Kirakira

Written by Jason Young  on July 28, 2009

Review: Love, sex, and rock 'n' roll, what more do you need?

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Okay, I admit it. I probably slightly overrated Kana: Little Sister and Hourglass of Summer just a teensy weensy bit. While those two visual novels were (and still are) very strong in their own right, they probably didn't deserve the high praise I gave them when I was still relatively new to the genre many moons ago. During that time, I've managed to play enough visual novels to tell the difference between the good and the bad. That said, Ever 17 is still king of the commercially localized visual novels. With it's awesome story and rewarding true ending, everything about it rang AAA quality. However, MangaGamer's latest offering, Kirakira, which nearly gives it a run for its money as a close second.

Focusing heavily on the themes of friendship and family, Kirakira uses slice-of-life vignettes to tell the story of Shikanosuke Maejima, a student at Oubi Academy, a private Japanese Christian school. Starting off with him filling in the reader on what led to his current life, we experience him being dumped by his girlfriend after he's forced to give up his position as a rising teenage tennis star. Suddenly he finds himself living the life of a slacker and doesn't put much effort into studying and lets his part-time job at a restaurant define him. All this changes however when he meets Kirari Shiino at work and suddenly finds himself joining a punk band.



Joining him are his childhood friend Chie Isurugi and a rich sick girl named Sarina Kashiwara. The three of them originally decide to join a band in order to pay tribute to their dying club, the Second Literature Club, during the school's cultural festival. While they're ill-prepared for their training at first, their dedication and practice allows them to succeed at their school concert. As with all things Internet and YouTube related, they suddenly become an overnight success thanks to a bunch of people online. While they originally only decided to do one concert and be done with it, people clamor for more and they decide to do a summer tour for their fans. That's where the story really begins to take off.

The story itself can be easily seen as two distinct halves. The first light half being forming the band and leaving on the summer tour and the second darker more romantic half full of heavy character, if at times tear-jerking, drama. As with most visual novels, the girls have their own problems in real life and use the band as a way to escape. These problems are so rooted in reality though that it adds a strong hit of realism to the game. From Kirari's family financial problems, Chie's parental separation, to Sarina's sheltered life, all of these are problems that occur everyday in Japanese society, or any for that matter. So it's easy to see real people like them using something like playing in a band as an escape. I mean, people do it with games like Rock Band or Guitar Hero in real life after all.

While the storyline may seem that it might fall flat due to your archetypal anime storylines at first, it's executed with such pizazz that it's easy to ignore these potential shortcomings. Unlike most visual novels, there wasn't really any point where I felt bored by any filler material or anything that felt extraneous; other than the occasionally out of place 'dirty deed' scenes. All of the comedic bits are damn funny, including their F-ing awesome punk transformation, and the dramatic scenes are sentimental enough for anyone who wants to read how romance should be done.

Returning from Overdrive's first success Edelweiss is Shinji Katakura, the ninja-bred illustrator. As one of the stronger, less well-known artists in the field, his images come to life vividly and most importantly the girls are cute. Even the male protagonist who is forced to cross dress during the summer tour. More impressive though are the concerts themselves.

With about eleven different vocal tracks performed by Milktub the concerts themselves are very well done. Quite a feat when you consider that they're showing nothing more than still full-CG images on screen. More than once I found myself fist pounding like an idiot in the privacy of my own room thanks to the songs; although they're more like J-Rock and J-Pop than J-Punk. Voice acting wise, all of the voice actors/actresses do an admirable job conveying their characters without being too sugar inducing or too old.

What stood out for me the most though was the vast improvement by MangaGamer compared to their earlier translations for Edelweiss. As my second purchase from the company, I could easily see the strides that they made to bring it to at least bearable quality. Sure the typical grammatical errors are there, but they're also present in games released by companies like NIS and Atlus so it's passable. I commend them on this job as a horrible translation could have made the entire experience a nightmare.

Recommended playing order: Kirari (normal) > Chie/Sarina (normal) > Kirari (true)