2025-05-28

ナルキッソス

ナルキッソス is a wholesome but depressive visual novel that is very fun to read. This is the 2nd visual novel I have read in japanese and I enjoyed every moment of it.

Intial Experience

This is an old Visual Novel, so I had a bit of trouble setting it up on my linux setup but eventually got it working. I didn’t know the exact reading order but had heard I was supposed to read the 2nd story and then the 1st. And thus I began.

It’s a wholesome story, we start off with our protagonist 姫子(ひめこ) and her life. She has a cute 妹, 千尋(ちひろ) and a chill 親友, 優花(ゆか). They’re both (protagonist and her bff) car girls and enjoy the chill life they all have.

After the chapter ends (I think it was the prologue + 1st chapter), the game takes you to a menu to select the next chapter—2nd chapter. But my stupid arse did not notice that and thought the story had ended¹. I was almost an hour into it and thought it was pretty short. I decided to move on to the 1st story. Then I repeated the same for the 1st part, going as far as the prologue and the 1st chapter.

It was then I realized what was going on and decided to look-up how many chapters each of the novels had. Lo and behold — 8 chapters, and 18 chapters with a prologue for each one.

After this, I continued reading as normal from the 2nd story again.

Emotional Effects

Story 2

The main female character from the first story—セツミ is introduced at some point in the early chapters of second part. After she’d fallen ill, she describes how she felt alone. School friends moving on, her weakening state. But she kinda pushes through it all not expecting anything (which is crazy for a kid).

The perspective of the story changes to セツミ from 姫子, in the middle chapters, we see them spend time together doing wholesome things together. Overall, a relatively cheerful story at this point. It’s probably a setup to introduce the depressing stuff later. Around the later middle chapters, there’s a sweet tiny child’s story—with 姫子, a cute and wholesome interaction that turns progressively sadder. Shed a few tears during some scenes.

The ending was satisfying, and emotional. I especially liked the narrative intertwinement of these story lines that added much more value to the exchanges.

• セツミand 姫子
• 姫子and unnamed child (i probably forgot the name if they introduced her)

It didn’t feel sad but fulfilling, the ending chapters were definitely emotional.

All the characters interacted wholesomely with each other. I am unsure on Himeko’s sudden changes in her behavior though, maybe she should’ve thought it through on how she treated her friend and imouto. But it doesn’t really matter since it added to the narrative and emotional depth.

Story 1

Cute interactions in a similar vein to Story 2, most of it is—them journeying around trying to live out of a car basically. I liked how セツミ is kind-of a know it all character who seemed to know her way around most situations, meanwhile the main character is just some green adult. Oh and for context, セツミ is 22 and the guy is like 20 in this story.

Partway, I even forgot that they were terminally ill because of how normal it felt

Around the end, I could feel how the characters had been holding back all their emotions inside throughout the previous chapters, they truly hit hard if you read part 2 before part 1 because you know セツミ’s background.

Learner’s perspective

Uses a lot of kanji for common kana words e.g 只、但し、貰う、居る、在る、暫く、筈、僅か, 等. Somehow they don’t use 私 frequently. Lots of difficult words for me as a beginner. It also uses a lot of 異字同訓(いじどうくん).

Common examples that stood out the most to me were these:

たずねる

1. 尋ねる
2. 訪ねる
3. 訪ねる

とめる・とどめる

1. 止める
2. 停める
3. 留める

ひざし

1. 日射し
2. 日差し

あたたかい

1. 温かい
2. 暖かい

There’s a lot more, usually with a specific meaning instead of the commonly known kanji word having multiple meanings. I think this should definitely be recommended to someone who’s read some material before.

Conclusion

People had made it out be some extremely depressive story that you take months to recover from but I didn’t feel any of that. I genuinely appreciated the characters. It is truly saddening how their futures had basically been robbed, but it didn’t cause them to fall into some pit of dispair. The stories are very human, and I can see how some people can truly be affected by it.

Part of the reason I am not as emotionally drained is likely because of my low japanese skill. While I comprehended most of the story just fine, including dialogue. There were some moments where I was rather lost because I couldn’t put the grammar structure together. I ended up whitenoising those things.

My understanding of the emotional baggage held by the words is not there yet either. This definitely played some role, however I am unsure to what degree it could prevent me from grasping the larger narrative.

Details

Data Finished: 「28 May 2025」

文字: 「117,135」²

時間: 「19:53:29」

Average reading speed: 5819文字/hr (variable)

Footnotes