Sakura Spirit - 17/20 hours

I feel like I've hit a wall on this whole "Hey, why don't I mod Sakura Spirit instead of directly playing it" project. At first, it was a fun technical challenge - the closest thing I had to relevant experience was a Visual Basic course I took in college ten years ago. Then, once I started getting a handle on things, it morphed into an amusing private joke (for some reason, a long time ago, I decided I was going to be one of those people who listened to DVD commentaries, so I know all the cliches). Now, with only three hours left to go, the joke stopped being funny.

I think I can pinpoint the exact moment, too. I'd just written the following speech for "the Director:"

I got a lot of flak from the critics for the opening of Sakura Spirit. They didn't understand why we needed these three opening scenes. They said it was redundant for Koyomi to bring up the existence of the  shrine, only to send Takahiro to see Ichikawa, who only knew enough to refer him to Ariya. They said it would have been more "economical" to just have Koyomi know about the shrine from the beginning.

That just demonstrates to me that the critics don't really understand Sakura Spirit's first act. Yes, we all want to get to the fun of the alternate world as soon as possible. But the mystery angle is necessary to build up the power this experience has in shaking Takahiro's world. Sakura Spirit is really the story of his journey into adulthood. I had to show the social entanglements he was leaving behind, so the audience would know what he was giving up with his choice at the end. The cost of pursuing his dreams.

And I realized two things. One, that because I take some moderate pride in my work, I had done my best to make "the Director's" self-regarding explanation of the game's intended themes  as consistent as possible with the actual game, and that meant I'd officially spent more time contemplating the themes of fucking Sakura Spirit than I had of much better games like Deus Ex or Broken Age.

The second thing I realized is that if I stuck with this project, I'd have to do it all over again when I got to the "maidens' silk" line, to somehow reconcile the way the fox spirits got young girls' panties confused with a traditional wedding garment with the notion that a pretentious director was deluded into thinking Sakura Spirit was anything but absolute schlock.


And . . . and . . . I just hate this game. So much.


I can't do a lighthearted mod that pokes gentle fun at the game's foibles. I don't have enough respect for it as a piece of art. A parody gives it too much dignity. I want nothing more than to delete it from my hard drive with extreme prejudice.

It's a disconcertingly strong reaction. I have to acknowledge that it is probably out of proportion to Sakura Spirit's offenses. I have experience writing fiction, and I know that it's hard work, and trivially easy to wind yourself up into a sort of fevered blindness, where you don't realize that your ideas aren't working and you're creating something dismal, boring, or vapid. I should have more understanding for the creators of Sakura Spirit. I think I, personally, could have done better, but not so much so that I'm entirely confident about casting judgement.

So, while I have a lot of creatively venomous things I could say about this game's writing and general artistic sensibilities, and while many of those barbs would be based on reasonable criticisms, they'd almost certainly be driven by an emotional reaction that I'm not especially proud of. Instead, I'll just say, I am looking forward to being done. I want to put Sakura Spirit behind me and never think of it again.

To that end, since I only have about one more playthrough's worth of time left before I reach 20 hours, I'm just going to power through it. Read the story and the alternate path one more time each and then forget about them forever. I think the satisfaction of slamming the door on Sakura Spirit might almost be worth the pain of enduring it.