9-nine-ゆきいろゆきはなゆきのあと 9️⃣ Week 7 (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: September 1, 2023
Previous Week (Week 6) Next Week (Week 8)

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: 26.2k

Scene transitions and character count (Steam version)

Location	Character Count
Shrine	8
Kakeru’s Home	795
Street (Beginning of 5/22)	3 682
Shrine	4 043
Station	6 653
Interdimension	11 229
Shrine (希亜の枝, day 4/17)	12 635
Street	13 449
Station	13 675
Nine ball	14 441
Station	15 418
Restaurant (希亜の枝, day 4/23)	16 240
Shrine (希亜の枝, day 4/17)	19 010
Station	19 945
Shrine	22 254
Nine ball	22 991
Station	23 171
Kakeru’s home	23 671
Kakeru’s home (Endpiont)	26 168

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

[AzusaChan]

Spoilers

The fake credits thing was a pretty cool way to start back the loop but outside of that, I’m not sure how much I liked the new developments. If I understood correctly, they never killed the real Iris but like a “dummy” version of her and then she went into hiding for centuries in order to make overload? When Iris activated it after the fake credit rolls, it looks like it made a new branch based on the overload menu view. Which makes me wonder still why any specific branch matters. If Kakeru kept observing the one where they killed the dummy Iris, wouldn’t they all be safe? Or maybe she’d come out of hiding early in that branch but then she’d never spend the time in that branch making the overload artifact and create a paradox maybe? I’m probably overthinking it or missing something

I think my biggest issue here is that the villains just aren’t that interesting. Yoichi’s entire character just feels so flat and boring. I was hoping they’d give him more of a reason for wanting to kill everyone instead of him being a free spirit that wants to try out his powers. Doesn’t seem like Iris is forcing anything on him either.

It was kind of funny when Takamine betrayed them like he said he would and then Yoichi killed him right away. The fact that he was a user this whole time was kind of a weird twist. He didn’t really have any incentive to hide that in the other episodes when they fought each other.

Before all of that happened, I did enjoy Sora accidentally offending half of their group when they didn’t receive a message from anyone asking if they were safe

Since Noa has the power to kill Iris, I wonder if the 18+ scenes that were skipped over would be enough for Kakeru to use her as a familiar to kill Iris? They talked about it earlier in the VN so I’m assuming it was a lead up for Kakeru to use it eventually. Outside of that, I don’t really see a way for Kakeru to win since it looks like Iris has everything else covered already.

[2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz]

This week's spoilers

I have conflicting feelings with these new developments. On one side, it was obvious that after the 5th of May have passed Iris would have known that Noa can kill her, and that she would prepare some countermeasure. On the other hand, she going into hiding and being so talented that, despite not being able to use magic herself, she manages to develop her own Overload artifact feels kind overblown and forced. Though I guess it took hundreds of years? Still, that’s not her only new invention - she also seems to have managed to figure out how to 同調 with other people besides the heirs of the Naruse family, and did it in just a few weeks. WTH? It totally just feels like cheating.

I feel that the fact that we have two overloads now makes things even more confusing - when クソ兄貴 uses it, a new branch is spawn. So whenever Iris does, that should create another, separate branch too, shouldn’t it? Iris can use the world eye to see other branches, so she can probably see when クソ兄貴 spawns a new one, but going there should actually split that new branch in two, no? =@.@=

I guess the VN does a somewhat decent job at transmitting how desperate and hopeless クソ兄貴’s situation feels like, which I guess it’s an interesting feat considering that normally any bad thing happening to a character that can rewind time feels very pointless.

I feel a bit frustrated that I don’t see how クソ兄貴 could win at all, except by the VN pulling some random power out of thin air (like it just did for Iris). Even if all characters managed to exchange powers and were all able to use them all to their full extent, what could they actually do?

Even if they manage to hit Iris’ soul directly, she will just rewind time. The VN also made it clear that it’s impossible to steal an artifact if it’s in Iris’ real body in the magic world, which is probably the case here since she developed it there, not to mention nobody knows how the artifact looks like to steal it. Even if they used ambrosia on クソ兄貴 and saw how the artifact looks for him, the VN stated the artifacts take a shape based on their owner, so probably Iris doesn’t look similar.

I don’t even see how they could defeat Yoichi even. He can insta-kill anyone, rewind time, and doesn’t even have the artifacts on himself, so they can’t be stolen. So unless Sophie out of the blue comes out with some magic way to at least temporarily break the 同調, it totally feels like checkmate.

[Daisoujou]

Nice, managed to pull myself together and get through this quickly enough.

Spoilers

Yeah so I mean, I’ve already said it but I agree, this VN does feel like it just pulls some new powers out of the air a lot. Iris can protect herself with a dummy, totally new. Then she makes another artifact that they treat like this legendary impossible thing.

It was obvious she was just giving them some fake victory so that in itself is fine and the way it was pulled off (more in style with the fake credits and etc than the mechanics) was decent. And I do think the hopeless struggling right now is pretty good. I imagine it’s going to be hard for it to not feel like cheating when they break it, yeah, agreed. But for now this stuff is conveyed well and the separation from the group feels bad.

Still holding out hope we are going to find the “real truth” behind Yoichi at some point, but I’m not super optimistic that it’ll work out. He hasn’t been set up well enough for it to work when it needs to now, I agree with @AzusaChan . Great work on making the situation feel desperate and terrible, just a shame it’s Yoichi responsible.