Death is always a hard topic. The mysteriousness and inevitability surrounding it can captivate, frighten, and intrigue. With the loss of life: it plants itself like a seed, with its roots spreading to all the minds that knew that person. Much like a weed, it's hard to pull away in its entirety. To see that loss permeate throughout one's way of life speaks volumes in a sense where no words can explain; and where that journey takes us is through the life of various students, finishing out the last years in high school, writing their [b]Last Stanza[/b].
It was a day that started out like any other for Liam and Beatrice, riding on the long bus ride to reach their school, one of the most prominent and sought after school's in the area. On their arrival, a large group of students, teachers, and bystanders crowd near the entrance. In the middle lay one black tarp over a lifeless body, some don't know who the woman was, or why it happened, but as the months pass after this sudden tragedy, it will soon change the course of life for those closest to her.
[b]Last Stanza[/b] is a short, dramatic visual novel that centers around the grief and aftermath of the sudden passing of Liam's friend and classmate, Charlotte. With her mysterious death centering around the core plot, most of your story here is how classmates carry on her name, how they deal with the frustration and sadness, and how it affects their daily life. Liam's character is characterized well in portraying the struggles to keep your head high after someone close leaves so sudden and agonizingly. The somber inner thoughts with the hope of catching a glimpse of something as amazing as that person was: you can feel the emotion pouring out of Liam onto your screen, and it's a beautiful and engrossing experience.
But the direction in which [b]Last Stanza[/b] starts to take on the latter half of the story just throws me for a loop. In an attempt to what feels like to spice up the story, one of the characters takes a dark turn and sees it as a positive step towards being with the one they love. It feels dark for the sake of being dark, and is wildly off-beat with most of the story. Characters tend to be happier more than sad with Charlotte's death, and for a novel that spends the first act portraying what a negative impact the loss of a friend can have, the second and third act feel almost like a different world. If this difference in opinion is to show how terrible the world can be, especially with the juvenile minds of high school students playing a prominent role, then the mission was accomplished, but it feels done in poor taste.
A lot of plot points that are touched upon also never get a conclusion or see the light of day. The biggest offender is Liam's infatuation with another girl, as when it reaches a fever pitch, is almost never spoken about afterward, almost like a visual novel checklist being marked off before heading to the next plot point. When the third act comes through, we learn more about Charlotte and her family, and it just becomes obsessively morbid. The final bit which explains the reasoning behind all the mysteriousness feels so shoehorned in because not once is it eluded to, or explained until right at the very end. What I feel was planned to be an, “A-ha!” moment where it all clicks together and explains all the scattered emotions just left me even more confused because the amount of hate and nastiness towards Charlotte feels so unbelievable. They could have kept in the feelings of jealously and envy of the situation between Liam and Charlotte, but for some characters to flat out say they were excited to see her pass feels gross to the touch. It is said, at least in one case, that one character is happy, but now knows how truly alone they are; but it's still so much to unpack in so little time that it's hard to get a feel for what side you're willing to take in this scenario.
I don't hate what's been brought to me here, but I guess I'm just confused in the direction in which [b]Innocence[/b] wanted to take its audience. The unnerving dread of having to move on with someone you weren't ready to leave is conveyed so well through Liam, but every other character in [b]Last Stanza[/b] becomes either cannon fodder for extra words, or so unbelievably brutal towards the situation it takes you completely out of the story. If [b]Last Stanza[/b] took more opportunity to relish the somber feelings, and build upon its characters to show how one can grow from tragedy, it would be so much more. Alas, the scattered remains of what [b]Last Stanza[/b]'s narrative could have been after a solid beginning leave much to be desired after the credits roll.
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