9-nine-そらいろそらうたそらのおと 9️⃣ Week 6 (Visual Novel Book Club, offshoot)

Japanese Language Book Clubs
1

This is being read as an offshoot continuing Episode 1, which was previously read as part of the Visual Novel Book Club.

Home Thread Here!

9-nine- ep2

Current week start date: April 28, 2023
Previous Week (Week 5) :infinity: Next Week (Week 7)

Pace

We’re aiming to read approximately 22.5 - 25k characters per week! A suitable enough end point will be selected each week and posted within the thread.


This week's endpoint: 21.8k

Mid 5/11.

Week 6 endpoint - 21772
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Scene transitions and character count (Steam version)
Location Character Count
Kakeru’s home (Beginning of 5/09) 20
Kakeru’s home (Beginning of 5/10) 9 212
Temple 11 450
Park 11 665
Kakeru’s home 12 508
Kakeru’s home (Beginning of 5/11) 15 790
Street 16 941
Station 17 583
Round 2 18 141
Kakeru’s home 19 538
Kakeru’s home (Endpoint) 21 772

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
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Spoilers

Well this really took a turn. This is sort of what I was thinking might happen with Sora’s powers out of control, though maybe less to the extent of removing her from memories. These powers really accelerate to extremes, almost abstract concepts when you can steal thoughts and whatnot. It’s kinda neat, though I do agree the previous power was an odd leap. It’s starting to feel to me like each game’s bad route might involve the powers getting uncontrollable – presumably that was at play with Kujou in the first game, though I don’t think it was explicit.

I enjoyed this week a lot. Conceptually, the stuff happening to Sora is absolutely terrifying, and I think it’s rather affecting the way the game has approached it. This week basically consisted of these strained bittersweet moments where both siblings try to not upset the other and I think the writers pulled it off well. This happening to Sora is worst of all because of how much we’ve enjoyed the light tone and banter. Rough stuff.

5 Likes
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Spoilers

Ouch :cry:

I agree the writers did a great job of showing Sora’s situation slowly deteriorating and how this is mentally and emotionally affecting both Sora and Kakeru. This is levels above Kujou’s bad end where Kakeru was basically running around in circles while Kujou went on a mind-reading spree.

The balancing on how these siblings are getting closer and at the same time despairing was really well done, and I felt genuinely sad and conflicted about the situation. Sophie genuinely caring about these two was also a nice touch.

I might have forgotten the exact explanation from episode one, but I was wondering why exactly they can’t just have Kujou “steal” Sora’s artifact to retrieve it? I do remember that during Kujou’s bad end, she felt responsible because her stealing the fire-user’s artifact did lead to his death, but I thought that was partially because he was already out of control. It seemed to me Sora hadn’t gotten to that level yet, but maybe it’s the same here?

I did enjoy and had a good laugh at Sensei and Kousaka showing up at Kakeru’s apartment, though.

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#mikoJokes :joy:

5 Likes
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Spoilers

This was a good week. I wasn’t sure how the story was gonna go with Ghost out of the picture for now but this was an interesting and sad development for Sora. One thing that had me curious while they were explaining Sora “disappearing”, did Kakeru just look like a crazy guy on their entire date as if he was talking to himself since Sora’s presence is like non-existent for other people? I think they mentioned when they went out to eat, the waiter put all the food in front of Kakeru as if Sora wasn’t there, so it must have looked like the food was levitating and disappearing when Sora was eating? :sweat_smile:

It was nice to see that Sophie actually cares about them, or she’s giving off that feeling at least. I had bad vibes coming from her since the start of the game but I’m slowly starting to think she might not be so evil. Kind of a tone difference here though compared to game 1 bad ending when Kujou died and Sophie was egging on Kakeru for his powers to awaken due to the situation, whereas here she is more thoughtful.

I didn’t think about that until now but it is odd that they never bring it up. Maybe she’s too far gone now to do anything? But if that was the case then I would think the medicine wouldn’t work either. It is surprising Kakeru never mentions the idea to Sophie to see if they could try that.

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While I did feel bad for Sora in this chapter, that face almost felt too cutesy to take serious :joy:

5 Likes
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Just a little more to go…

spoils

I guess Sora kind of took over the week’s reading, but before that…

Kakeru, why didn’t you wrap yourself in a blanket like a sick person? He goes through all that trouble later to hide his petrification, but he loses his composure from… Satsuki teasing him at the door? Oh well, I guess it’s better than the part where mom seems to ignore his perfectly normal speaking voice.

The references in this section were interesting. As always I had to rely on the translation to figure out what was going on (I swear, Katakana is still the last boss of this language). Sora, how could you even joke about deleting data from what sounded like Final Fantasy Tactics? Those battles take forever to finish! And was that a Terra Formars reference? How can anyone dunk on that series? I’ve never seen such immaculate censorship bars in my life.

Back to Sora, that was a really enjoyable read. For all the silliness it was nice to dive into their relationship like that. The situation is really cruddy, but I really loved how they were dancing around the topic and finding ways to maintain the status quo. One thing that kind of bothered me was what was going on with the other artifact users. I kind of would have liked to see more of their involvement instead of glossing it over. Kakeru mentioned Kujou reacting oddly in a previous scene, but I was probably floundering with the reading too much to pick up on it. Come to think of it, I don’t remember Satsuki responding to the story despite him seemingly telling the whole tale behind the artifacts and his petrification. I guess she was close enough to maintain her memories longer, but I think that conversation was the same day Sora went to visit their parents.

I might have misunderstood, but I thought in the first episode it was the act of forcibly stealing his artifact that lead to his eventual death. Regardless, that was something only known in the bad end version of the first branch so he still should have popped the question. Then again, Kakeru swings between complete idiot and expanding brain meme whenever the story calls for it… As for the medicine, I thought the explanation was that it would put people in a fake near-death state which would more or less trick the artifact into finding a new contractor. Or I guess in this case, let them cancel the contract for Sophie to collect it.

(dumb r18 question) Is it still incest if the parents don’t recognize and acknowledge her as a duaghter? Unrelated, but I love how the youtube results for “sweet home alabama” have been taken over by memes.

5 Likes