All right so, while SeaBed is still fresh in my mind — I have to say that this VN is probably one of the most sensitive and unique fictional depiction I've seen of loss and grief and the mental health issues related to this.
The non-spoilery summary is that SeaBed is not for everyone, especially if you struggle with slow-paced, confusing narratives that never hand you straight answers with lots of descriptions and apparently dull slice-of-life scenes. But if you manage to give it a chance and that it does grip you, then it's certainly a very moving story about a struggling mentally ill woman coming to term with loss and love.
Vague SeaBed Spoilers underneath:
I think what was the most striking about it to me is just... how quiet and mundane everything is. It manages to talk about mental illness and mourning but without all the artifices other medias generally uses, which makes the story very grounded. But at the same time, the narration and character’s perspectives are very unreliable, making it feel like we're just watching some surreal dream which a create a very odd contrast.
I admit it took me some time to get into the story, as the pacing is very slow and the writing very verbose (I think it literally took me until the twist with Narasaki, because that's when I truly started to get what was going on.) So a lot of scenes can feel very meaningless or overly long and tenuous. This added with the fact that Sachiko, who is the main protagonist, feel extremely detached/cold and flat, to the point I wondered why was this even told through her eyes and not as a third person narration.
But upon finishing it, I realized that these scenes actually are important to the story — that even the dialogues that seems to have no goal at all are all part of the experience. There’s nothing incredibly captivating going on, sometimes it’s even a bit boring, but those are part of these characters’ normal lives and as such this is the point. Even Sachiko’s cold way to tell everything’s that happening around her without seemingly being affected by it was very deliberate too.
The three main characters are all great and I love them, and I was also impressed they manage to make all its cast feel human and interesting despite how large it was and how some of them didn’t get much time.
I particularly loved Nanae and Lily — the latter’s backstory paralleling with Sachiko’s situation was quite interesting — and I really wish I’d gotten to learn more about them honestly. But at the same time it doesn’t feel like they were underdeveloped or anything, because the story is still entirely about Sachiko and Takako. How little revelence Fumi and Inukai ended up having is still almost funny to me... especially Inukai. (Oh, poor Inukai, you random Token Male Character lmao).
I was very moved too by just the clear empathy Sachiko's issues is treated with — be it with her general closed off attitude, the unusual way she deals with Takako's loss or her mental health issues.
I'm kind of impressed too that despite being a story about a gay couple getting separated because one is dying the story doesn't feel tragic. It's sad and melancholic, sure, (and two scenes did almost made me tear up), but in a sincere, grounded and, in the end, hopeful way. With how extremely humanized these women are it doesn’t feel like the game telling a Tragic Story for the sake of it, and it’s important to me when it comes to gay characters, if that makes sense.
I think that's also the first time I actually see a story tackling the "your dead loved ones will always live with you in your heart" in such a deep and interesting way.
The fact most of the characters are adult women in their thirties was also really nice and refreshing (I want more VNs about adult women... Middle aged women... Old ladies too, why the hell not.)
There are quite some elements I still feel confused about, but in a good way. I'm still thinking for example about Kozue's identity and meaning in the story and to both Sachiko and Takako, the little girl who looks like Takako and her brother Narasaki talks to, or the nameless librarian we see at the start of the story and never reappears again... But I’m glad they left so much room for interpretations, that’s actually quite fascinating to think about.
I'm looking forward to replay it because that's definitely the kind of stories that are more interesting upon reread! (And also my favorite type of stories.) Though that... probably won’t be for right away haha.
