Saya no Uta / Song of Saya Fans?

[AeriaGloris]

I'm genuinely surprised that I haven't found any discussion of this Visual Novel on this forum.

For those that aren't aware, Saya no Uta / Song of Saya is a Visual Novel produced by Nitroplus and written by Gen Uruchi (Writer of the Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Fate/Zero and Psycho-Pass Anime).

Plot Summary ripped from Kotaku of all places.

The Song of Saya is a visual novel about medical student Fuminori. After a car accident kills his family and leaves him in critical condition, he awakens to see the world as if it were a fleshy, pulsating, gore-covered, wasteland populated by scores of Eldritch abominations.

He is on the edge of suicide until he meets Saya, a girl looking for her missing father, who—unlike everyone else—looks and sounds like a completely normal human.

Horror ensues.

At it's core, Saya no Uta is a love story, and one of the few that really test the bounds of how far one would go for love. It's a story of that relies on the juxtaposition of a descent into madness, obtaining humanity and rational morals. These themes are complimented by a haunting soundtrack reminiscent of the Silent Hill series.

As a forewarning, Saya no Uta contains cannibalism, rape, possible pedophilia (however you feel about Loli characters), gore and extreme body mutilation. I'm not a fan of any of those tags and would actively avoid them in most written works on this site, but Saya no Uta manages to write a convincing narrative that gets the reader to side with the story's developing villains.

I would love to hear other opinions on this Visual Novel!

A censored version is available on Steam. I'm not sure to what extent the content was neutered, but I believe the actual writing hasn't been altered. Correct me if I'm wrong, I have a fan translation that I reread on occasion.

[Ixtili]

I know what that game is but I've never played it, mainly cause Saya is explicitly supposed to be like twelve appearance wise and younger in terms of actual age Eldritch Abomination standards for adulthood aside and in Australia you can go to jail for having that on your computer. The horror fan in me is intrigued by the premise but not to the point where I'm willing to download it. I have seen a let's play of the beginning, but even though the let's player censored it, it still triggered my discomfort and made me feel like I was looking at porn. So yeah the horror fan in me is willing but the anti-loli in me is not. The game studio that made that VN hs actually made ALOT of stuff that my inner horror and tragedy fan wants to check out but my outer squeamish self does not want to touch with a ten foot pole. Maybe one day I'll carry a barf bag and finish a let's play but that day is not today.

[DissociatedChaos]

To be fair, the game is fairly old at this point for there to be much active discussion on it. It's not a recently released title, even if steam added it in 2019, and the endings ranging from bitter-sweat and depressing to outright terrible for everyone involved definitely don't make it everyone's cup of tea. Not many visual novels end up as being so popular as Fate did that they spawn manga and anime adaptations and a million spin-offs, so I'm not surprised that there's very little active topics on it specifically.

I played it back while I was in college, as one of my introductions to Visual novels actually, right alongside Utawarerumono's initial game. And I will say that it's amazingly well written, and the music is stunningly effective and atmospheric. It's a tragedy of a love story with no good endings, a sort of thing that was never meant to be and that literally can't have a good ending to it, that also very convincingly shows how a person can lose their mind in the name of keeping something that means the world to them. The only branching story line options are to end things early, before they spiral too far into madness, or to follow the rabbit hole down and either watch it all fall apart, or blow up even worse than expected. Still, I definitely would suggest it to anyone who's a fan of psychological horror and the whole idea of watching someone's descent into madness even if, like me, you never actually appreciate the pornographic portions of it. I feel like they were mostly designed to build the dread and horror more than anything else, even, rather than being actually being intended as porn.

[AeriaGloris]

I feel like they were mostly designed to build the dread and horror more than anything else, even, rather than being actually being intended as porn.

Agreed, the superb writing is hurt by the shoe-horning of sex scenes (especially later in the Visual Novel). It's the curse of most Eroge that aren't dating sims. Despite it's popularity, I feel like the Fate Series is particularly egregious in this regard. The Heaven's Feel route was soured by the pit and the penis-worms, because of course there would be phallic worms that siphon life energy. Worse yet, that route was determined to be the True Ending despite Sakura having as much character as bathwater.

(The irony of being a vore writer and shoe-horning erotic content isn't lost on me )

[MidnightRose]

I love Saya no Uta, It's a beautifully dark story with a great soundtrack. Definitely recommend reading if you're a fan of horror and/or hard vore. That said, if loli or the other previously mentioned taboo topics bother you, you might want to skip it.