Jan 22, 2025
Hey, congrats on finishing! My thoughts on this one are kinda split. I like to frame critiques in terms of what was done well vs. what could be improved, instead of saying something is "bad" or "good". Obviously, you can't change anything now that the contest deadline is over, so the suggestions about what could be improved are lessons to take into account for your future projects. And obviously, they’re just my opinions, and I can always be wrong.
What I’m mostly split on is how well this fits in with the harmonic future category. Mostly, this fits into the what you did well category. With the exception of the prologue and the final few chapters, you wrote a very fluffy, feel-good, wish fulfillment romance where the high-tech future setting actually matters to the plot instead of just being scene dressing. As much as I personally may not enjoy wish-fulfillment (and I’ll explain what I mean by that later), there’s definitely a market for it.
But I’m not sure that the more tragic parts of the story really fit in with what the category is going for. Maybe I’m just thinking too much about the 2023 contest guidelines, but I suspect the category is looking for more feel-good stories. You ended on a positive note, but the last few chapters leading up to that are huge downers.
There’s also some cracks in the harmonic future society present within the story itself. The recent history with the war is kinda dark, but more importantly than that, the government fails Taro at multiple points until an ultra-rich pop idol hires top-class lawyers. The prompt is specifically looking for a future where technology has solved all of humanity’s problems, and as completely unrealistic as that sounds, I think that probably includes bad governance.
The other thing I think I’d point out as what went well is that the prose (and grammar, punctuation, etc.) flows well in most chapters. I saw the comment you put on a chapter about going back to re-edit some of the older chapters, and I think you largely achieved that. Later on, I noticed an increase in grammar problems, but i’m assuming those were mostly a result of the contest deadline rapidly approaching. It was a brutal deadline.
Switching over to things that could be improved, this will be a longer section because it requires going into greater detail than things that did well.
One of the exceptions to the prose flowing well in the first half is the prologue. Opening with “That night” (which night?) isn’t a great hook, and it can cause readers to to wonder if they missed an earlier chapter. Because “that night” should be referring to a night that was introduced earlier. Then, the car crash is only kinda alluded to, again being kinda confusing to readers as to what happened.
Finally, the last line/paragraph doesn’t work well as a cliffhanger, and it should have a question mark. It comes off as very amateurish, which is why there were some comments about it from other readers.
You tried to do this kind of cliffhanger in the chapter right before Kokoro collapses on stage. IIRC, the chapter just ends with “But then…”
These both don’t work because you’re the author and we’re the reader, and it’s your job to tell us what happened, not for us to try to guess at it.
There’s also not really a lot of tension that makes the reader turn to the next chapter when you use these hooks, because there you haven’t established any stakes when you employ them.
Thinking back on it, I would probably say the entire prologue isn’t needed. It sets a much different tone than most of the book (though it matches the tragic chapters near the end), doesn’t really hook the reader at all because an abstract car crash isn’t interesting or entertaining, and the story is just as understandable without it.
Coming back to the topic of my personal dislike of wish fulfillment stories, this came up in some others’ comments about giving the characters obstacles. Again, I think there’s a market for wish fulfillment stories without major obstacles to overcome, but I’m not that target audience.
The bigger issue to me is that Kokoro comes off as a manic pixie dream girl, and honestly Taro’s almost the male equivalent. They immediately fall deeply in love with each other the first time they bump into each other, Taro because he sees her breasts, and Kokoro because she sees his “kind eyes.” They then proceed to be selfless and giving and fix each other’s problems without any of the relationship difficulties that typically come with young love and first relationships.
And even when Kokoro dies because Taro messed up, she tells him it’s not his fault so he can have his character growth at the end. The entire scene seemed kinda forced, because she had been to the doctor, she could have told him what was up, stopped using the neural link for a little while until they fixed the problems, lived a longer life, and still auditioned at a later date.
There are other aspects I felt were totally unrealistic, but there might be an audience out there that enjoys these.
Becoming popular on the internet as a cover singer is a complete fantasy. In real life, cover artists upload songs, maybe can make some money from patreon or ad revenue, but they don’t become popular sensations known all over the world. And they definitely don’t with artificial voices.
Because AI or not, her voice was artificial. And I think that gets glossed over a bit. Even if you can believe that her brain somehow knows how she would sound if she still had vocal cords, the fact remains that singers have to train their bodies to sing well. They need to project, learn when to take breaths, strengthen and care for their vocal cords, etc. The other auditioneers would have a good argument that she should be disqualified for cheating. And once people learned about it, they would be disappointed because she “wasn’t a real singer” and her popularity would drop.
And finally, we get to when the pop star swings by to save the day. In real life, I would expect them to be kinda pissed that you’re profiting off their song by getting so popular online. Yes, they’d get royalties of any revenue Kokoro gets, but you wouldn’t expect them to be so enthusiastic about someone getting more popular than you on a streaming platform for singing your song. They’re never going to give you unlimited access to their money, even if they like you.
But again, all those elements might be exciting to the right reader. They just struck me as a bit too unrealistic.
The other unrealistic aspect that I think probably doesn’t work as well for some audiences is that Taro basically suffers no consequences except for Kokoro dying. Even if the pop star would be willing to fund his legal defense so he doesn’t go to jail, and even of the government did decide it’s their fault for not providing him with medical experts at their own expense, I would at least expect some of the orphans to not forgive him at all. But there’s no real consequences. In the end, he doesn’t even seem that beat up about the fact that he killed someone. Nope, time to try again with his own sister.
So yeah, I think in general, stuff goes way to smooth and perfect between his initial rejection by the government and Kokoro dying, and like everything else she did, it seemed primarily for Taro’s benefit. I don’t think it’s even bad that she died (contest prompt notwithstanding). The basic story you’ve fold (romance between a genius and a girl in a wheelchair, he invents things to help her regain control of her body against society’s wishes, then she dies) can be a good one. But the execution needs higher stakes, more ups and downs, and character growth that doesn’t just come from one of the characters dying.
Again, many of the harmonic romance entries I read just used the setting as window dressing. You actually made use of it for the plot, which is a huge plus in my book. And trust me, I know the contest didn’t give a lot of time to get character arcs right. But hopefully for your future works, you can find a way to make things a bit more realistic and give your characters a bumpier trajectory to overcome.
Best of luck with the judging and any future writing you do, and again, congrats on finishing.
