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Saya no Uta |OT| Eldrich Abomination Love

R

radiantdreamer

Member
Just started the game this morning, and finished it just now. OH MY GOD.

My curiosity got the best of me, and now look what happened!! MAD ENDING!!

Great story, though incredibly twisted. It wasn't as scary, gory, or gut wrenching as everyone says it was though. I guess I'm just able to stomach this stuff easier?

Excellent game. Enough that I couldn't stop playing. The sex was totally unnecessary. Other things could have been used as a plot device and it would have worked just the same.

I think I still prefer 999 over this, but that's not a bad thing.
 
C

Crash Station

Member
radiantdreamer said:
Just started the game this morning, and finished it just now. OH MY GOD.

My curiosity got the best of me, and now look what happened!! MAD ENDING!!

Great story, though incredibly twisted. It wasn't as scary, gory, or gut wrenching as everyone says it was though. I guess I'm just able to stomach this stuff easier?

Excellent game. Enough that I couldn't stop playing. The sex was totally unnecessary. Other things could have been used as a plot device and it would have worked just the same.

I think I still prefer 999 over this, but that's not a bad thing.
Click to expand...

Got all
3
endings?
 
R

radiantdreamer

Member
cosmicblizzard said:
Got all
3
endings?
Click to expand...

yup.

A couple of hours after writing my comment though, the horrors that I experienced started sinking its fangs into my mind. I am now forever tainted. This game truly is a mindf*ck beyond comprehension... I just learned that the same writer did Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
 
P

Paprikka

Member
Chiming in as another person that loved 999, started reading up on more VNs, and decided to dive in. I was actually torn between wanting to play either Saya no Uta or Clannad first, but the reactions here have pushed more toward the former. Will report back later with reactions.
 
P

Paprikka

Member
That was great, though not as bad as I was expecting. Can't decide if I'm just too desensitized or just read too into other reactions. Only took a couple hours to get all the endings and the end scenes in
abandoned sanatorium
were crazy. Soundtrack was nice too, ended up leaving the sound library up and repeating the last few songs for a while.

Only bad thing is it's lit a fire under me and I want more now, will have to read the VN thread and find something else to read.
 
T

Typographenia

Member
Thanks for the OT, infinitenine! It's got me really interested once again!
I need to go reread the VN OT you made. : P

Edit: The extent of my exposure to the VN genre has been the phoenix wright games and 999. I'm still fairly new to it, but I've really enjoyed what I have played.

Editedit: Nevermind.
 
I

industrian

will gently cradle you as time slowly ticks away.
I got all three endings.

I must be desensitised like fuck though because the game's "disturbing content" did nothing for me. Not even the sex scenes.

Very good story though.
 
H

hosannainexcelsis

Member
Just completed it. I hope I never become as desensitized as some of you, because there were some seriously disturbing scenes.
The neighbor's mental breakdown and what Fuminori and Saya do to Yoh... blegh.
I understand that the sex scenes aren't completely extraneous to the story, but the way they're written certainly is. It's unfortunate that much of the PC VN market feels it needs sex to sell. Of course, I can also imagine that the author is deliberately trying to mess with the expectations of the normal audience of H-games, given how horrifying these scenes were.

I liked that there were multiple endings.
The ending where Fuminori goes back to normal did interrupt the story halfway, but it was certainly the best ending possible for the characters - sanity prevails and Kouji and Yoh (and everyone else on the planet) can live their lives. On the other hand, the ending where Kouji ends up the lone survivor was how Lovecraft would have ended this story. Finally the ending where Saya's "children" are born feels like the ending this tale was meant to have, even if it's the most bleak of them all.

All in all, a well written story. I see that the author has also written Phantom of Inferno, which I happen to own, and Madoka Magica. Guess I know what to do next.
 
C

Crash Station

Member
hosannainexcelsis said:
Finally the ending where Saya's "children" are born feels like the ending this tale was meant to have, even if it's the most bleak of them all.
Click to expand...

Well it does
tie into the title more than the other endings
.
 
H

hamchan

Member
Ending spoilers:

It makes me wonder, do we turn into mindless blobs or do we keep our minds? Because if everyone turns into blobs but we all keep our minds that's not too bad really. Everyone would eventually just get used to it.
 
C

Crash Station

Member
hamchan said:
Ending spoilers:

It makes me wonder, do we turn into mindless blobs or do we keep our minds? Because if everyone turns into blobs but we all keep our minds that's not too bad really. Everyone would eventually just get used to it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but
there would be utter chaos for a while. Riots, murders; all that jazz. Based on Kouji's reaction to Yoh, pretty much everyone would go completely insane. Not to mention everything known about human biology would have to be completely rewritten. That's a major annoyance.
 
H

hosannainexcelsis

Member
cosmicblizzard said:
Well it does
tie into the title more than the other endings
.
Click to expand...

Indeed,
it is partly because the ending is so bleak that it is the most appropriate ending. The first ending is too good for this story's world.

cosmicblizzard said:
Yeah, but there would be utter chaos for a while. Riots, murders; all that jazz. Based on Kouji's reaction to Yoh, pretty much everyone would go completely insane. Not to mention everything known about human biology would have to be completely rewritten. That's a major annoyance.
Click to expand...

Not to mention
Yoh's reaction to herself. I suspect most of the world would either kill themselves or lose themselves. Anyone who managed to survive with mind partially intact would be living in a completely unsuitable world. I don't think it would end happily for many besides Fuminori.
 
C

Cowie

Member
Just finished up seeing everything in this game, pretty awesome experience.

I don't mind the sexual element, but I do sort of wish there was a version without it that I could recommend to more people. "Do you like Lovecraftian Horror? Great! What about
sex with interdimensional-abomination lolis
? ...Hey, where are you going?"


I guess to get mildly spoilery...

Is there consensus on the best ending? I'd side with the ending where Saya is able to spread her species across the planet, but I wonder if that just means that I'm a sociopath and that it should actually be a terrible ending. I appreciate the fact that the way the story was told, I probably could have been rooting for Kouji/Ryouko.

I was going to ask about the surgery that caused Fuminori to be the way he was, but as I worded the question I suppose I figured out that leaving behind a surgery that would do to the human brain what Saya had been doing to animal ones was Ougai's gift to her, in hopes that someone could see her as anything other than an abomination and potentially come to love her. Pretty awesome, actually.

I'm a complete sucker for Lovecraftian horror, but some of it seemed a little tacked on, like the idea of maddening runes scattered about Ougai's hideout.. Why were they there? Where did he learn of them? Were they an unrelated part of his studies, designed as a safeguard? They felt more like small reminders of the idea that the truth of the world would drive you mad, but i had trouble reconciling their place within the world. Not that it detracts from my enjoyment of the game at all.

It's still all seeping in, I half expect to come back to this thread in 4-5 hours with more questions. Thanks for making the thread that give me the necessary kick in the ass to play this game!
 
K

Kusagari

Member
Just finished all 3 endings. I enjoyed the story and it was great Lovecraftian horror. However, I didn't really feel disturbed by anything in the story. Though considering some of the stuff I've seen on 4chan it's hard for anything to disturb me these days.
 
C

Crash Station

Member
Cowie said:
I was going to ask about the surgery that caused Fuminori to be the way he was, but as I worded the question I suppose I figured out that leaving behind a surgery that would do to the human brain what Saya had been doing to animal ones was Ougai's gift to her, in hopes that someone could see her as anything other than an abomination and potentially come to love her. Pretty awesome, actually.
Click to expand...

Huh? The accident is what fucked up his brain, not some surgery. Or am I not fully understanding what you're saying?
 
K

Kusagari

Member
cosmicblizzard said:
Huh? The accident is what fucked up his brain, not some surgery. Or am I not fully understanding what you're saying?
Click to expand...

No, the experimental brain surgery they did to save him was what left him fucked up as a side effect.
 
I

InfiniteNine

Rolling Girl
Kusagari said:
No, the experimental brain surgery they did to save him was what left him fucked up as a side effect.
Click to expand...
This is accurate I remember this pretty well even though the last time I read it was a couple of years back.
 
C

Crash Station

Member
Kusagari said:
No, the experimental brain surgery they did to save him was what left him fucked up as a side effect.
Click to expand...

Really? Don't remember that. Guess I'm still zoning out during important parts of non-dialogue text.
 
I

industrian

will gently cradle you as time slowly ticks away.
Synth_floyd said:
Why don't they release these kinds of games for the ipad?
Click to expand...

I can think of a few reasons why this game in particular wouldn't get an iPad release.

But I understand your point. I don't know what kind of games/interactive stories are on the iPad already, but I'm sure that the more mainstream tablet computers become the more it will be an option to developers.
 
D

Dambrosi

Banned
Recently got all th
re
e endings, and I have a question.

I cheered and laughed out loud when Ryouko shattered Saya's body in half in the Kouji Survives End. My thoughts, after what she and Fuminori did to Yoh, and knowing from the True End that that fate was what awaited all of humanity if Saya succeeded, were "Good, the bitch deserved it". Add to that that I really, really disliked Fuminori as a character.

Does that make me as disturbed as Ryouko was?
 
C

Cowie

Member
Dambrosi said:
Recently got all th
re
e endings, and I have a question.

I cheered and laughed out loud when Ryouko shattered Saya's body in half in the Kouji Survives End. My thoughts, after what she and Fuminori did to Yoh, and knowing from the True End that that fate was what awaited all of humanity if Saya succeeded, were "Good, the bitch deserved it". Add to that that I really, really disliked Fuminori as a character.

Does that make me as disturbed as Ryouko was?
Click to expand...

Yes. Yes it does.

More seriously though, I'm glad to see people prefer different endings. I felt like the game was designed such that you could root for either side, and that 'bad' and 'good' endings are pretty subjective. The insane asylum would be the worst ending because of how much story it cuts out, but as far as.. killing as few people as possible goes, it's the best? But between the other two endings, I think it comes down to this: Do you think Saya no Uta is a love story, or a horror story?
 
P

Paprikka

Member
Cowie said:
Yes. Yes it does.

More seriously though, I'm glad to see people prefer different endings. I felt like the game was designed such that you could root for either side, and that 'bad' and 'good' endings are pretty subjective. The insane asylum would be the worst ending because of how much story it cuts out, but as far as.. killing as few people as possible goes, it's the best? But between the other two endings, I think it comes down to this: Do you think Saya no Uta is a love story, or a horror story?
Click to expand...
I think as far as humanity is concerned, the ending where everyone but Kouji dies is the best, just because Saya is also dead. We don't know how long her life is, so it's technically possible she could fall in love again. Unlikely yes, considering how she looks, but she also knows how to perform the procedure to switch how a person views the world so it isn't impossible.

My personal favorite though was the ending where she blooms as well. Screw humanity, I just want Saya to be happy. ;_;
 
C

Crash Station

Member
Cowie said:
Yes. Yes it does.

More seriously though, I'm glad to see people prefer different endings. I felt like the game was designed such that you could root for either side, and that 'bad' and 'good' endings are pretty subjective. The insane asylum would be the worst ending because of how much story it cuts out, but as far as.. killing as few people as possible goes, it's the best? But between the other two endings, I think it comes down to this: Do you think Saya no Uta is a love story, or a horror story?
Click to expand...

I actually got the endings in a specific order based on who I was rooting for. It was pretty obvious
Kouji would be fucked if he didn't get Ryouko's help, so I chose that path first since I was rooting for him. Well, I guess it's more that I was rooting against Fuminori and Saya.
I was pretty happy with my decision to go with that order.
 
E

Extollere

Sucks at poetry
Welp, finished this up last night. I really enjoyed it, although I can't say it's really up to par with some of the best literature I've read or anything :p not that it ever tried to be - but for what it is, it was very enjoyable. Maybe it's just me - but I was definitely expecting to be grossed out at some point, and that never really happened. Honestly, I didn't find any of the content in here to be objectionable or disgusting to me. I mean, sure, content wise we had things like
murder, gore, rape, sex with what appears to be a minor, cannibalism, suicide, etc.....
, and I guess I've seen most of those things about a hundred times over, either in some hentai, manga, video games - or whatever. None of it was really that explicit either. The gore was typically only described in text, and not shown - and the sex was censored (well the naughty bits at least). The one thing that definitely surprised me was
Fuminori's suicide. Not that I didn't expect it, but holy shit - that was a hardcore way to take yourself out, haha. Worse than falling on your own sword. We need a courage wolf macro image that says LOOK AT AXE - HEADBUTT IT WITH YOUR FACE

I guess if I had any complaints, I didn't really care for some of the backgrounds being filtered photographs. Think it would have looked a lot nicer if they were hand drawn, but once the story got rolling I really didn't care about it. I also didn't like how the text typically obscured the images (yeah I know you can hide to see the image), would have preferred it if the text was somehow relegated to the lower half of the screen, a la Phoenix Wright or something. Minor complaints really. I also can't say that the twist in the story was really a mind fuck or anything. It kind of fits in perfectly with what was happening up until the end. It was definitely nice the way it wrapped up though.

malingenie said:
Ok, for a non anime human what is this, how do I try it and will my gf get a restraining order on me if she sees it?
Click to expand...

I dunno, is your g/f against depictions of sex, or violence?? If so, I don't really have much advice for you. If not then I wouldn't say there is much in here that's really that offensive IMO. My wife played through the whole thing with me and neither of us flinched or felt offended. I'm guessing that she probably thought the whole thing was a little silly, but she stayed until the very end of the last story line.
 
H

harriet the spy

Member
can anyone who has played the game compare it to a movie, not in terms of story/theme, but in terms of sickness/twistedness, and gore? Just want to see if I can handle it.
 
E

Extollere

Sucks at poetry
harriet the spy said:
can anyone who has played the game compare it to a movie, not in terms of story/theme, but in terms of sickness/twistedness, and gore? Just want to see if I can handle it.
Click to expand...

Outside of the sex scenes, there wasn't anything in the game that was worse than most horror movies. I'd say something like Saw or even the Cube has a lot more gore than this. The two things that I'd consider to be the worst are
Fuminori, the main character, with his guts out - but this isn't real, it's how he sees himself in the beginning of the story. And chopped up human body parts in a refrigerator
. Outside of that, to the main character things like hallways and buildings are covered in funny looking bloody parts. I think it was described as rotting meat and animal guts or something to that effect, somewhere in the story. The other depictions of gore are just in the story. Like at some points it is merely described through text, and not shown on screen. I can be quite squeamish when it comes to gore, especially in movies, or in images online - but this didn't put me off. Maybe it was because it's all hand drawn imagery, maybe it's because it just wasn't that nasty either. My .02 cents, anyways...
 
C

Crash Station

Member
harriet the spy said:
can anyone who has played the game compare it to a movie, not in terms of story/theme, but in terms of sickness/twistedness, and gore? Just want to see if I can handle it.
Click to expand...

Visually it isn't that bad. Outside the main character's view of the world, it's mostly just described in text. The implications are really gory though which include (don't highlight this if you're interested in playing/reading)
a little girl getting chopped to pieces
.
 
P

Paprikka

Member
It's also worth mentioning you can tune down the visuals(sans sex scenes) in various ways. You can either dim the brightness, blur, or both dim and blur the bad backgrounds. I was going to post some (linked) examples, but I'm not sure if it would be OK, even considering the thread. Though I didn't think any of the backgrounds were really that bad, just creepy.
 
B

Bebpo

Banned
I started playing this tonight and I guess I'm about halfway
I'm after the first choice
.

It's enjoyable, but honestly I'm disappointed so far. Going by this thread and Urobuchi's work on Madoka Magika I was expecting a really creative non-orthodox tale. But so far it's just been a good, but typical horror short story; like something I'd read in a Stephen King collection. The first 15-20 mins were interesting, but then you figure out what's going on and everything has been very predictable since. It's written well enough, just...I was hoping for something more creative and unpredictable, like Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. Also so far it hasn't been scary at all and not very gory/guro either. I was hoping for something really disturbing like Silent Hill.

The music is pretty awesome though.

Will finish reading it tomorrow and hopefully the last half has some good twists to make the story more interesting. I do like it, and if I was going in blind I'd probably be very positive about it, but I guess I had high expectations and it's not quite living up to them so far.
 
C

Crash Station

Member
Bebpo said:
Will finish reading it tomorrow and hopefully the last half has some good twists to make the story more interesting. I do like it, and if I was going in blind I'd probably be very positive about it, but I guess I had high expectations and it's not quite living up to them so far.
Click to expand...

If that was my fault, sorry about that. If it wasn't and you have no idea what I'm talking about, disregard this post.

Glad you're enjoying it though.

&#8704 said:
Holy crap. I just started and I already feel uncomfortable. That whole classmate exchange was unsettling.
Click to expand...

Brace yourself cause it gets worse.
 
B

Bebpo

Banned
Just finished it with all the endings

lol

It was entertaining. Can't complain too much. It's not great literature, but it's entertaining horror porn pulp in the same way Elfen Leid is.
 
B

Bebpo

Banned
Also, I thought the opening scene was the best part of the game. The distorted voices, the creepy imagery, the oppressive music, it was really freaky and disturbing. I wish the whole game was like that.
 
kiunchbb

kiunchbb

www.dictionary.com
Dambrosi said:
Recently got all th
re
e endings, and I have a question.

I cheered and laughed out loud when Ryouko shattered Saya's body in half in the Kouji Survives End. My thoughts, after what she and Fuminori did to Yoh, and knowing from the True End that that fate was what awaited all of humanity if Saya succeeded, were "Good, the bitch deserved it". Add to that that I really, really disliked Fuminori as a character.

Does that make me as disturbed as Ryouko was?
Click to expand...

You're not alone, most people like Saya and Fuminori so much were blinded by
the tragic love story, and Saya's moe. In show like Death Note I can understand people cheering for Kira, since what he does for the world could benefit everyone even though he's pure insane... In Saya's case, she's 100% bad for mankind, no grey area stuff here.
 
S

Scribble

Member
I agree with Bepbo's impressions. The first few minutes made me go wow. Got me feeling how horrific it would be to, um, see the same way the protagonist does. Very scary. Then it becomes much less impressive.

And what is it with all these visual novel creators just casually tossing paedophilia into their works as if it's just another harmless fetish? Todd Solondz this is not.

Ugh, wtf is with the slurping sounds?
 
E

Extollere

Sucks at poetry
Scribble said:
And what is it with all these visual novel creators just casually tossing paedophilia into their works as if it's just another harmless fetish? Todd Solondz this is not.
Click to expand...

Can of worms... but, it has been common in Japanese erotic stories and literature to include sexual intimacy with characters of a younger age, since the introduction of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita in the country's native language. This is made even more obvious by the state of the eroge and ero-manga industry of the last decade. Take into consideration that Japan doesn't hold the same taboo about the idea of sexualizing minors as we do in the West - with the age of consent being as low as 13 in some prefectures. And possession of child pornography isn't illegal in Japan (although sales and distribution are). Back on topic - with regards to Saya no Uta (as well as many other works like it) I'd say the content is more accurately described as ephebophilia than pedophilia, which is a label that, more often than not, is dismissed by authors and makers of such content given that the content is entirely fictional. More specifically, the arousal of an idea or of fictional thoughts, does not equate to an attraction of its real life counterpart, and visa versa. I'm not justifying it one way or another, but trying to offer an explanation.
 
V

ViralMarketingDrone

Banned
Are there any other horror visual novels you'd recommend?
I like saya no uta.
20ivsd1.jpg
 
A

Alastor

Member
Finished it today, got all three endings and overall, it was very interesting and not as much... gruesome as I thought it would be from reading this thread earlier. I guess I was pretty disgusted at the beginning, because
I pretty much don't eat meat and find it look and smell sickening
, but after a while, I became accustomed to the visuals. Good thing it wasn't animated, I guess...

I expected to see
human-monster sex
at some point. Yeah, that'd definitely left me uneasy. But it's probably for the better.
 
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