Harmonia General Discussion

[Aspirety]

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General discussion topic for the Harmonia franchise, and more specifically the Harmonia kinetic novel. Feel free to talk about the entirety of the kinetic novel without using spoiler tags, but feel free to do so at your own discretion. But please make sure to tag references to outside content with [spoiler], providing adequate context in parenthesis. To those who have yet to finish Harmonia, we advise extreme caution when browsing this topic. Go read Harmonia first and then come back!

We’ll also be keeping an eye on this topic for the Harmonia Bookclub, so if there’s any particular topics you’d like to see brought up in the podcast, highlight them in bold so we see them easily. We’ll also use discussion here to decide on a Harmonia Bookclub MVP, so be sure to leave lots of awesome posts for us to see!

[Anime_HD]

I’m really looking forward to it I have been waiting a while for them to do a translation for it

[Aspirety]

This game has AMAZING presentation, possibly the best of any Key VN to date. It just feels so polished! And the music is incredible too.

[Anime_HD]

so far i am liking the art style and the soundtrack its kinda unique

[Aspirety]

Anyone notice how all the sprites have an animated filter over them?

EDIT: I’m gonna start taking notes as I read so I have lots of things to bring up here.

[BlackHayate02]

I’m only in Chapter 1 yet, and wow the production is amazing! Hinoue isn’t the only one who has shown vast improvement here. I haven’t seen Angel Beats! yet to compare, but there’s quite a strong attention to detail put in the programming. I instantly love the adventurous track at the start of Ch 1, and whoever composed this definitely outdid themself, may it be an Orito or a Mizutsuki.

[DangoDaikazoku]

I haven’t bought it yet, but I’m just laughing at the fact Key used (or at least authorized) the term “Onion cutting simulator” here:

Steam :: Harmonia :: Key's 15th anniversary Kinetic Novel 'Harmonia'

[John_Smith]

:love: that’s not very subtle of you there, Key…

[BlackHayate02]

Just the scene with Rei walking along the deserted earth frantically trying to find signs of life as he runs out of energy pills and likewise, hope, got me emotionally. I’m quite excited on how it will hit me in the feels soon :))

Again, I’m still very early to the story, but I’m really enjoying the Slice-of-Life moments in this kinetic novel. It’s not like there’s much happening yet, but I’m pleasantly surprised that I’m not finding the interactions boring by any means. Without relying much on comedy yet (well the interactions with Madd so far can get funny), I’m already finding the SoL to be lightly fun and charming.

I still think that Harmonia has nice art, but Shiona’s sprite zooming in suddenly was rather jarring. It doesn’t help that her pose looked rather stiff, and her eyes kinda scare me. :\

[John_Smith]

Madd makes my head hurt

[ZakM]

u Madd bro?

Get it? Because he’s mad all the time? and he’s called Madd?:fukowa::fukowa::fukowa:

[liclac]

So… what do the buttons in the bottom right actually do?

[HeliosAlpha]

So… what do the buttons in the bottom right actually do?

It’s auto mode, skip mode, backlog, lock the menu, and finally a bell for style points. Maybe the bell is there for awareness, but fuck if I know.

Btw, I finished it. It’s definitely far from the best KEY has done, but no one really expected more. As mentioned, the visual presentation is way above anything else especially in chapter 4. It’s gonna get compared to planetarian a lot probably, and man does it lose that battle.

[CaptainQuinn]

I finished it, I thought it was really good and extremely Key. I don’t think it was as good as Planetarian but I still enjoyed it a lot. The moment in chapter 5 really caught me off guard and I had to take a break from the game for a bit but I really liked how it was resolved in the end. I think Towa no Hoshi e might be my new favorite Key vocal track, it’s so good. I saw some people saying it was a 10 hour game but it only took me 3 to finish, although I do read pretty fast. I have the Key calendar and I noticed the characters in the Harmonia picture on it looked a bit different from how they looked in game which I thought was interesting:

[ZakM]

Just going to regurgitate what I said earlier on Discord and add a little.

I just finished Harmonia a few hours ago and overall I’m not too impressed. All in all feeling a little underwhelmed.

I found a lot of it pretty predictable and fairly weak in terms of thematic exploration outside of the surface level of depth. As a result I don’t really feel like I learned or took away anything special from the experience because it felt like it was over before it even began.

I felt like Madd needed some more character building with more of a framework outside of being an Esaka tryhard screaming asshat, because I found it impossible to empathise with him when watching his son’s video and henceforth his death that follows right after. I dont understand him, who he is, what he does, and why I should have cared about him.

I would have liked to have learned a little bit more about Shiona’s past, and perhaps some more info on her ‘brother’, and more about the human hunter clans that were forcibly claiming land from the Phiroids, and generally a little bit more world building. With the exception of Tipi and Rei; Shiona and Madd felt hollow and lack a level of nuance that would have them at least more bearable to read.

The ending was bizarre, but believable I guess. Nothing too noteworthy but it did kind of take away the tension of having seen them ‘die’ 10 minutes earlier.

There was potential and great stuff in there, but not enough to have me fully invested. As I see it, it was over before it even began, and that saddens me.

Also. 10/10 soundtrack. Kreygasm.

[SuikaShoujo]

I just finished it after reading nonstop for about 3 and a half hours. I couldn’t put it down. :komue:

I would start off by saying that it’s a very “Key” VN, which is probably why I liked it so much. Each character gets their own little arc as the story builds towards the finale, some slice of life happens in the beginning-middle, tears are shed by everyone at the end. (Or, if you’re Tipi, pretty much the entire time.) There were scenes and characters that felt like specific callbacks/copy-pastes from older Key works, too. I can’t be the only one who saw shades of CLANNAD in the film Madd’s son made, and Madd himself is, like some have already stated, pretty much Esaka Lite. Also, this may just be my bias talking, but I saw shades of Komari in Shiona, especially near the beginning. Always smiling, inexplicable dialogue quirks, blonde hair, a goal to make everyone happy… let’s face it, Shiona would be an avid supporter of the happiness spiral theory.

But that said, I don’t know how fair it is to compare it directly to Planetarian. Sure, they have similar settings and share the Kinetic Novel format, but at their cores they are very different stories with very different atmospheres. I feel like Planetarian put its emphasis on atmosphere and worldbuilding, while Harmonia spent more time on its characters and plot. That’s not to say that either is completely lacking in the opposite, but they do feel like two very distinct experiences. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing! I would rather experience a brand new story than watch Key try and recreate a game they made over 10 years ago.

As for the characters, while I do wish that we could have seen a bit more backstory and development for some of them, particularly Shiona, I think for a short kinetic novel we got an okay amount. This isn’t, say, Clannad or Little Busters, where they had over 50 hours to examine every intricate detail of a character’s life and personality. They had a story to tell, they gave us the necessary information, and left the rest to our imagination. I would love if we got some side materials in the future of some sort that expands on things a bit, whether it’s character-specific or expansion on the world as a whole, but for now I’m satisfied enough.

So overall, there were some aspects that felt rushed, a few cliches I’m sure we all saw coming, and other nitpicks, but overall I’m pretty pleased with Harmonia, and mostly think it was worth the long wait. (For the first time I found myself paying close attention to sound effects, just to hear the effort that was apparently put in.:kurumu:)

[bionic]

I was looking forward to a 10 hour experience, but alas, it was about 3 and a half :masdum:

I really liked Harmonia. First off, the presentation was astonishing. Music, visuals, small subtleties like the sound effects, all of it (I’m sure everyone agrees). On top of that, there were very few mistakes regarding machines and assembly, which was the icing on the cake (eh I like to nitpick).

As predictable as some parts were/became, I was really caught off guard when it was revealed that Rei was human (and that line from Todoketai Melody “a single drop in the dry sand”, pretty cool tying back to that). I kinda had my mouth hanging open for the rest of the KN, which was pretty rushed. Somewhere in the middle, however, a memory of one of my personal life experiences resurfaced, an experience that had to do with the major theme of the story. Maybe by pure coincidence, or maybe by excellent foreshadowing??? I have no idea, honestly, but it was pretty shocking/cool to me.

Did anyone else get (LB!) Kyousuke/Rin vibes from the interactions between Shiona and Tipi? Like the whole (LB!) as much as it hurts me, I’ll do what’s best for you thing.

10/10 tied a 100lb weight to my heart

[cjlim2007]

This story made me feel all kinds of weird things… I don’t even know. First of all like everyone else, I love the art style, music, backgrounds, everything. The art style with its like animated sketch style looks really pretty and its just something I’ve never seen before. I was expecting Todoketai Melody to start playing and have like an opening sequence but that didn’t happen, not that I’m upset about that or anything. Also Towa no Hoshi e killed me. Just after the KN ingrains that melody into your mind you can’t not be emotionally affected by it. Just. No. I got reaalllyy close to crying when it played. Anyways onto the plot.

So the plot… was kinda weird. But I like it. Started with key-like SoL? kinda? SoL in a post apocalyptic world? Idk. Then like helping Shiona and Madd. I thought Shiona was gonna go yandere in the Tipi arc but then giant plot twist which I actually noticed was very nicely foreshadowed. I felt like I knew that Shiona, Madd, and Tipi were going to be phiroids due to their weird emotion restrictions but I also thought Rei was a phiroid and that didn’t happen. Anyways moving on, I think the story would’ve benefited if there was more backstory on Madd. Like, how does he have a son if he’s a phiroid? Anyways, during the second half, I couldn’t stop the thought of (Planetarian spoilers? kinda? technically its in the trailer but w/e) please do not split heaven in two from reappearing in the back of my mind.

Random comments: when characters suddenly zoom in, its kinda funny. Especially in like the early chapters when Shiona just zooms in rapidly, just imagine a knife and you’ll know why I thought Shiona was going to be yandere. I wonder what the religious meaning of this story is. They literally recited the Lord’s Prayer and Planetarian undeniably has Christian meaning in it so its not farfetched to think key did it again with another KN. I also have mention that right before Harmonia released, hella people were in the voice channel and @Aspirety was like “I bet Madd is gonna die” or something to that effect, so I was kinda like omfg when Madd was revealed to be dead.

Tl;dr It was worth staying up til 12am to download it and then wait 19 hours later to actually play the game. 9/10, although I personally like Planetarian better, but that might change once bookclub analysis starts.

[HeliosAlpha]

I thought Shiona was gonna go yandere in the Tipi arc

In chapter 4 I was all like: Plz Shiona-san don’t kill me. In the library when it was dark and the colors were muted, that shit was spooky.

Aspirety was like “I bet Madd is gonna die”

There was talk about all characters, and technically most of them had a death scene. I said Rei would die, and he’s the only one who can be presumed dead at the end.

Like, how does he have a son if he’s a phiroid?

The son was presumably a human. Maybe Madd was made as a replacement of his biological father, or the boy was born without a father through science.

Oh yeah because people mentioned references to other Key stuff, When they’re leaving the town Shiona comments on how the Humans were already in decline in her time. That line is almost a word for word title drop of a novel series by Tanaka Romeo. Most people will remember it by this scene. The only real difference in wording is that she said humans[人間] instead of humanity[人類].