Bishoujo Mangekyou -Tsumi to Batsu no Shoujo-

Biman 4 definitely feels like a nukige to its core. Not that it's a bad thing, but the in-betweens between the h-scene were kind of not done well. The whole middle part of the VN felt meandering and trite, the classroom conversations between MC and his school friends felt hollow and what not. Hell, most of the side characters are just there. You could remove Ichika, for example, and you wouldn't even need to rewrite most of the scenes. The school SoL also just takes place in the same locations (lunch place, club room and classroom) so there's not much variety in those scenes either.

The writing for the most part is simple to read, no issue mostly, except at certain points it can get overly gaudy, especially when they name-drop random references to books and what not. It just feels forced. In fact, lots of the conversation the club room are like: "I read *insert name of fancy book*" "Wow, you're so cool", which just adds to the trite factor I mentioned in the last paragraph, and just makes the characters feel artificial.

Speaking of characters, most of them just exist I guess? Even the main two characters are just there and I have no reason as to why they care for each other, other than "I really want you". There is a distinct lack of chemistry so it makes their whole relationship feel forced.

I don't like how the main "plot" was shoved into the true end in a flashback of all things. It's very short anyways and kind of really weird if you think about it. Again, I couldn't really find myself to care too much at this point. Sometimes I feel like it's going too fast for its own good so the impact is only there to "shock" the reader.

Now I'm not saying there are no redeeming factors, there are good scenes here and there. However, in the back of my mind, there was always something nagging at me that something just didn't feel right. For me, one key point I look for in VNs is a strong thematic tying point and for Biman I just couldn't find any, which made the disconnect between the scenes and lack of any grounding pretty evident. There's no big takeaways from the story, just "Hey, look at these fucking doofuses haha lol" and it just feels pretty weak overall. The closest theme I can think of deals with obsession but even then, it's very weak and those ideas aren't explored well enough to create any strong narrative message. I know I'm ragging on a lot for a story that probably wasn't even meant to be this railed on like this, but that's just my approach to VNs in general and I can't really shake up my way of thinking no matter how hard I try.

I can recognize that Biman at its core is about stories of twisted people doing twisted things, but as an onlooker there really is no pleasure for me when the core basis of the story is sex. I love h-scenes and all, just Biman in particular doesn't really feel like a good marriage of story and sex.

And a note on the h-scenes, the line art and shading are amazing. The animations are hella dope too. Sometimes, the angling of the scenes can be a turn off and a few scenes have too much hair or clothes that distract from the main course.