Island liveblog thread

cool opening, which i can't post despite it being short bc the backlog only displays 3 lines at once

Seems like there's gonna be a main heroine that isn't one of the three on the starting screen (well, i know who it is. the game has been out for years)

ok actually, maybe not a secret 4th heroine. it's just one of the three with a different design for whatever reason (time travel? time skip?)

love how the protag's first impulse after stumbling upon a sleeing girl seemingly way belove his age is to kiss her (on the cheek)

that's like the coolest name ever

i appreciate when vns display a sort of title card between scenes so i know when it's a good time to stop reading. navel also does this

i heard the plot gets pretty complicated and confusing later on. i hope my low IQ brain brain can keep up.

in contrast go's prose and vocabulary is really simple. just like i remember it from himawari

lol she just straight up stabs you in the chest with the knive and murders you if you pick the wrong choice while answering the door

she even admitts it lol

sara looks like it would feel extremely good to ruffle her hair. birdnest hair lookin ass

wonder if there's a deeper reason that rinne's mom won't come out of her room and only communicates via paper slip under the door. maybe she's actually rinne, but older, but can't let setsuna see her bc time travel shit or something

big old mansion. wonder if it's gonna burn down

stfu battler

discussion and thought experiments about time travel, and red herrings (?) concering MCs identity have been the focal point so far, the SoL scenes those are embedded in feel mostly like a set up. ~3 hours in and i still know very little about the world/island or the characters

reading karen's route and i'm not sure why setsuna's character did a 180° after karen kissed him

cucked

i bet it's just her brother or something

not super on board with the 青春 drama but having a protagonist who doesn't always do the "correct thing" and doesn't perfectly handle every situation is nice i guess. setsuna's serious side stands in stark contrast to his usual easy going self though, the change felt v abrupt

of course

setsuna looks so much older than the heroines but he's really immature emotionally

finished karen's route. the route split seems to be the choice where setsuna decides who he is, a time traveler from the future, the past or not a time traveler at all, so all the heroine's and their respective route reflect that.

setsuna deciding that he's a native from the current time period corresponding to karen and to live a normal life. along those lines it's fitting that there's 0 time travel or sci-fi shenanigans at all despite how much that stuff was brought up in the common route.

i think karen's route could safely be classified as standard coming of age/seishun drama and begs the comparison to asuka's route in himawari as it retreads thematical ground but alas i don't remember anything from asuka's route aside from liking it a lot lol

karen's route was fine, i guess, but nothing really stood out to me either. was just ok. could've been longer maybe, i felt like it was pretty short.

this phrase popped up multiple times. i wonder if that's just karen's route or the overall theme of the game?

sara is the cutest heroine imo. the banter between her and setsuna is also the best amongst the three

sara's whole deal seems to be that she buys into setsuna being a time traveler from the future and the occult in general as a means to cope with her parents death but the way the vn gives attention to these topics wants me to believe that there is some truth to these things

so from my view point it's hard to discern what's real and what not when characters present different theories and versions of the truth. can sara's parent's death be easily explained away as an accident like the policeman said or is there more to it?

is there a deeper meaning to the misfortune that befell sara and her family or is it all wishful thinking on her part?

i guess karen's main struggle was her desire for the freedom to make her own choices. she would always talk about leaving the island but it's later revealed, that she never had the intention, or the willpower to follow through with her words

in fact most of her actions were direct influences from people close to her and she was never able to be her own person.

and it's shown that the act of leaving the island itself was more important as a step towards independece than leaving the island itself (and staying/cutting ties with the island) by her promptly returning after she reached the main land

now that i think about it, karen giving up on her twin tails in her epilogue could signify that she's reached adulthood? twintails being a hair cut for kids? idk

sara has made it her mission to "save" the island and experiences a crisis of faith when she stumbles upon her families secret. one thing that bothers me is how vague the game is about "saving" the island. as i see it there are two issues.

1) the island is hostile towards outsiders and as a result the culture is growing stagnant with old traditions such as parents choosing their children's spouses (karen's route) and economy is declining

2) the desease that riddles the island's inhabitants, and this is what i assume sara is trying to tackle. i say assume because much like setsuna was going on about his mission being saving presumably rinne at the beginning of the game without giving any explanation

as to what that threat might be (not that he's capable of doing that having lost his memories), sara also rarely talks in concrete terms about what she's means by "saving the island"

either this means something and plays into the greater theme of sara desperately clinging to some abstract sense of duty that gives her life meaning, or i didn't pay attention and advanced lines while thinking about something else (which happens) without fully digesting them

no you're not. you're 8 years old at best

that's pretty much the vase example from the common route

sara's epilogue is throwing me for a loop

alright, sara's route finished. can't say i liked it, the climax and the sequence of events that led to it have sara come up with some crazy theory how she's her own mom and has to travel to the past based on circumstancial evidence, to give birth to herself

then in the epilogue, if taken at face value, all of that turns out to be bullshit. her mom, who was presumed dead until this point and looks like a milf version of sara, shows up and it is revealed that not only she survived the fire 5 years ago

but has also been living on the same island under a different identity, no satisfying explanation is given as for why she chose to abandon her child. this is frustrating bc obviously that's an extremely cold hearted thing to do, and she doesn't seem like a bad person

aside from, well, the fact that she just faked her own death and abandoned her teenage daughter leaving her to fend on her own lol. and also apparently none of the other villagers snitched her out (there must've been multiple people who knew).

i like to believe there's some deeper reason yet to be revealed for this or at least something i just straight out missunderstood/missed bc otherwise i'd have to file this whole thing under bad writing. similar to karen's route, there seem to be loose ends so i remain optimistic

i expected the route to have something to do with the future thematically bc the route split is setsuna making the choice to believe he's a time traveler from the future but much of the route is sara seeking meaning in her parent's death and her role as the last of the 伽藍堂

this route was also on the short side. idk how long never island is, but at this rate i might finish next week.

????

guess i should ready every bad end too

love how often setsuna is prominently featured in CGs

diaper play is so hot. im a big giant baby and ibshit in my pants

i think i'm like halfway through rinne's route. as far as i can tell, the central conflict is rinne's feelings for a guy named setsuna who went missing, wether the MC with amnesia is that setsuna and wether it really matters or not. can't say it's a compelling read.

imo rinne as a heroine sucks bc she is entirely defined by her feelings for the setsuna of the past. she has literally nothing else going for her. you can't get more one dimensional than that

seems like setsuna subconsciously remembers stuff from other routes, time line hopping confirmed? island throws so much suggestive stuff at you, i hope go manages to string it all together in a cohesive and satisfying manner in the end.

people reacting like they've seen maria for the first time suggests she somehow managed to live on this small secluded island for 5 years without ever bumping into anyone she knew. also, karen's dad seems to feel guilty for something concerning her??

kinda confused rn. time travel sure is convulted

i'm not sure i even know what the exact sequence of events was at this point bc the game keeps throwing out possible theories out of the window as fast as they are postulated. found it hard to keep up

i wonder if i can even properly follow the plot and i don't feel like rereading relevant passages lol guess i'll just read never island and get it over with

what a nightmare, actual hell world

the name of the island? little saint james

IA AH UH AH IA UH AH IAH UHA AH AH IA UHA

cringe, just when i thought island was finally about to get good

my man's really working through every single one of these, huh? these thought experiments don't even seem to incorporated into the story in any meaningful way and are just there to stretch the script?

wow, i typed out my overall thoughs after finishing the winter chapter, thinking i had finished the novel and read some threads about the actual time line of events bc i couldn't quite piece it together in my head only to discover that there was still 真夏編 lmao

no wonder there were some pieces of information in there about kuon that i didn't remember getting touched upon, but i figured i was just being an idiot. not only did i effectively spoil myself, i didn't even think it was weird that there was no staff roll after winter chapter

i honestly don't know why i thought the winter chapter was the end of it

i should use guides even if the vn in question has a built in flow chart

when she wants to speak to the manager

sexist mf disease. we gotta cancel this bitch

ok, all of the thought experiments do come into play at the very end lel

there are some details i'm not sure about but island actually does a pretty good job at tying up loose ends and unanswered questions.

ngl, i didn't like the summer routes that much, especially the respective climaxes of sara and rinne's route, as both beginn with crazy time travel hypotheticals by sara,

that the characters just accept as the truth without questioning it, but looking back, setsuna not knowing what the hell is going on is the point and really, i respect goo for having the balls to gaslight the reader for so long.

i can't think of another game that deliberately feeds you false theories like this, and it's pretty cool on a conceptual level.

so despite the summer routes dampening my excitement my opinion on the game gradually changed beginning with the winter chapter and now that i see the more or less full picture, i think island is a pretty good game. so yeah, finished island.