TL;DR: it’s not that good, but I would recommend reading it if you like mystery/horror stuff.
Synopsis: a high school student discusses some recent murders on the internet, and later is sent images of murders by an internet anon named Shogun, who is presumably the culprit. As the novel continues, he is convinced the murderer is targetting him.
After I watched Steins;Gate 8 years ago, I remember asking other fans whether 5bp’s other titles were worth watching, and they said the VNs were good but the animes were poorly adapted.
The promotion art suggested to me that Chaos;Head would be some generic schoolshit harem, which does turned out to be very far from the truth. It turns out that, like Steins;Gate, 5bp has a fondness for having a male main character be surrounded by female characters who don’t give him romantic or sexual attention. I don’t think this is a bad decision, as I noted in my RWBY review, mixed sex groups tend to have less natural, more sterile, and anxious social dynamics than those dominated by one sex, as each sex has its own set of norms and cultural beliefs.
I was also unaware that this was a mystery novel, which was a pleasant surprise.
After 8 years, I decided to give their recommendation a chance. I have… mixed feelings.
Right of the bat, our main character introduces himself as “Takumi Nishijou, 17 years old, and a secondary student at x school”. Generally, I find these introductions to be uncomfortable, and this one was no exception. Funny enough, this turned out to be some very clever and silly foreshadowing. Hats off to the writers — they definitely played me.
Our “hero” Takumi then talks to a man in his chatroom who’s name is Grimm, who introduces him to the NewGen murders. Later, a different man in the chatroom sends him several photos of some murders - he then sees a pink haired girl commit those same murders later in the story. On top of that, the girl, Rimi, eventually attends his school, seemingly unaware she committed those murders.
Another detail worth mentioning is that our protagonist can alter reality by projecting his delusions onto the world. Some other characters can do the same thing, but they can only generate swords which other ‘Gigalomaniacs’ can see. There is some underlying logic to all of this, which made some sense in the novel but I can’t be fucked to talk about.
The actual murder mystery manages to be interesting and is not immediately obvious as it is in many novels. It could be Takumi, it could be the girl who is investigating Takumi, it could be the pink haired girl, it could be the person who sent Takumi the messages… In the end, the actual culprits of the murders turned out to be random and disappointing. In some cases it doesn’t even look like they revealed the perpetrator of the murders, though maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention.
Besides this, the novel had quite a number of issues.
In terms of the production value, the character faces lack quite a bit of diversity, which gives the series a lifeless feel. This didn’t feel that inappropriate for a dark murder mystery novel, but the series would have improved if the characters were allowed to express more faces. Compare this to say, Fate stay/night which has an image for every single emotion (and sometimes more than one!) and can even change during sentences. The lips moved when the characters talked, which accentuates the eerie and lifeless feel.
Reading Fate/stay night’s sequel afterwards really drilled into me how much things like that matter - the faces were much more lively and the actual dialogue felt better to read. I must admit, the overall production was acceptable, and was not even the main issue with the novel. To its credit, it has a very eerie and dark atmosphere - if you read it at night it might even feel a little scary.
Most of the characters are fine - Rimi and Takumi were the clear standouts in terms of characterization, the side characters on the other hand were a little lacking. Most of the other characters could be characterized as 2D (Norose, Suwa, Kozue, and Nanami) or not relevant enough to mention. A few of the characters were downright horrible — Daisuke in particular was obnoxious: a fuckboy who only likes to talk about women. He’s kind of like MedGold, but instead of a middle aged Palestinian man, he’s a Japanese teenager. Besides that, Ban and the other female cop felt out of place in the novel and didn’t contribute much to the story.
The villains were boring. “We want to control the world with magic”. Snore.
Later on, when the main character gains control over his delusions, the plot becomes very predictable. If he is losing hard, it is because he is being delusional. If he is losing by just a little bit, then he will solve everything with his literal God-like powers.
Overall, I don’t think it was a bad showing, and I was engaged with the novel’s mystery and with the two main characters (Takumi and Rimi). Really though, If you are interested in reading a visual novel, I would recommend taking a crack at Fate/stay night or Steins;Gate instead.
Scoring:
Design (8/15):
Distinguishment: (4/5) - cool atmosphere
Animation: (0/2) - lacking
Sound: (2/2) - seemed high quality
OST: (1/2)
Character designs: (0/2) - need more variety
Backgrounds: (1/2)
Script (37/50):
Character Investment: (7/10) - cared about Rimi/Takumi
Character Realism: (0/2) - XD?
Character Complexity: (2/3) - I’ve seen worse
Plot solidness: (4/5)
Plot complexity: (8/10) - writing was solid, no notable holes.
Ending: (5/5) - best thing about the series
Pacing: (3/5) - some sections of the novel feel too slow
Stakes: (8/10)
Value (9/15):
Thematic elements: (2/5) - none?
Skill: (3/5)
Originality: (4/5) - superficially generic, but unique under the skin
Enjoyment (13/20):
Did I like it: (13/20) - atmosphere and mystery elements did the heavy lifting