When I reviewed part 1 of this, I didn’t expect to get anywhere near as many views as I have. So I want to start this post by thanking anyone who has read part 1. If you stick around for my other content, whether manga, games, or books? I’d be even more grateful. And feel free to comment below letting me know your own feelings and theories on this!
I’ll preface this by repeating what I said before. This is a story written by Nijisanji EN Vtuber, Fulgur Ovid. This is a story about the fake backstory given for his character in the introduction. The true backstory for his model is seemingly a lot less dramatic, but the archivist decided to have some fun with words.
Since he isn’t a professional writer and isn’t necessarily planning to be, I won’t be talking about the nitty-gritty of the writing. For one thing, I get the story through watching the VOD and with the choices and chatting in between – I don’t absorb the story in the same way as I would a book. Maybe one day I’ll write editorial notes and message them over to him, but that wouldn’t be for public consumption anyway. Bit rude to very openly critique someone’s work unless they’ve asked you to. Plus, that would take an awful lot of work. If you want to read it for yourself, you’ll find it on the Legatus 505 blog.
With that out of the way – on with the review.
We had two chapters this time. One of them was a lot shorter than the other. Once again, these were in an episodic format, so it felt as if we had two separate cares. But chapter 3 did begin with a dream giving you hints of Legatus’ past. It’s a rather dark scene featuring body horror, so warnings if you’re not a fan of that. Legatus pulls the wires from his arm, and there’s a lot of use of colour in this scene. Red and blood for Fulgur’s design. You get repeats of the word drip, which work pretty well and a lot of vivid thought and description.
I appreciated this part. It felt like you were seeing a side of Legatus that you don’t see in a lot of the story. This boy is struggling with what he now his and the destructiveness that this can lead to. When comparing this to the interim you read later on – it gets even more interesting to look back on. In the interim, Sheep is scared, clearly so, but he still stands up for his beliefs. There’s a little less thoughtlessness and a little more action. I wonder what the time difference between these scenes was and what happened. I’m looking forward to finding out.
The rest of chapter 3 is another case. An I’mprint’s owner has died, and she hasn’t shut down. She called the division to let them know, and Legatus goes to see what was going on. It’s maybe a little short for what Fulgur was trying to do. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good chapter and pretty powerful. But I would have liked to have seen a little more detective work. I know the point of the choice was just to kill her or find out more. And the viewers voted to kill her. But a little bit more research before the options? We know he thought she was suspicious. We know he did a cursory search. But why? Obviously, her still being aware is abnormal. I imagine her ageing is weird too. But there would have been other clues. I’d liked to have seen more of the thought process essentially. Allow us to really get into his head.
What I will say is that Iris’s death was sad. It did have an emotional impact. She was clearly a woman suffering and was desperate for it to end. It hit me hard, but I get why Legatus would just get on with his mission. The path this choice will take him down will likely be dark but fascinating.
We then move on to chapter 4, which I definitely have some thoughts on. In this chapter, we have a famous comedian who has been using I’mprints of his past self to write jokes. Only something had gone wrong, and they were sending out secret messages that they shouldn’t. This doesn’t sound like it would be much of a mission, but this chapter very much touched upon some things that Fulgur clearly has a lot of thoughts on.
Without going into too much detail, the comedian, Valdie had made a joke many years ago that had led to a single woman being harassed online and in the media. The jokes were everywhere. It affected both her life and career and the woman had committed suicide. Valdie blamed himself. After that, he wound up falling into alcoholism. This is incredibly sad and related to PTSD. And the concept of what people say online and how they interact with so-called celebrities is something Fulgur has clearly thought about a lot. His rules include things like not reading out messages people ask him to – which is fair – and there’s a big reminder that he’s a character and a creator, and he’s not going to pretend to be your boyfriend or anything like that. He has a role behind the screen, and he’s happy to interact with people and make content. But it doesn’t go further than that. In a society where many people do feel they’re involved in people they don’t know lives – especially celebrities – because of the access we have to them, there can be a problem with people getting over-involved and over-invested. We can see this is something Fulgur wants to avoid, and we can also see his deeper thoughts on the impact this can have as a plot point.
Once again, this was a pretty sad chapter. There are two mentions of suicide, neither unexpected, but that’s something many people will wish to avoid. This chapter was rather long and rather heavy, but I enjoyed it. There was more of an element of mystery and detective work, which led to that sad ending feeling like the necessary option. Even if it could have perhaps been avoided.
The chapter also led to more information on Praetor Chroma. She’s definitely a character I’m interested in and suspicious of. I’m hoping that now most of the tech information is in the story, we’ll start to learn more about the lore with Legatus. There’s definitely some stuff going on behind the scenes, and discovering it with Legatus rather than just being told about it on the side would definitely make the story better. There are some possibilities here with the Praetor, so we’ll see if they come to fruition.
Overall I did enjoy these two chapters. I think there has been some improvement in the writing which is great. The more that’s written, the better it will get.
Lace and Dagger Books 