Val's Visual Novel Nonsense #03 - Word by Word, Line by Line, Darkness Retreats

    Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai (a good librarian like a good shepherd, stylized as such in the jp logo) is, in short, a fairly strong character-driven VN dragged down by a structural decision about the routes that unnecessarily dilutes the focus on the true end. Taking place at a school that is closer to a city in population, the story follows Kyotaro Kakei, a member of the Library Club, who coasts by on his ability to test well while spending every second he can get away with immersed in books. 

    The story begins as he receives a prophetic text message from someone called the Shepherd on his way to school, indicating an event would soon take place that would change his destiny. As he waits for a train, he notices a girl also on the platform, handing out fliers of some sort, and their eyes meet. A vision comes to him, one of her imminent demise due to the train derailing, and he acts to save her, but she trips and they both fall in the process. She flees, the train finally arriving and derailing, ending up precisely where she was standing before his intervention, and he scans the flyers, noting their recruitment efforts before running off as the bell catches his attention.

      Kakei is then caught up in the efforts of Tsugumi Shirasaki, the girl he saved, and Tamamo Sakuraba, her friend, to improve the school, after they join and convert the Library Club to a headquarters for her idealistic ambitions; she wishes to make the school a better, more welcoming, and happier place for everyone in ways that the Student Council can’t.

    Along the way, they pick up Kakei’s friend Ikkei Takamine, a waitress at the school cafe, Kana Suzuki, and a well-known member of the music department, Senri Misono. While getting to know them, the Library Club works as a force of volunteers to assist various groups around the 50,000-strong student body. 

     The comedic writing and goofs are probably the strongest part of the game, but the overarching plot becomes a light mystery about the identity of the Shepherd, a phenomenon at the school that everyone seems to believe in and nobody knows anything concrete about. They’re a mysterious person who seems to show up to those who are working hard and offer a reward of some sort, and eventually, their identity is confirmed, right as the game branches into character routes.

    Given that it’s a character game, the routes on offer are important, and I enjoyed my time spent with all four main heroines; Tsugumi is the obvious face of the game, given that it’s her desire to improve the school that drives the entire cast to act, but her character doesn’t go much deeper than that, and her own motivation doesn’t come from anything more substantial, to a comical degree. It’s fitting for the kind of person she is, but not terribly compelling compared to the remaining heroines. 

    Senri is a little more complicated, but also generally not compelling, and felt more like a cast-filler than a full character in and of herself, which is always unfortunate. Her route was mostly about overcoming impostor syndrome, and finding the motivation to carry on as a performer, but it rang kind of empty for me. 

     Her kouhai cohort, Kana, is, however, one of my favorite routes in the game, tied with the true end. She and Kakei have a lot of similarities, and both touch on the fear of being unable to comprehend other peoples’ emotions, and using books as both an escapist defense mechanism, and supplements to help cope with the lack of personal experience. She’s also just a really good character. 

    Tamamo is second to Kana for me, and her route is about her codependence and how she eventually learns to have some internalized self-esteem, a problem I’m working on myself, so it hit home a bit harder than I expected. 

    If it were just these routes, I would’ve been perfectly fine with it, but there’s both sub-heroine routes for three other girls that make appearances in the story and, let’s say, a second set of main character routes available after you beat one of the first set. The sub-heroine routes are fine but basically just serve as amusing filler. The second common route, as I’ll call it, leads into the true ending.

    When he was young, Kakei was told of a magical library, full of magical books that would let him understand everyone in the world, at a time when trauma had left him unable to trust or comprehend the emotions of the people in his life. He began to read to try and keep himself safe, and one day, a man told him of this magical library; he could go there, he promised, if he kept hold of a small bookmark the man gave him, and treated everyone well. 

    On your first playthrough, you’ll see choices grayed out, marked with the same bookmark, that display neutrality to a question that is asking your preference between the four heroines, the ones that obviously lead you onto a route. You’re not allowed to choose them, but after seeing your first route ending, they open up. In most games of this design archetype, failing to show interest in any particular character gives you a bad end, or a common end, a truncation of the story where nothing meaningful happens  because you failed to connect to any of the characters. In Daitoshokan, that is designed to be impossible to do for… narrative reasons.  

    When you exit the common route, the last scene is one where Kakei briefly encounters the man from his memories once more, and his bookmark flutters away. If you’re on a character route, it slips away forever, and he forgets who the Shepherd was, his promise with the man, and everything about the magical library. He’s bound to form a bond with one of the characters and resolve his fear of others’ emotions by learning about them with first-hand experience.  

    If you’ve been choosing the neutral options, the ones marked with that bookmark, the ones where Kakei fears showing favoritism and prizes the new status quo, he snatches it out of the air, deciding then and there that he will remember everything. This leads to the second common route, where the options are the true ending and character-variants on an alternate ending. The true ending is the core of the entire game, where all the mysteries posited by the front of the game are wrapped up and resolved, but it’s locked behind an awkward structural decision in the second common route, which kinda puts a damper on it, and potentially makes it something a player can forget about along with the protagonist if they focus on doing the first set of character routes first!

    Good game, though! I enjoyed it a lot, and I can see why the friend who recommended it plays through a character route or two every so often! Charming characters, good comedy, and I’m glad it got an English translation, both so I could play it and so I can recommend it to more people!