9-nine- 新章 9️⃣ (Visual Novel Book Club, offshoot)

[rikaiwisdom]

This is being read as an offshoot continuing Episode 4. Episode 1 was originally read as part of the Visual Novel Book Club.

Home Thread Here!

Start date: September 15, 2023

Pace

Because of the short length of the New Episode, this time there will only be a single thread for all of its discussion, with no deadlines or weekly characters goal.

Suggested order (optional)

No.	Choice
1	【石となった都】：都の枝
2	記憶をインストールする
3	記憶をインストールする
4	記憶をインストールしない
5	記憶をインストールする
6	わかった
7	【犯人の自死】：都の枝
8	二人に記憶をインストールする
9	【忘れないでね】：天の枝
10	記憶をインストールする
11	【一人じゃない】：春風の枝
12	記憶をインストールする
13	【掴み取った幸せ】：希亜の枝
14	記憶をインストールする
15	【すべてのはじまり】：都の枝
16	記憶をインストールする

After END:

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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]

I’m not sure how everyone else is reading through the extra episode since it seems like the order doesn’t really matter. I’m following the seiya-saiga guide. I finished through Kujou’s branch so far.

Thoughts on intro / Kujou's branch

The intro is what I thought it’d be with us going back to the branch where Kujou was going to be turned into stone. It was kind of weird to see more power level’ing going on with Kujou being so strong that she was able to steal both of their powers. I remember in the first two episodes there was a big emphasis on not overusing the artifacts cause they would take over and you’d die like the fire dude but it feels like that doesn’t apply to the main cast.

I was afraid this game was gonna have a lot of fight scenes but after that, it finally feels like everything is resolved in a sense that there won’t be anymore fights and the rest of the game will be slice of life things. One thing that I thought was odd is that every time we “install” memories on the cast, the girls get memories of Kakeru being in a relationship with every other girl but Kakeru never gets those memories installed onto him. Poor Kujou has to know everything Kakeru has done with the other girls now.

I liked Kujou’s branch after the intro thing with Yoichi. It was pretty short (and I guess all of them will be) but it was nice that she got some time to shine again. Satsuki trying to break up their lovey dovey scene wasn’t cool of her.

The scene at the festival was the highlight of her branch. The CG was nice and it was a very cute moment. I think it was a good way to end her branch. It feels like she’s found her resolve on who she wants to be.

I noticed in the Overload menu that it overwrote the ending of game 1 in the flowchart. The stuff with Ghost is no longer there. I’m not sure if I’m misremembering, but I thought they couldn’t delete other branches like that? I assumed this new stuff would just create another separate branch. I guess at this point its probably better to just enjoy the character interactions instead of worrying about the plot details

If the other branches are slice of life heavy like this then I think I’ll enjoy them a lot.

[rikaiwisdom]

@AzusaChan

I’m not sure how everyone else is reading through the extra episode since it seems like the order doesn’t really matter. I’m following the seiya-saiga guide.

Oh I didn’t think it would have choices or anything, being this short. I haven’t started reading yet but I should probably add that as an optional suggested order, I’ll update the OP with seiya-saiga’s .

[AzusaChan]

I finished the game! I’m going to break down my thoughts on each branch in a separate dropdown thing in case people read it in a different order than I did.

Sora's branch

Sora’s branch was great for the comedy alone. Their relationship is still in a weird spot of sorts, but the conversation about siblings being a deeper bond than lovers was kind of nice? It is funny how their relationship feels the most developed out of all the routes. In some of the other routes, it feels like Kakeru changes how he acts around the girls but he feels most natural around Sora.

This scene was the highlight for me. Sora never fails to make me laugh. She remained best girl until the very end.

Haruka's branch

Hmm, I’m not really sure how I felt about this one. I don’t think it was bad but there wasn’t anything in there that really hooked me. All these branches are short though so it is hard to really have a “hook” in them. It was cool to see how the party mission went down but the rest of the branch just felt like Haruka being horny I did like the beach scene where they were trying to have fun but didn’t know what to do

Noa's branch

This branch might have been my least favorite of the 4. All the food talk in the beginning just wasn’t that interesting to me. The details about why Takamine is so loyal to Yoichi felt really silly too. Takamine made him feel lonely cause he was creeped out by Yoichi playing with the dead body and that was enough to make Takamine basically dedicate his life to him…? He mentions their childhood bond too but its crazy to me that he would support Yoichi being evil just because of that. It’s even worse cause we’ve seen in the other games that Yoichi doesn’t feel the same way about Takamine at all.

The cosplay and trash pickup thing was okay (is that a real thing? ). There wasn’t really anything wrong with it but I kind of had a “meh” feeling throughout (maybe 9-nine fatigue but I did have a lot of fun reading Sora’s branch so hard to say).
Noa correcting Kakeru’s pronunciation of the guy’s name was funny

Ending stuff

I’m not sure I understand how Kakeru’s plan worked exactly. If consuming the artifact closes the gate, couldn’t we have done that in other routes to prevent everything to begin with It felt like a weird way to make a “happy” ending where no one dies.
I’m not sure if it’s the same for the steam version but the deluxe version had Kujou as the menu voice for the deluxe edition. That along with the ending CG with Kakeru and her being close together kind of felt like it was implied she was the true heroine in the “perfect” branch where no one dies. Good for her but still feels bad that she had the least screen time in the series out of the main girls.

The extra scene with Sophie at the end was cool. Think there’s like 5 different scenes if you keep clicking on it on the main screen. It almost felt like they were trying to setup for a potential sequel when she said she’ll call on us again if needed

The long journey is over now. Congrats to everyone that finished My texthook had the final count at 764,052 characters and 46,233 lines. My character count should be accurate although the line count is probably wrong cause sometimes multiple lines come in at once if I click to the next one too fast.

I’m not sure if its in the regular version too but the deluxe version had a cast interview section after you finish the game. I tried listening to one of them but it was longer than I expected and my listening skills are really bad so the longer it went on the less I understood. I wish it had jp subs at least, would be a lot easier to follow along to. Not sure if anyone else is going to listen to them but I might try to come back to it in the future when my listening skills aren’t bad.

[2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz]

Miyako's branch

Well, I feared the worst for a minute there when suddenly we クソ兄貴 and Yoichi get into a fight again. Sure, the way Miyako gets Nine’s memories and suddenly becomes ridiculously overpowered for no good reason didn’t make any sense, but it was fun to finally have someone else put those two in their place, and also to finally not have the girl(s) in the sidelines while クソ兄貴 does 90% of the work.

jiipiiesu? Evil organizations tracking every user without their consent? Unbelievable.

It was nice that Miyako gets more screentime than the other girls in this new chapter, though it certainly feels too little too late. paw pats Miyako

Sora's branch

No surprises here - this is the branch I had the most fun. There were moments where it feels the screen writer for Sora is someone else, and they keep poking fun at the nonsense the main writer is doing:

“I know Kung-fu!”

My Feelings Exactly

I agree that Sora and クソ兄貴 feels like the most natural relationship of all, and most of the time it feels like they can understand each other more intuitively than with the rest of the girls.

Haruka's branch

My overall reaction was “Erm… Okay?”.

I think this was the least interesting one. It didn’t really do much to strengthen their relationship, or even show other sides of Haruka.

Noa's branch

It wasn’t that interesting either but it was nice to see Noa completely relaxed and just acting naturally and having fun. I also wondered if cosplay-trash-picking was actually a thing too

New chapter overall

I don’t know… I feel this new chapter was mostly unnecessary. In most of the branches, there’s some parts about retrieving other artifacts, that literally had no consequences, were completely uninteresting, and sometimes just plain pointless

The one in Miyako’s branch, for example, where they find this girl that is an Artifact User that just swallows the Ambrosia without any good reason. I have no idea why is even that scene there - it doesn’t feel like it moves the story anywhere nor develops the characters in any way.

Maybe the only one sort of interesting was the one with Haruka, where at least it gives the feeling of team work.

Then we have the whole thing about the new branch where no one “dies”. Setting aside the whole “why the hell didn’t you do this from the start”, there was one thing I found kind of clever. Many VNs, specially the old ones, would always start by asking the MC’s name, and the player would input some name there. I felt it was interesting how they turned that cliché on its head and had it at the very end.

またにゃあ～！

It’s very satisfying to finally get to the end of the game, specially given that this is my first medium-sized VN I’ve read in japanese (I did actually try reading another one before, but could only get to one ending before getting exhausted).

I want to thank everyone who participated! It was a lot more fun reading everyone’s thoughts on the game.

I was feeling like I was at my limit with reading Fatal Twelve and this one at the same time, so I’m relieved to have this one end. I am a bit burned out, so I think I should take a break. Still thinking whether I want to read whichever VN gets picked next or not…

[Daisoujou]

Just wanted to drop in and say at least at the moment I’m taking a break from 9-Nine- cause I’ve had a lot of health issues and really piled on the stress. I took about a week off from doing much Japanese at all and for my mental health really need to focus on exactly what I feel like reading, which just isn’t this right now. I didn’t dislike the VN, but I think having hit the original ending left me sort of ready for it to be done, without this extra bit. If the mood strikes me I’ll come finish it and leave my thoughts here, but we’ll see.

All that said, thanks again for joining everyone, despite how I’m technically dipping out early, I had a good time with you all.