This rest of this review contains mild structural spoilers such as allusions to its heavy metafictional elements and discussion about the work's themes, ideas, and artistic goals.
Totono is certainly a work whose conceit depends considerably on the intentional obfuscation of its true nature, and the "twists" that it is able to deliver as a result. However, I don't believe that "going in blind" is especially necessary to be able to fully appreciate the work. I feel like it is increasingly hard to have not been passively spoiled about some elements of this game anyways, especially considering that the promotional materials themselves shows its hand that this is not a normal renai game, and I myself was aware of these themes before playing the game as well. I'd be interested in how someone would engage with the text if they truly knew absolutely nothing going in, but I don't think my foreknowledge detracted from my experience in the slightest. I imagine that the twists would be considerably more shocking if the reader weren't primed to expect them at all, but for me, the element of surprise was replaced by an equally compelling undercurrent of tension and unease while reading the entire first act. Little touches like the tiny but conspicuous additions to the dialogue in the second act might have served as subtly ominous foreshadowing if you didn't know what to expect, but were positively chilling if you did already have an inkling.
Even still, the ultimate direction that the game takes is one I highly doubt that anyone could have really seen coming - it didn't live up to my fairly lofty expectations for the narrative at all, but twisted and subverted and replaced them with something equally ambitious in a way such that I can't be upset in the slightest. Even if you come in pre-spoiled on some of its twists and thinking that you largely know what to expect, I suspect that you'll still leave with something entirely unexpected but just as interesting. At its core, Totono is a really fascinating meta-commentary on its own genre, and an interrogation about the way that we engage with fiction, so I think that a lot of its value lies not in the story qua story, but in the extremely personal journey it takes you on, and the extremely personal introspection that it forces upon you. Totono really is a work that needs to be subjectively experienced, and I think that so much of the game's ultimate impact depends on how much you were individually able to resonate with its message. I can't say for certain at all if you would take away the same ideas, let alone the extent to which you'll find them profound and meaningful.
For its part though, I think Totono does a pretty excellent job at delivering its ideas, though not without some shortcomings as well. I for one loved the entire last act and how delightfully meta it was, with a particularly game-design appreciation for the incredibly creative ways that the game employs narrative tricks that instrumentalizes the player's agency through its unique input and choice mechanics. It takes a level of insight far beyond merely being able to pen a really good scenario to conceive of the way that "gameplay”, no matter how limited, is able to contribute to the storytelling, and as it were, Totono's "ludonarrative" loses to almost nothing else I've ever played in terms of delivering its themes and elevating its story. I also thought that the final message the game leaves you with is definitely one that is delivered effectively and one that's suitably profound and artistically valuable, but my appreciation here is a lot more abstract and clinical rather than something very emotionally intuitive. To be clear, I think that Totono is definitely capable of having a really strong emotional impact on lots of people, and I imagine that being able to build such an emotional connection with its reader would do so much work to sell its message, but it just didn't really land for me personally. Even then, I still have a lot of respect and appreciation for what it tries to go for, so even in the "worst case scenario" where the game doesn't move you at all, I think there's still quite a lot there which is worthwhile.
I think there's two reasons the game fell short for me here, with the former being a lot more "fixable" but the latter being a lot more "interesting". Simple as it is, I do think better writing would have done a lot of good work to build a stronger emotional connection, and I would have really liked to see a much longer first act that develops the two heroines better. What was there isn't especially bad by any means, but it's fairly threadbare and just quickly runs through the typical motions of setting up affection flags without doing anything especially memorable or standout. Aoi in particular felt really marginalized and I can't understand how the narrative expects you to really care about her, but even Miyuki's character felt a little bit inconsistent and underdeveloped. I would've liked to see more scenes with MC and Aoi to really sell their feelings for each other, more background between MC and Miyuki to really flesh out their fraught history, but especially, more scenes of the friendship between the two to really highlight the cruel determinism of the later events and juxtapose their selfish versus selfless impulses. I can understand the desire to get through the characterization quickly and not bore the reader too much before getting to the "good stuff", but given how much the game's conceit depends on forming a strong emotional connection to the heroines, I really felt like more time and effort should have been spent here. Even keeping the overall structure the exact same, the first act could have been a much more satisfying and self-contained story, and wouldn't need to be "boring" at all if the writing were simply good! It's hardly fair to any other work to draw this comparison, but I think WA2 really is the paragon of having a gut-wrenchingly affective "Introductory Chapter" that works as a beautifully self-contained story but really only exists to help all the later drama land that much harder.
My other problem with the game's emotional thrust is much more curious and I feel sort of intractable. That is to say, I think the game's own metafictional conceit sort of can't help but be at odds with its goal of also trying to form an authentic emotional connection with the reader. I think the game's target audience is definitely people who are seasoned readers of fiction and eroge, but I feel like especially among this audience, there's such an embedded, implicit recognition of storytelling artifice that makes it nearly impossible for the game to land its emotional beats successfully. I think there is just too much inherent tension with its metafictional, fourth wall-breaking critique and its expectation that you develop an authentic emotional connection to its fictional characters - especially because the former depends so much on successfully accomplishing the latter. Deconstructing the fourth wall to such an extent is crucially necessary for the game's themes, but I feel like at the same time, it sort of lays bare the artifice of the text, and makes it eminently clear that the game is intentionally trying to manufacture a scenario which presents an emotionally difficult choice for the reader. It's no less transparently manipulative than good, "honest" nakige, and I absolutely love this genre and don't begrudge the effort at all, but I feel like it's considerably different in that it requires a curious tension in your suspension of disbelief to really land; where you have to both really genuinely internalize the game's metatext - understand the game as being merely a fictional construct which is attempting to impart certain thematic insights, but at the same time, operate with enough suspension of disbelief to develop a real, poignant empathy for the fictional characters the game constructs and be genuinely moved by their love and their suffering. I'm not sure just how the game could have even navigated this tension better to be honest, and it did clearly work for lots of people. I just find it super thought provoking all the same.
I want to also briefly touch on just how phenomenal all the game's craft elements are. The artstyle at times feels a bit inconsistent and incongruous, but it slowly grew on me, and I can't imagine the game without it now. Liszt also deserves just as much credit as any of the game's staff, given how perfectly an evocative, emotional piece like Liebestraum gets used by the story. I strongly recommend reading the "Liner Notes" unlocked upon completion of the game - it was one of the features I absolutely adored for its little nuggets of extra insight into the development process, and it definitely gave me a much finer appreciation for the many extremely deliberate flourishes that I loved Totono for - small attentions to detail like the extremely purposeful design decisions that went into each character's smartphone, the unchanging palette for the character designs that offer a "witching hour" vibe, etc. It truly cannot be understated how much the careful design and attention to detail elevates the work - with clear, deliberate effort being put into seemingly inconsequential things like the scripting for unique events (the cookbook gag~), and the many brilliant bits of UI design throughout. I'm sure the core story would still have functioned just fine without all these supplementary supporting elements, but Totono feels like such a more well-realized and complete work with these small touches many people probably didn't even notice.
The translation also deserves special praise for how marvelous it is and how much it does to enhance the experience compared to a more "average" translation. The aspect I found most praiseworthy was how it does an exceptionally deft job of translating otaku subculture "term of art" into accessible English phrases that still nod towards people who are intimately familiar with the medium and genre. For example, lines such as "Lucky sukebei? Pantsu mieta no?" -> "Did you catch a glimpse of something naughty? Her panties, maybe?" or "Dojikko moe nano?" -> "Are you a fan of the clumsy type?" are consistently rendered into natural-sounding English dialogue that'd be accessible even to those not acquainted with the subculture. On top of that, the TL has plenty of its own wit to boot (the added line about mosaics being in the JP version absolutely slayed me!~) and handled certain tricky devices such as the anata/kimi distinction about as well as it possibly could have.
In the end though, Totono is almost a little frustrating for being precisely as good as it was. I feel like Totono is a bit "too good" such that we'll probably never see something like it again - it burns so many bridges in the domain of interesting themes and creative ideas that it explores, and does just enough with them such that any other developer that tries for something remotely similar will get accused of being derivative. It's sort of a shame, because while it certainly is a clever, truly one-of-a-kind work that everyone should experience, the best possible version of its ideas put into a perfectly well-realized package really just might have ended the very genre of bishoujo games.
Originally posted on Reddit WAYR.
