Hi everyone, I hope you're all doing your best!
In the last update, I proposed a couple different possible games to cover. Initially, I went for Noesis given that it looked like a wild train ride, and it has some level of notoriety for being attached to an I Wanna Be the Guy fan game. And, well... it was closer to a wild train wreck than a ride. It's a completely unhinged mess that had me constantly staring wide-eyed at the turns the story took, and laughing at the absurdity of it... which is why I dropped making a video on it.
If you'll allow me to go on a tangent, which is relevant to this post, I want to talk a bit about my rationale behind making negative/critical videos. My ratio of positive:negative coverage is highly skewed towards the positive side, because it's very hard to make videos on 'bad' games simply because most 'bad' games are boring as shit. Early Kanno Hiroyuki works such as Desire for example, long before he wrote YU-NO, are slogs that I don't care to discuss.
Within the realm of 'bad' games however, there's a second kind: ones that are sensational and easy to laugh at. These are, generally, what people seem to want to hear about, and they're also the ones I heed the most caution with because of where I stand as a writer. My channel is statistically one of the largest in the English-language visual novel space, and judging by the fact that friends of mine regularly say they get recommendations from their friends based on my opinions, I have a non-zero amount of influence. That's terrifying, but I digress.
My point is that I have some level of responsibility and power. If I say "game good," people will say "amelie said game good." If I say "game funny-bad," people will say "amelie said game funny-bad." I think this is fine and harmless in some cases. Me laughing at MOON, for example, has absolutely no meaningful impact on the careers and lives of its developers, because it's an antique work made by people who have very established and beloved careers outside of their initial rough start. Additionally, and VERY importantly (put a pin in this), anyone with high school English skills can play the game for themselves and disagree with me. I'm not the sole English voice on the game.
So why is Noesis different? Well, it's a fairly recent game developed by a small handful of people with no English translation. If I made a video talking about the absurdity of it, there's a high probability it would become a joke in English-speaking spaces, and only a few people could say anything to the contrary. At worst, it could lead to the developers being unable to get their works translated, because the reputation is too negative.
I could, theoretically, make a serious criticism of the game that's still a bit tongue-in-cheek, ala my video on Kizuato. Except Kizuato was flawed in ways that were interesting to discuss. Noesis is flawed in ways that are boring to discuss, which is not a fault of the game; it's just that it suffers from pretty typical writing issues like bad pacing and underdeveloped characters, which manifest in a game that feels like a 2spooky4u creepypasta, even though the developers clearly thought it was serious and cool. It's plainly bad form to mock that when it's such a passion project with at least some modern relevance.
All this is to say that I put a lot of thought into what games I do and don't cover. I prefer positive coverage because I want to generate interest around- and appreciation for- visual novels, and while I like a good laugh, I'm not going to laugh at something that feels like punching down. I don't think that's fair of me to do.
But what about the rare cases where a game is flawed in a way that's interesting? Something which is sufficiently competent to have real potential and interesting ideas, and sufficiently incompetent at realizing those ideas, so that it becomes possible to make a critique which is simultaneously insightful and respectful, and also entertaining to watch?
Bishoujo Mangekyou 2 is one of those games.
I've previously covered the first and third games in the Bishoujo Mangekyou series on this channel, and I have gone on record saying that - besides being great to pump and schlick to - they're extremely interesting games that often have very good insight. The original is a great parody- and exploration- of true love as a literary concept, and the third is a brilliant tribute to classic sci-fi that looks to the future with hope, no matter how grim it may be.
Bishoujo Mangekyou 2 is a bizarre middle-child that feels like a transitional step between Bishoujo Mangekyou as erotica with a notion of story, and Bishoujo Mangekyou as story with a notion of erotica (well, more like a flood of erotica, but anyways). It is chock-full of ridiculous adult scenes that spring up out of nowhere, with serious plot beats peppered in that escalate from denpa-esque breaks in reality to gut-wrenching drama that wants to tackle serious topics.
The basic gist of the plot is that the main character - Akihito - is a mess of a man, crumbling under the weight of 1: a disability that puts him at extremely high risk of heart failure due to stress or overexertion, as well as 2: from having lost contact from his childhood best friend and crush, Shizuku, who said she loved him and would always be with him. Suddenly however, she reappears one day in front of him; and after an initially rough start, the two rekindle their love and breed like rabbits for about a month or so.
During all of this, Akihito's reality exhibits a number of oddities. People have conversations with him that they later deny having, no one can make their mind up as to whether Shizuku actually exists or not, Akihito's heart condition mysteriously ceases to matter, and our protagonist sees a recurring dream where he digs a grave for somebody as a child Shizuku watches him.
It's a very interesting introduction that, in typical Bishoujo Mangekyou fashion, sandwiches a lot of clever ideas in-between a torrential flood of beautifully squishy tits and patently ridiculous scenarios. Akihito's POV at the beginning is very reminiscent of Fuminori from Saya no Uta in how it portrays him as someone suffering immensely, and can only respond to that suffering with anger and apathy, desperately clinging on to the ideal of one thing he believes will save him.
Fuminori, of course, never really gets his salvation and drags everyone and everything else down with him. Akihito does get his salvation in the form of Shizuku magically reappearing and falling in love with him, but the story makes no effort to hide how he's in no way healed for this. He's still a very broken man, he's just a broken man that gets to have paizuri with a cute gf (who may or may not exist) voiced by Misonoo Mei. What a dream...
It's an interesting premise that had a lot of potential. But as good as it is on paper, it's let down by the chronically horrendous pacing. There's something like a 1:10 ratio of story:eroscenes, and while there is a legitimately good retroactive justification for the barrage of shlip-shlip-shlip and gushu-gushu-gushu noises, it's hard to get invested in either part of the pie. The story is too serious for the silly eroscenes, and the silly eroscenes are too ridiculous for the serious story.
This doesn't make it a bad game, just a very confused and uneven one that seems unsure of who it's trying to appeal to. I'd go as far as to recommend skipping either the plot or the eroscenes depending on what you're reading it for, because both are engaging when separated from each other. It just simply doesn't have the cohesion that the first and third game had to stick them together.
So why talk about this? After all, it seems like a pretty average title from what I explained. And indeed, if it stayed as a sloppy mixture of 18+ scenes and surreal breaks from reality, I might not even be writing this post. But Bishoujo Mangekyou 2 really, seriously tries to have a capital-s Story in its last acts, and it's SO GODDAMN CLOSE TO BEING INCREDIBLE THAT I CAN'T HELP BUT BE UPSET.
Spoiler warnings, and content warnings, because there's some serious things to follow.
The 'crux' of Bishoujo Mangekyou 2's plot, and how it functions, comes very late into the story. After something like 3.5 hours of little hints and [lewd sounds here], the game takes a turn and reveals to reader that Akihito's big booby gf has been dead for two years, and that he's been living a delusional lie trying to cope with the loss. The reason reality is so fractured throughout the story is because he's constantly drifting in and out of dream and truth.
What he figures out soon after this bombshell, dropped on him by his best friend, is that he is responsible not only for her death (presumably, we don't see the killing, important detail), but for assaulting her shortly before, in an act of grotesque entitlement and anger over growing distant from somebody who promised to love him when they were just kids; somebody who's become popular and beloved while he's stayed in the shadows. And rather than deal with the guilt of his actions, he's fled to a fantasy world where he never has to consider his actions, and can live a happy lie.
It's a legit powerful series of reveals, and it had serious potential to go somewhere interesting. I've discussed a lot on my channel before about justice and retribution, and this game had a great opportunity to explore that with regards to a very serious offense. For a brief moment, it comes close to pondering how guilt prevents people from reconciling with their actions; whether one should face grave punishment or live with the weight of their sins; and how we escape to fantasy to avoid dealing with our regrets.
I think this is even more interesting in the context of Akihito being a fucked up dude who crumbles in a way that is common for men due to how patriarchy teaches them to be aggressive and controlling. His outlet for struggling in life is to hurt people near him, his violent act against Shizuku is committed explicitly out of a desire to see her 'pay' and suffer for having what he doesn't: happiness, popularity, love.
In an ideal universe, Bishoujo Mangekyou 2 would have been a captivating story that starts out as a slightly uncanny and ridiculous story of steamy lewd true love which then bait-and-switches the reader by revealing to them that it's actually a psychological thriller that profiles why and how men do horrible things, the way this affects the people they hurt (very important part, there!), and the consequences of their actions.
It inches even closer to this with the reveal that Akihito never actually killed Shizuku (remember, the killing isn't shown; it's just implied). Instead, after he assaulted her, he realized that he fucked up horrendously and lashed out in an unforgivable way, intending to take his own life as recompense. But in a twist that spoils everything, he's quickly consoled by Shizuku because she loves him and therefore can forgive anything he does. Unable to accept being so easily forgiven for a horrendous act, he attempts to go through with ending things anyways, but is saved by Shizuku at the last minute.
Ever since that happened, two years ago, he's been stuck in a coma, recovering from the near-fatal stab wound. But upon remembering everything that happened and confronting it, he abruptly wakes up, where he finds everyone waiting happily by his hospital bed... including Shizuku, who I guess really did feel no hard feelings about the whole "being violently assaulted by her childhood best friend" thing. Happily ever after?
...No, not really.
This has given me brainworms. The story comes so close to being exactly my thing, it comes so close to dealing with some incredibly important and topical ideas in a way that could have forced the viewer to consider what justice is, what guilt functions for, how escape impedes our ability to confront reality, and instead, it completely cops out by using the series interest in true love in a frankly offensive way.
Shizuku's immediate and constant forgiveness robs the story of a theme that would have tied amazingly into the ideas of guilt and escape that run throughout the plot: the consequences of unforgivable actions. I can easily imagine a version of this story where Shizuku does not forgive Akihito after he assaults her, but saves him when he attempts to take his own life because she doesn't want to see someone die, even after what they did.
There would have been some serious moral complexity there, and some very hard-hitting questions. How do you, the offender, live with knowing you hurt someone in a way that can never be truly healed? How do you, the victim, live with the pain caused by someone you love, who is now suffering from their attempt to fulfill the 'eye for an eye' ideology of justice? At what point does someone suffer "enough" to have paid recompense? And at what point does guilt and evasion rob victims of a channel for healing?
There's so many fascinating ideas that could have come out of that one small change in the story. But no, true love has to forgive everything. I kinda hate it. Actually, I REALLY hate it, but it's also stuck in my mind because it's so fascinating to me as a critic. It's one of the most egregious missed opportunities I've seen in a long time, and it is blindingly reflective of just how much we believe is forgivable in the name of 'love;' how thinking about the feelings of victims is often something that requires conscious effort for people (see: how quick news outlets are to humanize white men who commit crimes, and say little about the people who suffer because of them).
It's very clear that the writer wanted to make something interesting and insightful, and indeed, much of what this game goes into is actually explored later in the series. Bishoujo Mangekyou 3, for instance, actually does a great job at profiling an entitled, broken man, while also characterizing the women in the story in a way that gives them vast amounts of agency and autonomy. It feels like what this game really wanted to be, which makes this game even more interesting to me, because it shows the author had good intentions. But ingrained beliefs and tendencies run deep, and the result is this... mess.
I don't think I'd call Bishoujo Mangekyou 2 bad per se, but it is extremely flawed, and this post doesn't even get into the half of my feelings about those flaws. That's what the video script is for, and I'm pretty excited to dive into my thoughts with much greater depth. I already have a couple of books lined up, and a good amount of notes on what I want to discuss.
See y'all soon. o/