=> gemini://sdf.org/yuno/ yuno's slice of life emporium #D.C. Da Capo. A Visual Novel I Quite Liked. This isn't an anime review at all, this is actually me talking about a visual novel I finished yesterday. Yes, as if this gemlog could get any more niche, I'm not writing about semi-obscure visual novels from the early 2000s. I'm a big fan of VNs, and one thing about them that's interesting to me is their historical vallue. The origin of "moe" comes really from these earlier visual novels. This will in fact come into play with this VN in particular as you will see, there's a link to a popular anime. I'm going to review each route of this game one by one, and this review will ABSOLUTELY SPOIL THE WHOLE GAME. IF YOU HAVE ANY INTENTION OF PLAYING THE GAME, YOU SHOULD DO SO BEFORE YOU READ THIS POST. The Story lines in Da Capo each rely on the intruigue behind their respective character, with a twist towards the end of the routes, (somewhat like a traditional kishotenketsu structure). Knowing spoilers will significantly effect your experience of the game. ## Common route and game overview. Da capo is very much a "typical" romance genre eroge, but that's what I appreciate about it. It's quite full of tropes, and it's self aware about these tropes. Some people from reading other reviews, are put off by this, but for me, I'm perfectly ok with this. In fact again, I quite like studying the progression and origin of anime tropes. The heroines can be split up into 4 groups: * Sakura and Nemu, who are both members of a love triangle with the MC * Kotori, who is related to the other stories but somewhat self contained * Moe and Mako, who are sisters. Mako's route is very short, she's a side heroine, so Moe is the main girl here * Miharu and Yoriko, Who are both unlocked after completing all the other routes as "bonus heroines". Miharu's route is also quite short so I can count her also as a "side heroine". I should warn you, this game does contain incest, some people may be put off by that. If you are, uhhh, don't read it. But you weren't going to anyway, were you? The common route is a little strange. Da Capo is a game with a lot of choices, not just in the form of the typical visual novel multiple choice answer lists, but also every day you choose where to go in the school during lunch break, where to go after school, and when to set your alarm clock for the next day. Because of this, even the common route isn't that common, since depending on where you go, different scenarios will play out with various heroines. I found that it was the weakest part of the game, most of it is centered around preparing for and completing end of year exams, and some wacky hijinx. Most of the character building stuff happens in each respective route, or on the way to each route via the choices you make during the common route. So I will now go through each heroine one by one and give you my thoughts. ## Sakura Sakura's route is an interesting place to start. She's the MC's cousin, but she's also a witch. Although she was close to the MC during childhood, she moved to america for years and only just came back. However, her appearence hasn't changed due to magic. All of the routes are related ot the magic of the never dying cherry blossom tree in the island, and as it turns out that tree is linked to sakura's magic, which in turn is linked to the magic of the witch that was her and the main character's grandmother. While the protag only gained the ability to produce wagashi from his hands, and the slightly more useful ability to see into other people's dreams, Sakura seemingly gained full witch powers. What's particularly interesting about that is that in this world, being a witch is super OP, demi-god level of powers. Sakura's route reminded me in fact of haruhi. The main twist of this route is that because of her powers, the world sort of bends to sakura's will, even without her intentionally doing so. For example , she wanted to be smart, and so it turns out she has 160 IQ. She wanted to become a teacher, so they instantly let her become a teacher. And crucially, she had a crush on the main character, so the main character started to love her back. This leads her to have a sort of mental breakdown, where she can't tell what in her life is real, and what was caused by her powers. Even the love of the main character is left ambigious. Would he have fallen for her if it weren't for her powers? According to the game, it doesn't ultimately matter, because love is love no matter why it happens, and this ends with a possitive conclusion to the story line. The other thing that's happening in the mean time is Nemu getting sick and throwing up flower petals. Again, how much of this is caused by Nemu's own magical relations to the MC, and how much of it is caused by Sakura's jelousy of Nemu being close to MC. It's a somehwat tragic tail even though it ends well. I thought it was interesting how this is kind of similar to Haruhi , even though it came out years earlier. ## Nemu Nemu is the main character's (non-blood related) imouto, and I am a sucker for imouto chara. Therefore Nemu is best girl. The main tension of Nemu's arc is her getting sick as she gets closer to the MC. Out of all the routes, I thought that the actual romance aspect was best in Nemu's arc, the way in which these two slowly fall in love and confess their feelings felt the most authentic and they had great chemistry. Nemu's character design is also my favourite. Unfortunately, the closer the two get, the more sick nemu becomes, coughing up sakura petals. The repeated imagery of a young girl surrounded by blood red cherry blossom petals I thought was quite powerful, and tragic. Ultimately, Nemu's memories of MC have to be wiped in order for her to live, but against all logic, you must persue her anyway, because love can't be stopped by anything as silly as logic or death. The only thing I thought was strange is the very end. It seems like it's going to be a tragic story, where nemu dies or becomes seriously ill in the end, only for everything to miraculously turn out ok. But with the context from Sakura's arc, it seems like sakura actually sacrificed her own jelousy and happiness for the sake of the main character, lending a satisfying conclusion to the love triangle. ## Kotori I wasn't expecting to like Kotori's route as much as I did. Kotori is a popular girl in school who likes to sing, sort of like a school idol. The magical gimmick of kotori is that she can read minds. She was adopted at a young age, but couldn't understand her new familyy at all. She was crying and the witch saw this, so she granted her the power to read minds so that she could get along with everyone. The way that the game "subtly" hints that she can read minds is laughably obvious, it's not even a mystery at all when it's revealed to the MC. However, the twist of the story is that the sakura tree dies, meaning she actually loses her ability. Then you have to ponder the situation, "someone who could read minds all their life suddenly cannot", and how someone would deal with that. I thought it was pretty emotionally moving, the way it was dealt with, the way she has to take a leap of faith with the protagonists love for her. A commentary on how the world is inherently uncertain, and how we can deal with that. While it wasn't my favourite, I still thought it brought it all together in the end to be an effective story. ## Moe Of all the routes I thought that Moe's was the most relatable to me. Moe is a very sleepy girl, that is her primary character trait. She also loves hot-pot, and will go on long rants about the history of hot pot. Cute autism girl. I really liked the voice actress for Moe. Her route is a pretty straight foreward romance, although I thought it was well done. It's not easy to construct a cast of different girls and yet have good chemistry on all of their routes, but I think D.C. pulls it off. I thought the way she's always sleepy was very cute, and there's some sort of moe from her playing the xylophone badly. I mean moe as moeru no moe not Moe the character. But then the shocking twist of Moe's arc is revealed, she's sleepy all the time because she takes a lot of sleeping pills. She does this because her childhood friend died saving her life when she was a child, and the only way she can still see him is when she's dreaming. So she constantly takes sleeping pills in order to dream about him. I found this revea l very effective, and quite dramatic and emotionally moving. As someone who has been through loss, and has used sleeping pills irresponsibly out of mental health issues myself in the past, it felt like a very personal story to me. Even though the story beats beyond that were fairly predictable, I found them to be effective. I really wanted to root for Moe. Towards the end, she takes a whole bottle of pills to sleep forever, and I found the imagery of a bishoujo character with an empty bottle of sleeping pills quite powerful. But of course she wakes up and is ok in the end. Medetashi medetashi. ## Mako Mako's route in my opinion was the worst one, but that might be because she is kind of a tomboy character and I'm not very interested in tomboys. It's also the shortest route so it wasn't a big problem. In her route, the main character at first is just roped into pretending to be her boyfriend for practical reasons. Of course, as is the trope, this pretending turns into just being her boyfriend quite soon. I thought that the protag and Mako had good chemistry, but they had the chemistry of two long time childhood friends, rather than romantic partners in my opinion. It wasn't awful as a route, but I didn't find it to be anything special. I will say, it's a little strange to read after the Moe route, knowing that all the throwaway moments of Moe falling asleep randomgly actually has such a dark reason behind it. ## Miharu This is definitely the weirdest route in the game. Surrealy, Miharu gets put into a coma after an accident and a robot version of miharu comes to replace her. She is extremely genki and excitable, her energy is infectious. Especially since robot Miharu is seeing the world for the first time, it can pull the somewhat gloomy protag out of his malaise so he can appreciate the beauty of mandane things. MC guy and miharu fall in love, although it seems that the real miharu also had a crush on him before hand. They then have to take care of Miharu as she hides the fact that she's a robot from the rest of the school. There is some drama when Nemu finds out the truth, and struggles to accept robot Miharu as a person (since she is close friends with real Miharu). However, in a somewhat cliche twist, it turns out that robomiharu only has a short time left to live. While she tries to recover the memories of the real Miharu, she ends up making new ones with our protagonist. While this route wasn't awful, I wouldn't say it was my favourite one. The premise is very surreal, and there were some times when it was played for comedy effectively, it was the only time when the cliche-ness started to take away from the story for me. I still enjoyed it though. ## Yoriko Ok I take it back, this one is actually the weirdest route. Yoriko is a secret heroine, in that you don't even see her at all or know she exists unless you do her route. This already is weird, considering the other routes all intertwine and refference each other, tying the world together. Even before you get onto any character's route, you've gotten to know them in the common route or in the background of other routes. Yoriko is simply not present at all until her route. This route almost feels like a victory lap or reward for completeling the game, since it's the most "wish fullfilment" type story line. As in, Yoriko is quite literally a catgirl maid who starts living with the main character. It is shameless otaku fanservice and for that I love it. It made me wonder, "if catirl maid was already a trope back in 2002, I wonder where it comes from". But I couldn't find an answer as to the origin of this trope. It seems like catirls and maids evolved seperately, but I can't find where they become connected. Any way, yoriko's route is quite slice of life focused for the majority, which isn't a bad thing, (this is my slice of life emporium after all). But there are also emotional twists and turns in the route. I found yoriko to be quite cute, and it was a nice satisfying conclusion to the game, as I said the level of indulgence and fanservice of a bishoujo nekomimi maid coming to live with you out of nowhere in itself was gratifying. So that's my review of Da Capo. For some reason, i feel like it's under rated, although it's not a masterpiece or anything. Just solid, standard stuff all the way through. I will say, the H scenes were really short and sometimes awkwardly drawn. I really thought the H scenes were a weak point in this game. Ok thanks for reading bye.