…So this was bad. Very bad. The first half is bad and the second half is bad too. Let’s go through this.
The first six or so chapters are a pretty blatantly misogynistic harem story. Standard for anime-inspired works to be fair, but it doesn’t make it better. The main character is awful and the main female character Rena is a horrible caricature of a girl, with the remaining characters being stock at best. I’d especially like to highlight ch5 (of chapter 1), the game of President, which manages to be a low point for even this story, with its utterly agonizing horror show of the worst anime tropes and blatant pandering to male fantasy. Maybe the rest I can somewhat tolerate, but this should not exist.
The remaining chapters somehow manage to degrade the quality further. The story shifts into essentially one long action scene, which is very jarring pacing-wise, but this is not the worst problem. What really hurts is how obviously lazy the writing is: once they start to introduce actual plot, it totally gives up the pretense of caring about plausible character motivations and actions, and instead fully embraces having everyone behave is nonsense contrived ways to justify an obvious end goal. Like the infuriating [deer in headlights](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeerInTheHeadlights) horror trope, the story cannot justify keeping the mystery as long as it does, or having the events unfold the way they do, so what do they do instead? Simply pad the writing with the main character constantly complaining about wanting to know the answer to the mystery, but never putting in more than one newton of effort into solving it. Of course, without this padding the duration of the second half would be way unbalanced compared to the first, so you’re killing two birds with one stone! And killing my interest in the story too.
The writing is extremely repetitive: if there’s a minor plot detail you’ll be reminded of it three times, a character trait you’ll be reminded of 15 times, a major plot detail thirty. No, it doesn’t elaborate or develop on these ideas each time, you’re just reminded of them again and again, in case you forgot I suppose. Because of this the writing is extremely low-density, taking several pages to painstakingly go over what a better writer would have done in one; not to mention that it has very few creative ideas to begin with. You’re really digging for scraps here – I don’t think there was a single time I thought the story described something in an interesting or original way. It only gets worse when it tries to build tension, because that’s when the eye-rolling over-dramatism comes in that plagues the second half.
Here’s just one example of what I mean, from ch8. I wasn’t exactly starved for choice here, but I think it illustrates my point well.
> “…but they don’t know if it’s from the curse or if this was an Onikakushi…”
> […]
> Come to think of it… I remember Mion saying at the beginning that they didn’t know if it was from the curse, or if it was a case of Onikakushi.
> It seems that the curse and being demoned away are different things, and they were “phenomena” that were paired together.
So just to be clear, what the author thought was necessary here was:
1. Communicating that Onikakushi and curses are different in dialogue
2. Having the narrator remark that this was communicated approximately 20 lines later
3. Having the narrator explicitly explain that Onikakushi and curses are different to the reader, just in case you didn’t get it yet
If this was released in the last few years, I might have doubted its authorship, because the only time I’ve seen text quite this repetitive is reading output of a large language model.
This is a visual novel, so I suppose I should address its audiovisual aspects. Admittedly, from it being described as a “sound novel” I had the expectation it would attempt to use sound to create atmosphere. But that was misplaced: it just uses occassional stock SFX over a generic VGM soundtrack that I had to turn off in the end because it was too annoying. The visuals were low-budget but passable; they just kind of existed, and neither added nor took away from the story.
So, not good. I can imagine liking the first half if you’re into run-of-the-mill slice of life and have a high tolerance for anime ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, but I can’t really imagine liking the second half outside of a _The Room_-style so-bad-it’s-good sort of thing. If you like your main characters to have convincing character motivations that exist to do more than further a plot, don’t read it. If you like your prose to be creative and original, don’t read it. If you like stories to treat you like you have a memory longer than 5 minutes, don’t read it. If none of those things matter to you and you just want slice-of-life then horror-action slop… well, I’m sure there are better options that don’t melt your brain, but it sure exists.
I’m just going to leave this review with a full, unedited, excerpt from the story. This is actually a passage that somebody wrote down and thought it was worth publishing.
> *chew chew* ""Hmm…""
> It seems my prediction was right.
> My tongue touched something.
> It didn't feel like something edible, so I reached in with my fingers and grabbed it.
> …What……What was this?
> Before I could fully comprehend what it was, I threw away the rest of the mochi I was eating as fast as I could!
> It slammed against the wall, causing the bean jam to splatter.
> Then, after sticking for a moment, it slid down to the floor.
> …I was dumbstruck by my own actions.
> What was I doing…!?
> Rena had gone out of her way to make it for me… How could I!?
> Dumbstruck, I looked down at the hand that performed such a vile act… then I remembered what I had taken out of my mouth…
> At first I thought it was a hair.
> Even though it was shorter than Mion's, Rena's hair was still quite long. And it wasn't this short.
> It was also a bit too hard to be hair.
> It was thick enough to roll around on my tongue.
> …There was a bit of a metallic sheen on one end of it, ah yes, there was a hole for where thread goes through, like it was a sewing needle…
> Yes, that's right…
> It looked very much like a sewing needle…
> …Exactly like one.
> …The end was pointed as well. Quite sharply.
> …It really did look just like a sewing needle.
> Huh?
> …What did I mean by, ""looked very much like a sewing needle,"" just a bit ago…?
> …I couldn't answer.
> But a voice inside me already knew… and let me know by chattering my molars together.
> …I couldn't stave off the terror welling up inside me…
> Suddenly, I tasted something metallic and felt a prickling pain at the back of my throat.
> …I stuck my finger in the back of my mouth and felt around to see if I was bleeding.
> …Suddenly, I felt the urge to vomit.
> The sharp taste of bile irritated the back of my throat.
> I clasped both hands over my mouth and, after writhing in agony… I was somehow able to hold back the nausea.
> I was finally able to breath normally again, but this time my heart was intensely throbbing.
> …Then, it finally registered… …Exactly what was mixed in with the mochi.
(Yes, it was in fact a sewing needle. I don’t know why they thought that was interesting enough to only actually reveal much later.)
I rest my case.
