I don’t know if my readers take this for granted but I don’t set out to write *reviews*; not the objective, completely logical or helpful variety, anyway. I’m doing this article for instance purely on my feelings concerning the visual novel Narcissu that are very subjective and not necessarily helpful at all. Fundamentally your appreciation of it hinges on whether it moves you; it moved me a lot so I got the inevitable compulsion to write about it.
This won’t be the best Narcissu article around so I do at least apologise for that. Its subject matter, approach and underlying messages are quite unusual so I suspect a definitive judgement on my part wouldn’t be particularly valuable anyway. So, yeah…bear that in mind when I recommend it (it’s free and completely legal to download, after all) and you later read it for yourself and think, “hey, I thought you said it was good…” Needless to say there are spoilers after the jump.
I’m going out on a bit of a limb here in saying that my overall impression of Narcissu isn’t that of an altogether downbeat tale. It’s a simple and straightforward one from a narrative standpoint, but there’s enough under the surface to prevent me summing it up as simply happy or sad. The premise is depressing on its own but what makes it special is the the rest of the story, the symbolism used and the light it casts the events in.
The main arc is a road-trip kind of affair, which makes it very linear and lacks the decision points that many VNs have. I wonder if it was a deliberate artistic decision to depict events and experiences constrained by inevitability through a medium that normally offers numerous ways out or alternative ends; what is more likely was a desire on the part of the writer to accompany a light and quickly-readable text with static pictures.
The image of Setsumi, as immortalised in countless soft-focus watercolour-style pieces of artwork such as the one above, makes it all too easy to dwell on the tragedy of Narcissu‘s story in a young life cut tragically short. The ‘neutral’ portrayal of her character is possibly one area in which I can say objectively that the writing works well: she isn’t heroic or unlikable, courageous or cowardly. She’s ordinary but reduced to a state of muted resignation, as any average person her age would be if they were terminally ill.
The same can be said of the protagonist too. He’s a bit of a blank slate personality-wise – which is advantageous in the VN format really – but doesn’t behave wildly outside the boundaries of what a typical reader would expect him to. Not that it’s easy to imagine being in a situation like theirs, but that is perhaps one of the aims of the work in the first place. How the hell would I react to something like this? Not as stoically or matter-of-factly as these two would, I suspect. That’s a criticism of my own weakness rather than a criticism of a well-thought-out story, by the way.
The reason why I find this to be a partly upbeat tale is that ‘happy’ or ‘sad’ are very subjective indeed. Narcissu‘s theme of imminent death is a stark example of this; please bear with me if what I’m saying now is stating the obvious because it’s something that I think is easy, and understandable, to overlook. The way in which humans view and react to experiences is peculiar in that a terminally ill person on a good day can be happier than a healthy person on a bad day. It’s a strange fact of life, but it’s also the reason why, for me, this story is so poignant.
The relative nature of happy and sad experiences means that a simple road trip to look at flowers, something that’s barely worth a mention in typical slice-of-life storytelling, is anything but trivial in this case. Faced with a choice between dying at home or dying in hospital, the protagonists take it upon themselves to make their own decision in choosing neither.
This is where the story goes into social commentary, which is where I can’t provide anything more than personal opinion based on my own conjecture. If Japanese hospitals are exactly as is portrayed here (I’ll let the plot holes go because any errors are as minor as they are irrelevant), it poses interesting questions in regards to palliative care. In this story, two people have to steal a car and go on the run just in order to live out what’s left of their lives; that in itself is saddening to me because their families, friends and doctors for whatever reason showed insufficient understanding.
The writer certainly seems to have some things to say about the Japanese medical system and its society’s attitude to terminal illness, but because my medical/scientific and philosophical/religious backgrounds are UK-based I really can’t say if these criticisms are valid or not. If for the sake of argument the course of treatment in cases like this is indeed as it is in this novel, I’d say there are a lot of things that need to be discussed and addressed.
I do still get an impression that the ending was a partly upbeat one though. It’s a given that the ending could never have been a happy-ever-after type so what the characters are able to achieve within this cruelly constrictive life is what matters. Setsumi’s final scene cannot be viewed without a significant feeling of sadness…and yet, it’s what she wanted, isn’t it? Even in a makeshift swimsuit on a cold January day the irrefutable fact is that, against the odds, she’s there.
I wasn’t surprised at having a lump in my throat by the end; I was surprised however that the tears shed were not wholly those of sadness. I felt sorry for Setsumi because her aspirations were reduced to something so simple, but I felt happy for her in that she did at least realise them. In her final moments, she was happy. It’s not much, but it’s everything to her.
Similarly what she leaves behind isn’t a great deal at first glance but considering how isolated both she and the protagonist feel it’s significant in that she leaves him with some memories that nobody else is likely to have and, quite frankly, he ended up knowing her better than anyone else did. Most importantly, each in his or her own way chooses a path that isn’t dictated by others – a decision like theirs then takes on infinitely greater significance. The writer had this to say:
No matter what it is that you felt, as long as you felt *something*…
That which you felt is, for your part, the *all* of this piece.
My conclusion is that it succeeds in that I got this message very clearly. It could be argued that the whole thing is pointless because it’s a simple little journey and because She Dies At The End. But for me its modest aims are mirrored in the modest ambitions of its characters: the narrative, and its subjects, draw meaning from something that could have been meaningless and devoid of hope. I cannot stress enough, however, that this is what I personally took from it.