TL;DR: better than Chaos;Head, but still kind of mid. Exciting mystery but a bit derivative and anime’d out.
Synopsis: high schooler Takuru notices that the dates at which certain killings take place correspond to the dates at which the “NewGen” murders took place and decides to hunt down the killer with the help of his newspaper club. In the visual novel, you can occasionally use delusions to temporarily alter reality in a positive or negative way that is usually comedic.
Chaos;Child, in many respects, is just like its prequel Chaos;Head: teenage nerd protagonist, harem-esque, crazy hair colours, tracking down a serial killer, magic… It’s just as weird and creepy as the first novel and the mystery behind the murders is better than its predecessor’s — the final culprit of them ends up being both surprising and compelling.
It retains some of the faults of the previous game: lack of creativity in setting and concept, evil for evil’s sake villains, and too much popsci. The characters are better in Chaos;Child in comparison to Chaos;Head — particularly the male side character and the side girls. I remember thinking that the previous novel had a lifeless feel it it, but I did not feel that was true for Chaos;Child. To be honest, I’m not sure if it was me or the novel that changed in that respect.
It has some interlude scenes where the characters go to the newspaper club room and map out the crimes onto a drawing board and talk about what happened. You are forced to fill in the blanks as the protagonist, and if you were not paying enough attention, then you will get the answers wrong and have to learn the story the hard way. I’m not sure if this is common in VNs, but it’s a nice way to have the viewer remember the details of what happened in the story.
Finale
As I said before, the ending of this novel is better than Chaos;Head’s, but the final arc had its own share of issues.
Towards the end of the story, a certain girl dies — it is not necessary to say which one, but the time between when the death occured and when it was emotionally dealt with was too long and reduced the mental impact of her death.
The final arc of the novel also drags on for too long and ends up feeling like a bit of a slog. Today, I started reading the novel at 1am towards the start of the final arc, expecting the read to take 1-2 hours, but I found myself finishing the novel just after 5 am. Many scenes took way too long to get through and I was constantly pressing enter for almost the entire second half of the story.
When are you reading Subarashiki Hibi? Bonus points if you read it in Japanese.