Genre: Adventure, Casual, Indie
Developer: ebi-hime
Publisher: Sekai Project
Release Date: Feb 7, 2017
Edited by KnightAvenger
Imagine if once, during your childhood, you helped somebody out for whatever reason and they appreciated it so much that they decided to devote themselves completely to being at your side and loving you to show their gratitude. Spoiler alert but that is the basic idea behind one of Nekopara’s character’s stories. Nekopara is great because it is very cute, fun and just nice in general but also because it has such moments of fantasy for the protagonist.
However, let’s back away from that cute story for a moment and look at it from a critical point of view. What would actually happen if, at some point in your childhood, you did something for someone, helped them in some way? Even if it turned out that they didn’t need saving or that the gesture was truly momentous, would they decide to show gratitude by completely devoting their existence to you? If so, how would that feel and work for you? Well, that is the question Sweetest Monster tries to ask and answer.
It is not a sweet and cute story at all but rather a dark, creepy and unnerving one, if not even disturbing at times. Nevertheless, that is its appeal. It tries to look at that fantasy realistically, without any romanticism, and how it wouldn’t all be rosy and peachy. How would or could a person deal with somebody like that, while they also have a wife and a kid?
The main character of Sweetest Monster is Robin Hawkins, an elementary school music teacher in his early forties. He is cynical, sharp and not very good at either his job, which everybody makes fun of, or his family life, which is falling apart. Constant fights with his wife Sally, whom he has been married to for almost two decades, a kid with social anxiety that he never speaks to that tried to commit suicide some time in the past, and an unfulfilling job at his primary school where the tip of the excitement is trying to stop one kid from hitting another one over the head with a recorder.
His wife Sally is a translator working from home that always gets on Robin’s back for being late or being nice to the parents of his students, specifically a rather attractive single mother of one of the kids to whom he teaches piano. She seems like a bitch, but, as the story goes on, her side and perspective seem to become more apparent, and we see that she is not just a bitch. Rather, she is very worried about her daughter Melody, wishing she would get over her social anxiety (at least a little) as well as wishing that her husband Robin would make an effort to talk to Melody, rather than just hiding because he is afraid of failing and disappointing her.
Melody is a very socially anxious 15 year old that is always in her room except when she has to go to school or have dinner with her parents. Even during those dinners, she rarely or never speaks with either of her parents, only giving vague answers in the form of moving her head to confirm or deny something. We never even see Melody, which shows how seemingly unimportant she is to Robin, who almost never calls her by her name, opting to use Melly instead. It is because he feels guilty for giving her such an obvious name, only to find out that she is not very much into learning the piano.
After one of his usual fights with his wife, Robin goes out and has a surprise meeting with Bell, a mysterious girl around the same age and height as his daughter but with cat ears and a tail. She is a spirit, as she describes herself, and can take the shape of almost any entity as long as she has enough power in her. She used to be a cat for a while because she didn’t have enough power to become a human but now she finally does.
The novel flirts a lot with literature, mentioning books like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Stoker’s Dracula, and others, even mentioning Romantics on a few occasions. However, it also reminds me of Nabokov’s Lolita at times, with Bell being the nymphet in this case. The novel is very well written in its own right, too. It leaves a lot of questions open, but they are all questions that don’t need to be answered to enjoy the novel.
What precisely is Bell? Whom did she get into a fight with to lose her powers? Is there some sort of spiritual society, government? Is she an outlaw and just barely managed to get away alive, so she had to change into a cat to hide? What happened at the end after the actual ending? It would be enjoyable if those questions were answered, but it’s not something that takes away from the overall experience at all. If anything, it is all up for interpretation, which makes it good, as anyone can come up with their own reasons.
One thing I must commend the novel for is the twists in it. There aren’t too many of them, and none of them are extremely new or unusual. They are rather obvious. Normally, that would be a bad thing, but, in this case, it is a good thing. The reason is the way the novel makes them both obvious and on the nose but also makes the reader not really want their expectations of the twists to be true until the very moment that they are confirmed. Even then, we still don’t want them to be the case because they are too unnerving. Not all of them, of course, but just a certain big one.
For all this talk of creepiness, unnerving twists and such, the written part of the novel really isn’t too dark or creepy, for the most part. It has quite a few fun and light-hearted moments, too. Nevertheless, the moments that are fitting of being called psychological horror and creepy are very much so, making this novel a mixture of both light-hearted white and bitter dark chocolate.
Sexual content and fan service are present but not very emphasized for the sexuality, as it serves an actual and proper role in the game as opposed to some other VNs which have sexual content as the main attraction. All of the scenes are drawn nicely, but don’t expect any big satisfaction on that front because the novel doesn’t want to let you have fun with it, choosing to make you regret getting excited afterwards instead.
One of the main themes which I haven’t yet mentioned is punishment, regret for doing something. The novel is actively sadistic towards the player, making us suffer and feel bad for enjoying something just like the main character does. It is very much a power play with both the protagonist and the player alike. Instead of having the protagonist in charge, he is stripped of all power and is made to go along with the story and Bell’s playful toying with him, being at her mercy for the enjoyment she provides, just to penalize him for going along with it.
The reason for that comparison with Nekopara at the beginning, aside from the obvious similarities, is that the author got inspired to write this novel after playing Nekopara. She wrote about it in the notes that are unlocked after finishing Sweetest Monster. While the author’s reasoning should be completely unimportant to those who agree with structuralists about the author being dead, it still makes for a nice opening, so I decided to use her own comparison as the opener.
The visuals are nicely done. The character sprites seem to be made with slightly desaturated water colors to represent the dreary atmosphere, but it is still all very nice looking. The backgrounds are basic and a bit uninspired but still nice enough with no real complaints from me.
The music is also nice, if basic. It serves its purpose of creating an atmosphere that the game needs at times but doesn’t do much more than that. The sound effects are a bit awkward, though. The sound of rain is a little loud at times but ok. The real issue is the walking sound that occurs a few times throughout the novel. Even though the character should be walking outside in a normal city, the walking sound makes it feel like he is walking on metal with some very heavy steps. It breaks the immersion a bit, but it is not too bad.
Overall, it is a very nice and, at times, pretty dark visual novel with a lot of depth, given the short length of exploration, almost like an experiment, proposing what would happen if a light-hearted idea were looked at seriously. As opposed to many visual novels that have stories in service of getting to the next CG image (not including ones that do it well or ones with nice stories that also have some fan service added), Sweetest Monster is an intriguing and a more artistic novel in search of the meaning behind simple fan service.
Pros:
- Writing is very nice
- Characters are also very good
- Story is intriguing
- Visuals look gloomy but pretty
- Ending is pretty open
- Twists are good
Cons:
- Some things remain pretty unexplained
- Sound effects are a bit awkward
Faris gives Sweetest Monster a score of 9.2 out of 10 (92) Moé Blobs.
Sweetest Monster is available for the price of $5.99 USD on Steam.
