Sakura Musubi - さくらむすび

This is one of those VNs that you absolutely must be in the correct mindset to actually enjoy. But if the thought of slow, evocative writing filled with romance and compassion in a moody inaka setting sounds attractive, then by all means give this a go.

Originally I never planned to give this a go since my experience with Suigetsu was a bit lackluster to say the least, honestly a lot of it was me being mad at the poor remaster, but still a lot of the multi-route mystery in that game annoyed me too much. However the reception of this game has always been a lot more positive, and I was in the mood, so I went for it. I have to say that keeping it grounded and not adding any supernatural stuff like Suigetsu does helps the writer’s style to shine much more, the writing is simple vocabulary wise, but the slow paced character focused approach does a lot more when you don’t need to focus on w/e Suigetsu was going for. Instead, here you get a lot of long scenes slowly drawing you into the moody experience, I found it a bit hard to get for the first few scenes since you are just thrown in with some very literaly style with characters making references to things you don’t even know yet, but it started clicking and summerging you in the atmosphere Tonoike was going for. From what I can see the style seems inspired by “櫻の樹の下には” since it is actually a big plot point in the game, well their own version of it I’d guess, sadly I’m not familiar with the original work so can’t say much there.

Sakura Musubi is mostly known as one of the incest imouto games, and also by the piano Sakura theme, maybe. The protagonist and his imouto lost her parents very young and were adopted by their cousins, the protagonist Keigo still lives alone, while the sister, Sakura lives with them and their osananajimi Momiji. The three of them get along very well since forever. The gist is Sakura being too close to the protag despite being already in high school, so he starts wondering if he should distance from her. Basically the entire common route is a back and forth of him stressing about this with his friends, it sounds kind of bad but the writing mostly pulls it off. I could have done with a few less scenes with their both friends at school since those were kind of killing me, but in general, the sweet nostalgic atmosphere and strenght of the prose makes it fun to read through

The common route leading into Sakura’s route weirded me out at first, since in one scene it seems he’s ready to abandon it all to live with her, and in the next one he’s back to distancing from her, I thought it was a mismatch of scenes between routes, but it’s the same in all of them, so it kinda goes to show the protagonist state of mind. To be honest, from a reader’s perspective, Sakura’s isn’t the most attractive character, in addition to the fact that the Karen and Momiji are both turbo hot, plus everyone telling him to get away from Sakura, makes it kind of hard to believe he still went for Sakura at times. I’m still not sure I believe the protagonist even liked her in a romantic way, and just went for it because how much he still loved her.

Anyway, despite that, the transition into the routes is actually smooth. I even had a hard time realizing I was into a route for the longest time, after starting the next one is when I realized that the “split” is much earlier than expected, although it’s even hard to call it a split since well, there isn’t one and even inside the route you still have some shared scenes until very late, the story progression is kinda similar in events, but with different things going on between the characters. The three routes kinda feel similar in this regard.

The similarity of the routes comes around the old tradition of a play at the theather club that it’s actually there to discover the mystery of the story related to their dead parents. I thought this was a bit strange since both Sakura and Momiji’s routes gives the full explanation, well Momiji gives you the choice to reveal the truth. If you are doing Momiji route first, I’d recommend not revealing it, since it’s much better placed for Sakura’s. But if you’re following a walkthrough, you’ll do Sakura’s first anyway, and to be honest, probably should, since it feels like the intended order. I was a bit scared at the start that it was going to be some nonsense supernatural plot again, but it stays grounded. Well, the actual backstory seems like some crazy thing someone came up with to bypass the blood-related incest, but at least it’s not some reincarnation plot or anything similar.

There are three routes; Sakura, Momiji and Karen. Sakura is probably the one you should do first, since it brings together everything from the common route. You may think of leaving it for last since it feels like the true route on paper, but far from reality is basically the intro to it, well “intro” may fall a bit short, but still. It opens the themes of the work fairly well, it’s called Sakura Musubi for a reason, and everything revolves around her, even in the other routes. the “bad” ending is in particular strikingly beautiful with both of them giving everything to go to the “Sakura no Kuni” (桜の国). I love how Tonoike blends everything together (musubi) with the themes, the play, and the actual reality all ending up in the same place by the end, his poetic prose is godlike at this.

Karen route serves mostly as a contrast with Sakura’s, and the parts with Sakura are probably the most interesting ones… Her route itself is some random boring family drama where the father is evil, and nothing is even dealt with in any capacity, probably for the best to be honest. It wouldn’t fit the game which I don’t know why they thought it was a good idea to do something like this in the first place. The route itself I see it more as a contrast to Sakura’s in several ways, like the sibling relationship of Karen not being good, or how he has to deal with Sakura’s crash out (since it isn’t a thing in Momijis, for example). Personally I think the ending doesn’t really fit too much the game and would been better to have them wait it out until she’s out of school, it would fit better with Sakura’s ending where the best choice is to just shut up and wait until they are “free” from society rules, as bad as it sounds. The writing still stays in tone with the rest of the game instead of making some angsty teenager drama so at least that’s good, but the most uninteresting out of the three despite Karen being a top tier character.

Although it doesn’t look like it from the outside, Momiji’s route is probably the “grand” route here, it’s actually fairly longer than the other two too (although it does fill a bit too long at times), it follows mostly the same pattern and the transition from the common route is quite seamless too. This route, compared with the other two, has zero drama, focusing more in their relationship and acting of the play instead. The writing goes more into the catharsis and sweet atmosphere where the prose shines the most, feels like it brings all the poetic allegories of Sakura’s endings into a more grounded view. The haircut scenes is an all timer scene and must see for any romance enjoyers out there. There is not much going on actually, but feels like it picks where the other two left off, and their dynamic as a baka couple is too good, great dialogue all around.

So I’d recommend to leave Momiji’s for last, unless you only plan to do one route, in which case do hers, since it gives you the full context of the story too. The game production values are very low, it takes multiple hours to even see the first CG, pretty sure they are only in the routes, it is also fully unvoiced, too. But honestly both of these things help give it a lasting impression, fueling your imagination closer to a novel. I’m not usually one to play unvoiced VNs but it works prety well here with the writing style. A bit more enshutu/scripting to show who is talking at times would have been nice in some of the longer scenes, where it’s easy to space out. One remarkable thing to say is that the protag is very prominent in CGs and appears in almost all of them. The OST is pretty famous for its piano tracks, and it is indeed fairly good, I’d say it is a bit repetitive since it’s always playing the first 4 tracks instead of the other 15, but quality of tracks is top tier in general, sets the tone of the game perfectly, big fan of the slow version of sakura’s theme.

For those out there looking to play a Tonoike VN I’d definetly recommend to start here over Suigetsu, even if the game is unvoiced and hard to obtain or get running, this kind of story fits his style much better and it is more in line from what I wanted to see when I played Suigetsu.