VN Talk: Norn9: Var Commons - Part 2: Koharu

Going up a bit late today due to having computer troubles yesterday (I blame the incredible heat wave we had this weekend), but the Labor Day holiday is allowing me a little time to catch up.

Continuing my Norn9:Var Commons series, we're looking at Koharu and her romances.

Koharu is an odd duck. She's the closest to the traditional otome heroine, being extremely self-conscious and wanting the best for everyone. But instead of being simply naive, she is ridiculously so, to the point that she takes notes on human behavior because she doesn't understand most social cues, and what she does know has largely come from a book.

On the bright side, the game is able to play this both for humor and for sympathy. She doesn't understand much, but she honestly tries. Sometimes it backfires spectacularly, like when she tries imitating Kakeru's sense of a joke, but everyone thinks she's serious because she shouldn't be capable of joking (and the suggestion would have been incredibly tasteless at face value).

All of Koharu's routes have her coming to terms with her pyrokinetic power. She's the most powerful of all the espers, being able to use it for long periods of time without tiring, but hates the level of destruction she can cause since people had despised her for it in the past. Because of that (and the fear that the other people on the ship might suspect her of being the traitor who blew a hole in the side of the ship), she keeps her power hidden on most routes, including her own, until pressured into using it.

Kakeru

I played through Kakeru first because the game clearly presents him as an intro choice. He makes an effort to be friendly to Koharu, and he seems like a fun person to be around. When Koharu gets to make her selection, Kakeru is displayed in the middle of her three choices and highlighted by default. Clearly, one can't go wrong choosing him.

And I found his route to be a decent opener, though I was surprised by how peaceful everything was for most of it. While the other characters were somewhat good about staying in their pairs early on, it wasn't uncommon later to see people running around without their partners and surprisingly no one ever called them out on it. (Unfortunately this is true of most routes.) That could have been a result of everyone relaxing their guard, since danger doesn't present itself in any meaningful manner until the fifth out of seven chapters, but it felt more like the writers just forgot.

Most of Kakeru's route revolves around Koharu learning how to interact with people through his advice and then Kakeru's personal hang-ups regarding the kind of person he is. For most of his route, Kakeru comes off as a congenial guy with a strong mischievous streak, though he's more careful of his jokes with Koharu once he realizes that she has a tendency to take them literally (or worse, attempt similar jokes on others).

However, things turn when he loses his earring about halfway through his route. At first he seems to be discombobulated by losing the only keepsake he has of his father, which is completely normal, but by Chapter 6 we're lunging straight into Crazy Town when we find out that his father is some sort of time traveling villain that had previously brainwashed Kakeru and then forgot about him. The earring is actually a mind-controlling device, and the reason Kakeru is so uncertain of himself without it is because he lost the certainty that came from the orders it was giving him.

While the romance between Kakeru and Koharu is sweet, and twined nicely given that Kakeru's father is also the traveler who inspired Koharu to make the journey to the ship in the first place, his route ends with a lot of unanswered questions.

Some of them I was fine with. For instance, Natsuhiko shows up towards the end, and while we can infer he's been the enemy attacking the ship, we don't really know how he fits in the picture versus Kakeru's father since he appears to be against both him and The World.

But rescuing Kakeru only to find out that his father is mysteriously dead by the time everyone else reaches him felt unsatisfying. We don't know what his father wanted or how he fit into the story, and it feels like if any route was going to address that, it should be Kakeru's. This is problematic not just for Kakeru's sake, but also because his father apparently knew about the timing of the ship and its travels years before it actually stopped where Koharu lived so she could get on board. Not only that, but he even had the ship's uniform for Koharu to wear.

From the characters' perspective, it didn't feel like they were really bothered by the unanswered questions, and they got their happy ending, but for me as the player I felt like I got cheated out of something. Even though we eventually get some of those answers from other routes and the epilogue (since Kakeru's dad is Shiro Yuiga), it still felt like more of that should have been on Kakeru's actual route.

Senri

I wasn't sure what to expect with Senri's romance, given that he's a pessimistic shut-in who wants nothing more than to be left alone. While I'd seen him a lot on Kakeru's route as a sad target of Kakeru's mischief, he can be such a whiner and downer that I had trouble seeing how a romance would even work. But surprisingly, it does, and Senri and Korahu make a wonderful duo.

The problem is getting him out of his shell. And to the game's credit, Senri doesn't make any kind of crazy 180 by the end of his story. He does get better at dealing with people, but he remains recognizably himself. As Masamune sums it up near the end of Senri's route: "Koharu tries so hard to do anything she can, no matter who asks it of her. ... Senri is the opposite. He doesn't want to do anything unless he is absolutely forced to, even if it is something he's capable of." And when something he absolutely has to do is bring his girl back from being used as a weapon of war, he does it!

The fact we know he's a scaredy cat, that he doesn't want to do anything hard, makes it much more remarkable when he does want to do something, especially when it's something no one expects of him for being the smallest, most fearful person on the ship. That he calls out Natsuhiko's ego while they're escaping with Koharu is just icing on the cake. Senri might look like a weakling, but he's got bite when he wants to use it.

Similarly, it's adorable as he starts to realize his own feelings for Koharu and tries shooing off other guys. Being Senri, he's unable to say anything directly, but planting himself right beside Koharu and staring at Masamune is more than enough to get the message across.

If there's anything I didn't particularly like on his route it's that Koharu is even dimmer than usual. While her naivete is still charming, like failing to distinguish the romantic "I like you" from liking friends in general, she completely fails to recognize the dream hiyoko as Senri, even though she does that with ease on Kakeru's route.

She spends a fair amount of the route struggling to understand the feelings she has for Senri because she thinks love is supposed to be a grand thing, but she ends up feeling nervous and ugly because of it. It's not unrealistic that she would have those issues, given how sheltered she's been growing up, but the fact she doesn't on other routes is what makes it stick out. Even after Senri kisses her on the cheek and makes it clear he wouldn't do this with anyone else (to ease her feelings of jealousy), she's still fretting over why she's jealous at all.

Like in Kakeru's route, Shiro Yuiga serves as the villain, and we get a little more insight into how he fits into the picture, but no resolution. It's not quite as bad as Kakeru's route since rather than cramming in Shiro Yuiga's mysterious death, Senri and Koharu just run away, and that is entirely on theme with the way Senri proposes that the two of them live their lives going forward. If they live cowardly lives they never need to fear that they will be turned into weapons.

But I wanted to know more about why Senri was only given half the powers of water. While I figured he was hydrokinetic given that Akito was obviously jacking his powers from him in Kakeru's route, I thought that meant that Akito's power was to absorb the powers of others. Instead it turns out that the power of water is split between Senri and Akito, thus accounting for why there are ten espers but only nine rooms.

Given that Senri only had half a power, you'd think an explanation would be given in his route, especially since other characters are willing to justify why Senri was an unsuitable choice for being an esper in the first place, being weak in body and cowardly in spirit. But instead Aion just gives an assurance that she doesn't make wrong decisions, and Senri is fine even after he takes Akito's half to give himself the full allotment of the hydrokinetic potential.

Despite the unresolved questions and Koharu being more dense than usual, I laughed a lot of this route, Senri's antics are adorable, and the high points are still very good, making this one of my favorite routes in the game.

Masamune

Masamune is the team's contact with The World and the only person on the ship (besides possibly Ron) who knows the truth about what's about to happen because he grew up on the island where Aion resides.

His route surprisingly doesn't contain much new information, given his connection with The World, and he's largely locked because the tail end of his route contains a lot of conversations that wouldn't make sense without already knowing about the Reset and the role the espers play in it. As long as the player has gone through Kakeru or Senri's route though, either of which are required to play Masamune, they'll have that though.

I would also suggest having played Sakuya's route as well, since he and Mikoto play a prominent role in Masamune's route and it's easier to understand what they're going through and the tragedy that happens in the end if you know the reason behind it.

As far as Masamune's route itself went, I feel like the strongest parts weren't well connected to any central story, which made it harder to enjoy. At its core, his personal romantic thread is falling in love with Koharu while having conflicting priorities in his duty to the ship and to The World. Once Koharu willingly becomes a weapon of war, and The World orders the espers to stay on the battlefield, he loses his faith in the system and chooses to run away with her.

But his internal conflict wasn't the strongest emotional part of his route. Instead it was seeing Mikoto run into town against orders to use her barrier powers to protect civilians, Sakuya sacrificing himself to protect Mikoto, and then Koharu's guilt that none of that would have been necessary if she had used her powers to begin with. That this is the only route where Koharu is happy to use her powers against an enemy says a lot about how devastated she is by her friends' suffering.

I actually liked Masamune's bad ending for not having enough affection, since it spends a fair amount of time with Mikoto's subsequent grief and Koharu's attempts to look after her, and we don't get that kind of processing on other routes even when tragedy occurs (though usually that's because it's a bad ending and the game cuts off shortly thereafter).

I have mixed feelings about his happy ending though. Even if Koharu is willing, it's clearly not healthy the way the army is using her, so I like the idea of Masamune spiriting her away from a warzone. But because he knows she won't go on her own, he has Nanami wipe out a bunch of her memories so he can escape with her.

What's not clear is just how much Nanami wipes out. While Koharu obviously remembers Masamune, she doesn't remember Nanami after it happens and presumably doesn't remember Mikoto otherwise she'd run immediately back on to the battlefield. But does she remember how she met Masamune? Does she remember being on a ship? Does she remember they were going to see The World?

All of that is just glossed over for an epilogue at Natsuhiko's base where Masamune is busy trying to get them set up for a new life. While I like the idea of Masamune breaking away from The World in theory, the execution just felt lackluster to me. It should have been the most powerful event in his story, given his position on the ship and the knowledge he holds, but even though the reasons were right, it felt understated, and the fact that Koharu is completely unaware of his change of heart doesn't help either since it removes her as a witness to his decision.

About the only thing I got a kick out of in his ending is the discovery that the hiyokos canonically do take over the monitors of Natsuhiko's base from time to time.

Oddly, Masamune's power to view the past barely figures into his route, whereas a romanced esper's power and how it shaped their life usually plays a large role in their route. The only time it comes up is when Masamune comforts Kahoru when she's lost control of her fire and he manages to see her past, making him the only character to learn her real name and why she forgot it in the first place. He also suggests that he might be able to eventually return Koharu's lost memories after Nanami's memory wipe, but those are really the only two times his power comes up at all. I would have liked to see it used more, or at least more critically to the story.

Next week, I'll be taking a look at Nanami.