VN reading club - June 2015 (Yume Miru Kusuri)

[Turnip Sensei]

Here's some of my thoughts about Yume Miru Kusuri, now that I'm finally finished it.

 

The biggest problem I had with this game was the abundance of H-scenes. Or not really the amount, but rather how often they appear. Nekoko's route was probably the worst example, new H-scene appeared every 5 minutes or so at one point. YMK had too much sex for being so short VN, the ever so often appearing sex scenes just killed the pacing for me. Just as the story was getting interesting, a new unnecessary H-scene happened. I managed to read through the H-scenes in Mizuki's route, but after that I skipped most of them. The sex takes so much time that the remaining story suffers.

The characterizations and the overall storytelling was little weak. When most of your character interaction is sex, it's no wonder. Like I said before, I would have wanted to see other ways of seeking comfort in each other than sex. The story lacked good build up for the endings, they just kind of happened, so the emotional involvement wasn't there. That said, the final events in each route were the best YMK had to offer, at those points I actually enjoyed reading it. When their problems finally got out of control and the characters had to actually confront them, that's when the story became interesting. 

 

My favorite routes are Mizuki>Aeka/Nekoko

I felt like Mizuki had best character development during her route and her route was the darkest, which is something I prefer. Also Mizuki's route was the only route where I read the H-scenes properly. Partly because she's closest to my preferences, but also because her H-scenes were actually interesting. There was more than just sex in their scenes, they played for dominance and sought new sides of each other. I also really liked the fucked up sex scenes they had when they were intoxicated and on drugs, those actually showed the escapism side the best. They were more than just H-scenes to fill out the game, they actually did something for the story. The ending was something really sweet as well, I'm not event that fond babies.

 

I can't really say which is better, Aeka's or Nekoko's route. Both had their own problems and suffer from the filler H-scenes as well.

Aeka's was more interesting, but it had awful pacing problems. Reading through the middle parts of her route was painful slog. The picked up at the end and had a thrilling finale, but that's it.

Nekoko's on the other hand was at least stable all the way through, thanks to the drug problems, but it lacked the impact the other route's had. The conclusion to her problems was too light for my tastes, I expected for the drug usage to have more grave consequences.

 

Overall I consider Yume Miru Kusuri to be a pretty mediocre VN. Despite the problems it has, it's not all bad. The concept is good and there's some interesting ideas, but the execution doesn't work that well. 

[Nimbus]

So as it turns out I dropped Nekoko and Mizuki's route just before the end of both thei routes so I just finished both of them

Nekoko's route was pretty dull. I was never really invested in her story and it got rather repetitive after a while. I'm sure the twist towards the end about her identity was supposed to have some impact but it was pretty obvious where they were going with that.

Although I did drop the route at one point this was for two reasons; I was sick of all the H-Scenes and I really wanted to do Aeka's route.

I can't really say anything else, the route left such a weak impression that I can't say anymore. I guess this basically sums up my feelings for Nekoko's route

As for Mizuki, I said before that I found her route really boring and I stand by that statement. Sure, the last half hour is really good and the whole idea of her not seeing a future was interesting but was it worth all the direction-less crap that is the rest of her route? nope.

[Eclipsed]

I'm waiting for your 'stalled' status.

 

Well, shit. 

[Kosakyun]

Well, shit. 

 

'Till next month's stalled status then.

[Kurisu-Chan]

Why do characters looks like potatoes?

 

Why do i have to watch naked lolis?

 

  

[Deep Blue]

Art style = 8/10

Music = 9/10

Plot = depends on the heroine but aeka 9.5/10 nekoko 8/10 mizuki 6.5/10

overall = 9.1/10  (yeah it should be 8.2 but I dont care )

 

cons:

 

Too many ero-scenes (still they used the ero-scenes for plot development kudos for that!)

sometimes the lolis were too much... (specially with her sister)

the length of the vn was really short (or at least it felt that way)

[kyrt]

Honestly Yume Miru Kusuri is one of the former gateway vns...it has a good amount of plot, sex, decent art, decent music and is short enough to keep most people's attention it has a few different characters and chances are you will be able to appreciate at least one of them. Now whether the vn is good or bad really depends on what you've read prior. To someone just starting out this is a great visual novel and it was for a lot of us who read it back when it first came out before there were a whole lot of good visual novels available for reading.

 

Before fan translating ever really took off visual novels were primarily only able to be bought via JAST USA, (Mangagamer had not yet come into existence) and fan-translations were in infant stages with even Fate/Stay Night only being in trial stages and the only real fan-translated visual novel available for reading being Tsukihime.  Kana Little Sister had issues when it was released, Ever 17 while brilliant had translation errors, censorship, and a few other small problems thanks to Hirameki, and really there were very few story emphasized visual novels at this time. YMK is the visual novel that changed that as far as company translated visual novels went. Yes it may have had a ton of ero scenes but they were done in a way that helped emphasize the overall plot. JAST really went out on trying to push the title and even tried to emphasize that this was a classic from Japan and a much more plot driven title. The game released in April of 2007 in english  so the visual novel is quite old compared to what a lot of people have read and has not aged overly well in the advent of the rise of fan translations and better titles released since then but when you look at it in the context of what else was released prior to it you realize that YMK was a pretty good title for the time of its release. 

[Fred the Barber]

Honestly Yume Miru Kusuri is one of the former gateway vns...it has a good amount of plot, sex, decent art, decent music and is short enough to keep most people's attention it has a few different characters and chances are you will be able to appreciate at least one of them. Now whether the vn is good or bad really depends on what you've read prior. To someone just starting out this is a great visual novel and it was for a lot of us who read it back when it first came out before there were a whole lot of good visual novels available for reading.

 

Before fan translating ever really took off visual novels were primarily only able to be bought via JAST USA, (Mangagamer had not yet come into existence) and fan-translations were in infant stages with even Fate/Stay Night only being in trial stages and the only real fan-translated visual novel available for reading being Tsukihime.  Kana Little Sister had issues when it was released, Ever 17 while brilliant had translation errors, censorship, and a few other small problems thanks to Hirameki, and really there were very few story emphasized visual novels at this time. YMK is the visual novel that changed that as far as company translated visual novels went. Yes it may have had a ton of ero scenes but they were done in a way that helped emphasize the overall plot. JAST really went out on trying to push the title and even tried to emphasize that this was a classic from Japan and a much more plot driven title. The game released in April of 2007 in english  so the visual novel is quite old compared to what a lot of people have read and has not aged overly well in the advent of the rise of fan translations and better titles released since then but when you look at it in the context of what else was released prior to it you realize that YMK was a pretty good title for the time of its release. 

 

Thanks for this - this kind of context helps things make a lot more sense, for those of us who are newer to the VN scene.

[Vorathiel]

Yeah, necro,necro, golden shovel, etc.

But seems like we don't have specific YMK thread and I don't feel like starting one, since I just have a question:

- Art style is rather mediocre (original, but nothing outstanding, and sometimes really crooked).
- Developers and scriptwriters never did anything big and well known.
- Setting is pretty standard.
- There is no YMK anime.
- It is not an awesome, omg, title (7.53 on vndb).

So...why is so popular? 

[Fred the Barber]

Read Kyrt's post, two up from yours - it answers exactly this question. In a nutshell, it's because of historical reasons, more so than how it stands up against currently-available English-localized VNs.

[Vorathiel]

So only because it was first official translated title?

[Nosebleed]

>Why is it so popular?

Because people like it...? I think most who have played this game enjoyed the story and themes, I don't know why you think that's strange.

[Deep Blue]

I love ymk because of how realistic everyone behaves (yes yes it does have some fair amount of bs I know, but still). How two persons that are lost in life can find a way to help each other and find a way to solve their problems, this could be monotony or not having a purpose in life, bullying, drugs..

Don't asume that is liked just because it was one of the first vns translated in a particular genre, I have read a fair amount of vns already and I still think is one of the best I've read so far and I would love to read something similar again (sadly there isnt anything close to this novel out there or I haven't found it yet)

btw the "historical reasons" argument falls apart when you see this for example

http://erogamescape.dyndns.org/~ap2/ero/toukei_kaiseki/game.php?game=6298#ad 

中央値 80 <---- average score

データ数787 <--- total votes

 

 

 

[Vorathiel]

7 hours ago, Nosebleed said:

>Why is it so popular?

Because people like it...? I think most who have played this game enjoyed the story and themes, I don't know why you think that's strange.

Hey, I'm not saying it's not good or something. But besides Muv-Luv 1 is only one VN in the top popularity ones, that had a <7.6 average on vndb.
So I would say that's pretty phenomenal popularity.

[Fred the Barber]

Yep. I'm also not saying it's not good, just that its relative popularity is substantially higher than its relative rating.

Here, data:

Go to VNDB, sort by rating - YMK is in the middle of the fourth page, which puts it somewhere around #175 by rating. Now sort on VNDB by popularity - it's #14. There are certainly some outliers with high ratings from a small number of people, but it's nowhere near enough to account for that kind of gap.

And if you look at the distribution of votes for YMK, it's not bipolar or anything, so it's not like it's a highly divisive game. It's a fine VN. But it's more popular than its rating alone would merit.

[Vorathiel]

And that's where my question came from. Why is that gap so big. But now I know, it was from historical reasons, so case closed.  

[Stormwolf]

 

Spoiler

I just finished Aeka's route, and i must say it was mostly good. It did suffer from some weird writing now and then. Hilariously silly when his mother was going to check his phone when he got those 256 messages and she was speaking every thought and action in past tense instead of it being written in first person. The bullying was so badly overproportioned that i couldn't do other than sigh at the whole situation. Guys giving a fuck about girl bullying and allowing girls to order them around at school.. Yeah, right. And that whole class must have been nothing but psychopaths. Sniggering at Aeka in the bad end, that ending was in bad taste especially considering the protagonist. Protagonist made me wish someone would murder him at certain points, but fortunately he got a lot better. And way to make the players despise absolutely every side character other than the gay guy during a single route. Quite the feat if i must say so. The ending was pretty damn satisfying though. Although if they went trough with it i pretty much wouldn't mind either way. 

As for the weird writing. I found it really confusing at the end of the route where his father says he needs to bring Aeka home and introduce her when he had that serious speak about the future. Then almost the next scene when they walk along the river it's stated that she started living with them right after the school incident  This played out like everything was on the same day *racks brain*

Well, it had it's ups and downs. Overall this route was a fun read!

 

[Deep Blue]

27 minutes ago, Stormwolf said:

 

Hidden Content

 

if you think the bullying was ridiculous and unbelievable on YMK you haven't read subarashiki hibi xD

[Stormwolf]

 

Spoiler

Done with Nekoneko's route now. And that was a pretty bad route to be honest. What the heck was up with that bad ending? did it turn into fantasy genre all of a sudden? I expected her to think she was climbing the stairs and then fall to her death, but she just vanished into that castle. Ridiculous. Good ending was good until i noticed she had gotten off drugs and become a bigshot at a theme park in the span of 2 measly years, and that they decided to bring back Nekoneko in the final scene. Was extremely weird and completely unnecessary. Nekoneko and Hiroko was supposed to be two separate personas. It was never clear if she had multiple personalities or if it was just her personality when she was under the influence of drugs. But what was clear, when she was off drugs she forgot everything. Well, for most of the scenes. And now suddenly she was brought back with no drug influence. I think the route suffered from really bad writing.

That leaves only Mizuki left. I wanted to save her for last as she seemed most interesting. 

[Kawasumi]

18 hours ago, Stormwolf said:

 

Hidden Content

 

I see nekoko's route as one big metaphor for drug addiction and especially that bad end is just so strong if you see people that have been sucked in completely which I have and it captures that feeling of never getting these people out of the drug induced fairyland so greatly.

[Tyr]

On 27.6.2015 at 8:58 PM, kyrt said:

Before fan translating ever really took off visual novels were primarily only able to be bought via JAST USA, (Mangagamer had not yet come into existence) and fan-translations were in infant stages with even Fate/Stay Night only being in trial stages and the only real fan-translated visual novel available for reading being Tsukihime.  Kana Little Sister had issues when it was released, Ever 17 while brilliant had translation errors, censorship, and a few other small problems thanks to Hirameki, and really there were very few story emphasized visual novels at this time. YMK is the visual novel that changed that as far as company translated visual novels went. Yes it may have had a ton of ero scenes but they were done in a way that helped emphasize the overall plot. JAST really went out on trying to push the title and even tried to emphasize that this was a classic from Japan and a much more plot driven title. The game released in April of 2007 in english  so the visual novel is quite old compared to what a lot of people have read and has not aged overly well in the advent of the rise of fan translations and better titles released since then but when you look at it in the context of what else was released prior to it you realize that YMK was a pretty good title for the time of its release. 

I know this is old but, uh, I think you're forgetting G-Collections.

Back then, G-Collectiion was the big vn publisher for us, not JAST. Because at that time JAST was still thinking that nukige are the way to make money, while G-Collections tried to give us something more, beginning with Kana Little Sister. (Which btw never had issues when it was released. The "issue" was that the crack wasn't easy to apply and most pirates didn't get the game to run, haha)
Well, not everything published by G-Collections was good, especially later when they decided to go more nukige, but still... this was definitely the most important English publisher for visual novels in the beginning of this century.

Also, this thread makes me sad. For me, Yume Miru Kusuri is one of the "newer" visual novels... And you guys are saying it's already old ;_;

 

On 18.1.2016 at 1:20 AM, Vorathiel said:

- Developers and scriptwriters never did anything big and well known.

Are you sure you know what you're talking about?

[kyrt]

1 hour ago, Tyrosyn said:

I know this is old but, uh, I think you're forgetting G-Collections.

Back then, G-Collectiion was the big vn publisher for us, not JAST. Because at that time JAST was still thinking that nukige are the way to make money, while G-Collections tried to give us something more, beginning with Kana Little Sister. (Which btw never had issues when it was released. The "issue" was that the crack wasn't easy to apply and most pirates didn't get the game to run, haha)
Well, not everything published by G-Collections was good, especially later when they decided to go more nukige, but still... this was definitely the most important English publisher for visual novels in the beginning of this century.

G-Collections, Peach Princess, and JAST Densetsu are actually all subsidiaries of JAST USA. 

[Tyr]

Just now, kyrt said:

G-Collections, Peach Princess, and JAST Densetsu are actually all subsidiaries of JAST USA. 

No, JAST bought G-Collections sometimes later.
At first, it was an English subsidiary of CD Bros while JAST USA was a subsidiary of .. well, JAST.

[Vorathiel]

3 hours ago, Tyrosyn said:

I know this is old but, uh, I think you're forgetting G-Collections.

Back then, G-Collectiion was the big vn publisher for us, not JAST. Because at that time JAST was still thinking that nukige are the way to make money, while G-Collections tried to give us something more, beginning with Kana Little Sister. (Which btw never had issues when it was released. The "issue" was that the crack wasn't easy to apply and most pirates didn't get the game to run, haha)
Well, not everything published by G-Collections was good, especially later when they decided to go more nukige, but still... this was definitely the most important English publisher for visual novels in the beginning of this century.

It's good to read some VN history, nice.

3 hours ago, Tyrosyn said:

Are you sure you know what you're talking about?

Well, in terms of 'VNs popular in the west', then pretty much - yeah. 

[Stormwolf]

6 hours ago, Kawasumi said:

I see nekoko's route as one big metaphor for drug addiction and especially that bad end is just so strong if you see people that have been sucked in completely which I have and it captures that feeling of never getting these people out of the drug induced fairyland so greatly.

Yep, i get some people are beyond hope when it comes to drug addiction, but i certainly did not expect her to actually go into this "fairyland". It was weird as hell.

Mizuki

That was one hell of a route. It was really enjoyable ride from the start to the end. If there is something like a main heroine in this game, then this is it. That strangling scene kept me on my toes for sure. Damn, that part was intense. It'd be a perfect ending if they'd shut up about that "boy" and "senpai" thing. Who does that in a marriage? I've seen that in a lot of vn's, anime etc where titles stick from the start to the end. You never see side cast do that, only main characters. I can't understand why. Wife not taking the husband/protagonists name seems to be another unfathomable device to create a small artificial distance in a happy endings, but i digress. In this case it's a minor issue here since i take it as a joke, at least the "boy" thing. Though it's pretty funny how me nodding or not during a footjob had a say in whether or not she'd be poisoned by her own pregnancy, lol. Complete abandonment would have been better, and choices to lead to the bad end should be significant ones.