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Hisao&Hanako<3 wrote:The point of Hanako's route is to see her as a normal human girl with feelings just like everyone else, right? And not to treat her with this special delicacy...

You mean that thing you do and then justify with pretentious pseudo-religious talk of spiritual convictions and your "Father"?


Speaking of feels, there's that annoyed feel when the cable through which your internet runs gets an imperceptible break in it at the very moment that a countywide outage begins. 'Net was dead for two days while the outage believed responsible only lasted a few hours...

And Wiosna still kills me with feels so it's hard to start replaying...I lost my save data.

The point of Hanako's route is to see her as a normal human girl with feelings just like everyone else, right? And not to treat her with this special delicacy...

The route actually contains an aditional point that has nothing to do with Hanako and everything with Hisao. Particularly in this route, Hisao's struggling to sort himself out and when Lilly asks him about his plans for the future, he admits he has none. His obsession with Hanako's situation is partially a distraction. He uses Hanako as a means to avoid having to think about stuff that makes him uneasy. As long as he's obsessing over Hanako, he doesn't have to think about his own life, because thinking about his own life makes him anxious.

So the additional point is: don't use others as an distraction to avoid having to think about your own problems.

Guest Poster wrote:

The point of Hanako's route is to see her as a normal human girl with feelings just like everyone else, right? And not to treat her with this special delicacy...

The route actually contains an aditional point that has nothing to do with Hanako and everything with Hisao. Particularly in this route, Hisao's struggling to sort himself out and when Lilly asks him about his plans for the future, he admits he has none. His obsession with Hanako's situation is partially a distraction. He uses Hanako as a means to avoid having to think about stuff that makes him uneasy. As long as he's obsessing over Hanako, he doesn't have to think about his own life, because thinking about his own life makes him anxious.

So the additional point is: don't use others as an distraction to avoid having to think about your own problems.

I feel like that point could apply to most routes, given the way Hisao is always just coincidentally hooking up with severely problematic people who he can focus on and worry over...

To be honest, only in Rin's and Hanako's route is Hisao clearly worrying obsessively and using it somewhat as a coping mechanism. In Shizune's route, Hisao's more confident and has sorted himself out by the time Misha and Shizune get into their little spat. In Lilly's route, he's clinging to Lilly a bit, but it's Lilly who's worrying over Hisao and not so much the other way around. In Emi's route, the problem isn't so much Hisao worrying obsessively, but rather Emi keeping him out obsessively.

What, Iwanako? The fact that he wasn't happy with the letter she sent and that makes him immature? I'd feel the same way he does, most likely. Seems to me everyone can accept you at your best, but they abandon you when you're at your worst. That is how fickle human minds are... but the reason the story went that way is so we'd have a lot more than just three endings.

I honestly don't know how I would have reacted 11 years ago, because back then I had a lot more to learn than I do now.

Then again, now that my half asleep mind is just waking up, I'd think that the hospital stay pretty much would have spelled it out for me.

And if you think about it, "Me-Hisao" would have handled things differently before the heart attack even came. Like writing letters to Iwanako instead of just staring and listening in admiration. I did a lot of writing in high school. I regret not keeping it going, but I got interested in other things that helped me grow as well.

I have to keep falling back on and saying this, but were I involved in the KS story as the main character or another male, things would have gone way different cause I'd make different choices. It would be interesting to see the characters' reactions to me vs. how they deal with Hisao. It also takes a lot of what-ifs, like considering if it's my high school self or the way I am now.

Hisao&Hanako<3 wrote:What, Iwanako? The fact that he wasn't happy with the letter she sent and that makes him immature? I'd feel the same way he does, most likely. Seems to me everyone can accept you at your best, but they abandon you when you're at your worst. That is how fickle human minds are... but the reason the story went that way is so we'd have a lot more than just three endings.

I didn't find a single mention of Iwanako in the last three pages. Curious as to what you're responding to here. But yeah, Iwanako's letter was all kinds of suckishness. No contact at all would've been preferable to her passive cutting-off of any future connection flimsily disguised as a weak attempt at getting back in touch.

And if your default view of humans is "accept you at your best, but they abandon you when you're at your worst", you've just been picking awful 'friends'. And there's no good ending at the end of that particular road.

Say, do you have some notion of being a demigod or an alien? You always specify "human" where it's already pretty obvious...I've met people who honestly hold such notions before so I have to ask.

Hmm, actually my comment of being abandoned at my worst refers to strangers. People that don't know me well.

As for the other comment, I don't recall making a direct reference to a human other than me saying "if I were another male in the KS story." Meaning, I'm not the main character. And I'm definitely not Kenji.

But yeah, Iwanako's letter was all kinds of suckishness. No contact at all would've been preferable to her passive cutting-off of any future connection flimsily disguised as a weak attempt at getting back in touch.

I disagree. Even Hisao mentioned that it was obvious that Iwanako's letter wasn't trying to get back in touch, but it was Iwanako's way of bringing closure to the relationship. The last time they parted was when she walked out of his hospital room and he didn't even know back then that he'd never see her again. It was a big open end. Sometimes closure is the best thing that can happen to an all-but-dead relationship. Whether Hisao needed that kind of closure isn't made very clear, but I suspect Iwanako did and I can't fault her for that.

Guest Poster wrote:

But yeah, Iwanako's letter was all kinds of suckishness. No contact at all would've been preferable to her passive cutting-off of any future connection flimsily disguised as a weak attempt at getting back in touch.

I disagree. Even Hisao mentioned that it was obvious that Iwanako's letter wasn't trying to get back in touch, but it was Iwanako's way of bringing closure to the relationship. The last time they parted was when she walked out of his hospital room and he didn't even know back then that he'd never see her again. It was a big open end. Sometimes closure is the best thing that can happen to an all-but-dead relationship. Whether Hisao needed that kind of closure isn't made very clear, but I suspect Iwanako did and I can't fault her for that.

She still worded it as if they might get back in touch. It was nothing more than a weak obligatory invitation but it was there.

"Still, if you would
like to correspond with me, by all
means write me back. I'd very much
like to hear about your new school
and how you are doing."
(Apparently, KS has its own wiki.)

Point being, if she needed closure, she could've skipped the part where she pretends it isn't a close.

@H&H: "human minds", "human logic", you do specify it an awful lot.

She still worded it as if they might get back in touch. It was nothing more than a weak obligatory invitation but it was there.

Yeah, but Hisao takes note of that part and mentions it's merely there for show. Japanese communicate like that a lot.

I agree. I kind of miss Emi a lot. I can't tell if that's normal or just plain sad.

pandaphil wrote:

Shail wrote:

tfw you will never get to cheer Emi on for her track meet
tfw you will never get to help Shizune with student council work
tfw you will never get to comfort little Hanako when she needs a hug
tfw you will never get confused to hell from talking to Rin
tfw you will never get to chase down the plane to keep Lilly from moving to Scotland

tfw you realize that you're holding your breath in life, waiting for things that will never happen, to the point you start forgetting the life you already have.

mfw I cried for the first time in 8 years because of how lonely I felt after playing KS

mfw I realize how alone I truly am, and how much I've missed in life by being anti-social
mfw I realize that my high school days are over, the magical years of HS that I watch in my anime will never come back to me


mfw I realize that I envy a guy, in a video game, who has a nearly-fatal heart condition, and goes to school with people who have disabilities
mfw I realize that I would give everything away, to trade places with a cripple...

There's a lot of truth in what you say my friend.

Too much truth. I really do need to take the new user topic's advice and figure out a way to snap out of this funk before I end up living in my room alone with Imaginary Emi. I really, really don't want that. I just don't know what to do now and I feel really alone and the KS story I made is so much more comforting than anything in real life. Ugh...

SpunkySix wrote:Too much truth. I really do need to take the new user topic's advice and figure out a way to snap out of this funk before I end up living in my room alone with Imaginary Emi. I really, really don't want that. I just don't know what to do now and I feel really alone and the KS story I made is so much more comforting than anything in real life. Ugh...

Here's what you do: Finish the game.

SpunkySix wrote: Too much truth. I really do need to take the new user topic's advice and figure out a way to snap out of this funk before I end up living in my room alone with Imaginary Emi. I really, really don't want that. I just don't know what to do now and I feel really alone and the KS story I made is so much more comforting than anything in real life. Ugh...

All I can suggest is keep collecting fan art, read fics, and post here in the forum.Most of us went through the same thing as you. It just takes time to recover.

pandaphil wrote:

SpunkySix wrote: Too much truth. I really do need to take the new user topic's advice and figure out a way to snap out of this funk before I end up living in my room alone with Imaginary Emi. I really, really don't want that. I just don't know what to do now and I feel really alone and the KS story I made is so much more comforting than anything in real life. Ugh...

All I can suggest is keep collecting fan art, read fics, and post here in the forum.Most of us went through the same thing as you. It just takes time to recover.

Alright, thanks. It's funny how weirdly normal this seems to be. Kind of a sign of major quality.