My review aims to address the comparison between the Euphoria Anime and the Euphoria Visual Novel. I am not reviewing Euphoria Anime as a standalone work.
If you go to Youtube and search 'Euphoria visual novel review', the most popular video (at the moment of writing) is "This Visual Novel Traumatized me" by Sydsnap, which is so blatantly disingenuous that it's kind of appalling to watch it. It boils down to "It's disgusting with its depiction of sex and fetishes and, therefore, a terrible and traumatizing experience", which is how the creators of the anime adaptation likely felt as well. This superficial understanding of the
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Euphoria VN does a huge disservice to the actual story, which is the reason I wanted to share my experience with this work.
First of all, the general outline of the Euphoria VN. Reading it takes about 30-35 hours for all routes, while the anime is only 2 hours. All the worldbuilding, character development, plot, etc., are completely stripped in the anime adaptation, only retaining the superficial elements - the sex scenes. In the VN, sex scenes act as a tool for character development, but in the Anime, they become the whole purpose of the show, which is, unfortunately, how most people view works depicting sex and fetishes. The whole reason the vast majority of people watch the Euphoria Anime is to later say: "Look at what messed up shit I jerked off to!", which is similar to saying "I watched the Monogatari Series for fanservice, I wasn't really paying attention to the dialogue." Unfortunately, the Euphoria Anime can be watched only as a weird jerk off session, but the VN provides so much more than that.
*Minor spoilers for the Euphoria Visual novel*
The protagonist of Euphoria, Keisuke, wakes up in a suspicious white facility, where he finds himself and 6 girls trapped. Then, the announcer lady says they will have to perform different sex activities to escape. At this point, one of the girls refuses to accept it and tries to escape, but is not able to since she gets captured and brutally executed via an electric chair. Keisuke witnesses it with disgust, however, finds himself with a massive erection. Nemu, one of the other 5 girls, rather suggestively points that fact to Keisuke and later blackmails him for getting erect at the sight of a girl being executed. That pretty much sums up the prologue for the VN and the first episode of the Anime adaptation. The similarities between the VN and the Anime also end here.
Remember the feeling you got from the prologue I just described as the Visual Novel will reconstruct it in a way I found incredibly masterful and unexpected. Experiencing the character development both Keisuke and Nemu go through is a very unique experience, which is something that could only be done in the Visual Novel media and the Ero-Guro genre.
If you got interested, I will now go into the details of how to experience the Euphoria VN technically since its narrative structure is a bit confusing for new Visual Novel readers. Let's go back to Sydsnap's Euphoria review. I genuinely believe that she hadn't actually read the whole VN, and finished it at the start of the climax, while thinking that this is the actual end of the story, which ruins the whole experience tremendously. The final reveal and True Endings are what makes this Visual Novel truly great, but you can easily miss them if you don't know what the VN expects of you as a reader.
The easiest approach is to use a guide. For my reading, I used this one (https://forums.fuwanovel.net/topic/17529-euphoria/), which helped me optimize my experience tremendously, but my personal recommended routes order is:
Makiba Rika --> Aoi Natsuki --> Byakuya Rinne --> Manaka Nemu --> Hokari Kanae --> Brute\Devil End (True Bad End) --> Good\True End (Main End)
*My whole reading took me about 35 hours, the full Euphoria experience.
For the shorter, but still viable read order:
Byakuya Rinne --> Manaka Nemu --> Hokari Kanae --> Good\True End (Main End)
*Misses out some details, but the general idea of the narrative is still present. Will take approximately 20 hours to read.
The confusion is in the Hokari Kanae route, which is not available at first, and appears only after finishing Manaka Nemu route. The VN doesn't indicate it in any way but is actually very clever if you know the whole plot.
Lastly, I want to address the most important factor: "Is it possible to masturbate to Euphoria Visual Novel?". I would say I jerked off about 4 times out of ~90 sex scenes there is, but I can hardly recommend to anyone for that purpose. The main appeal is a psychological horror element, which is one of the strongest out of any media I've witnessed. The end of Brute\Devil End (True Bad End) has scarred me psychologically for the rest of my life but in a good way since it is done for a narrative purpose. It shifted my perspectives of what I consider a worthwhile watching/reading/playing/listening/etc. experience, and I highly recommend it to anyone, who can stomach it.
Feb 4, 2021
My review aims to address the comparison between the Euphoria Anime and the Euphoria Visual Novel. I am not reviewing Euphoria Anime as a standalone work.
If you go to Youtube and search 'Euphoria visual novel review', the most popular video (at the moment of writing) is "This Visual Novel Traumatized me" by Sydsnap, which is so blatantly disingenuous that it's kind of appalling to watch it. It boils down to "It's disgusting with its depiction of sex and fetishes and, therefore, a terrible and traumatizing experience", which is how the creators of the anime adaptation likely felt as well. This superficial understanding of the ... 
Aug 7, 2020
Oide yo! Mizuryuu Kei Land
(Manga)
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Have you ever tried to read a doujin just to jerk off and forget about it, but instead it manages to capture your attention with an interesting and original premise that you decide to continue reading despite going soft? Oide yo! Mizuryuu Kei Land! is one of those mangas.
The story revolves around Mizuryuu Kei Land - an amusement park which theme's revolved around having sex. On the surface area, it's just an easy-to-insert-yourself-in premise, since you just pay to have sex in a socially acceptable way, but, as the story progress, you find yourself listening to the ideas' of the mangaka Mizuryuu Kei about sex ... |
