'The Burning of Tula Valdi's Zozobra' is the personal drama of one man's obsession and his spiral into madness. This is quite the tale being told as it lets the reader literally go through the thought processes of this lion man, how his initial infatuation spirals into anxiety and spirals into depression. How he laments over what is real and what isn't. How he whips himself up into an emotional frenzy and then scours every possibility to justify it's existence. So caught up in his assertion that started out as love at first sight, morphs into a pride unable to admit mistakes, devolves into a fear of being forgotten, and then even with reality staring him in the face and the possibility of life and happiness before him, he instead clings on to his delusions. Out of fear? Out of pride? Out of stubbornness. If there is one thematic throughline through this story, despite the title alluding to anxiety, what I interpreted it to be was a tale about stubbornness, and how it can drive men to misery.
The story takes place over the course of a year, as the main character, a lion named Tula, catches the glimpse of a wolf at a festival. He didn't approach him, out of anxiety, but now he spends his days planning to meet the wolf again next year at the festival. He obsesses by trying to remember every little detail correctly so when he can find him again, he can be sure. This obsession starts to become a pleasurable delusion for Tula, as he starts to hallucinate the wolf, and in his mind, he falls in love with the idea of the wolf. Thinking that every detail he can remember is yet another way he gets to know him before actually knowing him. The story then follows moments in his year as he interacts with the towns folks that supplement the overall theme. A drunken regular gets too old for his regular drinking nights and starts to forget his stories of his youth. His boss who thinks that a patron has locked himself in one of the bedrooms and is not paying, yet turns out there was never any patron there all week. Even a flashback of Tula, unable to remember his father's face as he left when he was very young. Yet as the day approaches and Tula can finally meet the wolf again, he finds out that the wolf was never there to begin with. Even with evidence to suggest that he could be mistaken, unable to reconcile with the possibility of being mistaken, in order to rid himself of the immense anxiety he literally has to burn a caravan, much like the burning of the zozobra, in order to feel at ease. Of course, in doing so, he's in very big trouble, but that's to be expected. I skipped over a lot of important bits, but really, the story is really well crafted, with a ton of great moments of introspection, the internal conflict with himself as he argues with his own subconscious, trying to out logic himself. Even the glimmers of hope as there's opportunities presented to him to steer clear of his obsession. Yet, as all tragedies are inevitable, Tula is unable to fully reconcile with himself, an plea to the reader to take caution from his tale.
The presentation is really unique, between all the digital pictures and the photos of real life sketch book art, it really helps re-enforce the themes of 'what is real?' as the story goes through and Tula spirals. The music and the sound effects are all great at immersing the reader, from the simple brushes of leaves to the fires. The writing is probably the most impressive part of this visual novel. It takes a lot of craftsmen ship to be able to write dialog that feels authentic and where each character has their own voice. There was quite a bit of looking up words due to my unfamiliarity with them, but I got the jist of what it was going for. Tula themselves is a really complex and layered character at that, both extremely observant and yet so narrow-minded, such a great choice for a character to follow.
The folklore aspect is incorporated into the story in the way where it's integral to the plot, without having to explicitly state where it's from. Granted I did have to look up the definition for some of the terms and do a bit of research to get the connection, so there's a little homework involved for those not in the know, but once I did, the rest of the story made a lot of sense to me, and I thought it was a really clever way to go about writing this story. In terms of creativity, just really creative use of the sketch book photos to help give even more of the vibe of, I would go so far as to say dissociating, how pulling away from the picture to even seeing the surrounding sketchbook and area that it's in, is just a cool effect and adds even more meaning in some way.
It's crazy that this seems to be a first time VN by Team Dance Mountain, it brings a fresh perspective into the vn space, and a really strong first impression of the type of works that you do. One might wonder if the sketchbook style is a one-off for this visual novel based on the narrative, but seems like y'all have the foundations to craft a VN to suit the story that y'all would want to tell. I can tell that some folks are going to love the verbose style of this VN, with the descriptive prose, the excess of details to flesh out the world and the small character interactions in the story. My only criticism might just be that I would've liked a bit more wolf scenes in relation to the world-building scenes, and even then this is just a nit-pick. Those delusional fantasies are what fuel Tula's obsession, and getting to see one where he gets something out of it would help sell why he's willing to ignore what's in front of him. But, where it is right now, it already gives that implication, so, yeah, I just think this is a great entry.