Narcissu: Visual Novel Review
Narcissu, a visual novel by Stage-Nana, tells a story of two young people who are both terminally ill. Not wanting to die in the hospital or in their homes, they ran away together. They drove all over Japan without any particular destination until they decided to go to Awaji Island – to the narcissu fields.
While the setting of the novel is reminiscent of Hantsuki, it takes a totally different plot. The story is solid and quite unpredictable. It felt like reading a good short fiction or watching a good movie on a Saturday night. It in fact reminds me of Haruki Murakami novels. The overall feel of it is sad but not taxing to read. The background images are beautifully drawn employing minimal graphics rendered on a cinematic screen. It has voiced and unvoiced tracks. Setsumi’s voice is soft and indifferent effectively depicting her character. There are also two translations which are both good capturing good monologues and intelligent exchange of thoughts between the two characters. Background music is relaxing and I swear I heard some bossa nova tunes there.
I’m glad I’ve come across this novel – a lovely story of two people who at the point of giving up found each other and made their lives more meaningful/memorable before it finally ended. Definitely one of the good free visual novels out there.
7 Comments, Comment or Ping
coeli
Penge kopya!!
Jan 24th, 2008
Choo
the characters seem nice. I meant their drawings. Novel as in inside is full of words and very lil pictures? XD
Jan 25th, 2008
lanie-emon
I do love a good story and the chara design looks nice as well…
Jan 25th, 2008
onyxx
arresting visuals. i hope it’s not a bawl fest
Jan 27th, 2008
shinji
@coeli: check your email ^^
@choo & lanie-emon: yes the character design is really nice to look at but since this was inteded to be a minimalist novel, you won’t see much character images. This made it different from typical VNs. But that’s what I like about it.^^
@onyxx: lol, I like this kind of stories but some don’t really dig sad plots ^^
Jan 28th, 2008
ritchan
I wasn’t bemused when I figured out that the female was the focus of the story, even though the guy himself is also terminally ill. I mean, c’mon! ‘I will remember her forever’ when he’s going to die soon too? Talk about pandering too much to a male audience! By the end of the novel, you feel like she’s like the only one dying. Like she’s the only one that matters.
Hmm, maybe that’s supposed to feel like that.
Feb 26th, 2008
shinji
Pandering to male audience… yup I agree and you can almost always see this in VNs. But from another point of view, maybe the author is trying to show two time frames in the VN, one is death or the ultimate end which was selfishly depicted by Setsumi which is the very same end the guy will inevitably go through; and second the initial stage of dealing with the disease as depicted by the guy’s character which is probably the same stage that Setsumi has undergone. So while they’re both bound to die, two pictures were presented through two different characters.
Don’t know if that makes sense hehe. ^^
Feb 27th, 2008
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