9-nine-はるいろはるこいはるのかぜ 9️⃣ Week 3 (Visual Novel Book Club, offshoot)

[rikaiwisdom]

This is being read as an offshoot continuing Episode 2. Episode 1 was originally read as part of the Visual Novel Book Club.

Home Thread Here!

Current week start date: June 9, 2023
Previous Week (Week 2) Next Week (Week 4)

Pace

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

This week's endpoint: 26.5k

Mid 4/30.

Scene transitions and character count (Steam version)

Location	Character Count
School (Beginning of 4/29)	26
Round 2	627
Park	1 329
Nine ball	6 845
Station	10 369
Street	10 797
Shrine	11 108
Kakeru’s home (Beginning of 4/30)	14 400
Remembrance	15 333
Kakeru’s home	18 631
Station	18 841
Onsen	19 464
Station	22 419
Kakeru’s home	23 346
Kakeru’s home (Endpoint)	26 487

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

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

[rikaiwisdom]

If someone could release me from these shackles in the Home thread please ;u; .

[anon99047008]

Story Comments

わかる。ぜったいわかる。

Definitely a fan of the more expressive Haruka.

Seems our ending screens have a lot of 絶対にs this go around, eh?

Overall, this was a pretty decent week. It definitely felt off in the shounen parts, as it always does. “I’ll kill you next time.”

Okay, but…you’re winning now…so just kill them now?

But ah well, I’ve definitely gotten used to expecting very little from those bits.

I’m definitely curious about Iris and such now, too. Sensei route when?

And of course, getting a little bit more of a peek at Sophie. With Kakeru starting to doubt her intentions, definitely curious to see where things go from here!

As usual, the strengths of this VN definitely lie in the character interactions though. I was pleased to get the little bit of Sora we could this week, but I’m really liking the way the relationship is developing with Haruka. I honestly almost feel a little bad for Miyako at this point… All the other girls’ routes do a much better job of giving them more personality and excellent interactions. Episode 1 wasn’t bad by any means, but it’s pretty clear that the writing got much better in the subsequent episodes.

[Daisoujou]

Spoilers

Well, went a little heavy on the fanservice and 胸 here and there, but it’s not the worst. I’m finding I like Haruka now. The development is pretty cliched, but the way they more directly support each other is sweet. Kakeru’s a little dumb and simple but he’s fundamentally a pretty good kid. The talk about this sort of betrayal of the Yoichi he knew is almost good but it just makes me wish Yoichi was properly developed in the first place rather than being someone we spent a whole episode groaning at. Since we only see Kakeru when he is quite preoccupied with all the supernatural stuff, outside of Yoichi’s small accidental help (at the time, though it takes on different meaning now), the guy seems more like a slight annoyance to ward off than anything. We hear about how important their relationship was back then but certainly haven’t felt it at all up to this point.

I pretty quickly assumed Naruse (Iris) was someone else, or a fake projection, but the brief smack in the face of “oh my god I just said no one is allowed to exist in this plot without direct ties to the artifacts” was harsh haha. I mean she still has her ties, but at least she hopefully isn’t a user. Though there’s still the chance we learn later she is the real mastermind and then I’m gonna scream.

Best not to ask questions but it’s never been exactly clear when Sophie can or can’t watch IIRC so I was wondering if it’s plot convenience keeping her from knowing she’s being doubted or how that’s gonna play out.

Honestly the onsen just made me happy to have a new location; we bounce between home, school, station/street, and shrine so much.

I wonder how Haruka’s powers turning dangerous, which seems to be the pattern so far, is gonna play out. Monkey’s paw kinda thing, maybe. Since her powers extend to sort of controlling others, maybe she can’t undo it? Though wildly making everything that ever happens exactly match her desires could be kinda interesting in how much that’d mess up the world. It makes me think about the movie Stalker, and its treatment of people’s deepest desires as not necessarily the same things that they have convinced even themselves that they are, if those desires aren’t the most virtuous. My initial impression with her powers after reveal was that they might need to be really strong, deep desires and that it really can’t be controllable. That’d be interesting, though the VN gives off the impression it might not be quite so limited. Anyway, drawing any sort of comparison between Stalker and this VN is kind of funny to me. Tarkovsky and the writers here, definitely working through the same sort of thoughts in their art

[AzusaChan]

Thoughts on this week

Definitely a very shouenen-type week. They even had the cliched this isn’t even my full power type line when Takamine said he only gets like 20% of Yoichi’s powers. I wish they would have thought of something better for Yoichi being evil instead of him just wanting to do it. Maybe we’ll get some revelations later that explain more but for now its kind of eh. Also when Takamine showed up, Yoichi was all you know I’m a killer, right? which made it seem like they weren’t that close beforehand but they had to have already done the ritual(?) sometime in the past to let Yoichi lend his powers to him

Not sure if anyone else caught this during the OP video, but when it showed the characters it listed their names for everyone besides Yoichi

His name is censored there so maybe foreshadowing that this isn’t the real Yoichi and he’s just being possessed by someone. Iris was able to control Naruse, so something similar could be happening to Yoichi here I guess.

Outside of the plot stuff, I am liking (normal) Haruka more. Her dialogue is usually pretty cute. She might not be Sora but she’s still funny in her own way.

@anon99047008

I honestly almost feel a little bad for Miyako at this point… All the other girls’ routes do a much better job of giving them more personality and excellent interactions

Yeah I think Miyako kind of got screwed cause not only was ep 1 shorter but they also spent half the ep introducing the setting, other characters, etc. Definitely a feels bad moment for her.

@Daisoujou

The talk about this sort of betrayal of the Yoichi he knew is almost good but it just makes me wish Yoichi was properly developed in the first place rather than being someone we spent a whole episode groaning at.

I was thinking about this too. We had two whole episodes before this to build up their relationship to make the betrayal more impactful but Yoichi was mainly an annoying side character that only had a few lines before this. In ep 1 they did a good job with him trying to repair Kakeru and Miyako’s relationship near the end (makes me wonder why he did that now) but I can’t remember anything else positive he’s done

@Daisoujou

Honestly the onsen just made me happy to have a new location; we bounce between home, school, station/street, and shrine so much.

The new location was a nice and we had like 2 new songs this week too

[2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz]

This week's spoilers

I guess Sora summarized my impressions of the battle with Yoichi & co. pretty well:

As usual the encounter was… kinda boring I guess. I am also finding it confusing how in the final battle of ep 2 クソ兄貴 and the girls easily defeated Takamine when he shows up after Ghost is defeated, yet here he kicks their asses like it’s nothing and knows like 3 martial arts… wat.

@anon99047008

It definitely felt off in the shounen parts, as it always does. “I’ll kill you next time.”

Okay, but…you’re winning now…so just kill them now?

Yeah, I also hate this cliché. I guess the only explanation where at least this doesn’t feel completely dumb is that Yoichi sees Sophie protect クソ兄貴, so maybe there’s something between them that just doesn’t allow Yoichi to do that right now… maybe?

The whole backstory of Yoichi and クソ兄貴 being kind of close friends felt quite flat to me, since the game didn’t quite develop him properly and he was never a likeable character to start with.

@Daisoujou

Best not to ask questions but it’s never been exactly clear when Sophie can or can’t watch IIRC so I was wondering if it’s plot convenience keeping her from knowing she’s being doubted or how that’s gonna play out.

Yeah, this was on the back of my mind all the time. Even if Iris somehow could “block” Sophie from listening in (or at least sense that she wasn’t listening in) while she talked to them, in theory Sophie is watching クソ兄貴 most of the time since she’s curious about his power … so I don’t see how they can openly talk about Iris at any moment… but yeah, plot holes.

I agree that Haruka’s development is decent though nothing that blew my mind either. She has her funny moments (specially when she realizes she’s going to blurt out something she shouldn’t and does some funny elongated noises). Her two personalities have their own charms, so I never find her boring.