Merry Christ­mas every­body~! ^o^ Hope your hol­i­day has been going great~! In the mean­time this’ll be the final of my hol­i­day post spam (seri­ously, 13! I’m spent! I have no clue how those episodic blog­gers keep all this up xD)

It’s been pre­ciously one year since I start play­ing Sharin no Kuni, Himawari no Shoujo, and com­pared to my 2010 anime expe­ri­ences, this visual novel eas­ily blew them all out of the water to take my #1 spot. With a unique premise, an imag­i­na­tive back­ground that was taken advan­tage of to its fullest, an awe­some set of char­ac­ters includ­ing one of the best pro­tag­o­nists ever, not to men­tion a high-impact dra­matic buildup that would even have the famed Key staffers envi­ous— this is one visual novel that’s a must-play if you’ve got any inter­est in the medium at all~

Sharin no Kuni [lit: Wheeled Coun­try] takes place in nom­i­nally demo­c­ra­tic nation, which is actu­ally ran by an elite stra­tum of “Spe­cial High Class Indi­vid­u­als”. Crimes within the nation are pun­ished by ‘oblig­a­tions’, in which case the peo­ple car­ry­ing the oblig­a­tion have lim­i­ta­tions placed on their lives, such as hav­ing your day reduced to only 12 hours or for­bid­den from hav­ing pri­vacy, until they are deemed re-educated by the Spe­cial High Class Indi­vid­ual that are autho­rized to con­trol every aspect of their lives.

In enters Morita Kenichi, Spe­cial High Class Indi­vid­ual can­di­date on his final exam. The loca­tion? His own home­town, where a rebel­lion broke out seven years ago and was bru­tally crushed by gov­ern­ment forces. Yes, as the expo­si­tion soon reveals, he is the son of the rebellion’s very leader, and his final test? To admin­is­trate and re-educate three girls bur­dened with ‘oblig­a­tions’, includ­ing two of his own child­hood friends.

For seven years, seven whole years, Kenichi had changed his name and lived under the harsh­est of cir­cum­stances to pass his exam­i­na­tions, from climb­ing the power lad­der in the slums to sur­viv­ing the blood­i­est wars in the south­ern jun­gles. The expec­ta­tions for becom­ing a Spe­cial High Class Indi­vid­ual were tough, and he strived to meet it no mat­ter the costs— for the sake of his dear friends whose lives were shat­tered, for the sake of reclaim­ing his own sis­ter from polit­i­cal exe­cu­tion, for the sake of aton­ing for that unfor­giv­able mis­take he com­mit­ted on that fate­ful day seven years ago… when Higuchi Ken had died and Morita Kenichi was born.

I’m only liv­ing because I can’t die! — Morita Kenichi

What does he find out after his return? His friends barely lived as empty shells of their for­mer selves. His first love, once a shin­ing bea­con of opti­mism and will, was ‘oblig­ated’ never to touch the oppo­site gen­der and reduced to a mess who was afraid even of look­ing at oth­ers in the eye. His sis­ter, the last of his fam­ily, was within his reach— yet he couldn’t even say a sim­ple greet­ing to her.

Hence Morita Kenichi begins his daunt­ing task: to save his friends and fam­ily while maneu­ver­ing around his supervisor’s cal­lous demands. It was a remark­able jour­ney, filled with inno­v­a­tive schemes, breath­tak­ing cli­maxes, and heart­warm­ing con­clu­sions; it par­o­died its own cliches, high­lighted the dan­ger of soci­ety putting ‘moral enforce­ment’ into legal hands, and unrav­eled sev­eral utterly mind-blowing rev­e­la­tions dur­ing the final chapter—

Ririko-nee-san is awe­some and hilar­i­ous, even if she has some “strange tastes” xD

The con­clu­sion of it all? Sharin no Kuni, Himawari no Shoujo is eas­ily my favorite visual novel avail­able in Eng­lish; I loved every moment of it, and much thanks for the folks at TLWiki for trans­lat­ing it~

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Post­note: So con­cludes my par­tic­i­pa­tion in 2010’s 12 Days of Anime project hosted by Canon; one shared by many across the anibl­o­gos­phere (see 8C, prototype27, Scamp, schnei­der, Bor­der­line Hikkiko­mori (cast), TWWK, Lan­don, Janette, digi­boy, drmchsr0, doc­tor­dazza, Fawkes, FNSNA, super rats, Anime Diet (crew), Jubbz, RP, The­BigN, Jinx, meflo­raine, Caraniel, Chii, Valence, dai1313, bitmapchaos, and Shin­maru). I hoped you enjoyed read­ing my input to this series (full list on my Archives page for Dec. 2010), and thanks to every­one who com­mented to respond with their own thoughts~ so, once again, Happy Hol­i­days every­body~! and stay in the spirit of the season~!

Pos­si­bly Related Posts

• G-Senjou No Maou Visual Novel Review
• Chanc­ing The Mar­ket: Thoughts On The OELVNs Com­mu­nity (+Always Remem­ber Me Review)
• 12 Days of Anime #2: A Heart To Give, A Love To Share (Angel Beats!)

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 25th, 2010 at 14:05 and is filed under Community, Visual Novels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.