Hey, there. I don't plan to document a full playthrough (in fact, I mostly skipped the 2-4 hour mark for that reason), but I wanted to discuss my thoughts on particular scenes from this last session. For longer visual novels (such as this one), I'll probably be repeating this method until I finish at least one route to keep the content flowing in this community. These are also going to be out of order and there will be some spoilers as I go.
Non-chan is Best Girl
This Visual Novel is extremely self-aware and so far is barely an Eroge. It's more of a parody of one and Non-chan, the genius inventor of the club, seems to be a possible writer self-insert so far. I love her so much. She was very fun in the Anime but the adaptation barely displayed how bonkers she really is.
In this scene, she's talking Star Trek style technobabble about making what looked like taffy (and was shown in the Anime) using a mixing machine that was somewhat censored in the adaptation. I won't be showing a screenshot of the machine because it was very NSFW when viewed at a distance:
This joke right here had me rolling. The setup was a pretty simple one: Non-chan had created glasses that allowed the wearer to visually take off anyone's clothing down to nothing at all. Yuuki, being the degenerate guy he was, tested his limits with the monkey girls only to have their underwear be censored in-story as a form of "blackmail" against him; to unlock the "Nudity DLC" for the glasses, he needed to make an "Oojima Roll" for her, but according to the Anime and this, those are basically God-tier items (in RPG terms). Using Google translate, the text roughly says something along the lines of: "This is a trial version. Now, let's continue with the full version unlocked."
I also love how she knows she's in a Visual Novel. In fact, it seems like the only character that doesn't know that would be Yuuki.
Aomi-san Needs Protecting and Headpats
The Anime does give Aomi a decent amount of screentime and this scene was adapted but in the Visual Novel, I feel it's better handled. It's a not a super long scene in either. She asked Yuuki to smell her to confirm that she did stink as much as the bullies in her class said she did (she goes through a pretty rough patch in both). Where they differed (for me): this was more tender and set up to show her as a love interest for Yuuki while the Anime played the scene more as a perverted joke (in Yuuki's head) but still kept the beats about the same.
There were some earlier scenes that were setup similarly where they had the same general events play out in both but the tone was different, especially when it came down to her introduction (see my post here for further thoughts on that). There's also a major Episode 4 spoiler at the end (that hopefully gets handled much better in this form when I get to it in the future).
Controversial Section (That Didn't Bother Me but Will For Many)
I don't fully know Japanese culture and will not apply my own culture's laws and morals to it (especially for a remake of a game that is currently 14 years old). In this scene, Yuuki had prepared a meal for his teacher, Hazuki, at her home. She was dressed up this way because they've been technically "dating" for at least a year now. He's 15 or 16 and she's like 23 or 24, but he doesn't view it as a romantic relationship or really anything more than both of them spending time together. I like to think they have more of a sibling thing going on than anything else.
She was his first kiss months back but that made things awkward for him; he set up boundaries that created this current dynamic, and, despite her antics and teasing, she respected them enough for him to bond with her. In exchange, she kept her alcohol consumption low to prevent another incident. This scene was very sweet in both forms and quite a bit more mature and realistic than many depictions that I've seen in other Visual Novels and similar media. I would gladly pursue the Teacher route if that's an available option even if it's a joke route, just because of this hug and how it was played out.
My Closing Thoughts
I'm having a mostly good time with this. Even though I have seen the full Anime adaptation, my goal is to still be mostly open minded and point out some of the more drastic changes made to where I'm at while I play. If you enjoyed this content, feel free to reply down below, reblog and vote. I thank you all for your time and have a wonderful night.