Jan 12, 2025
Aight, here comes the chonkerpost.
I was thinking of leaving a review, but it's kind of... no? Let me explain.
Yours it the other story that "should not" have worked for me. Ignoring the strange format, the structure is also wack even by SoL standards. There's several chapters that could've been chopped off with 0 effect to the story as a whole. It took forever for me to give a shit about anyone other than Ruby. The events themselves are insane, and the final boss was generic Big Bad no.8968596, not to mention it's a super open ending even taking the nature of this contest into consideration.
But it's a banger and I had a lot of fun. I did. Like you saw, I was a big fan of the humor. The way you'd use headings was hilarious at first, but as the story's tone shifted I feel like they started to get darkly ironic, and by the end I wasn't laughing anymore >:( speaking of which, the shift in tone is a huge pet peeve for me in the vast majority of stories like these, because I feel like it tends to be too sudden and not set up properly at all, and yet SOMEHOW you managed to pull it off. I have no idea how. You turned a cat scratch into a major plot point and that's deranged.
Which leads me to the other thing: I would agree that it's technically very messy to the point it's borderline incoherent, but that's also part of its charm? It might've been intentional, idk, but the things happening were so bonkers yet so lore accurate that I couldn't help but have a good time. It really felt like going on a road trip with a bunch of mentally ill girls and having progressively more insane adventures while also growing closer. In that sense, the ending (?) also feels like a 'To Be Continued', and I'm honestly all for it.
When it comes to characters, I think they suffered a lot by the format. Since there wasn't much introspection, I got to "know" them almost exclusively through actions and dialogue, which like... ok, that's normal, but since so much of the story is silly, then I seldom felt like I knew knew them if you get it. Obviously Ruby was the most developed, but I feel like the second place goes to Sylvie of all people. She had an actual arc and changed a lot throughout her story, with a pretty satisfying conclusion. Unironically I feel like I know her better than all the other girls combined, bar Ruby.
Because of this, when Stuff happened, I was like... ok... sure... that's very sad and stuff, but I didn't care care. I REALLY think we could've used a bit more actual characterization beyond tsukkomi routines or them acting out their stereotype... even Ruby fell to this to some degree. Lucy was 'moe blob with death flags that joins the squad halfway through to die' so I kinda was just living my best life when bad things happened, but the writing on the last chapters was so effective that I ended up feeling bad for her anyway. But yeah, that's about it. It is a very 'cute girls do cute things until midseason tonal shift' kind of story, but "that's about it".
Still, I always looked forward to a new chapter, and it was a really easy read. I think emotional moments landed when you wanted them to, and part of why that works is that the story always had this sort of foreboding sensation. Even when situations got silly and characters bantered, it never felt as though they were 'too cool for school' or whatever. They'd comment on the silliness on a situation but never condemn it, and that's great. That's exactly how meta humor should work imo. I'm sick and tired of characters that think they're better than their setting. No, they're not. No, you're not, author.
Which is to say that, despite everything, the story felt very sincere. I had fun, and I was also touched. Despite its flaws (not because, unfortunately), it's still one of my favorite entries in this competition. It really feels like you went for something 'more' rather than just "story". I'm very glad I got to read this, and I wish you the best of luck. I wasn't kidding when I said I could see this as a Shaft anime. but yeah tl;dr kool story
