oneyoudontknow wrote:1:
No. What the game fails to deliver is a convincing depiction of someone who is blind or suffering from some other kind of disability. It is too nice. Too positive. There is never some real kind of crisis.
It sounds like you were expecting to see some kind of disability-related crisis in each path. What sorts of things were you thinking of?
Lilly says in the Hanako branch, that the school is far from perfect and has cliques and groups, which would create some 'trouble' or so; bullying or what not. Such is never there. There is hardly ever a reference to what is going on in the school; Hanako's incident or the epileptic fit are two examples for the contrary. The player is never in contact with this ... is never immersed on such a level as to experience it and to see the reactions of the 'characters'.
Hisao is never particularly big in the social scene of his school, it's true. The closest he ever gets is joining the Student Council, and even that is mostly behind-the-scenes work. But given that he transferred into the school halfway through his senior year, I'm not sure that's necessarily unrealistic: he hasn't had much time to integrate, he isn't going to get much time to integrate because he will graduate in less than a year, and everyone in the school would know this. That doesn't leave much opportunity to get into the loop, so to speak.
Then there is the aspect of the disabilities. Why does Lilly never appear in an non-immaculate kind of way?
I'm not sure I understand: what do you mean by "non-immaculate"?
To name an obvious example. In order to pity them, the game would have had to move a good deal in another direction.
But the game wasn't trying to get you to pity them: quite the opposite, in fact. You aren't supposed to pity them, and a significant part of the game is devoted to telling you why you shouldn't.
What should have been done is to show the struggle a bit more. We, the normal ones, have difficulties in getting along and progress, while in this game everything was depicted in a too streamlined kind of way.
Three of the girls -Shizune, Lilly, and Rin- have been dealing with their disabilities their whole lives. Especially in Lilly's and Rin's cases, dealing with the world around them has become almost a background detail: their efforts are not insignificant, but they are automatic, and not the sort of thing they'd think to call out unless specifically asked. Shizune's disability presents more difficulty in dealing with people than with things, but as her path progresses they actually do touch on this.
Emi is a different case, having acquired her disability later in life than any of the others. Even in her case, though, she has had eight years to learn how to deal with her disability, and she's stated to have put in a
lot of up-front effort into doing things like re-learning how to walk. By the time of the game, that effort has paid off, but there are still things she has to deal with: we see what happens, for example, when she doesn't take adequate care of what remains of her legs.
Hanako is another case entirely, as the only one who really hasn't dealt with her disability (though even she is trying to). It's also interesting in that things get much,
much worse before they get better (if they ever do), and it's all the player's fault. Although you help her achieve a sort of catharsis by the end, that's really the only thing you do to help her, and then only after you've managed to mess both of you up rather severely.
What does the game give you at the end of the day? Are you able to understand someone better who is blind?
Marginally, yes, but as far as this goes I found more value in the questions the game leaves unanswered. How did Lilly plan on getting back to the house from the cornfield? Rin specifically mentions having trouble with shirts: what about pants, especially given that she wears the boys' uniform? How did Shizune learn sign language in a household (and, sadly, educational system) so hostile to the idea? The game touches on the basics of their situations, then asks enough questions to leave the reader wanting to know more, and I think this is a good thing.
Falling in love is a volcano. Being in love is a kotatsu.
