Holy shit this was worse than I remember and I already thought this was one of the worst routes in Key’s entire repertoire.
Kurugaya, Tits or some shit
I hate this character.
People who were there for the Clannad Bookclub can just copy paste my complaints for Tomoyo because a lot of that shit is copy pasted onto Kurugaya, I hate how she acts smug about her ‘perfection’, I hate how the writing forces in your face how amazing she is with every character sucking up to her, they try to say ‘but she doesn’t understand emotion’ as a flaw which is both a dubious claim to begin with and no nearly enough to balance out the rest of this shit.
She is funny with her juvenile humour and that is all I can say in praise. As far as I’m concerned, Kud is a significantly deeper and more enjoyable character to watch, and I JUST got done talking shit about HER in her thread.
So with that out of the way, understanding my mindset for this character is ‘active dislike’, bear with me as I simply cannot stop myself from being less lenient with the route.
So the whole bullying part at the start is, while not bad, infuriating in it’s entirety because not telling her is fucking dumb, I understand it can’t happen if you tell her, but that doesn’t mean I agree with it. And the best part of it all? It’s E N T I R E L Y pointless, none of those girls return in the route, it basically doesn’t even get referenced again, it doesn’t even do much for their budding relationship, it’s padding and garbage that’s primary goal seems to be to make Kurugaya spout the actual worst line in the VN. “Try saying that again in one of the seven languages I speak”, I’m supposed to be amazed by how cool and smart she is when I say that, frankly it sounds like the kind of shit you’d put in a navy seal copypasta meme, it’s idiotic.
But hey, the route has a good middle, it’s the part where Kurugaya is barely involved. Probably not a coincidence(cuz she’s trash and all that), I think this is the route with the most boys screentime, Operation Love Love Hunters, Operation LoliLoli Hunters, Operation Fireworks. All of this is good shit, it’s my boys dicking around and being buddies.
At least after the boys hijack the route, Kurugaya does get some nice scenes, she learns to feel emotions thanks to Riki no Diki and it that would have been a perfectly fine ending.
And then fucking time starts looping.
Honestly I zoned out, I was speedreading, this part, in addition to coming out of nowhere and not making sense, is so boring. I’m sure there is some symbolism or some shit with the time loop but you know what? I don’t care. I don’t care about Kurugaya, I don’t see how this adds to the route, I don’t see what this has to do with Kurugaya, hey look at that, a consistant fucking problem with Kurugaya’s route is that barely any of this shit actually has anything to do with Kurugaya. And that’s really bad, it’s HER ROUTE.
In conclusion, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if I’d find Kud Wafter better than this route, this could not be any further away from my tastes if it tried.