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I'm so happy to finally find someone on this website that knows about the game!
I had made a thread in the Library about the game to raise awareness, but it quickly sank into the abyss...
Also Mike Inel did the cutscenes? Damn, I didn't know that... The guy is great!
Yeah, he did every one of 'em.
I still think his best work comes from the opening scene, though, with all of Hisao's equipment beeping and the clock ticking in time with his heart. It had great transitions, an innovative credits layout, and the fading in and out of the sounds in time with his heart just stuns me every time. The KS team found a good guy; he did great work throughout the game.
Professional is right. I mean, he had a script to follow, but he still worked creative literary and visual magic with every scene. Each one was just so subtly foreshadowing... I think that's the best part of every one of those scenes, actually. The fact that once you actually read the route, and THEN go back to watch the anim again, you find out that it told you EVERYTHING, without spoiling a single sentence. Now that's professional.
Very, very true.
This is especially true in Shizune's route, and every single detail subtly points towards what will happen afterwards.
This was brilliant.
And it foreshadows both the good and the bad at the same time. Like, every single scene is up to personal interpretation. Like when Rin wakes up alone in the dandelion field, it asks "Will she wake up and realize the world around her, and find herself alone, forever, with the clouds? Or did you, trying to reach her, wake her up to the world around her so that she can move on?" And Hanako's whole anim begs the question "Are you there for her, her anchor when nobody else was there? Or are you dragging her down, isolating her even more from everybody else?" It's genius.
It's hard! You want to guard her, to protect her, but she doesn't need protection. She's sheltered enough. She needs the support to be free, not caged. And since she never says that, it can be hard trying to interpret what she needs, even with all of the correct context clues.
What's unimportant to us is a world of difference to somebody else, somebody who led an entirely different life, one that we don't understand, and possibly never will. But you don't need to understand to know how important it is. Hisao and Hanako don't understand each other at the end of the story, but they resolve not to let that get in the way of their love.
Hm.
It's almost as if they were trying to tell us something...