Seishounen Yakubutsu Mousou Satsujin Jiken - 青少年薬物妄想殺人事件

This doujin eroge attracted my attention back when it released in 2022 mostly because the premise plus the writer’s twitter seemingly having good taste posting about a bunch of cool VNs. It’s about a depressed guy being heavy on medication with a bunch of weird things going on, like the title indicates it’s heavy on drugs, crime, sex assault, etc.

First thing I was pleasantly surprised by the text quality, it reads nicely with a good tempo despite being somewhat simple sentences/vocab. The similarities to Setoguchi are evident in plain sight, for the first few hours the whole atmosphere gave me very schizocore vibes similar to 00s eroge like Tsukihime/Sayooshi/Carnival. The author is no Setoguchi or Nasu but the writing still could pass for a commercial VN easily, from trying a bunch of random doujin VNs I have to say this one is on the high stakes, the writing has personality compared to the average new debut work. Sadly the game still suffers from doujiness behaviour.

The story is divided into 4 chapters with the first one being the best one, it’s kind of a cool denpa plot where the protagonist is having nightmares mixed in with real life events that guide him into investigate his classmate Yumi and his relationship with some yakuza group. I had a blast reading this chapter but after the “twist” at the end comes the second chapter that is basically a really long flashback leading to the events of the first chapter. I usually dislikes flashbacks and this was no exception, it basically feels like half the entire script was wasted here for no reason since you pretty much already know everything that is going to happen here but it’s blended with some seishun school life that’s far from being the writer’s strong point, the mismatch with the first chapter feel made me hate it virtually from the start. The entire time reading it I was thinking why did he felt like he had to add this, and well, after the true end I get it since it would feel weird without that flashback being told somehow, but still the length and way to go about it feels wrong to me. I was thinking that maybe he was trying to do something similar to the third part of Carnival, but Setoguchi did make it interesting since his writing is superb and he put it effort to depict some of his ideas/themes in it. Here, like I said before, the writing is good on a technical level, but it isn’t that good at pulling enough weight to tell something more that just what it is going on plotwise. Having short or unneeded flashbacks made into disproportionated long ones for no reason is sadly a trademark of doujin VNs, kinda wished it didn’t happen here but it is what it is.

The next two chapters are basically the conclusion, they’re short and pretty nice for the most part. It becomes more of a compelling thriller with the protagonist trying to rescue the girl while dealing with the yakuza. It doesn’t have the thrill of the first chapter but it is still captivating enough to blast through it quickly, they’re solid enough. The true ending is also remarkable, even if you can sort of see it coming I will always love this kind of crazy endings. My caveat here is with the bad? ending, I feel like it doesn’t add up well with the true ending, and also feels again way too long for no reason. I think the author felt the need to add a real epilogue after the true end for some reason, and he also went all in with a bunch of new characters with tachie, new BGs and whatnot. Honestly I’d have not added it but maybe whatever he was trying to do was missed on me.

The presentation is also notable, despite the evident low budget and resources there was a lot of high effort put into the scripting, good CG usage with good simple effects and transitions like adding black bars to not completly showing the BGs or CGs, it adds a good mood that fits in with the craziness. Also having a tachie for almost every character is a nice touch, definetly appreciated over having a couple more random CGs. In general you can tell the author is experienced with eroge and knows what he is doing.
The voice acting for Yumi is also remarkable, her character being good helps but her voice has an uniqueness tone to it, stood out for me, hopefully she gets more roles her voice is cute. The one bad thing I can say is that it bundles special effects and voice sound under the same setting and the mixing is horrible, not a deal breaker but it could have been fixed.

So I’d say overall it ends up being somewhat similar to Craftwork’s stuff, I think fans of Sayooshi would probably love this one. In fact, I probably like it even more than it since it’s a bit more grounded but tbh I have never been too much of a fan of Sayooshi to begin with. Kinda sad about that flashback I feel that it could probably have become one of the best doujin eroge I’ve read if it wasn’t for it.