9-nine-ここのつここのかここのいろ 9️⃣ Week 7 (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!

Home Thread Here!

Current week start date: February 10, 2023
Previous week (Week 6) :infinity: Next Week (Week 8)

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: end of 5/06, 14.3k characters.

No fitting screenshot this week to avoid heavy spoilers, but the endpoint is very clear this time: finish 5/06.

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

3 Likes

I’m going to split my thoughts just so anyone who wants to take a break partway can. Reading this week covers three in game days and the breakpoints we discussed end on spoilery screenshots so it’s better to leave them out.

spoilers (5/01)

This was the first time we’ve started somewhere other than Kakeru’s bedroom isn’t it? It’s a nice change of pace for once. Meeting up with Kujou that way was not exactly surprising, but it was a bit refreshing to me. Now Kousaka…that was awkward and painful. She’s really forward about inviting Kakeru x.x Seeing Kujou stand up like that was kind of impressive. Outside her savings gag she always seemed more of a hands-off type of person that was on the reserved side.

Noa is… a chuuni character!? That’s probably the biggest plot twist of the story. I love how she seems to have made up names for all of the artifacts and goes straight into a hidden power routine. The writers didn’t really ham it up, so I found kind of fun that she was almost good enough to pass off as a normal person. Although there’s a part of me that wants it to be an act. I kind of died on the inside when Noa openly admitted to following and eavesdropping on Kakeru and Miyako and they immediate attempted to use a power in the middle of the park… T_T

This time I didn’t exactly follow Kakeru’s logic for defending himself. Trust Miyako because she sucks at lying and can read my memories? Was that it? Regardless, there was a lot of what ifs left in the air to use that for the first time in a tense moment. Can she read all of your memories? Target memories? Are emotions included? How long does it take? What happens to the person getting their memories borrowed? They kind of touched on this before, but just skipped over it the moment they got pressured. I’m honestly surprised everything went as well as it did.

And obviously, Kujou of the Nine what did you see? At the time I stopped and thought of a lot of things, but…

(Joking around about adult content yo) She totally caught you jacking off didn’t she? I was wondering how 精液 (14x) and 射精 (8x) show up so frequently, but those numbers start making more sense if we consider the possibility of him doing that prior to this day. You shouldn’t have kept that photo from Yoichi dude. Even worse, what if she saw you bribe Sora? She literally considers 1k yen a monthly luxury and you paid your sister off with bills just to maybe get some alone time with Miyako in a cafe. You are so screwed my man.

spoilers (5/02)

Ok, that was… painful. There is never a time where failing to reach out to someone is a good thing. Miyako using her powers indiscriminately like that is super not cool. It’d be one thing if they were say working together and targeting specific memories, but this… off. Omniscience is a really, really dangerous thing to play with. Her attitude swap made me think that she not only knows Kakeru’s inner thoughts, but has been learning what everyone around her thinks. There is no way that’s good for your mental.

spoilers (5/06)

Ok, for the first time I actually have a reason to appreciate Yoichi and it has to have been on the worst day of the story. It was kind of bizarre to see that Kujou has a fan club and that they actually sanctioned her relationship with Kakeru. So I guess in a sense they’re all the “healthy distance” fans that don’t interfere, but that’s pretty wild to see at this point in the story.

There isn’t much to say about Sora, but I think it’s a bit ridiculous that Kakeru didn’t tell her what had happened with Miyako. Like everyone else she seemed to treat it as a quarrel, but had she been there I feel like Sora was probably the one person that could have helped keep Miyako from going rogue like that.

Sophie is… well, she went from kind of a bitch to total bitch in a very short moment. That she tried to goad Kakeru into awakening off the back of all that and immediately discarded him when he was grieving is just… that was fucked up. What did she even intend with the whole awakening thing? Did she think Kakeru had a hidden power, or was she just expecting him to get serious now that someone died?

Maybe I missed or forgot it, but I didn’t realize the petrification made people completely stone. The first victim was bleeding after they took off her nail so I thought it was just external. Or did the perpetrator evolve their powers like how Miyako learned to steal memories? The whole thing with the artifacts is still super sketchy and this timeline has been completely ruined.

And I guess this brings us all to the end. If I didn’t know 5/06 was the last day (and bad ending) I would never have guessed we were hitting a mandatory bad end this week. The story beats just didn’t feel like they were lined up enough for a serious ending and I was expecting to start wrangling the side characters into their anti 魔眼 group. Noa definitely doesn’t trust them now and Kousaka was left as “dangerous person” so I wouldn’t have anticipated things falling apart like this. However, I did know there was a mandatory bad end so it made 5/02 feel super frustrating as a chapter. The moment Kakeru and Miyako were estranged it felt pretty obvious what route we were on. I’m guessing that for those of us who go on to read new game+ for the good ending will get a completely different version of 5/02.

For those of you who have read this far congrats on ‘finishing’ 9-Nine: Episode 1! Up to this point is around 80k characters so in terms of the overall script (JPDB reports 142k with adult content) we probably have a good bit more to read. I haven’t started reading the new game+ yet, but we’ve already started talking about how to do it in the main thread. Go ahead check that out if you’re interested in getting ahead.

4 Likes
5/01

sigh
Where do I even start.

First thought here is… Is Noa’s power actually eavesdropping? Or are Kakeru and Kujou actually extremely bad at having a secret conversation in a relatively low tone of voice? This is the second time she overhears them talking. So many things seem so careless in this scene - using a power in the middle of the day, in the middle of park, for no good reason, openly revealing Kujou’s power without knowing if Noa can really be trusted in the slightest… I’m inclined to think that they are indeed actually just careless. But I won’t rule out the eavesdropping power just yet I guess.

That scene made zero sense to me. Wait, you are going to prove your innocence by having your ally steal your memories? And the only reason that would work is because Kujou is bad at lying? Excuse me, WAT?

wat2

I mean, in the end it does look like Kujou is indeed lying and Noa takes it like a normal, coherent person would. I can’t see how someone with any sense of logic would have believed Kujou even if she said Kakeru was innocent with a complete poker face. It’s disappointing how this “demonstration of innocence” is not only a pointless nonsense, but it also triggers the happenings of the next two days. It’s almost… infuriating.

I’ll admit I never realized why Kujou lost it after reading Kakeru’s memories here. My first reaction, given that this VN is supposed to have some romance, was that she had realized his feelings.

Going a bit back, one thing I noticed that seemed a bit off. It seems Kousaka whenever she’s “normal” she seems to be sick or nauseated. I wonder if this is somehow related to her using her powers too much?

Lol, I couldn’t agree more with that statement!

5/02

I was disappointed by the fact the Kujou’s power seems to be so over-reaching. Like… what for did we have that scene where details like Kujou knowing the position of an object she wanted to steal, or having it in her line of sight was important and so on… if she can now easily just mind-read all of someone’s memories? Somehow it feels like the author thought that “person X’s memories” can be easily treated like a single object of some sort, which I feel makes little sense.

Then there’s something else that I also find baffling. When Kujou steals an object, she also removes the owner’s memories of owning the object. So… why does Kakeru (or the others) not turn into a blank person with no memories at all as soon as Kujou steals them? We do know she can “return” the memories, but it feels off that she can do both things instantly without any consequence for the victim.

Even taking for granted she can indeed just mind-read everything… I’d expect that digesting such a quantity of memories couldn’t really be an instantaneous process. I’d have expected Kujou to be at the very least stunned, if not something a lot more drastic, the moment she “borrowed” all of someone’s memories.

Somehow it feels like the author was like… setting up some rules and limits to powers so that they could then be combined in interesting ways as the story progressed, but then seems to discard all of that out of the blue and then accelerate the happenings at a ridiculous pace.

At least, I appreciated how Kakeru’s line of thinking is explained. He feels lost, and keeps going in circles, second guessing himself. I felt at least that part made sense.

5/06

Well, knowing that there was a mandatory bad end made it pretty easy to guess where this was going…

I actually didn’t hate how cold Sophie was in that last scene. I think, in a good way, it makes it very clear that she’s detached from humans and even sees them with disdain - clearly one of them dying doesn’t mean much to her. I feel this is actually how a proper alien person should be portrayed. Her emotions and values are different. In a sense, that’s why I usually don’t enjoy science fiction stories like StarTrek or StarWars where “aliens” feel pretty much like humans, maybe just with small cultural differences. The emphasize on the “alien” is too much on the external appearance, and not enough on the mental side.

Well, then… not sure if everyone else also feels this is obvious but… isn’t Kakeru’s power turning back time? I feel the game goes way too openly about this. Sophie goading Kakeru into awakening. Kakeru not directly mourning Kujou’s death but instead using the phrase “let’s return” which feels off when you have someone turned to stone in front of you. Then the game not directly sending the player back to the home screen, but instead forcing the player to take the specific choice of beginning again.

Yeah, that was very odd. I did see the English translation went with “fan club” here, though sadly I can’t remember what the japanese term was exactly. My mind kinda ended thinking this somehow meant her friends, and not her actual fans, which would make more sense I think. Need to go back and check that part again.

Bonus question mark because why not

wat3

4 Likes
5/01

I think that they’re just super careless about things. I can kind of understand testing Sora’s power in Nineball before since I was under the assumption that she wouldn’t be able to test it as easily without others (or maybe she isn’t developed skill wise yet), but just chatting away like that in the park while they admitted to seeing people around… I don’t think there’s a defense.

5/02

image

5/06

I’m kind of hoping the things you mentioned in 5/01 and 5/02 were just down to the bad end being an afterthought/non-canonical player filler. It’s not like I expected anything super amazing from what seems like a typical eroge, but these last three days left me feeling a little more confused than not with the characters’ actions.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it was well written. It just makes her unlikeable to me. Her attitude towards the people of this world seem to be a standard of Sephirot. At least that’s the vibe I’m getting considering they don’t seem to give her any support. Despite that she seems to express the same range of emotions and behavior: curiosity, joy, annoyance, teasing, pride… Is she really that different from us? I just think Sephirot has some screws loose and a complete lack of empathy from how they’re handling this whole fiasco. That, and the seem to think artifacts drive people mad with power which I’m still iffy on.

Since he’s an anomaly I didn’t want to rule it out, but at the same time it doesn’t seem consistent with the rest. The pattern has been get artifact → stigma → automagically learn about powers. It seems the others learned under voluntary circumstances, but in this case… I didn’t really get why Sophie said what she said. It doesn’t seem like people should awaken from just their emotions and Kakeru still lacks an artifact. Before she revealed herself as person from another world I was thinking it might be the living weapon trope or some variation of that where Sophie was Kakeru’s artifact, but that definitely isn’t the case.

I hope it’s not time control just because that’s kind of uninspired, but I’ll be happy as long as it isn’t some power of friendship/harem nonsense. Anime has rotted my brain.

5 Likes
5/06

Hmmm on second thought, you are right. I guess I’m more hoping she turns more and more alien, despite how unlikeable that might make her look like, rather than she just becoming all friendly with them and turning into a standard mascot character.

100% with you on that. Definitely the time control would feel bland, though I am having trouble imagining anything else - Kakeru getting flashbacks of what’s going to happen would be the only trigger for him to take different actions.

I am still hoping I am wrong on that and to be pleasantly surprised by the events in New Game+…

4 Likes

I’m still reading but finished the first day so I’ll post my thoughts on that for now.

5/01

When Noa was talking about the artifacts and giving them weird names, I totally thought she just had more information than us before the MC declared her as chuuni. As far as chuuni characters go, she seems like the most reasonable one I’ve ever read. Usually chuuni characters have really weird style of speeches and I can’t follow along at all, so I’m glad she’s relatively “normal” compared to other chuuni characters :sweat_smile:

Like everybody else has already said, the scene in the park made no sense to me. The MC mentioned earlier that there were kids just playing around and whatnot. No idea why he suggested to use Kujou’s powers in broad daylight like that. Noa already stated she didn’t trust them both so I don’t know what he was thinking. That scene definitely lacked logic. I’m sure I’ll find out by the time I’m done reading this weeks stuff, but my initial reaction is that Kujou found out that the MC has feelings for her.

I think my favorite part of that scene was this

:joy: for a serious response, those words are spammed like crazy in every 18+ title. My frequency thing on yomichan has them both around the top 500 most used words in VNs :joy:

5 Likes

The next day was really short, I guess I should have just read it together last time. Nothing too much happened but one new prediction before I go and read 5/06.

5/02

After reading through 5/02 and Kujou practicing her powers in class and everything, it finally dawned upon me that what she learned was that she killed the fire guy. Well, I don’t know if I’m right yet but it’s all adding up now. It was something the MC and Sophie both didn’t want to tell her and now she’s being distant, trying her best to hurry up and solve the case. I’m sure she feels guilty and doesn’t want anyone else to get hurt, which is why she’s saying she’ll do it by herself. I feel dumb now for not thinking about this at first although I will feel more dumb if it turns out I’m wrong now.

Yeah, she suddenly seems super OP? This is only episode one too so I wonder how far the power scaling will go for everyone else.

4 Likes
5/01

Kujou’s speaking flubs are adorable. It makes me a bit sad we probably won’t see much more of it.

I looked it up today and holy crap I was wrong thinking that was an exaggeration. The results for usages of 精液 in JPDB ranges from 610 to 150ish on the first page. Same for 射精. WTF.

5/02

The first thing that came to mind was his somewhat insincere motivations and given the focus on their relationship I’d honestly be impressed if that was the first thing anyone could think of. On the list of things that Kakeru did wrong lie by omission feels kind of small to me. Seeing her react like that is hella upsetting though.

Also, anime power creep let’s goooo!!!

Completely unrelated thought, I accident started writing some things in the ime and just found out that サメ has a :shark: show up. I’ve seen that with other words, but it’s still hella cute to me.

4 Likes

Alright I finished 5/06 now.

05/06

That was a wild day. I knew there was a bad end in the game but wasn’t sure where it was going to be placed at.

The most curious thing about the ending was Sophie egging on the MC trying to awaken his powers. This is starting to remind me of the Chaos;Head / Chaos;Child series almost. but yeah, after the MC didn’t “awaken” his powers (unless the time travel theory is correct), it was interesting how Sophie said she was going to search for the next possibility. Dunno if she meant another person who has “potential” like Kakeru or something else. Feels like Sophie is still hiding a lot of information from us either way.

I thought him going 帰ろう、九條 was kind of a typical anime response when someone has lost their mind. I wasn’t thinking of time travel until I read the comments here but the choice 「はじめからやり直す」is worded in a way that I think it makes sense.

If his power is time control, it’ll be interesting to see what his conditions are to be able to use it or if he can just do it freely. It seems like a really strong ability, and like I mentioned in my previous post, it seems like there is already some power creep on abilities. Hoping we get some answers by the end of ep 1 and it isn’t some huge cliffhanger.

4 Likes

Ermm… how should I say it… :sweat_smile:

2 Likes
Entire week spoilers

I’m late to the discussion and all my thoughts are similar to everyone’s point of view, but in any case, wow that was a week :joy: . I’ll only add though, damn, Sophie seems awful. I kinda liked her coldness in a comedic sense throughout the VN so far but this time I disliked her reaction a lot. She doesn’t seem to care at all about them as long as she can retrieve the artifacts and go away, so basically use them as minions with little lives with no respect to whatever happens to them. Like, a person important to another one just died, read the atmosphere. Even if she can’t relate to them or genuinely sympathise, at least be intelligent enough to show respect. I guess she hoped to push Kakeru to the limit in a critical moment to see if the power could be triggered but when you see it’s not just revert to basic decency afterwards or at least leave him a moment alone instead of making hurtful remarks, really just leave if that’s the best you can do. Hopefully the rerun redeems her in some sense but right now it’s looking grim. She’s not even exactly not-human like, is her? She’s from a different world/dimension but she did mention being " 同じ種族 " .

Right, I would expect the same. I’m automatically reminded of other series/work where this is exactly the case and it’s a huge hit for the person experiencing it or just straight never recover.

Yup :joy: . It goes from “I don’t know how to skilfully use my power” to literally a Goddess in like a week.

I interpreted the same way, he’s pretty traumatised and making zero sense at all because he hasn’t processed the whole situation yet. We’ll have to wait and see I guess but the time travel bit also makes sense!

5 Likes

Managed it all in 1 day again! ~14k characters is pretty good for me. I guess I’m very solidly back, have been having a good time doing this.

Spoilers

Coming off a section of power experimentation, oh boy was that a lot. I feel like I really should have realized what it was that Kujou read in his memories – blame my fatigued mind from having read this all in one go. I feel like it’s kind of a thing for some of these visual novels to have really dense protagonists, so some of the goofier plans and moments of carelessness fit into that, unfortunately. Feels like everyone is that way in this VN; I was pretty shocked by Kousaka just resuming the romance hypnosis right on the spot without even trying to catch Kakeru alone first.

By about the time Kakeru really started looking for Kujou, I realized exactly where that was headed. Oof. As exciting as all the events were, I missed the banter, which says a lot about how well they make that work. The little bit with Sora might’ve been my favorite part. Still, there’s a lot to wonder about in regards to all the others.

When Sophie started the “awaken your powers” thing I almost wondered if we were going to find that this is a VN where the structure is actually sort of canon, and going back in time to fix stuff IS his power. I mean, still not impossible, right? Oh, I typed that and then continued reading everyone else’s thoughts and @2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz beat me to it.

I’ve been keeping an eye out for an object mentioned in regards to Kakeru to hint at an artifact. Uhh, can Sophie count? Can that be my wild theory? I mean she’s a living being but somehow the other artifacts tell people how they work and they are objects that go to their user, the way Sophie, as a stuffed animal, went straight to him, yeah?

Edit - Was just thinking if the artifacts affect people, I’m kind of assuming they’re all a little far gone by now? That would certainly explain Kousaka jumping right into what she was doing with what seemed like terrible timing, and the whole chuuni stuff could be exaggerated due to whatever it is her artifact does.

4 Likes