世界の最も面白いブログ！（シュー）

Recently, I've been getting into ビジュアル　ノベル (visual novels).  Essentially, these are semi-interactive stories that involve anime style art and static graphics.  I like them because they combine both the intricate storytelling of books with the visuals of anime and manga.  They often have many different routes which lead to different endings (most of the time the different routes follow different romantic pursuits).  So far I've played mostly the famous ones, for specifically: Fate/stay Night, G Senjou no Maou, Katawa Shoujo, and Tsukihime.  But today, I'd like to talk about the visual novel Rewrite (リライト).

Rewrite main menu

Rewrite is a visual novel made by Key, one of the most prominent developers of visual novels, and follows the story of Tennouji Kotarou.  It's generally considered a romance visual novel with a lot of fantasy elements and comedic parts.  There are roughly 6 routes --5 character routes and a true route.  There's also the legendary "oppai" route to reward the player after they complete the whole game (don't worry, it's completely safe for kids, just a little bit on the perverted side).

The story is filled with funny, slice of life moments in the beginning, but after certain events occur, the story will turn serious in nearly all of the routes.  The grand scope of feelings that Rewrite gives to the reader is why it is one of the greatest piece of entertainment I've ever seen.  The plot is slightly above average in terms of complexity, but that's good since overly complex plots tend to not convey their greatness very well to most people.

I won't lie; I shed quite a few tears during some of the routes.  In fact, I can recall a specific scene where I noticed I had tears rolling down both of my cheeks!  I would not go as far to say that the emotional moments are "beautiful" really.  For the most part they're simple in nature, it's just that the attachment the reader gets to these characters is immense.

In game screenshot featuring Ohtori Chihaya, one of my favorite heroines

Visual novels take a while to get through since they are novels after all.  Most take at the very least 30 hours if you read fast, some take upwards of 100 hours if you go at the pace the lines are read (quite a few visual novels are voiced).  Rewrite takes roughly 50 hours for a fast reader, and it should take around 120 hours if read at the pace the lines are voiced.  Despite these daunting times, you should not be off put since this isn't like watching some mediocre anime or playing video games--good visual novels like Rewrite are not only entertaining, but they also teach lessons like most good books do.  Rewrite is full of messages concerning small things such as changing oneself to adapt to the world to larger things such as the future survivability of the planet in this age of pollution.

Ohtori Sakuya, my favorite character in the entire novel

And here is the opening itself:

Anyway, I highly recommend Rewrite and visual novels in general to anyone.  Although it's probably best suited to those who have at least some experience in anime or manga.  Since visual novels aren't exactly mainstream here, you'll have to torrent them and also depending on how famous/popular the visual novel is, you may have to tinker around a bit to install and play the game (less popular visual novels tend to have less effort focused on making it easy to play).  Also many visual novels are not translated yet since translation is a colossal task (over 100,000 lines of text in Rewrite alone had to be translated)!

If I haven't scared you off or bored you to death, and you're interested in getting into visual novels, then leave a comment.  I'll help you out to the best of my ability.