As of the time of posting this, reading is scheduled for 1 chapter per week. But feel free to jump in and ask questions or give your thoughts later! There are always people watching these threads
Pace
The current chapter can be seen in the menu, and you’re encouraged to keep an eye on that if you wish to read at the club’s official pace! To make this easier, the following image also marks the end of the chapter. While the image may not necessarily be a meaningful spoiler, it’s collapsed by default as there’s no reason to immediately display the images to anyone who crosses through this thread. 用心するに越したことはない
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Really nice chapter so far but I have to add that this warning from last chapter continues:
It’s also more descriptive this time around, so keep that in mind. It’s not long, but if anyone needs I can look up at what character number this happens exactly and post them under spoilers.
Done! I’d say this one is very close to rounding up to 13,000 characters by my count, giving us a new record for longest yet.
Spoilers
It’s the return of the very loud voice acting. Oww.
So happy to finally see レオナ back! Hope the game does a lot more with her. I like how the “treasure hunting” was kind of a misdirect about what they were up to, and タイラ explaining that his plan was actually really goofy did get a laugh out of me, heh. The cheerful partying group sections are always kind of whatever to me. Please give those side characters something more than a singular obsession. Got any loved ones at all or a second hobby? Anything? But the serious first part was good and it’s nice to see us transitioning into tackling the loop head-on. Seems like we’re in for at least one more chapter after this of group shenanigans. Oh, and the bit with ミア’s self doubts and whatnot, anything about her is good. Uhh, other than that seesaw bit perhaps
It’s a good chapter to be on Team Leona and Team Hilda. Everyone wins (except the side characters)!
I still felt like the second half was pretty good. Definitely wasn’t as much filler as I was expecting since they weaved in a bit of the stuff with Simon’s research. They wrote in just enough to give a sense of renewed normalcy and progression before jumping back into that that bombshell of an announcement from Simon. I really wasn’t expecting that to come up in chapter 11, but I guess it makes sense. It’s kind of hard to believe we’re already like 2/3’s of the way through this whole story… but once again did they have to jam all of this into one chapter?
I’m glad they talked a bit about Kuro and Kai (?) I ended up reading this over two days and was curious what would happen with them given Leona’s comeback. With them being faceless background characters it was kind of obvious they would get even worse treatment than Joe/Holly/Ritapon, but I feel like it would have been nice to at least have them show up in a flashback CG or something.
As it is we’re kind of barreling towards what I can only guess is an escape and an epilogue, but I’m really starting to feel like we missed out on a lot of chances to explore the other characters and what happened before Tyler and Hilda got involved. Then again, it is a relatively short VN so I probably shouldn’t be surprised at how much is being left out.
On a different note, I hope I missed things and added wrong because I only came up to about 70k characters so far. JPDB has this listed as 132k. I know we’d have to make up for the short ones in the beginning, but these last few weeks will be a bit long it seems. Being a bit more positive, this is longer than some of the novels I’ve been reading so it’s still pretty good progress. If you’re reading this great job for sticking with it so far!
Its nice to finally have レオナ back. The scene with ヒルダ reading レオナ’s time capsule thing was probably my favorite scene so far in the VN. Its nice to see how close those two are.
On the other hand, I was half expecting レオナ to not wake up and for things to take a dark turn. Maybe its because I’m just used to other Key’s games but I’m still expecting things to go wrong at some point haha. Supposedly they’ll be escaping the loop soon, so I figure something might go wrong there? It’ll be interesting.
For what its worth, I have the total characters read at 83,014 so far. I think I’ve captured all the text at this point but in my experience with past VNs, the jpdb character count and my final character counts tend to be a few thousand off of each other by the end (with my character count having more than what they say).
I’ve been wanting to write here for a few days and I keep forgetting, woops .
Chapter spoilers
I really liked the first half of this chapter, the moment when レオナ wakes up was super nice with the background music. I also felt the trio of secondary characters a tiny tiny bit less secondary characters even though they’re still pretty plain, but more interactions between them and the main cast has been nice.
I was also a tiny bit… uncomfortable, I don’t know how to put it, when ヒルダ was telling about レオナ’s suicide attempt. Not because I have an issue tackling such heavy topics, but because it felt a little bit careless. Of course it’s something that at that point has remained a simple memory, but telling it while smiling or giggling… I don’t know, it wasn’t anything super bad but it just felt a tiny bit weird to me, it’s usually not something that you would smile remembering or tell in a super relaxed manner. Also it’s not something that you would disclose freely to other people (let alone a group of people) without the person’s explicit consent or their presence, but I don’t know if the others already knew anyway. I don’t know, it’s nothing more than that, just felt a bit uneasy with how they tackled it. Coming back to it I think it was the overall tone of ヒルダ and maybe the choice of BGM.
Same! I was thinking that everything has been going super well ever since we started the more slice of life chapters, nothing has really happened since the spooky themes of the beginning. There are quite a few chapters left so I suppose something has to happen at some point, we still know nothing about 探し女. I hope we get into heavy details again, if I think about it nothing crazy has really happened so far ;-; . Sure we have some details about the loop but that’s about it.
That was a looong one. I actually read it in several sessions since it seems like a lot of different things were crammed into a single chapter. Took 1h 40min in total.
Things were getting dark for a bit so it was nice to see レオナ wake up for real. I wasn’t expecting that announcement towards the end but there are still a few chapters left and it’s been really long since the creepy ghost showed up so I’m expecting there’s still a lot to look forward to. Can’t expect getting out will be that straight forward. (Kinda weird to write this when most of the group has read a lot further than I have at the moment but… P:)
What to say about this chapter. I really loved the first part of it. For me, Hilda have been/is my favorite character so seeing her getting this success is great. I wasn’t a super fan of Leona really, but in some ways maybe I like her better after realizing how much Hilda likes her.
Overall, I just feel like all the characters are fairly flat. Hilda and Mia to an extent have shown the largest range of emotions and in that way are interesting. Tyler is pretty one note of excitement but also terribly kind/nice. Simon… I really liked his mysterious vibe but like, what more is it to him than the researcher?
I feel like for a lot of these characters you could give them a title and that would explain everything we know about them. Hilda included. Might be hard to pinpoint what title I would use for Mia.
Honestly, for anyone but Hilda, have parents actually been mentioned? Siblings? Friends? I guess we got a tiny bit about Leona’s parents. And maybe in one of the earlier chapters something was mentioned of Tyler’s (and we saw-ish his mom/dad in the first chapter).
I don’t know why I’m suddenly feeling so dissatisfied, but we finally had a climax in the Hilda/Leona story arc and… Except for escaping back into their real lives which we know nothing about (so it is hard to be excited about them escaping), what is there?
Maybe it comes from the chapter ending on a bit of a melancholy note when they suddenly realize it will soon be over.
So conclusion? I liked the first part of the chapter with the treasure hunt to get Leona to wake up, and then it was kinda meh for the rest of it.
Fully agree with everything you said, @MissDagger - really enjoyed the first part, feeling kinda dissatisfied afterwards once that “Will Leona come back?” tension had left me.
Thinking about it, it is a bit weird in the first place that not only do we learn basically nothing about their normal lives and the people they normally interact with, but even more importantly: How do we never see them interact with any of them? It’s not like they are isekai’d, they are still in the same city, just repeating the day. I guess it was out of scope for the story, but still, it feels strange to me.
I wonder what happened to that whole witch/magic thing in the opening, and to the sagashi-onna. And I’m honestly getting a bit tired of everything being a treasure hunt. Everything. This whole thing has more been about treasure hunts than about time loops.
Ah, yes. Simon, the one character who really needs to cool down before going back
Questions
Why is that ending with たら?
I’m not sure what’s that “仕掛け人” they are helping with is. If it’s just that they are helping with organizing, I don’t understand the ちなみに line and why Hilda is so surprised. Are they interfering somehow?
一安心って思ったら basically means “(Just) when I thought I could get peace of mind!” and the she explains why she couldn’t get peace of mind - Leona convinced her it was a lie from the government and that Tyler was actually an alien.
I am not 100% sure on the exact meaning of 仕掛け人 here, but my understanding is that they are on a treasure hunt, in this case one designed jointly by Tyler, Leona, Joe, Holly and Ritapon.
The ちなみに line is Tyler explaining, that by the way, since Leona, Joe, Holly and Ritapon all helped design the treasure hunt, they are on “stand by”. I am not sure if this means they simply cannot participate, or are in some way in charge of activating certain parts / devices / tricks of this specific treasure hunt.
The reason I am not sure is that 仕掛け can mean both devices / tricks / mechanism, but can also mean setup / layout. So I feel 仕掛け人 could mean that they are comrades that helped with the setup, or maybe that they are related to the devices / mechanisms / tricks.
I don’t remember if they ever had a “collaboratively-designed treasure hunt” before this one, and Hilda is surprised that’s allowed - or she could also be surprised just because the hunt is so complex it needs several people to keep running.
Mhm. I think considering Hilda’s surprise, it seems more likely to be the second thing. “仕掛け人？！” doesn’t feel like “It’s multiple organizers?!” to me at least. But then again, I’m a beginner in this language, so…
I finally continued with this VN after a loong, loong break. It’s kind of heartening to see others were playing it a bit after the fact long before me.
I accidentally read chapters 8-11 today because I missed the break point. Oops. I’m glad to be getting into the meat of the story finally! I’ve the rest of the week off, so ideally I’d like to finish Loopers in that time.
Contrary to most of you, I actually like the side characters, but I agree they could do with a bit more fleshing out!
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