9-nine-ここのつここのかここのいろ 9️⃣ Week 4 (Visual Novel Book Club)

This is being read as part of the Visual Novel Book Club. Another VN, BU$TAFELLOWS, is being read at the same time, feel free to join both clubs!

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Current week start date: January 20, 2023
Previous week (Week 3) :infinity: Next Week (Week 5)

Pace

We’re aiming to read approximately 10-12.5k characters per week! A suitable enough end point will be selected each week (feel free if you have a texthooker and it hasn’t been posted yet!) and posted within the thread. @ccookf has helpfully begun compiling a spreadsheet to display progress through the days:

Updated progress spreadsheet (contains spoilers, tread carefully)


This week's endpoint: 7.7k characters.

Discussion Guidelines

  • Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current chapter(s) and any content in future chapters.
  • When asking for help, do your best to provide context. Pasted text, screenshots, descriptions, etc. Unlike book clubs we can’t flip to relevant pages, so we may need a little help identifying exactly what is being discussed.
  • Feel totally at ease to ask questions or give your thoughts, any time! Clubs live and die by participation, and asking whatever question you have, no matter how silly it may seem, helps others who are reading it and even the answerer themselves.
  • Have fun, and do your best to interpret anything said with as much good faith as possible :slightly_smiling_face:

Participants

  • I’m reading along
  • I have finished this part
  • I’m still reading but haven’t reached this part yet
  • I’m no longer reading

0 voters

5 Likes

Overall I think I went dumb with this reading as most of Sora’s discussion and speaking habits just kind of broke me. It was really cool to see that she had joined the gang and was also an artifact user though. Continuing the train of fails at one point I think Kakeru referred to someone using こいつ and I have no idea how, but I thought of a character that wasn’t even in the room. It took me a few lines to realize I had really gone off the rails there. Plus there was more setting/background being set up like the entire discussion on the Augustia(?) blog which was a really interesting twist on the established lore, but oooh boy did that take a while for me to get through at first. It’s honestly impressive to think that this entire story was written around a whole idea of “shitty anime was actually a legit isekai” :joy: There’s a part of me that’s kind of hoping 2chan \Augustia catches the killer. Perhaps it’s better put as history eventually giving birth to a shitty anime, but I think it’s funnier the first way around especially with the current state of anime content.

let's start a war

We talked a bit about the Kujou trusting Kakeru a bit too much last week and now she’s straight up cooking for the group? I can’t get too mad, the drawings of her cooking and eating with the group were great.


It just feels a bit disjointed as far as the relationship goes. If Kujou was really the kind of person to stick her neck out and help people all the time wouldn’t she have had other people besides Kakeru to rely on by the time the plot got rolling? Maybe she was socially isolated as a result of status or something, but I don’t remember the novel really setting that up. It seems a bit strange to me that she doesn’t seem to have any friends to rely on and as a result has gone all in on Kakeru.

Moving on, it’s not like I want this series to go full on Yosuga no Sora (oh god, even the names…), but it’s very hard for not to like a character that takes a bribe like this.

I actually thought they cared about each other for a bit until Sora called him out on the bullshit. With the whole plan being verifying the story about Parfait Queen I wasn’t thinking alone time would be on the table. For Sora that’s basically inconsequential money. Niiiiiiice.

I suppose this also answer’s my question from last week about the *ahem* extent of Sophie’s monitoring. When she brought up Kakeru’s unique situation and said she would be observing him I was thinking it would be her sticking around outside of sleeping hours and stuff. It kind of bugs me that she just wasn’t part of the strategy meetup. I thought she would want to be involved in the Parfait Queen situation. Maybe I misunderstood, but in the school incident she knew where the artifact was on the mystery student, right? Wouldn’t she be able to do the same for Parfait Queen without having to get into a direct confrontation?

4 Likes
This week's story comments

Pretty peaceful content this week compared to the previous ones.

I found it amusing how kanji trips japanese people too. The scene where Kakeru jokes about their last name containing a 蛇 character that had gotten changed to 海 and her sister totally falling for it makes it very clear that the whole thing about kanji in names is a complete mess even for them :stuck_out_tongue:

Loved the brother-sister banter, I felt it was well written - it had a sense of closeness while also being witty in a silly way.

Is it just me or do they already have a way too convenient line-up of powers? Sora being able to make someone a lot less noticeable would probably make it very easy for Kujou to sneak on any other user and steal their artifact. At that point Kakeru might not even be needed, perhaps only to distract or buy time. Of course, that doesn’t solve the hard part of actually finding the users though…

I am starting to wonder if the “9” in this VN’s title comes from the whole 九十九神 business and the families?

Indeed, this feels like a very convenient development for our protagonist. Also considering her family connections, and considering how serious the situation is (I mean, there’s been a murder), you’d think Kujou could find someone like a real detective to help her out, even without having to explain the whole Artifact business (at least not completely?)

Yeah, Sophie’s laid-back attitude feels a bit strange - like she doesn’t care much about the whole issue and is just waiting for them to figure out something. As to how much she can help to actually pinpoint an artifact, my only possible explanation would be that maybe she can only detect one when it’s being used and within certain range? Maybe that’s why she could tell what and where the fire-illusion artifact was.

5 Likes
Spoilers

Pretty decent week with a lot of nice CGs. It looks like the girls we met earlier (parfait queen and the girl that is attracting all the guys) are users. I wonder what exactly the second girl’s power is and how its going to help them? If its just attracting a ton of people to her, not sure if that’s going to be helpful or not for them.

I like Kujou so far, she seems like a nice person but as for their relationship, it seems like the typical relationship you see in anime/VNs in these settings. Cute girl that seems great but for some reason has no friends and secretly has a crush on the MC :joy: The “setup” to their relationship might be pretty standard but I like their dynamics so far.

I thought the same thing at first and was kind of disappointed when it turned out he was just BS’ing. At least he showed the previous week that he does care for her but I guess his mind is more focused on Kujou for now. The banter between Sora and the MC is pretty funny. Sora’s style of speech is a little weird at times for me though.

That was my train of thought too and seems most likely.

I’m hoping the parfait queen is cool, she gave off massive tsundere vibes last time we saw here and those type of characters are always hit or miss.

5 Likes

I shouldn’t have attempted reading the weekly assignment being drowsy today but new week coming tomorrow ;-; . I think I got most of it though, we’re good. I hope blurry details don’t come bite me in the future.

Spoilers

Pretty chill week. I already mentioned being drowsy but some sentences just didn’t seem to register in my brain :joy: . I don’t really have much to mention, it’s nice that we’re getting a bit more links to what is going on, with the white snake legend and whatnot, I wonder if it’s still around? It was a pretty short week but full of nice detailed info.

Agastya, apparently. Here’s the English version because I’m way too sleepy to even attempt reading that monster of a text in Japanese, probably even awake tbh :joy: . It’s probably another one of those cultural references that will go over my head.

I suppose they really got closer that week (in-game week, the time jump we didn’t see), but you’re right, they mentioned it as if it had been going for the whole week. Looks like a mix of having a strong sense of duty, the fact that they had a massive what-the-heck event and that they’re both users in a suddenly upside down world.

The delivery of this scene was so funny to me :joy: . I really enjoy the stupidity of the interactions with Sora.

But then we wouldn’t have a cool story with quirky characters! :stuck_out_tongue: I suppose they want to keep it between the users and now the organisation who is directly concerned with it, of which we know nothing about yet, hmm. But the police already does know about the incidents, so they could still help regardless. Good point.

4 Likes

Hey, short week! That was quick. I’m doing pretty well so far. Displeased with how many words and especially readings I can’t recall right now, but I feel like almost every unknown I’ve come across is something I’ve at least encountered elsewhere. Hopefully that’ll make that stuff stick better soon, and it helps make the language feel a little less overwhelming.

Plot stuff

Sophie’s involvement is definitely vague, yeah. It COULD be sloppy but my guess is that we’re headed for more reveals about their full role here, eventually. The very passive act is fairly suspicious to me.

Having the fire scene early was actually really great because we see now that Kakeru is possibly going to make it through 4 games without ever saying a genuine thing to his sister (at least not drenched in a façade of sarcasm), but we’ve seen the bickering is just how they interact and they really do care.

My main takeaway is the writers here know how to weave character voice in enough to make things flow well. I’ve seen plenty of VNs get a bit dull when they decide to do some sort of worldbuilding lore dump, but I didn’t really feel it here.

4 Likes