Hira Hira Hihiru

I haven’t posted in a while but sort of want to get back into posting! I recently read Hira Hira Hihiru for a book club that I’m in with some friends and really enjoyed it! I’m gonna be a bit lazy and copy paste my thoughts here about the VN as a whole.

I’m also thinking of participating in femslash february again this year… Might link my ao3 fics here too :S haha which will expose my writing but it might be fun!

Spoilers abound!

I liked the VN a lot. What surprised me the most about the VN is the careful attention to the world building it does for Aerodema and Hihirus. I mostly expected from the prologue and the description that this would be a more fantastical/drama filled VN, but it felt very grounded and explored a lot of different aspects in the setting.

I admire the author’s use of the historical setting as opposed to a modern one to describe how information can both be harmful or beneficial when it comes to treating these diseases. Obviously the lack of knowledge or misinformation can be harmful when it comes to treating the disease itself, but having too much wrong information can also lead to the wrong kind of prejudice. I think it’s most evident when looking at the countryside and the different ways people treat Hihirus, especially children that treat them as mostly normal people.

I also really liked how the author used the different characters to show us a hugely wide variety of patients while keeping it natural in the flow of the story. Masamitsu gave us a lot of differing perspectives on not only those who did homecare for patients, but also the perspective of a new patient. Then Takeo’s perspective also helped reinforce the information we learned from Masamitsu’s route about homecare by showing how a family deals with a new Hihiru with Haruko. I thought this aspect was done very well from using two different perspectives, and the ways the story crossed never felt forced, in fact they felt coincidental which I thought was a nice touch.

Of course though to me the highlight beyond the setting was the characters. Before I even think about the main characters, the quality of the side characters like Kinukawa and Soichi really surprised me. Despite having short periods of screentime, their characters are firmly established and their relationships with other characters are also done well. True homies…

The main characters themselves were also all really good. I liked the use of choices and ends as a way to show what happens if or if not the character “grows” or learns. The routes being so different surprised me (in a good way) and I really liked how each character grew, whether it be them learning about their true desires, or coming to terms with things in their past. It would be hard for me to pick between the two which I liked more.

Also the presentation was really stellar. The CGs, art style, music, and VAs all meshed together really well to help sell the experience. Glad to see a visual novel really take advantage of all aspects of the medium to deliver a story.