We are reading Fuyukara, Kururu with the Visual Novel Book Club. Link goes to nomination post.
Please note the PC version is 18+, while the switch version is sfw.
Synopsis: The official synopsis available on vndb could be considered spoilery. It covers an event that happens several hours into the game. I removed that part (you can find the full summary on vndb or nomination post) for the summary here:
A boarding system school isolated from the outside world, and there do the immortal girls live.
The time it takes for them to become an adult is the same time it takes for them to deage and become a baby, they grow up until they become an adult once more and then do they deage again—a cycle that’s being repeated.
There’s only one condition in order to graduate from school: one needed to be deemed a prodigy by someone observing from the outside. The moment that verdict be handed down, the girl’s graduation would be recognized and she would disappear from school.
The immortal girls’ peaceful school life would be greatly disturbed by a certain murder case.
The game is linear with brief bad end branches. It’s also frontloaded with more light hearted slice of life content and H-scenes before the plot kicks in fully. The whole loose series this is in is infamous for this structure.
As of now there are no full playthroughs available of it online. There are playthroughs of the trial editon which is quite long though, if you search on youtube. If this changes I will link it here.
Content Warnings
some dubiously consensual/non-consensual sexual situations
One of the side characters who is also involved in the h-scenes is very young looking
twin sister incest
Cheating
The usual that goes with the murder mystery genre
I’ll probably add as I read on since I am a bit ahead.
Discussion Guidelines
We do not have a schedule so feel free to read at your own pace
As there are no chapters, include the cg unlock percentage in your post. Note due to the lack of H scenes the cg count in the switch version is likely different. You can find your cg unlock percentage on the main menu, under おまけ > cg mode.
You can also add more non spoilery details to be more specific such as location and character names that are in the scene. Example (made up scene)
PC, cgs 20%, Soraoka and Shihon, the cafeteria
Let me know if you can think of a better way to do this.
Since I am one of the 2 who read it I guess I’ll give impressions so far.
PC, 54 percent cgs, Soraoka Mizuna and Chiemi in the student coincill room (shortly after trial portion ends)
Finally the plot is going.
I am really intrigued by the little bits of lore and worldbuilding we got and I think its generally well integrated to the dialogue. However 6 sex scenes back to back was a bit much (also I think the sex scenes and especially the art that goes with them is Bad). On top of it Shihon really annoyed me lol. I found her voice initially cute but her and Soraoka’s dialogue was such meaningless fluff.
I was a bit glad when it was she who died.
Anyway from others in the series I expected the sex to be frontloaded, and I’ve seen people call the prologue “redundant”. I do think it could be conveyed in a more economical way though redundant seems a bit harsh. I enjoyed most of it (sans the sex scenes).
Now Soraoka is determined to find the murderer, but Mizuna seems like the real brains of the operation.
Although the moment they met Chiemi it went back to silly antics mode. I really was expecting things to be a bit more serious.
Since they are also searching for Tsukikadojima’s murderer, I wonder if Mizuna has any feelings about that. I feel like when they go to search for a motive, Mizuna will have the most obvious one as she was publicly humiliated by her. I don’t actually think she has done it though. In fact I am not so sure there was a murder. Whenever there is a locked room mystery that feels like the most straightforward solution. We have not comfirmed the body and even if we had - considering the carnation and technology and stuff I feel like they could easily get body doubles.
My biggest questions so far
what the hell is up with the people living in the woods that are casually mentioned??
what is the significance of the black needle?
I assume by context clues (chess is a solved game “konyan” is an old greeting) that the prologue is a future cycle but I wonder what the sginificance of being shown that is…
when in the time line is the 2nd part of the cycle with the needle obsessed girl. If I don’t remember wrong, she says that konyan is a recent greeting so I guess that’s closer to the main timeline, though no one seems to know or be aware of her death. Also names seem to change between cycles so it might be worth going back to the prologue and see if its Yukari or someone else. Or alternatively maybe the first part of the prologue is a special case where names have changed. Since I think shihons name is the same…idk…I def should reread it in a while.
I can’t believe 54 percent cgs are unlocked already lol. This is because each h-scene has like 50 cg variants and there are 6 sex scenes in the prologue.
Btw I think the op of this is pretty good
now that the h scenes are mostly over(?) the cg stat increases very slowly
57 percent, back in the student council room
Well I learned about the forest-people. Kind of a disappointingly straightforward answer, but at the same time I kind of want to meet one of them? It’s such an odd dynamic where people just join them one cycle and then return at some point. Also the other chool where the younger girls live, I’m curious about it too.
I think the setting feels a bit more claustrophobic than it really is because we are focusing on such a small cast when there are others out there we know of, peoples social interactions feel limited by it. I have the feeling we wont meet any new characters but I hope I’m wrong.
Anyway, mystery wise it’s interesting to follow someone so clearly ill suited to being a detective lol. It’s hard to be annoyed at it considering she has absolutely no qualifications.
So far, all we did is establish the details of the case, though there were some theories they were quickly proven wrong or dead ends entirely.
I’m leaning towards there not being a murder at all somehow. While we saw the bodies … I’m just not so sure they belong to those 2 girls (although Soraoka did identify her gfs body, she also was calm enough to surprise herself maybe a hint she senses at some level its not her?)
I’m not a fan of how the plot gives frequently way to random anime hijinks. While they never last long, it keeps the tone a bit too light for my liking. Though I think its intentional, it creates some dissonance between following this girl who has lost her partner and is devastated but also is able to participate in anime comedy when there is need for it.
So far, I don’t love the cast enough to but I do like them fair enough. The main appeal for me is still the setting and I love learning more abt it. Same for the mystery but I find it hard to engage it in a who dunnit manner since the cast is so small and I doubt a random no name student is the culprit. I don’t think any of the named characters are the culprit either which brings me back to me thinking there isn’t a real murder.
Curious where we will go from here as all the setup is done!
Overall non spoilery: enjoying learning more about the setting. The mystery setup feels done at this point so really curious where it will go from there. Some tonal dissonance keeps me from being as invested as I want.
Oh I did lol. I tried to skim rather than skip but I ended up skipping more often than not. I don’t really like h-scenes at the best of times, and I found these especially bad.
There was actually some plot? lore ? stuff in the middle of some of them that I noticed while skimming. There might be more that I missed but if the switch version can do without them so can I suppose.
Kinda bummed out. Outside of very occasional nuggets of setting or lore during long conversations about nothing, and a few H-scenes, nothing really happened. I feel like I need to skim more, just to keep the motivation from waning, and to get to the good parts.
there are 6 sex scenes total in the prologue for reference. I skimmed basically all of them and occasionally checked logs to see if there was anything important.
61%, 2nd sewing club room
I was told before I started this game has 3 parts. The prologue, the murder mystery section, and the sci-fi section.
I guess I can safely say I am in the last part now. Most of my questions are answered. And I thought the reveal portion was really good. Soraokas VA is REALLY good in this part I was pretty impressed by her. I didn’t care much for Shihon but her death was pretty sad in part thanks to Soraoka’s performance. Though if I am right (And I think I am) and the prologue is in the future, she will be fine eventually.
The “we have to introduce ““men”” to the world”, and the need to create new life is … hmm…I will refrain from judgement until I see how it resolves. Also I guess it makes sense the girls would talk about it this way but in practice the social gender role Soraoka occupies still seems to be same as the others. But I guess that might change when it is known ?? Also obviously it’s dumb that everyone wanted to jump her bc they could sense her …what…testesterone? Some inherent “male” quality? Honestly it’s kind of homophobic if you dwell on it lol. But this is a game in a series of otherwise straight eroge after all I don’t expect it to have the best handle of this stuff. I am enjoying it enough to overlook this for now. I will simply chalk it up to this being a silly eroge.
Honestly even though I have some concerns about this plot direction, I can say it’s not interesting and I have really enjoyed the reveals that took us here. Judging by the prologue…I feel like the ending will be kind of a cop out considering Shihon is there, and Soraoka is not a “male” it just seems like everything will return to a status quo. Since Soraoka is called something different I guess she is actually Soraoka’s offspring, but since they use the same hardware I guess essentially it’s a clone again?? Idk it seems kind of stupid if I think about it too hard, I suppose I should wait and see.
This section also made me like Tsukikadojima quite a bit, I can sympathise with her resistance to change. And this seems such a risky thing. Also made me like Yukari more as well as Soraoka. It feels like the first time people started taking things really seriously, which makes sense in the context they are…
Circling back to the mystery section, overall it was alright, better than the prologue but the tonal shifts were quite jarring and the side tangents a bit frustrating when I just wanted people to get on with the mystery. For the chess puzzle they really should have had a graphic it felt needlessly confusing and it just seems like the sort of thing that’d be better with a graphic since it’s a lengthy section of characters just talking about a chessboard.
Now that the questions are mostly answered I guess what we are left with is “now what is the group going to do about it”. I heard there is a survival aspect so we’ll see…
That does seem like a missed opportunity, and kinda odd to overlook, for a visual novel.
The rest of the stuff you mentioned sounds kinda interesting, but also I can’t comment, since I haven’t played it. How is the sci-fi stuff, in terms of vocab difficulty?
I’m not impressed with the games presentation in general. I feel like there are not enough cgs and when there are any they’re stiff or too close up weirdly. The character sprites also don’t have that many expressions the VAs carry the emotion. It feels like they blew all their budget on the OP presentation wise.
For this specific scene a very specific chess position was needed so I guess they didn’t want to actually think about what that chess position would be in practice.
not that hard tbh, it does a good job explaining complicated terms when it comes up. I didn’t feel like the content was that challenging.
I think I’m close to the end, so I will save some thoughts for later so I can have full context of it, esp re:gender stuff. However the attitude about the girls “transforming into men” has confirmed I was right to see them still as girls. They’re still refered to as 彼女, they don’t change in any real way. Another character who has decided to become a “male” also mentions that she doesn’t really think any of them are men.
It’s funny how its both gender essentialist in a lot of ways (“men are really horny have a natural instinct to procreate” though tbf if the shot is similiar to testosterones I heard it does have the former effect lol, not to mention the insistence to call people who undergo the transformation male, even though…they really are not!), but at the same time the supposed “boys” still look, act and present like girls (ie unchanged from before), it’s just that people who know that they have a penis are being weird about it. And the one girl who uses masculine speech patterns and 俺 decided she has no interest in becoming a “male”. Then there is also the character in the prologue, who many years before any of this was considering themself to be a boy (I guess, you could call him a trans man).
I really would like to hear more trans peoples opinions on all this. Amelie Doree made a video about Harukuru before it was translated, and she briefly mentions fuyukuru in it as well, I really would like to hear her thoughts on it.
I ended up rambling a bunch about gender despite saying I would save it for later oops. Anyway. I am at the third section and once again I have mixed feelings. I think there is a lot of interesting things to explore here but we only ever hear about them second hand. Oh there was a faction that was vehemently against the change in the status quo but was wiped out? They had to reveal the plans to the whole studentbody and deal with the reactions? People had to deal with seeing their loved ones break in front of them because Yukari stopped eliminating them before the graduation? Why can’t I actually experience any of this instead of being told about it…Instead we are locked into 1 on 1 interactions, which have some interesting philosophical discussion in them but then inevitably are just leading to more sex.
I really feel like this vn could be much better without its genre trappings. I really only rarely feel like eroge is actually enhanced by its own erotic content.
Though this is partly also the fault of its small cast, even thoguh there are 1000+ people in the school we only ever see 6 characters so inevitably have to be told about the rest. Idk, for such a high concept and large scope story, this feels like an oversight.
I also don’t really feel like it is using it’s own setup that well. We are told before characters occupy different roles have different relationships hobbies etc in different carnations. But in this case people are remaining conveniently the same. Chiemi is still the student president in the next carnation and still dating Kikuma for example. Soraoka who used to not be able to remember past cycles does now because she has to remain traumatized by Shihons death for the story to remain a detective. Yukari and Okubi are sort of paired up which is new but its the continuation of what happens in act2, so not really.
Still really enjoying it though, I’m just a natural complainer. I just feel like this has more potential than this. I realized at some point I did get attached to the characters even the ones that annoyed me initially. I initially really disliked Tsukikadojima especially (and it is hard not to considering everything she does) but she grew to be my favorite lately. I find it hard not to emphatize with her hating every change from the status quo, while at the same time realizing it is the only way forward. In the end she would clearly prefer to die out than this change (and I think in her place I would also feel similiarly, I am not big on the collective good and I’d rather remain immortal lol), but the decision has been made, she will support it, while also not hiding she is upset about it. I feel like she is a pretty complex character I like her a lot. She is however the closest thing the game has to a villain so I wonder if she will get a happy ending.
I obviously haven’t played it, but I get the impression I’d feel pretty cynical/critical about it. For a much better implementation of “everyone is female until…”, see シムーン S1 | L32
It’s been interesting reading your critiques of the game. Idk whether it counts as an eroge or not, but I found the ero parts of つい・ゆりadded to it, rather than subtracted
I actually heard the opposite about it and had been avoiding it for years because of it, you talking about it got me interested again. Frankly I do dislike the premise at least in both cases. But we’ll see I guess, I have no idea either way. I’m still undecided about what I think about fuyukuru but it’s interesting so far at least.
I’m not sure how comparable it is though. I feel like in fuyukuru I would say there is no real gender change. I guess let me give some real context I don’t think I ever did. This is a very rough summary ofc.
There is a twist midway through that reveals they are essentially living in a simulation that is highly unstable and will end with everyone dead sooner or later. One possible suggested solution is to create new life which will allow them to reuse old hardware, and add diversity to the simulation to possibly adapt better to changing circumstances that is causing it to be unstable. As a side effect of this, since there is limited hardware, eventually people will start dying once all previously corrupt hardware is recovered and current ones will need to be used.
To do this they have to introduce “males” to the system which essentially just means that some people undergo a transformation to be able to impregnate others. Although they are called men it doesn’t seem like they are in any social way. This would bother me in most cases and it still sort of does here but in the context of the characters do not have a frame of reference for what a man is, so it makes somewhat sense. It’s still a big change to the system and the characters affected and treated as such. On the other hand, there was a character in the prologue who could be argued to be a trans man (thought of himself as a boy though with limited context of what that would entail tbf), though they haven’t showed up again yet.
In conclusion: Idk. Could be worse, could be better?
I would definitely say its eroge. The term just means whether these scenes are present (ie original fsn was an eroge and would be called such though recent versions don’t have that content)
I guess it depends what one is looking for. For me there’s certainly a bit of wish fulfillment there (as with watching Ranma), but also a certain level of realism/real world resemblance. I’ll hold off from saying more though, in case you do watch it at some point. As an aside, Ranma came up in my lesson recently, and when my teacher summed up the whole gender swapping mechanism, I commented 羨ましい. I was wondering if/how she’d react, but she didn’t comment one way or the other.
Interesting. From what you’ve written about Fuyukuru, I dislike the premise there, but in the first place I’m not a fan of “everything is a simulation” setups. But like… if it’s just a simulation, why give it such a shitty/unbalanced setup? Idk, it just seems kinda meaningless and pointlessly contrived to me.
That indirectly reminds me of a character in きみが死ぬまで恋をしたい | L22 … except they’re part of the main cast, and it’s a little more nuanced than just that… seems like they might be more nb/genderqueer, but I haven’t caught up with it in a long while. Anyway, not really the same situation, but it popped into my head
Ah yeah, then no doubt. Re: FSN, I think that’s mostly for the better - Nasu’s sex writing from back then was awful and cringe (though there’s one arc, where I think it actually has meaningful plot significance). I’ll still read them this time around anyway - for the vocab, and to see if it sounds as terrible in Japanese or not.
I watched ranma as a kid and I remember being very frustrated with how good ranma has it and doesn’t realize it I was annoyed any time he complained about his condition and thought it should have been me hahahah…
I definitely am interested in Simoun but the difficulty has me waiting on it for now.
This is discussed in game though I’m not sure if you’d be happy with the explanation. It essentially boils down to we can’t really know the intention of our creators and questioning is about as fruitful as questioning humanitys existence in the first place haha. I oversimplified it but basically the girls are actually data being sent across space (like the arecibo message I guess, we aren’t privy to details since the girls knowledge is limited) with each individual essentially being a program. So they also suggest there might be other simulations with only men, a mix, no consciousness at all etc, but it doesn’t really factor in to their lives so not worth thinking about that hard.
And presumably whoever made them didn’t expect them to end up in a situation where they were subjected to as much radiation as they did.
anyway I am back at the scene in the prologue section which I guess means I’m almost done. I will write final thoughts once I am finished and think about it a bit. Regardless of my final verdict I can say this vn has given me plenty to think about (sometimes intentionally sometimes I suspect not lol).
Hmm, I think I can accept the explanation well enough. Not 100% satisfying, but not terrible either.
Very fair. I’m hoping my listening comprehension has improved enough by next time I decide to watch it… Well I still have like 6 eps of watching together with my friend left, but after that
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I was annoyed any time he complained about his condition and thought it should have been me hahahah…