A Winter's Daydream

A young man from rural Japan comes home from university in Tokyo to visit his immediate family and grandmother. While on a trip to his grandmother's house, she makes a wish. This is a good VN. It's poignant and sweet. The music hits just right and doesn't become overbearing or annoying. The art (especially when concerning the backgrounds) is varied and pleasant. In the authors note, a concern about how this story may be easy to consider a joke because of the premise is brought up. I would say so. I came in expecting something different and despite it having humor throughout, at the end you kind of just come upon a story of acceptance and what it means to get older. It's kind of short but I like that. It doesn't overstay it's welcome and has something for the reader to consider without becoming pandering or overwrought.

从与妹妹不和的主角回乡探望奶奶开始，到见证奶奶重返青春的愿望成真，曾经不熟悉的亲人在相处中渐渐有了实感，不像爷爷去世时那般了无感觉，而是真心希望奶奶能长寿安康。 故事中没有回避人会变老、跟不上时代的现实，而是道出一个更温柔的视角：永远年轻不值得羡慕，那意味着在乎的人慢慢老去，自己却不变。与奶奶的相处让主角学会敞开心扉，和妹妹言归于好，一家人开开心心去新年参拜。可喜可贺。 5块钱能有这体验，还能说什么呢？我愿称之为《老夫老妻重返青春》游戏版。

A VN with a short, sweet story that focuses on family, how easy it is to take advantage of the people in your life, also how it's never too late to repair and create a relationship your family. Another wonderful VN from Ebi-hime. Who can create a VN with a rather silly premise and make it heart warming and though provoking.

I really liked this novel a lot. The visual effects were stunning near the end at the temple. I was a little bit bored with the excessive arguing between brother and sister, but the ending made up for it. I would definitely recommend it to someone looking for a good love story with a funny twist.

8/10. Minimal presentation weaknesses along with weak side characters do little to obscure timeless, yet easy-to-forget story themes that can leave you introspective. A Winter's Daydream is an ebi-hime VN, which usually means that it's very short, as is the case here (looking now at my playtime shows 111 minutes). That's a good and bad thing: good because it's pretty easy to put together short little stories that don't have to deal with pacing or multiple conflicts, bad because you rarely get the kind of thematic and emotional payoff of a larger story. Even so, every VN of hers that I've read (Six Days of Snow, Sweetest Monster, Lily of the Valley) manages to hit upon some meaningful (if not exhaustively portrayed) themes. She's also pretty much exclusively a writer, which means that the art changes from VN to VN. Art's never the main reason I enjoy VNs, but it's definitely noticable. In this case I wasn't really a fan of the character sprites. The CGs are fine, but there's something about the sprites of the young girls (the store page image with young grandmother <---> old grandmother might show this), mainly the upper cheeks, that bothers me. Music feels slightly above average. The main point of these VNs is the story. As mentioned it's a short VN, so flaws can feel disproportionately large in this situation. One is that a couple of the characters feel kind of cliche. They aren't the focus of the story, so it's easy to understand why this might happen, but it still feels off. A cursory glance at the store page probably makes the themes of this story pretty easy to anticipate, but feel free to skip the following if you're not sure about them and don't want to be spoiled (not on specifics, but discussion of the themes). I interpreted them to be something like "the person behind the old age" (and I apologize for how disjointed that sounds--gen gap would be an analogous (though reductive) term) and the importance of family. I think the former's valuable: it's easy to look at an old person and just see that they're [i]old[/i]. It's easy to lose sight that they have sparks of personality, mischievousness, and hopes and imaginations even in their old age. This is tied pretty well into the latter theme as well: it's easy for kids to discount their older family because they're seeing them through that veneer. This stuff probably holds greater importance in my mind because of some events a couple weeks ago, where due to some of my family being out of town, I was getting my great-aunt (amusingly, ebi-hime mentions that this story was partially inspired by [i]her[/i] great-aunt) food and stopping by her house nearly every day. Prior to this I'd seen her maybe twice during the year. And even then, every time I left directly after placing her food on the counter, giving her about 2-3 minutes to talk to me about banalities, then hug me as I left. I'll be honest, I felt a little guilty about it. I was rarely needed elsewhere. I'm closer to 30 than 20--past a teenager's knee-jerk rejection of family. This woman baby-sat me for hours as a child. Even so, I feel no kinship with her, no rapport. I only feel guilty because I feel like I'm supposed to care. While I may be slightly uncomfortable with my own position relative to these themes, I think they're important to explore, and this VN does a good job, in the short runtime it has, of doing so.

I really enjoyed this game. I couldn't help but progress a little bit slowly because it made me miss my grandparents quite a bit - but the best visual novels are the ones that make you really feel something, I think. The story was really lovely and fun, and it's always nice to see a story revolve so much about family bonds rather than focus on romance or potential romance. As always, thank you for such a lovely story, Ebi-hime!

Спасибо за тян и платину)