Preamble for all the c00mers out there because I know that some of you out there are not learned when it comes to visual novels: This is a Key VN. Wtf does this mean? It means that this is a VERY story heavy experience that uses hentai simply as a marketing gimmick to get c00mers to buy it. Here is what you need to know about the H-scenes:
A) There is a grand total of 1 (one) H-scene per waifu
B) You need to invest half a dozen or so hours before you even get to it
C) It lasts for 1 or 2 minutes max (queue sex joke here)
D) It does not come with voice acting
E) It is heavily censored with big ass mosaics
If you're that desperate to C00M! then you're way better off going to google or whatever and look for rule34 there. You're welcome.
With that out of the way, let's get into the review proper.
This is the first time reading a Key VN and I must say that overall I enjoyed my experience with this title as you can see by the score that I gave it. I had been previously gotten acquainted with Jun Maeda's works through the anime adaptations of Kanon (which was good) and Angel Beats (which was not so good). So I decided to pop my Key cherry by reading his second work over at Key which is this visual novel right here.
The story overall is quite interesting, but it unfortunately suffers from the same problems like his other work that I saw. The MC is called Yukito. He is basically a wandering hobo, walking around from town to town doing magic tricks with his puppet. See, when he was little his mom told him that he has special powers which allow him to animate, well, inanimate objects, and that he has the task of finding a girl in the sky. The bus drops him in a quaint seaside town filled with several different waifus who all have some sort of magical problem that he has to solve. Maybe one of them might actually be the girl he is looking for, nudge nudge wink wink. So like the giga-chad that he is he basically befriends them and then squats over at their places and mooches off of them and their families. P. based.
As a character I like him. He is the same type of sarcastic asshole with a heart of gold that you may have seen in Kanon or Clannad. I actually like this character archetype because it always makes for good comedy and it is good to see something other than a wussy male character that the female characters fall for for no reason. He starts off giving a strong sigma vibes, but later as the romance progresses he softens up and we see a more caring side to him. I believe the weeboo term would be tsundere, if I am not mistaken, however I would not know this for certain as I am not a weeaboo.
Anyway so the MC is decent, but unfortunately the same cannot be said for his love interests. The main problem with them is how they are portrayed. They're supposed to be of high school age but they act completely retarded. I mean that in a medical sense. It's like these girls suffer from late mental development. Now perhaps one could argue that this is due to the magical problems that they had to go through, but in my opinion the author just wanted to make them even more cute in order to later pull even more tears from the readers eyes. Personally I found it downright creepy at times.
Talking about each of the other characters is a bit difficult since anything could be a potential spoiler due to the plot heavy nature of this title, but I'll try my best not to spoil too much.
So the first, and arguably the most important character since she is also on the box cover, is Misuzu. I can't talk too much about her, but suffice to say is that she is moe incarnate. She has a couple of trademark sounds when she says "gao" or "nihaha" and she really likes dinosaurs. In typical Jun Maeda fashion she is also very frail. She lives together with her mom Haruko, which is arguably the best written character in the entire novel. I won't say too much but suffice to say that by the end of the story she undergoes through some very important changes which have to do with, what I believe is entire message of the story.
What I forgot to mention is that the waifus are each paired up with another female which also happens to be the best written character for that specific route! This is jarring, but in my experience it is not uncommon in japanese media for the side characters to be more interesting that the main ones. I consider this a flaw of the medium, but that's another different topic.
The second waifu is Kano. She is yet again another sickly girl who lives together with her bigger sister Hijiri who is best girl hands down. Such a shame she didn't get her own route and we got stuck with Kano. I just don't like Kano all that much because there's really nothing interesting about her. She is my least favorite of the whole cast. She is also constantly followed around by this gigantic poodle named Potato that makes an annoying "piko" sound when it talks. The romance is also contrived and comes out of nowhere. Hijiri would have made for a much better match with Yukito since they had much better chemistry together. Oh well. At least her route was tightly connected to the overarching plot. Unlike the next character...
The final waifu is Minagi who also happens to be my favorite of the three. She is the only one who also acts according to her age. Personality-wise she is the kuudere type, with a somewhat emotionless face and pattern of speech. She is accompanied by a much younger friend called Michiru whom I absolutely hated at the beginning because she was such an annoying little brat, but as the story progresses she slowly started to grow on me. Out of all the three main routes hers was my favorite. The only problem is that it doesn't really have much to do with the main plot! It is connected theme-wise, but plot-wise it's like its own thing. It is obvious that the author didn't know how to connect it all together which is a shame because there were many interesting ideas that just didn't gel well together.
And that concludes the Dream Chapter. Wait, there's more? Indeed there is. In this first chapter there is a common route at the beginning where you get to make many choices ranging from flavor to plot important. At the end of the common route you will jump onto a girl's route depending on your choices. My advice is to not follow a guide and simply go with whatever you feel like since there's more than one possible way to get onto a route. This also helps out flesh out the MC more and allow you to better identify with him. Well done, Key! I wish more studios would follow suit and offer the reader a more non-linear experience. Each girl has one good and one bad ending. After you have seen all the good endings you unlock the second chapter.
Summer is my favorite chapter in the entire VN! It is difficult to talk about it without spoiling so I will just say that the timeline jumps back 1000 years in the past in medieval Japan where we get to witness the events that set in motion the entire story. We get a new MC as well as two new characters. More I will not say because I don't want to spoil anything. Despite this being a completely linear route with no choices I felt that it was also the best paced one with the best plot and the best character dynamics. It was well worth slogging through some mediocre beats in Dream just to read Summer. It's that good!
And then the final chapter is called Air. There is yet another time skip, this time right at the beginning to when the story initially started. And yet again we change protagonists. This time we will be able to see Yukito through a third party's eyes. The downside to this final chapter is that for the first half we have to go through the same motions as we did in Dream, with a few minor tweaks here and there to accommodate the new MC. It was a boring experience for me. I understand what the author was going for but I think it could have been handled better. The final stretch is where things really emotional in typical Key fashion. I dare say that the last few hours of this VN is some of the most heart warming writing I have ever witnessed, and it is here in the final half of the Air Chapter that the theme of the novel really shines through: the importance family and the hardships that come from being part of a family and the perseverance that one must have in order to protect this important bond. As for the plot resolution itself it was handled less well. At the end it is not clear whether the issue at hand had been solved or not. If it was then the climax was unclear and unsatisfying. And if it was, one has to wonder what the point of the story even was?! I think the author wanted to leave an open ending in order for the reader to come up with his own theory, but personally I hate it when writers do that. It almost never works, and it ends up looking like a pretentious and lazy cop-out.
On the audio-visual side of things this title is up there with some of the best. While the character designs have not aged well at all thanks to the shitty early 2000's anime aesthetic witch gigantic down's syndrome eyes that are about to pop out of the character's heads, the backgrounds are absolutely gorgeous pieces of art. I took screenshots of almost every background because they are THAT good, especially the nature ones. The music is also phenomenal per Key's standards with music that fits perfectly to whatever the action is on the screen.
The interface sucks tho. I had to manually click through each line. But that's up to par with the standard back then.
Best routes in order: Summer > Air > Minagi > Misuzu > Kano
Best girl: Hijiri
Best main girl: Minagi
Best character: Haruko
Final remarks: despite it's many flaws Air has become one of the favorite titles in the medium. Its strengths outweigh its many flaws. The main issue was pacing where sometimes it felt like the plot was moving at a snail pace, especially during the first half of the Air Chapter. There are also some asspulls whenever magic gets involved, but that comes with the territory unfortunately. But the overall theme and message are so wholesome that I have to recommend it to everyone who wants a nice, heart warming experience. The seaside town setting also lent itself well to creating an intimate universe for the characters and the reader to live inside.
I recommend reading it during summer for maximum immersion. There was something almost magical reading this during the hot evenings when the orange summer sun was just about to go into sunset...
Verdict: 4 stars. Definitely not a masterpiece, but a must read for those who want a story heavy story with a nice wholesome message.
A) There is a grand total of 1 (one) H-scene per waifu
B) You need to invest half a dozen or so hours before you even get to it
C) It lasts for 1 or 2 minutes max (queue sex joke here)
D) It does not come with voice acting
E) It is heavily censored with big ass mosaics
If you're that desperate to C00M! then you're way better off going to google or whatever and look for rule34 there. You're welcome.
With that out of the way, let's get into the review proper.
This is the first time reading a Key VN and I must say that overall I enjoyed my experience with this title as you can see by the score that I gave it. I had been previously gotten acquainted with Jun Maeda's works through the anime adaptations of Kanon (which was good) and Angel Beats (which was not so good). So I decided to pop my Key cherry by reading his second work over at Key which is this visual novel right here.
The story overall is quite interesting, but it unfortunately suffers from the same problems like his other work that I saw. The MC is called Yukito. He is basically a wandering hobo, walking around from town to town doing magic tricks with his puppet. See, when he was little his mom told him that he has special powers which allow him to animate, well, inanimate objects, and that he has the task of finding a girl in the sky. The bus drops him in a quaint seaside town filled with several different waifus who all have some sort of magical problem that he has to solve. Maybe one of them might actually be the girl he is looking for, nudge nudge wink wink. So like the giga-chad that he is he basically befriends them and then squats over at their places and mooches off of them and their families. P. based.
As a character I like him. He is the same type of sarcastic asshole with a heart of gold that you may have seen in Kanon or Clannad. I actually like this character archetype because it always makes for good comedy and it is good to see something other than a wussy male character that the female characters fall for for no reason. He starts off giving a strong sigma vibes, but later as the romance progresses he softens up and we see a more caring side to him. I believe the weeboo term would be tsundere, if I am not mistaken, however I would not know this for certain as I am not a weeaboo.
Anyway so the MC is decent, but unfortunately the same cannot be said for his love interests. The main problem with them is how they are portrayed. They're supposed to be of high school age but they act completely retarded. I mean that in a medical sense. It's like these girls suffer from late mental development. Now perhaps one could argue that this is due to the magical problems that they had to go through, but in my opinion the author just wanted to make them even more cute in order to later pull even more tears from the readers eyes. Personally I found it downright creepy at times.
Talking about each of the other characters is a bit difficult since anything could be a potential spoiler due to the plot heavy nature of this title, but I'll try my best not to spoil too much.
So the first, and arguably the most important character since she is also on the box cover, is Misuzu. I can't talk too much about her, but suffice to say is that she is moe incarnate. She has a couple of trademark sounds when she says "gao" or "nihaha" and she really likes dinosaurs. In typical Jun Maeda fashion she is also very frail. She lives together with her mom Haruko, which is arguably the best written character in the entire novel. I won't say too much but suffice to say that by the end of the story she undergoes through some very important changes which have to do with, what I believe is entire message of the story.
What I forgot to mention is that the waifus are each paired up with another female which also happens to be the best written character for that specific route! This is jarring, but in my experience it is not uncommon in japanese media for the side characters to be more interesting that the main ones. I consider this a flaw of the medium, but that's another different topic.
The second waifu is Kano. She is yet again another sickly girl who lives together with her bigger sister Hijiri who is best girl hands down. Such a shame she didn't get her own route and we got stuck with Kano. I just don't like Kano all that much because there's really nothing interesting about her. She is my least favorite of the whole cast. She is also constantly followed around by this gigantic poodle named Potato that makes an annoying "piko" sound when it talks. The romance is also contrived and comes out of nowhere. Hijiri would have made for a much better match with Yukito since they had much better chemistry together. Oh well. At least her route was tightly connected to the overarching plot. Unlike the next character...
The final waifu is Minagi who also happens to be my favorite of the three. She is the only one who also acts according to her age. Personality-wise she is the kuudere type, with a somewhat emotionless face and pattern of speech. She is accompanied by a much younger friend called Michiru whom I absolutely hated at the beginning because she was such an annoying little brat, but as the story progresses she slowly started to grow on me. Out of all the three main routes hers was my favorite. The only problem is that it doesn't really have much to do with the main plot! It is connected theme-wise, but plot-wise it's like its own thing. It is obvious that the author didn't know how to connect it all together which is a shame because there were many interesting ideas that just didn't gel well together.
And that concludes the Dream Chapter. Wait, there's more? Indeed there is. In this first chapter there is a common route at the beginning where you get to make many choices ranging from flavor to plot important. At the end of the common route you will jump onto a girl's route depending on your choices. My advice is to not follow a guide and simply go with whatever you feel like since there's more than one possible way to get onto a route. This also helps out flesh out the MC more and allow you to better identify with him. Well done, Key! I wish more studios would follow suit and offer the reader a more non-linear experience. Each girl has one good and one bad ending. After you have seen all the good endings you unlock the second chapter.
Summer is my favorite chapter in the entire VN! It is difficult to talk about it without spoiling so I will just say that the timeline jumps back 1000 years in the past in medieval Japan where we get to witness the events that set in motion the entire story. We get a new MC as well as two new characters. More I will not say because I don't want to spoil anything. Despite this being a completely linear route with no choices I felt that it was also the best paced one with the best plot and the best character dynamics. It was well worth slogging through some mediocre beats in Dream just to read Summer. It's that good!
And then the final chapter is called Air. There is yet another time skip, this time right at the beginning to when the story initially started. And yet again we change protagonists. This time we will be able to see Yukito through a third party's eyes. The downside to this final chapter is that for the first half we have to go through the same motions as we did in Dream, with a few minor tweaks here and there to accommodate the new MC. It was a boring experience for me. I understand what the author was going for but I think it could have been handled better. The final stretch is where things really emotional in typical Key fashion. I dare say that the last few hours of this VN is some of the most heart warming writing I have ever witnessed, and it is here in the final half of the Air Chapter that the theme of the novel really shines through: the importance family and the hardships that come from being part of a family and the perseverance that one must have in order to protect this important bond. As for the plot resolution itself it was handled less well. At the end it is not clear whether the issue at hand had been solved or not. If it was then the climax was unclear and unsatisfying. And if it was, one has to wonder what the point of the story even was?! I think the author wanted to leave an open ending in order for the reader to come up with his own theory, but personally I hate it when writers do that. It almost never works, and it ends up looking like a pretentious and lazy cop-out.
On the audio-visual side of things this title is up there with some of the best. While the character designs have not aged well at all thanks to the shitty early 2000's anime aesthetic witch gigantic down's syndrome eyes that are about to pop out of the character's heads, the backgrounds are absolutely gorgeous pieces of art. I took screenshots of almost every background because they are THAT good, especially the nature ones. The music is also phenomenal per Key's standards with music that fits perfectly to whatever the action is on the screen.
The interface sucks tho. I had to manually click through each line. But that's up to par with the standard back then.
Best routes in order: Summer > Air > Minagi > Misuzu > Kano
Best girl: Hijiri
Best main girl: Minagi
Best character: Haruko
Final remarks: despite it's many flaws Air has become one of the favorite titles in the medium. Its strengths outweigh its many flaws. The main issue was pacing where sometimes it felt like the plot was moving at a snail pace, especially during the first half of the Air Chapter. There are also some asspulls whenever magic gets involved, but that comes with the territory unfortunately. But the overall theme and message are so wholesome that I have to recommend it to everyone who wants a nice, heart warming experience. The seaside town setting also lent itself well to creating an intimate universe for the characters and the reader to live inside.
I recommend reading it during summer for maximum immersion. There was something almost magical reading this during the hot evenings when the orange summer sun was just about to go into sunset...
Verdict: 4 stars. Definitely not a masterpiece, but a must read for those who want a story heavy story with a nice wholesome message.
