9-nine-ゆきいろゆきはなゆきのあと 9️⃣ Week 2 (Visual Novel Book Club, offshoot)

[rikaiwisdom]

This is being read as an offshoot continuing Episode 3. Episode 1 was originally read as part of the Visual Novel Book Club.

Home Thread Here!

Current week start date: July 28, 2023
Previous Week (Week 1) Next Week (Week 3)

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: 28.3k

End of 4/19.

Scene transitions and character count (Steam version)

Location	Character Count
Street (Beginning of 4/18)	7
School	1 267
Street	3 220
Nine ball	4 000
Kakeru’s home	7 708
Station	8 441
Park	9 726
Street	15 601
School (Beginning of 4/19)	15 802
Restaurant	20 640
Station	24 252
Kakeru’s home	25 173
Kakeru’s home (Endpoint)	28 348

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]

This week goes a bit over the character mark, sorry about that. It completes the day and overall gives a wrap up for the week so I thought it was a better endpoint. However, if it’s too much, especially now with Fatal Twelve starting, the transition from the 24 252 mark to the 25 173 one can also work as an endpoint, so if someone is tight on time and can’t make it comfortably do let me know so I set that endpoint instead and leave the rest for next week.

[2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz]

Interesting developments this week

This week's spoilers

Mission failed - there are three 石化 victims already…

I can’t say I like Yoichi as a character, but his stance feels more like him in this episode than in the previous two ones. I highly doubt the VN is going to actually explained why his sense of values is kinda warped, but it’s nice to have this more ambiguous kind of characters.

I didn’t totally dislike the new battle scene with the fire user - it was nice at least to have Yuuki come to the rescue instead of Kakeru solving everything by himself with overload (overlord?) or something. Sad part is that it feels that the only important battle moment of Miyako has been stolen away…

Not sure I quite followed how exactly they “save” the fire user - クソ兄貴 uses the alter ego artifact to make a barrier, but I’d have imagined a barrier would protect someone from things coming from outside, not from the magic coming from inside the fire user … but I guess making the guy lose consciousness kinda makes sense (can’t Miyako steal consciousnesses too? Wouldn’t surprise me at this point… )

I also don’t feel クソ兄貴’s plan to get in touch with Kousaka-senpai makes much sense - she might be comfortable enough to meet with Takamine since they’ve been mailing each other, but would she want to meet a (almost) total stranger? Feels a bit off to me, but I guess she might jump into it with her other personality.

I am starting to wonder if this episode is actually going to have a bad ending.

Most enjoyable scene this week was when クソ兄貴 explains to Yuuki about Kousaka’s power. No(r)a-neko sprite best sprite.

[AzusaChan]

Spoilers

This week was pretty fun. I liked all the scenes where Kakeru already knew what was going to happen. Miyako going all “I have work today” and Kakeru going “no you don’t” was great The picnic scene was good too, anytime those chibi CGs come out its always a good scene.

Seeing the new “ghost” or Rena now was nice. I don’t think anything changed about her outside of the color of her outfit and eyes. I guess they’re on a budget but would have been kind of cool if her style of speech would have changed a bit to match Kakeru’s personality or something. I didn’t really understand how the barrier was supposed to save the fire user either but I just went along with it.

@2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz

I also don’t feel クソ兄貴’s plan to get in touch with Kousaka-senpai makes much sense - she might be comfortable enough to meet with Takamine since they’ve been mailing each other, but would she want to meet a (almost) total stranger?

I was surprised he didn’t try to get closer to her during one of those morning scenes. He already called out to her once before so figured that would be a good opportunity to try and get closer to her.

The Noa neko scenes are great too, I love how excited she gets when talking about cats.

[Daisoujou]

Spoilers

@2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz

Not sure I quite followed how exactly they “save” the fire user - クソ兄貴 uses the alter ego artifact to make a barrier, but I’d have imagined a barrier would protect someone from things coming from outside, not from the magic coming from inside the fire user

This went against the way I had imagined them being overrun by their powers too, but I guess the way they put it was all the fire was running wild, shooting out of him at random, and once he loses the ability to keep doing that for whatever reason, it all converges on him in a very literal sense. It’s not totally unreasonable, I guess. We know Ghost being a manifestation of powers somehow was able to directly counteract the fire, so with the barrier being another form of that same power, I guess the fire dissipated in contact with it. With the barrier we have another instance of a power being really stretched to the limits of what it could be imagined to do, but I guess that’s standard by now.

---

Anyway, I enjoyed it. I still enjoy this concept of Kakeru trying to put all of his past knowledge to use here (and sometimes mixing up the days like on that phone call, haha), and this structure seems like it’s going to allow for good moments with all of the characters. Well, other than Kujou maybe – she still can’t manage to stand out with this cast too well.

Pretty much all the goofy fun scenes landed well for me, I liked cat chat and tomato eating (they’re the worst!) and Takamine being Takamine. So far, so good with game 4.

I don’t disagree about having some reservations about how they’re contacting Kousaka, but I guess I’m waiting to see exactly how that plays out since we just have the vague shape of the plan.

The character development of Kakeru has been kind of nice too; I was thinking about that a little before the game drew explicit attention to it in that conversation with Yuuki. We’ve made it a good way’s beyond reading 下心 20 times in episode 1.

[adamstan]

Yuki is the next best girl in this VN (right after Sora ). I didn’t think too much about her during previous three episodes - she was more or less in the background, but this episode turned it all upside down, and became my favorite.

However, Sora still remains top character, because she kind of brings everyone together in each and every episode