halfmoon

halfmoon was a VN I picked up because it was both really cheap and also I really liked the art for it. It’s… a strange VN for me to talk about. Both because I felt like there was more to it than meets the eye, but it was so short that it’s hard to exactly say what the author was going for.

The premise is relatively straightforward, it’s a story about a person who in the afterlife is now working a job on various things regarding souls. Some of these tasks involve sorting them into the cycle of reincarnation or sending them into the “hidden” world (which by the description I remember is like merging their soul into a collective). But to be sent to the hidden world, they must not have any attachments or regrets.

There’s also tasks of stripping away some of the stronger attachments they had, as well as calibrating them.

Ultimately, from this aspect alone, I think there’s an interesting discussion to be had that in order to move on in this world, you have to be willing to be part of a collective and lose your individuality. Otherwise, you’re sentenced to reincarnation effectively. They treat being reincarnated as a “bad” thing, but honestly… is it? I value my individuality and I don’t know if I’d want to be part of that giant collective. Though funnily enough the characters make the same comment on it too. Stating that the hidden world is boring whereas the other is more exciting and chaotic.

The ending also has a bit of a stinger with the reveal that this isn’t really the afterlife at all but is instead a simulation. Their mother asked their children to create it as a way for them to try and understand… something that I forgot lol. I forgot to be honest because the part that stood out to me more was that they had done this simulation multiple times, and made the mom go through it with her memories wiped multiple times as well. But, she does comment that they do get better at it, and better at understanding too.