Bansenjin

I'll be frank, Soushuu Senshinkan Gakuen Bansenjin feels more and more like a 'worthless sequel' the more I read. I don't say that out of cruelty but simply because I have no attachment left to the characters from the original, except a general feeling of 'that story was over, for god's sake move on!'. Some people already know my feelings about sequels in chuunige VNs, and Masada is particularly bad when it comes to returning characters. One of the problems is that Masada tends to actually complete his stories inside that one VN in such a way that you are left exhausted and satisfied... and thus you can't help but feel a little betrayed when he up and creates a sequel.

Moreover, this is a time when I would really have preferred them to just create a new cast of characters from scratch. 

Yoshiya is Masada's most boring protagonist - I can say this with absolute certainty - and the other characters are similarly bland in comparison to his other works. The fact that the first VN was still a lot of fun was simply because Masada is good at telling stories in general. To be honest, I was a lot happier when I was only thinking of the possibilities for this game.

Worse, because I know where it is going - Masada's hints are more blatant than usual - I'm starting to be unable to retain an interest. 有体に言いえば。。。白けた

I feel like I feel when watching a zombie movie... something that shouldn't be moving is moving, blech. I don't care really what Masada planned from the beginning, because this has been a singularly unpleasant experience so far.

Edit: I just figured it out. I wanted Shizuno (the white-black haired girl) to be the protagonist, with only minimal interference from the old cast. To be honest, her weirdness would have made her an excellent new protagonist, and I hate that I'm spending so much time in boring old Yoshiya's head when a more interesting brain is nearby, lol.

To be honest, except for the end of the VN, this one is fairly disappointing. It was like they mixed a fandisc with a real sequel... there is way too much slice-of-life mixed into the VN, and the fact that they reused the Hajun concept again (anyone who plays this after having played Dies Irae and KKK will understand what I'm saying) was immensely irritating. I mean, the biggest complaint every last person who played the original had was that it was too much of a Dies Irae imitation, without the power that Dies Irae possessed.

*sighs*

From a simple raw quality standpoint, this is - in the end - a Masada VN, and it shows through in the quality of the narration... it just grates on the nerves for me, because I expected better from Masada than a pale copy of his other works.

The last few hours are, of course, classic Masada battle narration and story advancement... which still didn't quite make the overwhelmingly irritating slice-of-life segments worth it.