The thing about human nature is that it’s too damm stubborn. It doesn’t change with just a few words or someone’s sympathy.
Once you get a addiction for something, it’s a hard way out. I once trusted a person, we had spent so much time together and had many secrets together. I even told him about my family situation which was or… is tough. Some days later i found him laughing about it with some of his friends, treating my life as a joke. I had told him to never discuss this with another. When i confronted him he told me that he was just doing it to get acceptance with them, because he wanted to hang out with those cool kids. He thought i wouldn’t mind if he used my/our secret, my feelings for his gain. I told him it was over with us.
But he kept coming back, telling me that he was sorry. I was so naive back then. I accepted it. What happens the next month? I again find him there. Making a gossip out of my and others life. So much for apologetic. I avoided him from then, even if he tried i ignored him. One day he came up to me and i straight away said ‘Fuck off’. I never saw him again after i changed schools so i could get home early. You can go ahead and say i was stupid but i don’t want a single ‘what happened to you was bad’ phrase.
People are hard to change. That day didn’t change him but it changed how i saw people. I am a nice guy but if you do something awful or unacceptable to me i probably won’t give you another chance if i thought what you did was unforgivable.
Anyway that’s just my point of view. That’s what matters, we all have different personality so the way we see the world and other people is totally different. You can trust that it is in the familys to change themselves but I’m gonna be weary, i have already wasted my sympathy and time on one person. I don’t have any more for someone who doesn’t deserve it.
I’ll say it as many times as I have to: I don’t believe in objective morality. And, I don’t like taking strong stances, because I’ll never be able to see a comprehensive, 100% unbiased viewpoint of every situation.
I have to say to my own comment -
-the magic words: not that I’ll let that stop me from trying.
Ultimately, I agree with Odin
Friggen bias. It’s always the kicker, innit?
It could even be that the Futaki’s completely lack awareness of their actions. For example:
if they really, truly believed in their god, then this part could be explained as them trying to save Haruka from eternal damnation or whatever. I don’t think that makes it completely justified all of a sudden, but that’s just me, and it does add nuance to the situation.
Edit: Umineko spoilers: Holy crap I just realised, without love it cannot be seen!
I don’t particularly want to defend people who could just have shit intentions towards everyone other than themselves and just like to ruin people’s lives, but even that’s better than hating and blaming someone who never intended any wrong, or did any wrong.
Innocent until proven guilty.
I guess I may have been too pushy with what this route’s message means, maybe to the point that even I myself was drowned by my idealism so I guess I should set things straight:
There are actions that are unforgivable. And there are people whose intents are not good. And there are times when we must stand up and face those kinds of people head on, make it known that they are wrong, and let them know what they have done is unacceptable and unforgivable.
BUT before we do that, we must learn to understand. Understanding before hatred and forgiveness before revenge. Only once we make the effort to understand and still find it unforgivable do we fight against it. And never give in to hatred while fighting against it, because that hatred may just make you another lock in the chain.
Hello everyone, this post is nothing but complete and utter poison and spite, wouldn’t even read it unless you want to see a really fine example of how angry this route actually made me.(which I once again stress, I feel is a point in it’s favour, I applaud it in it’s ability to provoke strong emotion, even negatively, as it was the intention.probably)
I lack the capacity to muster a single infinitesimal iota of respect for those creatures enough to regard them with anything but contempt and hatred. The prospect that they are capable of so much as the concept of feeling positive emotion is an incomprehensible idea to me.
That people like yourself, and topically, Haruka, can consider the idea that this could happen is great, but I can’t do that, there is no room in my heart for mercy for them.
And it is with great joy to myself that I know they are miserable in their ideals, will live miserable and die miserable.
SHE’S SO GREAT AND WONDERFUL SHE WAS FREED FROM THE PIT OF DESPAIR AND NEVER LOOKED BACK FOR A SECOND AND WALKED TO THE FUTURE FACE FORWARD I LOVE HER.
They also beat a left handed child for using her left hand, and then beat her for failing to preform with her right. Starved said child, then beat her for failing to preform physically while malnourished. Threatened to kill one of those children to blackmail the other one. And more exciting tales from Kanata’s route that I won’t share here.
Peeps, buddy pal friendo. It’s great that you can aim to see the good in people, really, admiral trait. But look at some of that shit, there was what like 15ish years of that shit, I won’t accept the idea that they had any sort of good intentions. They are as Ganesh_Swami said, power hungry dicks, there is a line, Peeps, and they’re so far past that line that it isn’t even visible anymore.
I judge people on their actions, and every single action these people preform is beyond redemption. I understand them perfectly fine, and I understand there is no worth to be found in those people.
I know this, And Haruka has my admiration for that. But even my lovely Haruka can say and do things I disagree with.
OH FUCKING HELL YOU BROUGHT HITLER INTO THIS.
[Exasperated sigh]
Well I’m about to briefly argue in flavor of literally Hitler in comparison to the Saigusa Family. Jesus christ in this day and age where getting offended is the popular thing to do and literal nazism is at a recent surge, if there was ever a post to truly lose me fans, this is it.
Hitler, as you said, wanted to create better lives for the German people. Team Saigusa wanted to relive the sensation of being in power that they lost. On paper, Hitler is clearly the better person here, his goal isn’t one born of complete and utter worthless selfish desire, there was SOME worthwhile motivation to Hitler, the Saigusa have no justifiable reason for their action.
Now then, BEFORE you get uppity at me for what I just said. Hitler also ordered what is it, millions of deaths and horrific atrocities, so he gets a -10000 points deducted from his +1 up there, Hitler is obviously complete scum and this was frankly a stupid comparison and I don’t know why the hell I even responded to this post but I hope I at least managed to use it to express one of the reasons why the Saigusa are so unforgivable to me.
I do not tolerate selfishness.
Neat.
Family is a weird concept to me, I have a family of good people, and of course I respect them for raising me, but as it stands they are people who I just don’t think alike to, don’t share interests with, I don’t think I’d have trouble completely losing contact with them(only factoring in my own feelings in this hypothetical scenario, of course). So to see someone describe a group as being thoroughly unpleasant but also still wanting to have that connection is something I can’t understand but find fascinating.
It’s definitely a part of the route that I sort of get but sort of don’t, and my seemingly unusual value of ‘family’ is why I can so easily write them off as not worth a second worth of thought while others may want to believe there is light.
And for the last time for good measure, I do understand. I always make the effort to understand. And they failed.
Ladies. I am a simple man. I see the girl I love suffer immensely at the hands of these people, I want two things:
For her to look forward and overcome her dark past and live without it’s burden, which I got. Nobody will fault me for this.
The second is for that which harmed her to never again do so, which, from my observations, the only way that would happen is if she never interacted with that which harmed her again. Some people might disagree with me on this, and say that trying to reconcile is better. That’s a better view overall view than mine, but in this situation I consider it a lost cause.
Number 3 is I want their house on the mountain to burn to the fucking ground because they deserve it. This is pure spite. I think it’s fine to forget and move on and not think about it whenever possible, but I don’t think it’s correct to forgiveandforget.
I still think it’s important to acknowledge that your hatred is towards “them”, “they”, never a single individual. What you hate is the organised system of the Saigusa Family. The story intentionally avoids identifying any of its members and why they do the things they do. It is an unknown force. From this framing, the enemy here becomes a product of society moreso than any single mastermind.
Due to a lack of information, I don’t feel we can point fingers at anonymous family member X without being hasty in our judgements. The story decides to withhold that information, so speculating on why anybody did what they did in that family is a mute point.
This might be a Kanata route thing, but there iiiis a couple of specific ‘uncles’ at the absolute top of both the Saigusa and Futaki shitmountains. Not to downplay the lesser shitsnowmen of the mountains mind you.
Yeah that, it’s like, everyone is like ‘but what if they had reasons’ and ‘what if they’re not complete trash when not with the girls’ but all we’ve ever seen is ‘200% garbo trash 100% of the time’, and I’m going to act on what I’ve see, because that technically is the entire existence these characters have.
Well this is exactly what I was getting at. I was trying to say that “good intentions” (assuming they even exist for the Futakis), don’t just justify doing shit things.
Not the place for this
And for the love of god people, it was an example, not a comparison. I don’t know how you people still aren’t getting this. Like I said on the discord, I was planning on using Ned Kelly as my example, but then I realised that some people might not know who that was, so I chose someone that everyone would know.
tl;dr famous people are chosen as examples for things() and Hitler worked in this case because he has negative connotations to his name.
And in any case, he’s not just some real life Voldemort, just mentioning his name isn’t some kind of cardinal sin.
I’ve been thinking for a while that we might be misleading ourselves with our own explanation of the route’s message, smoke and mirrors and all that. We’ve been saying that the message of the route is “stop the hate”, basically, but… that’s not what the route says. That’s our own interpretation of the message “there are no evil ones in this world”. If we keep using our own interpretation as reasoning, we’ll just build a never-ending argument of speculation and interpretation, which leaves us nowhere. There’s nothing inherently wrong with hate, I would go so far as to say. It makes people do stupid shit and try to fuck up other people’s lives, but it also motivates people to correct perceived injustices. What comes after is on the person, not the hate.
I imagine that hate towards a system would be perfectly acceptable within what this route is trying to tell us. Unless you really take it out the wrong way, hate would probably cause more good than harm in this case.
We are going a bit to far with our pedantic idealism, but, like I said:
Nuance is the key word here. I don’t think anyone here would just forgive them and love every part of them all of a sudden if we found out that they had good intentions, but I can’t accept a position that removes nuance from the situation either.
Seeing everyone talk about (myself included) talk about evil and forgiveness vs. non-forgiveness, another quote comes to mind:
Evil is created when someone gives up on someone else. It appears when everyone gives up on someone as a lost cause and removes their path to salvation. Once they are cut off from everyone else, they become evil. Just look through history and you’ll understand. What is the difference between a murderer who kills a single person and a great hero who kills one million? It has nothing to do with the person himself. It comes down to whether everyone else accepts him. It’s an issue of majority rule. ~ [spoiler person] - To aru Majutsu no Index New Testament vol. 14
Evil is something people are defined as by other people. But, taking this concept to the extreme, you can let people get away with anything and there would be no evil in the world if you simply maintain a certain attitude. Well, extremes are usually not good.
To me, there are two evils in this world. The first one is malice. The second one is ignorance. For the next example, I only need the first. Malice with no practical purpose, merely the desire for someone else to suffer and the ability to delight in the suffering of another.
The family is evil because they treat Haruka with malice. They take pleasure in hurting her and Kanata. Also, they force their own hatred, their own malice onto Kanata for no practical reason. Therefore, they are evil.
I’m sure the family was written with the intention of them being unlikeable. That they are pure evil, as intended by the author.
As someone who likes these two girls, I hate the family for doing that to them. I wish bad things upon that family.
And at that moment, I become evil myself.
It’s that easy for the hate, the evil to spread. And that’s why it’s so hard to resist it.
Alright so we all have been discussing how these so called familys are evil or not, forgivable or not and these arguments are mostly directed towards the members who displayed physical abuse and child brainwashing to Haruka and Kanata.
Kanata route spoilers
What about the people who were on sidelines?. Haruka’s roommate who is a distant cousin of Kanata and her only became her roommate because of the family persuaded(or threatened choose what you like) her to keep watch on them.
She doesn’t want to do it but can’t oppose the family because of their power.
She wasn’t a bad person. We can see this here. She didn’t report to the futakis of Haruka and Kanata getting along even if she could get in trouble for it. Her actions say everything.
Now imagine how many more like her are present in the family. People who want to escape but are afraid to do so in fear of families retaliation. Haruka and Kanata’s parents fall in this category also. Their situation is no less different then Haruka and Kanata.
Haruka’s route is probably one of my favourite Key routes so far. I’m a bit late to the discussion and as people went into great detail regarding the route recently I’ll just mention some of my overall thoughts and impressions.
As I progressed through the route I came to like Haruka a lot. First she just seemed like a goofy troublemaker up to no good, but boy there’s a whole lot undernearth the surface here. Towards the end I came to like Kanata a great deal as well. Her confrontations with Haruka throughout the route made a big impact on me, I found myself wondering why Kanata was being so mean to Haruka and what exactly was going on between the two. I felt really bad for Haruka and, like some other people mentioned before me, her family is absolutely despicable and I find them unforgivable. In the end I felt just as bad for Kanata considering she went through misery too and was forced to treat Haruka the way she did even if she never really wished to do so. The scene where they finally come together was very emotional and one of my favourite scenes in the VN so far.
Haruka’s relationship with Riki was nicely developed and I can only be glad Riki was able to be such of a good support to her. She and Riki stopped eachother from going over the line if I remember correctly, because I think at some point Riki was about to hit Kanata and then later on Riki stopped Haruka from going too far as well. Had either of them not been stopped things probably would’ve ended up a lot worse. I also read the bad ends, and boy these were quite painful. The one bad end where it was implied that Haruka committed suicide ended up confusing me a bit. As Riki’s narcolepsy started to kick in Kanata tells Riki again to stay away from Haruka and to “not ever get close to her again.” But if she actually committed cuicide isn’t that pointless to say? Or it might also simply be a thing of her already referring to the next playthrough where you have to make the choice again, though that kinda breaks the fourth wall I guess.
Like Naoki posted a while back I do think it’s likely Kanata ended up having feelings for Riki too (makes sense considering she has a route too I guess), and while she was seemingly joking around about her taking Haruka’s place next to Riki I do think she did was serious to some degree. It was interesting to see that apparently with contact lenses and the same hairstyle she looks almost identical to Haruka. Besides hair colour I never considered them to be that similar in appearance, Kanata’s eye shape seems to be quite different too but maybe I can just attribute that to her generally having different expressions from Haruka. Though I still find it odd considering they have different fathers, but enough nitpicking, it’s not like I find it a big deal.
The only other thing I want to mention is that the story doesn’t feel completely finished. While I love the conclusion and the fact that the biggest issues between twins and their parents were resolved, the family issues on the other hand are still very much present. The family itself is still as messed up as ever and I doubt they would just leave Kanata, Haruka and their parents alone after everything that has happened. Makes me wonder if Kanata’s route will expand on it and how similar her route will be compared to Haruka’s. I’m looking forward to getting there.
@Realta Kanata’s route contains more details about their family and gives closure to the problems related to it; the twin’s routes, just like the characters, complement each other well.
So, here we go. Haruka Route left me having really complicated feelings about it, and the whole “nobody is evil thing” definitely played a huge role on this. I still have a problem with that, but after rereading, it wasn’t quite as bad as I thought, but rather came to me as a result of attempts at nuance gone wrong. The route is amazing for other reasons, but I still can’t shake off that one qualm.
I’ll talk about that soon, but first, the associating-a-heroine/route-with-classical-myoosik gimmick. We all know Haruka is a troll, so of course I’ll be going with a piece composed by a well-known troll: Joseph Haydn. Haydn loved adding jokes in his pieces, ranging from a really loud chord in the middle of a soft movement (Surprise Symphony) to adding a false ending (The Joke Quartet) to a, pfft, “bassoon fart” (Symphony No. 93).
Yet somehow, I chose something else: Symphony No. 45 in F minor, “Farewell.” Classical-Period symphonies in minor key were typically likened to the Sturm und Drang movement, which more-or-less promoted emotional extremes over rationality in writing. Though more interesting is the theatrics that occurred during the 4th movement, where the performers started leaving their seats one-by-one. There’s an interesting story about this, where we can say that the symphony signified a desire by the original performers to return to their loved ones. And they do so, by leaving in the middle of this emotionally painful piece. Stretching the meaning of “rationality” here a bit, these don’t sound too far off from what happened in Haruka route.
So, for the route itself, dang, it sure doesn’t hold back. Sometimes, I feel that it may be going too far, but I can’t really hold that against it when it sure as hell hit me hard. I was pretty close to sobbing my eyes off by the time Kanata broke down. Raw.
I am of two minds about the story itself, however. On one hand, I love how it tackled the issue of misguided hate. ((I don’t want to use “hate” in a broad sense for personal reason – as a journalism student, I have encountered various people in social movements who are angry and maybe say “hateful” simply because they want injustice to end. If there’s one thing I learned from them, it’s that they really are willing to peacefully discuss with the government, but for the entire time the latter is uncooperative and worse, even willingly contributing to this injustice.))
Anyway, when I said “misguided hate,” I meant by how Haruka, due to years of abuse rendering her to be unable to trust anyone, has been actively attacking the seemingly-privileged Kanata despite the latter being a victim of this system as well. It’s almost like how certain feminists have been targeting men without realizing that the latter are also oppressed by the system.
I also love Haruka’s character development, which I think I can agree to be the biggest point of the route: a tale of how someone can become able to find love and love herself after years of abuse left her both distrustful yet emotionally needy. Haruka, though helped by Riki, was able to realize that by her own accord.
I could have easily regarded this as the best non-Refrain route for these, except for one huge problem: the route’s stance on the system that perpetuates abuse is confusing as hell, and that’s the last thing I want a story to be when it involves such a really sensitive societal issue.
To be fair, I don’t think the route ever justified abuse at all. Look at all these pieces of dialogue:
(Also Haruka’s parents talking about how abnormal the family customs are, but I forgot to screenshot that.)
The route is definitely aware that this system is wrong. I do agree with @Pepe that Haruka’s “there are no evil ones” speech is pointing more on the concept of “evil ones” rather than the lack of wrongdoing whatsoever. Also, I’m actually really convinced by @HeliosAlpha’s interpretation of that speech; the rest of the text seem to hint towards that too.
My problem really is that we’re practically left wondering what Haruka herself thinks of the family or the system now, or if that “nobody’s in the wrong” quote applies to them. So we’re left to assume everything, which makes things extremely confusing. I do agree that the abusive family is not exactly the point of the route, but when the story involves such a really sensitive societal issue, it can’t afford to be unclear in its stance on this matter. That can have really unfortunate implications.
I’m not asking for something like Haruka and Kanata burning the house down; there’s a time and place for escapist fantasies and I don’t think that’s the route’s goals at all. Rather, I feel that they could have added more lines for Haruka to maybe question this system. About that,
Jesus, she was manipulated to believe that somehow there is justification to the abuse. Yet the route never shown her thinking back that maybe, there were something wrong about their family’s actions (and maybe it should be addressed at some point). That’s… :((
So, yeah. As I said, I’m sure that the route is trying to achieve a certain nuance in its message, but a single stumble in writing made it really confusing. The route certainly has good stuff though, and I think those good stuff are really amazing. I think I can at least give this a 4/5.
You are right, the story never shows Haruka coming to the realization that, even if they possibly did not have bad intentions behind what they did, abuse is not OK. But a follow up question to that: does the story really need to show Haruka coming to that realization? Do we, as readers need to be told that? Or isn’t it universally accepted by us readers that abuse is simply not ok? Will some readers think that that kind of abuse is ok without being told?
Frankly I don’t know the answers to these. And I don’t think these are the issues that the story tries to bring up, but they remain issues nonetheless.
I mentioned this a little while ago on the discord as a joke, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense to me.
…Doesn’t Haruka just need a pet dog?
A lot went wrong in a lot of ways in Haruka’s life, but it seems to me there’s one major thing she’s missing (or at least, she perceives that she’s missing.) Unconditional love. This is what she sought in Riki, as we know. A pet dog can - debatably even better than a mother can - provide unconditional love. You never have to doubt a dog’s love. I was thinking that, just maybe, if Haruka had just that, she’d be able to accept everything else. She might have even been able to take a step back and forgive her parents, if not Kanata herself.
That is an interesting idea but my negative thoughts see that going terribly, where someone purposefully tears the dog away from her, possibly by beating it. Now that would be ridiculously cruel…
But, I honestly doubt it. Mainly because (possible Kanata spoilers - it might’ve come up in Haruka’s route, but just to be safe) Kanata and the family had an agreement. And the family actually has stuck to it up until this point. I doubt even they would go so far as to intrude on someone else’s home and beat their pet just for… what reason? I just don’t see it happening.
It was discussed in the route but yes it is scientifically possible. It’s called superfecundation. Basically it’s like how fraternal twins are different because they are from two separate eggs and two different sperm from the same father. However, if the two eggs are fertilized by sperm from different fathers then superfecundation occurs. It’s much more common in animals than in humans but as stated in the route, basically Haruka’s mother had intercourse with both men within a short period of time so superfecundation occurred.
Another good route, probably a bit long but I slightly long route is much better than an undeveloped one like Komari’s which was trash was. The entire Superfecundation was a weird inclusion but an interesting one. Gonna say Haruka needed a pet dog or cat as I think it would have helped her better but thats just a though of mine. The entire family structure thing was nicely developed and was good that Maeda didnt just cover Haruka getting bashed mental and psychically but also the pain from the expectations put on Futaki and the guilt of having her sister put through what she has been, (something which if missed would have made this route much worse as this happens to every real-life equivalent situation. Also I don’t understand why Haruka tries to justify the abuse she got, but even if I don’t understand its just what happens with people in abusive situations frequently.
The character development also was pretty good specifically near the end where she even asks her sister for help of her own volition. I enjoyed this arc and would go more into depth if not for me needing to finish the remaining arcs within 20days, there is plenty posts here anyway to read.
Haruka’s route was actually written by Shirokiri and yeah for that stuff the route is brilliantly done. I would assume though that a pet would not help because the family would probably torture or kill it since they are some of the worst fictional humans you could ever expect. I don’t know too much about abuse but it’s very likely that justifying one’s own abuser is actually way too common irl so almost everything is this route is scarily… Kinda possible…
Edit: oh wait I addressed the pet thing before… oh well. Maybe a pet would be ok at like haruka’s parent’s place but I’m not sure
so I guess I should set things straight:
) and Hitler worked in this case because he has negative connotations to his name.
