#and i didn't even get around to praising aoi's voice actress eh

[foxstens]

time to talk about totono (beware the spoilers)

i knew it was a masterpiece from the very beginning, and i guess the reason for that is the atmosphere. i have never come across a vn that builds atmosphere so effectively, whether it be through the use of music or it’s absence, or the beautiful but ever-so unsettling art, or a mix of all of those. but that very atmosphere is probably what made me want to continue reading even if i was terrified of what was ahead of me

and yet, i only gave it a 7. there’s a few reasons for it. such as the fact that the music, though it works very well within the vn, there’s only one track i really like on its own, and in fact there were times even during the vn that i found the music annoying.

then there’s the protagonist who i won’t really elaborate on bc he barely has a role in the story, and he’s so ugly even though he doesn’t even have a face. i hate him with a passion and he doesnt deserve to be part of such a great story.

then there’s its structure i guess. like going in i was excited bc it’s listed as being a medium-length vn but it only has two love interests so of course i expected both of them to get equal amounts of focus and development. yea no.

other than the atmosphere aoi was hands-down my favourite part of it and i was so looking forward to her route, to have quite moments with her and fun moments with her and for her to get to change and become a /character/ instead of a plot device.

but i never quite got that. because she just doesn’t get enough screentime. like her personal quirks and her opinions and her speech patterns and the way she wears her uniforms and her life /in this world/, they’re all so interesting and i wanted to find out about those. i wanted her to receive character development in other ways than being a love interest.

and even her being a love interest could’ve been done so much better. i just didn’t feel it. when the big dramatic part of her route hit i didn’t feel as attached to her as i should’ve, and i wasn’t rooting for her relationship with the mc at all. tbh most of the emotions i felt during the confrontation scene were just because of how well that scene is done in general. 

so i was very much prepared for aoi to become one of my favourite female characters but it didn’t happen because the story decided that the other love interest deserves so much more screentime.

which brings me to the third and biggest reason that i can’t give this vn a 10. miyuki herself. 

i hated her from the first time  i saw her; i didn’t like her face or the colour of her hair or eyes or her hairstyle or her voice or anything. but i kept going, scared shitless, waiting for her to kill the mc or for me to warm up to her.

and i did warm up to her a tiny bit once i got onto aoi’s route and she acted all nice and  shit. but then the ending happened and i was so happy because i had called it from the very beginning.

and then it cemented itself as a masterpiece even more with how terrifying that ending scene was. and i loved it.

BUT THEN IT KEPT GOING. the entire vn getting messed up and being unable to save and having lost all my saves and not knowing what was happening and her talking directly to me at times - that was all fun. it became considerably less fun when i was stuck in this endless loop replaying the same scenes making slightly different choices at times, using the ctrl button more than i ever have in my entire time.

in real time i probably didn’t spend more than 3 hours in that hell but looking at her face all the time not knowing when it’d end going to the cat shopping a million times was incredibly aggravating. and when i looked up a walkthrough i found out this was called endless loop #1 and there’d be some plot happenings when i managed to choose my way out of it but then there’d be an endless loop #2 waiting for me. 

so after i got out of loop #1 i looked up its various endings on youtube then promptly deleted it. i appreciate so many things about this vn and it definitely feels like it’s a classic already, but the focus on miyuki really breaks it for me, and i can’t help imagining just how much better it would’ve been had aoi received even a fraction of that focus. D:

language-wise it felt quite easy i think. the fact that aoi’s lines are only written in kana is a bit unusual but personally i found it helpful because oftentimes what she says is repeated by others and written in kanji, which i really liked. she does use a fair amount of onomatopoeia which you might love or hate, but other than that the language is pretty simple as far as i could tell. i didn’t understand even close to half of the narration but i never felt like i was lost or missing out or something (except that one time i did a high skip and a new choice popped up without any context whatsoever lmao). i definitely feel like i learned a lot.