"This is the story of Words and Melodies"

Subahibi is a life-changing story about a group of teenagers whose worlds are pushed to their breaking point. A story about suffering, identity, belief, perception, the world, and the Sky.
A story about how we construct our reality, and what happens when that construction collapses.

"The sky is full of anxious words"

It is a story unafraid to show life in all of its cruelty and absurdity. In this sense, this visual novel is deeply unsettling and unnerving, which is why it has earned such an infamous reputation. Yet I deeply resonated with it. To me, there are few works that capture the feeling of "living" as truthfully as Subahibi does.

The moments of compassion, love, misunderstandings, and awkwardness that arise when two deeply insecure teens talk to each other ;
Subahibi feels, to me, exactly like that. It is dark, tragic, and suffocating, and yet somewhere deep within in, some hope quietly sleeps. Hope that beyond the sad days, Wonderful days may still await you. Hope that reveals itself through humour, through the recognition of the absurd, and through the fleeting moments shared with the people around you.

5.61 Logic fills the world: the limits of the world are also its limits.

Subahibi is for people who feel disconnected to the World, to their own existence, from what any of this is supposed to mean. What makes Subahibi truly mind-blowing is not necessarily its plot, but its characters, all of whom feel profoundly human and relatable. After all, it is a story about broken people trying to accept their closed Inner World. About people confronting the EndSky, their furthest possibility, and trying to reach a place where language, logic, and meaning can no longer penetrate. Suicide, sexual violence, isolation, and madness are all states of extreme human destabilization ; experiences that push us beyond reason itself, because suffering often appears fundamentally meaningless.
Subahibi masterfully handles existential philosophy and transforms this inventory of depressing experiences into something deeply human and gut-wrenching. Something that leaves almost no one indifferent.

"This world, which is not a vessel, has nevertheless been filled to the brim. The shape of that happiness is probably like a soft soap bubble."

I will try my best to express my thoughts on Subahibi, although it feels less like a work that leaves one with concrete conclusions than an experience that quietly remains within us. It leaves behind questions that perhaps have no answers at all, confronting each reader with their own fragile and subjective understanding of the world.
Because of this, I do not wish to reduce Subahibi to a single interpretation. Rather than attempting to explain every symbol, every themes, or every philosophical idea, I want to follow the ideas that resonated with me the most, and perhaps give this story a trajectory of my own. I will be circling over the same questions more than once, because Subahibi itself constantly returns to them, each time revealing a different facet.
This is not an attempt to exhaust the novel's meaning, but simply to share the path I found while going through it.

every story is a melody.

In a life where one is only faced with suffering, humiliation, anxiety, and the crippling fear of death and the unknown ; what conclusion about the world would they create ? How would they understand and articulate the world ? Would they realize the contingency of these miserable events, Or rather seek comfort in determinism and fate ?
More importantly, how can we make sense of hopelessness ?

5.632 The subject does not belong to the world but it is a limit of the world.

Subahibi is, above all else, a story about diving deep into the Inner World. To be human is to exist within a closed world made of perceptions, beliefs, and experiences that shape one's reality. The world must remain ordinary, logical, meaningful. Otherwise, if suffering is truly arbitrary, if life possesses no inherent harmony or reason, then the foundations upon which we have constructed ourselves begin to crack. Yet this desperate pursuit of meaning is precisely what leads many characters into madness.

Both Zakuro and Takuji are prime examples of this : Zakuro cannot accept that her traumatic experiences may have been entirely meaningless. Life could not possibly be that cruel without reason. It had to be fate.
As for Takuji, he spirals into delusion after witnessing Zakuro's suicide. He convinces himself that he is a savior, that all of his suffering existed to forge him for a greater purpose. As a result, Takuji's mind unconsciously reshapes reality in order to preserve this paradigm: censoring Hasaki's name, demonizing the Wakatsuki sisters and reconstructing events in ways that protect his worldview from collapsing.

"Whether it is inevitable or just coincidence isn't a distinction that a human can make"

What makes Subahibi so brilliant is that it never fully resolves this ambiguity. The line between coincidence, delusion, fate, and transcendence remains deliberately blurred. It is never clearly stated whether Takuji is truly a savior or simply a broken boy who seeks meaning in what he was told. Yet I feel the story subtly suggests that, through the confidence and charisma he gained by embracing this role, he ultimately managed to accomplish what he set out to do.

"Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent"

All answers to these questions seem to lie beyond the limits of our world, beyond what language and logic can meaningfully describe. God, meaning, life and death, good and evil all appear fundamentally inaccessible, because they exist beyond human comprehension. We remain confined within our own small and closed worlds, shaped and determined by our perceptions of events. And God never answers our calls.

I can only applaud Sca-Ji's success in blending a grounded human story with the philosophy of Wittgenstein, one of the most notoriously difficult thinkers in philosophy. Wittgenstein's influence can be felt throughout the fractured narrative itself, through the idea that no character can ever step outside the limits of their own world. Each remains confined to a singular perspective, unable to fully inhabit another's. No one lived Zakuro's life except Zakuro, and that is true for every character.

Yet I also deeply feel that Sca-Ji attempts, much like the later Wittgenstein critiqued the earlier Wittgenstein, to demonstrate the limits of the Tractatus itself. To analyze the world purely through rigid logical structures, as the Tractatus or as certain great systems of philosophy have attempted to do, ultimately feels detached from lived experience. Why should we remain silent about meaninglessness, transcendence, suffering, or God, when those are precisely the things human beings feel most intensely?
Prehaps "critique" is not the most accurate word. Rather than rejecting the Tractatus, Subahibi inhabits the tension that Wittgenstein left unresolved.
Sca-Ji refuses silence. He continues writing about the most essential aspects of existence, despite knowing they can never be fully captured by language alone.


You'll see that I was in these lettered lines,
--Eloquent all the more, the less sincere!
--Take it, and make an end!

Unfortunately I yapped way too much with this review and went above max characters for a steam review, so full review here : https://backloggd.com/u/tweekloveslain/review/3964329/
pwease check it out

Signal

Can anyone hear me ? Is anyone left out there ?
If someone out there can hear me read this text.
You're not alone any more.

"If we can love this world will change"

In a deserted world, am I still human ?

CROSS†CHANNEL is a highly atmospheric story about a fractured friend group. Behind its sequential slice of life scenes lies a deeper topic ; the longing to connect to someone, to feel understood, to know you'll be taken care of and that you'll take care of the Other in return.
For some reason, I find it highly difficult to talk about the deeper meaning of CC. It is something deeply rooted in me, in all humanity, yet it feels so difficult to talk about it properly.
What is highly enjoyable about Cross†Channel is the fact its philosophy isn't rambled about, but rather all of the story and little moments portray the core of its main ideas.
Cross†Channel's philosophy is rooted in Human Nature as something inherently dependent, something that exists in relation to others, endlessly reaching out in a world that feels both meaningless and scary.
Its about the paradox of human connection: the fact that we are fundamentally dependent on others, yet forever separated from them.

Can someone fully understand me ?
Can I overcome my past, can i love through my trauma ?
Is any human connection possible for the outcasts ?

Cross†Channel takes a slow and melancholic approach to treat those subjects, which is mainly why i think a lot of people won't click with it. The amount of slice of life scenes may seem redundant and insignificant at first, but they all participate to the emotional building of the story. Light moments that always have a deeply tragic undertone, as we know connection will never fully be established between people.
No matter what, I am alone, people are around me, we can talk, interact, I can change a thing or two to present myself more likeable, and whether or not we become closer (and even, almost merge as my body embraces the other's), it feels like there's still this gap between us, this tension born from the desire to merge together and the impossibility for me to embrace someone.
Suddenly, even the joyful moments become filled with sorrow and meaninglessness.

"Make no mistake Touko. I'm not leaving you. I promise."

Every character deals with the world in a unique way. Some of them are stressed out by the world and the people. A lot of them hurt others despite wanting to heal. A majority of them hurt themselves despite wanting to feel happy. Almost all of them want to be seen, to feel safe.
Everyone of them does their best at trying to reach out to others.

Cross†Channel doesn't stop at this hopeless affirmation. In fact, it transcends it to somehow give meaning to our attempt to connect to others, despite knowing it's impossible.

Much like Serial Experiments Lain, it feels like Cross†Channel builds on previous works and expands its horizons to a beautiful light-hearted but still quite mysterious story. Compared to other Denpa works, which follow similar ideas/concepts, Cross†Channel takes a different approach. Whereas Denpa elements are used to distort reality and create fear, here they express something deeply human. Denpa waves aren't a symbol of madness, but one of our desperate attempts to be heard, for someone to acknowledge us as another human being. By extension, an attempt to feel human.
Communicating is what defines Humanity!

In its attempt to draw the outlines of humanity, Cross†Channel presents people with various mental illnesses and disabilities as a way to portray another characteristic from what it means to be Human.
Self-harm, codependent tendencies, oversensitivity, difficulty understanding others’ emotions, difficulty expressing our own... these traits define the cast.
They are placed in a special school, separated from the world. Perhaps to protect them from it, or to protect the world from them.
People who don't fit in, people who are excluded from society, people who are called monsters. People whose humanity is often denied.
Setting aside its critique of normative institutions (which Cross†Channel handles remarkably well), I love how, to portray what it means to be human, we are left with a cast of outcasts.
Even with good intentions, all of the characters may hurt each other, they make mistakes, get highly emotional, let their first impulse push through what's socially acceptable.

But even then, not once are they monsters. Not once did they stop being human.
Humanity isn't something you can gain from being Good or lose from being Evil.
Being human means being capable of the greatest and the worst. It means helping without asking anything in return and with no remorse hurting someone else.

"So what's the right way to love someone?"

"From now on, I would have to treasure my memories. And use them to keep on living."
Humanity's greatest weakness - the failure to connect - can make moving forward feel discouraging.
However, it is with others that we can manage to find strength.

The send-backs routes hit hard every single time. They offer speculative futures to each character.
Will Youko accept someone getting close to her ? Will Miki grow up to be herself ? Will Kiri become strong enough to face the Evil parts of humanity ? Will Touko see the value of herself, instead of waiting for someone else to do it ? Will Misato push through her suffering and confront it ?
The ending isn't a simple resolution of all their problems, but we can only hope Taichi's words reached their hearts strongly enough for them to stand up for themselves.

They wouldn't be able to begin healing, to realize the flaws in them, if others weren't there to reflect it.
"-You said it yourself, You needed others.
-To hurt them?
-No. For you to be yourself."
For you to grow, For you to achieve who you are meant to be.

"Friendship is not asking anything in return."
The memories made with our friends will grant us a promise for a better future.
In loneliness, all there is to do is to remember those who mattered for us.

And even if it always ends with us collapsing under our own mistakes, I will rebuild that antenna.
I will give it everything just to hope for our paths to cross. To meet at the intersection of that X,
to feel, even for an instant, that fragile glimpse of unity.

Destruction, Jealousy, Hate. In the end, they are all unconscious attempts to reach out, to get someone to look at us, to get someone to open their ears and listen to us.

I want to believe that reaching out will give our existence meaning,
I still want to believe that reaching out matters

"The wall that keeps me from the world
Has become my cell, my cage.

And so, from loneliness I reach out
As we gently wound one another.

And so, from loneliness I reach out!
And embrace this ragged world."

I will live until this sky is gone 　　　　 So let there be a Cross between the world電 and .̷.̷]̷ ░yourself██-.-. .- -.█░░ ᛝ　　　　　It will become　　　 A channel 　　for words to pass through\\\ █▓▒ -.--　　 --- ..- [[[ ╋━Then someday go and spread your hands　　　 out of this loneliness 　　　　　　⟟̷̡̛̤̠̦̖̼̺͚̬͍̼̪̹̠̘̓̓̓͐͒̚͜͝͝⟟ 　　　And embrace this rusting world波 as it fades away
See you next week.