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On 5.2.2019 at 1:21 PM, alpacaman said:

Finished the Chaos;Child common route and that finale really was... something. I didn't hate it as much as ChaosRaven did but yeah, the twists and reveals were pretty bad. I'll just mention one huge issue I had, because picking apart everything wrong with the last third would probably take me hours (spoilers for C;C and Hatoful Boyfriend ahead):

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When a villain with a similar motive works better in a pigeon dating-sim you're doing something wrong. "My best friend had an innocent wish so I decided to commit mass murder to fulfil it for him" only works as a motivation when your villain is either crazy evil or a parody, not someone the reader is supposed to sympathise with and who just has to see the wrong of their ways. It gets even worse when the best friend character starts feeling responsible for the actions of the bad guy.

Despite how little sense the plot made in the last third, it was still paced well enough that it was an engaging read for me. But maybe it was just because I was mentally prepared for things getting stupid down the line from the point

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the Di-Swords were introduced. When you feel the need to put huge magical swords in your crime story, you're probably not very confident about the mystery you built.

On a side note: Shouldn't the Di-Sword with the mind control device still be in the psychic realm (or whatever you want to call it) instead of being a real sword connected to a machine? The swords are supposed to be something Gigalomaniacs can summon as a manifestation of their powers and not as their source. So if the weird rucksack gives you psychic powers, shouldn't its wearer become able to summon a sword themselves? And yes, I know this this is a minor issue compared to all the other dumn stuff going on in the end.

Despite all my ranting, I still kind of like C;C's common route, especially its overall atmosphere and the way it built suspense.

After having read the remaining routes I stand by my criticisms for the most part. There was just a lot of wasted potential and I think Chaos;Child could have really benefitted from redrafting the script at least one more time. There were just too many plot threads that either go nowhere or have a clunky resolution, twists for the sake of having a twist, dispensable heroines and villains and poorly explained character motivations that could have been solved by some restructuring and rewriting. To name a the major issues I had:

Spoiler

Hana adds nothing to the plot. You could easily just write her out of the story and everything would still be the same (I still kind of loved her route for being so ridiculously over the top). The idea for her character and power was quite interesting but if you don't find any way to use that in the plot either scrap her completely or leave her for a fandisc or something like that.

The mystery about Hinae being at the crime scene in the Revolving Dead case leads nowhere. The story spends a lot of time on making her seem dubious only to have it turn out that she just happened to be there. And from that point on she basically turns into a mere plot device so her power can be used whenever the story asks for it. 

This is not the only time something like this happens. The way the whole Minamisawa Senri subplot plays out is pretty weird. It gets set up like it was part of the overarching mystery when its actual relevance to the story is very little and there is no real payoff as the pyrokinetic happens to be someone else who kind of looks like her. But then this kind of resolved arc comes back in Nono's route to give some character backstory and drama that again adds very little to the main plot. Including the reveal of Senri's true identity into the common route and the resulting trust issues (especially given the fact she was one of the characters who could have actually committed the crime since she can shapeshift) could have added some interesting conflict to the last few chapters of the common route instead of the actual *twist* Serika is evil but *twist* she was working for some big bad but *twist* turns out she was the mastermind all the time anyways.

And why does C;C need three psychopathic bad guys anyway? You easily could have written all evil deeds by Sakuma and Wakui to be committed by a single character and having Serika+1 side villain would have been completely sufficient. Having the same twist twice in one VN just seems like a bad idea. Additionally you could have done a lot more more with Sakuma's history of working on psychics than just have him be some generic villain.

I'm not opposed to Serika being the main villain, but please give her a proper reason for being demonically evil. Either cut the imaginary friend thing or have her be brainwashed or have her power lead her to believe that humanity deserves to suffer or... I don't know, anything but what C;C went for.

The twist in the true route is pretty underwhelming. As it turns out everyone was ugly all along *gasp*. I know that there's this thing about everyone suffering from CC syndrome being delusional all the time but still, there was very little point to it. 

The final non-showdown or whatever you want to call it is more or less pointless. The big bad shows up, says some villainy stuff, tells the good guys he won't interfere with their plan, sequel-baits a little and leaves.

I like the way the redemption arc at the end plays, but it doesn't make any sense in the overall plot when you consider that they could easily have pinned Sakuma and everyone would get their happy ever after (as Stormwolf and Seraphim88 have already pointed out). Also Takuru doesn't actually have anything he really needs to atone for.

Several of these things seem to me like they are remains from earlier plot drafts the writers didn't know how to fit into the narrative anymore but still wanted to include for some reason. The character routes could have been cut completely imo. What little they add could just as easily be worked into the main route. Still you spend a lot of time just skipping through text to select the correct delusion triggers to reach the routes, and then you spend another few hours on some side stories that aren't that great to begin with.

It's just really frustrating to read something that had the potential to be great but takes so many wrong turns that you start to ask yourself what the creators were thinking. I would really love to read a reworked version of C;C that addresses its problems, kind of like they did with Chaos;Head. But I guess that won't happen given how happy people seem to be with the game they already got, at least according to vndb.

 

Next up for me is... probably not Himawari, considering ChaosRaven compared it to C;C in this thread. Maybe Fatal Twelve?

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I just finished Dare ka ga Koi Shita Hankagai.

It had some interesting bits, and there were some feels, but all in all it feels quite unpolished/uneven. Well, according to the vndb, its developer is amateur group, so it's kind of to be expected.

First route I've read was Ai's

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Quite nice romance route, and gives some basic information about the world. (Most of the story is set in the kind of "dream world")

Next was Riko

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This route had some interesting parts about identity and loneliness. Strange, but nice.

And finally Yurika's , which also serves as true route.

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Here authors tried to pull of a Key - in other words, writing nakige. Nevertheless an ending itself was IMO too sad, very different from previous two. The twist at the very end (the last lines) surprised me. Unfortunately it ends with the annoying "TBC" - so probably the story continues in the sequel, which isn't translated.

Spoiler

Also, after all it seems that Ai is true heroine ;)

As for the technicalities, there are many shortcomings. Art itself is okay for backgrounds, and pretty good for character sprites, but there are very few backgrounds, and CGs. Also, quality of voice recordings is very inconsistent - some lines are way quieter than the others, and overall sound quality is strange, like mp3 with too low bitrate.

Also, English release is rather messy itself (isn't this becoming Sekai's trademark, sadly?). Translation sounds rather awkward, and it's inconsistent between routes - same terms/names translated differently. Looking at credits, there were three translators working on this title, and apparently editor couldn't handle it very well. Also, there are some typos, grammar errors and mistranslations. The one that bugged me the most, as it repeated pretty often, was translation of one of the generic side character names. At the various points in the story there are situations when we are speaking with some anonymous young lady, who would be either customer, or shop owner or whatever. In the original the name for such characters was probably "Onee-san". And what do we get in the english release? Yep, you guessed right - "Older Sister". I was like "WTF - whose sister is that anonymous character?" many times before it finally dawned on me :P

All in all - some enjoyable moments, but not as good as I expected - 6.5/10, probably it's safe to skip it.

Edited by adamstan
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On 10/02/2019 at 12:08 AM, ChaosRaven said:

Reading Midori no Umi now. I was interested in that VN for quite some time - mostly because I've a mysterious mansion fetish and the VN looked very interesting in that regard. I also have the Japanese harcopy lying around for over a year now, waiting to be read. It was therefore a bit of a surprise when SakuraGame suddenly came along with it's pseudo western release.

The translation is obviously bad, but it's still better than what Atlas is spitting out, so it's at least better than nothing.

Anyway, at the beginning of the VN I really thought I'd have fallen in a large sugar storage, with half of the inhabitants of the secret mansion being moe heroines and the other half sweet little kids.

However, a few hours reading later...

I've died four times now. Two times I was murdered, one time I ran away with a heroine and we both got lost and died, and one time I went insane. In addition to that, the heroine I wanted to romance seems to be a dangerous yandere that threatened me and now I'm scared of her. So I'm slowly getting the impression that this isn't just a run of the mill moege. :o

It's getting more interesting the further I read, but no kidding, the VN gets really depressing after a while and it's slowly getting to me. It's a good thing that I have some fluffy 'emergency moeges' lying around to get my mood up again. :sachi:

Started reading Midori no Umi you, but the translation is seriously throwing me off. I honestly think sakuragame has been using google translate quite liberally here.

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On 2/10/2019 at 1:13 AM, alpacaman said:

After having read the remaining routes I stand by my criticisms for the most part. There was just a lot of wasted potential and I think Chaos;Child could have really benefitted from redrafting the script at least one more time. There were just too many plot threads that either go nowhere or have a clunky resolution, twists for the sake of having a twist, dispensable heroines and villains and poorly explained character motivations that could have been solved by some restructuring and rewriting. To name a the major issues I had:

  Hide contents

Hana adds nothing to the plot. You could easily just write her out of the story and everything would still be the same (I still kind of loved her route for being so ridiculously over the top). The idea for her character and power was quite interesting but if you don't find any way to use that in the plot either scrap her completely or leave her for a fandisc or something like that.

The mystery about Hinae being at the crime scene in the Revolving Dead case leads nowhere. The story spends a lot of time on making her seem dubious only to have it turn out that she just happened to be there. And from that point on she basically turns into a mere plot device so her power can be used whenever the story asks for it. 

This is not the only time something like this happens. The way the whole Minamisawa Senri subplot plays out is pretty weird. It gets set up like it was part of the overarching mystery when its actual relevance to the story is very little and there is no real payoff as the pyrokinetic happens to be someone else who kind of looks like her. But then this kind of resolved arc comes back in Nono's route to give some character backstory and drama that again adds very little to the main plot. Including the reveal of Senri's true identity into the common route and the resulting trust issues (especially given the fact she was one of the characters who could have actually committed the crime since she can shapeshift) could have added some interesting conflict to the last few chapters of the common route instead of the actual *twist* Serika is evil but *twist* she was working for some big bad but *twist* turns out she was the mastermind all the time anyways.

And why does C;C need three psychopathic bad guys anyway? You easily could have written all evil deeds by Sakuma and Wakui to be committed by a single character and having Serika+1 side villain would have been completely sufficient. Having the same twist twice in one VN just seems like a bad idea. Additionally you could have done a lot more more with Sakuma's history of working on psychics than just have him be some generic villain.

I'm not opposed to Serika being the main villain, but please give her a proper reason for being demonically evil. Either cut the imaginary friend thing or have her be brainwashed or have her power lead her to believe that humanity deserves to suffer or... I don't know, anything but what C;C went for.

The twist in the true route is pretty underwhelming. As it turns out everyone was ugly all along *gasp*. I know that there's this thing about everyone suffering from CC syndrome being delusional all the time but still, there was very little point to it. 

The final non-showdown or whatever you want to call it is more or less pointless. The big bad shows up, says some villainy stuff, tells the good guys he won't interfere with their plan, sequel-baits a little and leaves.

I like the way the redemption arc at the end plays, but it doesn't make any sense in the overall plot when you consider that they could easily have pinned Sakuma and everyone would get their happy ever after (as Stormwolf and Seraphim88 have already pointed out). Also Takuru doesn't actually have anything he really needs to atone for.

Several of these things seem to me like they are remains from earlier plot drafts the writers didn't know how to fit into the narrative anymore but still wanted to include for some reason. The character routes could have been cut completely imo. What little they add could just as easily be worked into the main route. Still you spend a lot of time just skipping through text to select the correct delusion triggers to reach the routes, and then you spend another few hours on some side stories that aren't that great to begin with.

It's just really frustrating to read something that had the potential to be great but takes so many wrong turns that you start to ask yourself what the creators were thinking. I would really love to read a reworked version of C;C that addresses its problems, kind of like they did with Chaos;Head. But I guess that won't happen given how happy people seem to be with the game they already got, at least according to vndb.

 

Next up for me is... probably not Himawari, considering ChaosRaven compared it to C;C in this thread. Maybe Fatal Twelve?

Spoiler

Don't forget one of the most important faults of the true ending. Everyone let a ticking nuclear bomb just go live in peace in another city while they took an innocent person into custody instead. How does this make any sense? That development is so out of this world that i'm at a serious loss for words. The writers just wanted to redeem Serika by all means possible, but they didn't think how utterly stupid it was after everything that has happened. Honestly, it was a forced bad ending for Takeru and forced good ending for Serika and everyone else. It all felt forced. Truly bad writing.

And one other big mistake is for her to even remember. That was another mistake. Her reason to be free is null and void. She is a psycopathic bitch. Personally, i don't think she even cared about Takeru at all really. Not in a good way that is. She even gave Wakui permission to kill him in Hana's route. 

Well, it's such a shame this vn fell so hard apart from about the middle part of the story and completely crashed at the end.

 

 

Edited by Stormwolf
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17 minutes ago, Stormwolf said:
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She even gave Wakui permission to kill him in Hana's route.

 

Spoiler

Yeah, that was pretty stupid, considering she started off saying that they need to give her a reason if they're going to kill Takuru, but when Wakui told her that they don't really have a reason to do it, she immidiately said that they can kill him if they want. It makes no sense for her to accept it based on that.

 

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1 minute ago, Seraphim88 said:
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Yeah, that was pretty stupid, considering she started off saying that they need to give her a reason if they're going to kill Takuru, but when Wakui told her that they don't really have a reason to do it, she immidiately said that they can kill him if they want. It makes no sense for her to accept it based on that.

 

Spoiler

Well, i honestly simply think Serika never felt any positive emotions towards Takeru. I think everything was a facade and she did those things because she simply enjoyed it.

 

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A bunch of C;C spoilers follow:

Spoiler

With regards to Takuru pinning himself as the criminal, he feels at fault for the murders and taking the blame for them is his way to atone. Ultimately the murders were done for him, just so he would feel special and superior to others, and he blames himself for wishing that they would continue even as his own loved ones were harmed in the process.

 

Serika was, through the common route, never really a person. She was a tool to fulfill Takuru's desires, and everything she did was to that end. To blame her for anything that happened is to miss the whole point of the novel imo. She was less a murderer than she was the murder weapon.

 

They would not be able to be together at the end. The two separating is what enables them to live normal lives. Takuru wants to be apart from her so he is never tempted to repeat his past mistakes, and so she would finally be able to live as her own person.

 

The whole C;C Syndrome twist ties into most of C;C's main themes. Syndrome patients live in their own fabricated reality, where they can be free of the persecution they are targets of in the real world. In this way, like most of the novel, it functions as a critique on the way people cherry-pick information that suits their viewpoints, and how that same information can be manipulated along with those who rely on it. That's the whole point of Wakui's plan after all, to see how much people would delude themselves into happiness by cherry-picking only what they want to see, ignoring what might cause them stress or lead them to question the world they see as true. Because, ultimately, the world one sees is not the real world. It is shaped by our thoughts, misconceptions, and opinions. That is also the biggest thing to take from the heroine routes.

 

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Spoiler

 

I don't really agree with much of what you say as your opinions seems to just be in line with what happens in the vn. Im just pointing out those bullshit developments that happen. I never expected takeru to be with Serika at the end, but that final scene was silly. And they certainly didnt need to include feelings either. It was out of place for Takeru to suddenly realize at the end that he loves Serika. Just a plot device to make the end more impactful.

And how do you defend them letting the ticking nuclear bomb serika live in peace? Its stupid beyond belief as she might get her memories back at any moment (and what a shock that she did) in which no one could say what might happen.

 

 

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1 minute ago, Stormwolf said:
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I don't really agree with much of what you say as your opinions seems to just be in line with what happens in the vn. Im just pointing out those bullshit developments that happen. I never expected takeru to be with Serika at the end, but that final scene was silly. And they certainly didnt need to include feelings either. It was out of place for Takeru to suddenly realize at the end that he loves Serika. Just a plot device to make the end more impactful.

And how do you defend them letting the ticking nuclear bomb serika live in peace? Its stupid beyond belief as she might get her memories back at any moment (and what a shock that she did) in which no one could say what might happen.

 

 

Spoiler

He did not "realise" he loved her. He said "A man cannot keep clinging to the woman he loves.". That line refers to the Serika he initially created, the one who lived to fulfill his desires and fill the hole his parent's abuse created. If Serika is a representation of his childish desire to be special, to have the world revolve around him, to feel superior to others, that line shows his acceptance of his sins and his resolution to grow up and leave behind those desires.

Serika was no longer a "time bomb" during the true end. She was remade into a normal person, and thus, did not feel compelled to fulfill Takuru's desires. Her memories were sealed away for her own good, so that she might lead a normal, happy life. They were not what was keeping her from relapsing into a psychopath as you seem to be implying.

 

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1 minute ago, Mobotium said:
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He did not "realise" he loved her. He said "A man cannot keep clinging to the woman he loves.". That line refers to the Serika he initially created, the one who lived to fulfill his desires and fill the hole his parent's abuse created. If Serika is a representation of his childish desire to be special, to have the world revolve around him, to feel superior to others, that line shows his acceptance of his sins and his resolution to grow up and leave behind those desires.

Serika was no longer a "time bomb" during the true end. She was remade into a normal person, and thus, did not feel compelled to fulfill Takuru's desires. Her memories were sealed away for her own good, so that she might lead a normal, happy life. They were not what was keeping her from relapsing into a psychopath as you seem to be implying.

 

Spoiler

Her memories were sealed away yes, but she still remembered. And i have no doubt in my mind that Kunosato and takeshi would never just let her be based on absolutely no evidence that she won't return to becoming a psycopathic killer again. Her becoming a normal human might be one thing, but there is no way of confirming that and... she has killed a lot of people.

 

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1 minute ago, Stormwolf said:
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Her memories were sealed away yes, but she still remembered. And i have no doubt in my mind that Kunosato and takeshi would never just let her be based on absolutely no evidence that she won't return to becoming a psycopathic killer again. Her becoming a normal human might be one thing, but there is no way of confirming that and... she has killed a lot of people.

 

Spoiler

It was confirmed by Takuru himself, the one who created her in the first place and who had the biggest reasons to make sure she was normal. If you are saying they should not believe him for some reason I have no way to argue that I guess, since we are never shown him convincing them. In her changed state she is no longer the person she was and Mio & Co letting her go free, even providing for her needs and giving her a normal life, implies they agree that she's not responsible for what she did and that they believe there is no chance of her being manipulated again.

 

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1 minute ago, Mobotium said:
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It was confirmed by Takuru himself, the one who created her in the first place and who had the biggest reasons to make sure she was normal. If you are saying they should not believe him for some reason I have no way to argue that I guess, since we are never shown him convincing them. In her changed state she is no longer the person she was and Mio & Co letting her go free, even providing for her needs and giving her a normal life, implies they agree that she's not responsible for what she did and that they believe there is no chance of her being manipulated again.

 

Spoiler

Ohh they might believe he repressed her memories. Thats not a tough pill to swallow in this entire scenario, but what happens if she regains them? I dont think anyone would be stupid enough to take the risk. I think through all the routes that it seemed like Serika did stuff as much for herself as for Takeru. Like i said, she even gave Watui permission to kill him. 

 

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Just now, Stormwolf said:
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Ohh they might believe he repressed her memories. Thats not a tough pill to swallow in this entire scenario, but what happens if she regains them? I dont think anyone would be stupid enough to take the risk. I think through all the routes that it seemed like Serika did stuff as much for herself as for Takeru. Like i said, she even gave Watui permission to kill him. 

 

Spoiler

Well, the memories thing is a whole different issue though. The memories themselves were only a problem for Serika herself, as knowing you killed people would probably make it harder for someone to have a normal life. The real problem though was the wish involved in her creation, that compelled her to fulfill Takuru's wishes and led to the killings. Erase that and her power and her becoming a psychopath again is impossible. At most she would be a normal girl with memories of another personality killing people.

 

As for the heroine routes, they are a whole different monster. Because Serika is not a real person in them, she's more of a concept. This is because the heroine routes are not "routes" as you would normally think of them in a VN, they are the dreams each heroine shared with Takuru during their synchronised coma. While they never specifically tell you this is the case it is heavily foreshadowed and hinted at. Just a few of the hints:

 

During Arimura's route, at the very end, Takuru is a "ghost" relating events in the first person. Obvious bullshit if the route is reality.

 

The personality shifts some characters undergo during the routes. This is most prominent in Nono's route, where Serika and Kawahara are not themselves but rather a mixture of what Nono thinks of them and her own negative emotions of jealousy and self-hate projected onto them.

 

The fact that only the heroines with a route went into a coma.

 

Mio talking about the comatose girls, saying they were fighting their own delusions in a dream-like state. Later, she also mentions delusion-synchro, the way gigalomaniacs share their delusions, or in other words their inner worlds, with each other. This makes the way choosing a route works make a lot more sense. By choosing positive delusions towards a certain girl, Takuru's inner world is synchronised with the girl's, leading their shared delusion to diverge.

 

The endings screen which shows a broken, stained glass for all endings but the true one.

 

The subtitle of the true route chapter "Life on the right side of reality".

 

There are other hints but you get the point.

 

Due to this you can conclude that Serika, and in fact most characters in the heroine routes, is but a representation of what Takuru and the heroines think of her. She tends to act similarly as she did in the common route, manipulating events to fulfill Takuru's deepest wishes, but she is fundamentally different from the Serika in the common route as she is affected by whoever is in control of the synchro.

 

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4 minutes ago, Mobotium said:
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Well, the memories thing is a whole different issue though. The memories themselves were only a problem for Serika herself, as knowing you killed people would probably make it harder for someone to have a normal life. The real problem though was the wish involved in her creation, that compelled her to fulfill Takuru's wishes and led to the killings. Erase that and her power and her becoming a psychopath again is impossible. At most she would be a normal girl with memories of another personality killing people.

 

As for the heroine routes, they are a whole different monster. Because Serika is not a real person in them, she's more of a concept. This is because the heroine routes are not "routes" as you would normally think of them in a VN, they are the dreams each heroine shared with Takuru during their synchronised coma. While they never specifically tell you this is the case it is heavily foreshadowed and hinted at. Just a few of the hints:

 

During Arimura's route, at the very end, Takuru is a "ghost" relating events in the first person. Obvious bullshit if the route is reality.

 

The personality shifts some characters undergo during the routes. This is most prominent in Nono's route, where Serika and Kawahara are not themselves but rather a mixture of what Nono thinks of them and her own negative emotions of jealousy and self-hate projected onto them.

 

The fact that only the heroines with a route went into a coma.

 

Mio talking about the comatose girls, saying they were fighting their own delusions in a dream-like state. Later, she also mentions delusion-synchro, the way gigalomaniacs share their delusions, or in other words their inner worlds, with each other. This makes the way choosing a route works make a lot more sense. By choosing positive delusions towards a certain girl, Takuru's inner world is synchronised with the girl's, leading their shared delusion to diverge.

 

The endings screen which shows a broken, stained glass for all endings but the true one.

 

The subtitle of the true route chapter "Life on the right side of reality".

 

There are other hints but you get the point.

 

Due to this you can conclude that Serika, and in fact most characters in the heroine routes, is but a representation of what Takuru and the heroines think of her. She tends to act similarly as she did in the common route, manipulating events to fulfill Takuru's deepest wishes, but she is fundamentally different from the Serika in the common route as she is affected by whoever is in control of the synchro.

 

Spoiler

Pretty interesting read about stuff i never realized. That actually makes a lot of sense as i thought that things didnt make a lot of sense sometimes in the routes. Still, at the end they should have pinned the murders on Sukama and pin his murder on either takeru or surika as self defense. After all this crap im not sure they'd even see the inside of a court for it.

 

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6 minutes ago, Stormwolf said:
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Pretty interesting read about stuff i never realized. That actually makes a lot of sense as i thought that things didnt make a lot of sense sometimes in the routes. Still, at the end they should have pinned the murders on Sukama and pin his murder on either takeru or surika as self defense. After all this crap im not sure they'd even see the inside of a court for it.

 

Spoiler

 

That's reasonable. Ultimately it was Takuru wanting to take responsibility for what he had, even if unconsciously, caused and for his own thoughts and beliefs. He seemed to despise the part of him that desired the murders in the first place and that, coupled with his disgust at the person he was while happily following the cases after his sister died, led him to want to atone. It's not necessarily a way of thinking I agree with or would follow, but it seems realistic enough to me.

 

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1 minute ago, Mobotium said:
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That's reasonable. Ultimately it was Takuru wanting to take responsibility for what he had, even if unconsciously, caused and for his own thoughts and beliefs. He seemed to despise the part of him that desired the murders in the first place and that, coupled with his disgust at the person he was while happily following the cases after his sister died, led him to want to atone. It's not necessarily a way of thinking I agree with or would follow, but it seems realistic enough to me.

 

Spoiler

Its simply not acceptable. If thought murder was a crime then we'd all be in jail. The unsung hero self sacrificing himself is just a super japanese cliche which i'll never understand. Point is that to my western brain, this vn lead to a ridiculos conclusion. At the end of the day Takeru is innocent, and after all he's been through i did want to see him get a happy end, or at least not a depressing one. 

 

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1 minute ago, Stormwolf said:
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Its simply not acceptable. If thought murder was a crime then we'd all be in jail. The unsung hero self sacrificing himself is just a super japanese cliche which i'll never understand. Point is that to my western brain, this vn lead to a ridiculos conclusion. At the end of the day Takeru is innocent, and after all he's been through i did want to see him get a happy end, or at least not a depressing one. 

 

Spoiler

As I said, I can understand your point of view. However, I can also understand the idea of wanting to atone for what you caused. You don't have to accept it but ultimately, he did it because he wanted to. His end is not a depressing one in his eyes. He saved the people he wanted to save, gave a future to the one person who supported him the most all his life, and is being sent to prison of his own will. For him, this is all he wanted, and thus, it is a happy end.

A story does not have to make the reader happy and a happy end does not have to be one the reader desires. Because, as C;C really wants to explain, the world we see is the boundary between reality and lies. Though his mindset may not be one you can accept or understand, that does not make it worthless. It just means he sees reality in a diferent way than you do.

 

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6 minutes ago, Mobotium said:
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As I said, I can understand your point of view. However, I can also understand the idea of wanting to atone for what you caused. You don't have to accept it but ultimately, he did it because he wanted to. His end is not a depressing one in his eyes. He saved the people he wanted to save, gave a future to the one person who supported him the most all his life, and is being sent to prison of his own will. For him, this is all he wanted, and thus, it is a happy end.

A story does not have to make the reader happy and a happy end does not have to be one the reader desires. Because, as C;C really wants to explain, the world we see is the boundary between reality and lies. Though his mindset may not be one you can accept or understand, that does not make it worthless. It just means he sees reality in a diferent way than you do.

 

Spoiler

He didnt cause anything though. If we're assigning blame then the chaos head cast is to blame. Havent read that one though. Takeru was a victim just as much as anyone. Well, a lot more of a victim actually. But i guess this is more of a philosophical question really so it can be interpreted differently

.

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1 minute ago, Stormwolf said:
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He didnt cause anything though. If we're assigning blame then the chaos head cast is to blame. Havent read that one though. Takeru was a victim just as much as anyone. Well, a lot more of a victim actually. But i guess this is more of a philosophical question really so it can be interpreted differently

.

Spoiler

Yeah, pretty much.

 

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4 hours ago, Stormwolf said:

Started reading Midori no Umi you, but the translation is seriously throwing me off. I honestly think sakuragame has been using google translate quite liberally here.

No doubt about that - it's most likely an edited machine translation or at least a machine assisted translation. I'm only going through that mess because I wanted to read it in Japanese with a text hooker anyway. Certainly not a release I'd recomment anyone to read with even the slightest translation standards. :P

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Just now, ChaosRaven said:

No doubt about that - it's most likely an edited machine translation or at least a machine assisted translation. I'm only going through that mess because I wanted to read it in Japanese with a text hooker anyway. Certainly not a release I'd recomment anyone to read with even the slightest translation standards. :P

Its kind of weird though. I cant follow certain dialogues but i follow the story as a whole. One big mistake in one line might correct itself in the next, which makes me understand it. Its terrible yes, but readable if you really want to read it.

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2 hours ago, Mobotium said:

A bunch of C;C spoilers follow:

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With regards to Takuru pinning himself as the criminal, he feels at fault for the murders and taking the blame for them is his way to atone. Ultimately the murders were done for him, just so he would feel special and superior to others, and he blames himself for wishing that they would continue even as his own loved ones were harmed in the process.

 

Serika was, through the common route, never really a person. She was a tool to fulfill Takuru's desires, and everything she did was to that end. To blame her for anything that happened is to miss the whole point of the novel imo. She was less a murderer than she was the murder weapon.

 

They would not be able to be together at the end. The two separating is what enables them to live normal lives. Takuru wants to be apart from her so he is never tempted to repeat his past mistakes, and so she would finally be able to live as her own person.

 

The whole C;C Syndrome twist ties into most of C;C's main themes. Syndrome patients live in their own fabricated reality, where they can be free of the persecution they are targets of in the real world. In this way, like most of the novel, it functions as a critique on the way people cherry-pick information that suits their viewpoints, and how that same information can be manipulated along with those who rely on it. That's the whole point of Wakui's plan after all, to see how much people would delude themselves into happiness by cherry-picking only what they want to see, ignoring what might cause them stress or lead them to question the world they see as true. Because, ultimately, the world one sees is not the real world. It is shaped by our thoughts, misconceptions, and opinions. That is also the biggest thing to take from the heroine routes.

 

Spoiler

"Everyone creates their own reality" doesn't really work as a message though when the people who create them suffer from a supernatural disease that makes them delusional. It's an interesting concept for a sci-fi story, but not something that lends itself to making some philosphical point. Even if there was a possibility of including some meaningful aesop, having the reader skip for more than one hour through stuff they've already seen to read more or less 10 hours of mediocre side stories isn't the best way to go about it imo.

Also, I get that the VN wants Serika to be seen as a tool, but there is no indication Takuru wished for anything close to what she did. Wanting to make his parents go away was obviously referring to him not wanting to deal with them. If there was any indication in the VN that Takuru had repressed sadistic urges the real-booted Serika was a manifestation of and that he found some degree of satisfaction in the things she did, fine, but he comes of as pretty well adjusted for someone in his circumstances. When he makes his wish he's 12(?) years old and understandably unable to cope with everything going on because of the earthquake and other than that there are no instances where he's taking delight in someone else suffering or something like that beyond a little schadenfreude.

 

Edited by alpacaman
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11 minutes ago, Stormwolf said:

Its kind of weird though. I cant follow certain dialogues but i follow the story as a whole. One big mistake in one line might correct itself in the next, which makes me understand it. Its terrible yes, but readable if you really want to read it.

Yes, that's pretty much how I approach all my Japanese VN's as well. I also find the voices very helpful for understanding the dialogs, because mood and subtle meanings are often communicated via vocal accentuations and not necessarily through the text.

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Just now, ChaosRaven said:

Yes, that's pretty much how I approach all my Japanese VN's as well. I also find the voices very helpful for understanding the dialogs, because mood and subtle meanings are often communicated via vocal accentuations and not necessarily through the text.

Yep, same here. A shame it doesnt work for the protagonist though :/

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10 minutes ago, alpacaman said:
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"Everyone creates their own reality" doesn't really work as a message though when the people who create them suffer from a supernatural disease that makes them delusional. It's an interesting concept for a sci-fi story, but not something that lends itself to making some philosphical point. Even if there was a possibility of including some meaningful aesop, having the reader skip for more than one hour through stuff they've already seen to read more or less 10 hours of mediocre side stories isn't the best way to go about it imo.

Also, I get that the VN wants Serika to be seen as a tool, but there is no indication Takuru wished for anything close to what she did. Wanting to make his parents go away was obviously referring to him not wanting to deal with them. If there was any indication in the VN that Takuru had repressed sadistic urges the real-booted Serika was a manifestation of and that he found some degree of satisfaction in the things she did, fine, but he comes of as pretty well adjusted for someone in his circumstances. When he makes his wish he's 12(?) years old and understandably unable to cope with everything going on because of the earthquake and other than that there are no instances where he's taking delight in someone else suffering or something like that beyond a little schadenfreude.

 

Spoiler

The syndrome is just a representation of the message itself, it's not meant to be the message. The concept at its core is that all people view reality differently based on their experiences, thoughts, senses, etc and so that, ultimately, reality is in the eye of the beholder. Also, the idea of skipping to get to routes is so common in the VN medium in general that I can't understand your point.

 

There are indications. Takuru wished for her to help him do what he wants, and she was created out of that wish. Saying that him wanting his parents to go away meant not having to deal with them is obvious, but how else would a recently created entity that embodies his desires fulfill that wish? If killing his parents ultimately led to his happiness, as it did, it seems like a perfectly reasonable action to take.

 

He does not take delight in other's suffering. What he does take delight in is in feeling superior to others. And at the peak of this desire are the murders that preceded the earthquake. He idolized the person who turned the case on its head proving he was not the killer as everyone, even the police, tought. His desire is ultimately for recognition. He wants to be known as superior to those around him. And that case symbolizes the ultimate expression of that desire.

 

So he does not have to enjoy the murders themselves and neither does Serika, the manifestation of his desire. In fact, she makes it clear even in the common route that she found the killings themselves disgusting and sick, but was willing to go through them because the case had to be absurd enough to draw as much attention to itself as possible. All that mattered was that Takuru was interested in the case, that he felt the excitement of it slowly closing in on him, the despair of being marked as the perpetrator and the ultimate feeling of superiority as he proved to all those wrong-siders that he was the only one who had reached the truth.

 

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