Harmonia is my favourite Key work, plain and simply. It is very different from their other stories, so I understand that it could betray many fans’ expectations. But personally, I was actually fed up with Key recycling their stories and concepts. I wanted something original, and Harmonia served exactly that.
While it is the same setting as Planetarian (post-apocalyptic world), it actually has nothing to do with it at all.
The main story is much more fleshed out than usual (except for Rewrite), the characters work much better together than usual (in every other Key work, the characters have their individual stories, as a result all these stories don’t blend in altogether ; it’s not the case here, every story matters in the grand scheme of things), it was also darker than usual as the mood is extremely depressing (arid ground, dry and dusty air, dead and dirty places, …)
Its short length makes it fairly easy to read, and I am definitely not against the “kinetic” format (no parallel story = better tied-in story).
The characters… they’re definitely not the best from Key, taken individually. But as I said before, they’re meant to work together, not individually. In that regard, what seems like the least developed crew turns out to be one of the best written group of characters from Key.
The OST is great, even for Key (especially Tristitia, which is a masterpiece).
The story is pure Key work: it had that charm and that subtlety, that magic recipe that plays with your heart and brain up until the very end.
Finally… that title screen, seriously! As soon as I launched the VN and got to the title screen, I was already mind-blown. That mood was just so much, I literally stayed on that screen for several minutes.
But of course, this isn’t perfect.
While I love the visuals, there’s one issue with it: the characters are hashed, I don’t understand why. I actually thought this was a bug, but it turns out, it’s part of the chara-design… Pretty weird. It’s still far better than any previous Key work though.
Then, I have to admit, I don’t want to count the post-generic scene. Before that scene, i found the end perfect. The very last scene, however, kind of screws it up in my opinion.
Finally… man, I really wish they had made it longer. They just scratched the surface of the world they created. While they did talk about everything they had to, I really wish we’d learned more about the Phiroids.
And I think that’s pretty much it. Harmonia was near-perfect in my opinion. It’s a mix between Pixar’s Upside Down movie and HBO’s Westworld series, made in Key. It’s a perfect combination!
