Boy, I forgot how insufferable Key protagonists could be.
Impressions:
He can barely go a minute without announcing some pretentious purple prose BS. “Aah, this truly is the springtime of a melancholic boy’s wounded youthful rennaisance.” “Huh?” “Oh, golly gee, ma’am. Don’t mind me. I’m just Billy Everyteen, contemplating the weight of existence.” No, dude. You’re an obnoxious wanker, and trying to play up how clever and witty you are isn’t helping. And this keeps repeating. Not that the girls are much better as they stare blankly, enraptured by commercials, or empty space. Or when encountering a creepy jackass staring at them in the middle of the night. You gonna stop staring? No? This conversation that is 90% ellipses and staring blankly for 5-10 seconds in between each line isn’t weird and disturbing at all. Huh. A sleeping girl? Better grab wildly at her, grope her, and joke about raping her. Fantastic. Way to make me rethink any fond memories for the VN era of adaptations.
If, like me, you actually can remember to the VN-adaptation era, this is a very dull and paint by number one of those. The episode is just a parade through bumping into each individual girl, and since it’s Key, the protagonist is a bit up his own ass and snarky rather than 100% simpering pathetic doormat. He still is, but someone gave him a thesaurus and copy of Catcher in the Rye. The good versions of these have charismatic characters or a good hook, not just “tour of girls”, and this has neither of those. He’s insufferable, every girl are the same boring tropes and extremely artificial cutesy quirk who will no doubt all have some metaphysical issue that he needs to sort out by existing, but even that wasn’t hinted at in any way, unless you count one magical butterfly and him constantly stating “wow, there must be some greater meaning in this nostalgic mysterious world of ours.”
