9-nine-そらいろそらうたそらのおと 9️⃣ Week 7 (Visual Novel Book Club, offshoot)

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: May 5, 2023
Previous Week (Week 6) :infinity: Next Week (Week 8)

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: 27.3k

Mid 5/12.

Dialogue choices to follow
No. Choice
1 受け入れる。
2 選択をやり直す。
3 受け入れない。
Scene transitions and character count (Steam version)
Location Character Count
Kakeru’s home (Beginning of 5/12) 32
選択をやり直す。 8 320
Kakeru’s home 8 320
Temple 18 592
Temple (Endpoint) 27 267

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
4 Likes

A quick midread thought I need to get out there:

Spoilers up to that 8320 character transition

Last time we read, it was already on my mind that it would just be better to tell Sora about the plan. Like, what possible better way could there be to keep her encouraged than letting her know she doesn’t actually have to disappear forever like she thinks she does? I initially thought she might not want to give up the powers but she increasingly just seems afraid of them as things worsen. Maybe the mental influence makes the person cling to their powers no matter what? Still feels contrived, and it’s a point I’d definitely be explicit on. I don’t generally like nitpicking plot points or character actions I don’t agree with, but it feels like the VN is being overly contrived for the sake of drama, which really dulled this bad end’s impact on me.

Edit: Wait, a little later it very much seems she already knew about it. I guess I forgot? Still feels like she at least doesn’t know the timeline and how close it actually is. I dunno, that complicates it but mostly by making me wonder why in the world she wouldn’t keep trying to wait, heh. Irrational actions and giving up in really stressful bad situations can be excused, but still. it all seemed… unclear, at least to me.

3 Likes
Reply for 8320 character part

I think it was last weeks reading where they mentioned it? I don’t think they ever gave Sora the full breakdown but after their date there was a scene back at Kakeru’s house where Sora was sad that everybody was forgetting her and even the automatic doors wouldn’t open for her etc and Kakeru was trying to comfort her by telling her to hold on for a little longer until the medicine is finished. Then she whispered after saying she didn’t think she’d make it that far.

I do agree that the bad end here felt a little flat. When Kakeru fell asleep, Sora said goodbye to him and left but like, did she know he forgot about her already :thinking: Bad ends (especially when they’re pretty short like this) usually have a hard time leaving much of an impact on me though since I know there will be a happier resolution waiting for me right after.

I only made it to the 8,320 part so I’ll post the rest of my thoughts once I’m finished reading the rest.

3 Likes
8320 reply

You’re probably right and I forgot that it was done that way, oops. I spent so much time reading Octopath between then and now that I made 9-nine- feel a little distant til I got back into it, haha. I think what I may be mixing up is that last week what was gnawing at me was that I wish he had told her that her mental state itself will impact how this goes. I’m pretty sure that went unsaid, and it’s not so inexcusable to decide not to mention it, but I think it would be good info all the same, the same way we know with any real affliction that stress and the like can exacerbate things. I’m pretty sure that feeling of something being unsaid ended up making me think it ALL was instead.

3 Likes
This week spoilers

Lots of things going on this week.

Personally, I felt that the events with Sora flowed quite naturally - her powers out of control, which Sophie had mentioned would make her emotionally unstable, made things rough for her even if she knew Sophie was working on a cure. I felt it made sense - she couldn’t rationally stay calm, so Kakeru’s support was necessary. Specially as she found that her only anchor, her brother, was also being affected by her powers.

I found it interesting how the choice to accept her confession had this feeling of “this is something I want to do before I disappear”, which Kakeru strongly rejects in the other choice - forcing her to stay in a positive mindset.

I liked how when they finally open up completely to each other, their natural tendency to banter pops back again.


:llama:

Then we have the battle with Ghost. Wasn’t a fan of it but it wasn’t terrible. At first Kakeru had this usual shounen-protagonist mindset of “I am going to overcome this by sheer willpower” which I dislike and find extremely overused - but at least he kinda made tricks and traps and used his brain at least a little. The girls showing up at the last moment to save him and win the battle was a decent touch, and I definitely preferred that to Kakeru “overcoming impossible odds with plot armor”.

I was a bit happy to see some development on the other girls - Kousaka senpai’s power seems to be more interesting than what it seemed at first, and we finally got to see za order in action. That was fun at least.

I guess at this point there’s just the epilogue left - I imagine it’s finally time for Kakeru to confront Sora’s feelings, and the story will probably also tie some loose ends (how did Kujou and Yuuki, and more so Sora, knew he was at the temple, for starters).

What I am most curious about though, is how is this going to connect to episode 3, since at this point Evil Eye has been defeated. My best guess is the part where whatever “collaborator from the other world” Ghost had might come into play, but we’ll see.

3 Likes
Spoilers for this week

I kind of have mixed feelings on this weeks reading. It felt very much like something out of a shounen-jump manga and I’m not really a big fan of that type of stuff so the action scenes like this tend to not do much for me.

When Sophie mentioned that Kakeru should leave a note for Sora before they left, I felt like that was foreshadowing that Sora was gonna come save the day. I wasn’t expecting Kousaka to be the one to come and save him. I was thinking Sora was gonna wake up and go searching for him but near the end of the scene before the girls arrived, Sophie said everything was under control. Maybe Sophie went and contacted them? Can they interact with Sophie when Kakeru isn’t around? I don’t remember if they’ve ever mentioned that or if we’ve seen that.

Ghost is supposed to have someone like Sophie on her side and Kakeru mentioned they were probably being monitored the same way Sophie was monitoring them. I’m surprised the person on Ghost’s side never warned her that they were all coming. We never got to see who her other world ぬいぐるみ friend is either which is kind of suspicious, especially since Sophie helped out in the fight for Kakeru.

Also I might be forgetting something, but was there any reason Sora had to use the Ambrosia on Takamine? Couldn’t Kujou steal his artifact there?

Not sure how much is left in this episode but I’m curious too on how it’ll tie up/how the next game will go. If the next game is a different branch again, I wonder where the divergence point would be at. It would be weird if they had to fight ghost again. With the evil eye defeated, it almost feels like everything is resolved but since there are more games left, obviously that’s not the case haha.

3 Likes
Week's spoilers

So yeah, suppose I was just mistaken in what I was posting before. I do think the bad end came on a little quick, but I’ll go easy on most of it; I don’t think it was so unreasonably irrational. Especially considering that being driven to being irrational is the nature of the problem haha. I had the same exact thought as @2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz about how when things are truly improved, the siblings start immediately joking around more. The writing captures their mental states and navigates their relationship pretty well.

The fight though… yeah, ehh. Just not that big on that kinda thing. I both like the others giving their assistance in principle, but also found it silly when they started congo lining their way to the temple every time they were needed. I don’t think it’s unreasonable that they find out (through Sophie or whatever) and come there but they just didn’t mask the feeling of it being extremely convenient well enough for me.

From here I guess we’re headed to a larger villain, approaching the connections to Sophie’s world more. They also introduced the possibility of multiple 魔眼 users somehow so there may be even more people with that power? I think we’ll see it again at least. I’m looking forward to seeing Kousaka’s powers in more detail.

Sophie’s grown on me a decent bit and I like how she’s handled now. Very interested now to see others from her… “world.”

I haven’t had enough sleep and I feel tired and rambly so instead of continuing to stare at this post and try to work out how to better say some disparate thoughts I’m just going to hit reply now haha.

3 Likes

This might be redundant because of continued discussion past this point, but I figured I’d chip in my 2c. It was a really good break point for reading.

8k response

Leading into this Sophie specifically warned Kakeru that keeping someone motivated with a twisted mental state like that is extremely difficult. Rational thoughts don’t always work when someone is emotionally unstable and basically crazy. They both already saw that her feelings were excessive after her powers went wild, in that sense I think Sophie knew there was a good chance Sora would ask something unreasonable of Kakeru that he might not handle well. Her warning was to make the right choice, but when you look at their relationship everything Kakeru did was to maintain the status quo. He played the good brother, avoided her when he became conscious of her, moved out when he found the album, always acting responsibly when she would push his buttons… He never tried to address or deal with the problem.

So when we he accepts her feelings (and especially with how the kiss scene progressed) Sora already knew he was doing things because he had to, not because he wanted to. She specifically says he doesn’t have to love her, but wants them to be lovers, but in the end I think chasing that bit of fake happiness backfired on her. It forced to realize that Kakeru couldn’t respond to her feelings and that in a sense her dream would never truly come true. He was maintaining the status quo. That’s where I think the bad end was more less set in stone. As soon as that finishes her powers flare to the point that Kakeru even mentions the stigma and she ends up sleeping all day; Sora had given up.

I think can sympathize with her. Her powers are not only out of control, but have taken away her friendships, family, even her basic ability to survive in society (no mechanical objects, not be recognized by people, etc). She exists, but has been isolated and the last thing keeping her out of complete despair is her brother… who has shown signs of losing and forgetting her like in the arcade. To make it worse, not only is she making her own existence fade, but she’s done it to the person she loves the most. It was already a depressing situation and then guilt probably sank in from that.

I’m not sure why Sophie and Kakeru brought that up. Outside of the arcade scene where Sora was attentive to his spying I don’t remember anything explicitly showing another lapse. Given how her powers kind of worked with line of sight I think her intent to was to quietly disappear alone where other people wouldn’t be affected. It was something of the one chance she had left to make sure Kakeru wouldn’t vanish too because Sora had already given up on making it to the medicine. She was unintentionally erasing the most important person to her and in the one moment where anything goes, the most desperate please a person could probably make, she is forced to realize she’ll never get what she wants. She apologizes for troubling him, almost erasing him, and thanks him before sneaking out.

Or maybe it has something to do with his pants mysteriously vanishing in the night. Sora, consent is important. Or maybe there was a bit of hidden material in the r18 verison. I’m pretty sure Adam already pointed out there wasn’t any significant plot points there though. Despite all of this not really feeling like r18 came into play I’m pretty sure I saw a few more adult vocab terms crop up on JPDB… so I’m actually not sure how I feel about how the bad end would have worked if that was the case. At the least my interpretation would be completely wrong.

Everything I said was dependent on Kakeru fundamentaly rejecting her even if he outwardly said yes and because of that I actually liked this bad end. It wasn’t amazing, but it wasn’t a generic someone gets stabbed in the back and dies thing. There was something of a bittersweet dance of two kids struggling with their emotions under unreasonable ending and I appreciate that. I just don’t appreciate how the writers keep retconning stuff into the story as soon as things become relevant. That whole “kujou didn’t text me thing” was just… lame and unnecessary.

3 Likes

And another week done.

mild thoughts

Overall I had a hard time of this ending. Reading it was… difficult language wise for me, but even past that I can’t say I really enjoyed the fight scene all that much. Getting all of the users together was definitely better than shounen willpower bullshit, but I just don’t see how they could have all gathered at the shrine that quickly even under the best of circumstances. I thought Sora was supposed to be asleep for up to a few hours, Kujou was something like a 20 minute ride in the opposite direction, and Noa didn’t even go to the same school, right? Even if it was cool getting the band back together it just felt a bit too forced to me.

I’m guessing with the contract revoked Sora could use her phone again and everyone got their memories back. I didn’t understand how Sophie’s stealth mode works, but it seems weaker on ability users and everyone already seems to respond to her so I’m guessing it didn’t matter or she could turn off the stealth regardless… At the same time I’m not even sure I want to dwell on it too much. I was really enjoying the parts that focused on the relationship between Kakeru and Sora, but like I mentioned in the last post the writers seems to love retconning random shit in to justify whatever deus ex advancement they want at times and it gets old.

Yall have already read the ending, but I’m guessing the epilogue is just going to give some really contrived explanation for what happened. Personally, I think I just want to see what happens with Sora and find out what our new antagonist will be if they tease it.

I was really excited for tonight’s reading, but honestly after the Sora parts it fell super flat for me. I read a little under 20k tonight, but it was just kind of disappointing in the end T_T

3 Likes
Story Comments

The approach to the bad end felt oddly familiar… :thinking:

This is the second time a VN we’ve read as a club has some parallels with that series. :joy:

Edit:

わかる。ぜったいわかる

Though… I struggle with the spoken more at this point, so maybe not. :joy:

4 Likes