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Karifean's Blog of Visual Novels

Cross†Channel First Impressions

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Well... I've never felt this in the dark about how a visual novel might turn out.



At first glance Cross†Channel takes place in a typical highschool setting. Immediatly the protagonist, Taichi Kurosu, turns out to be one of the most annoying characters I've seen in a while because he spends every scene sexually harassing one of the girls. No, seriously, I can't think of a single scene involving a female character where Taichi didn't sexually harass them in some way.



If that premise sounds *wonderful* already, well you better get used to it because the entire prologue is like that. But it seems Taichi's obsession makes way more sense than it should, because the school the story is set in is actually a special school for "people who cannot fit into society". Well damn, all of a sudden that makes sense.



The girls on the other hand... seem pretty normal. For now at least. I could picture them being in any other highschool anime environment. But, well, I'll just assume they're in this school for a reason, and that reason will become clearer as I go. I don't have much to say about the individual girls yet as there hasn't really been any notable interaction with them yet that didn't involve staring at or touching their breasts and asses. From the sparse dialogues I did have with them I guess I could assign them typical anime cliché labels, but that would be pretty premature because... come on, I'm only like five hours in.



So how's Cross†Channel been as a reading experience so far? Well to Taichi's credit at least he's a damn good narrator. As annoying as his narration tends to be around the girls, when things are better the narration is quite witty and interesting. Not to mention some of the dialogues were pretty funny as well.



Oh yes, I need to mention this. The translator's notes. Right off the bat you have a choice between "all", "some" or "no" translator notes. I picked the recommended "some" and OH MY GOD THERE'S SO FREAKING MANY OF THEM. Every minute or so you run into a translator note, which starts to get silly fast if you read for a good hour or two. Sometimes it's helpful stuff, most of the time I just wish they'd taken liberties with the translation to have the explanations be intuitive.

Story-wise I still have no idea what the hell's going on. Basically almost all the characters I've met so far are part of the school's Broadcasting Club. Near the end of the prologue, they all come together for once to make an actual broadcast. How to call their channel? Well the speaker is Taichi Kurosu, so they bring up the name "Kurosu Channel". You can probably see where this is going.



So Taichi steps forward to speak and says one line... just one line that made me stop in my tracks. Because I had a feeling, but seeing it being said outright like that was still... unnerving.

That line being this one:



*cue opening movie*

It's sometimes said that even just knowing what Cross†Channel is all about is a spoiler in itself, so I might not post any further impressions. All I can leave you with for now is... I'm intrigued. I want to know what's going on. The MC is annoying a lot of times but likeable at others. The other characters all have the potential to be deep, rich characters, or the exact opposite.

Whatever it may end up as, I'll see it through to the end.

Oh, by the way. Optional H scenes involving main heroines in the prologue. No further comment.

Comments

  1. Pumpkin's Avatar
    Umm I want to know what's going on with the is anyone alive out there but the rest seems very... not for me