Chaos;Head Noah (General)

[Maypews]

Funnily enough, I actually answered the questionnaire incorrectly the first time and got the bad ending where he's pushed off the edge for failing the test. But that kind of confused me, because we later find out that Shogun is just a voice box. How the hell was Takumi pushed off in the bad ending? Was someone else there? Seems like a bit of an oversight. Tbh so far the story has been tightly written for the most part but this is probably one of the bigger issues I've noticed with it to so far, though it's in a pretty side/non-canon ending so not a huge deal.

I always figured someone actually had been there to place and move the wheelchair the voice box and mask were on, especially since Taku hears it move himself, and that person just leaves before Taku can spot them. Alternatively, if this is all the doing of a porter to begin with, that same porter could also just real-boot a force pushing Taku in the bad ending.

But then it occurred to me that Takumi's attachment to Seira is likely meant to be a way of symbolising his deep-rooted insecurities. In any situation, and at any moment, Seira will try to convince him to run away from the world. Seira herself is just a stand in for his psyche; it's essentially the part of himself that fuels his hikki and highly anti-social tendencies trying to convince him to retreat into his comfortable place, into the realm of his own delusions and ESO, instead of facing the cruel realities of the world. Furthermore his battle against the horde of Seira's later in the story is meant to symbolise him overcoming his countless fears and self-doubts.

Maybe I'm a retard for not noticing this on my first playthrough or maybe it's a super original take, I don't know. But I do feel pretty confident that this was a subtext they were going for deliberately, and it's a really nice touch!

I don't recall ever seeing anyone in the fandom actually say this but yeah I do think it might be because it is pretty obvious. She clearly represents the part of his psyche holding him back and keeping him from growing as a person

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similar to another pink haired delusion

Well, I looked it up online befoar posting and I saw some people who seemed pretty confused on what the Seira battle scene was meant to represent so I'm not gonna criticise myself too much haha. But yeah maybe it is kinda obvious, I read C;H kind of early on in my "journey" so to speak of art so I wasn't quite as good at analysing metacontextual details at the time. Also good points regarding the bad ending, that makes sense!

[Maypews]

Finally back to reading this, updooting the site was taking away a lot of time that I'd have spent reading C;H otherwise heh. But I made it to chapter 8 this session. Taku gets jumped by a gang of DQNs as a result of his reputation garnered from the O-Front debacle but the new transfer student Kozupii beats all of 'em up and they become frens. I like Kozupii but not much to say about this part, really just a slice of life-type introduction mostly. As such we're going to start things off pretty hot and fast with a new edition of Science Class, courtesy of our friend Sena Aoi.

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Class is now in session!

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Aaand that's all for now.. come back soon.

Of note is the fact that Rimi still has not shown her face since the

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Earthquake, in a solid 10 days. We see from scenes that our protagonist is not privy to that she seems to have been visiting or in correspondence with Shogun.

But Taku has no idea what's going on and the snickers and jeers he's receiving from his classmates are beginning to wear on him mentally.

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His failure to save Nanami is another thing which has taken a mental tax on him. Though at least he knows that she's safe and that the hand Shogun put in that giftbox wasn't hers & was just used as a scare tact-

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O___O

So yeah, that cope theory of Taku's is now dead and buried. Of course, the day he happens to see Nanami at school is also the day that Rimi finally shows herself again. The old group of her, Dai-chin and Taku seems to reassemble once she appears back into the mix, but Taku finds it hard to converse with her due to the

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anguish her harbours about his little sister.

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Regardless they head home, only for Grimm to inform Takumi that the 7th case has happened. This one is referred to as the DQN chain, with the corpses of the victims having been torn in half and then re-arranged at random. And the DQN's in question... are the same 3 that beat up Taku yesterday. This causes Takumi once again to spiral into a somewhat understandable meltdown.

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Takumi investigates and happens upon the essay he wrote as a child which created the "Whose Eyes are those eyes" phrase as well as the IR2 equation. Sena later happens upon it as well after they break into his house to check while he's away visiting FES at the hospital. He is assailed by an incredibly powerful Gaze of God and goes to ask the nurse for help, but he instead ends up happening upon her notebook which contains illustrations of the Staking case.

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Honesly this is another summarypost, most of what we see is just building up towards later plot points and I don't have much to offer my opinion on. The mystery and intrigue is as great as ever of course, with the scene of Takumi

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happening upon the Nurse's journal and the Nanami phone call asking Taku to give her right hand back building up great tension for what's to come later. Fun session and can't wait to read moar tonight.

Quote of the Session

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[Maypews]

This is still going I swear! To be honest I was starting to get a bit burnt out on this because like, I wasn't just reading it but also feeling somewhat obligated to come in here and make a high effort lengthy post after every little bit read which was probably a bit much. Then also on top of that the site was taking my attention away, but I binged 3 hours yesterday so I think I'm getting back into it and I'm also getting pretty close to experiencing the new Noah content for the first time. Since we're getting towards the end I also went ahead and moved over to my PC/Laptop setup.

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Yua gives Ban and Momose a little interview, where upon her theory about the killer being Takumi is shut down but they do gleam an interesting piece of information; that the Gero froggies only come into stock on the weekend, which coincides with the GE rate spike. It's also becoming more and more clear that the new "Meiwa Party" seems to have rose to power in a timeframe which greatly coincides with them too. To top it off Taku finds out that he is a delusionary existence as Rimi so bluntly puts it, causing him to spiral.

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(this could be fun to recreate potentially, since all the text is done you'd just need to redo the website UI and find the individual gero froggy variants)

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I find Takumi's identity crisis very visceral. All of the times he deludes himself that he runs into traffic, only to snap to and be in the same spot unmoved. Over and over again, it feels very raw and true. The inability to escape that biological programming of his despite the firm belief in the worthlessness of his own existence, the desire to keep on living no matter how grim things may be.

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We also sadly see Ban betrayed by his partner, Suwa. Loved Ban, very likeable character. Yua also ends up seeing a delusion of her sister which nearly results in her diving off the building just like her, but fortunately ends up awakening and finding a Di-Sword instead. Last but certainly not least, Rimi leaves off to rescue Nanami, who we see has also awakened after having been used as a sample for the Noah II. Unfortunately she is unable to overcome the machine's delusions in conjunction with the trauma stemming from her having suffered much the same experience as Nanami currently is, and ultimately fails.

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The pacing picks up incredibly quickly in Chapter 8 I must say. I don't find it to be particularly unbelievable feeling though, since it does to some degree feel like almost all of this was given enough time to stew. Maybe the game would have done well to space all these events out a bit but I kind of think there's some charm in the constant panning to other perspectives in it's own right too, makes it feel like shit is going DOWN.

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Taku ends up returning to the base, where he's comforted by a delusion of his little sister. I think her appearance here sort of embodies his insecurities but in a much different way than Seira does; rather this fake Nanami and her appearances both here and at school shows just how traumatised he is and also how inadequate his failure is making him feel.

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Regardless of how much of a wuss he may be, he still possesses the natural instinct to protect and to have failed so gravely at it is weighing on his mind deeply. I think the scale of this weight is kind of evidenced by how utterly he buys into this delusion's existence; with most of the other delusions that weren't amplified by external factors we see him at least question them or ask if they were delusions or not, but in this he places his unwavering faith because that little bit of pride he still possesses deeply desires, no, NEEDS it to be true.

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This scene is very well placed too in my opinion, because shortly after Shogun and Takumi finally get into contact. He tells him about his role, that he is the original version of him, and also that Rimi went off to try to stop the Noah 2 and Norose herself but that she likely failed and is now also captive.

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He finally becomes of aware of just how smitten he is with Rimi, and with Shogun's guidance is able to awaken and find his sword. He sets off, not to save the world as Shogun desires, but simply to save both Rimi and his little sister and to reconcile his past failure.

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Now a common criticism of C;H is that Takumi's character development feels rushed here, and this was something I felt at the time that I first read it too. But I must say, over time I've grown to realise that this sort of sudden growth is sometimes more realistic than gradual growth. Gradual development is nice and all, but at least in Takumi's case I don't think it really fits. Because his psyche does essentially anything he can to shut out external influences; how can he grow if he doesn't allow himself to? Especially when there's really nothing that could possibly change his habits to begin with; his back story isn't even something he lived, who knows where his parents are but they aren't his real parents anyway. What reason does he have to slowly "grow"? Really nothing much, at least not until the events of the story.

In short, in this situation I think the epiphany that Takumi has in his conversation of Shogun suits this story perfectly. There's nothing wrong with it as a manner of fleshing out a character; in real life you see so many people have their lives radically changed after simply dwelling in thought for a relatively short time. Now combine the fact that Takumi's world has essentially been flipped upside down between

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the unveilment of his inhumanity and the loss of the two people who he cares about most. I don't think there's a better catalyst for him to grow into what he does given the circumstances.

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I think this is why I find Chaos;Head so cathartic. It is the story of a young man who possesses absolutely nothing to live for finding his own meaning and a purpose. Even it might be a simple one, and even if our protagonist might be imperfect; it is precisely this which makes it all the more human and relatable. No matter how grim things may seem or how meaningless you think you are, anyone can always forge their own path. If Takumi can do it, so can you!

(If you haven't noticed, I love this game lol.)

Quote of the Session

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[Maypews]

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Got the Silent Sky ending on my latest session, had a blast with it I'd say. This is the most memorable part of the game so I won't bother to needlessly summarise too much, but this is the sequence where Takumi finally awakens, finds the NewGen killer, the third melt happens which is awesome, confronts and kills Suwa, has the internal battle with the Seira-tans (who were, as Parz said earlier, realbooted), and then fights Norose.

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The NewGen reveal is a bit rushed I feel like. The plot point sort of comes out of left field and even though it makes sense I think that the killer should've gotten a bit more spotlight given how integral the killings are to the progression of the narrative. Hoping to see more about that in the other routes.

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Also those flashback scenes with Takashima and the pregnant man case were haunting, goodness me. Can't remember if those were in the original game or not but I don't think they were? Could be wrong.

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Sena's dad taking a bullet for her in the end is a very emotional moment. This scene humanises and fleshes out Sena's character in a really nice way. Beforehand I think she was kind of just a walking plot device who went around serving as the author's mouthpiece for how the mechanics worked and it's why she's never been my favourite. But here we get to see the more human side of her, it's nice and sort of looking forward to her route since I've heard good things about it.

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The fight with Suwa is also a great scene. His introduction where he offs Sena's father and then goes like "Oooh.. wrong one... oh well, not so bad from such a distance" in that aloof tone is so cool. Feels like such a threat, reminds of Cell's return in DBZ. Seeing Takumi turn the tables on him and avenge Ban is awesome too.

Now to give my opinions on the events. Well firstly, and this is how I remember it being when I last read it too, a lot of things seem rather underdeveloped. Especially the cast, like we know almost nothing of Kozupii's back story beyond vague anecdotes and we barely see the softer side of Sena's character at all until the very end. Seeing Yua and Takumi reconcile in the end is nice but we also don't get very much of her at all either past the very beginning of the game and with the

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awakening scene she has. Very little of FES either, I assume she underwent the same torture that Rimi did but we know little to nothing else about her background.

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Secondly I have no idea why I thought Rimi killing Takumi at the end would've been a better ending, as I said in an earlier reply to Parzival . Well okay no, I think I do know why. It's because you often see these "guy gets the girl at the end" stories after some act of heroism, but you rarely if ever see the girl forced to kill him after. That would've been super memorable and the potential setpiece of them kissing while she stabs him would be unforgettable.

But in the context of the story Takumi living fits it a lot better. The entire point of the narrative is that of fake Takumi, a delusionary (aka meaningless) existence finding his own reasons to live. Killing him just to keep the already dying Shogun/Original Takumi would've made little sense from a longterm perspective and would also kind of shat on the main message I think. So what they did here was definitely better in my opinion even if the other way also seems somewhat cool in a vacuum.

Thirdly, Takumi has a "based retard" moment when he offs Norose. Norose preaches about how dark the ugly side of humanity is and uses this as a justification for his plan to essentially domesticate all of us into eternally happy slaves. But, to quote a character from one of my favourite video games of all time, that's not living; it's just being kept alive. A man who lives without free will or agency may as well be dead. Norose's "utopia" sounds hellish and I'm glad Takumi offed his sorry ass.

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I'm glad that in the end I seemed to have loved this as much as I remember loving it. On to the Noah content now!

Quote of the Session

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[Maypews]

Now that the "main game" is over I'll probably make these posts a bit more casual from this point on. Got the Crying Sky ending for the first time. I really liked it!

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Honestly about as good as a bad ending can get I'd imagine. They basically ended up using that idea I had about Rimi being forced to stab him at the end in a really well-developed and realistic way. Guess the Committee used the Noah II to beam it out of my head and write it into their visual novel. Srsly though, Rimi having to put down Taku like he's a sickly aging animal hurts ;_;

The flashback showing all the NewGen cases was absolutely harrowing. Literally raised my heart rate some, jesus H christ lol. I can totally see how experiencing all of that pain basically first hand would ending up causing Takumi's mind to break. It kinda assigns some meaning to the brutality of the cases too, as opposed to it just being super over the top for no other reason than the killer being sadistic/into making his crime scenes "art work" as that common trope tends to go. Suwa and Hazuki also had quite believeable motives.

Would be nice to maybe get to see more on the Church of Divine Light and what they believe in and stuff. How exactly they have such a strong grasp on Hazuki that she'd sacrifice her own child like that. But cults can have that sort of impact so it's not unbelievable.

Really liked this ending, I honestly didn't expect it to be so good. Hope the character routes can keep up the quality.

[capstasher]

Which one of the endings was the one where you got the full gruesome details of how the

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doctor was killed? Was that Crying Sky or was that in the main run? That stuff actually left me a little disturbed, incredible writing to be able to convey such terror.

[Maypews]

Which one of the endings was the one where you got the full gruesome details of how the

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doctor was killed? Was that Crying Sky or was that in the main run? That stuff actually left me a little disturbed, incredible writing to be able to convey such terror.

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Yeah you're thinking of Crying Sky. The main route shows a more abbreviated scene of the Doctor's brain getting scooped and also of the pregnant man case but it's the bad one that goes into the nitty gritty of all the cases. Shit is harrowing.

[deha28]

I managed to complete Chaos;Head 100%. Honestly, after completing the game, it left me with rather mixed feelings. In this post, I’ll be more subjective than objective, so please don’t take my words too serious.

When I started Chaos;Head, I had high expectations for it, as it is still SciAdv. And that’s where my high expectations let me down, as it turned out to be completely different from what I’d anticipated. At the very least, I simply didn’t understand the plot, or, to put it bluntly, it just isn’t for me.

Overall, the story got a little long-winded. At times, it felt as though certain parts could have been shortened without compromising the story. The pacing was a bit odd: it was very slow at first, but finally picked up considerably towards the end. And ironically, the slow pace wouldn’t have been a problem for me if certain other aspects of the plot had also been done well.

The weakest aspect of C;H is the characters, normally a very important element for me. I didn’t feel any sympathy for anyone except Takumi. I didn’t like him much at first, but over time he started to reveal different sides to his personality. His backstory is sufficient to explain why he is so traumatised. This is really the only character I wanted to empathize with. As for the girls, they are all pretty dull and shallow. Generally speaking, the characters in this story aren’t people, but merely plot tools. There’s no chemistry or genuine interaction between them, just explanations – what a Di-Sword is, for example.

The plot manages to build some really great tension at times, but the ending was just as bizarre as it gets. It felt like I was watching some cheap shonen anime rather than a psychological horror.

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Once Takumi got his Di-Sword, I just kept getting more and more disappointed with the plot. I also thought the Ban's and Suwa's storyline was very weak. And the final disappointment was that Hazuki and Suwa were behind all the murders, which is fine, I suppose, but I was expecting something more spectacular.

But there were plenty of good moments too, even if they didn’t outweigh the rest. Every time there was talk of the Dirac Sea or the

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technology to suppress the five senses, I’d think: ‘Ooooooh, here we go!’

Whenever a new murder happened, I’d also think: ‘Wow! Sick bastards, but I like their style.’ And as we approached the finale, I simply felt no empathy for the characters. The story seemed to get stranger and stranger, but in the end it didn’t give me a payoff.

So Chaos:Head might be a brilliant story, but not for me. I just don’t like horrors. Stories like that don’t stir up strong emotions in me, so they don’t stick in my memory. I also admit that I was very naive in thinking that if it’s SciAdv, it should impress me just as much as Steins;Gate. I’ve even decided to refund Chaos:Child, because I don’t know whether my disappointment will be repeated in the sequel.

As you can see, everything I’ve written has been very subjective and hasn’t branded this visual novel as objectively bad, so please don’t throw tomatoes at me.

[Maypews]

I managed to complete Chaos;Head 100%. Honestly, after completing the game, it left me with rather mixed feelings. In this post, I’ll be more subjective than objective, so please don’t take my words too serious.

When I started Chaos;Head, I had high expectations for it, as it is still SciAdv. And that’s where my high expectations let me down, as it turned out to be completely different from what I’d anticipated. At the very least, I simply didn’t understand the plot, or, to put it bluntly, it just isn’t for me.

Overall, the story got a little long-winded. At times, it felt as though certain parts could have been shortened without compromising the story. The pacing was a bit odd: it was very slow at first, but finally picked up considerably towards the end. And ironically, the slow pace wouldn’t have been a problem for me if certain other aspects of the plot had also been done well.

The weakest aspect of C;H is the characters, normally a very important element for me. I didn’t feel any sympathy for anyone except Takumi. I didn’t like him much at first, but over time he started to reveal different sides to his personality. His backstory is sufficient to explain why he is so traumatised. This is really the only character I wanted to empathize with. As for the girls, they are all pretty dull and shallow. Generally speaking, the characters in this story aren’t people, but merely plot tools. There’s no chemistry or genuine interaction between them, just explanations – what a Di-Sword is, for example.

The plot manages to build some really great tension at times, but the ending was just as bizarre as it gets. It felt like I was watching some cheap shonen anime rather than a psychological horror. Once Takumi got his Di-Sword, I just kept getting more and more disappointed with the plot. I also thought the Ban's and Suwa's storyline was very weak. And the final disappointment was that Hazuki and Suwa were behind all the murders, which is fine, I suppose, but I was expecting something more spectacular.

But there were plenty of good moments too, even if they didn’t outweigh the rest. Every time there was talk of the Dirac Sea or the technology to suppress the five senses, I’d think: ‘Ooooooh, here we go!’ Whenever a new murder happened, I’d also think: ‘Wow! Sick bastards, but I like their style.’ And as we approached the finale, I simply felt no empathy for the characters. The story seemed to get stranger and stranger, but in the end it didn’t give me a payoff.

So Chaos:Head might be a brilliant story, but not for me. I just don’t like horrors. Stories like that don’t stir up strong emotions in me, so they don’t stick in my memory. I also admit that I was very naive in thinking that if it’s SciAdv, it should impress me just as much as Steins;Gate. I’ve even decided to refund Chaos:Child, because I don’t know whether my disappointment will be repeated in the sequel.

As you can see, everything I’ve written has been very subjective and hasn’t branded this visual novel as objectively bad, so please don’t throw tomatoes at me.

Sad to hear that you weren't the biggest fan. The way I see it, Chaos;Head is essentially a Takumi character study and the degree to which you enjoy the game will rest somewhat on how much you enjoy him as a character. I find it carthatic because of what I said in my posts earlier, that of it being a story of a delusionary, meaningless existence discovering his own purpose and overcoming his own problems.

As far as the characters being flat goes, I don't necessarily disagree but I think Steins;Gate is somewhat similar. At least in the respect that the protagonist receives the bulk of the character development, while the rest of the cast gets less in comparison. Daru, Faris, Luka, Mayuri, even Kurisu are all rather flat characters that don't evolve much over the course of the story IMO. Personally, I think this style of writing is fine and suits what Chaos;Head is going for, though I do agree at times it can be excessive (like I said earlier, Sena is very clearly at times just a mouthpiece for the author to loredump through lol).

As far as Child goes, it's not uncommon for people who weren't huge on Head to like it. You say later in your post that you aren't really a fan of horror though, and it does maintain a similar story loop so to speak with the newgen cases. Maybe pirate it and see what you think, then you can purchase it after the fact if you like it.

[capstasher]

(like I said earlier, Sena is very clearly just a mouthpiece for the author to loredump through lol).

Not the only thing Sena's good for.

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