some significance when the big reveal happens at the end.

That said, I do feel the drivel and disturbing content is worth sitting through (or in some cases grinding through) to get to the game's real treasure: its twist ending. A twist ending that, while not completely original, does bear its narrative fruit that makes you go "ah ha, why didn't I see that coming"? For myself, after finding out the twist in the end I was left somewhat dumbfounded I didn't figure it out sooner, but the fact the game played everything up until that point so convincingly caused me to forgive myself for not putting two and two together beforehand.

Which brings me to my next point, and that is the topic of mental health. I will say I do not think this game portrays mental health symptoms such as psychosis with much grace and makes several faults with portraying the symptoms accurately (I say this as someone who has studied psychology and sociology) but I think this is reflective largely of Japanese media as a whole. Even today, there are not a lot of anime, manga or video games I would say portray individuals with mental health symptoms very favorably or humanely and this may be reflective of the current stigmatization of mental health as a whole in Japan.

Still, in spite of underlying stigma and its emphasis on shock value over accuracy, I will say the writers of this game succeeded in making me feel sorry for the protagonist. There was not much to be gathered from his backstory unfortunately, but from the little we can glean, it is clear to me he was subject to complex trauma, loss and failure. The game may very well serve as a robust form of social commentary towards Japanese society as a whole- a culture that does not forgive ones who fail to deal with mental health symptoms on their own and especially does not forgive those who fail to fit into the system. I wish I could elaborate on this point further with examples, but that would give away too many spoilers of the ending.

Anyways, before I ramble further, will I agree Sayooshi is not a perfect game? Absolutely. However I found this game to be quite a refreshing take on the visual novel genre, especially since it touches on taboo topics of mental health and failure to conform to social norms. Yes, these themes could have been addressed in a much more sanitized manner and it is a shame that the game's perverse aspects have detracted so many potential commentators. Still, for what its worth, the fact that the game has maintained its cult following even to this day shows to me that it has achieved some merit in its story-telling.

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Could you spoil what happened ?

I always said people saying that there some really good plot twist but i never actually find any information about the game other than the reviews and i can't undestand Japanese

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Spoiler

Each girl route ends abruptly while discussing something strange on the verge of seemingly revolutionary important breakthrough after the H scene. When all girls routes are finished, main character just wakes up, and no delusions ever happened in reality.

 

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