Hey y'all. I was rained out today (no work) so put four more hours into this VN. The divergence between the adaptation and original was not as much during this session as it was in my last one but this one also started focusing more on the discrimination of the scholarship students. I could be misremembering the Anime for this part, so I'll be keeping comparisons to just where it's directly relevant. I also realized in my last post that I might have brought up an uncomfortable topic that I wasn't clear enough about (no one said anything but I made a note on it regardless). Let's jam!!!
Non-chan is Best Girl, the Threequel
Every major scene that Non-chan was in was hilarious. I don't remember exactly what the first part was about but thought it was a fun out of context line. The context for the rest: Yuuki has officially began running for Student Council President so that he can keep Shokken (his club) from being disbanded by the other candidates if they won. To win the preliminaries, he must gain a total of 600 signatures so the club has been collectively gathering those. Non-chan is apparently just insanely good at convincing people to sign anything she throws their way.
The Monkey Girls Are Still Mostly Butt Monkeys
Between both of them, they received a total of 8 signatures. They have the most "Anime" faces of the club members and basically split a single brain cell. They were born within minutes of each other between neighbors that were friends, so they are "sisters" and should seriously have a spin-off of their own. Also, Ukiii is the Japanese onomatopoeia for the monkey sound (and one of the jokes is that Yuuki may be the only one that hears them make that sound; not confirmed yet but his slow fall into madness gives me such a chuckle).
Chisato As the Campaign Manager is Kind of Intense
On the route I'm on (not sure exactly where I'm going with my choices yet; could be a bad ending knowing my luck), I'm surprisingly sweet on Aomi, the scholarship student, and Chisato had been prying into that aspect. She also was getting onto my Yuuki for not obtaining enough signatures because he was thinking too much about that girl. Jealous Chisato is a riot.
About Chisato Being Alone with the President
The current Student Body President offered to guide Yuuki and the club through the electoral process in exchange for the ability to rerun again the year after. I don't want to dive too far into those details, but he requested that Chisato joined him privately in his quarters to discuss her duties as the campaign manager. She had just snuck in through the balcony as Yuuki was falling asleep and made a very specific comment about her experience with the President that gave the option to blow up at her (I'm jealous) or calm her nerves (I'm relieved). Choosing the second option completely shocked her, so it's possible I may have screwed the story here a bit.
NOTE: The whole getting ready for the campaign and gathering votes (most of the scenes above) were almost an hour of runtime for me. I was trying to spread out my screenshots and actually cut this down by around half of what I originally was going to post. There's just so much dialogue here. I also wanted to open with the funnier parts because these next sections will be heavy topics and some critiques.
Let's Dive More into the Scholarship Student Discrimination Topic Now
This entire scene exchange took up around 20 minutes or so but set up many things I want to talk about here.
I find this line fascinating for a few reasons. This meant that despite the scholarship students getting a better education than they would if they went to a normal, public school, with the current system, they couldn't use that to its fullest potential after graduation. This also showed possible bias from Chisato.
There was an earlier scene in the club room where she was saying that the scholarship students weren't that important to running a campaign or keeping the club from being disbanded (which makes sense to a degree). The context for me felt a bit more like a front because not everyone in the club possibly cared about that situation as much as her or Yuuki (as shown later on). It's like saying that a certain class or race of people will never amount to anything because the system won't let them (and she's somewhat been defeated by that system), so it's a fact that Mike (the girl in question) can never amount to more.
I've noticed something interesting with multiple different exchanges with various students: everyone wants something out of everyone else in all instances. Mike is a scholarship student but she and Chisato had been friends for awhile (but rarely interact in public due to their standings and no longer being in the same classes). One of the major ways a student attending this academy could get expelled was by having any kind of part time work outside of class (even if it's needed as a scholarship student to keep food on the table and to purchase extra supplies and whatnot). This school was heavily divided by who had money and who didn't, so when Chisato sought out Mike to get her signature, I viewed it as an honest attempt at reconnecting while doing her job in spite of all of that.
After getting her signature and convincing another student to try and sign up, the entire tone of the scene shifted. The VN showed more of what those students were going through. It's also been confirmed that much of this started within the last year but it was quite a bit worse several years back when the program started. The first year, all students were a part of the same classes but then the second year on, they were separated completely by financial standing (except in certain classes like this cooking one due to not having enough students in either group to keep it going otherwise). Furthermore, they weren't allowed to join clubs or participate in many of the common activities that normal students would be allowed to. I don't know if this system was set up to protect the scholarship students or to make them "other" peoples but currently, it's not working in a safe way.
A common complaint that I've seen online lobbed at both the adaptation and original was that they handled this whole subplot too heavily handed, but I disagree, at least in regards to the original. I genuinely think that being up front and approaching these kinds of topics head on (like it was here), especially if they're a core part of the story and setting, is my preferred way of portraying them. People want to be entertained by media, sure. I definitely do myself, but "art imitates life" they say. I felt that by giving as much time as they did here (not completely due to how slow I read, either), it gave more weight to the material at hand. It's also nice to have a balance between comedy and drama. The adaptation chose what was more marketable and fun at the cost of keeping that balance, in my personal opinion.
Now, a Possible Turn Off For Some People
My sexuality doesn't really matter to this discussion but both versions executed a trope that will rub some people wrong: Oboro was very gay and definitely had a man crush on Yuuki. I don't exactly love how the Anime handled it but it wasn't a major issue due to how quickly it started and moved on from it as the series ran. Here, it only just showed up in my last 2 full sessions and just was kind of slid in there without any provocation or warning.
The first instance, Yuuki was creeped out but didn't feel like saying anything. It seemed out of character for Oboro and could have been misinterpreted (like some of the "video game" stuff had been so far). Now, it's a bit more prevalent (in terms of where it's placed and how it's affecting the pace of the story).
With the Anime, it's not that it didn't happen at the same general plot beats as here (because it did); it's that they rushed through quite a bit of the other content to create the first 3 or 4 episodes (which makes sense for a 50+ hour VN, for sure). There's just that much more dialogue that was not adapted that I'm starting to realize was used where it was for reasons (but could possibly not fully work for a 12 episode Anime adaptation).
One thing that the Anime did differently: his passes at Yuuki had a musical cue tied to them. It was very downplayed in the original and, in this scene specifically, it was almost completely ignored. I don't fully know how I feel about either approach, now that I think about it.
Now, a Change Made in the Adaptation (That I have Some Words About)
I kind of wish the Anime hadn't added an original scene here. The club was looking to use Yaoi Sticks (Oboro's family's new hot commodity) as an extra giveaway for promotional purposes, but the adaptation decided to take it one step further and add a scene where Non-chan created a back massaging machine that could help keep them physically relaxed and loose as they manually placed labels on all of the sticks. It was kind of amusing and did "fit" with how her machines were only partially useful (especially the See-Through Glasses) but I would have preferred some of the cut content inserted instead. Non-chan had plenty of scenes they could have replaced it with. I don't remember the classroom scene being shown in the Anime with Mike. If that was, it wasn't impactful enough for me to really notice or remember it.
I feel that how this was executed in the original was perfectly adequate. They went off and purchased their needed supplies while Oboro's dad delivered the sticks. Then it just cut to this scene where Yuuki and Chisato were about to go grocery shopping for ingredients for his Oojima Rolls. The rest of my session (about 15 minutes or so) was just them both openly talking about their feelings about everything coming up and getting on the same page. I love their "personal" moments sprinkled throughout so far.
This entire session was very dense. I hope you enjoyed my thoughts here, and I'll be continuing to post in the future as I go. What were your thoughts? Are you also playing this? Leave your comments below, vote and reblog. Thanks for reading have a wonderful night.