Saturday again! (In some time zones...) Here's my liveblog of 2-1 to 2-4.
2-1
For those who didn't play the game, the author is helpful enough to insert game notes for reference. Bit of an odd choice, but then, what other kind of choice does he make?
The ride on the Tohoku shinkansen from Ueno station took about two hours. From there we changed over to a branch line, and after roughly a further hour we disembarked at a station called "M-gawa". Then there was another hour on a swaying bus. We arrived in a mountain village. It was the village where the mansion we were to research was located.
Hinasaki travelogue!
During that time, Mr. Shibaguchi spoke about strange phenomena that had occurred during the game's creation.
:'D Even his fictionalised self cannot be stopped.
After all those paragraphs of intense descriptions of bloody sunsets, the manor's threatening atmosphere and Shibaguchi being under a supernatural influence, Ioka's line about the mountain birds broke the tension, to say the least. I actually liked the bit about the creaking sounds and the laughter, though. That seems quite in-keeping with the auditory scares that FF1 did so well.
2-2
It looked like something weird was beginning to happen in this mansion, something strange enough for even someone without a sixth sense to notice it.
Come on, Mafuyu, Shibaguchi just the foetal position and started shaking all over. Ioka would have to be extraordinarily oblivious not to notice something was going on.
We chose the steps that exited onto the sakura tree courtyard as our rest spot.
Don't be silly, you can't get into the cherry atrium this early in the game.
And from here on, things get really, really weird. On my first readthrough, I think the moment I realised this was not going to be anything approximating a proper novelisation of the game was when Shibaguchi turned into Takamine, and Mafuyu started turning into Miku.
2-3
This author's interpretation of Miku and Mafuyu's relationship is just really sad to me. The idea that all they had was each other, but even with everything they shared Mafuyu still didn't really know how to talk or relate to her is really depressing. I don't really know what to make of that whole bit about the sixth sense being like a demon side, either. I will say the author does a decent job of portraying a sixth sense as a curse, not a superpower to be envied, and whether it was intentional or not, I quite liked the blurring of the lines between the regular children who bullied Miku for being different, and the ghosts crowding around her in the mansion, all tied together by the Demon Tag/Kagome motif.
For someone who's supposedly desperate to save Miku, and is basically sharing her mind and body right now, Mafuyu seems very detached from everything.
I was wondering why Miku had to get rescued by Little Kirie ex machina, but I was forgetting there's no camera yet. :|a
2-4
Beneath the waterwheel, there should have been a stream... how was Mr. Shibaguchi standing there? Thinking it strange I looked at his feet, but the moonlight was hazy, and I couldn't be sure.
So Mafuyu doesn't really have to worry about a thing, cause he's there with Jesus!
Oh, and now the lack of a camera gets lampshaded, okay. I'm just glad it's not like the FF2 novelisation, where the camera just vanishes completely from the proceedings.
I don't really know what to say about the next section. Mafuyu, stop being so weird and obscure. All this reality-bending stuff seems out of place for FF1; time warp aside, the sequence of events in FF1 is actually pretty clear. I guess the author considered that a bug rather than a feature!
Huh, the novel places Himuro Mansion in the Tōhoku region, I don't think I noticed that before. Was that actually made clear in the Japanese version of the game, then? Cause I know locations never got mentioned in English translations till FF3.
No, Mafuyu, I don't care how genre-savvy you are, you don't get to cheat by reading the plot summary, GOD. >:[
So I think the main question this time round is, are you all as confused as I am? I'm used to thinking of FF1 as the most straightforward game in the series, but good grief.
This week should be 2-5 to 2-8! Is everyone still cool with that, or are we moving too fast?