*sees discussion of Shizune's route*
Okay, Odds are 10:1 that this is going to be a "worst route" discussion.
...
Yup.
And oh, look, Oddball's involved, after I explicitly revoked his "talking about Shizune" privileges. (I kid)
So, anyway, how to start?
The beginning is as good a place as any. I doubt I'll keep this organised, though.
Unnatural Hair - Such is the reality of the anime aesthetic. I've gone into greater detail elsewhere, but here's the simple answer: More vivid colors are in place to simulate the variation among natural hair colors. Stereotypically, all Asians have black hair. In actuality, there's a relatively wide range of (dark) hair colors that are possible. Rather than having black, dark brown, brown, and light brown/auburn, they opt for purple, blue, green, and red.
Unbelievable Appearance - Someone here commented that he rationalises Hideaki's appearance as an exaggeration of how a teenage boy sees a younger boy. On that interpretation, Jigoro is the idealised specimen of how a teenage boy perceives his girlfriend's dad. Frankly, though, I feel that's cheating a bit. So we're forced to see Hideaki and Jigoro as they are. Let's take them one at a time.
Hideaki - Our first question is: does Jigoro expect his son to be "manly" or does he expect his son to have drive and conviction? If the former, Hideaki's an abject failure. In the latter case, though, he seems... shockingly on target. He wears what he wants and is willing to defend his choices, but, frankly, doesn't care what others think. He knows what interests him, and he does those things well. And, of course, he's driven to surpass Shizune in all things - period, full stop. As for his emotionlessness, remember that it only extends to his tone of voice. He's very expressive - just not vocally.
Jigoro - Oh, I could write an essay about Jigoro. Someday I probably will. Or a fanfic. I'll try to keep things short, though. How can he earn money? Easy - he's an Alpha. If you have talent and the right kind of assertiveness, you can be a complete asshole and be successful in spite of it. Some would even argue that you're successful
because you're a complete asshole, but that's another subject entirely. AS for his expectations, I'm not arguing that he's "Father of the Year" material, but are his expectations unreasonable, or are they unflinchingly realistic? You don't necessarily have to
agree with what he says, but, for most of what he says, you have to admit that he has a bit of a point.
Hisao Growing a Spine - He was pushed over the edge. Once you reach a breaking point, you'll do things you wouldn't even consider in a more relaxed setting. But that ties into a bigger thing: Hisao's relationship with Jigoro. We are all well aware of Hisao's first impression of Jigoro - we only see Jigoro through Hisao's eyes. But let's turn the picture around for a second: what is Jigoro's first impression of Hisao? He's an unexpected addition (a boyfriend joining a girl unexpectedly on a summer vacation at the homestead is an extremely yellow flag, if not outright red) that sleeps the morning away, has absolutely no drive or motivation, and has a penchant for backtalk. Hell, he doesn't even have the guts to defend his wardrobe decisions - he just seethes internally like the little bitch he is. Of course, Jigoro's not unfair. He knows that Hisao's from a school for disabled kids - his sleeping the day away might be a side effect. he may have caught Hisao at a bad time. So he gives Hisao another chance - the showdown near the end of the visit to the Hakamichi Residence is Jigoro's way of saying "Here's your second chance: prove to me that my first impression was wrong." And Hisao fails spectacularly.
As for Jigoro and Shizune's relationship, well, that's another essay of its own. Maybe I'll get back to that...
Speculation on the Author (Anonymous22) - I'm not touching this one. He keeps to himself and rarely appears in public, but you can learn a lot if you do some detective work (or ask certain devs when they're in a good mood). Suffice to say that you may possibly be right on a few points (I wouldn't know, I'm not A22), but there's sufficient information available to imply that, for the most part, you're dead wrong.
Having one choice isn't inherently bad. Some would argue that it's cutting out all the bullshit and being honest with the reader.
Believe it or not, the inclusion of side characters is arguably greater than their use in other routes. Most routes push them to the side any maybe include a (mostly filler) scene with them just to remind you that they still exist. Except for Shizune and Misha, who play a notable role in every route.
I understand that the conventional wisdom is that he did a nearly complete rewrite at a relatively late point in the game, so that may account for a seeming lack of polish.
Claiming that Hisao is inconsistent without citing specific examples is pretty hard to dispute (and not because it's a sound argument).
Hisao's lack of heart issues simply means that it's not important or relevant to the story. As I understand it, the whole point of giving him Arrhythmia was that it wasn't really visible and could end up anywhere from a major defining issue to an unimportant side note. And why the unequal treatment? Lilly's blindness was never depicted as a significant hardship - just a minor annoyance on occasion. For the most part, Rin's lack of arms plays an even smaller role. And Hisao's heart wasn't really an issue in Rin's route, either.
As for Kenji's scenes, were they really as irrelevant as they seem? Kenji's Hisao's token male friend; he's a sounding board, someone with whom Hisao can commiserate, and he also is able to provide an alternate perspective, to help Hisao see things from another angle. He's crazy as a moonbat, but his role isn't pointless.
As far as thsoe "pointless" scenes, they're important in that that's where the real characterisation takes place. Especially the bit about the tissue boxes. Did you completely miss the fact that this was seemingly the first time that Misha and Shizune were disagreeing about anything? On the subject of Hisao being back and forth about the Student Council, the answer is easy - Hisao is tsundere for Student Council.
On the subject of a relationship, this ties back to the characters. Shizune compartmentalises. She can't conceive of shifting gears rapidly. When she's doing Student Council, she's 100% Student Council. Additionally, she expects Hisao to take the role as the man of the relationship. She ties Hisao to a chair not because she wants to rape him, but because she wants to give herself to him. After the scene on the couch, it was clear to ehr that Hisao was afraid of hurting her, so she took it into her own hands to let him know that she wanted it. After that, she is quite often putting herself in a position where Hisao needs only make his move and she's all his, but he never makes a move.
And the similarity between the good end and the bad end are intentional. It helps emphasise the differences. Besides, the whole point of the good end and the bad end is that it hinges on whether or not Hisao considers himself to be in a relationship with Shizune.
The reason it bothers Hisao that Emi avoids talking about herself is because she actively avoids the subject. For Shizune, it never comes up. Also, Emi keeps quiet to push Hisao away. Shizune doesn't talk about herself because she really doesn't like being the center of attention. Life's not about her, and she likes it that way.
Overall, the big thing is that Shizune's route is full of something that I personally find lacking in Lilly's and Hanako's (much more popular) routes - nuance. If something's important with Lilly or Hanako, you practically have someone outright stating "Hey, this is important!" In Shizune's route, most of what's being said is never actually spoken. Key points and foreshadowing are made with the timing of a single change of expression (which receives no textual comment). Body language plays a huge role as well. And I'm also fond of pointing out Mutou's quantum physics lecture from Emi's route:
"What's a scientist to do if he can't observe something? How, for example, can we talk about quarks when nobody has ever actually seen one? Or black holes when observing them directly is impossible?"
"Well, scientific equipment's pretty advanced…"
Mutou irritably waves away my response.
"No, that's not it at all. Those are tools, I'm trying to give you a philosophy. Think. If you can't observe something directly, then how can you observe it?"
"Uh, guess?"
"How? How would you guess the movement of a quark? What is your guess based on?"
Of course. I should have thought of it earlier.
"The things it affects."
Mutou claps his hands together excitedly and whoops.
"Yes, exactly. Good. Remember that, Hisao. If you can't examine something directly, it's because you're looking at it wrong. You have to look at it differently if you want to uncover the truth. And if it eludes you, then look at what it leaves behind.
Finally, on the subject of autism, don't. Just don't. As a spectrum disorder, you can only diagnose it by observing the entirety of a person's actions. Leave diagnosing to the professionals. And leave diagnoses to real people.
Anyway, skimming through replies...
Oddball wrote:The big problem is that characters in her route seem to actually resist growth. There's a scene where Hideaki wants to learn sign language, but nothing comes from it. Then Jigoro shows up at the school and it seems fairly obvious he's trying to reach out to his daughter with the family trip idea, but nothing comes from that either. You find out Misha is basically just putting on a show for everybody but in the end, Shizune and Hisao seem content with her going back to hiding behind her facade again. Shizune says she'll change, but we never see it. Even in the good ending, it doesn't seem like they're a couple.
It just feels like nothing of note ever really happens in her route.
As always, you're focusing on events. And you're not even doing a very good job of that. Hideaki wants to learn sign language. He has such a small role that character development and cahracterisation overlap, so it's not clear whether this is revealing something about Hideaki, or something new that came from his exposure to Hisao. Regardless, it's perfectly fine and relevant without there being an epilogue with Hideaki signing to his sister. Jigoro approaches Shizune about going on a family trip, yet that's
clearly not character development, or Jigoro perhaps conceding that Hisao might have had a point; nope, just another time wasting scene because "katanas in a school lol." ¬_¬ Not everything can or should be resolved. You can have a complete story without tying everything up with a neat little bow. It's kind of necessary if you're going with "slice of life" rather than "entire cake of life."
Interesting to note that the consensus is that Jigoro refuses to speak to Shizune. And they never give credit to Jigoro's statement that she refuses to speak to him, because Jigoro's obviously some sort of Bell School boogeyman. And they conveniently miss the fact that Jigoro is the only person where Shizune explicitly tells Hisao to "Tell him" something, rather than singing directly to the individual with the expectation that he'll interpret for her.
They purposely leave it ambiguous whether or not Shizune knows Hisao's disability, but there are a few scenes (based on act 1 choices) where it hints that she might.
DISCLAIMER: I have only read each of the other routes (all ends) once (with near constant review of snippets via the library for reference purposes). I read Shizune's route once with my initial playthrough, then, some months alter, went through it again, carefully examining each detail with a fine-toothed comb. As such, I am significantly more likely to be generous to Shizune's route than I am to the others.