VN - Others - Completed - Hanachirasu [Nitroplus]

Hanachirasu is a bit of a heavy read if you consider its running time. A significant part of this VN is exposition, worldbuilding, explanations pertaining martial arts, descriptions of everyone, everywhere, everything, and if I'm being honest, there's not much of a story here. Fortunately, there is a great reason to try this: It has excellent writing, and it's a genuine pleasure to read, so if you are looking for good prose (vocabulary, grammar, syntax), then look no further.

Positive:
- Great writing - This is the reason to read Hanachirasu. Good passive characterization; Different types of descriptions; Coherence and correctness (text quality); Top notch worldbuilding (too much of it even), and more technical stuff at a high level.
- Nice plot twist - No spoilers, but the entire thing just makes sense in your head (clicks), once the truth is revealed. Both main characters wanted one simple thing, they were robbed of it, and right or wrong no longer matter, after that. It's smart without being pretentious, that's always a good sign.
- Solid ending (not the gags) - The number of good VN's that botch their ending is significant, but this one finishes things in a very satisfying way, that allowed for a higher score. It's perfect really.
- Alternative history setting - Nothing uncommon truth be told, but the writer went through a lot of trouble, to create a contemporary, restricted scenario, were the sword is the primary tool of defense (or aggression). It's compelling in a "samurais dueling to the death kind of way".

Negative:
- Many possible mentions, this is very different from a traditional VN, and not as easy to read or enjoy. Try to get more (non-spoiler) info on it.

Score: Hanachirasu is an 8/10 and a great VN. I'm not recommending this to anyone in particular, except the people who liked Muramasa (same writer, but it's a long shot). Read Hanachirasu, if one day you wake up feeling like you want some quality writing. That's it.

(Sexual 18+ is not worth it, don't bother.)

This was my first foray in the vast bibliography of Nitro+. I chose this title because I got it cheap on sale and I also heard that it was short. Overall it was pretty much what I expected: an edgy, semi-2deep4u story of rivalry of revenge. That doesn't mean that it wasn't fun however since this is exactly what I wanted from this title.

The story takes place in an alternate universe where the nukes were never dropped, but Japan still managed to get gangbanged by both the USA and USSR. The action takes place in the modern day Tokyo which since then turned into a shithole that nobody wants and it even has a giant wall surrounding it so that none of the undesirables get out lol. Another important thing to note is that firearms are outlawed in Tokyo so the only weapons available are traditional ones.

Now I don't know about you, but it seems that the author developed this contrived backstory just for the sake of it. I say this because this could have been easily turned into a plain old medieval setting with minimal changes to the characters and events.

Anyway so the two main characters are Akane Takeda and Yoshia Igarasu, once friends and members of the same dojo, now bitter enemies due to a tragic past event which shattered their friendship into pieces. My main issue with the story the whole time though was the fact that both characters desperately want to fight and kill one another, but they each go to immense lengths to lure the other one out. It just felt very contrived.

Akane is as chuuni as they come. He's a midget with a nihilistic view of the world who would have probably appealed to highschool me but now at this age I find a bit cringe. Yoshia of course is the exact opposite; a calm and collected guy who feels no emotion save for his hatred for Akane. The duo is as archetypal as they come, but that doesn't mean that it's a bad thing. On the contrary, I think that the writing, while always verging on the cringe, manages to keep a level head so that the reader is kept engaged throughout.

There are many other side characters of course, but aside from the main two, we don't really get to learn much about them. They are mainly plot devices in order to get Akane and Yoshia to fight one another. Probably the most memorable of the bunch were Yasaka, a grizzled old bodyguard, and Watari, a sneaky ninja. But like I said we don't really get much of a glimpse into any of the other character's personality.

This is basically a kinetic novel disguised as a visual novel. There are a few choices that you can make here and there, but they only lead to these really short and really goofy endings. They do come with their own CG's though so they are worth exploring, plus like I said they are very short. The main story line is good though and it arrives to a satisfactory, albeit quite predictable conclusion.

One criticism that I read about Hanachirasu is that there is a lot of exposition and info dumps, but that is greatly exagerated imo. The backstory, although in large parts superfluous, is interesting to read so I didn't have a problem with it. One issue though are the info dumps related to sword fighting. See, this author is apparently in love with japanese martial arts and so there are these somewhat lengthy sections where he basically describes various moves and stances and whatnot. I'll admit I kinda skimmed through these as I am not very interested in the subject, but for the supreme gentlemen out there who have studied the blade these sections will probably be some of your favorite. The fight scenes themselves are very entertaining however, regardless of your affinity towards sword fighting.

On an audio-visual level this novel is up there with the best. The sprites, CG's, and backgrounds are all drawn with great care and you are immediately pulled into the atmosphere especially with the dynamic way that the CG's are handled during the fight scenes. The music is quite subdued and ambiental which perfectly fits the dreary mood of the novel, but it does bring some industrial tracks too for those intense battle scenes. My favorite tracks were Demon Blade and Rivalry. I don't think I need to mention that the VA is on spot, no?

Now for the moment all you coomers have been waiting for? How're the coom scenes????? I WANT O C000000MMM!!11111 Dude, if you're here to coom there is something wrong with you. Now the novel does begin right in the middle of an H-scene so that might lead you to think that this is some kind of nukige, but trust me, it's not. There are several H-scenes scattered thoroughout and they're p. hot I'll admit, but really who the fuck reads this for the porn, seriously?

On the technical side of things there are a few things that I should mention. First of all I ran this on Linux through Wine using Lutris, so I don't know how it compares when run on a Windows machine. The biggest problem is that there were these moments where the program seemed to halt in-between lines. The music could still be heard but none of the controls worked. The only way to fix this was to alt-tab several times out of it. It didn't happen very often but it was a little bit annoying. The other issue that I had was with the separate mini-game that comes bundle with this novel. The game launched fine but no matter what I tried the fonts refused to load properly so all I saw was tiny squares. Again this is probably a Linux related thing so if you run this in Windows you'll probably not run into this issue.

Overall this was a decent title. I enjoyed my time with it greatly. I wouldn't call this a masterpiece due to the clunkiness of some of the writing and the overall chuuni feel to it, but I think that you could do a lot worse than this one. I can safely say that this novel turned me into a Nitro+ fan and I can't wait to read some more of their work.

My rating: 4 stars, an excellent addition to a weeb's collection. Just don't expect do to too much cooming, coomer.

Total read time: 6 1/2 hours, but like I said I skipped the mini-game.

I don't even care about the porn. This is simply one of the best VNs I've ever read. The protagonist is one twisted motherfucker, but he's so well written. The fight scenes are done very strategically, rather than the over-the-top action-movie stuff other VNs use.