This review contains spoilers

Pretty good! Ch2 was an improvement over 1 I thought in that the slice-of-life first half is still driven by an actual plot (what's the deal w Shion?), but this taking it even further with Satoko worked really well.

If there's one complaint I have, it's that I felt like the plot kind've peaks with the night of the Festival, and then... keeps going for a good while. And it has a lot of good, exciting/sad/intriguing moments still. But I think since I'm used to the time loop format now, I basically checked out after Keiichi kills Satoko's uncle thinking 'OK, and then Keiichi's gonna die horribly any moment now'. I'm not sure the tension and horror particularly works for me when I know it's happening for the third time. (It also doesn't help that the volcano gas thing feels like a ridiculous escalation - and yes, it's an interesting mystery, but it feels like such a wild ass pull I really need to put my faith in future installments for this to feel satisfying).

With that said, the glimpses of Satoko's sheer terror triggered by random innocuous actions was really effective, enough that it doesn't really matter her uncle is barely a character despite being crucial to the chapter. That one TIP with the sad picture of Satoko in the background over stats on child abuse w a scare chord playing sounds like a shitpost but it was genuinely so chilling too.

Reviewed on Nov 27, 2022


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