A little moment in Natsu-Mon
I've been wanting to write about this for, what, a month now? Probably more, but I kept stalling, so I'm forcing myself to do it now.
I got into the Millennium Kitchen/Kaz Ayabe-directed games last year, after playing the fan translation of Boku no Natsuyasumi 2, and since then I've played 1 too, as well as Attack of the Friday Monsters, a little two-hour 3DS masterpiece that's a really sweet homage do kaiju movies and Ultraman (tailor-made for me, really). All of these games are great in one way or another, and BokuNatsu 2 in particular stands to me as one of the finest narratives ever put into a game, there is simply a lot to be said about that one.
So, obviously, once the studio's newest original game (excluding the Shin-chan licensed ones) was announced to get an English worldwide release, I immediately jumped into it as soon as it came out. And, even though I haven't finished it yet, Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid, is perfect, game of the year in my book.
Natsu-Mon retains the calendar system from the BokuNatsu games — you got one month, playing days with time limits — and applies it to an open world bigger than anything in the series up to this point. The map size pales compared to AAA endeavors, sure, but it's just big enough that it feels like you're on a journey every day, but everything is close enough that you can go to multiple places a day and get a lot done. Still, there's absolutely no pressure to do any sort of "quest," the few ones that you receive, you just play leisurely at your own rhythm. Certain days in the game I don't even do any sort of event, just walk around, talking to people, climbing mountains, capturing bugs, occasionally fishing, meeting the little ghosts that are scattered throughout the map… That's what it's about, and the fact that the movement in this game is so good only adds to the fact it doesn't feel tiring in the slightest, 22 out of 31 days in. For more about this, I can't recommend enough this post about the Japanese approach to open world games.
Point being, this openness and focus on exploration and movement is what makes it differ from the BokuNatsu games I've played, where you've got a smaller map and a reduced cast of characters. Those games do have their share of exploration, but they also got a lot of story. Everybody has something going on, personal issues, family drama, that you unravel as you talk to them day after day. It's truly wonderful and very few games make me as emotional as the BokuNatsu storylines do. Natsu-Mon manages to hit that emotional beat, too, just in a different way.
That's where the little moment comes, that I'll use as an example. The recurrent thing with this game is that you can talk to all the citizens of Yomogi Town every day — and there are a bunch of them —, watching their routines, how they change their actions depending on the day of the week… If there are any "story" events, they're more reserved for a moment in a day instead of a continuous storyline that spans a month.
One of the citizens you get to meet is the station man in Yomogi Town. For a while he was really just one of those guys I talked to every night, and he'd always talk about how much he loves buses more than trains, as well as asking for ways to improve the railway transportation, things like that. I didn't find him the most compelling character to talk to every day, but once you reach night in this game you don't have much to do anyway, so I might as well speak to him.
One such nights he talked about how his love for trains started after reading Night on the Galactic Railroad by Kenji Miwazawa as a kid. The train that travels through the galaxy made such an impression on him he started to see the magic in trains, and that was when he decided to work doing something related to them. I really can't make justice to the scene describing it here, and besides it's been a while so I don't remember all the details, but, really, that got to me. That little random dialogue in a random night in the game felt like it had so much passion put into it, it was such a sincere story, even as a 1-minute daily dialogue, and I understood his love for trains and why he always talks about them. That just elevated him as a character in my mind. It's hard to describe, but it's the kind of magic these games have.
There are many other memorable little moments in this game, even stuff like watching the rain with the bookstore girl or things like that, and I love all of them dearly. The Millennium Kitchen game catalogue is mostly not easily accessible in English (can we get a BokuNatsu collection, Sony?), so to me it's a blessing I get to experience it like this, cause it's very special and a worthy successor to the older summer vacation titles.
By the way, watch the opening. A The Pillows cover by Cure Black's VA is an incredible thing to exist.