Chaos;Head Noah (General)

[deha28]

I managed to complete Chaos;Head 100%. Honestly, after completing the game, it left me with rather mixed feelings. In this post, I’ll be more subjective than objective, so please don’t take my words too serious.

When I started Chaos;Head, I had high expectations for it, as it is still SciAdv. And that’s where my high expectations let me down, as it turned out to be completely different from what I’d anticipated. At the very least, I simply didn’t understand the plot, or, to put it bluntly, it just isn’t for me.

Overall, the story got a little long-winded. At times, it felt as though certain parts could have been shortened without compromising the story. The pacing was a bit odd: it was very slow at first, but finally picked up considerably towards the end. And ironically, the slow pace wouldn’t have been a problem for me if certain other aspects of the plot had also been done well.

The weakest aspect of C;H is the characters, normally a very important element for me. I didn’t feel any sympathy for anyone except Takumi. I didn’t like him much at first, but over time he started to reveal different sides to his personality. His backstory is sufficient to explain why he is so traumatised. This is really the only character I wanted to empathize with. As for the girls, they are all pretty dull and shallow. Generally speaking, the characters in this story aren’t people, but merely plot tools. There’s no chemistry or genuine interaction between them, just explanations – what a Di-Sword is, for example.

The plot manages to build some really great tension at times, but the ending was just as bizarre as it gets. It felt like I was watching some cheap shonen anime rather than a psychological horror. Once Takumi got his Di-Sword, I just kept getting more and more disappointed with the plot. I also thought the Ban's and Suwa's storyline was very weak. And the final disappointment was that Hazuki and Suwa were behind all the murders, which is fine, I suppose, but I was expecting something more spectacular.

But there were plenty of good moments too, even if they didn’t outweigh the rest. Every time there was talk of the Dirac Sea or the technology to suppress the five senses, I’d think: ‘Ooooooh, here we go!’ Whenever a new murder happened, I’d also think: ‘Wow! Sick bastards, but I like their style.’ And as we approached the finale, I simply felt no empathy for the characters. The story seemed to get stranger and stranger, but in the end it didn’t give me a payoff.

So Chaos:Head might be a brilliant story, but not for me. I just don’t like horrors. Stories like that don’t stir up strong emotions in me, so they don’t stick in my memory. I also admit that I was very naive in thinking that if it’s SciAdv, it should impress me just as much as Steins;Gate. I’ve even decided to refund Chaos:Child, because I don’t know whether my disappointment will be repeated in the sequel.

As you can see, everything I’ve written has been very subjective and hasn’t branded this visual novel as objectively bad, so please don’t throw tomatoes at me.

Sad to hear that you weren't the biggest fan. The way I see it, Chaos;Head is essentially a Takumi character study and the degree to which you enjoy the game will rest somewhat on how much you enjoy him as a character. I find it carthatic because of what I said in my posts earlier, that of it being a story of a delusionary, meaningless existence discovering his own purpose and overcoming his own problems.

As far as the characters being flat goes, I don't necessarily disagree but I think Steins;Gate is somewhat similar. At least in the respect that the protagonist receives the bulk of the character development, while the rest of the cast gets less in comparison. Daru, Faris, Luka, Mayuri, even Kurisu are all rather flat characters that don't evolve much over the course of the story IMO. Personally, I think this style of writing is fine and suits what Chaos;Head is going for, though I do agree at times it can be excessive (like I said earlier, Sena is very clearly at times just a mouthpiece for the author to loredump through lol).

As far as Child goes, it's not uncommon for people who weren't huge on Head to like it. You say later in your post that you aren't really a fan of horror though, and it does maintain a similar story loop so to speak with the newgen cases. Maybe pirate it and see what you think, then you can purchase it after the fact if you like it.

These are actually very good points. If you connect with Takumi, his journey can feel cathartic and profound. If not, the whole story falls apart, and that’s when the issues with pacing, characters and presentation come to the fore. I suppose I just couldn’t get attached to the protagonist enough.

As for the flat characters in Steins;Gate, that’s also true, but the characters there still felt a bit different. And here, I don’t even understand myself exactly how they were different. Perhaps they simply didn’t have such a clearly defined role in the plot, or maybe the livelier interaction and chemistry between them changed everything for me. For me, for example, Luka was the least interesting character throughout the whole story, but when he briefly became the central figure in the plot, my impression of him changed completely.

I’ve also heard that Chaos;Child is a bit different. Right now, I need to take a bit of a break from Chaos;Head. Perhaps I’ll return to this universe later.

[Maypews]

Got the Nanami ending last night. Felt a little bit too long for what it was, like we had so much time plodding around with the delusionary Nanami even after it became very obvious what the game was doing. I don't really think it does anything that hadn't been done before, like we've seen Taku's escapist tendencies being mirrored in his psyche a lot already. This felt sort of like another "bad" ending for sure since him realbooting another human would inevitably result in him ending up like the original Takumi. Dunno, it was decent I guess, 6/10.

[Maypews]

Since my last post, I've gotten two more endings; the FES and Yua ones. Unfortunately I've been having a lot of technical issues getting the routes themselves, I don't know why but it seems like it's up to the game's interpretation even if I follow the guide to a tee whether it's going to put me on the route or not. I had originally planned to finish all the Noah endings after R;N but unfortunately this glitchiness was irritating me a great deal so I ended up pivoting to reading something else instead. Nonetheless I'll give my thoughts on the endings here.

The Yua route was solid, though I was unfortunately spoiled on the big twist because of aforementioned technical difficulties and, when looking for online help to fix them, Google decided to spoil everything so that's nice. It certainly reads like it was wrote by someone who's into femdom to the point of being a bit silly and immersion breaking, but it does end on a high note. I'd give it like a 7/10.

I was a big fan of the FES route. In the main story, Ayase feels as though she had been forgotten. We don't see much about her character and never learn what exactly all of her schizobabble means, so I'm glad the game takes a detour to clear that up. It also humanises her a lot and makes the reader ponder what or how differently someone may perceive the world from oneself.

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This isn't something I think I've seen many stories try to do. The way someone sees the world will obviously greatly affect their opinions on it, and as such what may seem utterly incomprehensible becomes much less so if you're able to place yourself in the exact same shoes as someone else. It's a very nice and human message, and it also fleshes out Ayase herself a great deal. 8/10, maybe an 8.5/10, really enjoyed this one.

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