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Koitama


Clephas

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I picked this one as my second game for VN of the Month May for a very simple reason... this company's previous works(1/2 Summer and Timepiece Ensemble) were overall enjoyable/emotionally powerful and I was hoping for a repeat of the experience. I'll be honest and say outright that it is nowhere near either of those two for sheer emotional impact, but I did find it more interesting in some ways, intellectually.

First, the basic setting is pretty interesting. The VN takes place in a school with an absolute caste system, where most of the students are 'failures' brought in from around the country and forcibly enrolled in order to reform them and a few dozen high-level students rule over them with an iron fist. This is achieved through the use of bracelets and anklets that stick together when activated at a special student's console and a collar that can unleash electric shocks as punishment.

The protagonist basically comes into the school with the purpose of doing something about Tenjouin Aika, who is the overall absolute authority of the school, as well as being the head of the special students' organization through sheer charisma and personal ability. The story is split into two differently themed sets of routes, one purely romance-themed and the other focused on the behind-the-scenes occult circumstances that shaped the school's policies. The former's heroines are Naho and Nono, with Nono as the main heroine of that one. The latter is focused on Aika and Kanade, with a focus on Aika. That isn't to say that Kanade or Naho's routes are neglected... it is simply that the most important issues for each of the two main themes of the game is only resolved in the main heroines' routes.

The overall quality of the game - both in terms of narrative and basic story structure - is quite high and generally enjoyable, but it lacks the nakige-qualities of 1/2 Summer and Timepiece Ensemble, which is something of a downer. Rather, it focuses - sometimes to excess - on the rather straightforward themes I mentioned above, the occult issues and the straight-out romantic ones. The main theme of the story in either case is individual/personal growth, though it is a bit more complex than that.

I think that the biggest problems with this VN - and what stops it from being a truly superlative one overall - is that there is no exploration of heroine or protagonist backstory whatsoever and the fact that the lack of an extensive after-story for the heroines other than Aika.

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