alpacaman

Over the last couple of weeks I watched the anime adaptations of Key VNs I hadn't seen yet, namely Air, Little Busters and Rewrite. Air: This is the only one out of the three where I haven't read the VN so I can't really comment on how good of an adaption it is. What I can say is that I enjoyed it quite a lot despite the rushed pacing at times. I feel like three or four more episodes to properly establish the heroines and backstory could have worked wonders for its general quality because what is there in the anime is in no way weaker than Kanon imo except maybe for the one route by the guy who hasn't written anything since whose name I'm too lazy to look up. It's quite atmospheric and Air as a story feels like the logical link between Kanon and Clannad thematically. I get why it is the closest thing Key has to a "forgotten" VN, with the game being (and looking) quite old and the anime falling somewhat short of the amazing adaptations of Kanon (at least the one by KyoAni) and Clannad, but I'd still highly recommend checking it out. Little Busters: Out of the VNs written by Maeda I think Little Busters is the hardest to adapt, mainly because of all the minigames that make up a lot of its charm that won't work as well in a linear medium. Considering that I thought the adaption was pretty solid even though the drop in production quality when compared to Kanon or Clannad is immediately noticable. I feel like they tweaked a few of the heroines' personalities a bit, sometimes for better (Kotomi), sometimes for worse (Haruka). Also some of the heroine routes were actually handled better in the anime than the VN, especially in Mio's case. And is it just me, or is there a lot more fanservice than in the KyoAni adaptations? I'm not fundamentally opposed to it, but in a couple of emotional scenes it got quite annoying. Rewrite: I know this one is kind controversial, as it has an original route and is pretty obviously rushed trying to cut down an 80+ hours VN into 24 episodes. Despite that I think this version of Rewrite is probably close the best that's possible considering the restraints in terms of time and budget the studio apparently had to work with. Yes, the way they handle Lucia's and Shizuru's backstories is clunky, and the bad CG, animation and direction in some scenes when compared to others make it pretty obvious what parts of the anime they thought were important to get right and which ones not so much. But I think in terms of what Rewrite wants to convey as a story they did a solid job. The new route itself captures the spirit of the VN well enough and where they make changes to mechanics or personalities they are sensible. Would I recommend it someone who hasn't read the original? Still no. For that it's just moving through things way to fast to make sense of what's happening without prior knowledge. But I think it shows they consulted Tanaka Romeo for the new route and if you're looking for a somewhat different take on some material you already know, I think its worth checking out.

Great video! I've been looking for content creators (tbh not very thoroughly) in the VN-fandom who take a more analytical angle regarding themes and this kind of stuff, and I like Key, so this was right up my alley. Have you watched/read anything else by Key? If Kanon's core themes resonated with you, their other titles might as well. I'd suggest going chronologically though as each game somewhat builds on the ideas of the previous one, something I realised only very recently when I finally got around to watching the Air anime.

I'd say the second part is worth reading on its own. It's a lot better than the first one and its main plot is pretty much self contained anyway. Most of the overarching plot and worldbuilding is kind of lame anyway, so I wouldn't mind it never being completed as long as AiD manages to put out at least one or two more episodes on the level of M2S:a (is that how you abbreviate the title?).

And Silvz is dealing with people having different opinions by voicing an opinion, so what is your point?

So does this imagined VN show any of the the war crimes and genocides or nah? I mean apparently everyone did them so it would be unrealistic not to include them. Or is it more about sexy waifus being kickass while wearing Wehrmacht uniforms?

Is your second paragraph referring to G-Senjou no Maou again? If so, first you should probably hide it behind a spoiler tag. Second, I'm not saying it's a great twist, just that it makes at least some sense in the context of the narrative so the twist itself doesn't bother me as much. Also, is it even true there is no proper setup?

I don't even think plot elements and twists being properly explained or foreshadowed is that important as long they are consistent with what a story attempts to communicate. In a conventional whodunnit a big part of the enjoyment comes from the idea that the audience is given enough clues to figure out the solution themselves, so asspull twists are a complete no go. Other types of stories have different aims though, so there doesn't have to be the same degree of consistency on a purely logical level but rather in terms of ideas/mood/themes and so on. The twist at the end of Planet of the Apes (which you probably know so I don't even need to spoil it here) seems like an asspull when your only criterion for a good twist is "could I have figured it out on my own". It still is a great twist though. In the case of G-senjou no Maou I'd argue

I know I already got a hat a few years back, but Rad Shiba reeeaaally wants a candy cane to chew on.

A few days ago I finally finished Muramasa. My feelings towards it are complicated. It seems like Nitroplus applied their own law of balance where for each brilliant idea in the game they had to put in a bad one as well. To name one example, one of the core ideas Muramasa poses is how using violence / killing someone evil for the sake of good actually makes you evil as well, making the case that those one considers evil have different ideals for which they deem using violence justified, like you do for yours, putting you on the same level morally. While I personally don't agree with the conclusions the Muramasa draws from this seeming contradiction, I admit it makes its case well and in a nuanced fashion, at least for the most part. It would be easier to accept these ideas though if the "villains" our "heroes" are supposed to be morally equal to weren't either There are a lot of really interesting concepts like how the individual mecha (which are sentient btw) and their powers are basically the manifestation of the violent form of the ideals of their masters. I know it's not exactly revolutionary to have a character's personality match their fighting style but imo Muramasa handles this aspect especially well, turning fights into battles of ideas with stakes that go beyond "will the protagonist survive". To balance this out, a few of these mechas Speaking of H-content, I'd even say most of these scenes involving the protagonist are handled relatively well. There's pretty dubious consent in most of them and I totally get if they cross the line for anyone but at least for me they kind of work in their thematic context. Then again there are numerous rape scenes that just exist to show you how evil a certain character is. There is a lot more stuff (good and bad) I could write about. But overall I'd say Muramasa is worth checking out, at least if you can stomach a few rape scenes, an extremely gloomy protagonist (don't get me wrong, I think he's well-written and his overly literal and honest character makes for a few very funny scenes, I just wish he wouldn't take himself so seriously sometimes) and some pacing issues in the first half. I would say Muramasa has too many flaws too be called a masterpiece, but it's definitely one of the most ambitious "mainstream" VNs out there, and when it gets good, it gets reeaally good. It actually has some depth to its themes, the fight scenes can be extremely suspenseful and it has a strong main cast. I gave it an 8/10 on vndb. Without all the bad stuff I might have landed on a 9 or even 9.5, but even so the bad stuff can get quite annoying at times but at least to me not distracting enough to award Muramasa anything close to a low rating. But I totally get how it could ruin the experience for someone else.

I was just able to access the site from Germany although there still seem to be technical difficulties, as each page takes very long to load and my old account on the site has seemingly disappeared. I was able to make a new one though and am currently downloading the game. I'd say I'm cautiously hyped for Muramasa. It's the 8th highest rated title on vndb, but then again Baldr Sky Dive 2 sits at 9, and I found that one pretty mediocre. Also from my few experiences with Nitroplus I got the impression that they have a tendency to put style and edginess over substance in their stories.

So I've been doing some reading over the last couple of weeks. I finished Musicus!. In my opinion it deserves most of the praise it's receiving. It feels to me like the kind of novel you'd read in literature class that everyone found extremely boring except for the literature geeks, so being this highly rated on vndb despite reaching a more mainstream audience thanks to the hype surrounding it is a pleasant surprise to me. I usually dislike it when people defend a boring story by saying it has ~themes~ (cough, Himawari, cough cough), but in the case of Musicus! I'd say it actually is themes-driven rather than plot- or character-driven. Characters often represent certain ideas or outlooks on life and once those are developed to a certain degree the game has no issue dropping those characters completely, and its approach to scene selection is somewhat similar, rushing through scenes that seem central to the plot and instead showing some slice-of-life surrounding them. Occasionaly there is an edgy philosophical monologue, but a lot of the time Musicus! communicates its ideas through small details, like most of the protagonist's classmates only getting sprites once you enter the school route or the bad route completely lacking BGM. I also read Meeting in the Flesh, a free otome EVN about romancing monsters in a gory fantasy world. What seems like the premise for a (bad) parody game turns out to be one of the most powerful love stories I've encountered in a VN so far. It reminded me of Saya no Uta to a certain degree, but inverts its core theme of how your perception of the world shapes your outlook on things, instead showing how an open and loving mind lets you find even the most deeply hidden beauty. This game is also one of the rare cases where I'd really recommend reading the R-rated version, despite, you know, the vore and tentacles. The CGs aren't that explicit anyway.

I think I found the reason it's tagged adult-only on Steam.

So I read Ciconia When They Cry - Phase 1 over the last few days. I know it's kind of a stupid idea to start reading the first episode of a series that's just been delayed until the end of the pandemic (whenever that is supposed to be) for dubious reasons, but I was in the mood for a murder mystery VN without wanting to buy one so I picked the most promising option from by backlog. As it turns out Ciconia isn't a murder mystery, which I could probably have guessed beforehand, given the Sci-Fi military setting. So it's less of a sequel to Umineko in terms of subject matter, but rather tries to develop (and deconstruct, of course) some of Umineko's core ideas and themes. What Ciconia Phase 1 basically does is to put a character who somewhat embodies the "golden" solution Umineko proposes for its central idealism vs. realism conflict into a situation where, despite him being one of the seemingly most important figures, he is powerless to prevent a war that could potentially wipe out mankind. I read somewhere that Phase 1 is supposed to be Ciconia's equivalent of the complete question arcs in Higurashi and Umineko, which would explain its length (~25 hours) and complexity. It is rather heavy on exposition and introduces a lot of characters and factions. As for overall enjoyment, I'm kind of torn. It has enough really strong moments, but it can get pretty cringey at times, especially when Ryukishi07 tries his hands at social and media criticism. Tbf Umineko had its weird/boring moments as well, but at least to me they didn't feel as central to the core of the narrative as they do in Ciconia. Then again Phase 2 is probably going to take the story into a completely different direction than I'm expecting right now, so chances are I'm completely wrong in this regard.

For some reason the Steam version isn't available in Germany and as I don't have a credit card I can't get the game from Mangagamer itself either. So it seems like I'll have to put off reading it for the forseeable future...

Isn't the English release already based on the PS4 version? Anyway, I don't think Iwaihime could be salvaged by a few rewrites.

I don't really want to get too deep into discussing Grisaia as I don't want to derail the thread, but is it really the character routes that are the most contentious? I managed to really not like it in the common route, and some of the aspects you mentioned as objective positives played a big role in that. The comedic scenes all basically culminate in a "women are irrational, amirite" or "Yuuji is so badass" punchline and most of them are accompanied by the same music track so at some point every time it started playing I automatically zoned out, which imo isn't what proper sound direction should do. I strongly disagree about the character build-up as well. Other VNs don't need close to 50 hours to build up characters to make you care enough for them to feel sad for them when you learn they were once forced to cannibalise members of their softball team or whatever. As for the art, I agree it's competently done, but artwork especially something where time and general trends play a big role in how it is received. Most VN artwork from the 90s looks somewhat ugly by today's standards (except to fans of this particular style), and it's completely possible we are going to look at Grisaia in the same way in some 20-30 years. High/expensive production values are not the same as high quality. (Sorry, I couldn't contain myself). To add something more substantial, I completely get where you are coming from on this. I think the term you're looking for is "valid". You can point to a set of criteria a piece of media should adhere to in your opinion, explain where these criteria come from and why you accept them as an indicator for quality. You can say that the action scenes in the Transformers movies are bad because they are cut in a way that doesn't properly convey what is even going on instead of just cutting really fast between locations, and in your opinion an action scene should actually show the action. That is more valid than someone saying "skyscraper go boom", but it's not more objective. The reason I fight the term "objective" that much is probably because of these youtube channels that claim to do "objective criticism" when all they basically do is stop at every frame and scream "that's stupid", and by claiming to be objective they can pretend they are not just whining because they don't like a movie having a female/PoC protagonist who actually does stuff.

As to your second point, I think quality being 100% reliant on context or whether something does its job are different categories. The former is more is more about the assessment of quality depending on which subset of the potential audience you ask while the latter is more about resonating with the intended target audience. To pick Grisaia as an example: Many in the VN fandom regard it as one of the must-reads, yet there is a subset of readers who hate it passionately (including me). I'd say that has to do with it committing to a certain set of VN tropes and turning them up to 11. For the people who love VNs because of these tropes this makes Grisaia on of the best things out there. For people like me who got into VNs for other reasons and are only bearing with some VNisms because other aspects make up for them, Grisaia can be unbearably bad. I can totally acknowledge that if a certain type of experience appeals to you, chances are you are going to love Grisaia. Stuff that might be considered an indicator of quality for Grisaia's target audience might be the opposite for others. So is Grisaia a masterpiece? No! It completely depends on who you ask. I don't even want to know what my mother or the average newspaper critic would think of it. Which is no different to something like Twilight. If you ask your 14 year old niece, it might be the greatest thing in the history of things. If you ask anyone else, not so much? So am I calling Grisaia the Twilight of the VN community? Yes. But my point is, you could basically do a similar mental exercise with any popular and/or highly regarded piece of media.

Fixed it. Also what Fiddle says.

According to this list Little Busters has about 5-10% more lines of text than Clannad. There's also a bunch of minigames you can choose to spend quite a lot of time on (you're free to skip most of them though iirc).

Isn't the presentation closer to point and click games or rpgs with story elements rather than any written or live action media? You have a static background and every time you click, you get a new piece of information, often accompanied by a line read, reaction shot or sprite or whatever. The soundtrack keeps on playing continuously until you reach a cue where it's supposed to change, and if you reload a point in the middle of a scene, the music starts over from the beginning, and not from the point you left it at when you saved. Also, you can't just revisit scenes at will unless you want to go through the whole thing again or the VN's creator purposefully decides to give you that option.

So I can't use this?

If you've come this far I'd recommend finishing it if only for the epilogue, which has one of the weirdest genre shifts 80% into a piece of fiction I've had the pleasure (?) to witness.

More like Iwaihi-meh! (I'm sorry) Anyway, the VN sadly doesn't get any better the longer it goes.