Review for Aokana: Four Rhythms Across the Blue. Game for PC, Android, iOS, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 27/09/2019 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 21/08/2020 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 21/08/2020
Continuing this happy and recent Nintendo Switch tradition that is slowly taking over PlayStation Vita as the home of Japanese Visual Novels, finally arrives on consoles (also on PlayStation 4) in the west - thanks to PQube - the truly summery Aokana: Four Rhythms Across the Blue, a VN that really surprised us and promises to be one of the best ways to spend these hot days for fans of sports anime, beautiful girls and Japanese life.
The concept behind Aokana is extremely simple, even trivial at first glance. The game will lead us to impersonate Masaya, a boy like many others who lives on a beautiful island - Kunashima Island - part of a fictional archipelago of southern Japan, a real tropical paradise, accompanying him in his school life, including exams, adolescent worries and first contacts with the opposite sex. But what makes the difference in Aokana is that the game is set in a parallel dimension, where man, discovering a new molecule called Anti-Gravitron, was able to realize the Grav Shoes, that is apparently simple shoes that allow people to fly. In the world of Aokana, therefore, not only is it normal to be able to go to school simply by floating in the air, but the Grav Shoes are also used for recreational purposes, mainly thanks to the Flying Circus, an intriguing sport based on precision and speed of flight, a kind of flying rodeo.
The world is miooooo
And the story of Aokana will be based on FC, which is therefore divided between the inevitable dating sim mechanics with the girls who will make up the FC team of which Masaya is the coach (all obviously single, beautiful, with multicolored hair and clearly attracted to the protagonist) and instead a probably more interesting sports component, which at times made us think we were before an episode of a spokon quality like Haikyuu !! o Eyeshield 21 instead of a relatively unknown VN eroge on Switch.
Why this is the great strength of Aokana: beyond an interesting story, with different choices, endings and really well written characters, in addition to the interest generated by the rivalry between schools in competing with the Flying Circus, I am its visual and musical components and in general the production factors and details to surprise us completely, giving us one of the Visual Novels (again in these days PQube has also brought us this VN) most satisfying to the eye and ear in recent years.
Complete and finished: good!
If something like SeaBed is all about a complex and intricate plot, Aokana: Four Rhythms Across the Blue takes us on a colorful journey into the lives of its characters, with Themes that never touch such complex or introspective chords, but remain pleasant and interesting enough to push us to continue and potentially even relive the story over and over to be able to discover all the endings (the game has lots of very convenient skip and dialogue management options to get to the unreleased content in a second playthrough).
The strength of his truly magnificent illustrations and his generally very little two-dimensional characters have been such that Aokana has received a manga and anime adaptation over the years quite successful, also transmitted in the West thanks to Crunchyroll, something that we have generally seen happen only to more famous names such as Steins; Gate: a certificate to a game that really surprised us.
You never get bored
The 20/25 hours you will spend with Aokana are a joy and they keep a level of novelty and variety that is hard to find in a Visual Novel these days. Each episode of the story (complete with previews of the next chapter and initials as in a real anime) in fact introduces many new illustrations of different styles, music (really catchy) and always remains dubbed completely in Japanese.
Then yes, the ultimate goal of the events is always to weave a with one of the attractive girls in the game, but Aokana manages to make it all very genuine and consistent with the events of the game, giving the player yes some skits a little "hot" but without exaggerating. If we want to find fault with it, it is to allow ourselves far too many such clichés that clash with how “modern” everything else is, but they are probably precisely the canons of productions of this type that have not yet been completely overcome.
For lovers of Japanese culture, Aokana: Four Rhythms Across the Blue is a salt-flavored window into the lives of attractive Japanese teenagers with a passion for a decidedly sci-fi sport. Beyond a solid yet slightly trite narrative, it is in the options, in the style and in the music and in general all the technical factors that the PQube and Sprite package has convinced us completely.
► Aokana: Four Rhythms Across the Blue is a Visual Novel type game developed by Sprite and published by PQube for PC, Android, iOS, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 27/09/2019 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 21/08/2020 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 21/08/2020
