And I’m done too! What a trip.
Because it doesn’t feel right to put this at the end, let’s start out with a grammar question
I wonder what the だけ is doing there. It doesn’t seem to fit (if this is the only thing she has faith in, what else does she not faith in?), and it’s not in the translation either: “I’m confident the taste hasn’t changed since then.”
Alright, with that out of the way, chapter/game thoughts!
Ha, I’m glad that I’m not the only one who felt that some things just didn’t make sense.
Spoilery thoughts and confused questions on the chapter / the game
So, things end. Not on the happiest note, considering that Arco and Marco are separated, but nobody “good” died, the evil is no more, and there is hope that our main cast will meet again! At least they are still connected by auction/bank account
One thing that really confuses me is the whole “Marco’s family on earth” thing.
- So, Mitsuko wasn’t a Love alien after all? She actually still lives and exists and then was just impersonated by a Love alien or something at the time Marco killed “her”? (She seems to be actually Marco’s mother, but has forgotten everything about it because apparently when Arco eats memories it’s more like she simulatenously eats it from everyone related, huh.)
- Okay, so Yuko and Sakurako are Marco’s sisters. How did Arco know when she said “マルコが姉妹に遠慮するのは、ボクがいるからだと思うんだ” (while Arco was preparing to leave fight Asterot)? And also… doesn’t that imply that Marco knows too?
- While we’re at it… doesn’t that mean that Yuko and Sakurako are Mitsuko’s daughters too? Even though they never meet, never talk about each other, seem completely unrelated, and Mitsuko only mentions having a little son when talking about herself, but conveniently forgot two daughters?
- Also, what’s with the completely unexplained “kill her” / *gunshot* red herring at the beginning of the VN when Mitsuko is evidently not dead after all?
And like @bbo mentions, a fair amount of individual sentences didn’t make sense either. But other than that, I could mostly roll with it from a “making sense” perspective. Stuff’s weird, things happen. It’s hardly weirder than my beloved The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (Although with a lot more plot holes.)
My main two problems with the VN are how unfocused it seemed for the first half, and how the non-stop slapstick made it hard for the characters to feel like actual people with more than one dimension. Plot-driven, character driven? It felt more random-driven than anything else. Sooner or later we got concrete goals the characters worked towards, and characters actually thought and talked about more serious topics and hardships, but too little and a bit too late.
I mentioned this in an earlier week, but I think I would’ve enjoyed this a lot this more in English, where I could read quickly, and didn’t feel like I invested so much effort into a funny and entertaining, but ultimately not very substantial experience. (But I guess I did get some language learning along the way too for my troubles, and its features did make it a fantastic game for a language learner.)
In the end, I think it’s a 3/5 for me: Something that was “okay”. While I wasn’t happy with everything I did enjoy myself at times, and I don’t regret reading it, but I wouldn’t recommend it either.
…but, that being said, now that it’s over, I kind of feel a bit lonely, and finding myself wanting to read more from some of the characters. So maybe it got me more than I than I thought it did.
But, well, that’s it, I guess. バイビーーー!!