Am I the only one that enjoyed Shizune's route?

[urishima]

Nevertheless, I think that the ending to Shizune's route actually had far more to do with Hisao than it did with Shizune - there's a moment of clarity she has after the second H-scene where she comes to terms with her own nature, but she's already a fully formed character, and her arc has more to do with figuring that out than actually changing in any meaningful way (which is fine, and actually a welcome change of pace).

It ends on the note that Hisao wants to go back and teach, and moreover it spends the better part of last two acts (especially when he gets Iwanako's letter, which is very important) detailing how Hisao does a complete about-face, which I think is something a lot of people fail to realize about the path. In the other paths we see Hisao gradually accept his new life and move on, but nowhere else is it as pronounced or profound as it is here. He is not grudgingly accepting his fate as a scienctist, walking backwards with his back to the future and his eyes on the past. Instead, we see Hisao wake the hell up. He begins to make conscious choices and sees his future as this very real, tangible thing. What got me the most was the observation that his life could sputter out at any moment due to his condition, but that he would soldier on regardless.

Shizune's "saying" is: "Can you tell me what you think?" Shizune's path is the one in which Hisao grows the most - he really starts to think for himself.

Couldn't have said it any better, no matter how hard I tried. Having finished the route just a couple minutes ago, I find myself agreeing with almost everything you said here.

I'm glad that I continued with the route, even though I wasn't all that interested in it at first. To all those who haven't played her route yet: Don't let others tell you that it's bad. Fellas dunno what they be talkin about!

[ingordo]

To answer OP's question: quite possibly yes. The sex scene with Misha, abhorrent as it was, was the high water mark of Shizune's route for me.

[Pl4t0]

I loved act 1 and 2.A very random sex scene occours and you barely interact with Shizune on that trip at all.

I think the whole point of that "random scene" was to bring that lack of interaction into focus. Due in equal parts to her disability and her upbringing, Shizune finds it very difficult to communicate with people. This is a character who has only been able to communicate normally with a handful of people to begin with - in KS, this constitutes only Hisao and Misha. She is only able to hold conversations with others through a proxy (Misha), something that Hisao even mentions must isolate her and impair her skills of communication. The H-scenes in Shizune's route are certainly the most abrupt, but I figure that's mostly because Shizune isn't really equipped to ease into something like that. The lack of interaction is not just poor writing, it's intended to evoke those aspects of her character.

The key is to be found in the two H-scenes.

Take the contrast between them, for example. In the first, she ties Hisao up and they don't even remove their clothes. There's been so little interaction between them on the trip (and this is reflected in the scene - he literally cannot touch her, or as it says, even manage to kiss her) that there's no real emotional investment; in every sense of the word, they are just "fucking". It's awkward, quick, and embarrassing afterwards. This is the best approximation of a normal relationship that Shizune can manage, because she just does not know what a normal one is supposed to look like.

But then in the second H-scene, it's entirely different: she still ends up trapping Hisao in her legs, but the gesture is one of affection - not a mechanical reproduction of what she thinks she's supposed to be doing. The first scene was one-sided intercourse, and nothing more than that. I wouldn't go so far as to call the second scene "lovemaking" (at that point, despite getting a better picture of Shizune, we still don't know how many of Hisao's feelings she can reciprocate), but it's definitely a few levels above "fucking". Afterwards, she gives a more literal explanation of the progress that this represents and Shizune begins to realize just how cloistered she's been this entire time and what that lack of interaction means.

Or, I could just be reading way too far into everything, and the writers were really stupid after all; however, I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they had some idea what they were doing . Anything that managed to make me emote on such a level achieved what it set out to accomplish, no matter how it ended up getting there.

Couldn't have said it any better, no matter how hard I tried. Having finished the route just a couple minutes ago, I find myself agreeing with almost everything you said here.

Thanks, glad to hear that somebody shares the same sentiments

[Megumeru]

Bro...my man, homie....

She left me speechless most of the time, how could I not love her route?

[ziamatt]

I wasn't very excited about Shizune as a character or a love interest for Hisao, but as I think about her route she grows on me. I'll have to replay her route to get a better perspective.

[sazaland]

The route is definitely better on a reread. The second time through I saw all the things that Pl4t0 has mentioned so far, and I saw a number of them on the first pass.

Shizune's route is either a great subtle story, or a grand accident. Unless A22 decides to show up and comment we'll never know for sure. I'm inclined to say it's a subtle story at this juncture, which pretty much on it's own explains the general reaction to it: people generally just tend to not like subtle stories. Hollywoodification of storytelling perhaps...

[crystal]

I like it because of Misha, that is all.

[Guest]

I basically agree with everything Pl4t0 has said - it's just made me appreciate Shizooooon's route all the more, and even if her route was completely unsalvageable she'd still remain my favourite girl.

Let's face it - Misha was always going to be involved, most likely romantically, and she became KS's Ensemble Darkhorse with many people asking for her to get her own route. The devs were insistent this wouldn't happen, which only figures that she'd be a main character in Shizune's (and ties in to the fact that during the time of KS at least, Misha only has eyes for Shizune). I for one would have been horribly disappointed if Shizune turned out to be tsundere or she and Hisao turned out to have a relationship on the scale of, say, his and Lilly's in terms of LOVE DOVES CHURCH BELLS BLUE SKIES GUSHING ROMANCE, because that just isn't Shizune at all ... or the "Shizune path" version of Hisao. I like that with Shizune, what you see is very much what you get, but once you understand her without Misha, she becomes much more of an enjoyable character.

In fact, I'm very glad that only Lilly had that style of route, but then again she was styled by Raita to be a bit cliched. Nothing wrong with that type of route, of course, different tastes for different people - but if you've played a lot of VNs then that kind of story is quite common.

I don't think I've ever seen A22 on the KS forums, he's the only writer I've not seen here - he could lurk, but until he shows up and explains what he meant, he's either a writing genius or this was all a massive happy accident.

[Megumeru]

Lilly's route is soapy--sometimes i feel it to be too sapy for my taste; her friend's route is similarly xo IMO.

Shizune's path is just a ad bit more realistic and believable, which is why I tend to get absorbed more into the story than most of the arcs.

[scorptatious]

You are never the only one.

While I personally liked Lilly and Hanako's routes slightly better, I enjoyed Shizune's route. Granted I'll admit the way it was written I had to re-read certain parts of the story to understand Shizune's character. But overall, I still enjoyed it.

[pauper]

I did Hanako's route, and im now doing Shizune.

The good thing about Shizune's route is that you graduately start to talk better with her, and I like that. I also had a laughed at the Kenji scene that appeared when he put of his glasses and starts talking about that girl with the baseball cap.

[scorptatious]

least vocal?

interesting choice of words

I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE.

I really liked Shizune's route, or maybe it was that I liked Shizune's character the best. Competitive and a bit playful despite how wound up she was with the Student Council. I was in student gov't in highschool so I could relate to how she wanted the Student Council to have more responsibilities because that really was the whole point of having a student gov't. Her ending though really was pretty anti-climatic. I think the real issue was that there really wasn't much conflict in her route so most people feel it lacked depth. I'd say I liked Lilly's route the most because the ending was such a rollercoaster but I think Shizune herself was the heroine I could relate the most too.

She was also the only one that had a sprite with the :3 face, abominably cute.

As a matter of personal preference Shizune appeals to me more than the other girls, which I think really lends itself to my enjoyment of the path and allows me to excuse some of its shortcomings. But I have to agree on the lack of conflict near the end - it's not that the thing with Misha wasn't huge or powerful enough, just that the direction it took afterwards was less than climactic. Thoughtful, cerebral, and emotive no doubt, but it lacked the sort of pace or impact that I think we were all expecting. Nevertheless, I think that the ending to Shizune's route actually had far more to do with Hisao than it did with Shizune - there's a moment of clarity she has after the second H-scene where she comes to terms with her own nature, but she's already a fully formed character, and her arc has more to do with figuring that out than actually changing in any meaningful way (which is fine, and actually a welcome change of pace).

It ends on the note that Hisao wants to go back and teach, and moreover it spends the better part of last two acts (especially when he gets Iwanako's letter, which is very important) detailing how Hisao does a complete about-face, which I think is something a lot of people fail to realize about the path. In the other paths we see Hisao gradually accept his new life and move on, but nowhere else is it as pronounced or profound as it is here. He is not grudgingly accepting his fate as a scienctist, walking backwards with his back to the future and his eyes on the past. Instead, we see Hisao wake the hell up. He begins to make conscious choices and sees his future as this very real, tangible thing. What got me the most was the observation that his life could sputter out at any moment due to his condition, but that he would soldier on regardless.

Shizune's "saying" is: "Can you tell me what you think?" Shizune's path is the one in which Hisao grows the most - he really starts to think for himself.

I have to agree with this.

Spoilers about, well, all of the girls in Katawa Shoujo:
Shizune is already a fully formed character. To me, it seems like she and Lilly are the only girls out of the main cast that seem to have everything together. They both beat their disabilities and have respectable positions. (Lilly probably more so considering Shizune's methods as head of the Student Council).

I guess one could argue that Emi has things together as well. But her bottled up feelings about the loss of her dad kept her from getting to close with anyone. Rin also had trouble dealing with people, and Hanako is both physically and psychologically scarred by everything that has happened to her in the past.

[Nakz]

I liked her route a lot a I like her character as well. I also found her dad to be hilarious lol.

[Pl4t0]

I also found her dad to be hilarious lol.

The Misha/Kenji/Jigoro triple-whammy was just awesome, as far as comedy goes. It was also nice that Kenji showed up as often as he did, that conversation about the Olive Jars is one of the funniest I have ever read.

[metalangel]

I was attracted to her the most at first physically, but ended up on the Emi path and found myself effectively sharing Hisao's affection for Emi.

When I went back and made a point of going for Shizune, it was because I wanted to know the real her. I could tell that she was one of those people whose personality changes when she's around a certain other person.... in this case Misha, and they feed off each other. No matter how comfortable Shizune was using Misha as an interpreter (and as Hisao learns sign language you see she really does translate almost verbatim) she'd no doubt temper some words a bit because they were passing through someone else, especially someone who she felt some affection for.

I thought the game went a bit out of its way to make her seem bitchy early on when she's telling off Emi and Rin.

As Hisao learned sign language, and was able to spend time alone with her and get time to talk with her about non-Council stuff, I started to understand why she behaved the way she did, that she disliked people who weren't driven. As Emi works Hisao physically, Shizune works him mentally. I loved that she immediately saw how introverted and self pitying he was, and that she made a point of dragging him out of it whenever he lapsed, to do something worthwhile instead of moping.

Finally having sign language was wonderful, getting it straight from her, discussing life. While I enjoyed Emi (and haven't done Rin, whose personality I find the most interesting) I dare say I like Shizune best. The constant little challenges to keep things interesting, to improve your abilities, I wish my real partner was more like her (she already has the glasses to play with, at least).

At the end of it all I think they both built a very strong connection and learned a lot from each other. The ending was a bit too vague (though I take heart both from that connection and the fact that Hisao says he's going to 'keep chasing' her) but I think all three of them came out of it a lot better than if it had just been Shizune and Misha.

She might just find herself as the new lock-screen image on my phone...