Update Three Hundred and Thirty: 03 October 2019

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This is probably one of the most baffling, most insensitive visual novels I’ve ever played. I wasn’t expecting it to be that great - it’s a yandere vn, I’m not expecting it to be championing rights and dignity for mentally ill people - but from beginning to end this vn is just one long shriek of ‘that’s not how that works! That’s not how any of that works!’

You play John, a motherfucker with depression, currently being unsuccessfully treated by a shady psychologist who pushes drugs on him that don’t work for nefarious means (RED FLAG DING!), and that pair makes up two of three actual characters in this vn (RED FLAG DING!). The third character is Lizzie, a pretty but quiet girl who seems to be watching John a lot - and if you thought this would be a story that would build suspense and tension by slowly revealing the depths of Lizzie’s madness, you’d be wrong, because she has a psychotic break three lines in that shows just how unhiiiiinged she is (DING!). After she gets closer to John by menacing him on the roof and saving him before he almost slips off, John takes it upon himself to try to help her while threading the needle of not triggering her psychosis. He takes her to get a… blood test…. that somehow lets doctors know what kind of mental illness you have (DING!!!!) and the pharmacist talks to John instead of Lizzie (DING DING) to tell him that Lizzie’s dangerously unstable, and let’s JOHN pick what kind of medication Lizzie can get (DING DING DING).

The path splits from there - Lizzie can kidnap you and keep you in a basement, which you’re largely fine with, or you can date normally and she’ll kill your lab partner instead for, you know, the crime of being your lab partner. The TRUE ENDING involves Lizzie’s fraught backstory with the local Big Pharma company, and it’s their fault she is the way she is due to drugs her mother took while pregnant, and she kills a bunch of people, and -

That’s not how this works! That’s not how any of this works!

Even if we’re taking the craaaazy dangerous mentally ill person trope as a given, these characters don’t act like people. There’s no internal logic, no depth, just ‘what’s the craziest shit this character could do at this moment? Let’s have her do that’. Yes, it’s a short VN (GOD BLESS) but even still it’s as shallow as a puddle when it comes to characterization and motivation.

What’s a shame is that the art is genuinely very good, especially for a really small-time VN like this. The artist knows what they’re doing, but the writer is just lost in the sauce.

I enjoyed reading it because it wasn’t Edo Blossoms, and also sometimes really awful things can be fascinating, but this is one to avoid. Just read Doki Doki Literature Club! again instead.

Next up: Ooooh, I’ve had my eye on this one for a WHILE and now I finally get to play it! 1920’s fantasy with a sumptuous art style? Yes ma’am!

See you soon!