Kikokugai

at first, i didn't even know what rating i should give kikokugai. if you've read the novel, you can tell by my username that, well, i actually liked it. but i have a complex relationship with kikokugai as a whole, i think
i love the premise. god, i really do! i think that nothing could be cooler than a transhumanist setting with martial arts and cyber warriors - unfortunately, it lacks in a few places.
the story was very entertaining and the fights were captivating, even i if i find it hard to wrap my head around contact sports with little to no visual feedback.
i think my main issue is that, again, gen urobuchi's misogyny and his dependence on shock value. game starts with a woman being raped. no, this isn't a spoiler, it's literally what you experience after pressing "start" on the main screen. besides that, the main premise of the game is about the protagonist's (kong taoluo) sister (kong ruili) was murdered during a gang rape. im keeping this review spoiler free, but the reason why this happened is revealed later in the game, and it's incredibly disgusting and misogynistic from the writer's perspective. it makes ruili sound like a shallow shadow of what she could be.
even though i hated what the premise came to be, and i feel like the story drags a lot during certain parts, i still enjoyed kikokugai somehow. i feel like the remake's visuals and voiced lines added a lot to my positive feelings towards the story. i also heavily enjoyed the soundtrack.
would i recommend kikokugai? definitely not. i do enjoy it a lot, as a story, as a birthplace of the titular ruili, who is one of my favorite characters of all time, but i don't feel like this is something you need to read.
read it if you wanna experience more of gen urobuchi's early works.
kikokugai is just my personal trashy vn that i enjoyed a lot more than i should.

A pretty oustanding Cyberpunk & Wuxia revenge story. It's quite grim and IMO the ending gets a bit pretentious in the edgy way, but It's not like I wasn't ready for that kind of ending while reading this game. This is a VN without any interactivity besides reading the text, but I found the story to be engrossing and well written for what it is, and I thought the BGM was superb and effective, and some of the CGs were incredibly awesome. Most of the art actually grew on me pretty fast, at first I didn't think the artstyle was very good, but the more of it I saw the more it drew me in. I thought some of the character developments were rather silly, but that's about the only real problem. I never knew Cyberpunk in written form could be so cool. If you read this, you have to be ready for its edge of some concepts, it goes pretty far. It's absolutely a distasteful read, f you're fine with that it's a great story with some silly existentialism thrown in for good measure but mainly it is the height of hyper-masculine badassery, and with tons of atmosphere.