Friday, June 15, 2012

True Remembrance: My Thoughts (Part I)


So, I found a FREE visual novel for download on the Internet (I only want to read free ones) about a week ago.  Its title is True Remembrance and it’s my first.  For those who do not know, visual novels are basically digitalized novels with an anime/manga art pictures.  It’s distinct and obvious.  There are basically two types:  the kind that lets you make choices (similar to a Choose Your Own Adventure novel) and the kind that don’t.  The ones that have choices usually have multiple endings and that ones that do not...don’t.
           
True Remembrance falls in the latter “no choices” category.  That is quite alright.  It’s basically like reading a novel with nice artwork and a cool anime intro on my computer.  To my point though, this post though is basically me talking about certain things that may “resonate” with me as I read this visual novel.  Something has.  Before I get to that allow me to briefly summarize what’s going on with it.

The novel is basically about a world where a good part of the population is in this incurable state of depression called “The Dolor.”  This is so bad that not even leading psychiatrists can come up with an answer for it.  Instead, the answer comes in the form of people who have the ability to the erase the memories of other people.  These people are employed by the government to do just that:  erase the painful memories that are causing people to develop the suicide inducing “Dolor.” 

The visual novel follows one of these memory erasing people who calls himself Blackiris.  He is a young man who is very good at what he does but doesn’t seem to enjoy it.  He, and others with this power, do their work in a small town that was developed especially for them.  They take in paying “Guests” who they basically live with and guide through life until they have gathered enough information to go along with the memory erasing process.  It is an interesting twist to the whole doctor/client relationship leading to the somewhat horrifying memory erasing part.

The story begins with Blackiris being assigned a new Guest:  a girl no older than 15 it seems who goes by the name of La.  La seems to be different than the other guests that Blackiris gets. I suspect that their time together will prove to be a most emotional and complex journey of self-discovery for the both of them.   I’ve only read the first chapter though so I’m curious to see where it all goes.

My thoughts:

Since that’s all out of the way, my thoughts on this are hovering around the idea of erasing memories to escape from pain.  It is sort of like running away don’t you think?  And ultimately, can we run away from our unhappiness?  Even if we forget those painful memories that bring us unhappiness will we really be happy?  I don’t know.

I honestly don’t think so.  Won’t the problems you were facing before still be there in some way or another? 

So far I think the story will deal with the nature of our memories, dealing with pain, and just living life.  We have to deal with our pain not run away.  Though, maybe it’s different when it’s a large majority of the population dealing with something as unfortunate as “The Dolor.”  It seems like an emotional “Black Plague.”  I know that sounds pretty broad, but I’ve only read the first chapter as I said before.  Overall, I’m definitely intrigued and I can’t wait to see where it goes.

Care to read with me?

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