Visual Novel Reviews: May Sky
Next up, we have the great visual novel by Scrubbing, May Sky.
Basic Information
-Originally in Japanese, translated by Insani
-Made on NScripter
-150 minutes long
Plot Synopsis
Haruki Mizoguchi is a young adult who has just begun his life as a salary man. When he meets a sharp tonged shrine maiden named Minori Kamiake, his days become a whole lot more interesting.
It’s really amazing how few people even know about this game, considering how much fun I had with it. At first glance, it doesn’t seem like much, with slightly below average art and filtered photographs as backgrounds. But appearances are indeed deceiving and I claim this truly one of the greatest visual novels ever made that’s currently available in English. (Legally anyways.)
Some of the character sprites are really cute.
The presentation of May Sky is kind of spotty, with a very limited base engine. Only the most bare bones of basic visual novel functions are available here, with only loading, saving, and scroll back present. The skip key is kind of glitchy, and as far as I know, there’s no way to change the text speed. (A pain, since it’s on the slow side.) Also, you can’t change the sound or music volumes either.
There’s quite a large number of event CGs in May Sky
The art is a slight improvement, but still borders on below average to average. All the colours are nice and bright, and the character design is cute all the way through. But all the sprites suffer from iffy transparency masks that creates a very slight white border around them. As for the quality of the sprites themselves, it varies quite a bit between the expressions, with some of them looking quite a bit distorted, to others looking great. There is quite a large number of event CGs, and once again, the quality here ranges across the board from below average to nearing professional levels. The backgrounds are also a source of some problem. About half of them are filtered more or less effectively, while the other half remains unfiltered. Some consistency in the quality of the art would have been really great to see.
The quality of the event CGs vary quite a bit. From very good…
To kind of so-so…
But the presentation hardly matters compared to the truly wonderful plot of the game. This is the perfect example of a romance story done right. The amount of character development that Minori undergoes as the plot progresses, from being the distant and apathetic shrine maiden, to being someone much closer to you, is really profound. While the plot does not stray so far from tradition that it feels unexplored or too avant garde, there is still a lot of originality to be had here and the plot is quite unique. In addition, the August Snow scenario is really a great treat after finishing the game and I absolutely recommend everyone to play through it.
Some of the backgrounds are filtered while others are not.
And yes, there are many, many moments of moemoe in here, especially in the bonus scenario. =3 That is not to say that the plot is happy and fluffy all the way through, since there’s a lot of other serious moments as well. With all the drama and emotional turbulence of the other parts in the story, these flashes of happiness really add tremendously to the plot and elevate this visual novel to great levels.
Presentation aside, moe is still moe and cute still makes right.
May Sky is a visual novel that is better than the sum of its parts. Even though lacking in presentation, it makes up with a truly spectacular story that’ll twist your heart and make you cry one moment and laugh another. Ultimately, the story embodies everything good about anime, visual novels, and ren’ai.
Moemoe moments sound good to me :3. Well, I just started reading this. After reading your review, I look forward to getting into it. Unfortunately, I can only read during weekends. But yeah, visuals is never as important as a good story!
The bonus story was definitely filled with moe-moe, but it was well worth it :P
In terms of storyline, this is my favorite free visual novel that I’ve tried by far (I’m a sucker for happy endings). And the bonus scenario definitely added to the story. It was just enough of a continuation to satisfy one’s curiosity, but not enough that it it leaves nothing to the imagination. The characters and interactions were very real. The pop-culture references had me laughing out loud (Daikon Excalibur). And, although, the visuals may have left more to be desired, some were beautiful none the less. I think you said it perfectly about it being more than the sum of it’s parts.
[...] 06:04 PM http://samukun.wordpress.com/2009/01…views-may-sky/ Looks good 2, with VN, I don`t have to download that particular anime for saving the HDD spaces for [...]
Visual Novel??? - Anime Take Forums said this on June 24, 2009 at 12:04 pm |
Definitely a good visual novel and enjoy the depth of the story. I also like that it was through the eyes of a young man making his way into the business world rather then the common high school student plot. I would rate this just about as good as the “Hour Glass Of Summer” visual novel. That one was quite good and stirring emotions.