MUSICUS! Impression

It's a story about a quest for answer; a simple yet complex answer. During the journey, you'll meet with various things. Be it a joyful experience, or a lesson --a lesson of life. It was never a smooth journey, sometimes it's painfully heartbreaking, but in the end, you'll get the answer you have seek for. A satisfying answer for all your journey.

The story of MUSICUS is told entirely from the perspective of the protagonist, Tsushima Kei. He's not only the main character and the narrator, the story of MUSICUS is his story. The plot span a journey of almost a decade of timeframe; from Kei adolesence to his adulthood. Many things happened, from interesting events to trivial one. Characters comes and go. We witness directly how Kei progressed in his quest for answer. Each route gave different answer for the question that started the journey. But I'd say, the true answer lies in the Mika route, as it provide full understanding to his original question and provide the best and most satisfying conclusion, or answer. The route structure also kind like ladder stucture. So do Mika last, folks.

Have you ever eat a food with ton of different taste coming from different spices and ingredient that make up one single taste of a food? That's what MUSICUS story is like. It's rich. You can always talk of one scene in MUSICUS and ended up talking about a lot of things. That being said, the story always bring up different subjects/topics in its scene. Ranging from socioeconomic issue to interpersonal problem. It's mostly presented subtly, but there's times that multiple subjects are being presented explicitly. All of that, is relevant with the plot, and characters. That's how amazing it is.

The level of immersion of MUSICUS are extremely impressive. The way the story narrated really make us feel what Kei feel, as if we're one person. We know everything about him. From what he's doing, his way of thinking, his true feeling, his emotion, everything. That level of immersion really make the story so remarkable. It make the story feels so alive, so emotional, and very relatable.

And speaking of immersion, now let's talk about the writing that made this amazing story and those level of immersion possible. Setoguchi write his prose like a novel, as in sense of literature. He describe everything, even though there's a visual representation of the things he decribe being presented in the screen. You think that is unecessary and would make it boring? Well, maybe it's unnecessary, but because of that, it make everything much more immersive. So it's doesn't make those things boring, it enhance the immersion. His prose flows very smoothly. It's clear and simple, but never plain. He make of what supposed to be complex to be easy to follow and understand without leaving the neccesary nuances. A definition of a good writer. Among all other things, I think the most remarkable part of his writing comes when he describe/depict the mind and emotion of Kei. It's just simply amazing.

Despite the story is centralized on one character, doesn't mean that others characters are ignored. The characters in MUSICUS is dynamic, as with its timeframe, characters comes and go. But there's some characters that remain till the very end. Those are the characters that you will remember the most. That however doesn't mean that others characters are uninteresting. The characters in MUSICUS is fascinating. A lot of them have depths; a story of their own worth explored for. They feel alive, and many are relatable to our everyday life. Even the characters that only appear in some scenes are still worth the attention. Heck, even you can be really emotional over a character that only appear in some portion of the story. Or how that character have an impact to the entire story. Still though, the central characters are the utmost; they're all amazing and really memorable. The personal interaction with those character are really fun, and it made everyday life in the story so coloured. Relationship between Kei and the heroines are also really interesting. All in all, those characters really make the story so amazing. In the same plot without the same characterization, I doubt it will work at all. My favourite character in this VN are: Kei, Mika, Hanai, Kaneda ( I can't believe that I would put this guy as my favo), and Fuuga. I also like the rest of the chars, dw.

Sumeragi Kohaku character design is great. The colouring and quality on each CG is impressive. The art really looks beautiful. Truly reflect how high the production value of this VN are.

And we can't talk about MUSICUS without music. Apart from how music become the center theme of the story, the music itself are great. Both BGMs and insert song are all amazing. For the song, each of them often represent a character, with some music outright represent the whole theme and messages. Clever usage of music for the narrative i'd say. We got a lot of insert song in this VN. And what's more is that this VN have some sort of music player section apart from BGM section, dedicated for all those songs. We can see the lyric with that ingame music player, which is great.

Overall, I really, really like this VN. It's definitely the most memorable VN for me. Though the messages didn't become a life-changing experience for me as other previous works with strong messages did, I still found that the messages in MUSICUS is really strong, relatable, and beautiful. It's still something that make me reflect on myself and help me view this life much better. So I will say, that MUSICUS is definitely a masterpiece. And I'm really glad to have read MUSICUS.