dirkncloak

I had stopped reading visual novels for a long time now, but they were a massive guilty pleasure of mine. The medium is jam-packed with anime and visual novel tropes I absolutely despise, but it’s where I’ve found a lot of titles with so many different styles of storytelling and presentation that I absolutely enjoy (the bag of milk series, christmas tina, mhakna gramura and fairy bell, eliza, stella of the end, 428 shibuya scramble, fata morgana, umineko, jiangshi x daoshi). I respect the variety, creativity and ambition that goes on to make fantastic visual novels and whoever runs VNDB is an absolute genius in categorisation, cataloguing and organisation. I stumbled upon SeaBed during Steam's summer sales and it instantly appealed to me, not that I’m gay/lesbian or into yuri, but because of how real and sensible it was. There’s no silly moments and barely any explicit drama moments, and when there are, they are resolved quickly and spontaneously. Most conversations don’t contribute to a grand plot, but develop the depth of and relationships between the characters and the characters act stoically, keep their problems to themselves and reminisce a lot about the past to forget what ails them at the moment. The story is extremely well-written, the middle-aged cast and long-established romance was very refreshing. I appreciated the contemporary down-to-earth setting and the writing style which was descriptive but straight to the point. I’m very glad that it’s not a traditional “mystery” which would require a guide or actively solve it to get the answer, basically additional workload I can’t be arsed to do. The mystery’s just a basic framework and I pretty much understand all of what was going on by the end. The visual novel presentation is also my favourite, there’s no sexual content (massive plus) and the NVL+kinetic novel style is a much more comfortable reading experience than ADV+choices. I still have very fond memories of SeaBed because it is an incredibly strong, emotionally gripping and unique piece of fiction and it’s by large margin my favourite visual novel. As someone in his mid-20s and working full-time, the story is very sincere and relatable to me. I could only find a select few titles that gave me a similar “real” feel and themes like the movies (Paterson, Before Sunset), anime (Tsuki ga Kirei) and the French graphic novel (Days of Sand), but even though they were really good, their format is way too short a scope and SeaBed was manifold a stronger and more heartfelt personal story to me. I even tried getting into “real” novels to find something like it (In Search of Lost Time, Capital, Convenience Store Woman, Granta 127: Japan and 20+ novels I dropped by the first chapter) that fell under the theme of “mundane realistic slice of life” but all left me disappointed either due to lack of relatability, poor writing, too verbose and slow/awkward pacing in spite of supposedly being the superior medium.

I finished SeaBed last year and I was astounded at how different it was from any visual novel and pretty much everything I've seen. It's a very strong contender for my favourite piece of fiction, but I don't think I'll be happy if this is the peak of all fiction I've seen. Ever since, I've tried finding something that gave me the same immersion and feel as SeaBed, which includes Umeda Sky (short VN), Paterson/Before Sunset (live action movies) and Omoide Poroporo (anime movie) and some of Europe Comics (Cold Front, Swamp) and while they do share many similarities, none of them are comparable to SeaBed as a whole, mainly due to the length. I have been very disappointed with the selection of novels I've read so far: Proust's In Search of Lost Time was much more slow paced and excessively verbose and had a ton of complex vocabulary, John Lanchester's Capital was very jarring with the protagonist changing every chapter. I'm not giving up on books just yet, and I'm hoping that I could find recommendations. I guess what I'm looking for is a book/VN preferably or other media that: Has no contrivances, tropes, cliches, harems, explicit dramas/thriller/shocker moments or forced misunderstandings, 18+ for porn's sake etc. Have characters being real as fuck; acting stoically, keeping their burdens to themselves, resolving potential conflicts quickly and spontaneously, not making a fool out of themselves or burn bridges etc. Falls under modern realistic slice of life; No fantastical story arcs, transformations, setting, but ordinary, realistic, believable scenarios with normal human characters experiencing normal human life. I find that a lot of the "slice of life" novels I've seen and dropped are set in much older times (1800s-1900s) or are just utter misery. Has a writing style with descriptive prose without being excessively verbose or too much complex vocabulary so that I have search up a dictionary every half minute. E.g., I really like SeaBed's writing being very flat and direct, much like the excellent translations by Makoto in his works (Saya no Uta, Hanachirasu and Soukou Akki Muramasa) Other factors I've eyeing for, but not necessary is: Unique, "not explored much" character dynamics (i.e., preferably predominantly adult male cast or elderly, or has characters with many different ages spanning young to adolescent to middle-aged to old) like how SeaBed's mainly filled with middle aged adult women. Turnip Sensei also explain why I love this visual novel in the thread, Is Kindred Spirits similar to SeaBed?.