Hmm. Your point is a good one. But the young girl's hair doesn't look right to me—too fine. And those look like hazel eyes, not Imari's which are, IIRC, blue. Still, you could be right
third replay has started, this post deals with an old goth chick crying at some words, and the identity of the first narrator of the game, and why her name is Ami/Amy the second.
In the past I have talked about how it was only during my second playthrough that I started to love LiL, but that is incorrect at least regarding my first impression of it. Sure, there was a lot that I scoffed at during my first time (like Yasu and the gods' nonsense), a lot I skipped entirely (like Chika's storyline), but this, this had me from the start:
I remember reading every sentence out loud, because the music captivated me so much that I decided to really give my all this time. Rarely would I would this with a porn game, hell, it's even rare for me to do it with a proper novel. But here I was reading word for word out loud, with no idea what would come next and we have first the idea of perception, how the correct angle of light can make invisible things visible; then we have the romantization of death (which spawned so many theories that Akira jumped to his death at the beginning of the game), but here's where all the hairs of my arm never fail to stand up: "the third thing I can never understand is you".
Man, what a strong start to a narrative. I wonder how many times Selebus rewrote this. It's just so powerful! "because where you're going is somewhere special. Somewhere with so much strangeness in every single one of its proportions that you'll be forced to understand how truly beautiful life can be, even during its darkest moments." It's haunting.
Then as we get to the "I'm supposed to tell you that nothing is real. We're all just air. So, how about we breathe together?" I start crying like a child. This is one seriously amazing start.
On another note though, yet again, upon seeing the entire event I'm convinced this is Himawari, here is my evidence:
let me tell you, the amount of "Ami knowing about resets" undertones from the start is absurd (there was more, it's just that in this conversation it was off the charts):
third replay has started, this post deals with an old goth chick crying at some words, and the identity of the first narrator of the game, and why her name is Ami/Amy the second.
I agree with a lot of what you said, there definitely are things that could point to Himawari, but I still think the evidence against her is stronger. Here's my devil's advocate response to each of your points:
Good posts so far, please keep them coming. I'm not following along with your playthrough (finishing the entire game in a month is absolutely wild to me, even with the autovn mod) but I finished my second playthrough recently enough that hopefully I'll be able to chime in as you go.