This work has too many allusions – probably.
This article was originally written on 7/20/2015. May contain mild conceptual/structural spoilers.
Gensou no Idea ~Oratorio Phantasm Historia~ (幻創のイデア～) is the first chuunige which I’ve had the pleasure (?) of reading. For those unfamiliar with the term, ‘chuunige’ is a genre identifiable most by its grandiose storytelling . On one end, in contrast to most typical works, chuunige’s written in a comparatively poetic, grandiose prose (being more intense within fight scenes — these lines typically do not work outside of Japanese). On another end, the events which surround and constitute a chuunige are ‘world-defining’ (i.e. the world’s going to be at peril within a chuunige). After spending the past week or so of my summer on this work (putting in at least 4 hours a day on average of continuous reading), I’d be lying if I claimed that my venture into this genre was an entirely enjoyable experience (as chuuni prose is very painful to read quickly). Nonetheless, it’d be an even bigger lie to say that I didn’t enjoy my first contact with this genre wholeheartedly.Now, I had every intention with beginning the review with a facetious, pretentious overview of the themes of the work (perhaps mirroring the prose in a fashion reminiscent of the type found within the work). After all, Gensou no Idea is a plot-based work with a great deal of interesting themes.But, it seems that I ultimately lack the creativity (or perhaps I’m too exhausted after having spent so many hours on the prose of this work). So, I’ll be more blunt with the work’s strengths and weaknesses. Gensou no Idea has several strengths (which I’ll go on to mention in no particular order of importance). For one, it’s very well-paced. It spares little time on ‘useless slice-of-life’ & has a clear focus with what it wants to accomplish within each of its respective arcs. Gensou no Idea does have its scenes of slice-of-life, but these scenes never felt arbitrary or there for the sake of it — they contributed to the mood, or the experience of the work. Indeed, while not always the case, they were often strategically placed between ‘high points’ (or cathartic, emotionally exhausting parts of the work). Subsequently, in contrast to a lot of works of this nature, I never found myself wishing for the plot to ‘move faster,’ or for the ‘insufferable slice of life’ to move quicker (as there was none).
Second, Gensou no Idea’s executed very well. By this, I mean that during its more profound scenes, I was entranced — it had my attention entirely (which is a feat typically reserved for either anime or incredible works). This was made possible due to its fantastic production quality. It’s a work with gorgeous aesthetics — both in art (on level of CG quality, CG quantity, and art style) and in soundtrack (on level of its evocative, more profound instrumental tracks, and on its thematically relevant vocal themes). I’m generally not the type to discuss the aesthetics of the work that much (granted that if it’s good, then it’s good for fairly obvious reasons) — but in Gensou no Idea’s case, I think that it truly made some parts of the work. Third, Gensou no Idea has a cast of memorable, really great characters. Now, despite being a work told through the perspectives of two different protagonists — each of which, have their own discrete ‘group’ of friends (i.e. heroines and concerned persons of interest), the two protagonists still very clearly, felt ‘connected’ within the scheme of the work as a whole. I didn’t find myself clearly favoring one protagonist over the other — they were both very reliable, and all-around affable (and at times, very entertaining) leads. It’s no mystery that ‘素敵’ is the most common attribute ascribed to the protagonists of the work on EGS. But, it’s not just the protagonists that were intriguing — the heroines (and subsequent, minor characters) of the work were also very good. Each respective heroine (and some of the more important minor characters) were given a substantial amount of development (each heroine, an entire arc’s worth of material) — it’s rare that I actually like all of the heroines and find them very memorable (the latter condition especially — I hand out the ‘affable’ ascription by default, but for the heroines to be both really likable AND memorable? That’s rare).
Nonetheless, this also brings me to the work’s first major weakness. By all means, the work develops its heroines well in that it puts a great deal of time into characterizing them (as mentioned, each heroine has roughly an arc or so of direct characterization, and many more in indirect cases) . However, some of the characterization is ‘bad’ in the sense that it’s rushed, unexplained, or merely outrageous (a certain heroine having a complete personality change as a result of a seemingly random, traumatic event being the largest, largest flaw, as it reversed my stance of the heroine briefly). In some other instances, the characterization of the heroine, while meaningful in itself, seemed loosely tied to the work’s core themes & plot (while I actually enjoyed a certain tea fanatic’s arc, her story seemed comparatively random). Moreover, the heroines very clearly had an hierarchy of importance (the work was somewhat ‘meta’ in calling some of the heroines the ‘main’ and some, the ‘supporting’) — I found this to be an especially bad thing. On one end, it establishes a clear favoring of one heroine over the other, despite the lack of significant justification (for one protagonist, I found both of the heroines to be very comparable on level of ‘spotlight’). And second, there’s no real ‘official’ heroine ending (the majority of the h-scenes are found through the scene replay option after finishing the epilogue of the game — this effectively gives the protagonists their respective harems, which, while not the worst, is not that satisfying).
Despite these rather large character design flaws, I still really liked the characters. Perhaps it’s the genre of the game, but it’s not this often that I find myself admiring the characters of the work for what they do and say. While at some points of the game, I found myself disliking the characters (or perhaps just their evolution/development), at the end of the work, I do view them as a collective, meaningful whole (although there’s some irreversible damage). On a connected note, Gensou no Idea also suffers on part of its plot development. While I found the game to be well-paced for the most part, at times, the work decided to randomly introduce information from out of nowhere. Some of this information, while ‘logical’ in the sense of serving an explanatory purpose, felt rushed & poorly-thought out (i.e. deus ex by some accounts). Indeed, the work doesn’t foreshadow some parts that should have been (while some of the work’s revelations or twists certainly made ‘sense, some felt like low-handed, ridiculous blows [a certain scene involving a certain handsy guy being an evident example]). Furthermore, towards the end of the work, the plot begins to move sporadically, with some important plot points being developed in a very condensed amount of time. This hurt the work especially badly because its storyline is reliant on consistent, meticulous world-building (a work with infodumps should have infodumps intermittently spaced throughout the work, not entirely after the fact, or at a particularly important junction). In doing so, the work effectively undermines its own significance/seriousness by lightly, or whimsically developing points that required more time to establish.
So, Gensou no Idea was an excellent experience — but it’s an experience which while collectively good, isn’t without its speed bumps. These speed bumps, while ultimately nonfatal in the sense that they slowed rather than stopped the momentum of the work, still hindered, or prevented the work from reaching its maximum speed. In the end, despite having struggling through some portions of the work on level of reading endurance & of emotional fatigue, I do think that the work was fun to read. My main complaint with the work could in a sense be condensed, and simplified as such — “I wish the work took itself more seriously.”
