2025 Week 1 Review Roundup
Ft: Kara no Kyoukai, Select Oblige, Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai, Fuyukuru
New year, new me, new direction of what to post about. I’ve never really written reviews for anything but I always enjoy reading or listening to them so I figured since I’m already reading and watching all of these things I may as well give it a try. I didn’t do very much very much this week on account of it being the final week of the holidays but I think I’ll get back up to speed in the following weeks.
Kara no Kyoukai
Very enjoyable series of novels. Nasu’s earliest work but his writing style didn’t come off as too amateurish, definitely much more intricate and nuanced than the average Light Novel author. I actually thought his tendency to overwrite was more subdued than in his later works although it still slips in at times.
I think the amount of which a person is going to enjoy these novels comes down to how much ambiguity they’re willing to endure. Maybe this was just my Japanese being skill checked but I found the first volume to be very confusing, due to the achronological order, and come out the other end with more questions than answers. Thankfully things become much clearer with each subsequent novel even though the achronological order is maintained, although parts of volume 2 suddenly shift in perspective without much warning which made it a little jarring. However because of this volume 3 felt like one clean shot and was highly satisfying to read.
Another debatable point is Nasu’s tendency to overwrite things. For the most part this isn’t necessarily an issue but every now and then there are massive walls of text which explain every last detail of the subject at hand. Most of the time this is appreciated because the world which he’s created is extremely intricate and an understanding of the powers at play as well as the techniques at their arsenal goes a long way, not only for these novels but for every subsequent one of his works. This also makes the action sequences much more lively as you read about each and every body part being cut apart or the length incantations and their aftermaths, it really pulls you in. However he is not indiscriminate in this treatment and at times can go off on length tangents about the most miniscule things, such as in volume 3 where he explains the usage of THC and LSD. I personally found this endearing and respect that he’s willing to give everything the same level of respect and treatment. Although I can’t deny that this does unsurprisingly lead to pacing issues, volumes 2 and 3 are 1.5x the length of volume 1, and while this is not a surprise as these are volumes in which you learn about the magic systems and Shiki herself, it does feel like there is a good amount of fat to cut out.
For me the weakest element of the series was the characters. Which is a bit of a surprise given that I’ve seen them at the forefront of every review. However, understandably, they primarily serve as exposition machines and not much else and none of them necessarily stood out to me as notable. This is a bit of a surprise because I’m aware that Mahoyo is another one of Nasu’s earlier works and that has my favorite cast of characters of them all, although I imagine that was given much more time in the oven to be worked on given that it was the last of his major works to be released. I did find Shiki’s journey of self to be very compelling and she was definitely the strongest member of the cast although that has more to do with her internal conflict rather than her external character, which makes sense since that’s the entire basis of the story I suppose. Generally I think the characters are more enjoyable in the movie adaptations, they aren’t necessarily bad just unrefined and generally sidelined in favor of the atmosphere.
These are definitely worth a read if you’re into his work I know they were recently translated in full (although I can’t speak on the quality of the translation). A very good introduction to the world and systems which are carried over to every other one of his works and it makes me wish that he put out more standard novels just to see how he fairs because there’s a lot of potential here. I will be revisiting these once I’m better at Japanese.
Select Oblige
A fairly standard moege, not really much to write about here. This one was my introduction to Madosoft which to my understanding is the other titan of the moege sphere, with Yuzusoft reigning supreme over the market. If you imagine a moege in your mind you’re probably not too far off from what this is like, outcast protagonist forced into some sort of scenario with 4 heroines who all fall in love with him immediately, hijinks follows. The heroines were pretty decent although nothing too notable, from the top I thought Kukuru was the best, Kaname second, Eve third and Touri last. The common route was decent, filled with lots of cgs and the heroines generally have decent chemistry with each other and the main character. The specific routes were alright, generally following a plot structure of introducing some new side character → date sequences → 3 sex scenes later a closing conflict → resolution. These conflicts scale from boring to generally entertaining but even at it’s best they aren’t particularly memorable. The characters can be fun, Kukuru and Kaname have good chemistry with the protagonist and keep their routes from feeling boring, although on the other end we have Touri who is extremely one note and lacking. The main issue is that while it doesn’t do anything terribly, it doesn’t manage to stand out from the sea of it’s contemporaries other than it’s artstyle and occasional moment. At the end of the day the soundtrack is okay, art is good, doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, and I’ve run out of things to say, it’s extremely average. The sex scene art was very good though.
Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai
Another moege although this one fairs much better. This has the same issue as Select Oblige in that it doesn’t really push it’s boundaries very hard but the quality level it maintains is very high. It’s about one standout moment away from being one of the best in it’s genre. The cast for this one is much larger with 6 main characters and 3 optional routes which are about 1/3 the length and just as good. The cast also manages to be extremely fun, full of life and character, there aren’t many moments where I can say I wasn’t entertained. The plot isn’t much to write home about which is fine since this is a character driven game, but as I mentioned before it generally stays the line in it’s quality. This isn’t/can’t be a bad thing since it never delves into “bad” territory, but this does come at the cost of lacking lasting memorable or distinguishable moments. I love the aesthetics and felt that it matches the tone of the work perfectly, very warm and cozy, unique and pleasing to look at. While there aren’t a lot of cgs it follows in the footsteps of Mahoyo and uses the character positioning on the screen for unique angle and perspectives which I am absolutely a fan of. The characters and camera are always shifting around and it feels dynamic it creates a very dynamic feel despite all being still images. The whole cast is great but my favorite has to be happy go lucky Kana, her VA does a great fun bringing her to life and she elevates every scene she’s in which is most of them since for the most part the group stays together (y’know, like a club). My only complaints would be that the magic world wasn’t explored enough outside of one route and it stayed too consistent if it were a little more daring this would’ve been one of my favorites for the year.
Fuyukuru
This one had a lot of potential but ultimately it fell short because of it’s over reliance of sex scenes. Characters are cute and the world is actually fairly interesting but just about every time the plot starts to go somewhere it cuts to a sex scene. For reference in just the first hour there were 4 sex scenes and this was a 5 hour read. It manages to pick itself up in the second half but these issues never manage to go away and it was very disappointing. The sex scenes are very long too, much longer than in games which are much more upfront about being sex centric which is a decision I found odd because this is already a very short read so why would they waste so much time? It doesn’t help that just about every line of dialogue contains some kind of dirty joke. Not to be too much of a prude but it really takes you out of it. The mystery itself wasn’t too bad, very standard affair although there were a couple twists which were both funny and interesting. I see some potential here but it’s been buried deep.
And that’s everything I read this week! Not a bad week in general although a very busy one. I’m planning on watching more movies and anime so those will be included in future posts as well, thanks for reading!