story

Warning: Spoilers for Chaos;Head NoAH. Click on the blurred text to reveal them.

The story has a long common route of 10 chapters. The first playthrough will lead to the A ending, after which you must explore all other routes (including each individual heroine's routes) before you can reach the true ending. I would say the pacing is quite well done. Admittedly it takes a while for the story to get rolling, and there’s a lot of time spent on scenes of Takumi stuck in his room trapped in his own head.

However, between these desperate scenes of claustrophobic social isolation the world around the protagonist keeps moving. The murders keep going, the girls each pursue their own ends, Ban chases after the killer, something ominous is moving in the background, and the clock is ticking. Information is gradually revealed to you, and not always elegantly (there’s quite a bit of infodumps). The common route does a good job at invoking a slow sense of dread, pouring on a steady stream of alarming reveals and developments.

Something to note is how closed off the characters are in this story. Takumi actively tries not to contribute to the plot, the girls are each motivated by different goals, and the inter-heroine interactons are mostly brief and accidental, otherwise borne out of pure (plot) necessity with some notable exceptions.

In the good sense, it helps build the story’s brooding atmosphere. Although less severely than Takumi, they each have their own reasons to be closed off to others around them.

Now in the bad sense it means that the characters are generally stuck in their own worlds, limited to the knowledge and theories they have on hand. It adds immersion in being just as lost in all the crazy stuff going on but it’s also a bit frustrating.

Something I feel ambivalent about is Takumi’s turning point. I wish there had been more of a glue between where he ends up and the loser he is for 99% of the plot – I support positive character development, but it just doesn’t feel terribly earned or like it’s a conclusion that makes emotional sense to me/gives me a feeling of catharsis from everything which followed it.

I’m conflicted about this because as unsatisfying as it can be, the heroines’ problems and Takumi’s own tendencies stunting relationship dynamics contribute to the story’s atmosphere and suit the themes, but when later developments try to have its cake and eat it too with how they act out emotional payoff without having to painstakingly build up the dynamics that would make those payoffs feel properly earned, it makes me sour.

The individual routes themselves don’t feel horribly unearned though. I get to know more about the girls and see their past and motivations, which I welcome, I just don’t love how they’re at least partially predicated on their interactions with Takumi who by any objective metric is not worth it, damn I love the guy like an owner loves his ugly pet dog, but, come on.

I wouldn’t be speaking so cynically about it, considering “girls open up to [player] cause he’s special” is a genre staple and not even just for Japanese media, AND especially cause the routes themselves aren’t even that romantic but when the protagonist is literally addicted to moeslop/hentai/collectible waifu and sees the women around him based on those stories, I feel like this goes against the themes of the story and doesn’t challenge Takumi harshly enough.

The actual climatic reveal of the killer, battle with the big bad etc were engaging enough in the moment, but I feel like the villains were a missed opportunity overall. I did like Shogun and actually loved his difficult relationship with Takumi, I wish I’d seen more of that.

characters

Takumi - I did genuinely like Takumi. I don’t have a problem with him as a protagonist, I even sympathized somewhat with his twisted misconceptions of people around him and his anxiety. His narration can be genuinely sympathetic and even funny when it’s not gross. My biggest problems with him are:

later developments don’t make enough emotional sense to me, when Takumi decides to find his own meaning and help Rimi. For much of their relationship the narration is him going “save me Rimi” and he seems to like her for selfish reasons. Yeah, it turns into something genuine later which I can buy, theoretically, but the change happens too suddenly without enough buildup for me to be satisfied. It feels like it’s making light of how serious his issues are when the buildup to show how bad they are is so well-done.

it is frustrating that he doesn’t actively contribute to the plot. It has to be brought to him. I get that’s the point, but there are moments with where he could’ve asked questions but his narration is explicit in how he’d rather live in unsustainable denial which I wasn’t a fan of.

The girls -

Yua is my favourite of the heroines, even if it is unfortunate that her route is disconnected from the main story and doesn’t add any lore or resolve anything. I liked her story and that she’s revealed to be quite the flawed person and that her efforts were misguided. That the story ends with no conclusive resolution to where the real her ends and begins was a nice touch – when Chaos;Head is pleasantly frustrating, it excels.

Sena’s character archetype isn’t my favourite, and I disliked the underlying vibes of the route that she’s better and cuter when she’s emotional and vulnerable, but overall, I enjoyed her character and her story, which had nice lore and plot relevance as well.

Rimi… works well as the main girl. I don’t really have much to say, I liked that she is flawed but it’s shown in a subtle but consistent way. Her relationship with Shogun was good. I loved the ending of her route, it’s so bittersweet. I wish her relationship with Taku was more believable though.

Kozue’s archetype isn’t something I love, but her route did a good job at humanizing her while making a hard turn into the psychological and still being integrated with the lore.

Ayase’s route, I prefer more in concept than in execution which is a shame because the ideas expressed in it fit with the story’s themes and the idea of the “blue sky”. I would prefer if there were more moments in her POV instead of Takumi’s – I already know what Takumi’s inner world looks like! I don’t mind the horny stuff but again, I also would’ve preferred if I got to see in her POV why she’s doing this. Also, there are some events implied to have happened in her route that’s a missed opportunity to just… show onscreen. The ending was sweet though.

Nanami’s route itself was good, and well-integrated with lore. Unfortunately the route itself isn’t about Nanami as a person and more about Takumi’s mental state, which does fit with the story’s themes, but it feels like a let down in other ways.

The villains are underdeveloped. I was hoping for Suwa and Hazuki to be some kind of examination for being raised in a cult etc or that I’d get to know what drove Norose to want to subjugate the world and cleanse people’s hearts since it’s pretty obvious his Gigalomaniax powers (which require extreme mental distress to invoke) had something to do with it but no, they’re all just one-dimensional characters and stay that way. I’d say they’re the low point of the story unfortunately.

art

Possibly controversial but I overall loved the art of Chaos;Head. Yeah it maybe looks mildly generic. Yeah the 3D backgrounds look a bit hokey. Yeah sometimes Takumi doesn’t look that great in event CGs. But I think fit the story being told and I do have a soft spot for the art/coloring style. It still holds up almost 20 years old later, in my opinion.

The art direction itself is also strong. Actually the art direction is better than the art itself. The title screen is striking, the UI being based on a desktop was a good choice, the murders look creepy despite their visual depiction being censored, and the delusion CGs reflect Takumi’s mindset. The whole package becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

sound

Takumi has the best voice acting in the cast. The VA does a great job at capturing his stuttering anxious whiny personality without pushing it too far and even giving life to the character and invoking sympathy when it counts. The rest of the voice acting is good, but I don’t have an ear for Japanese VA and I could only find their performances as befitting their archetypes. Nanami’s probably has the most emotional performance during certain scenes which compliment those moments well.

The soundtrack is great, not flawless, not top 5, but still quite good. The best word for it is probably “immersive”. The sound effects (except for Takumi’s PC humming) don’t loop the best way unfortunately. FES’ songs grew on me and are worth listening to after reading the VN. Find the Blue is my favourite of the openings.

enjoyment

Chaos;Head grew on me. It can be a difficult story to love, and I’d say it has some serious demerits, but even through all the frustrating and low parts of the story I was able to keep looking for the good things in it, the messages expressed within it, the effort to make the reading experience immersive, and I felt like it was all sincere.

I’m glad the staff was given more chances to iterate on their ideas, first with NoAH and then with subsequent entries in the Science Adventure universe, because there really are genuinely great aspects in the story they told that are worth revisiting and polishing.