Karifean's Blog of Visual Novels

don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story is an original English indie visual novel created by ALPB Soft and Christine Love. It's most notable for its somewhat unusual method of storytelling.

Overview

The story follows teacher John Rook as he gets to know and helps his seven students. The school has an internal social network called AmieConnect which the students use frequently - or rather, all the time - to communicate. The catch is that the main character as a teacher gets to observe and read all comunication on that network without the students' knowledge.

Holy crap I'm playing as purple-haired Kristoph Gavin!

And so you get to read every. single. one. of your students' private messages and wall posts as your counter in the top right corner, indicating your unread messages, is constantly rising. And by constantly I mean constantly. There might just be more private messages in than actual lines of dialogue in this game.

With that, you are always one step ahead when it comes to the students' problems, and when they take John up on his offer to give advice should they need it, you always already know what it's about in advance. So that hopefully you can give everyone the advice they need...

Structure

Although the amount of choices is far from low this visual novel is rather linear. Depending on your picks you eventually go through either Chapter 6a or 6b, and end up with one of three possible endings. It takes about 2-3 hours to complete this novel 100%. There are no unlockables or anything of the sort.

Characters

The characters are obviously the main focus of this visual novel, in particular the group of students and their dynamic as such. Instead of being like a galge with every student's problem being independent from one another, they are actually very intertwined and mostly deal with the group as a whole rather than just any individual student.

The characters include Arianna, a girl with a not-so-subtle crush on the protagonist, Taylor, a very self-centered girl who easily manages to piss everyone off, Nolan, Taylor's ex-boyfriend whom she will not leave alone, Akira and Kendall, a homosexual guy and girl both of whose spoken language is so internet it hurts to read, Charlotte, Kendall's ex-girlfriend and the only one who actually pays attention in class, and Isabella... who I'm not even gonna talk about.

Uh... thanks, I guess?

The majority of the character insight and interaction not involving the main protagonist happens in AmieConnect. The students are perpetually chatting about meaningful or meaningless things and you get to spy on it. Should you? Hell yes. This is some of the most fun dialogue in this visual novel and it would lose a lot of its content and appeal without it.

Now I haven't really talked about the main character yet. John Rook is a twice-divorced man in I think his early thirties or so and his resolution as a teacher is to not be as boring of a teacher as the ones he had. He's always there to give advice as needed which is the catalyst for much of what happens, but in terms of focus this really is a story mostly about the students, not the teacher. Don't take it personally, babe...

Story

With its linear structure and focus on characters it should come as no surprise that you basically go through all the characters' problems more or less in order. I say more or less because some chapters are heavily connected to others and don't focus on just one character at a time. I had no problems with this setup, it made everything feel rather fluid and not at all disconnected.

The high school setting depicted in this visual novel is notably different from most Japan-made visual novels in the same setting, as this one has a way more... "western" feel to it. The characters act in a way I'd expect from any American TV show in the same setting, which while not my preferred choice of story was a nice change of pace for once.

Besides AmieConnect, there's also a site you have to frequent from time to time called "12channel". Yep, you can already guess what that's like. It's satirical of a lot of Japanese popular culture and sometimes rather amusing. Other times, not so much. I would've at least liked it better if the game didn't force you to read every single post.

*walks away whistling*

Now as for the story itself, well I'll be honest and say that compared to Japanese visual novels in a similar setting I've read (CLANNAD, for example) the character arcs in this one were rather... for lack of a better word, plain. It probably won't shock or evoke any special emotions in you, it just happens. But that's fine, that's probably not what this visual novel set out to be anyways. It's just simple, everyday stories about a group of students in their late teens. If that isn't your thing, this visual novel probably won't strike you as particularly memorable.

I do quite like the ending, though.

Summary

don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story is a very short read, and one you can easily just go through if you have two hours to fill. It has a fun cast of characters and their interactions are quite enjoyable, especially those over AmieConnect. It just - most likely - won't be all that memorable.

The whole thing with the social network actually worked well, although if you're like me you'll probably end up reading all the new messages the instant they're posted, which means clicking that button every 2-3 lines of text most of the time. It also gets a bit annoying on replays when the game still forces you to read unread plot-relevant messages, making skipping through a bit more of a hassle than necessary. Nonetheless, I liked the system, I definitely prefer it to Steins;Gate's Phone Triggers.

Overall, I give this visual novel a

6 / 10

You're not gonna see me going around universally recommending this visual novel anytime soon, but I still liked it.