this is probably the most conflicted i've ever felt about a visual novel.

on one hand, there's definitely something to be praised about how it manages to handle themes of isolation, bullying, trauma, and misanthropy. but on the other hand, it feels too indebted to trying to shock or titillate the reader to make a strong impact on me.

akane's route feels like the best sampler of what the game aims to do over its runtime, balancing high-school drama, a dense and repetitive atmosphere, and a lot of b-horror influence and style. she's your childhood friend archetype, but also still learning to navigate life after an incident where she and your mc, kyoji, are forced by a gang of bullies to fuck in the middle of the woods. aoi (best girl)'s route brings in heavy denpa elements, with how the entire town is getting affected by the supernatural horrors in the second half of the story. she's a withdrawn, but kind, emo girl grappling with both the death of her father and brother (who she got her style and love of metal from), and her resentment of akane for treating her as a baby bird that needs to be coddled, to the point of stealing kyoji away from her, without even feeling much of anything for him (though that changes for her). kiika's route is the one that mostly directly deals with the theme of sexual trauma. seemingly perfect at first glance, she's self-loathing due to the high standards of her mother, and for her interest in sex and masturbation, as it quickly takes over her life in destructive ways.

the main theme tying these three, kyoji's guardian yamiko, the mysterious and cold-blooded yoshiki, and our villains, yukari and the titular gore, is trauma. everyone has let specific pieces of their past control them for years beyond the fact, except for kyoji, who's been able to forget and suppress the best and worst parts of his childhood. he ends up pulling our narrative further along through this attitude, and across all of the routes and good/true endings, he's enough of an influence on people's lives to grab them by the wrist and pull them into the future with him.

where i think this game didn't quite live up to the hype for me is in the use of sex in the narrative. this is a vn very much about sexual trauma, so the use of it outside of those contexts feels very forced-in (especially when you're having Actual Sex scenes with yamiko, who's basically your aunt, and yuka, who is an ageless being that is no older than twelve physically). i do realize in a sense, it's a bit silly it is to complain about the genre mainly made for sex scenes having a game with a bunch of gratuitous ones, but i feel like it often derails the pacing and undermines the otherwise-strong writing, almost as if it was inserted in near the last second. my other main issue is the general cohesion of the narrative, as it feels like the main heroines and their routes are playing second fiddle to the grander narrative, with not much of an attempt made to tie all of these ends together. kyoji as a character also feels like he suffers in the true route, with a lot of his more unbearable characteristics on full display, making it kind of a slog to get through to the ending

it's very, very fucking messy, extreme, and offputting, but i still managed to feel compelled and intrigued by gore screaming show.