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Review of Silver Jiken

SubjectSilver Jiken
The Silver Case - Download Edition
ByHelpfulness: 0
Vote: 9
applemons on 2021-08-21 last updated on 2021-08-24
ReviewI really enjoyed The Silver Case from start to finish, but it'd be difficult to explain exactly why. It's strange fiction set in an alternate world - where the special Heinous Crimes Unit must track down the infamous serial killer, Kamui Uehara. But the Heinous Crimes Unit does not exactly deal with ordinary crime, and they don't deal with it in ordinary ways - referring to crime as a "virus", among other things. That's really as far as I can get into the story's premise - the plot begins with little fanfare, and most of the details of how the society works are implied rather than confirmed.

The game's structure is divided into two parts - the "Transmitter" chapters which follow the Heinous Crimes Unit, and the "Placebo" chapters which follow a journalist investigating what the HCU dealt with last chapter. They complement each other nicely - Transmitter generally throws you into the deep end while Placebo helps you make more sense of what the hell you just read. While you can read the next Transmitter chapter immediately after the last one, I strongly recommend doing the corresponding Placebo chapter first - they're designed to complement each other.

The story is nothing short of surreal, and the moment-to-moment writing treats this as though it's a perfectly normal plot, not ever slowing down to go "wow, isn't this strange?". Nor is it long-winded; dialogue is short and punchy for most of its runtime. Read it at your own pace; you'll undoubtedly get lost at times.

The Silver Case is not (like many other "surreal" VNs) a plot that relies on breaking the fourth wall, or one that pulls off any sort of ambitious twist. It's just weird from the get-go and deals with messages that are more abstract than the norm. In case it didn't stand out enough, the visuals also help in that regard. The "Film Window" system overlays images and text boxes on various parts of the screen as you read, forming an aesthetic I can't really refer to anything other than "Silver Case-esque".

With all of the above in mind, I don't think you can really go wrong with reading The Silver Case, so long as you have a decent attention span and a bit of patience. A walkthrough might be necessary for some of the interactive parts (there's a particularly bad section near the end of the game which can eat up over half an hour of your time), but the occasional jank is definitely worth it.
0 points
#1 by historyeraser
2021-08-21 at 07:28
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The Silver Case is not (like many other "surreal" VNs) a plot that goes "meta"
Wrong. Akira is meant to be a commentary on silent protagonists.Last modified on 2021-08-21 at 07:31
#2 by applemons
2021-08-21 at 09:57
< report >By "meta" I mean the fourth wall is for the most part intact. Granted, you can make theories about the story being set in a simulation or the like, based on some of the later events in Lifecut, but just because some aspect of a story is a commentary, that doesn't necessarily make it meta in my book. I'll update the review later to clarify this.