I think the big words for understanding Noriko are loser, genius and insane. I'll skip most of what has already been said in previous posts and instead focus on what I think hasn't been mentioned enough.
Also, this is a long only textual character analysis, if not interested, skip to the tacos at the end.
In retrospect, if Sensei was with Maya then she broke the pact. It's actually probably Ami, but there's not really much of a reason that Sensei and someone would have been in the old district back then...
I never liked Maya and these kinds of things only amplify my dislike of her.
She is a pretty disgusting person, more so than Akira in my opinion.
This is where moral compasses cannot point to a correct direction, you'd think Akira is a horrible person (which he is) for grooming girls, but what about Maya? did SHE groom Akira? This might seem like a pretty stupid person, how can a literal child groom an adult person, but that's a misconception that people always have because they assume a young person can never be bad or should never be held accountable.
This is where my moral compass differs from most people, I believe Maya is worse than Akira for the simple reason that her intentions are more ill-purposed than his. She seduced and stole Akira from Niki (presumable using some kind of powers) and made it so that all comunications was ceased between him and the others because "fuck them hes only mine lol"
She doesn't give a fuck about how others feel and only wants him for her selfish desires.
Akira is just a broken man (actions still not justifiable) that finds comfort in getting his Pink-headed yogurt slinger wet from drilling fresh pussy, but he genuinely feels bad for doing it, he's just too weak to control it, and at the end of the way he wishes to help people, that's why he goes out of his way to constatly embark in shenanigans with people. Maya simply doesn't give a fuck about hurting others, that is the big difference.
So if for whatever reason I happened to be WIRES, I would take this stupid bitch and remove her from existance so that she can stop corrupting this shell of infinite power and replace her with a girl that has genuine, un-implanted feelings of love for him. Maybe a girl that can hear sounds.
Assuming she has any power to begin with, even if she does, it doesn't seem to be that strong if she couldn't do shit to stop the resets and all that. Otherwise, she is just a normal teenage girl and Akira an adult who not only pursued something with Maya willingly, he also willingly went with whatever Maya did to "steal" him; broken or not he has proven to be able to say no when he doesn't want something, so saying Maya did it all is unfair, he is just as guilty.
- "I begged the driver to stop so I could get off and chase you down and wrap my arms around you and ask you to come home."
- "But of course she [redacted]."
- "I couldn't believe it. Here I was just inches away from finally finding you and [redacted]."
Assuming she has any power to begin with, even if she does, it doesn't seem to be that strong if she couldn't do shit to stop the resets and all that. Otherwise, she is just a normal teenage girl and Akira an adult who not only pursued something with Maya willingly, he also willingly went with whatever Maya did to "steal" him; broken or not he has proven to be able to say no when he doesn't want something, so saying Maya did it all is unfair, he is just as guilty.
I agree, Maya was a child. I think it is relevant that he was broken, and that she acted in bad-faith, and forced/manipulated and even perhaps blackmailed him - since that is also evidenced by her strong refusal to the fact that she was molested. But Akira was still an adult that most likely wanted to "pet the cat" when he first met her. They're both wrong here, or none of them are depending on how the story ends. But we can't in good faith just blame one side (especially not Maya's since, again, a child).
I'm finally on my vacation and have some free time to replay the game once again. I just started, and man, after the whole Ami's mental breakdown, Akira's first day must have looked scary as fuck from Ami's perspective: sudden memory loss, questions about her parents, about the people he's known for years, why she calls him Sensei instead of his real name, why she's living with him instead of being closer to her friends and the like.
Looking at it from that perspective, yes, she takes it way too well. Like way too well. She either remembers fragments of the cycles, or Akira had this happen other times before the resets (Ami is fully acquainted with his sanity pack and auto-pilot mode). Or maybe both.
I know I'm a page late (and honestly other people did a very good and detailed dive into it too!) but yeah in addition to all that, the RL stalker this was a big turn off.
Also, to go a little more meta on it, I remember when she was first introduced Sel doing a post somewhere to the effect of "if the perfect girl doesn't exist you create her, meet Noriko", so when she was so unhinged during her intro scenes, I was already on alert. There was also some other Sel comment when someone was asking him about the original plans for the story if the second floor hadn't gotten added, and he said that Niki would've still happened and been (obviously) vital to the story, but I assumed from that point that Noriko was basically shoehorned in. To be fair, this was all quite a while ago and I might be misremembering!
In general though, I feel like most of the characters besides the original 10 are unnecessary and contribute to bloat on an already insanely bloated game, even the ones that I've come to really like. Uta is probably my favorite of the main cast, but her story is pretty much a nothingburger with a crazy amount of stringing along. This is what happens when the author takes so much pride in word count though (it's still my favorite game on this site don't shadowban me plz k thx)
A little while back there was some discussion of gods and trees in relation to Kaori's events in the forest and Wires's possible involvement. It turns out that in Chapter 1 there is some pretty strong evidence that trees are connected to all of the trinity, and probably to gods in general.
On the first beach trip, after Sensei begins to disassociate, his inner monologue starts talking about a tree that represents the trinity.
A connection between gods and trees is also made in "Trinity pt. III" when the "narrator" (probably Pareidolia) goes on a rant against Maya. We're told she's not a god at the same time the text on screen says she's not a tree:
Returning to Kaori, it unfortunately seems pretty ambiguous who could be acting through the forest. It also re-raises the question of who sent the treasure maps - I think the original consensus was that it was Wires because of his connection to trees? But given Nao's connection to USER4 and the idea that USER4 could be the tree's trunk, maybe it was them instead?
A little while back there was some discussion of gods and trees in relation to Kaori's events in the forest and Wires's possible involvement. It turns out that in Chapter 1 there is some pretty strong evidence that trees are connected to all of the trinity, and probably to gods in general.
On the first beach trip, after Sensei begins to disassociate, his inner monologue starts talking about a tree that represents the trinity.
A connection between gods and trees is also made in "Trinity pt. III" when the "narrator" (probably Pareidolia) goes on a rant against Maya. We're told she's not a god at the same time the text on screen says she's not a tree:
Returning to Kaori, it unfortunately seems pretty ambiguous who could be acting through the forest. It also re-raises the question of who sent the treasure maps - I think the original consensus was that it was Wires because of his connection to trees? But given Nao's connection to USER4 and the idea that USER4 could be the tree's trunk, maybe it was them instead?
This is a very good analysis. I can't see anything wrong about the conclusion of which parts of the tree each god is. Good job.
On the narrator addressing people, Rin possibily hears the narrator when she's rejected by Chika and is patted by Akira (it's either the narrator or the room with the clocks) - but Ayane for sure hears the narrator on "all for you".
This is a very good analysis. I can't see anything wrong about the conclusion of which parts of the tree each god is. Good job.
On the narrator addressing people, Rin possibily hears the narrator when she's rejected by Chika and is patted by Akira (it's either the narrator or the room with the clocks) - but Ayane for sure hears the narrator on "all for you".
She doesn't react that time, but then (after talking about the tree stuff) the narrator seems to address her again (she's the one crying) which is connected to her hearing the ticking. So even if she's hearing the room with clocks, the narrator is probably involved in causing it.
Ayane hearing the narrator in "All For You" is really interesting, thanks for pointing that out. I already thought that narrator was Himawari, and for me that basically confirms it. Seems like she's intentionally raising her voice so that Ayane can hear even though she's talking to Sensei, which makes sense for Himawari because she's doing it "all for [Sensei and Ayane]".
I always find it mildly amusing when folks reference the page count, you know you can edit how many posts appear on each page yeah? We're on page 633 for me currently, the far more useful and important number is post count and for that, we're a few weeks away from 40,000.
Let's try to keep things moving then. If you had to adopt one of the girls from the class who would you choose? I'd go with Yasu, something about her activates my protective instinct.
Let's try to keep things moving then. If you had to adopt one of the girls from the class who would you choose? I'd go with Yasu, something about her activates my protective instinct.
Let's try to keep things moving then. If you had to adopt one of the girls from the class who would you choose? I'd go with Yasu, something about her activates my protective instinct.
From class? It should come as no surprise, but Ami. Her love would be unconditional, the cleaning and cooking around the house would be more or less handled, and after the trauma she’s endured she really does need someone to hold her together.
This wasn’t asked, but I’m throwing in Chinami and Tsukasa too. Chinami needs stability and Tsukasa just needs new parents in general. Really sad…
