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I just did not like it at all... Although when browsing the forums, I've come across several Lilly threads with people raving about how Lilly's path was the best and how it'll be a top contender to beat.
I did like Lilly, but I felt like her path was way too drawn out. I played Hanako's path first, which took me about 5 hours to beat. Then, even when using Skip through Act 1, Lilly still took me 3 and a half hours. Maybe Hanako's was just short, but I feel like a lot of Lilly's was so unnecessary and poorly written.
One thing that irked me about Lilly's path was how Hanako was portrayed. I feel like the writer was so desperate to pull that twist of Lilly possibly moving away that they did not put any time or effort into the characters around her.
Hanako warms up faster to you in Lilly's path than in her own, losing hardly any bit of timidness and stuttering that she once had and instantly forming friends with other classmates. I understand that the focus was on Lilly, of course, but because Hanako is her best friend it involves much of Hanako as well. I would assume they would at least keep her character, rather than have Hisao and Lilly practically ignore her issues.
I really liked Lilly from the start, as she had a kindness that no other girl possessed. But the fact that Lilly's story was so dragged on and had such a cliché ending irritated me.
Cliché as in: Hisao running after her to the airport to beg her not to go. Happened many times before. It just upset me because I was expecting some sort of bigger, different, twist. As Lilly's entire story seemed to be carefree and fuzzy.
So I was wondering, why do some of you like Lilly's path more than the others? What was the specific appeal to you? Maybe I just didn't notice it, or need to play every path to see, (halfway done with Shizune at the moment). Or it's just a matter of opinion. Still, I want to know! D:

I enjoyed the path, but I don't think much of it. Everything resolves itself a little too nicely and Lilly is a bloody Mary Sue.

Hmm... I would say that I genuinely liked the slice of life moments. They were very sweet and romantic and did a good job of developing Lilly's character. None of them felt insignificant in my opinion. I honestly disliked Hanako's route for being too short.

Hanako's character development is there, but just not emphasized. Lilly does note that Hanako is more expressive and out-going due to Hisao's less coddling relationship with her. That and I would find new friends too if the only two friends I had were a couple with a healthy adolescent sex drive, so I wouldn't need to bother them all the time.

As for the ending, it was definitely cliche. But I had grown way too attached to the characters to care that the ending was cliche. They also played with the cliche by making the run life-threatening for the runner, so it wasn't that extremely cliched.

Synthus wrote:Lilly is a bloody Mary Sue.

I suppose she had traits of a Mary Sue, but she wasn't badly written at all. Her emotional repression was a major fatal flaw and why Hisao had to be in a life-threatening situation before Lilly confessed to him or decided to stay with him.

bleh wrote:The end was indeed very cliché but I didn't really make a huge deal out of it as I was just happy I got the good ending. About Hanako softening up faster, I guess she would have been to much of a distraction if she was just like Hanako in her own route. I liked her character, the wheat field and h-scenes. Maybe my opinion isn't valid as I'm not sure if Lillys path is my favourite, but that is my opinion of Lilly.

Does Lilly have a bad ending, also?
I know that she has a neutral, where it just ends once Lilly and Akira leave to Scotland and you comfort Hanako. But I haven't been able to figure out how to get a bad ending.

LeeeHaay wrote:

bleh wrote:The end was indeed very cliché but I didn't really make a huge deal out of it as I was just happy I got the good ending. About Hanako softening up faster, I guess she would have been to much of a distraction if she was just like Hanako in her own route. I liked her character, the wheat field and h-scenes. Maybe my opinion isn't valid as I'm not sure if Lillys path is my favourite, but that is my opinion of Lilly.

Does Lilly have a bad ending, also?
I know that she has a neutral, where it just ends once Lilly and Akira leave to Scotland and you comfort Hanako. But I haven't been able to figure out how to get a bad ending.

Nope, just good and neutral

First off:





Second off, I personally liked Lilly's route a lot. Sure I personally liked Hanako's path a bit better, but I felt Lilly's route also did a few things the other routes didn't.

One thing being:Lilly and Shizune's special moment towards the end of the route showing that despite their differences, Shizune will miss Lilly and their family ties are still pretty strong.

More screen time for the other girls. Most of the other paths placed the other girls almost completely out of the story during their route. (Besides Shizune and Misha anyway) But Lilly's path actually let all the girls had at least a little bit of screen time past Act 1. It sort of made the experience a bit more complete for me.

Hisao being placed in a hospital again. I thought that was a pretty clever move on the author's part to place Hisao back to where he basically started. I always liked when a story ends up coming full circle.

( i gonna get alot of hate for this )

lilly was too " little house on the pirare " ( even blind like the older sister ) .... wheat fields , log cabin .... why dont i just just watch that

i just didn't click with lilly nothing against the lilly fans .... i don't see the appeal in lilly

Is it just me, or do opinions of Lily's and Hanako's route depend on whichever path was played first?

One thing that irked me about Lilly's path was how Hanako was portrayed.

I think the focus of a path should be the development between Hisao and whatever girl you've chosen for him, not the surrounding characters. I know that Lily, Hisao, and Hanako are very close to each other in both paths, but it seems kind of silly to get caught up in something other than the main relationship development. IMO of course.

And I agree that writing/dialog wise, Lily's was not the deepest or most well written path. I think that would be Rin's. But Lily's path is still my favorite because I "fell for her" the most during my first play-through. I think most people can attribute their favorite to whatever girl they gravitated towards on their first play-through.

Draetheus wrote:Is it just me, or do opinions of Lily's and Hanako's route depend on whichever path was played first?

One thing that irked me about Lilly's path was how Hanako was portrayed.

I think the focus of a path should be the development between Hisao and whatever girl you've chosen for him, not the surrounding characters. I know that Lily, Hisao, and Hanako are very close to each other in both paths, but it seems kind of silly to get caught up in something other than the main relationship development. IMO of course.

And I agree that writing/dialog wise, Lily's was not the deepest or most well written path. I think that would be Rin's. But Lily's path is still my favorite because I "fell for her" the most during my first play-through. I think most people can attribute their favorite to whatever girl they gravitated towards on their first play-through.

idk if that is true ... i played shizune's path third and she is my favorite ... i think alot of factors go into a favorite girl ... real life counter parts , sexual appeal , writing , personal taste , music even ... no one factor decides who we like and don't like

The worst thing about Lilly's path is that it has no conflict for the first 3 acts. Without conflict I found myself bored with what was happening. The last act does fix this, but it's a bit late to the party. It is also quite cliched, so I think they nailed that part of her original design on the sheet.

Draetheus wrote:Is it just me, or do opinions of Lily's and Hanako's route depend on whichever path was played first?

I played Lilly's route last, yet I preferred her one over Hanako's.

When I first played Lilly's route I thought it was the best one, tied with Rin's route, but I have since decided that it isn't for many reasons. Lilly's route was incredibly cliched, even more so than Emi's which also suffered from this. A storyline with cliches isn't necessarily a bad thing, but however a cliched storyline usually is, and unfortunately I think that Lilly was in the latter of the two, or at least for Act 4 she was. Nevertheless her route is still my second favourite but I can see many reasons why people would dislike it.

Lilly isn't a Mary Sue, but she is as close as you can get to one. I mean she does have a few flaws which become more apparent in Act 3 and 4, but for most of the game she is so perfect. This, along with the cliches, did lower my opinion of the storyline in a whole. The reason I liked it? It was the most romantic and the most realistic out of all the routes, or at least I think so if you exclude the mad rush to the airport, which also happens to be an epic cliche. Also Hanako doesn't necessarily warm up to Hisao more in this route, just that the route goes on until the summer holidays whereas Hanako's route doesn't get anywhere near that far, in fact Lilly is still in Scotland by the time it ends.

GIRakaCHEEZER wrote:The worst thing about Lilly's path is that it has no conflict for the first 3 acts. Without conflict I found myself bored with what was happening. The last act does fix this, but it's a bit late to the party. It is also quite cliched, so I think they nailed that part of her original design on the sheet.

That's what my big problem was. The first three acts were so simple and happy, only perfection. That makes for a boring character and a boring story.
So I was left bored for most of the story, which didn't happen to me during Hanako's story or Shizune's.

Imo paths cant be placed in one and only order cause they have so much variation. Lilly's route was pretty cliche sweet love story and I liked it like that, tho I can also see why some ppl disagree with my opinion about it.

One interesting fact in Lilly's path was that Hisao's body was weak for real instead of just Hisao and other characters saying so.

I'll use spoiler tags for any non-Lilly route, seeing as anyone clicking on this topic should be smart enough to realise it's full of Lilly spoilers.

I actually liked Lilly's route over Hanako's route because it had a much larger focus on Hisao, something I was missing in Hanako's route (which was part of the charm of that route, if you ended up with the neutral ending (I did in my first, blind, playthrough of Hanako's route ) though). I felt like Hisao developed much more as a character in Lilly's route than in Hanako's route.
I did actually, not, think of Lilly as a clichéd character. At the end of the story it was apparent that she was hiding her problems and not confiding in Hisao as much as she should've, which resulted in her leaving to scotland.
Really, she's quite a well-developed character, she's not as flat as you make her out to be. She is very well-mannered, but has quite the libido, and her hiding her leaving to Scotland for good shows the fact that she is trying to be way too independant way too much.
Next to that, the blindfold play during sex was something unique, interesting and exciting.
Her not having flaws earlier in the story just makes it more appealing for me. Most people don't actually have obvious flaws, yet I'm pretty sure that everyone has some dark secrets or bad habits that appear once you know them better. It's pretty realistic if you ask me.
The cliché at the ending... It's kind of cliché but by then I was so into the characters and story that I didn't even care and found myself crying as Hisao got a heart attack, thinking he was dead.

I've found that even though there wasn't a lot of conflict in the first 3 acts, there was certainly a huge amount of character development, which made it interesting to experience.