/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>16924561

So those were my “thoughts” on Subahibi. Not that those were the entirety of my thoughts on Subahibi, long as this post has been. But what did I “think” about Subahibi? Did I enjoy it? Did I like it? The answer, frankly I don’t really know. Down the Rabbit Hole, I love. Looking-Glass Insects, I hate. The rest… is a lot more hazy. At the very least I unfortunately won’t be able to put a 10/10 down on VNDB with the rest of y’all. Which actually makes me think: damn, everyone likes this! It’s weird! How is this so well-rated? I’d think Subahibi would be one of those works that is a cult classic but isn’t so appreciated in the “mainstream” due to its bizarre content... But damn, no, everyone loves it. Weird. But like I said I don’t think I’ll be able to join the leagues of adoring fans, as much as I really would like to. Rather than blaming the work, I suppose I’ll end the post by offering some possibilities as to why I didn’t love Subahibi as much as everyone else, not necessarily in any order.

1. Contrarianism. Maybe I am just a contrarian fag and end up not thinking highly of any popular things just because they’re popular. I didn’t care for The Godfather either, sue me. I doubt this is the case with Subahibi though because I can absolutely tell there is a lot to love and appreciate here.

2. Personal biases and hatred towards bullying/injustice ruining LGI for me and souring the whole experience. This definitely is an unfortunate part of it. Without meaning to sound accusatory, though, I really don’t know how anyone could sit back and read all that nonchalantly. I suppose this is 4chan though so it makes sense. We キモオタ here on the chans eat 3 Guys 1 Hammer for breakfast, a little light bullying is 朝飯前, eh fellas.

3. A preference towards straight-forward works. I wouldn’t say myself that I prefer straightforward works, but maybe I just don’t know myself very well. Certainly most of my favorites don’t usually seem to be the “mindfuck” type so perhaps I was destined not to be a Subaliever from the start. The saga of a pleb.

4. Lack of Japanese ability. I think (or, at least, would like to think) this isn’t much of a factor as I’m pretty competent in the language. But I’m nowhere near native level and my completion time is about two times the EGS median figure. So it’s entirely possible that if I had a better comprehension of the language, I’d like the work more. Then again plenty of people who loved it read it as their first VN taking five minutes a line so I don’t know how valid that line of logic is.

5. Lack of philosophy knowledge/comprehension. I did some pre-reading for Subahibi, namely, Alice, Cyrano, and Night on the Galactic Railroad. While I won’t ever be able to experience a Subahibi where I didn’t already read these things, so I suppose I can’t say for sure, I do think those things enhanced my experience quite a bit, especially the latter two. If I had read (and ideally, understood) the Tractacus beforehand as well, maybe it would have made my journey all the more meaningful. Who knows. On the same note, I can’t claim in the slightest that I understood everything Subahibi was doing on a philosophical level. Assuming that Sca-ji is not just being pretentious and throwing in references randomly, which I don’t think is the case, there is a lot I didn’t understand from my reading and likely won’t for a while on down the road. Maybe if I read enough analytic blog posts it’ll all click. Or not.

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And I suppose that wraps up my big fat Greek Subahibi post. If you didn’t tl;dr I appreciate it. If you respond, I’ll appreciate it even more, and I’ll be sure to write back tomorrow after I wake up. Until then, my verdict, I guess: 2deep4me, unironically. While I doubt I will ever come to like LGI, I can definitely see myself coming back to take another look at Subahibi 5-10 years down the road, hopefully able to appreciate the philosophy better and also be better at taking the bad with the good.