"In three day's time, our world will end. The meteorite is coming. Don't you see it, Senpai?" - Kosaka-san upon meeting her the first time on the school's rooftop.
Welcome to my second Visual Novel review for this community. My name is 5k, and I love stories. Trigger warning: this story is a work of fiction that takes place in our real world and deals heavily with the topic of suicide. If you are sensitive, this review and visual novel may not be for you. Reader discretion advised.
This is a short kinetic novel (meaning there are no choices to be made, just a story to be read and completed) with an average runtime of under two hours and is free to download with both an English and Spanish translation available. Instructions on how to apply either can be found here (the Spanish one can be found under Languages). If you would like to help support the original developer, you can purchase the game through Steam or Booth. I would strongly recommend playing this in its entirety before continuing to read the rest of this review. I will be spoiling the ending and openly discussing my thoughts on the experience.
All images used are sourced from the Booth link above
I don't play too many free Doujin like this. For those of you that don't know the term Doujin, it's a Japanese independent creator or team of creators (often known as a Circle) with less restrictions on what can be commercially released or legally referenced. That's why many works are able to use real world events, official brand names, or musical tracks like this without fear of legal action from their respective copyright holders (although, many circles do use parodies of them regardless).
Side Note: the moment that song began playing, I took pause, synced up the official soundtrack release with this game and just looped it for a good while. I love The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya film so much!!! It's not like I've rewatched it about 50 times over the years!!! 🙃
There were two moments that stood out to me the most in this work. Loosely quoting Kosaka, "There's no risk or reward in playing a game for free; paying for the experience pushes one to embrace the bad and attempt to find the enjoyment." I definitely resonated with that sentiment and appreciated how casually it was placed in the story without breaking the pacing or overall tone of where it was placed. It could have easily been ignored or missed without the player losing anything for it. The "cold fries" in a McDonald's metaphor used alongside it was a nice lead up into the revelation that occurred a few scenes later.
There were only a small handful of problems I had with the presentation and storytelling, so I'll bring them up here before I talk about the ending. First of all, there were only four named and fully detailed characters in the story. Both Katou (the infirmary teacher, which it turns out is a real thing in some cultures) and Kosaka had the most polish to their sprites, including shots where their breasts were the main focus of the camera. The camera didn't zoom in on them at all but they were there for the eye candy aspect.
The moment that Katou started briefly talking about porn games with the main character, I was definitely taken out of the experience a bit. Her gender pronouns were also changed a few times during that entire scene. This visual novel was one of the first English translations Shinzou Translations worked on and according to this blog post, it seems that English is a secondary language for the group. The game was easy enough to read and correct where needed (especially when the many typos and strangely worded sections came up), but a retranslation might be in order at some point. I'm no expert and am not intending to be massively critical about it, just bringing it up here for completion's sake.
The main reason I brought up the sprites for the women was because both Mozes, my best friend in the story, and my character sprite felt like they were done by a totally different artist altogether. They both felt very caricature-like and not people of the setting, especially when compared to the few background characters and environments in other scenes. I'm not going to speak for anyone of color that reads this (Cacausian male here), but once you see Mozes's sprite, learn where he's from, and discover how he fits directly into the story (will be disclosing this last one in the next section), you might take offense due to perceived racial stereotyping.
Childhood abuse and drug addiction are both things I understand very well. Mozes, had been loudly discussing with my other classmates the effects of LSD and how it could easily be slipped into a drink while everyone in class was at lunch. Whenever Kosaka heard that outside the classroom door, she immediately ran home and confronted her mother about it. It had never occurred to her that what she was experiencing wasn't real up to that point yet for anyone that's been paying attention, there were many hints given throughout.
Whatever transpired afterwards at home was never shown on screen, and it didn't need to be. Kosaka spent that last day of her life avoiding me yet made sure to leave money to pay for the meal from the previous day. I was left in a haze for the day and began searching for her later that night. Most of what had transpired in the story was because we drank her tea.
As I stood on the rooftop where I first met her, there was no meteorite in the night sky, only her standing on the edge, mirroring the title screen but looking away from me without her smile. The reality was weighing on her immensely. Her mother had joined a cult months back after her father died in an accident. Kosaka's daily tea had been spiked; she was slowly being poisoned. That was too much for her already frail psyche.
Note: I am not from Japan and don't truly know the culture there outside of the media I consume. This particular trope often bothers me due to its massive usage in various Japanese media. Here, it affected me a bit differently, though. I'm a survivor of a very similar experience to what she was going through; rarely does this particular kind of abuse get shown with such tenderness while also being as forward and blunt. I'll leave that part of my history for your interpretation, just know that this whole ending sequence left me screaming and shaking my computer monitor. I had tears and didn't want to feel what I was feeling.
The moment she walked off the edge and my character jumped after her, I sat there quietly, almost lifeless. Time had slowed down, the entirety of the work flashed before my eyes, and the meteorite was made real both in the story and for me as a viewer. The conversation between the two as they fell smiling will never leave my soul. Cut to the ending credits with no conclusion to their story. Did they survive or die together?
What were your thoughts on this Visual Novel? If you enjoyed this review, feel free to reply below, reblog it and vote on it. Thank you for your reading this post and have a wonderful night.