Jump to content

Aokana Release by Nekonyan [UPDATED]


littleshogun

Aokana Poll  

39 members have voted

  1. 1. Which is the best girl?

    • Kurashina Asuka
      6
    • Tobisawa Misaki
      18
    • Arisaka Mashiro
      11
    • Ichinose Rika
      4
  2. 2. Which girl that have best route?

    • Kurashina Asuka
      12
    • Tobisawa Misaki
      24
    • Arisaka Mashiro
      2
    • Ichinose Rika
      1


Recommended Posts

On 11/2/2019 at 11:08 AM, GXOALMD said:

Thank you for your thoughts, I appreciate hearing another perspective.

  Hide contents

The reveal doesn't kill my sympathy for Masaya as a child, the issue is that in the several years since he not only never takes any steps to move past it on his own but even goes out of his way to avoid moving past it.  A character wallowing in pity, leaving the best part of their life behind, over something that happened half of their life ago doesn't do it for me.  Having just finished Asuka's route tonight, I actually really liked that he was willing to admit that some people were better than him and still be able to enjoy flying.  I'd say that he probably grew the most in Asuka's route, finding a sense of belonging in the sky before even returning to the competition.

I don't really know how one would miss the similarity between Masaya's past and Misaki's present, they're kinda the same scenario.

I think we're on roughly the same page with your third paragraph.

I may have just missed it, but I never really got the sense that Misaki actually cared about FC until the fall tournament itself where she declares that "the desire to win is what's important."  In the common route she was just doing her thing, "it seems fun, so let's do it."  In her own route, it seemed like she had two motivations for doing it; 1, she wanted Masaya to screw her and 2, the inherent gratification of succeeding in doing something you thought you couldn't do.

I feel like a lot of the novel's humor was lost on me, which is unfortunate given how hyped I was (this was the first big name novel I ever pre-ordered).

I don't recall ever mentioning how I feel about the character growth in this route (I merely stated that the episode dedicated to it was too long), but it's interesting to hear another's perspective.

I'm not really sure how to respond to your seventh paragraph.  I don't really like any of Aokana's main cast and until I read Mashiro's route I actually considered her the bottom of the barrel character.  Shindou, Aoi, Shion, Shirase, and Satouin all pretty much carried the novel for me.

Maybe I read into their relationship a bit too much.  From my perspective they entered this relationship because they both needed to move past what was holding them back and the only thing that enabled them to move forward was their "love" for each other.  A bit of support is all fine and dandy, but when the support is the only thing that lets you keep going then it's a problem.  Also, I would consider the extent to which they neglected the rest of their friends to be harmful, but that's a much lesser point especially seeing as that is presumably resolved after the tournament.

I'm probably just missing something.  In my limited experience with character routes, how much I like the character doesn't have a major bearing on how much I like the route.

As an unrelated question, having just finished the novel tonight I need to know:

  Reveal hidden contents

The epilogue with Masaya and Aoi flying together, does that happen automatically when you finish your fourth route, or is it just at the end of Asuka's route regardless of the order you read them in?

 

Spoiler

 

I think it's just a question of empathizing. And I say empathizing, not empathy, because I think generally speaking, things like character sufferings and flaws (like not being able to move on) are straightforward enough for most people to have the capacity to empathize with, it's just question of whether you're willing to give them the benefit of doubt, or if it just makes your patience run thin. It happens all the time when people react to fiction, different people have a different willingness to accept a flaw like Masaya's as premise, I'm happy to give it a pass as an overly competitive person putting too much (?) meaning in his abilities, while someone like yourself might find it tiresome. It's probably also why our opinions on Asuka's route diverged, I found it cheap that it easily threw away a core aspect about him that was built up in the common route and that I had already taken as a premise, while you didn't care for it as a premise in the first place.

I think you really misunderstood her motivations for doing FC, which is weird, because the game hammers in plenty of times that Misaki's an extremely competitive person. The classroom scene explained most of her past and present motivations for doing FC, one of her primary motivations is that she has a talent for it, so she doesn't want to lose to someone like Asuka at being good at FC. Of course, enjoying FC is also one of her motivations - her original reason for playing FC was being captivated by Masaya's flying when they were kids after all. I want to say that that her competitiveness was also a factor when she was in Nagasaki, but it's debatable since it's never explicitly said. I don't think she was such a different person back then either and Masaya mentions that it doesn't add up how she never won a single tournament in Nagasaki, which might be hinting that it also affected her level of motivation the same way it did in Shitou.

As for doing FC because she wants to fuck Masaya, it's never stated but I guess that's a possibility. She was doing FC partly for his sake between the classroom scene and the fall tournament, so I guess it's plausible that it's because she wants to fuck him? I'm pretty sure wanting gratification is wrong though. The veranda scene, the post-practice snack scene and the pre-fall tournament scene all laid out that she's practicing this hard because she's frustrated and afraid, not because she's chasing some kind of emotional satisfaction. In the first place, she doesn't even have the confidence that she can pull off winning the fall tournament or meeting the expectations of herself and the people who were helping her train, let alone do things that she believes she cannot even do.

I think you can just take liking and disliking characters as a matter of personal taste. Trying to find some inherent right or wrong is probably a fruitless endeavor.

You're conflating their support for each other and the answer to their problems when they're two separate issues. Both of them were trying to find a way to stop their anxieties and insecurities from paralyzing them. It's true that they only found the answer 'because they were both supporting each other'. So in a sense, you could say that they learnt to move forward 'because' of their love for each other. But they're able to move forward despite their fears because they now have a mindset that being a competitive person is OK (the part about loving the feeling of wanting to win) and to use their fears to to drive them to do better and work harder, instead of giving up like they did in the past.

This is not the same thing as being able to move forward because 'I love you' or 'you're there for me'. They discovered the solution together, and you could even argue that they would never have found the solution without each other, but the solution wasn't 'each other', if that makes sense. I think being able to improve your partner as a person like that (being able to accept themselves and being able to use their flaws to do something positive) is a pretty big sign of a healthy relationship. And seeing that it's a relationship between two highly competitive people who compete in the same sport, it would probably end in a disaster if they weren't able to come to terms with their competitiveness like that.

Masaya was avoiding the rest of the club because he felt guilty and responsible for breaking it up like that. I'm guessing Misaki might also have felt the same, although she never mentions it so I'll just file it as a possibility. And of course, they couldn't do training together because Masaya was no longer the club coach but Misaki's personal coach, so he was a foe and outsider at that point with regards to FC.

Someone already answered the last question for you but yeah, the epilogue is for reading all four routes. You don't get it if you only read Asuka's route (and I did hers first, so I would know).

 

 

Edited by d3ban
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just finished the story yesterday!  It was just awesome! I did them in the order the game presented them to me, only switching Rika by Mashiro.

I initially thought that Asuka was going to be the main heroine but by the end, I think it's split between her and Misaki.

Asuka is basically cuteness incarnate.  Everything, she talks, thinks, her dog, her "tchans"... even when she is sad she is still cute.  

Misaki on the other hand, while she has a cute side (nowhere near Asuka though), she also has that sass that I love, she has more "dimensions" (not talking about her breasts here) and is just more interesting to me as a character overall.

As far as routes go, I also preferred Misaki's over Asuka, but I feel they both offer alternative solutions on how to get over trauma.  Asuka's is about just having fun and Misaki's more about finding an answer.

PS1: Just started watching the Anime (ep2) and I believe that, while the story is quite inferiorly presented (understandable) they seem to propose an alternative pairing which might just be the one.  Asuka x Misaki.  Or Asaki for short.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, I finished the last route last night and I have to say that it was a really great vn

I really loved the protag and just how much of an actual character he was! He had strengths, weaknesses, growth, and something he needed to accomplish and push through.

He wasn't Mr. Generic Average High School Boy Number 5000000

Like it actually made sense why these girls would fall for him, which is so different from other vns, (cough Hatsukoi) that have protags that leave me scratching my head why any of these beautiful and cute young ladies would want to ever give Mr. GAHSB the time of day

I ended up liking most of the characters and almost all the routes. My favorite was Misaki because I felt a genuine love connection between the two of them. Plus, I loved that reveal about her role in his childhood. Can I say that for the most part the sex scenes were really well handled? Like some of them actually felt romantic and they didn't lean heavily on shitty h scene writing troupes. For the most part anyway. Misaki had the best scenes by far I mean in the second scene Masaya actually takes off his clothes to have sex. Incredible.

The side characters were across the board pretty great with Aoi being the standout and favorite character for me. A lot of them felt like they could have easily been reworked as romantic targets.

But for every gem there is always going to be a flaw and for me that was Mashiro's route and, well, Mashiro

I really couldn't stand her constant annoying clinging to Misaki and I genuinely didn't care for her. Her route also was pretty garbage and felt like a complete afterthought. I thought she would end up going against Arika. I thought they'd flesh out her character more and that yuri relationship with Mayu. Instead she didn't shine in the tournament at all and instead just went against Misaki. It seemed like a waste and I found much of her route a huge chore to play through.

 

Oh, I almost forgot that production quality was aammmmazing I especially loved the backgrounds. They took the already great backgrounds that Koi had and dialed up that shit to 11.

Overall, I think this was a truly great vn and I think it's pretty fucking sad that sprite went bankrupt. A real shame.

Edited by Ranzo
Link to comment
Share on other sites

After common route I thought I wouldn't like Mashiro's route, as she seemed just annoying. But for me her route actually worked, and I liked it.

5 hours ago, Ranzo said:

Can I say that for the most part the sex scenes were really well handled? Like some of them actually felt romantic and they didn't lean heavily on shitty h scene writing troupes. For the most part anyway.

Yeah, they were really good. It's sad that such thing is pretty rare even among romance VNs :(

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, adamstan said:

After common route I thought I wouldn't like Mashiro's route, as she seemed just annoying. But for me her route actually worked, and I liked it.

That's what happened for me too.  To be honest, I was really upset to realize that I liked Asuka's route more, I was looking forward to voting for Mashiro's route in this poll to give it the love it deserves.  Second place gets zero recognition. </3

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yooo, that was a blast. Aokana is the first "sports"-vn I've ever read, (excluding the occasional track team route,) so with my boxing background I felt right at home (and should move my fat overwinter ass off the couch). The big FC fights actually glued me into my chair from start to finish and this title makes good use of moving the screen, transitions, sound effects and narration to make them exciting to follow along. The last vn fight scenes I enjoyed were the ones in Comyu and this is even better. Nice. (quick shoutout to the episode-preview narrations)

Sprite draws amazing... well sprites, SDs and backgrounds, so like in koichoco I had a lot of fun looking for easter eggs in CGs and backgrounds. The Soundtrack also kept me entertained without becoming grating after repeating for all four routes.

I've read the routes in the following order; Mashiro, Rika, Misaki, Asuka. I would recommend following that, with the option to either start or completely skip Rika. Whatever you do, read Asuka last.

Mashiro - smoll and cute

Spoiler

 

She is not a character I got along with right away. She actually got on my nerves during the common route and I snapped her first mostly because I was morbidly curious as to how the hell a romance was supposed to grow out of this... lets call it "unfortunate" character setup.

Well contrary to what I expected, it just happened to work really well. Mashiro's route is a really cute romance story, featuring a really cute little girl. The more this little shit untangles herself, the more likable she becomes and I'm a big fan of her personality change, because it's gradual and doesn't come out of nowhere. Aside from this really strange stretch of "nothing" happening when Masaya works at her place and she going to Rika for training in which they never speak, I can't think of a single thing I hated. 

Mashiro's route has the best romance of them all and it has my favorite conclusion; Instead of focusing on the themes of the sport and "defeating the bad guy/girl", this route culminates in a showdown between Mashiro and Misaki, which is great because we as the readers are invested in both characters at this point and makes us care a lot about the result. Thematically very fitting finale and it wraps everything up with a neat bow and tie. 

 

Rika - Things happens and then it ends

Spoiler

 

Lets me get this out of the way: The route is not bad, Rika is a very nice and soothing heroine and it's not so bad, that you'd hate yourself reading it when you're a fan of Rika.

Now, if you didn't click with Rika in the slightest, you might as well skip this route, because it doesn't really contribute anything to the greater picture. Things just kind of keep happening, the protagonist doesn't do anything all that important and the villain of the route is... very bad. It was physically cringing to myself, due to how lame it she is and her suddenly plot twist.

It's the only route that doesn't adress the fate of the protagonist (which is strange, considering she knows the most about his past from the get go) and has a surprisingly high number of plot holes regarding the flight psychics and technical laws, mostly because it had a different writer who is not credited on VNDB.

I didn't hate it, but I wouldn't reread this one either. It was fine.

 

Misaki - The pity party

Spoiler

 

So, this route was amazing. A little messy to be sure, but an amazing mess nonetheless. We are allowed to delve into the complex feelings of frustration and jealousy through the minds of two scarred individuals attempting to, failing to and lastly, succeeding to overcome those emotions. Misaki is a frustrating heroine at times, because her flip-flopping is great for the comedy and sass value, but sometimes annoying to read, which is without a doubt intentional. 

Misaki's route aside from targetting issues from a fresh (and dour) perspective, benefits greatly from axing the main cast and instead building up a new "party" of support characters. That is pretty nice, because it keeps things fresh. Storywise, the Inui fight was my favorite fight in the whole vn and I was super proud of myself for figuring out their strategy hours before the characters. Unfortunately, the big final fight against Asuka seems a bit less important and isn't as tense.

Anything I didn't like? Well, yeah the romance. While it gets better towards the end when Misaki and Masaya end up flirting and screwing around, initially the start of the relationship kind of just happens and it's never brought up by anyone else. The tone of route, the science and action came at the cost of the romantic development. Furthermore, the new support cast comes at the cost of not addressing the Mashiro issue in a meaningful way. Or any of their issues in general; It's mostly a problem with Asuka being the "main-route", so the inability to resolve the other, open character plots in this route is the nature of the beast.

high level nagging, but nagging nonetheless

 

Asuka - the big finale

Spoiler

 

Yeah, so Asuka's route is the main story and you feel it. Despite building up how amazing Asuka is, we still follow a rather classic underdog type sports story that focuses on learning new tricks and exciting asspulls. The big solution is this time dropped right at the start and easy to pick up on, but most readers would most likely forget by the time they reached the finale. 

This route also delves into some serious topics, mostly related to the protagonist, but mostly focuses on the FC sport itself, which is great for me because I was into that the most. The romance is very cuddly and fluffy, because Asuka is a precious cinnamon roll.

The finale is big, flashy and a little stupid. The ending spectacle is a bit too flashy for my tastes, but it works as everything was setup. We actually get some nice endings for all the main characters, including the protagonist. However, the script does reach a Return-of-the-kings approximate amount of endings that could've been souped into one, full epilogue just to steamline somewhat.

When compared to Misaki's route, I think it's weird that she stuck around for this whole thing to go down (considering what's going on with her in Mashiro's and her own route) but I like that you essentially pick your preferred type of story: Do you want to heal Masaya's old wounds by applying wholesome excitement and fun or do you prefer brute forcing your way through the wall by hitting your head until it breaks

 

The protagonist is a cool guy and I love almost all side characters. So much so that I'm baffled that ohohohjou-sama didn't get a route (also why does Arika have those giant knockers? Holy lord in the sky)

Overall I give Aokana a 0/10, because there's a character voiced by my girl, Mizuhashi Kaori and I wasn't allowed to respectfully bone her into oblivion all night long.  

NSFW PS: bless Madoka, she a good girl.

Spoiler

jvV6zLN.jpg

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/17/2019 at 12:18 PM, TexasDice said:

Rika - Things happens and then it ends

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Lets me get this out of the way: The route is not bad, Rika is a very nice and soothing heroine and it's not so bad, that you'd hate yourself reading it when you're a fan of Rika.

Now, if you didn't click with Rika in the slightest, you might as well skip this route, because it doesn't really contribute anything to the greater picture. Things just kind of keep happening, the protagonist doesn't do anything all that important and the villain of the route is... very bad. It was physically cringing to myself, due to how lame it she is and her suddenly plot twist.

It's the only route that doesn't adress the fate of the protagonist (which is strange, considering she knows the most about his past from the get go) and has a surprisingly high number of plot holes regarding the flight psychics and technical laws, mostly because it had a different writer who is not credited on VNDB.

I didn't hate it, but I wouldn't reread this one either. It was fine.

 

 

 

Rika was my favorite of the heroines and I'd say that her route is probably worth skipping even if you like her.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Finished and thought it was good, but not great. For me, me plot wasn't as interesting as Koichoco but the characters did such a good job at carrying the story that it ended up making the whole package far better than Koichoco. Also, too bad the company folded, because there was potential to make the franchise go full MajiKoi with the amount of likeable side heroines. Overall, if i consider Aokana a moege it's the best one i've ever seen, so i understand the high VNDB ratings even though i don't think it's that much of a classic.

Ranking down heroines: Misaki>Mashiro>Rika>Asuka

Ranking down routes: Misaki>Asuka>Rika>Mashiro

Edited by onorub
Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

Would be nice to get an ETA for the Perfect Edition. I've Aokana stalled right at the start of Misaki's route and I'm just waiting for that update now. :wacko:

I think you're good to read it now, actually. I contacted NekoNyan a while back regarding how the Perfect Edition content would be accessed in-game and got this as a reply:
"The plan for the extra Misaki scenes is that they will be accessible via the main menu."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Seraphim88 said:

I think you're good to read it now, actually. I contacted NekoNyan a while back regarding how the Perfect Edition content would be accessed in-game and got this as a reply:
"The plan for the extra Misaki scenes is that they will be accessible via the main menu."

Oh, that's good to know. Then I don't have to wait to continue, if it's an extra scenario anyway.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Sounds good that we hear the news about Perfect Edition here (Even though it looks like append disc), so let's look forward to it. Oh we also already have patch 1.1 in which it'll add voice bookmark thst was promised by Nekonyan, so good for them to add new feature for Aokana overseas version even further (Adding the music mode is already a big step up seeing that the original version didn't have it).

Edited by littleshogun
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

The results of Sprite's Aokana popularity poll are in!

Main heroines
1. Misaki
2. Mashiro
3. Asuka
4. Rika

Others
1. Saki
2. Madoka
3. Satouin
4. Minamo
5. Aoi

Source

How Saki managed to nab first place for the supporting cast is beyond me. Personally, I'd put her in last place on the list, if I'd even let her be on it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, adamstan said:

it's Satouin for me

Yeah, it's either her or Madoka for me. I hope they get their chance to shine in either the sequel or an EXTRA! Would like to see Aoi as well, but I guess the chances of that are lower, if Sprite is actually taking the poll into account.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...