Review of Aonatsu Line
| Subject | Aonatsu Line Aonatsu Line - First Press Limited BLUE Edition |
| By | Helpfulness: 2 Vote: 9bahoaday on 2022-05-08 |
| Review | This is not a review of a full game yet but an impression after reading Miki's route. I will update the review with other routes when I read them later. This review contains spoilers and NSFW details. -- Miki's route has just come to a close and I'm still basking in the afterglow of the feel trip this route put me through. I've been reading visual novels for more than 10 years and most of the time a romcom does not do much to me because while reading a romance story, I can feel that I've read this tale somewhere else. Thus, I've been always chasing that "feeling" when I experienced something impactful for the first time. A story that can make me forget that forever chase is really hard to come by and Aonatsu Line's Miki's route is one such tale. 「青春」、 "youth" is a cliche term often used in visual novels or anime. However, when this element is used to great effect, the story will be something special. "Youth" means "growing up" and "changing" throughout the vulnerable, yet precious period when a child is fledging into an adult, both in mind and body. Miki's route captured this period of the 3 close friends (2 guys and 1 girl) perfectly and compile them into a "youth" album. There's growing pain, there's peer pressure, there's the desire to stay in a comfortable status quo forever and there's the resolve to break through it so that all members can take the next step in their lives. There are 3 main people in Miki, Chihiro, and Tatsumi's youth album. "Two is company, three is a crowd". We often see this in stories with 3 people of the opposite sexes together. More often than not, they form a triangle. However, in Aonatsu Line's case, it's more like a solid line and a dot and everyone in the main trio thought that he/she was that lone dot. Gradually 2 dotted lines connected that lone dot with 2 dots on the solid line. That triangle-but-not-really created a comfortable shape that made the three increadibly close but at the same time prevented them to take move on to the next phase of their lives. I'm glad Miki's route does not have a love triangle, just 3 friends who care deeply for the others. It's a pleasant experience to see Miki changing from an innocent childhood friend to a confused teen girl who did not know how to deal with peer pressure and social expectation in Junior High, to a confident girl (on the surface) she was in the second year of Senior High and finally to that breakthrough at the end of her route. Chihiro also changed a lot alongside Miki and Tatsumi and his final breakthrough is just beautiful. Tatsumi, the protagonist of course also changed, however, I feel his growth stopped at the end of the common route and only resumed at the very end of Miki's route, which I think is one of the weaknesses of the game. Despite some hiccups here and there, I think Anonatsu did a stellar job depicting the trio's growth, which is critical for a great coming-of-age story. Some random tidbits I noted while reading this route, not in any particular order: 1. Miki's route reminds me of my favorite VN writer, Fumiaki Maruto's style (the part where the story involves past not-lover-but-almost-so). 2. I was startled by how good Aonatsu Line or Miki's route in particular is compared with Yukiiro Sign, which was penned by the same writer. However, when I looked up Aonatsu Line's writers on VNDB, I saw both Fuyuno Donbuku (Yukiiro Sign's writer) and Daichi Koneko. And voila, Daichi Koneko was an assistant director for Kono Aozora ni Yakusoku o (written by Maruto). No wonder why I feel some faint similarities with Maruto's style. 3. The story set some clear "deadlines" early on (the deadline to decide the summer plan, the deadline to execute the pool plan, and the deadline for the trio to face each other after the confession at the start of the new semester) so there's always a hint of urgency thorough the route that kept me on the edge of my seat while reading. 4. Aonatsu Line used lots of proverbs and phrases that I had to look up (for example,「あばたもえくぼ」: love is blind). It's worth it though. 5. Even though Miki's route is about her, Chihiro and Tatsumi, I like that Kotone and Yui (other heroines) were involved a lot instead of just disappearing after entering a certain route. Hopefully, this will be the case for Yui's and Kotone's routes too. 6. I like Miki's talking in third person (Miki-san) in her route. It's super cute and endearing IMO. 7. There are plenty of lovey-dovey scenes for a story-focused visual novel and I love it. There are some visual novels that I like the story but I feel the characters did not flirt with each other enough (Cyanotype Daydream's CASE-3 for example). Those scenes are also very descriptive and detailed, not just the protagonist and the heroine going somewhere and saying they loved each other. I particularly like the scene where they rang the "couple's bell" and placed a lover's padlock on the fence (it's relatable because this is what couples do IRL). 8. If I have any complaints about the game, then it's about the H-scenes. I read through all H-scenes of Miki's route without skipping because they successfully showed how much the couple was in love with each other (I usually skip H-scenes except the first one of a route while reading VN). However because I paid attention to the H-scenes, I found some pet peeves that bugged me. For example (NSFW), in the Miki's first H-scene, there's a CG where Miki's fully clothed but in the next CG, she's no-bra and her panties were put aside already while the text glossed over the "removal" part. Another example is the second H-scene in the shed, in the first CG, Miki's panties were already pulled down to her knee but in the next CG, she was properly wearing it while giving Tatsumi fellatio. I guess if a game makes me hooked enough to pay attention to its H-scenes, it's a really good game. If you read through my rambling until here, especially the NSFW part, thank you. I will read Kotone's route next. I hope it will be at least half or 2/3 as good as Miki's route. |
| 2 points |