Class 5

[davidn]

Class five! It's another hour-long one and I usually try to space these out a bit over days, but people had been waiting for this one - and I don't think they'll be disappointed!

This is an amazing chapter - a climactic part of the game with great performances from absolutely everyone. It's very illustrative of the game's ability to toss its players around like they're in an emotional tumble dryer - we go on a very long journey through here, from absolutely laughing our heads off during much of the first part to fear and anguish in the third.

This is the genius of this game. The immediate draw of its bird-related craziness honestly pales in comparison to the lunacy that it lets you into once you break the surface, and you keep on exploring deeper and deeper until you're this far into a storyline that you would never have thought it had. Anyone who's just heard about the game in passing may accuse us of overacting here, but... honestly, I don't think that much of this was actually acting by the end!

5-1: Sakuya and Shuu

0:25 Dad/Mum
0:45 Baby Sakuya
2:35 Doctor...
3:00 Assessment of Sakuya
4:55 Cleaver
6:40 Lack of fingers
7:15 Save point
9:10 Mmmmmmmegalomania
10:55 Distraction
11:55 Delayed reaction
12:35 Corpsing the doctor
15:25 Fate
16:25 Listening to Shuu
17:20 Massive thing
18:35 Drawers and hesitation
20:40 Literacy

5-2: Preparation

0:55 Take a drink
3:40 Physical labour
4:35 Take a look at him
6:45 Nobility knows no illness!
8:10 A Yuuya scene, do I even need to say anything more specific about these by this point?
10:05 Pause for thought
12:05 Dodge the scarecrow!
16:15 Plan

5-3: Brothers

0:00 Oh, the whole blasted thing.

Well done.

Comments

[kjorteo]

With Sakuya, I'm not sure there's ever any kind of acting except "over."

Everyone else in this chapter was absolutely phenomenal, but special praise goes to your Shuu for crossing the line from creepy into downright terrifying with far too much ease, and of course Raven's Yuuya for the same kind of "wait a minute, suddenly this silliness is downright heartwrenching" performance that the game itself puts on at that point. He rose to the occasion of that scene beautifully, he really did. Xaq also had some real palpable anger in Ryouta's confrontation at the end of 5-3, and Kaye handled being Sakuya's father much better than I handled being Sakuya at that age. (I would like to congratulate everyone involved in that part for making me push my already-questionable fake British accent all the way into full-blown Luke from Professor Layton.)

Hatoful is ... it's a game wherein you are the only human in a school for pigeons, and you date pigeons represented by actual Google and/or self-taken photos of pigeons. Then, if you can accept that, it gets weird.

We jokingly use that line a lot, but this is one of the most definitive moments in which the trap is sprung--the end of 5-3 is definitely one of those "I remember when this game was about dating pigeons...." moments.

[premchaia_pre4]

You realize I still went o.@ a bit at “Never let anyone tie you down”.

[kjorteo]

There were an astonishing number of Yuuya lines I could have taken the wrong way (and would have, in a more lighthearted scene) but chose to maintain respectful silence instead. Actually, this entire group has an incredible sense of appropriateness for when to be playful or serious, for a game that so gleefully whiplashes between the two--for example, just look at the times when we read typos in the script as they are written to poke fun at them, and when we just say what the line meant and refrain from further comment.

[premchaia_pre4]

Fair enough! And the plushie icon works very well for such things.

[davidn]

I'm honestly not sure how to feel about my new-found capacity for unspeakable evil! I'm not sure how much of it is just the British stereotype here, but... I've found I do get a lot of enjoyment from provoking that reaction (except at that moment in class 7 when it all became too much).

Raven's transformation was amazing :) Hearing the same voice we knew as a non-serious character, along with your own well-practiced pained version of Sakuya, suddenly going through this tragic plot point that could only have worked with birds as the characters... and at the very other end of the scale, your squeaky-voiced Sakuya was one of the funniest things in the entire run so far (I had to turn the volume of my laugh down significantly in the edit because it had distorted so much!)