Tick-tock.
A doctor tormented by a shadow at the edge of his vision. A mysterious girl. A strong-willed black cat with secrets of her own. A man who seeks to liberate the populace through death. A spiral staircase reaching towards darkness and miracles. A menangerie of indestructable and terrifying Creatures that are understood by few. And a vast, filthy, magical, corrupted, wonderous city.
Welcome to the strange world of Sekien no Inganock.
Yeah, very florid. What the hell is this all about?
Sekien no Inganock is the second game in the cult What a Beautiful series of visual novels, produced by Liarsoft. It is also arguably the game where the series found its voice. That's not saying that its predecessor, Souten no Celenaria, is terrible by any means. But compare any scene from the former to any scene from the latter and it becomes clear that Inganock onwards is a whole lot more fascinating. There's a couple of references to Celenaria in other WAB games--they all take place in one coherent universe, after all--but for the most part, Inganock is both the earliest WAB game translated into English as well as probably the best starting point.
The What a Beautiful series plays by different rules than just about any other visual novel I can think of, and Inganock is no exception. I'll go into what exactly makes the game so different later in the piece, but know that if you're looking for your standard heart-tugging dating sim story of love and tragedy, Inganock ain't it. There's love, yes, and a great deal of filth and grime and even deep sadness. But what Inganock is, is a fairy tale: occasionally rambling, sometimes predictable, but frequently touching as well as incredibly inventive. All of this, set in one of the most unique fantasy worlds in a video game, tying together references to everything from mythology to Lovecraft into a heady mix.that will send your head swimming.
Not that it's everybody's cup of tea. But we're getting ahead of ourselves! Sit down, take a bite of buttery naan bought from the street vendors, and a sip of black tea. Let's tell ourselves a story.
Aesthetics:
The WAB aesthetic doesn't share a lot in common with those of typical visual novels. This is out of necessity, if nothing else. Since the majority of visual novels tend to be set in high schools, they tend to get by with photorealistic backgrounds and polished, if somewhat generic, character designs. In contrast, Sekien no Inganock is a "Fantastic City," as its inhabitants call it, and so the burden on the artists in depicting the craziness hiding in the alleyways is correspondingly greater. Thankfully, the artists knock it out of the park. Somewhere between the gothic stylings of Tim Burton and the layering of Gankutsuou, the art of Inganock might be some of the best I've seen in a visual novel. Make no mistake--it's rough stuff, and shows little of the refinement present in later games in the series. But the designs for the characters, the monsters, the spirits and yes, the city itself, are all fantastic.
The problem is that the budget isn't quite up to handling it. If Inganock was made with a great deal of love, it was also made on the cheap. Many of the characters have voices--many of them excellent--but these voices are only heard sparingly. Only a handful of chapters are fully voiced, while the rest play out almost silently except for a few important clips. The budget also clearly shows in the fight scenes, which can be a bit confusing at times due to a lack of Fate/Stay Night-style kineticism.
The music, on the other hand, is remarkable, fitting everything from daily life in the city to action sequences to quiet moments with grace. Perhaps the most impressive plays during a certain scene with a spiral staircase, and is, remarkably, structured exactly like a spiral staircase. The problem is that the soundtrack is tiny, and becomes familiar very quickly. Thankfully the game is not quite long enough for this to become grating.
Stylistics:
Sekien no Inganock is divided into twelve chapters, each of which covers about the breadth of an episode of anime. It doesn't take long to realize that the game is extremely repetitive. Almost every chapter in the game, all the way to the end, follows a set structure: first comes slice-of-life material with the protagonist and his friends, then a new character is introduced. A problem appears that must be resolved through the use of the protagonist's supernatural powers. He does so, and the day is saved. The climactic fight scene is almost exactly the same, every single chapter. Most of the characters who appear vanish afterwards, never to appear again in the story. Granted, each chapter gradually introduces new elements, and overarching conflicts begin to rear their head as the story continues. But if one were uncharitable, it could be argued that about six to seven chapters of Inganock are copy-and-pasted filler material.
There's a ring of truth to this statement. After all, most of these short stories to be found in the game resolve very similarly. But where Sekien no Inganock differs from, say, heavily episodic anime, is that it uses its repetitive structure on purpose. Lines said in the beginning take on a whole new significance when repeated further down the line. Certain scenes are repeated each chapter until they become awe-inspiring ritual. It helps to think of Inganock as less of a work of prose than as a very long poem, with a chorus after every stanza. At its best, Inganock reaches a kind of lyrical transcendence, in which the constant refrain of reused elements becomes incredibly poignant and exciting.
If that sounds familiar, it's because much of anime director Kunihiko Ikuhara's work pulls off exactly the same trick. His most famous work, Revolutionary Girl Utena, deliberately used the extremely repetitive structure of magical girl anime in order to simultaneously satirize, pay homage to and eventually deconstruct the very ideas he was working with. I don't know whether Sakurai was inspired by Ikuhara's work, but what I?ve read of the What a Beautiful series is inspired enough by shoujo manga that Utena might have very well been an influence. Inganock is not quite as smart as Utena, and does nowhere near enough with its use of repetition to come anywhere as close to the complexity of the latter work. Nevertheless, the game stands out as a remarkably unconventional and memorable visual novel, especially in contrast to its peers. It is not as well written as its predecessor (by a different author) Forest, or even as more traditional visual novels such as Cross Channel and Sharin no Kuni. But it possesses a marvelous charm and even mystique that is unique in all of the medium.
Corollaries:
Like fellow Liarsoft game Forest, as well as practically every other game in the What a Beautiful series, Sekien no Inganock is not for everybody. While the game's repetitive structure mostly comes off as a valid artistic technique, there are times when Inganock can be extremely predictable. The protagonist is rarely in any real danger, despite the overwhelming abilities of those he faces. Certain tangents in the story take a very long time to become relevant, to the point where the reader might holler at the screen whenever certain characters appear briefly, only to say a handful of cryptic lines and then disappear.
In addition, the plot of the game is mysterious at the best of times and totally confusing at others. Many elements near Inganock's endgame are either unexplained or given the most perfunctory of hints regarding what exactly is going on. The resolution of the final confrontation will either come off to the reader as a beautiful subversion of expectations, or as a total cop-out, depending on your propensities as a reader. Inganock does make much more sense on a second playthrough, when foreshadowing snuck into the first few chapters suddenly click in the player's head and the plot is swung into sharp focus. There is also a webnovel written by the author going into what happens after the events of the game, which is absolutely essential since Inganock leaves the fates of some of its most likable characters completely ambiguous at the story's end. The webnovel goes a long, long way towards resolving these problems.
Sekien no Inganock is, of course, an H-game, and contains a handful of graphic sex scenes. Most of these are very quick and almost certainly inserted into the game in order to sell more copies. I had hopes going in that Inganock's artists might be able to render them impressively abstract, but sadly my hopes were very quickly crushed. On the other hand, sex in Inganock is nowhere near as bizarre or creepy as it is in Forest, so this game might be a little more "appropriate" for younger audiences, as these games go. At any rate, these scenes can mostly be skipped over without missing anything, although some of them help fill in details regarding the city's prostitution trade and certain character histories.
Inganock also contains a minigame that comes roughly halfway through every chapter, and involves clicking through the inner thoughts of the game's cast. On one hand, these thoughts are very often crucial to understanding the story, and are often hilarious and well-written to boot. The problem is that the rules of the game are somewhat inexplicable. In the end I resorted to using a walkthrough to make it through each part, which worked perfectly fine but still made me wish that the mini-game was a little more comprehensible.
Conclusion:
Like the earlier-reviewed Forest, Sekien no Inganock will probably not be appreciated by everybody. It's low-budget, repetitive and occasionally even incoherent, saddled with a ton of obscure fantasy chronology and a mystery plot that remains ambiguous even at the story's end. There are probably visual novels that are more polished, better written and a whole lot more accessible.
But if you're looking for a change from the norm of high schools, cardboard heroines and other crutches of the visual novel medium, you owe it to yourself to check Inganock out. It's a game that?s content to do its own thing, and if you can tune into its wavelength you might find yourself in the midst one of the most idiosyncratic and charming visual novels ever released, not to mention one of the most intriguing fantasy worlds in the video game medium.
Too bad that the What a Beautiful series didn't hit Inganock's heights again until Shi'ei no Sona-Nyl. But that's another story for another time...
Looking for another visual novel to scratch the same itch? Try Inganock's sequel Shikkoku no Sharnoth, which plays with its predecessor's ideas in some very interesting ways, though it brings a whole new set of flaws to the table. Otherwise, check out Forest, arguably Liarsoft's best game. Just be aware that if Inganock is a case study in strange, Forest is even stranger.
And that, is that.
Tick-tock.
Tick-tock.
The sound of a clock. The sound of a clock.
"Is it time? Is it time?" it continues to call.
Tick-tock.
Tick-tock.
Tick--tock.
A doctor tormented by a shadow at the edge of his vision. A mysterious girl. A strong-willed black cat with secrets of her own. A man who seeks to liberate the populace through death. A spiral staircase reaching towards darkness and miracles. A menangerie of indestructable and terrifying Creatures that are understood by few. And a vast, filthy, magical, corrupted, wonderous city.
Welcome to the strange world of Sekien no Inganock.
Yeah, very florid. What the hell is this all about?
Sekien no Inganock is the second game in the cult What a Beautiful series of visual novels, produced by Liarsoft. It is also arguably the game where the series found its voice. That's not saying that its predecessor, Souten no Celenaria, is terrible by any means. But compare any scene from the former to any scene from the latter and it becomes clear that Inganock onwards is a whole lot more fascinating. There's a couple of references to Celenaria in other WAB games--they all take place in one coherent universe, after all--but for the most part, Inganock is both the earliest WAB game translated into English as well as probably the best starting point.
The What a Beautiful series plays by different rules than just about any other visual novel I can think of, and Inganock is no exception. I'll go into what exactly makes the game so different later in the piece, but know that if you're looking for your standard heart-tugging dating sim story of love and tragedy, Inganock ain't it. There's love, yes, and a great deal of filth and grime and even deep sadness. But what Inganock is, is a fairy tale: occasionally rambling, sometimes predictable, but frequently touching as well as incredibly inventive. All of this, set in one of the most unique fantasy worlds in a video game, tying together references to everything from mythology to Lovecraft into a heady mix.that will send your head swimming.
Not that it's everybody's cup of tea. But we're getting ahead of ourselves! Sit down, take a bite of buttery naan bought from the street vendors, and a sip of black tea. Let's tell ourselves a story.
Your first moments in Inganock will probably feel a little bit like this.
Aesthetics:
The WAB aesthetic doesn't share a lot in common with those of typical visual novels. This is out of necessity, if nothing else. Since the majority of visual novels tend to be set in high schools, they tend to get by with photorealistic backgrounds and polished, if somewhat generic, character designs. In contrast, Sekien no Inganock is a "Fantastic City," as its inhabitants call it, and so the burden on the artists in depicting the craziness hiding in the alleyways is correspondingly greater. Thankfully, the artists knock it out of the park. Somewhere between the gothic stylings of Tim Burton and the layering of Gankutsuou, the art of Inganock might be some of the best I've seen in a visual novel. Make no mistake--it's rough stuff, and shows little of the refinement present in later games in the series. But the designs for the characters, the monsters, the spirits and yes, the city itself, are all fantastic.
The problem is that the budget isn't quite up to handling it. If Inganock was made with a great deal of love, it was also made on the cheap. Many of the characters have voices--many of them excellent--but these voices are only heard sparingly. Only a handful of chapters are fully voiced, while the rest play out almost silently except for a few important clips. The budget also clearly shows in the fight scenes, which can be a bit confusing at times due to a lack of Fate/Stay Night-style kineticism.
The music, on the other hand, is remarkable, fitting everything from daily life in the city to action sequences to quiet moments with grace. Perhaps the most impressive plays during a certain scene with a spiral staircase, and is, remarkably, structured exactly like a spiral staircase. The problem is that the soundtrack is tiny, and becomes familiar very quickly. Thankfully the game is not quite long enough for this to become grating.
You'll be seeing this a lot. Sorry, what did you say? Too slow. Don't cry.
Stylistics:
Sekien no Inganock is divided into twelve chapters, each of which covers about the breadth of an episode of anime. It doesn't take long to realize that the game is extremely repetitive. Almost every chapter in the game, all the way to the end, follows a set structure: first comes slice-of-life material with the protagonist and his friends, then a new character is introduced. A problem appears that must be resolved through the use of the protagonist's supernatural powers. He does so, and the day is saved. The climactic fight scene is almost exactly the same, every single chapter. Most of the characters who appear vanish afterwards, never to appear again in the story. Granted, each chapter gradually introduces new elements, and overarching conflicts begin to rear their head as the story continues. But if one were uncharitable, it could be argued that about six to seven chapters of Inganock are copy-and-pasted filler material.
There's a ring of truth to this statement. After all, most of these short stories to be found in the game resolve very similarly. But where Sekien no Inganock differs from, say, heavily episodic anime, is that it uses its repetitive structure on purpose. Lines said in the beginning take on a whole new significance when repeated further down the line. Certain scenes are repeated each chapter until they become awe-inspiring ritual. It helps to think of Inganock as less of a work of prose than as a very long poem, with a chorus after every stanza. At its best, Inganock reaches a kind of lyrical transcendence, in which the constant refrain of reused elements becomes incredibly poignant and exciting.
If that sounds familiar, it's because much of anime director Kunihiko Ikuhara's work pulls off exactly the same trick. His most famous work, Revolutionary Girl Utena, deliberately used the extremely repetitive structure of magical girl anime in order to simultaneously satirize, pay homage to and eventually deconstruct the very ideas he was working with. I don't know whether Sakurai was inspired by Ikuhara's work, but what I?ve read of the What a Beautiful series is inspired enough by shoujo manga that Utena might have very well been an influence. Inganock is not quite as smart as Utena, and does nowhere near enough with its use of repetition to come anywhere as close to the complexity of the latter work. Nevertheless, the game stands out as a remarkably unconventional and memorable visual novel, especially in contrast to its peers. It is not as well written as its predecessor (by a different author) Forest, or even as more traditional visual novels such as Cross Channel and Sharin no Kuni. But it possesses a marvelous charm and even mystique that is unique in all of the medium.
I'm not sure whether Gii is amused or irritated in this picture, honestly.
Corollaries:
Like fellow Liarsoft game Forest, as well as practically every other game in the What a Beautiful series, Sekien no Inganock is not for everybody. While the game's repetitive structure mostly comes off as a valid artistic technique, there are times when Inganock can be extremely predictable. The protagonist is rarely in any real danger, despite the overwhelming abilities of those he faces. Certain tangents in the story take a very long time to become relevant, to the point where the reader might holler at the screen whenever certain characters appear briefly, only to say a handful of cryptic lines and then disappear.
In addition, the plot of the game is mysterious at the best of times and totally confusing at others. Many elements near Inganock's endgame are either unexplained or given the most perfunctory of hints regarding what exactly is going on. The resolution of the final confrontation will either come off to the reader as a beautiful subversion of expectations, or as a total cop-out, depending on your propensities as a reader. Inganock does make much more sense on a second playthrough, when foreshadowing snuck into the first few chapters suddenly click in the player's head and the plot is swung into sharp focus. There is also a webnovel written by the author going into what happens after the events of the game, which is absolutely essential since Inganock leaves the fates of some of its most likable characters completely ambiguous at the story's end. The webnovel goes a long, long way towards resolving these problems.
Sekien no Inganock is, of course, an H-game, and contains a handful of graphic sex scenes. Most of these are very quick and almost certainly inserted into the game in order to sell more copies. I had hopes going in that Inganock's artists might be able to render them impressively abstract, but sadly my hopes were very quickly crushed. On the other hand, sex in Inganock is nowhere near as bizarre or creepy as it is in Forest, so this game might be a little more "appropriate" for younger audiences, as these games go. At any rate, these scenes can mostly be skipped over without missing anything, although some of them help fill in details regarding the city's prostitution trade and certain character histories.
Inganock also contains a minigame that comes roughly halfway through every chapter, and involves clicking through the inner thoughts of the game's cast. On one hand, these thoughts are very often crucial to understanding the story, and are often hilarious and well-written to boot. The problem is that the rules of the game are somewhat inexplicable. In the end I resorted to using a walkthrough to make it through each part, which worked perfectly fine but still made me wish that the mini-game was a little more comprehensible.
"Is it time? Is it time?" he continues to call.
Conclusion:
Like the earlier-reviewed Forest, Sekien no Inganock will probably not be appreciated by everybody. It's low-budget, repetitive and occasionally even incoherent, saddled with a ton of obscure fantasy chronology and a mystery plot that remains ambiguous even at the story's end. There are probably visual novels that are more polished, better written and a whole lot more accessible.
But if you're looking for a change from the norm of high schools, cardboard heroines and other crutches of the visual novel medium, you owe it to yourself to check Inganock out. It's a game that?s content to do its own thing, and if you can tune into its wavelength you might find yourself in the midst one of the most idiosyncratic and charming visual novels ever released, not to mention one of the most intriguing fantasy worlds in the video game medium.
Too bad that the What a Beautiful series didn't hit Inganock's heights again until Shi'ei no Sona-Nyl. But that's another story for another time...
Looking for another visual novel to scratch the same itch? Try Inganock's sequel Shikkoku no Sharnoth, which plays with its predecessor's ideas in some very interesting ways, though it brings a whole new set of flaws to the table. Otherwise, check out Forest, arguably Liarsoft's best game. Just be aware that if Inganock is a case study in strange, Forest is even stranger.
And that, is that.
