being spoiled on things kinda sucks because i'm really bad at forgetting spoilers and so they colour my impression of the story in advance. it's not a big deal but

“I clicked the link in Yokoyama Kiyoshi's (I remembered his name because it was in the email) message and went to the underground message board.”

「でも、正しくは水上さんが隠した物じゃない、水上さんに隠されたもの」

my favourite part of Subarashiki Hibi is when Otonashi Ayana turns directly to the camera and says “Subarashiki Hibi”

evil otonashi ayana be like “there is no outside world”

let's subahibi

finally encountering the legendary creature known as “kimika”

minakami yuki has a level of technical literacy that would seem out of place if the game were made today, but which i don't think is out of place for its time

minakami yuki does not fear ptsd…

i love moody detectives named some variation on “yuki”

what the fuck

(i just got to the end of july 17 in dtrh 2)

is it true that a kiss can give you schizophrenia

sometimes i post things because they're funny but they might give the impression i am reading something into this that i am not

sometimes she lies to herself, perhaps

this sky is so cool i want to be an ayana when i grow up

She seemed to know everything. She seemed to see everything.

‪they need to do some otonashi ayana shit to me‬

why does minakami yuki have a cop baton

…oh, perhaps this is why this chapter is titled—

The concrete columns seemed to stretch on forever.

oh. the horrors

oh god the horrors

oh, the horrors

(got to the end of dtrh2 july 18… i have a feeling these events might be route-dependent)

a sky with no name

wait if subahibi didn't have male voice acting in the original release, would that mean fucking takuji had no voice?!

i guess takuji was an honourary girl for voice acting purposes (i feel like i'm going to regret saying this somehow)

なんでもないよ、ただ

i finished down the rabbit hole 2

i appreciate that, almost as if i were minakami yuki, this story keeps thwarting my attempts to pre-empt and overanalyse it

i must continue subaing my hibi

time for… “It's my own invention”…

i've heard that arc name before but i do not remember anything i've heard about it

probably for the better

oh god the [rot13]snpg znzvln gnxhwv vf gur cbi punenpgre[/rot13] means this is going to be Horrible i am certain of it

local girl (me) expects to see the violence rained down by the perpetrator of previous arc, discovers she's actually going to see the violence rained down upon them first

it's always like this, isn't it

honk if you love the cycle of violence

yuuki tomosane… i feel like i have friends who would know him [euphemism]

shiroyama and numada must be the ugliest fucking characters i've seen yet in this artstyle

how big of a fucking grin does sca-di have on his face every time he writes “this isn't an eroge!”

this game's relationship with the fact of its being an eroge continues to fascinate me

because it's an eroge it can be honest about sex as a subject of intrusive thoughts, for example

i'm so scared. tragedy feels almost certain

NO I DO NOT LIKE WHERE THIS IS GOING

i should really start making notes as to what particular tweets are about

it's funny how i'll reflexively tweet shit like “NO I DO NOT LIKE WHERE THIS IS GOING” in response to the slightest hint of reasons behind future/past events i've partially already experienced, and then something far more horrifying Actually Happens and i simply. Stop Tweeting

“this game's relationship with the fact of its being an eroge continues to fascinate me” yeah funny i just tweeted that because it's now going in the “morbid” direction

not the best place to stop playing for the day, the intensity of a moment loses something when you pick up later.

i think i want to go back in time and force my 16-year-old self to read this game just to see what happens to them

subahibi keeps inspiring that fear in me of knowing the shape of the tragedy that's about to happen. sometimes that affects me more than actually seeing things occur…

mamiya takuji :(

i guess the interesting thing about reading an eroge of this type is that any ominous implied wild possibility might actually happen

mamiya takuji confirmed haruhi fan (it's my own invention, july 12)

the ideal visual novel is characters staring idly at the sky and thinking to themselves

i knew it :(

mamiya takuji :(

it must be too early for me to speak of this, but finishing “down the rabbit hole 2” and getting some ways into “it's my own invention” are really making “down the rabbit hole 1” feel downright cruel

what a game

he's totally relaxed. he's completely calm.

i love end of evangelion

i try not to do it but i keep having increasingly more elaborate hypotheses about who or what tsukasa and kagami are

perhaps she really did know everything. perhaps she really did see everything

mahou shoujo riruru is probably more cardcaptor sakura than anything else but she does feel a tiny bit nanoha-inspired possibly

i love trinitarianism

“sub specie aeterni” is something i should've tweeted earlier

five weeks without reading any subahibi… i've been slacking.

picking up where i left off in it's my own invention, start of july 14

You've probably suffered for a long time.

But the only reason you're suffering is because your existence is correct.
You suffer because you're correct.

But the incorrect person who is tormenting you will die.
Soon, one of your problems will disappear.

were online suicide pacts a particularly japanese early-2000's phenomenon, or just a generally early-2000's phenomenon? at least within popular awareness of them? i'm sure they never went away of course, but this is the second time i've seen them come up in old japanese media

couldnt we get in trouble for that?
it seemed like she was broken

No, I'm actually super creative. I might not look like it, but I'm an artist.

the riruru-chan scene auto-advances what the heck

On an unconscious level, humanity is a single organism.

i clearly haven't completely quit social media so i guess i can allow myself to tweet that i finished “it's my own invention” a while back, the alt route specifically, so now i'm gonna see how the main one goes

tachibana kimika

残念賞 is an extremely funny word

she's… she's never made that face before

sir, we are reaching supercritical levels of ayanasmug

christ this game keeps finding new ways to twist the knife

subahibi is a game that opens with a sickly-sweet beautiful false utopia, and then guides you through many different delusion-filled horrifying realities, wounding your heart with the fragments of so many shattered dreams that, one can only wish, could have been a greater whole

i've now finished the main route of “it's my own invention”, having previously finished the alt route

hmm i can't let myself get out of the subahibi habit, it's time to pick this back up

fear

I wonder if there are beautiful things in the world of mirrors…

damn

wow i think i may have spotted a translation mistake? that or it's an intentionally mangled brand name.

the TL says “Donkey's” and she did say 「ドンキ」, but this is the nickname of the store chain Don Quijote, which is full of cheap tacky Halloween-y stuff, i've been before

ah i think i misheard! i think Megu says 「ドドンキ」 which sure seems like an intentional mangling. in that case, the English is a reasonable translation (different intentional mangling).

then right after that they throw “lol.” into a spoken line… what

perversely i feel most sorry for kimika

god seeing this meeting between takuji and zakuro again from the other perspective is even more painful

remember kids, if you never show any vulnerability and close your heart to outsiders, nobody can hurt you (except the people who're already hurting you, but nothing can be done about that)

“When I came here… I felt like there was something drawing me in. Somewhere else… Somewhere other than the place I am. The world of mirrors… The world of mystery… I know that nothing like that really exists, but for some reason I had gotten the feeling that there was something different about him. Mamiya-kun seemed enigmatic at first, but… But it was just an illusion. This place lost its luster once I found that out. It was just another dull place.”

if any chapter of this game would have the ability to shatter my heart into pieces, surely it will be this one. zakuro is just… far too close to my heart

We're going to restart “Looking-glass insects” because we had hardly started this chapter before we had our own series of, uh… 素晴らしき日々… and there's not much to re-read. This will be an interesting experience for sure. I am now reading the work I supposedly come from.

Oh, we wondered what is up with 素晴らしい [subarashii] versus 素晴らしき [subarashiki] and Wiktionary says it's “(Classical Japanese) adnominal form of 素晴らし (subarashi, shiku-adj.)”. Is this some fossilised inflection from older Japanese? Fascinating!

Fascinated by how closely this Japanese translation of “Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There” seems to match the English (assuming the English is directly quoted from the original book)…

I wonder if there are beautiful things in the world of mirrors…

「でも鏡の世界の私だってつまらない顔しているのだから、あっちはあっちでつまらないのかも知れない。私ならそう感がいてしまう。鏡の世界だってここと同じ。」

“Now only otakus have them… Only disgusting freaks who talk to themselves have knives.”

(Apparently “dreams” is a plausible typo of “freaks”, because that's what our phone keyboard inferred the first time… beautiful.)

Oh god. Poor Takashima-san being bullied out of her concert ticket. ”All About Lily Chou-Chou” really is very SubaHibi…

oh god we're like kimika

“It was just another dull place.”

“And even if there was a bouquet of flowers to fill the hole in my life… they would wilt in just a few days.”

Oh, and now we've caught up to where we were. Only one day in, huh.

This CG of Mamiya reading on the rooftop (as Takashima talks to him) might be the one where he looks most… handsome? happy? of all the ones he's featured in in the game so far.

Ah, this is the pleasant, almost Koizumi Itsuki-ish version of Mamiya-kun, isn't it… I hope that makes sense to someone, I don't have better words…

Oh, right, the other comparison our brain immediately jumps to is Nagisa Kaworu, and I'm sure I wouldn't need to explain that one. (Gods, he's probably in here too, isn't he…)

Wait, why is he reading [that book]. I mean, I have some guesses. But this is the biggest surprise of the game so far, for— wait, who am I talking for. For me? Maybe? Not for us, for sure.

Ah, so “Alice in Wonderland” is『不思議の国のアリス』, and “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There” is 『鏡の国のアリス』… this means you can abbreviate the titles neatly as 『不思議の国』 and『鏡の国』… WAIT DID LEWIS CARROLL COIN THE WORD “WONDERLAND”???

Without getting into the realm of speculating as to what's actually going on, the way there are apparently several Mamiya Takuji who seemingly aren't aware of eachother and have incompatible self-concepts hits… uncomfortably close to home (in the sense that we've been like this)

Takashima-san, you shouldn't be so judgemental when someone says “you two” when you only see one person in front of you, you know…

We thought we knew what this chapter might be about, and I think we are about to find out we were very, very wrong.

Megu gets a ¥30,000/month allowance from her parents????? Look I know this is a fictional character in a— well I mean I am a— uhhhh the point is that even if we have been relatively lucky in life we can't imagine getting anywhere near that order of magnitude, what the fuck

I don't like where this could be going… [rot13]V pna guvax bs bar jnl Gnxnfuvzn-fna'f ohyyvrf pbhyq znxr zbarl ol fgnegvat n oybt naq vg jbhyq bayl or onq arjf sbe ure[/rot13]

Takashima-san has quite possibly read Flowers for Algernon… we will be thinking about that throwaway implication for a while because we're fixated on that book alas.

Whoa, the way the game uses sound and Takashima's internal narrative to completely change the feeling of entering a physical space that you as the player are very familiar with by now… sensations that would also have been there but not given attention by from the earlier PoV!

Visual novels really are a special medium. It would be hard to do this in a movie without it feeling quite avant-garde. It would be very hard to do this in a 3D video game. But the sensory experience in a VN is always incomplete, and you can use that incompleteness as a tool, huh

This particular transcript is a perfect example of why SubaHibi breaks our heart constantly.

my therapist: beautiful bishōnen intellectual Mamiya Takuji reading a book in the shade on a rooftop in mid-summer isn't real. he can't hurt you.
beautiful bishōnen intellectual Mamiya Takuji reading a book in the shade on a rooftop in mid-summer: https://social.noyu.me/@hikari/statuses/01K48FA772HSZR0BR72ZJCKE4C

this chapter is really gonna hurt us in ways we never imagined, i can feel it. (no, i don't know who's typing.)

oh no, zakuro just said he has pretty eyes. if we know one thing from our nanoha obsession it's that thinking a girl has pretty eyes means it's over

these transcripts where Mamiya is reading the same book as the day before, but trying to puzzle through it in French (sorry for the lack of alt text, we hope OCR works) are uh

look this would be enough for us to fall for him

we… everyone must know we love languages, right?

Oh God. The whole Mamiya-kun/Cyrano de Bergerac/{Takashima Zakuro's thoughts thereto} thing. This is a lot.

リア充 [リアじゅう]
(n) (sl) person who is satisfied with their real (offline) life; normie (from リアル + 充実)

No way, how have we never learned this word before.

“The surface of the water looks like the sky in the world of mirrors… It feels like we're on the precipice.”

Many are saying this.

Ah, maybe there was a reason we felt so bad for Kimika…

:')

Starting to worry I may have been right. (https://social.noyu.me/@hikari/statuses/01K48M7RKGBC6E58VQ6JJXM368)

HELL YEAH GO ZAKURO

“You see, it's not good for your brain. But it is good for your spirit. […] Smoking is good for the spirit that's not good to begin with.”

The smoking propaganda in SubaHibi is really funny. They must have been paid off by Never Knows Best. Not that I'm complaining. lights imaginary cigarette

kimika the goat

生物兵器 is a word every girl needs to know

mamiya takuji

Looking-glass Insects has all these unexpected happy moments that are going to set us up for even worse heartbreak later… we want Zakuro and Kimika to be happy