Musicus!

released on Dec 20, 2019

Musicus! is a story-rich visual novel that tells a story of the struggle to fit society's mold while living for ourselves.


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I felt like I was learning things every time they talked about music production :DDDD

This review contains spoilers

The bad end is the best one.

Bocchi ザ Rock if it were soulless

MUSICUS! is a story about passion, freedom and why we pursue artistic endeavors, all told through the story of Kei Tsushima's journey to discover what it is that he truly wants to do with this life.

One of the VN's best aspects is that the pursuit of music is not done in a vacuum where no other factors matter, but it is skillfully told in conjunction with the economic realities our protagonists have to face when trying to make a name for themselves in the volatile music industry. The moments where the main character is pondering how to escape crushing necessity and how his luck fairs out in comparison to other talented musicians that ended up fading away is perhaps the best content on this whole game.

The character writing is, for the most part, stellar but understated. Their sometimes humorous, sometimes grave interactions are the sturdy thread that makes the whole experience work. Kaneda in particular ended up being one of the best ones despite starting as one of the most obnoxious ones.

But of course, you're probably more interested about what does it say about the "meaning of life", which is a talking point some of its fans bring up when praising this lengthy work. It says!... Not much, at least nothing you probably haven't heard elsewhere. Most of MUSICUS!'s philosophical musing are about the most common of existentialist thought, like how we can't know anything in life, how it has no meaning, how we do not take anything with us upon death, etc. The answers it provides are also of the common sort, like how even if life is meaningless it has value (this applies greatly to the production of music, since the act itself is just sounds and vibrations, it also moves people's hearts and that's good enough reason for keep up making and listening to it), how we are simple creatures that tend to overcomplicate our existence and that we should lead our life with as much freedom as possible since this is the only chance we have of living it.

These are all fine points and I tend to agree with most of it, but if these common answers to the human condition is all MUSICUS! has to offer, does it truly deserve the absurd praise that it is the closest answer to the meaning of life? OH BROTHER respect yourselves!

Excellent game, similar to the Anime Shirobako, perhaps even better than it but since people keep presenting it as having something important to add to the eternal debate of the significant in our lives, I ended up disliking quite a bit of it.

That's all I got to say about K-ON!! Camus Edition, I hope you get play it and reach your own conclusions.