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Narcissu | |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Stage-nana |
Publisher(s) | Insani (English version) Sekai Project |
Designer(s) | Tomo Kataoka |
Engine | NScripter (JP) ONScripter (EN) |
Platform(s) | Mac OS X, Linux, Microsoft Windows |
Release | 2005 |
Genre(s) | Visual novel |
Mode(s) | Single player |
Narcissu (Japanese: ナルキッソス, Hepburn: Narukissosu) is a free visual novel video game developed by the dōjin group Stage-nana, telling the story of a terminally ill young man and woman. It was made with the NScripter engine.
The work was originally written in Japanese by Tomo Kataoka, and subsequently localized and translated into English, Chinese, French, Korean, Russian and Vietnamese by various fan translators. Unlike most fan translations, however, this was an authorised work. The author, however, was not actively involved in the translation process as it had been the case for True Remembrance. Both the original Japanese visual novel and its English version were released as free downloads over the Internet. The web edition of Narcissu has lower graphics and music quality, to conserve bandwidth.
Narcissu is an experimental work: it uses minimalist graphics in a very narrow window, and includes two full scripts, one accompanied by a voice track, and the other adapted to work without voices. In the English translation, different translators translated each version, to provide different perspectives on the story.
Synopsis[edit]
The anonymous protagonist is diagnosed with lung cancer shortly after his twentieth birthday, and is admitted to hospice care at a hospital in Mito, Ibaraki. There he meets Setsumi, a woman who is two years older than he is, who is also terminally ill. Finding that they both refuse to die in the hospital or at home with their families, they run away together in a silver Honda Integra belonging to the protagonist's father.
They travel west across Japan's many highways and prefectures, initially not knowing where to go, but later collectively decide on taking the narcissus fields of southern Awaji Island as a somewhat arbitrary destination.
Characters[edit]
- The Protagonist
- A young man, 20 years of age. Your typical university student. Attends a technical institute, and has just taken (and passed) his driver's license examination. Lives with his family—a taciturn and unsupportive mother and father and a little sister who only ever has harsh words for him. Has never really been sick in his entire life. Has never really had much of an aim for his entire life, either.
- The protagonist's name is never given in the first two games, but is revealed to be Yuu Atou (阿東 優, Atou Yuu) in various supplementary works.
- Setsumi Sakura (佐倉 瀬津美, Sakura Setsumi)
- Voiced by: Rino Ayakawa
- A young woman, 22 years of age. Has a body physique like a child. She has a quiet personality. She loves cars and is knowledgeable about them. She expresses to the protagonist her desire to die neither at the seventh floor of the hospital nor at her home.
Himeko Shinohara is the protagonist of the 2nd Side prequel.
Yuka Akishima is the 23-year-old best friend of Himeko.
Chihiro Shinohara is the 21-year-old younger sister of Himeko. She is a devout Christian.
Release history[edit]
The original Japanese version uses the NScripter engine; for the English localization, the open sourcecloneONScripter was used instead, as this has been modified to support English. Narcissu has also been ported to the Nintendo DS.
A second game and a prequel named Narcissu: Side 2nd was released on May 15, 2007 while the third game in the series named Narcissu 3rd - Die Dritte Welt - was released on April 27, 2009. The final game in the series named Narcissu - if there was a tomorrow - (ナルキッソス~もしも明日があるなら~, Narcissu - moshimo ashita ga aru nara -) was developed by Kadokawa Shoten playable on the PlayStation Portable. The final game is a compilation of all three games with some new extra content added. It was released on June 24, 2010.
A complete remake of the Narcissu series, published by Sekai Project has been announced. It will include all of the previous Narcissu games with updated graphics and audio, as well as a new 4th Narcissu game.[1]
Influences[edit]
Narcissu is both stylistically and thematically similar to the opening chapter of Gin'iro, a commercial title by the same writer; Tomo Kataoka himself describes it as essentially a modern-day version of Gin'iro, which is set in medieval Japan.[citation needed]
On a level more familiar to Western audiences, the work has much in common with road movies; the screen layout is even intended to evoke a cinema screen. Many of the scenes and events of the story are road-movie clichés, and the ending, in which the physical journey itself is explicitly linked with the metaphorical journeys the characters have undergone (their lives, their self-discovery), is typical of the movie genre.
Soundtrack[edit]
Several of the music tracks in Narcissu are arrangements from other visual novels. 12 of the game's music tracks are accessible on-demand via the in-game jukebox, which is called the 'Sound Mode'.
The titles in the following list are based on the Sound Mode of Narcissu: Side 2nd, which contains updated and corrected titles; in the original release of Narcissu, Tracks 2, 3, 7, 8 and 12 had slightly different titles, while Tracks 4 and 9 were incorrectly listed as 'Rather Than a Life of Finality' and 'Eightmoon' respectively. However, Narcissu: Side 2nd still mislabels the source of Track 4 as 'The World is Coming to an W/end', instead of 'The world is drawing to an W/end'.
No. | Title | Music | Length |
---|---|---|---|
1. | 'The Emerald Sea' | MASA | 2:18 |
2. | 'The Silver Coupé' | Ebi | 2:33 |
3. | 'Narcissus (inst.)' | Ebi | 2:01 |
4. | 'From The world is drawing to an W/end' (Arranged by Kometto Nekono) | Masashi Yano | 3:43 |
5. | 'I'm Right Here (vocal ver.)' (Vocals by Mari Mizuta, lyrics by Tsukasa Umitomi) | Hirofumi Ishihashi | 4:47 |
6. | 'Lamune 79's' (From Lamune, arranged by Kometto Nekono) | Elements Garden | 3:08 |
7. | 'Route 1' | Sentive | 2:37 |
8. | 'The Seventh' | Sentive | 2:15 |
9. | 'Sakura' (From A ¥120 Spring, arranged by Shitoshi Fujimoto) | Ebi | 2:16 |
10. | 'The Emerald Sea (ver. 2)' | MASA | 2:17 |
11. | 'Scarlet' (From Mizuiro, arranged by Hirofumi Ishihashi) | Noriyasu Agematsu | 3:07 |
12. | 'Narcissus/Setsumi's Theme' (Vocals by REM, lyrics by Tomo Kataoka) | Ebi | 2:25 |
Print adaptations[edit]
On 25 July 2008, MF Bunko J released a light novel adaptation of Narcissu and Narcissu -side 2nd-, which was written by Tomo Kataoka himself and illustrated by GotoP.[2] The novel is licensed in Chinese by Tong Li Publishing,[3] and licensed in Korean by Haksan Culture Company.[4]
A manga illustrated by Pochi Edoya started serialization in the seinenmanga magazineMonthly Comic Alive on 27 November 2008.[5] Two bound volumes have been released by Media Factory under their MF Comics label,[6] and are licensed in Chinese by Sharp Point Press.[7]
References[edit]
- ^'Sekai Project to Release Narcissu remake project'. Anime News Network. July 4, 2015. Retrieved July 5, 2015.
- ^'MF文庫J ナルキッソス' (in Japanese). MF Bunko J Official Website. Retrieved 2010-03-21.
- ^東立漫遊網 東立小說區 水仙花 (in Chinese). Tong Li Publishing Official Website. Retrieved 2010-03-21.
- ^만화가 꿈꾸는 세상! 학산문화사 : 소설 최신간 보기 (in Korean). Haksan Culture Company Official Website. Retrieved 2010-08-31.
- ^コミックアライブ2009/1月号 (in Japanese). Monthly Comic Alive Official Website. Retrieved 2010-03-21.
- ^アライブコミック ナルキッソス(2) (in Japanese). Monthly Comic Alive Official Website. Retrieved 2010-03-21.
- ^'尖端出版SPP網站-narcissu 水仙花 - www.spp.com.tw' (in Chinese). Sharp Point Press Official Website. Retrieved 2013-07-05.
External links[edit]
- Official Japanese Homepage for PC Narcissu(in Japanese)
- Official Japanese Homepage for PSP Narcissu(in Japanese)
- Narcissu at The Visual Novel Database
Visual Metamorphosis
Visual metamorphosis is the term we use to indicate shape-shifting in art. It allows an artist to transform a shape representing one item into a similar shape representing something else. This, in turn, allows one meaning to be hidden behind another. It is a visual technique equivalent to allegory and metaphor in literature and has, in consequence, been widely used. It was first proposed in the 1930's in a slightly different form by the French art historian, Henri Foçillon. Although subsequent historians have recognized visual metamorphosis in a few works by major artists, Dürer being the best-known, it has been far more widely used than anyone, save artists, has ever recognized.{ref1}
Any great European artist in any period would have assumed that a borrowed form borrows meaning and that there is no difference between an idea for a painting and a composition of form. Plato's word for form was idea.{ref2} Nevertheless, in the nineteenth century many experts believed that paintings by Edouard Manet, who was by far the most significant artist of the day, had no specific meaning. Lunar combat mac os. His compositions, they said, were just a variety of different colored forms and that the artist himself paid no more attention to painting a human head than he gave to the depiction of the same man's shoes.{ref3} Just as materialist science had robbed the world of meaning, so art criticism repeated the pattern in art. The movement reached its peak in the theory of Clement Greenberg, a twentieth-century American critic, that painting should have no other meaning than the essence of its own medium: canvas, paint, flatness and frame.
Even before Foçillon, though, cultural historians trained in Germany and led by Erwin Panofsky had argued that the traditional symbolism of certain objects allowed artists to embed their images with meaning. Their prime example was how the circular shape of a straw firescreen behind the Virgin's head in a painting now known to be by Robert Campin imitated the shape of a halo. It allowed the artist to portray the Virgin as an ordinary mother without the artificial baggage of an ancient symbol. Iconology, as the methodology is known, became popular though few examples were quite so visually intriguing as the firescreen and the halo. Many involved the changing meaning of an object over time rather than of one form being mistaken for another. Like other methodologies it succumbed to competing theories, also non-visual, that seemed to offer more promise.
A few art historians continued to focus on vision. In 1934 Foçillon restated St. Augustine's argument from a millennium earlier that forms live in the artist's mind.{ref4} Forms, he argued in his book The Life of Forms in Art, are in constant change not only in the mind of the artist but as they are transmitted from one work of art to another. The metamorphosis that a form undergoes in the mind of a great artist, he declared, is unavailable to the unimaginative painter who cannot recognize the common element nor even effect the change. {ref5} If many painters cannot recognize the metamorphosis, it is not surprising then that most viewers have not been able to see them either. Indeed Foçillon's own experience of such metamorphoses seems to have been somewhat limited because his concrete examples in art are relatively scarce. Once shown, however, the ability to see visual metamorphosis can be taught and, as in so many other talents, practice helps improve performance. (A word of warning: it is important that visual metamorphosis make sense within the work itself, the artist's overall oeuvre and art history too. If not, the viewer can get carried away by his or her own imagination, not the artist's.) Studying our examples, though, from a variety of periods by a variety of different artists will help strengthen your own neurons' ability to recognize similar patterns supported by similar evidence elsewhere. Indeed the joy that comes with such recognition, fed by the neurons' release of dopamine, is as close as many will ever come to pure aesthetic satisfaction.
For a more detailed explanation, see the paper by Simon Abrahams, 'How Forms in Art Work.'
1. Joseph Leo Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (Chicago University Press) 1993, pp. 27-32
2.Plato's definition of ideas as forms was based on their eternal, unchanging nature. Seneca described Plato's definition of Idea as ‘that from which all things visible are made and according to which all things are shaped' and as ‘the eternal model of the things which are made by nature.' He further asserted that ‘God has within himself these models of all things.He is full of these figures, which Plato calls ‘ideas'; Aristotle stated that ‘the form of a work of art is present in the soul of the artist long before being translated into matter' See Erwin Panofsky, Idea: A Concept in Art Theory [orig. publ. 1924] (University of South Carolina Press) 1968, pp. 24-7, 125.
3. From the supportive criticism in Manet's own day of Emile Zola to the scholarly writings of the 1950s, it was generally accepted that ‘subject, narration and symbol were alien to Manet' and that ‘no object had any meaning beyond its formal function.' Beth Archer Brombert, Edouard Manet: Rebel in a Frock Coat (Little, Brown and Company) 1996, p. 487
4. St. Augustine ‘acknowledged that through art a kind of beauty is revealed that, far from being merely derived from the creations of nature and transferred to the work of art by a simple act of copying, lives in the mind of the artist himself (author's italics) and is directly translated by him into matter' See Panofsky, op. cit., p.35
5. Foçillon described the influence of forms on the minds of artists of varying abilities: ‘With a mere imitator, a reliance on memory narrows the field of metamorphoses; with a virtuoso, such a reliance does not necessarily diminish their intensity in any way. To a visionary, the sudden, imperious nature of an image seems to impose itself on the life of forms with no little violence. There are, finally, those intellectuals who strive to think of form as thought and to adapt its life to the life of ideas.' Foçillon, The Life of Forms in Art, trans. C. Beecher Hogan and G. Kubler (Zone Books) 1989, p. 125
1989, p.125)
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