Chaos;Head Noah (General)

[Maypews]

Thought I'd start a thread for this to force myself to commit to this finally; a proper re-read of one of my favourite pieces of art of all-time, Chaos;Head. I originally read through the original Chaos;Head fan TL (DiPatch) shortly before Noah came out about 4-5 years ago.

Anyway, I haven't started yet but expect follow-up posts containing my thoughts and analysis in the coming days. Excited to finally experience all the Noah content that supposedly fixes a lot of the plotholes the original had.

[Maypews]

Forgot to mention this in the OP but every post from here will have spoilers so don't read ahead if you haven't played the game, I can't be assed to go and spoiler tag every little thing. If you're ITT you are assumed to have read it.

I had always thought that C;H starts really strong compared to the other material of the series that I've experienced, and I came away from this session feeling as though my opinion had been reaffirmed. The first hour of the story wastes no time in building up a little intrigue. We are introduced to the New Generation Madness case with a grisly visual of the group dive alongside knowledge that the case is occurring quite close to his Base. The mysterious Shogun shows up in Taku's chatroom and spams a bunch of pictures of the case alongside dropping a phrase that only Takumi should know the meaning of; with this phrase later re-appearing in his classroom inexplicably.

I couldn't help but appreciate the foreshadowing of Takumi reminiscing on a "stupid paper" he had written in middle school that litters the start. That's one thing that's very impressive in Steins;Gate as well; throughout these titles they really had a thing for foreshadowing major plot beats VERY far in advance. As an aside, Takumi's autistic ass being friends with the classroom's gigachad in Misumi makes for a pretty amusing dynamic.

As an aside, I am reading the Switch version, original English TL. I've heard that the CoZ patch supposedly makes the script better, but unfortunately my modded Switch has an overheating problem so I have little choice in the matter as I don't feel like reading on my laptop and can't apply the patch on a vanilla one. There are also a few changes about the patch that I honestly find rather offputting, so I decided to just go with the default one unless it gets really terribad.

So far though I find the official TL largely pretty readable, not quite sure why it has the reputation it does save for a few awkward things like calling his ESO/Chatroom alias "Knightheart" instead of Neidhardt (???). Not really a fan of how "Sono me, Dare no me" is turned into "Whose eyes are those?" instead of "Whose eyes are those eyes?" either, the latter rolls off the tongue so much better. That said unless there's a massive dip in quality I'll probably stick with it, a few words/phrases here or there doesn't bother me too much.

[Blond]

I had always thought that C;H starts really strong compared to the other material of the series that I've experienced

100% agree with this. The first 4 or 5 hours of C;H are probably the best introduction to any VN. Not even C;C does this so well, and C;C is my favorite entry!

We get to know who Takumi is, New Gen, as well as the fact that the year the game takes place is very important. I especially love all the foreshadowing with Grim and like you mentioned before, the essay Taku wrote. I personally think the game peaked with the Nanami hand scene. I still get goosebumps from remembering it. Great writing.

[Maypews]

I had always thought that C;H starts really strong compared to the other material of the series that I've experienced

100% agree with this. The first 4 or 5 hours of C;H are probably the best introduction to any VN. Not even C;C does this so well, and C;C is my favorite entry!

We get to know who Takumi is, New Gen, as well as the fact that the year the game takes place is very important. I especially love all the foreshadowing with Grim and like you mentioned before, the essay Taku wrote. I personally think the game peaked with the Nanami hand scene. I still get goosebumps from remembering it. Great writing.

My god the Nanami hand scene is incredible. The way the game builds up Takumi as being an unreliable narrator, you think at first when you see that email that he might just be having an episode again. But as more and more pieces of evidence pile up the dread slowly starts to creep in for the player as it becomes clear that it isn't a delusion while Takumi is still shitting his pants in denial.

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(I had The Ringtone as my phone's ringer for a time and every time it went off I'd enter into a thousand yard stare)

[Blond]

My god the Nanami hand scene is incredible. The way the game builds up Takumi as being an unreliable narrator, you think at first when you see that email that he might just be having an episode again. But as more and more pieces of evidence pile up the dread slowly starts to creep in for the player as it becomes clear that it isn't a delusion while Takumi is still shitting his pants in denial.

The scene with FES in the bridged is also great. And the fact the same song she was singing plays in @café...

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FES best girl.

[Maypews]

Some notes on Yesterday's session. We meet his sister Nanami and have a pretty heated interaction, Taku perhaps behaves a bit cruelly here but it seems perfectly in-line with his character and fear of the "gaze". Also that soda poisoning delusion was brutal, whew. Fun fact but I actually did not know about the delusion triggers on my first playthrough of Chaos;Head or that I was supposed to pick positive/negative, I always just got the neutral one lol. I did know when I read Chaos;Child though thankfully, couldn't miss the once-in-a-generation ham sandwich scene.

Taku stumbles onto a New Gen crime scene, incredible moment as always of course. His theory of Shogun being the "Demon Girl" is honestly pretty reasonable based on the available information he has. Taku then meets Yua and they become chummy, lots of good foreshadowing here through lines such as Takumi's internal monologue going "Maybe she was making it up the whole time. If so, she had a future as an actress". I never actually realised just how much foreshadowing this game had until my re-read now, it's quite impressive and I honestly think just as good as S;G is in this dept.

Today's Quote of the Day:

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(I think I'm gonna make this a thing with all my future posts in this topic)

My god the Nanami hand scene is incredible. The way the game builds up Takumi as being an unreliable narrator, you think at first when you see that email that he might just be having an episode again. But as more and more pieces of evidence pile up the dread slowly starts to creep in for the player as it becomes clear that it isn't a delusion while Takumi is still shitting his pants in denial.

The scene with FES in the bridged is also great. And the fact the same song she was singing plays in @café...200w.gif

FES best girl.

On the topic of great scenes, the one where Taku is introduced to Rimi in the alleyway at the scene of the staking. Just got there and my goodness I've always loved that one, the CG goes absolutely crazy hard too. As do the sound effects, that sound of the stakes being driven in is bone-chilling. Adds so much mystery to Rimi's character too.

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I also love the beginning and ending scene with Taku and RImi under the rain/ruined city, the way it comes full circle is just chefs kiss.

[Blond]

On the topic of great scenes, the one where Taku is introduced to Rimi in the alleyway at the scene of the staking. Just got there and my goodness I've always loved that one, the CG goes absolutely crazy hard too. As do the sound effects, that sound of the stakes being driven in is bone-chilling. Adds so much mystery to Rimi's character too.
2026022017360800_c.jpg

One thing I also realized in my reread is that the buzzing sound Takumi mentions was actually a porter all along; we just didn’t know it yet. This game’s writing is phenomenal. It’s a shame that it kind of feels off after we know who Shogun and Takumi really are. The ending also feels way too good. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a sucker for good endings, but with Chaos;Head, it feels a bit off that they decided to stick to that route.

Speaking of delusions, I remember clicking on the positive one on Nanami thinking something nice would happen. Like Taku says:

Sin título.png (893.84 KiB) Viewed 249 times

[Maypews]

On the topic of great scenes, the one where Taku is introduced to Rimi in the alleyway at the scene of the staking. Just got there and my goodness I've always loved that one, the CG goes absolutely crazy hard too. As do the sound effects, that sound of the stakes being driven in is bone-chilling. Adds so much mystery to Rimi's character too.
2026022017360800_c.jpg

One thing I also realized in my reread is that the buzzing sound Takumi mentions was actually a porter all along; we just didn’t know it yet. This game’s writing is phenomenal. It’s a shame that it kind of feels off after we know who Shogun and Takumi really are. The ending also feels way too good. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a sucker for good endings, but with Chaos;Head, it feels a bit off that they decided to stick to that route.

Speaking of delusions, I remember clicking on the positive one on Nanami thinking something nice would happen. Like Taku says:
Sin título.png

Conversely I'm a sucker for sadder endings but I agree with you, C;H is my favourite entry in the series but if I were to criticise one thing it's that the ending seemed a bit contrived so as to receive a desired "happy" outcome, at least in the original game. Was kind of hoping that Rimi would've had to stab Taku there, something about it just seemed so poetic to me. Would've made the opening/ending scene all the more impactful too.

[Parzival]

I've still yet to experience anything that oozes sheer atmosphere like Chaos;Head does, especially in its opening hours. Not even ;Child reaches ;Head's heights in that regard, and that's part of the reason why C;C and C;H alternate as my favorite in the series depending on the day.

Also gotta say that while atmospherically the ending feels kind of off, I think thematically it really hits the mark. Takumi finding a will to live, becoming ok and even happy with his existence is honestly peak fiction and gives off shades of Evangelion or Xenogears.

Speaking of finding a will, it also helps that both A Will and Desire Blue Sky are imo the best true ending themes in the series.

[Maypews]

I've still yet to experience anything that oozes sheer atmosphere like Chaos;Head does, especially in its opening hours. Not even ;Child reaches ;Head's heights in that regard, and that's part of the reason why C;C and C;H alternate as my favorite in the series depending on the day.

Also gotta say that while atmospherically the ending feels kind of off, I think thematically it really hits the mark. Takumi finding a will to live, becoming ok and even happy with his existence is honestly peak fiction and gives off shades of Evangelion or Xenogears.

Speaking of finding a will, it also helps that both A Will and Desire Blue Sky are imo the best true ending themes in the series.

You raise a good point about the ending and how it ties into generally Takumi's character development as a whole & serves as a sort of conclusion to it. I'll have to see what I think about it when I get there this time; I was missing a lot of important information after all. I will say though that I don't think that it should necessarily should take precendence over the likelihood of events actually occurring, but it's been so long that I can't really remember why I thought it came off as asspull-ish haha.