Bro is frontin' y'all. 'ithinkitslikesomeisekaiwattpadthingidk' (or is the movie called 'Anubis College'? whatev) is a meta-humorous false-film parody of 'My Wolf' visual novels, furry visual novels in general, and way too much poking fun at the uncs by tormenting them with Gen Z/Alpha/slop slang and vernacular. And in spite of it's attempt to come off as an incompetent rush job, there is a surprising amount of depth to the jokes and the layers to poking fun at the popular visual novel tropes in a 'if you know, you know' kind of way. It's both self-aware that it's presenting itself as a mockery of furry visual novels, but the amount of research and knowledge about them needed to accurately pin point the jabs let's you know that this was written by someone who cares about visual novels a lot.
I really have to appreciate the story and framing of this visual novel. It's established early that this is actually a story about a group of college students (film students maybe) who are shooting a movie in a month (game jam reference), and said movie is an isekai story about [insert protagonist name], a human, who is brought down into Duat (Egyptian underworld) because he's actually an anubis this whole time and now he's the Prince to an Anubis dad and he has to go to Anubis College to study and win his father's favor to become the new king because he has a younger brother who is also aiming for the throne. Following? It's okay if you're not, none of it actually happens, as there's frequent moments of fourth-wall breaking as the characters are fully self-aware of the caricatures they're playing as, straight up reading from scripts and poking all the holes in the plot and giving nu-gen quippy humor. No secret, this biggest parody this is of is Adastra, but there's jabs at other furry vns too, Lyre for falling in love with a knight who is assigned to protect you, I think one might've been Cho-Pro for the clothing choice scene, and I want to say the plethora of college based furry vns and this one just being another college setting. There's even a "cut to the final scene because we're running out of time" with a lot of funny bickering about how they have to skip over the sex scene, which is like, the most important part of a vn. The fact that there are three endings based on which outfit you pick, is hilarious, in that each of the endings is also like, just as entertaining as the last, as they all end in tragedy, but in their own unique ways. It even ends on a joke, as the drama is forced, there's a lack of any real weight to the finale, and it just ends with all the actors patting each other on the back sayin' how they might come back to film the missing scenes, but whatev cut to credits.
The presentation is nothing to scoff at either. Like, don't let the broken menu fool the particular craft in making it look 'this' busted. And even then, it's actually not 'that' busted. The character sprites are really good: jackal family, wolf knight, and the fox guy all are all expressive and give off so much character. The backgrounds are immersive, there's even some sketches of CGs for the ending, which is so good in conveying the whole "running out of time to finish this" running joke (happy accident that the 'image not found' made me laugh more than be annoyed). The bits where they have to cut the filming because something unhinged happened or they need to re-shoot a scene are always great visual gags. The audio does it's j*b what it needs to do.
I need to talk about the writing, because I both hate it, that's it's so grammatically incorrect and narratively 'wrong', but love that it commits to the bit so hard and consistently that I know that it's a conscious choice being made. I know you know how to write, because there are characters that do speak in complete sentences and times when the slang is left out. There is something so oddly refreshing about character's being aware of the tropes they're based off of. But also how each character, in spite of their dialog being full of slang, they each come across as distinct characters? And like, as actors playing characters too? There is so much vocabulary anachronicity that it's just a funny running gag at that point. Favorite bits and lines are "can't you see I'm trying to create conflict here" and "we've undergone like 0 character development" and "the past four years and five book/movies/visual novels".
This is really creative, not that parodies and false films haven't been done before, but how instead of making fun of a particular visual novel like some parodies have in the past, but like, pokes fun at the language of the furry visual medium as a whole. Pointing out the in unimportance of the protagonist's previous life yet how they keep reminding you of it, the absolute forced drama because a character is just overwhelmingly evil, the way that certain social structures like an aristocratic class and slavery has some stuff there that needs to be unpacked, and even the constant dunking on human characters. Funny enough, this fits really well in the folklore category being based on the Egyptian myth of Anubis and references to other literary works in here, so it's like, there was creative intent and this wasn't some fluke.
I'm going to say, looking at who is behind this (kaz and blacklight), I did not know that this collaboration would work so well, and I'm so glad that y'all put something like this together. Blacklight from those comedy chops that I remember from 'One Way or Another' and Kaz's unhinged prose waxing with 'First Winds'. Such a funny and new perspective on the contemporary visual novel scene, still putting together a somewhat coherent plot even if it was 'Adastra but with jackals', and just finding a way to make a meal out of every line. I don't know if Nu-Gen stylized comedies are going to be your go-to when you next make a visual novel or if you're going to branch out into other genres or try for another original story, but it's crazy how much improvement happened from the first game jam to this game jam. Keep workin' on that scope bloat and time management skills, y'all cut it close.
