Tuesday, June 18, 2024

"A Midsummer's Day Resonance" by Saitoh Kagura

 So yeah, long time no see. Haven't fallen off the face of the earth yet, just needed to take care of a few projects (my first trad published novel is coming out this year!) and odds and ends. Plus I've been in a bit of a hiatus when it comes to dōjin purchases, but I do have some new material on the way so reviews will be coming soon. I know I have a rather... umm, 'silent' public XD but stats say people actually enjoy reading this blog, so here we go.

Today it's a very quick one, a few notes about a visual novel I have actually played years and years ago for the first time, and that I have replayed recently - A Midsummer's Day Resonancenull (夏の日のレザナンス) by Kagura Saitoh, who in spite of what VNDB would tell you, has actually made more stuff through their semi- professional dōjin circle "Resonance"null, mostly phone games I haven't played so I won't comment upon. Inactive since forever and ever but, by now, is that even a surprise? most of the stuff I write about is dead and buried anyway.



Still, A Midsummer etc is definitely worth a play. Without going to much into the details of the fairly light story (one of those "Dandelion Girl"-ish soft scifi slice-of-life thingies Japan loves so much), I will give you a bunch of reasons to bother downloading this little game:

- English localization, in case you don't speak Japanese. And, should you want, the Japanese version is fairly approachable even by VNs standards. 

- A female protagonist- in fact, a fully female cast. There is a touch of yuri but it's super light, and the focus is more on friendship and 'senpai admiration' than love proper. 

- The art is simple but effective, just a bunch of backgrounds, a few portraits and a handful of intermission sketches. The indie cred is off the charts. 



- Very cute music, and occasional touches of humour. One of the characters is your typical ditz, and she's used quite effectively here without being overplayed. 

- Very short runtime, doesn't overstay its welcome.

So yeah, reccomended, not only as a product itself, but as a historical piece of VN localization. Like most of Park's Insani translations, one could add. Because yes, there was a time in which, save for a few happy islands like this one, either you knew Japanese, or VNs were a no go. Crazy, huh?

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