Finally finished Sharin no Kuni, Himawari no Shoujo. Wow, that was long! And the story was great! Its a visual novel by AkabeSoft2 with the focus on society and its corruption. It had a heart warming story and promoted a ton of deep thoughts in it. There were also a ton of suspense and twists at many corners. Highly enjoyable experience to any deep thinkers with an understanding of what society is.Full review after the jump.
Game Cover
Synposis:
You play as a male known as Morita Kenichi. You start off without learning about his history but over the course of the game, you (as the player) learn basically everything about Kenichi's background. Morita Kenichi is a very successful individual with lots of fame and money. He is smart, and looks decent also. In the course of the game, you face various challenges as your final examination to become a "Special High Class Individual". It is an occupation very desired in the country and regarded as the most prestige title one can hope for. The location for the final exam happens to be in the town where you grew up, where he left many painful memories. His task was to rehabilitate 3 girls, who went by the name of Mitsuhiro Sachi, Oone Touka, Hinata Natsumi. Each of them had to uphold an "obligation", it was his job to remove them.
An obligation was similar to a sentence decided by a judge and jury. It was an absolute order handed out by the country on a person who commited a crime. However, that obligation could be abolished if the rehabilitee demonstrates that she had self reflected and can stand up and contribute back into the society. That was Kenichi's final exam.
Morita Kenichi, protaganist, special high class individual in training
Higuchi Ririko, Kenichi's sister
Hinata Natsumi, obligation of restricted contact with opposite gender
Mitsuhiro Sachi, obligation of restricted time
Oone Touka, obligation of complete obedience to parental figure
Oone Kyoko, Touka's parent, school teacher
Mana, Sachi's unofficially adopted sister
Nagumo Eri, fellow special high class individual cadet
Masaomi Houzuki, liscenced special high class individual, Kenichi's supervisor
Ratings:
Plot: The plot is the best one thus far. It was both very personal and grand at the same time. Society was not a obscure topic yet it had affected everyone. You and I both live in a society, whether there is a government (developed countries) or not (tribes). You live based on a set of rules that is set up from a person or people. And this story has its own society, it shows its problems and how corruption takes place. Because everywhere has a form of corruption. Corruption occurs because it is impossible to satisfy everyone, no matter how hard they try. The people who aren't satisfied will say the government is corrupted. It is as simple as that.
The plot was also darker than the other visual novels I've read. Adding to the seriousness of the story. Life is not nice, its not all candies and rainbows. This plot was surprisingly realistic for a visual novel (from the amounts that I read). Another realistic one would be Narcissu which I didn't review it but I had read it a long time ago. It was about suicide. Another very gloomy and sad plot.
The plot was also extremely long (in my opinion, based from earlier visual novels that I've read). It was divided into 5 parts. Whats like an introduction then moves onto Sachi's arc, then Touka's, then Natsumi's then finally the combination or conclusion arc. Of course, theres also the epilogue with the character you chose. But thats extremely short. So in a sense, this can be regarded as 3 visual novels as each one of the girls has a different problem so it is a different story. However, it all links back together at the end.
Choices mattered but they also not mattered. Actually I can't say for sure, but this is what I tried. I reloaded older save games (before I cleared the game and changed a choice, skipped a bit of conversation, the dialogue didn't change from my other savegame. So what I think is that, different choices will only get you a different immediate dialogue but doesn't do much else. EXCEPT there is an obvious choice to for whether you want your ero-scenes with a certain girl or not. Pick it and thats how you enter her route (thats what I believe), reject it then you'll be presented with the other girl's route at a later time (thats also what I believe). I only cleared it once, so I can't say too much for sure. Also, for Touka, there is an instant end option. I will assume there is one for the other characters too. But generally speaking, as long as you pick what your mind believes in, you should be able to clear it in one clean sweep.
In my opinion, I prefer happy stories except I must give this one an applaud for the emotional story. I definitely shed some tears.
5/5
Characters: The characters were probably the only thing they could have improved. The characters were by all means lovable. They all had their charms, from one of those energetic girls, to a tsundere, to a overly reserved girl. The problem for me were the voices. Although it might have been intentional, I found the voices to be a bit rough, like the voice actor was acting. It didn't sound very natural. Or maybe it was just how the people sounded like.
3/5
CG: The CGs were nice. The drawings were consistent and didn't look like the artists slacked off. There were a combination of normal pictures and chibi pictures. Both had their own charms.
5/5
Explicit Content: There weren't many, but is as expected. I only went through Touka's arc, there were 3 scenes, 2 of them were merged together in the event extras. There were 4 separate CGs (not including the variations; eyes opened, eyes closed, etc). More can only be better, right? Haha. As long as the story is not compromised.
4/5
Translation: I didn't notice anything wrong with the translation. After playing 3 games, I found that fan translations seem better than official translations by a company. Which is pretty strange but I can't argue nonetheless.
5/5
Overall: I think this was a good novel, again, I would recommend it to everyone. It is however on the long side so those with a short attention span or don't have much time should probably ignore this. I found myself agreeing to many things said in the story about corruption and ideal. It was great to know I wasn't the only one thinking like that. That was kind of aside though. But I would say I definitely learned alot of things if not just confirming my beliefs. It had alot of educational value as well.
There isn't much more that I can mention, the music is decent. There were some tracks I loved, and others not so much. But that was purely due to taste, I can assure you. I generally like the happy sounding tracks. Music was used in the visual novel as way to give players the atmosphere of the situation. For example when main character saves the day, theres a heroic BGM. When people are in tears, the music is very sad. And so forth.
The user interface and user experience is simple and refined. Nothing like the Wanko to Kurasou visual novel.
Title page
Sample CG
In-game screenshots:
4.5/5
Title Cover Image Source: Here.
The following are just notes I made while I was reading the visual novel. I made no reference to the notes when I wrote up this article except to get the character's names.
*SPOILER AHEAD*
Note:
- Main character is Morita Kenichi
- Story is realistically dark, the stories tend to have things like conspiracies, the plot is not straightfoward and simple
- Morita's background is a very intelligent person with lots of understanding of different people, probably why hes the youngest "Special high class individual", basically he is good at everything (looks good, athletic, smart)
- Morita's life goal "To manipulate people like fools"
- People who have done bad deeds gets obligations which they must fulfill, depending on the appointed "Special high class individual" who watch over them, they can either be lifted from that obligation after being recognized that the sins were atoned for, or they could be killed because progress was not met
- A theme is politics, talks about how the Government is run by the "Special high class individual" because they have been trained/educated in many different areas (super human in a way). For that reason, Special high class individual are rare because of the qualities involved to become one
- Another theme is corruption; every heroine had demonstrated some sort of trait, such as free will or spirit, however, Houzuki shows how easily such things are crushed. While Kenichi tries to show that those are important traits and it will prevail against the opposing government and corruption.
- Sachi and Touka both mentioned how they're don't feel like they deserve the "obligation" they have, felt it was unfair
- Educational, main character is educated, his thinking is thorough, lots of things that can be learned, good value
- Diverting blame seems to be another recurring theme, with the 3 girls looking for other people/things to make decisions for them (so they dont feel guilty)
- Stories involve putting blame on other people for their own misfortunes (dark stories)
- Choices seem to be a recurring theme in the game, every character had their share of choices that were laid out in front of them. They eventually have to choose and grow up
- Undecisive characters, got annoying for me.
- Alot of choices, however from what I could tell after reloading older savegames and picking the option I didn't pick, only certain few choices leads you to a "bad end". In fact, I had only gotten a bad end for Touka after picking an obviously wrong choice. Tried a few other choices, nothing seem to have happened, but ofcourse I didn't stick with those choice until the end of the game. So it may have an effect on the "final ending"
- Each story had their own theme about personal traits and how society tries to suppress those emotions, calling them useless. Main character sought to protect them.
Sachi - Justice
Touka - Compassion
Natsumi - Love
- Game is separated into 4 parts, Sacchi's Arc, Touka's Arc, Natsumi's Arc, Ririko's Arc
Characters:
- Morita Kenichi (Previous name Higuchi Ken, deserted his allies): Protaganist, Special high class individual in training
- Higuchi Ririko: Kenichi's sister
- Nagumo Eri: Fellow special high class individual cadet
- Mitsuhiro Sachi: Childhood friend, obligation of restricted available time
- Mana: Sachi's "sister"
- Uzuki Isono: Sachi's appointed "Footsoldier boss", writes fairytales, possibly a writer, pen name "Sepia"
- Hinata Natsumi: Childhood friend, obligation of restricted of contact with opposite gender
- Oone Touka: Classmate, obligation of complete obedience to parents
- Oone Kyouko: Teacher, Touka's mother
- Masaomi Houzuki: Experienced special high class individual, Kenichi's superior
Quotes:
- "No one has actually seen the tenets of society! Humans invented crap like gods and ghosts because they wanted to explain stuff that they didn't understand, so that they could avoid having to take responsibility for it themselves. As the advancement of scientific knowledge and technology marched onward, humans had less and less need for such explanations. However, right when the world had us believing that we had understood pretty much everything, we realized that we had come up with our own form of unexplainable phenomenon by creating society!"
- "People can't live without someone or something to shift the burden of responsibility onto."
- "Nah, you'll just get dumber if you go to school. The teachers are all trash, your friends are all stupid, and the rules are all pointless. If you can't study, they treat you like you're worthless. Kids who don't fit in are considered failures as human beings. The only thing you can do inside of that prison is listen to what the teacher tells you."
- "Society's fraudulent methods were absolutely powerless before true strength."
- "Depending on how you look at it, this world we live in is either heaven or hell. But, here's the thing. People are so weak that they never look at anything except themselves."
nice review but long story and topic.
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