The Blog of Xbolt

I’m filing this under Webcomix, even though it isn’t technically a webcomic.

True Remembrance is a visual novel. Everyone familiar with the term? Yes? …Oh, no? You in the back, you’re shaking your head… Alright. You all know what a novel is, right? It’s “an invented prose narrative that is usually long and complex and deals especially with human experience through a usually connected sequence of events”. Now, what about the visual part?

A visual novel is what you could call an interactive novel. They are especially prevalent in Japan. It shows images of the various characters on the screen, and a text box that shows what they’re saying. You press a little button to advance to the next paragraph, and the character’s facial expressions will change. It can even be accompanied by a soundtrack!

Anyway, back to True Remembrance. The setting is rather interesting. Extreme depression is a pandemic spanning the entire globe. The condition is known as the Dolor. And people will go to one remote city, where they can have their bad memories removed by ‘Mnemonicides’.

In this city, live Blackiris, an Alpha Class Mnemonicide, and La, his patient. And this is their story.

And quite a nice story indeed. There is little in the way of action scenes, and much more about character development/interactions. So if you like a good story, you can’t go wrong with this. If you want things exploding every five minutes… You’ll have to look elsewhere.

As for the character art and accompanying soundtrack, they are both excellent. (It’s originally from Japan. Good artwork seems to flow from there.)

The entire story takes about three hours to read, and may be longer or shorter depending on how fast you are. But I recommend going a little slow in reading the first time.

In fact, when people are first introduced to the concept of visual novels, they are often directed to this piece. (Just as I just did. ;) )