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Supipara - Alice the magical conductor. Chapter #01 - Spring Has Come!, released!


DharmaFreedom

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There is an interview with the staff of Supipara. I thought it was quite interesting, so I decided to post it below.

Interview with Supipara Staff

Oh, I forgot to said this beforehand but apparently each chapter will based on the meaning for each letter that formed Supipara. Since first letter mean Smile, then Sakura Chapter here was also called Smile Story here (It also stated at the end of the chapter). Of course Hotaru Chapter will be called Peace Story (Kaitsu said that it's ironic that the sadist Hotaru had the chapter called Peace Story here, although it will be quite interesting here). As for the heroine for both of Passion and Love part, obviously we don't know because Supipara was scrapped by minori after the failure here.

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I’ve finished reading the first chapter of Supipara now, the story arc centered around Sakura.

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It’s somehow hard to judge a VN if there’s still 80% missing, on the other hand each chapter is supposed to be one complete heroine route and therefore should be rated as such. However, the ending was quite sudden and felt like something like a closing chapter would follow. Not so unlikely considering that there are 4 chapters for heroine routes but 5 in total.

But so far it was kind of a so so experience. Naturally, the visual presentation was most impressive. Although, even if it sounds like heresy to criticize something in that area, some facial expressions of certain characters in various situations looked kinda goofy, especially the ones from the protagonist’s mom, but also Angeline had some weird expressions. Besides that, even if the lighting was pretty awesome in general, a bit too many scenes suffered from over-blending, making them so bright that it did almost hurt in the eyes after a while, especially in combination with the white font. Still, the visuals were certainly a highlight of the VN.

Unfortunately, the sound department wasn’t as stellar as the visual one. Especially the slice of life music tracks were quite dull and reminded me of Princess Evangile which had similar problems in that area. I therefore exchanged the music with one of my ‘emergency albums’ for such situations after a while which made everything appear much more dramatic. But in general I don't like to do that, because my own music doesn’t adjust depending on the situation.

Character-wise it was typical Minori - some were awesome while others stayed a bit bland. Alice stood out the most and there’s little doubt that she’s the main heroine. She’s very similar to Yuuko in ef or Erica in Eden and probably the most characteristic ‘Minori’ character. They are extremely good in writing that type and she’s so unique that they could almost claim a copyright for her. I’m not even sure hot to categorize her - I guess smart-dere nails it best. Overall, it was just a pleasure interacting with her although it could be criticized that she was stealing the other characters the show too much. Pretty much only Momiji could keep up with her, while Sakura and Angeline appeared rather bland in comparison, even if at least Angeline had some funny scenes (like the photograph scene :miyako:).

The story was slice of life for the most part so far, which is still not exactly the biggest strength of Minori. And I think there was a lot of wasted potential with the witch scenario. It’s revealed so early that I don’t even have to use spoiler tags for it and none of the characters really seemed to care about it for whatever reasons. I know stories where just the ‘possibility’ that someone 'might' be a witch already makes for a highly interesting and tense story. But if even the involved characters don’t seem to care, why should the reader?!

The romance also seemed a bit too rushed and the witch scenario wasn’t really used for an interesting story development yet. About half of the first chapter was more or less the common route introducing the characters, so there wasn’t much time for the Sakura specific arc anymore. That’s also a bit of a problem with the chapter structure for different routes instead of a continued story. You usually need a common route before the split to the heroine routes and I wonder how the other chapters will deal with that. Will it be repeated each time with slight variations like in Umineko, or will it be handled in a different way?

Anyway, so far I’d rate the VN with a careful 7/10, mostly because Alice and the visuals compensate for a lot of shortcomings in the story department.

Heroine ratings so far: Alice > Momiji > Angeline > Sakura

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To answer ChaosRaven above, from Hotaru Chapter review that I'd read I think it'll probably will following Umineko ie loop with some difference. About Sakura Chapter, if ChaosRaven said so (No time to develop Sakura story) at least there's some explanation from the witch ie Sakura didn't really need witch spell here, although I agree with you that Sakura here was quite bland here ie didn't had many character development here (She was quite entertaining though), then again if this is supposed to be story introduction, guess it make sense that it more focused to the introduction than the heroine story (Like Fate Route in Fate Stay Night). In this chapter, actually instead of Sakura I'd more interested with Takako (I mean Nishizono) who decided to team up with Alice for beauty contest (Forgot to tell that 2 contestants allowed to team up in one performance) after seeing of how Alice violin play was far more better than Takako's piano play (Didn't play for years will do that, although Takako piano skill was still good).

For the climax itself, too bad there's no beauty contest shown, and actually this will scream bad story telling because we couldn't see the excitement of the contest itself (Also the fact Yukinari memory about the contest was taken as the cost will surely made many people disappointed that they couldn't see the excellent beauty contest), such as Hotaru supposed deadly magic show or Alice and Takako dual performance there (Minori actually could add one of their OST as the piece that was played). Another disadvantage here would be we couldn't see Sakura and Yukari (Yukinari female name) show which supposed to show us of how they managed to perform splendidly. All we know that Sakura was in 2nd place and Alice and Takako was in the 1st place. Maybe I'm nitpicking too much here, but guess it couldn't be help here if minori really was run out of time for the production there. 

For last word here, I knew about Yuuko and Elicia here and funny enough this time their seiyuu was not the one who voiced Alice here. To add more irony here, Yamada Yuna (Yuuko and Elica seiyuu) here was voicing our sadist Hotaru here. Quite interesting.

PS - About the witch, I think it will be more used in Hotaru Chapter and definitely in last chapter (Chapter 5). Although from Momiji and Alice interaction I could see that there's some interesting story between them (Momiji here was said could expelled Alice, and both of Momiji and Alice quite hostile to each other).

PPS - How many Alice that I'd find in VNs just recently? First it was from here, then Majokoi and finally Hapymaher. Looks like Japanese like name Alice for cute girl character there. Just saying.

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Just wrapped this up. Still working out how I feel about it, but mostly positive. I thoroughly enjoyed the ending, and, after the post-game teaser, I'm looking forward to the next chapter. On that topic, @littleshogun, why do you think Hotaru is the next chapter? It seemed pretty clear from that scene that Ryouko will be the next chapter's focus (which I'm actually pretty pumped about).

Even though this chapter was super fluffy, the events at the end perfectly set the path for a much less fluffy remainder to the game. I feel like this game is on the road to being a real heartrending new classic in true minori spirit. I'm excited enough that I'm considering gifting a few copies just to raise the counter at http://mangagamer.org/minori/ a little bit...

Breakdown by area:

  • The art is freaking gorgeous, of course, though I'll echo @ChaosRaven's statement about Ryouko's facial expressions looking pretty janky. Sakura also had one pose where it looked like her head had been scrunched down a little. But, yeah, everything is so glowy... it's really lovely, IMO. I only nitpick because everything else was so amazing that it's a little disappointing to be unable to call it simply perfect.
  • The music is honestly pretty lackluster. It's not the worst I've heard, but it's really not great. I suggest turning down the BGM volume a fair bit.
  • The story, like I said, is mostly really fluffy, but there's a lot of foreshadowing and interesting setup (which didn't feel clumsy or annoying to read or anything like that). So, even though this chapter didn't have much in the way of surprises, I feel like the broader arc is going places. I love a good nakige, and if we do ever get all of SupiPara, I'm willing to bet it will go straight to the top of my "best nakige" list.
  • Characters were initially iffy to me, but they really grew on me. Amano is the best example: I couldn't pin her down for a while, to such an extent that I couldn't even think of her as a human; she was just a really weird trope. But after enough time with her, I started to pick up more subtle shades of personality and started to appreciate her more; she kind of turned out like Ami from ToraDora (one of the few redeeming characteristics of that show). And while, as a character, Sakura is pretty flat, with all the others, I felt like they were gradually deepening the more I read about them. In the end, Momiji is best girl for me, by miles, but all the rest are interesting too. Ironically, I thought Sakura was best girl initially because she's so bright and shiny, but I think she dropped from the top of the rankings all the way to the bottom by the time I was done, just because she didn't really change or grow. She was at her best in the first five minutes, and was all downhill from there.
  • The translation is fine, if a little verbose for my taste, especially in the dialogue. I've found I have a tendency to screenshot three things: lines I find really clunky, lines that I find really funny, and cute girls. SupiPara was weighted most heavily towards cute girls, followed by funny lines, followed by lines that should be improved. So, all in all, I shouldn't really complain here (though, you know, I probably still will, a little bit).
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About my statement for Hotaru chapter here, let me state that was not my opinion here. In fact it was the absolute fact that next chapter will be about Hotaru there. The reason I said that because back at last year Otakon, I was interested with Supipara and so I decided to check for Supipara review and read it. And of course I'd found out about Hotaru route from there (Well, I'm spoiler seeker here). For Ryouko, it certainly interesting that you'll think the next chapter will be about here, but I think we still don't know much about our Yukinari past here and about Alice I suspect that there was more than she state about her meeting with Yukinari in the past there (No, he had an accident and Alice save him at the cost of Ryouko's memory didn't count here).

About Ryouko here, I would like to suspect that minori was probably save Ryouko story for Story 2 before it was finally scrapped because once again sales wasn't good at Japan there for Story 1 alone (In Japan, Supipara divided to 2 stories, story 1 which consist of Sakura and Hotaru, and planned story 2). Well, what I knew that if Mangagamer managed to gather the necessary money for Chapter 3 to 5 here, I'd definitely couldn't searching the Japanese version review for the spoiler here. Oh, and about Hotaru chapter here if you need some official answer here that not from the spoiler, I could quote Kaitsu from the interview.

Quote

We know Sakura and Hotaru represent “Smiles” and “Peace” (that latter being horribly ironic when you consider how much of a sadist she is)

From there we surely could conclude that next chapter will be about Hotaru even if you didn't read the spoiler like me, just from considering that Sakura Chapter was more like Smile Story and Pi from Supipara mean Peace, and from the quite above we could conclude that once again next chapter will be Hotaru's.

PS - Did some of you saw a girl who had sprite in Chapter 1 (Other than Momiji and Takako of course)? Take note of her, she will play some role later (Probably).

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I see. So, from the final scene of chapter 1 it definitely looked like they were going towards dealing with his mother's situation next, but I guess they're doing that in the context of Amano's route.

And, the fact that the most important heroine hasn't been introduced yet is also mentioned in that teaser scene at the end. Kind of a strange decision, but I guess between the memory loss and the time loopiness, it seems kinda fitting.

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Just some minor spoilers & speculations from someone who has read the game in japanese

- The blue hair girl doesn't seem to be the most important heroine. She will be introduced in the 2nd chapter. 

- 3rd route: Momiji, 4th: blue hair girl, 5th: Alice

- His mother's situation probably will be dealt with in either chapter 4 or 5

- The 2nd chapter is much better than the 1st one with the appearance of the blue hair girl, the reveal of a grand scheme at the end, and Amano's background story which at least has some dramatic elements (albeit the author still resolves the situation pretty lightly :S)

- The story seems to become more and more interesting after each iteration to support for the theme of the game (wonder/ wonderful everydaylife?). Hence, I guess that's reason why they make Sakura's route so bland.

- I don't know why but 'Supipara' sounds similar to 'suprise' in Japanese to me, which I think pretty fit to the mood/theme of the game.

Also, favorite characters (so far): blue hair girl > momiji = alice > hotaru > sakura  :D

 

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48 minutes ago, deepblue said:

Just some minor spoilers & speculation from someone has read the game in japanese

- The blue hair girl doesn't seem to be the most important heroine. She will be introduced in the 2nd chapter. 

- 3rd route: Momiji's, 4th: blue hair girl, 5th: Alice

- His mother's situation probably will be dealt with in either chapter 4 or 5

- The 2nd chapter is much better than the 1st one with the appearance of the blue hair girl, the reveal of a grand scheme at the end, and Amano's background story which at least has some dramatic elements (albeit the author still resolve the situation pretty lightly :S)

- The story seem to become more and more interesting after each iteration to support for the theme of the game (wonder/ wonderful everydaylife?). Hence, I guess that's reason they make Sakura's route so bland.

- I don't know why but 'Supipara' sounds similar to 'suprise' in Japanese to me, which I think pretty fit to the mood/theme of the game.

Also, favorite characters (so far): blue hair girl > momiji = alice > hotaru > sakura  :D

 

This is exactly how I thought they would do it, and the reason why Sakura's route is so light. But I liked her route, I like a nice easy slice of life romance.

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So the second chapter is also really light on the drama?

This is so un-minori-like. And it's clear that they don't do pure light-hearted slice of life very well. It's starting to become clear why this wasn't as successful as they hoped for in Japan.

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8 hours ago, Decay said:

So the second chapter is also really light on the drama?

This is so un-minori-like. And it's clear that they don't do pure light-hearted slice of life very well. It's starting to become clear why this wasn't as successful as they hoped for in Japan.

Well, I did like it. But to each their own I guess.
Let's just hope there will be enough funding to finish it. Although I think that would take quite a while, if they even ever get that far.

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I think Supipara case was more likely no H instead of light drama here. The reason I said this was because if we remember ef had the first 2 chapters was quite light-hearted and yet it was successful (Granted the drama at ef was heavier than Supipara, but still). And if we recall ef has some H-Scenes there. I might be wrong here though.

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ef had a more serious tone from the start, but that doesn't change the fact that its first two chapters were pretty generic slice of life. And while I'm a big Yuuko fan boy, I wasn't exactly blown away by the rest of the cast. Actually, I already like more characters in Supipara than in ef, and I also prefer the fixed protagonist over the 4 - 5 questionable dudes in ef.

It'll be hard to beat Eden though. That one was a real masterpiece. Would have loved if Minori revisited the world of Eden more in a newer title.

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