To be clear, regarding Higurashi, I'm pretty thoroughly spoilered already; I've already seen the anime, read the manga, and read a couple different Let's Plays of the VNs, even if this is my first time going through them myself and getting the full experience. So my thoughts on the later chapters are mostly going to be on the various low-level details of character and tone and so forth which the adaptations left out, rather than on the central plot and mysteries.
But, with that said: the one I enjoyed most, this year, was probably Watanagashi. (With a moderately-large remaining chance that it was actually Tatarigoroshi, but I think Watanagashi is in the lead.) Pretty much everything about its character-building, the slow buildup of tension over time, Keiichi's sense of guilt around everything, and so forth were all just beautiful. The Higurashi adaptations... do a decent job of capturing the horror of the things that happen, but don't really manage to capture the sadness of them? But it exists, and it's very well-executed.
(Of course, most of this could be said about both of those chapters. Thus my uncertainty regarding which I enjoyed more. :p)
I'm curious what your stubbornly-held idea of what happened was, in the Danganronpa 2 trial! For my part, I went into the trial with the amusing-in-retrospect mix of things-figured-out and things-very-much-not-figured-out of "had successfully identified the traitor, thought the traitor was likely the culprit (due to being one of the only people in a position to know about the bombs, where I figured the murder would have been done differently had the killer not known about the bombs), but almost completely failed to see through the layers of deception at the murder scene". (I'd considered suicide as an alternate hypothesis, but put it aside for reasons of "I'm not seeing how a suicide-arranged-to-look-like-a-murder in this style would advance the victim's goals", and I had no other plausible alternate hypotheses.) But then the person I thought was the culprit didn't take the win, in the trial, given the chance; and at that point I became Confused until relatively near the end of things, when the truth became clear.
And yeah, I've heard very good things about You and Me and Her and it's on my shortlist of VNs to get next time I notice it on sale. Whenever I get around to playing it, I will report my thoughts in the visualnovels discussion threads as I go!
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2022-12-08 18:04 (UTC)But, with that said: the one I enjoyed most, this year, was probably Watanagashi. (With a moderately-large remaining chance that it was actually Tatarigoroshi, but I think Watanagashi is in the lead.) Pretty much everything about its character-building, the slow buildup of tension over time, Keiichi's sense of guilt around everything, and so forth were all just beautiful. The Higurashi adaptations... do a decent job of capturing the horror of the things that happen, but don't really manage to capture the sadness of them? But it exists, and it's very well-executed.
(Of course, most of this could be said about both of those chapters. Thus my uncertainty regarding which I enjoyed more. :p)
I'm curious what your stubbornly-held idea of what happened was, in the Danganronpa 2 trial! For my part, I went into the trial with the amusing-in-retrospect mix of things-figured-out and things-very-much-not-figured-out of "had successfully identified the traitor, thought the traitor was likely the culprit (due to being one of the only people in a position to know about the bombs, where I figured the murder would have been done differently had the killer not known about the bombs), but almost completely failed to see through the layers of deception at the murder scene". (I'd considered suicide as an alternate hypothesis, but put it aside for reasons of "I'm not seeing how a suicide-arranged-to-look-like-a-murder in this style would advance the victim's goals", and I had no other plausible alternate hypotheses.) But then the person I thought was the culprit didn't take the win, in the trial, given the chance; and at that point I became Confused until relatively near the end of things, when the truth became clear.
And yeah, I've heard very good things about You and Me and Her and it's on my shortlist of VNs to get next time I notice it on sale. Whenever I get around to playing it, I will report my thoughts in the