うみねこのなく頃に Portable 1

I'm shocked at how little credit Sayaka Ohara is getting in this box. I'm only on Episode 3 so far but she does so much to propel nearly every line Beatrice has with such insane aplome. It's a phenomenal performance that twists to convey so much about her character without me understanding Japanese in the least.

Also, of note, I've seen some people note the length barrier and "obscurity" as a means for all the high ratings but even without mods it's pretty easy to play the series via the Steam games.
A game like Last Window Secret of Cape West is infinitely more subject to that obscurity factor. A Japanese/PAL only sequel to a somewhat niche DS game that goes for $100 secondhand on a system that's a pain-in-the-ass to emulate Touch Controls for on PC. That has high ratings from anyone who played it but also very few people who had played it.

I think this deserves a time loop secondary.

If you didnt play this with Ryukishi sprites, you didnt play the game. I don't make the rules

Just finished all the Question Arcs


It has its issues; the anime humor is near universally bad and leads to some character traits I feel could've been removed, the start is slow, the logic of how different realms work can be kind of annoying to follow, some plot points/confrontations are weirdly contrived but everything else is special and cool.

I love its premise, the push/pull of its main dynamic, the music, the constant intrigue of new identity mysteries, a lot of the character arc concepts I've seen so far, any time something it’s doing reminds me of another thing I enjoy as a means to dig deeper, and Sayaka Ohara’s voice performance as Beato is simply divine. Brainrotting hard about it since finishing and this is the “worse” half.

About halfway through episode 2; I'm digging what I've read so far, but something that sorely sticks out is how badly this needed an editor. I'm 25 hours in and I don't feel like anything I've read so far feels justified to be that goddamned long. There's so much prose that feels clunkily written and padded out; like there's this section in episode 2 that talks about a character's failing business, and I'll paraphrase roughly the way it's written:

"(Character)'s business was like a seesaw. In a seesaw, you can go up and down, and to go up, you need someone else on it. (Character)'s company was like this. Now imagine a seesaw in a playground where no kid was interested in playing with it. Without another kid, the seesaw would never go up. (Character) couldn't find someone else to participate in their business, so it wouldn't get off the ground, hence why their company was like a seesaw."

Like yes lmao thank you, I get the metaphor already. That's a particularly egregious example but there's a lot of overstuffed roundabout narration that's like this, and it's taxing getting through it all. I'm not sure if this is a product of translating the original Japanese script or what.