A Paper Plane to the Past
Epilog
Stephen Hawking said, although we could travel to the future, but going in the other direction was ruled out by Albert Einstein’s theories. But everybody knows that we cannot just stop thinking about it – the time paradox, the other self of that time, the butterfly effect. All we do is a little retreat from reality to virtuality, and in the fictional world, where the law of excluded middle doesn’t work, the impossible can become possible.
The past is also like a mirror. It reflects the current, and reveals the future. Though I’d like to babble more about reflection upon self, this is really not the place for such cliched preachment.
At least, the never ending fantasies about going to the past has spawned a ever increasing bunch of works about this topic. And this game is just one of them.
This game just suprisingly appeared in my Steam library[1]. I have heard of it years ago, but haven’t come to purchase and play it. So I decided to give it a try. And that’s the whole story.
Part 2
Time travellers are, technically, travellers. Those works featuring trips usually have a great emphasis on encounters and parting ways. A light novel named The Journey of a Witch might well fall into this kind. I haven’t read it, so I’m not sure. What I’m certain about, is that Spice and Wolf doesn’t care much about it. Maybe it’s because Lawrence always faces unfriendly people. Girls’ Last Tour is similar, although it is a bit more about sightseeing.
In a journey, one runs into all kinds of people, and usually, they never cross their paths again. So we learn how to say goodbye.
And the same, somehow, applies to the time travellers as well. Usually after departing from a spacetime, a world line, one cannot comes back. And unlike the negotiable spatial distance, the temporal one is absolute.
Back to the Mother features similar plots. Despite its frivolous atmosphere, bold fanservices, and the title, the manga tries to tell a serious story. Yuu, the protagonist, is such a fan of his mother, an once idol band member, that is near the extent of Oedipus complex. But one day, the mom’s glorious figure mysterically turns into a graceless unsliced nigiri(sushi, maki, whatever) with an face only appearing in comedy mangas. Along with this eerie transformation, he often find himself transported to the past, when his mother was of his age.
Each time he was sent to the past, Yuu gets to know, a little about his mother’s youth. And at the same time, he and Hanada get closer to each other, his teacher but once a friend of his mother’s. While he manages to fix his mom’s past the way he knows, Hanada is becoming more and more important to him. Finally, he uncovers the reason why his mother turns into a sushi roll, and prevents it.
Knowing Yuu will be sent back to his time and unable to come back, Hanada calls him out to a park, to say farewell to him, and to this forever unrequitted love.
The manga was appeared to be, somehow, hastily concluded. But the up side of it is, it saved the work from lengthy, remotely related stuff, like new characters, stories about the new characters, new places and fanservices, which is common for many serial works. It is usually good, or, OK, for those slow-paced works, for example, Boarding School Juliet or Nisekoi(maybe more prevalent in lightnovels), but it really hurts the compact story line, which is one of the centers of this manga, the other one is, of course, the tragic female main character Hanada.
Part 1
The Season of 12 Colors tells a story like My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday(shortened to Bokuasu).
And I think it somehow well conclude the main plot of this story. So if you have read the novel, or watched the film, you are already spoiled. Sorry.
Made by Class Tangerine which is also the developer of Gaokao Love 100 Days, this one is kind of short and concise, and the game ends within an hour.
I think the same plot usually means the same climax. And what can I say?
The largest difference between separation and death is that: after separation, you know they are there, but after death, you know they aren’t anywhere. Another short VN by the same group plays on this difference. If you have only 12 hours to live, what will you do? Be moody, give a grave talk, watch your friends and families cry? The protagonist is in the same situation, but things are somewhat different: everyone treats him as if he were just going to another place rather than dying, and that is no serious matter. So even if the protagonist proclaims, “I am going to die! Please treat me better!”, others just see it as a joke. This twist makes the plot which is going to be sad, a hilarious one. And in his last minutes, even the protagonist himself stopped worrying about his death, but starts to think about saying something cool as his last words. And he ridiculously fails.
It is included in the game Short Stories Collection of Class Tangerine, along with another 9 stories. And they are all interesting stories.
And Greek tragedies often have this topic, that one struggles to rewrite their doomed fate, but ended up realizing that it is unchangeable. In the end, they wrap up themselve, to paint the final stroke on the canvas of tragedy.
Unlike in Bokuasu, the time does not flow backwards for Mo Li(jasmine in Chinese), the heroine, since the beginning, and not until her mother’s death. It gives rise to a turning point, which marks the end for the protagonist.[2]
This is the first time for Mo Li to meet me, and the last time I see her.
MC ends up telling fairy tales to the then 6-year-old Mo Li, play with her, and teach her how to fly a paper plane. And in the last, he has to say goodbye to her, knowing he will never see her again.
We will come across again, and a lot, in the future.
So do remember, the signal is the paper plane.
Because if you write a letter on it, it will reach the person on your mind.
Prolog
I found out the post is a little too long for a short VN like this, but it’s too late.
So I’ll just leave it like this.
