Karifean's Blog of Visual Novels

From left to right: Misha, Shizune, Hisao

Shizune is a character I wouldn't have thought I'd appreciate much. She is a deaf girl who is also student council president. In the early parts of the story, Misha - who acts as the interpreter for her - and Shizune are on your case all the freaking time and it can be quite annoying. That is unless you go for Shizune's route in which case Hisao actually ends up appeciating their attention as it took his mind off his initial self-pity and made him get back into enjoying life.

Before I go into detail about Shizune's route, I'll quickly talk about the common route bad end which I so happened to get. If you put up with Shizune and Misha's intrusiveness for long enough, they'll eventually barge into Hisao's room and start asking about his meds. Now you're supposed to be nice and calmly dodge the subject but I was quite annoyed with the two of them myself and picked the more aggressive "kick them out of my room".

...well that was the last I heard of them. Following that the festival arrived and it turns out I hadn't completed the necessary requirements to enter ANY heroine's route, so instead Hisao ended up being depressed for the day until finally going up to the rooftop with Kenji to drink alcohol. And after a bit of comedy and insight into Kenji's character Hisao ends up falling down from the roof and the game ends as it fades to red. Quite a poignant ending, huh. I guess it's not the smartest idea to avoid people when you're depressed.

And that's all there is to the common route bad end, now for Shizune. There was something unsettling about her route; the distinct lack of choices. I think following the initial choices to enter the route in the first place there was exactly one and no more. That choice was all it took to decide good/bad end. Quite a contrast to, say, Rin's route which is filled with all sorts of choices (and I still haven't gone through half of them).

In fact, not much happens during Shizune's route at all. It feels like a very long extension of the common route in atmosphere and tone albeit with a focus on Misha and Shizune. Only by the end of Act 3 does a bit of drama strike. So yeah, quite a slow-paced route, though not as bad as Rin's route.

From here on out it's heavy spoilers for Shizune's route.

Admittedly the impact was heavier, having this be the only choice in the route.

As should be no surprise, Hisao and Shizune end up getting romatically involved. Hisao ends up learning sign language for the very purpose of communicating with Shizune. Eventually though there is a bit of trouble with Misha. You see, Misha is pretty attached to Shizune. Misha mainly came to this school to learn sign language and in doing so became quite attached to Shizune. However, Shizune is not someone who looks far into the future, but rather sees life in bite-sized pieces, which comes back to haunt Misha now that high school is almost over as she is not quite as ready to sever contact with Shizune as Shizune probably is.

Why is this such a problem... well I'll give you a hint: There is no Misha route in this game.

"Wahaha~"

That being said though, this is pretty much glossed over in the route. Misha brings it up here and reminisces a bit about when she confessed to Shizune, and then nobody ever really talks about it ever again.

In fact, as long as you didn't opt to "Comfort Misha" before, everything turns out fine and dandy. Naturally Shizune x Misha never happens, but everyone gets the strength to move on and accept their eventual parting. Shizune also becomes more self-aware and mature. If you did comfort Misha however the route still goes on for a while but Shizune eventually decides that she needs to stay away from people for a while and that's where it ends.

It takes her quite a while to realize this mistake.

Most of Act 4 is spent dispelling the tension between Shizune and Misha whose relationship is a bit strained over the eventual parting that Misha finds herself unable to accept easily. But after a lengthy talk with Hisao she ends up getting over it. And that's pretty much all the drama that ever happens in this route, then it's on to the conclusion.

Thankfully, this route offers more overall closure than either of the other routes I've read so far. For one it goes until graduation. Then both Shizune and Hisao end up making somewhat concrete plans for their future. I liked that. Emi's route had a bit of that but not much. A lot of side characters were introduced, like Shizune's brother, father, and Lilly's sister. Some good moments were had, but overall they weren't very memorable characters. Still, I wonder if they feature in Lilly's route as well.



That's it for Shizune's route. Not much happened but it was fine. I kinda liked it though I can't put my finger on why.

Next up is Hanako's route. Looking forward to it.