Some thoughts on Hashihime
After my last post I finally finished Hashihime of the Old Booktown, since the last route was really short, so I thought I'd write a short thing about it. I probably won't get much into spoilers if that matters to anyone.
I mostly had fun, but as it went along things got more mixed to me. This is a visual novel with five routes, and the biggest issue is that the first one is the longest, and feels more final, and as I started to read the other ones my interest was dwindling.
The reason is a structuring problem that's actually somewhat interesting to think about. You have a set order to do the routes, and you don't have choices until you need to make a route change, which means there's very little variation. So you do Minakami's route (by far the best one) without doing any choices; then there's Kawase's route, and you get one choice to make after 15 minutes of fast forward; then Hanazawa's route, where you get two choices, the same as last time and a new one; and so on. So that means that for each route you have to spend more time fast forwarding through stuff you've already read, and then what remains to be read gets progressively shorter. If you count the repeated sections, I'm willing to bet they're roughly the same duration, but there's not much reason to replay everything unless you completely forgot what happens. I just don't find that to be a very engaging way to set up routes in the long run, so it was a little strange to see it.
(I hope my explanation made sense there.)
As for the content of the routes themselves… I don't know. Minakami's is the best one by far, with a really engaging mystery, some thrilling horror scenes, and the twist reveal midway through being pretty cool. Then, once you get that out of the way and have the full picture, what's left is less the mystery and more getting to know more about the other characters. The second route is Kawase's, which I liked, cause you get to see what's behind the detached, rude friend that hates you. Then there's Hanazawa's, which has some some commentary about the military that I wasn't expecting and I thought was a pleasant surprise, different from what came before. This third route does have a very abrupt ending but I like it, it's also different.
Then I reached the fourth route, Professor's… and by this point my interest started dwindling. It was fine, but I can't say I cared much about that one, which is a shame cause I like anime guys in suits and gloves and the eyepatch was also cool. I liked the character on the other routes, but his own chapter didn't do much for me. I don't even remember why at this point, it just left very little impact on me, even though I did feel it was fine as I read it. I think it had more to do with the fact I wanted to move on to something else and there wasn't much of a mystery or anything like that retaining my attention there. Like, when I think back on it, I don't feel like it was significantly weaker than chapters 2 and 3, but I just wasn't as invested after doing this three times already.
Well, then there was the last one, Kaoru's route, which starts very differently from the rest and it ends very differently from the rest. It had my attention on the beginning! Then there was a final twist that was marginally interesting at first, but to be perfectly honest I can't say I felt added much. And, as much as I hate to say this, the conclusion was a bit of a slog. I really don't mind sex scenes, especially cause this is a BL game, I was fine with them in the other routes, but once again, by this point I just wanted to move on to something else, so I can't say I cared about reading the last one that much.
So yeah, I don't know. I don't regret reading this, I kind of liked it, but I was also mixed about it due to this structuring. I'm sure Kurosawa Rinko only got better since then — with Ooe being released last year and people all over going crazy about it —, so I still want to see what else she's done. Uuultra C in particular, being a BL game that mixes tokusatsu tropes in a Showa Era setting, feels like it was made for me. And also, it's one route, so the issues I had with Hashihime won't happen again, most likely.
But that's for some other time. Currently I'm reading Go Nagai's adaptation of The Divine Comedy, which I'm loving, as well as the Irish epic Táin Bó Cúailnge, or The Táin for short. It's the Big One and just as fun as the other tales I'd talked about before. I also need to get back to The Poe Clan by Moto Hagio, which I put off for a while in order to finish some other stuff… like Hashihime. And likewise I won't start Uuultra C before one of these readings is done, since I don't want that feeling of starting a bunch of stuff and not finishing any of it.
Have a nice weekend now!