The melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya novel - review

 The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya - a classic that has yet to live up to my expectations

 A while ago, I was siting in bed and thinking about what to read next. I had already finished the horrific experience that was "Scum Villain Self-Saving System" and I was not going anywhere close to the second volume, or really any other volume from that author (the people say that her writing gets better, but they also say this first series is still very good so I do not trust their judgement) so I was at loss with what to continue. Of course I could continue my long classical literature to read list, or perhaps read one of the tens of psychiatry books I have in my library, but obviously, I was not yet tired of painfully mediocre writing (not to be misunderstood, I do not believe svsss's writing is mediocre. Bad is a better description.).

Enter the Haruhi Suzumiya light novel series. A piece considered an absolute classic in anime culture, her face recognizable to any self respecting otaku and anime fan alike. So of course, I had high expectations. Not to high, of course, I knew in the end that this was a light novel and one written in 2003. But still, pretty high.

So yeah, safe to say I am yet to be satisfied.

Also so it's clear, I know the name The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is used as the name of the anime, but I'll title all my reviews based on the titles of the novels (ex: the second novel review would be titles - The sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya)

Short plot summary

Kyon, our protagonist, just entered high school, but, in the first day during their introductions the girl seated right behind him sits up and says:

"I'm Haruhi Suzumiya, from East Junior High. First off, I'm not interested in ordinary people. But, if any of you are aliens, time-travelers, or espers, please come see me. That is all!"

This introduction, of course baffles everyone, especially when they realize she's dead serious. Her name is Haruhi Suzumiya.

She continues to act weird, and our protagonist has no connection to her, until one day after she complains that all clubs are boring he suggests that she should make one herself. And as such the SOS brigade is formed - a club dedicated to finding any sort of paranormal activity. She gathers a weird bunch of people - an asocial book obsessed girl - Yuki Nagato, a shy but very pretty and friendly - Mikuru Asahina, and the mysterious but also friendly transfer student - Istuki Koizumi. 

Left - Yuki Nagato     Middle - Haruhi Suzumiya     Right - Mikuru Asahina

Haruhi searches desperately for any sight of supernatural, but even with her club members doesn't succeed. Yet in private, each member comes to Kyon and tells him how they're each a supernatural creature (Yuki - alien, Mikuru - time traveler, Koizumi - esper) sent to observe Haruhi who is a sort of all powerful god, who can change the world to match her whims. Kyon of course doesn't know what to make of this until every one of the three shows him his powers, but asks him to not tell Haruhi.

Everything is going fine until Haruhi catches Mikuru and Kyon in a slightly more personal position moment in which she gets jealous. Her jealousy created a closed space (an area where no life exists, created by Haruhi's strong emotions) that is about to destroy the whole word and create it again in a way she likes, until Kyon (the only other person except her allowed in this closed space) goes and kisses her, and the world is back to normal.

The biggest and most glaring issues

I made sure to avoid the biggest issue this novel has in my summary, so I can really put it down here.

SO MUCH SEXUAL HARRASSMENT

Like look, as a person who consumes a lot of 2000s media, I have a bit of resistance to it. I can give it a look and turn my eyes away. BUT GOD DOES THIS NOVEL MAKE IT HARD. It was to a point where around halfway I actually debated dropping it. It was so much and soo big that I genuinely couldn't and didn't want to ignore it anymore. In a way , it really spoiled my experience with this book, since I was loving it at the start. Buy just so you get how bad it is, there is a whole moment where as to blackmail a guy, Haruhi unbuttons Mikuru's shirt and forces a guy's hands on her boobs while Kyon takes photos.

And yes, it's not Kyon doing it, it's Haruhi towards Mikuru. Which was perhaps funny back then for some people, not really that pleasant anymore. She forces her into revealing outfits, she fondles her breasts against her complaints, she takes unconsensual suggestive photos of her and almost uploads them to the internet. It's a mess. Thankfully by the end of the book it does tone down a bit, but I was told there is a worse scene in the next books. Apparently she does calm down by the 4th book, and it's somehow supposed to show how she's so weird and supposed to make you uncomfortable but I have my doubts. 

Unfortunately this is Japan, and they don't have the best record with this media. Nowhere in the entire thing is this portrayed as bad except the protagonist's snarky remarks. And now I'm not a person who thinks bad things should be specifically stated as bad for the reader to understand they aren't good but there is a moment where you have to stop and ask yourself "Yes, I find this weird because I don't think sexual harassment is ok. But a person who doesn't have the same morals as me would find it weird as well, or would they find it funny/hot?". I'm not accusing the writer of anything, because from what I've heard it really does get better, but I am offering a perspective not many think about.

Another issue I have is with the ending. While nice, it really feels so out of place with the earlier themes set in the book. Haruhi wants to remake the world she lost any hope in, but she's actually still just a highschool girl and when her love kisses her she realizes this world is worth living in. In an attempt to deepen Haruhi's character I feel like they cheapened it. Her earlier actions are now put through a different lens that makes her actions seem way more mundane in a bad way. She doesn't actually believe in aliens and espers, she just wishes they'd exist, and in her heart what she truly treasures is love. And also she's a tsundere. It's just so... after we've set Haruhi as this intricate almost out of reach existence we suddenly make her so painfully normal that her charm just fades away. She is now quirky at best, and I am scared that even her quirkiness will fade away in some ways. 

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying normal characters are inherently not interesting anymore. But human and normal characters have to be different and weird in humanly ways, which are way harder to master and do than making an unreachable character into a straight up anomaly. Because the author has been creating the latter all this book, when he tries to switch to the first one she falls a bit flat. 

There's other small issues I can talk about as well, but I feel like these are the main and important points.

Verdict

I will probably continue reading the second novel, although after a while as I am back in the mood for reading good books again lol. I am mixed on this book, so I'll see how I'll approach the second one. The only thing really motivating me is this one character I saw that hasn't been introduced yet that looks cute, and this one antagonist that was thrown out of the picture this novel but is on the cover of the 4th volume. I'll see. For now I'll give this book a nice

5/10

wonderfully mediocre

恋色クレシェンド 〜Princess Diva of Convallaria〜 guide

 Koi Iro Crescendo ~Princess Diva of Convallaria~ Guide

Hello everyone today I decided to write a short guide to a visual novel almost no one knows exists. I haven't actually played it, because it's not translated and I don't know enough Japanese but my girlfriend did and she got stuck at one point so badly that I felt the need to write this guide. 

What is this game?

In case you somehow found this guide without having already known about the game, here is a small rundown. This is a ~10h long vocaloid mikurin/rinku/hatsune miku x kagamine rin yuri visual novel. It's a slice of life, and nothing that big happens, just some petty drama and some...questionable bad ends. But generally, the main focus of the vn is the relationship between the two girls.

Where to download it from?

The original website is in Japanese and it's this one -> https://maidens-gene.sakura.ne.jp/game/koicre/index.html

BUT when you go to dl to download even if you press the Gumi image, there's a chance your laptop won't download it, since it's considered an unsafe site. If yes then I uploaded it on Archive.org here -> https://archive.org/details/koicre-1 . You might notice a big all caps text in it's description. Yeah that's the reason I'm writing this blog entry.

Guide

The game has 4 endings but unfortunately to this day I still haven't figured out how to get the second one. It probably includes that pesky point system I'll talk about later but in the meantime, we have 3, out of which only one is good, and that one is the mikurin one. 

The first ending you can reach is the Gumi Ending. This one is very easy to reach, as it depends on only one choice. On day 14 you will get the option to confess something to Gumi or not, and choosing to confess will end in this ending.

choosing the first option here will give you the gumi bad end

Second ending is the ..... Ending

Third ending is the Luka Ending this ending will be the end of you if you don't get lucky and you wish to see the Miku x Rin ending as well. Basically these 2 ends are very closely related. And that is that in day 5 a big mass of choices overwhelm you. Now most of these choices look completely and utterly useless, issue is that they almost all (if not all) contribute to a point system. The points needed for the Luka ending are 300. The points needed for the Mikurin ending are 303. To get to 303 you have to get an almost perfect combination of choices which, except like 4, do not have any connection to Miku or Luka. So how do you get the Luka ending? To be honest i don't know how to explain except with most combinations of choices except a few selected ones. One i know for sure that it works is choosing the first choice at all of them. 

if you have this choice on day 3 then you're on the 4th ending's path.

The fourth ending is the Mikurin Ending is hell to get, and it took me months before I was able to figure it out accidentally. I reverse-engineered the game, looked through its code, and after hours of working hard I tried to get the text right before the Luka ending and by pressing random choices I got the right one. Depressing and hilarious, really. You can try it by yourself, but i recommend no. One way i know it works is from the beginning of day 5 to do these choices.

Number of the question         number of the answer as counted from top to bottom

1                                                                2

2                                                                2

3                                                                1

4                                                                1

5                                                                2

6                                                                2

7                                                                1

8                                                                2

9                                                                2

10                                                              2

11                                                              1

12                                                              1

13                                                              1

14                                                       1

15                                                       1

16                                                       1

If you don't feel like doing this you can go on the archive link and you'll see in all caps an explanation to what you need to do. Just download the save.dat file and replace it. After these 16 choices there are no more and to my knowledge doing these correct locks you into the 4th ending. 

Enjoy the game!

A kiss for the petals 1 - review

A Kiss for the Petals/Sono hanabira ni kachizuke wo 1 - A true classic in the yuri visual novel genre

A Kiss for the Petals 1 (that I will be referring to as Sonohara 1, so as to not type the entire title all the time) is the first installment of the 'A Kiss for the Petals' series of visual novels. It was first released on 22 September 2006 by the doujin group Fuguriya and then rereleased on 30 July 2011 with improved graphics and voice acting. Now chances are that if you like yuri media you've heard about it before, even if it was passingly. But, unless you actually know these games, you most probably have a very wrong impression about this serie, since it's way less fluffy 'kyaaa but we're both girls' . So in this review, I'll talk about what this series is, how the first game is, and my opinions.

This review is 18+. Scroll at the end for a simplified list of pros, cons and rating.

What is this series even about?

cover of the game

Well, if you'd want to be frank, and summarize it in as few words as possible, I'd just say this. 'Lesbian/Yuri porn'. Really, these games are NOT complex at all, yet very few people are aware that they're borderline if not straight-up nukiges ( that is, a visual novel erotic game whose main focus is on the pornographic material, instead of the story or characters. Basically the story/characters exist for the porn, not vice versa). I also wasn't aware of this fact until I opened the cg gallery and saw like 4 non-NFSW images out of 20. Like the entire title is one big innuendo -> the petals just represent the vagina. While I knew the game was going to be an eroge, a fact that many people don't know, I did not know the full extent of it. Oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This misunderstanding often comes from the fact that only Sonohara game you can easily access in english is Sonohara 15 on Steam, which is 15+. It also stems from the cute fluffy gifs that were online and the prejudice that yuri media is only cuteness and rainbows. Now Sonohara, as a humble vn written in 2006 does not in any really meaningful way challenge these prejudices, but I do think it's an interesting piece of writing, that can be analyzed while keeping in mind the year it was released in and also contemporary ideas. 

Yuri erotic content and the flaws of the genre

Any person who actively consumes yuri media and also doesn't believe lesbians are fictional creatures invented so men could jerk off to them will understand when I say there is a difference between a yuri piece of media and a lesbian piece of media. And no, by that I don't mean that one is made in Japan and the other in the west. 

Yuri as a genre, although in theory a very flexible and vague tag, actually tends to have a pretty defining trait - It is the fact that the girls must all, to some extent have this air of innocence to them. Think pink sparkles, true love, and lilies. Those type of thing. This is very easily explainable - The people who write this media tend to believe men have a sort of tainting air to them, that destroys the innocence of a girl. It comes from the decades-old assumption that men are the perverted ones who take women's innocence from them. It's always 'men protect your daughters' never 'men protect your sons'. 

This could evolve into a very long and complex discussion, but this isn't what this post is about.  Maybe I will one day actually write a post about that, who knows. This post is about Sonohara though, and this section is about its gratious amount of porn. Since non eroge moments are so scarce not much can be said about them. The plot is pretty cute, a classic in the genre, a younger student (Nanami) who just got into a new all-girls boarding school. helped by an older student and falls in love with her. Then, later, she finds out that the older student (Yuuna) also loves her, and bam, relationship and fanservice ensues. As this is in fact a nukige, it makes sense that the story is only really there to serve as a build up to the porn. 

So let me start with my two main complaints.

• The relationship develops extremely, and I mean extreeemeellyyy fast. On one hand, I get it because them falling in love is not the main focus of the game, but it is pretty hard to believe it. 
• The bg music is sooo repetitive. Like I think they have 3 tracks? maybe 5. If there's more they were too similar to differentiate. And this really diminishes the impact of specifi scenes. For example, the last scene in the game, which was supposed to be heartwarming, had very little impact on me because the music was the same I've heard for the last 2h.  I hope the next games will have more diversity because the lack of it was genuinely annoying here, and I'm not an audiophile in any way. 

Yuuna left and Nanami right

Another small issue I had comes from the artstyle. While it nails most of it, the anatomy being good and the shading pleasant, almost all nsfw cgs will have one face that looks weird, usually because the angle it's in and some obvious issues the artist has with perspective. I assume these things will get better with the newer games though, and it didn't bother me that much, just a small addition.

Anyways. One of my first surprises when playing this game was that the overly childish talk wasn't actually as prevalent as I expected. It's too often in yuri novels to have 16 year olds talk as if they're 5. While it does have its moments, especially related to sexual stuff on Nanami's part (ex: barely if ever using actual words to refer to her body parts, and always just saying stuff like "down there" "those places" or overcomplicated metaphors), but those can be forgiven to an extent. In the end, their talk is not totally unbelievable for older teens, especially considering that this is Japan and the 2000s. On this subject, I was also pleasantly surprised by the voice acting. Maybe I've been consuming too much Japanese moe media, but I really didn't find their voices as forced and high pitched as I expected them to be. Yes, Nanami's voice was obviously a bit more towards the childish side, but it still sounded believable. And in general, the quality of the voice acting is above average, especially during the erotic scenes. I liked the kissing and moaning sounds they did, which is a surprise since usually the moaning in these games is abhorrent, just high-pitched screaming. But here it was leaning more towards the believable side (with some exceptions, of course)

Another thing that i loved at the erotic scenes was how they did NOT just constantly describe what the other was doing to her. This is one of my biggest pet peeves in Hentai and Eroges. Half the dialogue is just the girl/bottom screaming how "oooouughh [other's name] dick/finger is touching my pussy/dick! It's going inside of me!!" after the narrator has already said it, and the cgs are also showing it. Like I'm sorry but who in real life live tweets their sex experience??. Thankfully this game did not have this issue, except at one sex scene by the end, but I am down to forgive it. 

One thing i also appreciated is Nanami actually expressing her discomfort and explaining to Yuuna when she didn't like the way she was touching and referring to her. It was a nice detail, yet important one.

The specifics of the sex scenes and a surprising kink

Here i wish to describe the sex scenes for anyone interested. If you don't want spoiler over them and just wanna experience them with no forewarning then you can skip this part.

The sex scenes are actually pretty diverse and interesting, and the writer definitely knows something about fucking women. Yes them both coming at the same time is pretty unlikely but that's a shared delusion by every and all porn creators so yeah. I was surprised when they actually said the word clitoris, the first scene giving me the impression it wouldn't use such language. 

As such, the sex isn't in any way insane, nothing actually that extreme is done, I'd argue the most adventurous part is them scissoring twice, and then the game implying they came more than 5 times in a row (we're only showed 2). They barely even finger each other, mostly just rubbing or oral. But there was one thing that did surprise me a lot. Yuuna actually has a kink, and it's not any kink, she has a piss kink. Now I did not expect that, but she's pretty dedicated, even attempting to drink Nanami's piss at one point. This entire kink isn't really explored, but it is interesting to see something like this in a yuri game (although she was presented as being 'perverted' because of it, but in the end ill have to cut some slack since this is still japan 2006)

I'd say they really did hold up pretty well for how old they are.

Summary, pros, cons and rating

Sonohara is a yuri visual novel that's mainly a porn game, with little focus on the other story parts. The characters are nothing to write home about but they're still pleasant to read about, and their conversations are neat, and their sex even neater. The game is not that innovative, though it might just be because nowadays we have so many games with this idea, i am not sure how innovative it was at the time. 

Cons

• Super repetitive music, to the point where it gets annoying and destroys the atmosphere of certain moments
• The relationship develops at a light speed, extremely unbelievable 
• Artstyle makes many faces look wrong.
• The sex scenes while nice are not anything wow

Pros

• The voice acting is above average especially considering when the game was made
• Their language is mostly not overly childish and the character that gets fucked doesn't narrate her experience word by word
• The writers clearly know something about having sex with women which greatly improves the experience and credibility
• There is a wide variety and diversity of sex scenes in a pretty short game (playtime ~3h 30 and there were 9 sex scenes)

Rating:

A big thing i took into account when i gave this game a ranting is its genre. I appreciate the fact that its not attempting to be something it isn't. Overall if i compare it to other more complex and deep games, Sonohara 1 would be below average, but as a simple yuri nakige i will rate this:

6.3/10

(ps I might end up changing my rating later depending on how the other games are.)

Thank you for reading my review, i will attempt to play more games of the series, perhaps trying to finish the entirety of it (except sonohara 7 and 9 because those include a relationship between a teacher and a 6h grade child - which is apparently more promiscuous and experienced than the adult, thing which I'm not ever touching.), see you later :]

How to make BGs like Ryukishi

 I had once attempted to do Backgrounds like Ryukishi's original PC photo ones. It doesn't look that hard, right? WRONG. I was lost and in the end did something that just kind of reminded me of them. Of course, I was sad but in the end, I forgot about it, till yesterday when I was doing a project in Powerpoint. I had to edit a photo so it wouldn't look as odd and decided to go into the artistic effects and lo and behold, there I made an amazing discovery.

POWERPOINT I

We'll start with this picture

(btw this is actually a picture of Shirakawa-go, the village that inspired Hinamizawa, and in which the pics were taken)

1. add it to Powerpoint, and go to picture format. 

2. pick artistic effect -> paint strokes (the second one on the second row)

3. right click on the photo and click format picture

4. there go to picture corrections and put:

•  the sharpness at -10%
•  the brightness at 25% 
•  the contrast at -53%

At this moment the photo will look like this.

If you want you can leave it like this, but I decided to refine it even more.

POSTERIZE

Here I did one simple step, which was googling posterize image online and put the photo in the first site that popped up. The one I used is this one -> https://pinetools.com/posterize-image

Here, I went ahead and set the level to 15 and hit posterize.

This is how it looked.

And here comes the last step.

POWERPOINT II

Here I added it back to Powerpoint, and did the following:

1. right click on the photo and click format picture

2. I changed the brightness to 11% and contrast to -10% 

3. I added the artistic effect -> paint brush ( third, second row)

4. after that, while still on the artistic effect tab, I pressed artistic effect options (if you cannot find it you can search it in the powerpoint search bar - the "tell me what you want to do") 

5. and finally I put the transparency on 70% and brush size on 6

And the final result looked like this.

Anyways hope this helps, bye bye ><!!

Saya no Uta - a review

Saya no Uta - the teased masterpiece vs what it unfortunately actually is 

Saya - the game's main
 heroine and mascot

If you're in the visual novel sphere or lately, on a specific side of tik tok, you have probably heard the name Saya no Uta, or have seen the heroine's face. She's pretty well known, the game being the number one most-rated game on VNDB (visual novel database), with a whopping number of 18146 votes, and an average score of 7.99. Still, popular doesn't necessarily mean good, so let's see how good this game holds to its praise. 

This review is not spoiler-free.

What is Saya no Uta?

Saya no Uta is an eroge visual novel developed by Nitroplus (or Nitro+). It was released in Japan in 2003 and officially published in English in 2013 by JAST USA. Its director and scenario writer is the famous Gen Urobuchi, best known for his work as a scriptwriter on Madoka Magica.

Now you might wonder why I underlined that word, but it's because it's extremely important that we understand what it means. A lot of people, even between those who have heard the word before, don't truly know what it means so let's clear that up.

An eroge is a game with erotic content. That's all. It doesn't matter how much it has, if it includes even one h-scene be it 2 minutes in a 20h game, that game is now officially considered an eroge. A visual novel that is primarily pornographic and/or is just porn with breaks in between the scenes is called a nukige. Saya no uta is NOT a nukige. 

Now that we have that out of the way, some people might be shocked to hear that this game includes sexual content (and oh boy we'll sure talk about that too), and might be wondering why is every 11 year old on TikTok obsessed with it and, to that, I can confidently say that they have thankfully never played the game. People online will act like it's a horrible thing, and while I agree that it's extremely annoying, I would rather them not play it for reasons that will become obvious soon enough.

The good, the amazing, and the taste of the masterpiece it could've been.

So let's start with the good, right? 

The first thing you might notice is the sprite artstyle (and the art in general). Personally, I was very intrigued and pleased by it, as it really isn't just your average moe anime drawing. The art matches the tone of the novel very well, and it's just plain refreshing to see more unique artstyles in visual novels.

Right off the bat, we start with the main character, Fuminori,  interacting with what look like grotesque flesh amalgamations, all talking in an ear-piercing and disgusting way. But the shock only comes after, when you realize what those monsters actually are. They are Fuminori's friends, and they aren't actually in any way grotesque or monster-like, but instead, our protagonist went through an accident, from which he could be saved only by an experimental treatment, that, as a side effect, had him develop an unknown neurological disorder that makes him see the world around him the way he does. Each and every one of his senses is affected, and he now sees, hears, smells, and tastes the world around him as if everything was covered by intestines and gore, and everyone was a form of horror abomination. Yet in this mess of a world that he now perceives himself to live in, there is one beacon of hope that keeps him living, that gives him hope. That beacon is none other than a little girl by the name of Saya, who he can perceive normally. 

Screenshots from the game showing how Fuminori
 sees his friends (bottom) vs how they actually look (top)

The premise of the story is enticing and generally pretty original. It hooks the reader and especially since the beginning, it's very shocking. The dialogue of the friends being so distorted it makes no sense anymore, the dread inducing music, and the constant parallels between how the world actually looks like vs how our protagonist sees it are all amazing. The horror is there, and not by any cheap tactics, but by the genuine horror of the world our protagonist has to live in, the atmosphere is chill inducing and the music fits extremely well. At the time of writing this review some months have passed since I played this game and I can still vividly remember the most iconic tracks of the game. 

Still, I'd argue the best part of this game is the writing in the non-eroge parts. The novel is very short, it took me around 5 hours to finish it, but it doesn't feel underdeveloped. The story is concise, and you never have a moment of boredom. The cast of characters is small so most of them are pretty well fleshed out. Perhaps it doesn't make you cry for them, but the story and actions still hit pretty well, and I found myself rooting for Fuminori's and Saya's demise by the end of the game (I will explain later). It's just generally a very enjoyable read, and the side characters act in a very humane way, though sometimes suffering from the "horror character characteristic stupidness/boldness" syndrome. But generally, their actions are believable.

My favorites are probably the endings. While the first ending which you can get (the bad ending) is pretty dull, the other two are magnificent. My favorite one is actually not the 'true' ending, but another bad (?) one, in which Fuminori's (ex)best friend kills Saya, and then Fumi kills himself. His friend is then left all alone, all his friends dead, left to be haunted by his nightmares. It's depressing but also so intriguing, and it leaves you with some feelings you can ponder over. The true ending is also very interesting, and it has some of my favorite art. In this one, Saya, who was earlier revealed to be an alien who came to this planet to perpetuate her species, gives birth? Blooms? spreads her seed on the entire planet and every person gets turned into a gore blob like her. It's poetic in a way, and if you really liked her, this ending is pretty damn fulfilling. 

If you're very attentive you might've noticed that my favorite parts were the beginning and the end. So why's that? One very simple answer. They were the ones with the least or no amount of eroge content.

And this brings me to the negatives.

The unfortunate reality, and the big disappointment that Saya no Uta actually is.

I must start this by saying I don't actually have issues with eroge content/h-scenes in general, or in plot based stories. I actually think they can really add to stories when they're executed well, or just be a neat break when if they aren't that serious. No, their existence isn't the issue. The issue comes from how they're put in practice and oh boy...

As i have mentioned before, It took me around 5h to finish Saya no Uta with all endings. Let's say a slower reader would've needed 6/7h and a faster one 3/4h. The total number of h-scenes is 6/7 (there 6 sex ones and 1 just naked bath scene). That means the average player will see at least one h-scene per hour of gameplay, and they last anywhere from ~4 minutes to ~10 mins. That is not little for a game that sells itself as plot heavy.

And here I'll have to come and address the elephant in the room. Saya is most definitely lolibait. If you do not know what a loli is, lucky you. But basically in Japanese media it's defined as a young looking girl. And by young I mean prepubescent leaning towards primary school. And these girls either actually are that age or are 1000y old fairies or some stupid excuse like that. So why do they have a name? Because this is also a porn category. Yeah, love you japan. Perhaps one day I'll make a blogpost about this as well, but not today. So when I say  lolibait I mean she's the classic out of this world ageless creature that looks like a little girl and is also super sex positive for some reason.

Some people will how the fact that she looks acts and is acknowledged by everyone in the game as a young child only adds to the horror and makes sense story wise. To that i call bullshit,  I won't deny they could've done an amazing job making her youngness and Fuminori's descent into degeneracy a very horrific tale, but unfortunately, as much as most of it's fanbase tried to pretend that's not true, the real purpose was not to disturb. Or perhaps to disturb a bit, but really, most of the content is made for sexual gratification. Chances are it scared you because you aren't attracted to little girls, but if you were, do you think you would still be scared? Perhaps for some, but definitely not for all.

And here comes the biggest issue I have with the sex scenes. They're generally not written as disturbing or horror. They're simply what it says...sex scenes. There are some that are written as more disturbing, but generally, they just read as the average "dead dove do not eat" smut. An average reader would be disturbed, but if you came into contact with this type of content before, you can tell its main purpose is not to disturb. Also, another hint towards the actual reason they are there is also the copious amount of cgs during them. And that just completely breaks the flow of the novel, and the horror of it, and it just gives it this fethishy vibe.

As such the middle of the novel is its lowest point, as its just filled with porn The usefulness of them is debatable. I do not think the game should have no sex scenes, the beginning ones do help with the story (though I'd space them a bit more, as I feel like they're a bit too close to each other.) And the fact that Saya really likes semen and sex which is important later on is a good thing to establish (although one should mention how "sex/semen obsessed" is a very popular trope with loli porn). But in the middle....

The scene where Saya gets raped is almost objectively useless. And I do get the getting closer to Fuminori part, and it's not the idea I mind, but it's execution. The amount of cgs and details makes it obvious how it's simply there because it's someone's kink. And it's not even made to be that horror?? A rape scene can be made so disturbing, but this just reads like the average non-con fic. I genuinely believe the game would've been so much better if Fumi would've walked in when he just undressed her, or before he put it in. It would've served the same purpose, especially since it was only mentioned once after the scene was over.

Is it worth it?

It's really hard for me to decide if the game is worth it or not, because my feelings on it are very mixed. The good is amazing but the bad is horrific, and could genuinely spoil someone's entire experience. I have thought about maybe recommending the steam censored version but i haven't played that one and i have a feeling instead of summarizing or adapting the text they just straight up cut it which would leave the average reader with quite some gaps. 

So in the end i say if you still want to read it, start it while knowing what you're getting into. And if you really want to play it but don't want to see those scene's at all just get the steam version and then read a summary online. 

Overall i think this game is soooo overrated, and a lot of people like it just because it's so edgy and well known, and also because it's short. If i could give it two grades i really would, i'd give the non eroge parts a 9 and the eroge parts a 3 but as i cannot do that I'll just settle on a 6.3.