Escavalien

The last time I tried reading it was 2017, the same year Presage Flower was released. I'm not gonna lie I binged and rushed pretty hard in order to watch the movie with the route over, and like I've known about myself for ages my memory is in its own tier of shit. It's been five years now and most of my memories of the events are from the movies because well, they're a visual medium and easier to have rewatched over the years.


I had the urge to read the visual novel again and I thought it was fitting to start by rereading HF this time at my own pace, though that implies I'll touch the other routes I don't actually know if I will.

At any rate holy shit I don't know if I have ADHD or something but getting through parts I'm strongly familiar with like the prologue (which I just skipped after a bit) and the first 3 days was really tedious. I found myself getting distracted constantly. The scenes I wasn't distracted were either scenes not used in the other routes (not much of those this early) or bad ends. I've never been the type to sit through a VN and go through bad ends, though I know people like FSN's a lot, and there are some standout ones that most people who read the VN have gone through that I've at least cared to read because of their reputation.

But I just wanted to see what taking the other options would do for the sake of switching things up since the normal course of the game is something I'm used to. It was actually pretty fun. I never realized that Illya was going to torture Shirou indefinitely if she killed him early on. I just assumed she was going to kill him and that's it.

Speaking of Illya I am honestly in this for her and Kirei's scenes because most of my recollection of the route has been scrubbed out by the movies and such. But I am also anticipating a personal experiment. I comprehended Shirou's character arc in HF but I never emotionally connected with it. I sympathized with Sakura, empathized with Rin, and despite having a weak recollection of their parts still found Kirei intriguing as all hell and Illya's actions endearing. But Shirou himself left me emotionally blanked out.

The part where there's an experiment is I'm wondering if I'll build a stronger rapport with his journey through the visual novel and have a eureka moment where I am able to emotionally connect or if nothing will change from my bumrush of the route back then and my reaction to the movies. Though this is mostly a side quest to the main quest of just enjoying the plot at a more natural pace.