18/02/2018

Bad Apple Wars: From love to hate to love again


Let's get straight to the point: I ADORE Bad Apple Wars, so much so that it can claim the honour of being my absolute favourite otome VN so far. (Yup, I love it even more than Norn9—although to be fair, there's but a teeny-tiny gap between the two games in my heart.) But as the title implies, it was not always that way. It took a lot of time and runs to reveal that game's true potential, and my feelings for it went through a lot of ups and downs in the process. Without further ado, here's the story of how BAW meekly but decidedly climbed to the top of my personal otome chart. (Minor spoilers!)

Things started auspiciously, as I had an instant crush on BAW the very second I started playing it. I was hopelessly fond of the sharp character design, the distintive art style, the vivid colour palette, the lush soundtrack, the unique font, the lively translation, the zesty voice acting, the eerie setting, the mesmerizing atmosphere—the everything. I just loved that game, period. It oozed some strong Danganronpa vibes, and yet it was unique enough to not feel like a complete rip-off of said Danganronpa. I relished the fact that the heroine was this bland, unremarkable, nearly blasé character instead of your usual cheerful and upbeat otome MC, and I was delighted by her uncanny ability to maintain her apathetic edge even in the face of a completely foreign and ludicrous situation. I cleared Satoru's route first, and I enjoyed it so much that I was just that close to jumping on my keyboard and ordering a physical copy of the game. However, experience had taught me to be cautious with VNs and otomes, and to not judge a whole game on a single route. So I restrained my roaring purchasing impulses, and kept playing.

And sure enough, things started to deteriorate right from the second route. I went for Higa, and I was quickly irritated by Rinka's submissive attitude towards the Bad Apples and by the goody-two-shoes and holier-than-thou attitude of said Bad Apples. I started suspecting that the writers had a mighty big bias towards the Bad Apples indeed, and that the choice between two sides I had somehow been promised was nothing but a marketing sham. Then I played Alma/Aruma's route, and the repetitions promptly drove me crazy. Higa's and Aruma's routes had so many scenes in common that I felt like I was virtually playing the exact same route, only with a different suitor. And to my utter dismay, the same pattern reared its ugly head yet again in Shikishima's route. That's when I resorted to skipping massive chunks of the game in order to reach the next exclusive scene without having to sift through mountains of already read dialogue; and by the time I polished off Watase's route, I had virtually stopped reading segments that didn't feature the beau du jour. That sure didn't help alleviate my negative feelings towards BAW, as all that skipping made me feel more disconnected from the game than ever. To add insult to injury, the story was not answering all my questions, and you know how much I hate it when a story leaves me hanging and doesn't bother tying loose ends. In a nutshell, I was pissed off, and my initial love for the game had turned into contempt and aversion.

I thought things were well and truly over between me and BAW—but lo and behold, a few days after the end of my run, I started nursing second thoughts. I though that maybe I had missed some key information by skipping so many scenes; and I wondered if maybe the bad endings, which I had carefully avoided, could shed light on some unexplained story elements. Most importantly, the game still tugged at me and draw me in somehow; and deep down inside, I really didn't want to dislike it. And that's how I decided to give BAW a second chance and found myself replaying the whole game from scratch, bad endings included.

And to my utter delight, everything clicked into place during that second playthrough. It turned out that BAW is one of these stories in which nearly every word uttered by the characters contains meaningful information and is relevant to the plot, and that I had indeed missed a lot of important narrative elements by force-skipping entire sections and avoiding bad endings. I finally managed to piece everything together and I was able at long last to understand the whole story—and holy cow, is it a mind-blowing story indeed. Very consistent rules, no major plotholes, no trace of ad hoc or deus ex machina and last but not least, a delightful plot twist—albeit a bit too muted for it own good. It took an awful lot of unraveling to get the full picture, but gosh, that was so worth it. The game's title finally made sense, as well as the fact that there's only one true side available: the sole purpose of the NEVAEH Academy is to coax dead youngsters into overcoming despair and recovering the will to live, and that deed can solely be achieved through being a Bad Apple. Fully understanding the story's stakes also gave me a new appreciation of all the characters, whose hurdles and hardships suddenly became much more touching and heart-wrenching. And that's how I found myself not just merely loving BAW again, but loving it ten times more than when I started playing it.

It goes without saying that after all that, BAW brilliantly passed the Shall We Get Physical test. And it passed with honours too, since I ended up purchasing the regular North-American edition AND the Japanese special edition. As they say in french, when you love, you don't count the (shipping) costs! Having said that, I'm going to skip the route report for that game. The reason for that most unusual course of (in)action is twofold: first, the romance in BAW is clearly secondary to the overarching story, a mere side dish to be enjoyed along the way; and secondly, although I kinda liked all the guys and could relate to their plagues, I don't have much to add about them. I was thinking of laying down the rules of the BAW universe in a dedicated post, but I'm not sure I'll have the drive to do that. What I have the drive to do, on the other hand, is play the last otome VN I snatched during that January PSN sale. Let's get back to the love grinding! Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!

6 comments:

  1. I avoided reading beyond the first paragraph to avoid spoilers, but, considering your reaction, it seems like it's a pretty good Otome? Honestly, I've never heard about it until I saw it on sale a couple of weeks ago (which coincides with when you bought it) but I tried to avoid buying even more games for now. My backlog is huge as it is.

    Guess I'll keep an eye on it. When it gets another sale, maybe I'll go for it.

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    1. The spoilers are rather mild, to be honest. There's nothing here that could ruin the story for you, except maybe in the second to last paragraph. ^^

      That game is quite similar to Sweet Fuse when it comes to its overall atmosphere, only with a much sweeter and more melancolic vibe. Heroine Rinka strays from your typical otome heroine by being apathetic and blasé, and romance is mostly treated as a side dish. BAW is first and foremost a visual novel, and then an otome game.

      Last advice for the road, if you keep abstaining from reading that post: if/when you play BAW, make sure to play all the bad endings as well, as they give valuable insights into the story. ^^

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  2. Okay, so I had to sleep on this game, and if there's one sentence to describe it, it's this: squandered potential.

    The premise is very good, and I didn't mind the school setting as much as I thought I would. It could pull a very creepy atmosphere when it wanted to, and the characters were fine. But that's it; the base was good, but when it came to the landing it completely failed. There was almost no point to having a choice between the 'bad apples' and 'good apples' when the MC didn't make one iota of an effort to be a prefect. I don't mind her befriending the bad apples in both routes, but there should at least have been some conflict there. Each guy barely had any personal moments to themselves, which means there was very little time for a romance to develop.

    Other than that, there were several things I didn't like:
    - How time worked as a whole; they never explained how Watase died after her, but was at the academy long before her. The reincarnation timelines are also iffy; how come Higa reincarnated just in time to be the same age as the heroine, but Sanzu (from what we see in Alma's ending) graduated before him, but was only a little girl when the heroine saw her? Of course, complete ass pull. Because it's okay for Alma to be way older than her, but the MC couldn't meet Higa years later when she was an office lady or something. Older women x younger guy, grossssss.

    -I HATE REINCARNATION ROMANCES. It means they're love with their past selves, not their current selves. This means Higa, who was my favourite otherwise, was completely ruined. It wasn't confirmed with Shikishima, but the fact she kept seeing his great-grandnephew as him might have made it even worse. And as for Alma...not confirmed either, but the implications that she was the reincarnation of his love completely ruined his route. Wasn't the point of his route to learn to move on with your life? Way to completely shoot that in the foot.

    -Speaking of Higa, why the hell did he graduate when he kept breaking rules constantly, and never did in any other route?

    -They shouldn't have revealed Watase's face in the OP screen. Completely ruined the mystery of his face.

    -Why did Naraka not have a route? He was the one who had the most chemistry with her, especially in the good apples route. Plus, it would have been able to makes the routes split equally (either put him in the good apples route, or switch Shikishima to a good apples route). But no, they want to be progressive and have a cool cross-dresser, but they're still cowards who won't let us date him. *sigh*

    But since I like to write myself, I really value potential over a plot that bores me, so this game will still stick around in my head for a good while. Whereas I really get the feeling I won't give one crap about CollarxMalice, which everyone says is better.

    Great OST though! And I really loved the bad ends, especially Satoru's.

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    1. Gee, thanks for commenting! ^^ Thinking back on the game, the way time works at the NEVAEH Academy was indeed messy and confusing... And yet, I doubt it could have been handled any better, if only because stories involving different times are bound to be messy and confusing indeed. :P

      My understanding is that NEVAEH is some kind of place out of time, in which school years loop over and over again for people who don't graduate. There is thus no actual passing of time, and no actual arrival point at a given time for new students: the notions of 'before' and 'after' are meaningless, and students are either there or not there. But because humans are temporal beings, students will recreate that illusion of time as loops unfold, and somehow project it backwards.

      In other words: the illusion of time in NEVAEH is created by the loops, but those loops don't take place in time. New students always pop up at the beginning of the school year no matter what, and that school year resets infinitely: those who loop with it and don't graduate get the feeling that they've been there 'longer', when they've actually been going through the same loop over and over again. The notion of the passing of time in NEVAEH is mostly a mental illusion, and some students feel they've been there longer than others simply because they've been through more loops — kinda like those infinite screen in old video games: even if you loop through them a million times, you haven't moved an inch in actual space. So Watase didn't arrive earlier than the MC, he's just been through more loops.

      As for the reincarnations romances... Well, I dislike that trope as well; so the less say about them, the better.

      Satoru is my favourite character by a long shot: his personal story of working himself to death made me tear up, and I really appreciate the fact that he's the same age as the MC when he comes back to life and that both of them are not reincarnated lovers. They are the game's sweetest pair, and the one I rooted for the most — although I also have a soft spot for Watase and his harrowing tale of loneliness, rotten karma and thirst for love.

      A Naraka route would have been awesome indeed; and as you say, it would have nicely balanced the Good Apples and Bad Apples sides. As it is, the promise of choice between both sides is nothing but a marketing sham.

      Man, writing all this makes me wanna replay the game! :D

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    2. The only issues I have time-wise is the reincarnation aspects only. Like I said, it felt they were made to be convenient and nothing else. For example, it makes total sense that Watase graduated after her, but technically came back to life almost at the same time, since they died almost at the same time too. He couldn't just poof from the real world and pop back once he finally graduated after all. But Higa and Shikishisma? Yeah, it was total BS.

      Also, it still does not make sense that Watase came to Nevaeh before her though. Now, if he was locked, or the game came out and said he was the true route, it WOULD make sense; the school sensed that Watase needed to almost lose himself in Nevaeh so the heroine could double her efforts in pursuing him, and in the process, save his life. But the game does not make his route the canon one, and in other routes, the heroine does nothing to save him, so that easy cop out is sadly out. Now, when it comes to Higa and Alma, I think it does make sense that Higa died before Alma but came to Nevaeh after him, since Higa clearly needed a leader like Alma in every route and the school catered to that need.

      Personally, the one I had the most soft spot for was Shikishisma. While I have never wanted to do anything more than make fanart with my art, and I don't even share it online, his desperate struggle to show someone how he saw the world differently really stroke a cord with me. Which is only the more sad that he got the crappiest ending of all of them :(

      That said, I am also extremely close to my mother, so Satoru killing himself just to make his mom happy was also very touching. But he's just so annoying with his constant word definition babble, I couldn't fully enjoy his route because of that, even when he became very sweet. Still, his was the least complicated route, and the only one besides Watase's that can end without making an unsatisfying ending.

      Another thing, they explained the headmaster, but who were the teachers in Nevaeh? Where did they come from, and what was their true function? You can't even say they were there to guide the students due to what gas mask did, though that is certainly what the other two did. Lost potential there. As with Naraka lacking a route.

      Still, I really loved the main theme of the game; that life if full of despair, but still worth fighting for. Whatever shortcomings the game had, I felt they delivered that message very well.

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    3. Shikishima's ending was frustrating indeed; and surprise surprise, it involves the heaviest dose of reincarnation! Sarcasm aside, I'd really prefer all the guys to be from the same era as the MC. That would require suspension of disbelief, but I'd gladly have that over serial reincarnations.

      Agree with you about the teachers and the headmaster: I kinda expected some juicy reveals on that front, only for the game to keep the mystery intact and explain nothing at all. Oh, well; maybe it's better to leave it at that, and swallow the game whole as the allegory it is.

      >'Still, I really loved the main theme of the game; that life if full of despair, but still worth fighting for. Whatever shortcomings the game had, I felt they delivered that message very well': you know, I had an epiphany of sorts upon reading that last paragraph of yours. I realized that my all-time favourite VNs are of the allegorical variety, with an underlying message about life, relationships, the Universe or whatnot on top of l'Amour. Bad Apple Wars, Norn9, Café Enchanté, Steins;Gate 0: they all deliver such a message indeed, and that's why they left such a deep imprint on my gamer's soul.

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