I "read" the Gin'Iro Haruka trial. And by "read" I mean I skimmed through it with VNR. I'd never actually read the whole thing with VNR because while machine translations may give you a basic idea of what is going on, it is not substitute to actually reading it with full comprehension on what's going on. Gonna be difficult to give my thoughts on something based on this kind of impression alone, but I'll try anyway.
Two things immediately stand out about Gin'Iro Haruka. One is the presentation. Oh my god. This VN looks gorgeous (so gorgeous that Imgur has trouble keeping up, and the images I'm posting look significantly less sharp than the actual game). I struggle to find any faults with it. The backgrounds look great, the designs look great, the cgs look great. It's just flawless. The music is also great too. I wonder what the full OST is going to be like because I like what I hear so far. There looks to be at least 75 music tracks in total, which is about twice the amount as it's predecessor Hoshi Ori. Hoshi Ori had an amazing OST, so it'll be interesting to see if this one lives up to it.
The other part that stands out is the characters. They are written in a way where they're all tropes, but they don't feel pandering in the slightest. I think this is best shown through examples. One of the heroines is actually a foreigner who just arrived in Japan. Instead of foreigner jokes or engrish jokes, they instead seem to be focusing more on her adjustment to life in Japan rather than any of those other things that plague a lot of foreigner characters. Another example is the non blood related little sister character. Instead of just using that whole non blood related thing to bypass the incest factor, they decided to make the "step" part a part of the relationship with the MC. By the time the game starts they've only been siblings for about a year and a half, so they still haven't gotten too used to the idea of being siblings, so they're a bit more awkward around each other. Regardless of that they do appear to have a healthy and functioning relationship together that doesn't feel antagonistic, nor does it feel very romantic. The VN does use tropes, but it doesn't try to forget to treat them like real people, and that's one thing I really like about it.
Gin'Iro Haruka feels like it's trying to do it's own thing even though it kind of isn't unique in concept. Gin'Iro Haruka is at it's core still just a regular harem charage. It's just executed really well in a way that feels a lot more genuine than a lot of other works I see. Yeah, I think that sums up what I read quite well. Gin'Iro Haruka while a regular harem still has an aura about it that still makes everything feel genuine. I hope the full game past the middle school arc that this covered is just as good. Guess it's time for me to put off learning the language to actually read this.
Man, I really talked a hell of a lot about a trial that I only skimmed over while reading a weird machine TL.
