My Thoughts on Raging Loop
I want to say that before anything else, please read Higurashi before reading Raging Loop. Higurashi is super long, but Raging Loop is basically post-Higurashi in terms of themes but I want to make that clear before rambling on about Raging Loop. Also, I will not be giving much of a synopsis of the game aside from saying that it’s essentially Werewolf/Mafia as a visual novel taking place in a rural village and an extremely brief description of the main characters.
This isn’t exactly a review, but it is for anyone who hasn’t read Raging Loop before since it’s spoiler free. It seems like the people who do talk about Raging Loop haven’t really read visual novels before or talk about it as if it’s a game that you play to beat and I don’t like that. I will just ramble about everything I find interesting about it. I also want to make this upfront: Raging Loop is no less than a masterpiece, anyone who says otherwise is objectively wrong.
It’s difficult to talk about my personal experiences and love for Raging Loop without talking about the characters, because Raging Loop is a very character-driven work. The main characters, Haruaki Fusaishi, Chiemi Serizawa, Rikako Uematsu, and Haru Makishima (which I will focus on in this post) are all characters that I feel like I can empathize with on a personal level. The side characters are also phenomenal. I sometimes forget that the characters aren’t real and are fictional characters because they have so much depth and realism to them.
I want Haruaki Fushaishi to fucking raw me. He’s basically like Subaru Natsuki from Re:Zero but a fucking genius and also incredibly curious, which makes the narrative a billion times more interesting. I wouldn’t want to know him in real life, but I relate to him a lot and I love him. More protagonists should be like Haruaki.
Chiemi Serizawa is VERY similar to Mion from Higurashi. Cute tomboy, surprisingly a really good heroine. She acts like a normal human being, which can apply to all of the women in Raging Loop thankfully, but it’s especially rare for the main heroine. Also very proactive and I love her “route” and “post-route”. Every visual novel heroine should complement the protagonist as well as Chiemi does for Haruaki.
Rikako Uematsu fills a very similar role as Rika from Higurashi, aside from the name. She’s somewhat quiet, a shrine maiden, and generally fills the “mysterious heroine” trope in a lot of visual novels and anime. This isn’t much of a spoiler, but she’s cute and my biggest problem with anime-esque narratives is that the mysterious heroine HAS to lower down to the protagonist/audience at some point and stop being mysterious. Rikako stops being mysterious, but in an extremely satisfying way. The only narrative that I’ve enjoyed for not making the mysterious heroine not a complete dumbass after the narrative progresses is Shiki from Subete ga F ni Naru, so HUGE props to Raging Loop for doing that!
I honestly had no hopes for Haru Makishima as a heroine. I already don’t like female tsundere characters (aside from Takako from Otoboku), so my standards were fairly low. However, Haru is a fantastic character and her “route” was far beyond my expectations. A surprisingly deep character, although her route is kinda weird (but I generally suspend my disbelief for some things in Raging Loop).
Essentially, please read Raging Loop. Get it on the Switch if you have one.
