Summer Pockets - Pre-Release Discussion and Speculation

Key Discussion
#22

I hope you’re wrong here. One of the things I liked from the characters in LB! and in Rewrite was the way the characters interacted together. This is what made the common routes of those games fun. Whether it was in the Occult Club room fooling around with the girls or playing baseball and chatting with the other members of the team, those moments felt really nice because the characters had such a nice chemistry. I hope that isn’t lost in this game.

Also, regarding the character designs. I don’t really like what I see so far. I know that some people are saying we should see them colored first, but the most important thing about character designs is the silhouette. And so far, the silhouette of the heroines doesn’t tell us anything about them. Comparing it to LB!, for example, which had characters with quite remarkable shapes, their silhouette can’t even stand out among other VN characters. So, yeah, I think those designs can’t get much better with just coloring.

2 Likes
#23

That would be very strange considering that’s a point they push very heavily. In almost every interview I’ve read recently they bring up how Key’s niche is having lots of interaction between heroines. Also like Kshell said, they mention in the interview that having more characters and character interaction would lessen the feeling of it being similar to Air, so it’s likely that they will continue in the vein of the newer games.

1 Like
#24

Oh, I haven’t been keeping up with any of the news around this. That’s a shame then. Something I haven’t liked about the more recent Key titles is the heavy amount of heroine interaction. I find they struggle to build an atmosphere when they focus on a wide range of characters and ideas. Makes it hard to get invested emotionally.

1 Like
#25

As for Najima, yeah, HatsuSaku has already been mentioned like 10 times. He’s obviously here because he’s a SagaPlanets guy. What I was surprised to see on his resume are Majo Koi Nikki and Koi x Shin Ai Kanojo, not as well known as HatsuSaku maybe, but both getting pretty decent reviews from those who have read them.

As for Hasama… he’s all over the place. He certainly has his name attached to a wide variety of things: Kud Wafter, of course, but also Axanael; Tokyo Babel; Harumade, Kururu.; Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi – The latter two are some of the most well known genre-shift VNs in the community, and, just saying, genre shift is not something Key would be new to. Take my theories as you will.
However, he seems to have little actual scenario writing experience? So we’ll see how that actually turns out.

Ooo ooo ooo… I had no idea! But now that you mention it, I see it really strong in Ao.
Funny that people are getting so worked up over character designs when art was never Key’s strong point to begin with… oh well, I guess when thats all we really have.

Anyway, as Helios pointed out, as boringly generic as this sounds at the moment, I think we can hope that theres something not toooo predictable hidden in there.

And at the very very very least, we can all go in with the same mindset I came out of Charlotte with: “Hey, at least we’re bound to get some damn good music!”

6 Likes
#26

As it was mentioned above, Niijma has many popular titles. I think HatsuSaku or Natsu yume Nagisa is the most celebrated work. I don’t know about Hasama, but he is credited to some works, maybe as an assistant writer.

Nijima is known as charasteristic writings. And some work is very controversial because his works sometimes end with not perfectly happy ending. (especially Koi x Shin Ai Kanojo) So Summer Pockets ending might not like CLANNAD or LB! but more similar to Rewrite or AIR.
In my opinion, what make his game renowned is that he often makes use of multi-ending structure of VN. So summer pockets might have that sort of trick or structure, but it is said that Maeda did main plot, and I don’t know how it works.
I read Nijima’s work of HatsuSaku and really impressed by emotional part of the story especially in the reality of the protagonist’s emotion. So we can expect high quality in that part, though I don’t how he deals with parent-child love.

3 Likes
#27

But Koikake is a good game primarily because of the art and soundtrack, imo. Storywise… One of the routes has almost zero plot, only ichaicha and dating (the confession scene and what precedes it is pretty awesome, tho, but thats just a tiny portion of the route). Then, another has some nice drama, but it was not very built up (like, most of the route is still SoL). And the student council president route (although very pleasant for me) is also almost devoid of content. Now, none of these were written by Yuu.

The main heroine’s route, written by him, although it presents some flashbacks if I recall correctly, is also mostly dating and ichaicha. That is, until you reach the end of the route. Heavy spoilers As his onanajimi, she left him a long time ago, but the reason was unclear. If I remember correctly she lied saying it was her dad’s work or something. But at the end of the route you find out she left him to be an idol with some other girls and the whole time she was dating him, she was, in fact, using him to inspire her to write songs. Then, she leaves him again. On the true route, he’s already an adult and a teacher. After fooling around with a student, he meets his onanajimi again and they start living together. But she leaves him again, despite promising otherwise. In the end, he keeps waiting for her ずうううと until she comes. End. .

So, despite the weak (and messed up) story (it left me quite unsure about how should I feel), this is a very nice VN, but only because of the art and BGM. I found the artstyle absolutely gorgeous and the BGM is not Key-level, but almost there.

1 Like
#28

I didn’t include it in the article, but I believe it was said that they plan to include some handsome guys to balance it out, which definitely sounds like a good sign to me.

5 Likes
#29

The article did indeed say that. It likened them to the same kind of glue that the male cast of Angel Beats and Little Busters played, so I don’t think it’s much of a cause for concern. It also used the term “charming” over necessarily straight “handsome,” so there’s a nice little nuance that can reach beyond just physical appearance there.

4 Likes
#30

Very good!

#31

Can somebody translate Interview here:


It’s important. :blush:
#32

Pretty much all of the important info from that interview have already been presented in either original Aspi’s newspost, or in this thread.

#33

Maybe there is something in between lines. Better be sure.

I just tried google translate, and I was right. There seem to be a lot of things. This definitely needs full translation.

#34

I’m not one much for speculating, but I do have some general thoughts on what we’ve seen so far.
Story- It sounds kind of generic right now, but it’s the characters that make a story “original”. Clannad and Kanon both had very generic sounding plots to me before watching them but they turned out great. I’m a little sad Maeda isn’t writing any of the routes but it’s understandable.
Setting- I love the setting, summer is my aesthetic and I also like the idea of it being on an island.
Characters- I love Ao’s design so much :heart_eyes: And Tsumugi’s (was that the name of the fourth girl?) as well. Shiroha’s design is a little plain in the sketch but I love the white hair and it looked like the uniform is white with a black accent which is :ok_hand:t2::ok_hand:t2::ok_hand:t2:
I don’t like the second girl’s (Kamome?) design very much for a reason I don’t really know.
I’m excited to see more designs in later updates!
Music- it’s gonna be good. It just is. Key music has never failed me before.
Overall- thanks Key for my life; I saw a game so beautiful I started crying?

#35

Who knows, maybe he is. Those details are usually added later. Current list just confirms that is likely to don’t write any significant route. At least not directly. But there are still possibilities that can write some minor side routes, not mention of some kind of supervision about main story.

#36

No, he says clearly that he won’t write.

2 Likes
#37

Where? In that interview? Again we need translation. :sweat_smile:

#38

That interview is the only information that’s been given. We’ve already paraphrased the entire thing. If you don’t trust that, have fun looking for a different option.

#39

Again, as they have already said before, all important and relevant information has already been stated either in the post and in the forums, by forumers well-versed in Japanese language, no less. Since the rest of the information aren’t as important, there’s no need to translate the whole thing. Not everyone has the agency of time to do things they don’t need to do, or even the least bit of motivation to do things they don’t want to do.

For your answer, the fact that his name isn’t listed under “scenario” is already telling. Plus we should already know by this point that Maeda’s health condition isn’t good, so I doubt they would give him much work to do.

2 Likes
#40

In the second paragraph of the article.
"Jun Maeda is responsible for the original concept, but is not a writer on the project. "
We don’t know if he’ll have further input on what happens (as he is a big influence) but he most definitely isn’t a writer.

I don’t think you should deride people for missing, overlooking, or just not having information that you have. If you know something that someone else doesn’t, just tell them.

4 Likes
#41

Ok, thank you for detail.

I little searched about Hasama and found following:
His real name is Kubota Keigo, he has great experiences as assistant writer for various works (mostly by Nitroplus), but out of things that he actually wrote only two are worth of mentioning: Famima! and Koishiki Manual. Should be mentioned that in both cases it’s romantic comedies with great portion of erotic material. And in both cases he is responsible for harem routes in those works. And apparently he has things for lewd and threesomes. So what expect from him depends on how much he will be involved in scenarios and whether this will be all age or 18+ work.