Oretsuba impression

At first, I was expecting Oretsuba to be a VN with a deep story or strong/profound messages. I was wrong. Even at this point, I'm not sure that whetever Oretsuba is actually a moege or not. If it was indeed a moege, then Oretsuba is truly an exceptional moege. Nevertheless, one thing that is certain, it's hell of a ride.

The plot of Oretsuba is rather simple, but it's absolutely fascinating. One of big reason why, is that Oretsuba use more than one protagonist/MC system. Each protagonist have their own chapter and thus story. Each protagonist's chapter have completely different atmosphere, and to a lot extend, theme, from each other. Had it not been the main plot of Oretsuba linking them, I would think of it as a completely different VN; as it feels like completely different story already. And speaking of atmosphere, Oretsuba has really amazing atmosphere and immersion. Its amazing depiction of the urban life, Japanese youth subculture, and underground culture, accompanied by impressive depiction of the surrounding ambience, truly make the story of Oretsuba feels alive.

And for the writing; honestly, I'm not really the fan of the writing pace, and the writing is also too verbose for me, but Ou Jackson's writing is absolutely amazing. It's the main factor that make Oretsuba so lively. His depiction on the surrounding and city's ambience and all of its activity is absolutely remarkable. He also realistically portrays every characters in oretsuba on his writing. He even has different writing style for each protagonist to match their personality and how they sound in the narration. However, not only that I find his writing too verbose, his word choice level is also too high. Which make Jackson's writing can be quite difficult sometimes.

The characters in Oretsuba is arguably one of (the other being the writing) its biggest asset. They are absolutely fascinating. As I have said, the characters in Oretsuba are depicted realistically. Each characters always have "A struggle of their own", an interesting tale of their own that worth reader's attention. The characters in Oretsuba are also quite relatable to the real life, at least for me. That alone effectively make all the characters are well developed. And for the character development itself, Oretsuba really did great job to that, particularly to the MCs which always undergo great character development in their respective story/chapter. I really liked all the characters, to a certain degree that if I mention my favourite characters in Oretsuba, I would ended up mentioning 80% of them. My favourite heroine though, is Asuka and Hiyoko, for sure (If Pal was a heroine, she would definitely be my favourite).

For the visuals, it's gorgeous. It greatly enhanced the amazing atmosphere of Yanagihara in winter; If only Oretsuba has bigger resolution, It'll be more amazing. For the character design; Personally, I'm not really into Aoi Nishimata design, but all the characters, especially the heroine, are quite good for me.

And for the music, I really liked how the music is really diverse and varies throughout the story, in order to match the atmosphere of each protagonist chapter. It's excellent and refreshing.

Overall, I had so much fun with Oretsuba. It might not be the VN that I expected to be in the first time, but Oretsuba is a VN that managed to impress me throughout the end with its sublimity. It's fun, refreshing, and absolutely amazing.