Review of Maitetsu
| Subject | Maitetsu Maitetsu |
| By | Helpfulness: 15 Vote: 8alonesome on 2020-09-09 |
| Review | I don't think I'd be alone at all in describing Maitetsu as if nothing else, an incredibly consistent and pleasant read, but I feel like I probably am fairly alone in terms of how interesting I found it. I can't imagine that this is a work which will truly excite you and inflame your passions unless you're unusually interested in the technical details of locomotive operation or the finer points of municipal governance, but even still, I found a lot to appreciate about Maitetsu's storytelling and the very peculiar genre space that it carves out for itself - being pleasantly and surprisingly different from so many other superficially similar works. It is actually surprisingly hard to compare Maitetsu to anything else, and it does stand out as being fairly unique among many other works even though they might share a lot of other similarities. It certainly shares a lot of resemblances with "pure moege", and there are indeed plenty of extremely cute heroines, but it really doesn't do this game much justice to describe it as just a moege about trains. This work is considerably more narratively and thematically driven compared to moege that exclusively foreground their characters, and typical content such as comedic events and romantic happenings are really quite understated as far as genre conventions go. I don't know if others would also get this impression, but I often felt at times that Maitetsu resembles a more conventional literary work, with specific "modes" of storytelling that I'm not very used to seeing in VNs. For example, it's rather lacking in the small, "interstitial" scenes that are a staple of VN storytelling to accompany the transition between one plot beat and the next. It can feel a bit disconnected and jarring as the story jumps from one scene to the next without a very grounded sense of time and space, but this is something that's much more par for the course for literature, and through this form of storytelling, Maitetsu gives a much stronger sense that every scene serves a specific purpose towards its story. Even though it's an incredibly long text, I never got the sense that it was specifically wasting my time; even the highly technical infodumping details about trains seems like a very intentional conceit and part of the work's artistic intent, no matter how much you end up appreciating it or not. Maitetsu also just has that very solid, thoughtful thematic coherency that you'd expect to see out of literature but can somewhat give VNs a pass on. Although I didn't think it was that exceptionally well realized, I really appreciated the gestures. A consistent throughline of literary motifs like "the last stop", the way that three separate facets of Soutetsu's trauma are explored in each of the three routes and perfectly complement themes related to the heroine's own background and character development; it's the type of "meaty", substantive, purposeful storytelling that I really like to see and don't feel like VNs tend to deliver on. I just wish that the prose and/or TL was generally a bit better, since it does very clearly have some actual writing talent and solid fundamentals behind it, but I feel like the actual conveyance of its ideas wasn't the most well-realized. There's also the underlying narrative about small-town revitalization that's fairly sanitary and idealized, but still has enough verisimilitude and nuance to be fairly interesting even without any moe appeal. The premise is certainly very grounded and low-stakes, but it still ends up capable of generating some rich and fascinating drama about an issue that's especially contemporary and relevant in both Japan and elsewhere. Despite how much the term gets bandied about, I feel like this is one of very few works in this medium I'd definitively call "slice-of-life drama" and for better or for worse, a lot of your enjoyment will be conditional on how much you like this type of storytelling. Make no mistake though, the moege content is still a really fundamental part of this game's appeal, and I really doubt that the totality of its storytelling would be enough to hold anyone's interest if they didn't also love cute girls. I think the writing here is solidly competent, but not exceptionally standout. What I did especially appreciate is the very creative setting and wide range of heroines from very different backgrounds, which makes the individual routes very different from each other. All the heroines are majorly cute by themselves, but it's a bit unfortunate that there isn't that compelling of a group dynamic, and as a whole, the game doesn't deliver that much fluffy moege "good stuff". Scenes like the one with Hachiroku at the ticketing wicket had me squeeing from cuteness like the degenerate moebuta that I am, but the game isn't really built around lingering on and celebrating these moments like other moege, but instead, seems to just treat them as specific checkpoints of character development in the bigger overall story it wants to tell. What really elevates Maitetsu though, is the incredible quality of its aesthetics - I'm honestly shocked that this game is so old and yet still the best execution of the e-mote system that I've seen. When it's done well like it is here, with every scene meticulously "scripted" with perfect accompanying expressions and gestures, it adds so much to your enjoyment of the game. It's by no means perfect, and there are still minor issues like occasionally weird lip synching and excessively jiggly boobs, but it's certainly better than the uncanny valley abominations you oftentimes see, and it just adds so much life and character to the visuals. A super genki and expressive character like Hibiki is at least like 20% cuter when you add in all her little expressions and gestures. It seems like it'd require a truly phenomenal amount of effort and attention to detail to script everything as well as it did, but it honestly feels like a glimpse into the future of VNs - it'll be a bit upsetting to go back to static sprites and CGs knowing what's possible. In addition, the game's extremely detailed and technical focus on trains is certainly yet another core conceit of the text, whose As a whole though, even though it's a very strong work, I'm not quite sure how to recommend it. There are lots of Originally posted on Reddit WAYR. |
| 15 points |