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I started reading Witch on the Holy Night ("Mahoyo"), the like 10+ year old kinetic novel by Type-Moon. I'd say I started reading it because I was on sale, but I saw it was on sale because they added Aoko to Fate/Grand Order. I'd heard surprisingly few reviews about it: the majority of people talk about how you have to read Fate/Stay Night or other Fate VNs, but it comparatively gets a lot less feedback. maru told me she enjoyed reading it and Aoko's FGO kit is cracked so I figured why not.

So far I'm on chapter 7 and it's, idk, what I expected? Slice of life-y, definitely written by Nasu with characters pulling out nonsensical Proper Noun names for things and oddly dramic dialogue. I haven't actually read Fate but I'm under the impression Soujyuro is very "proto-Shirou"? In that he's an insanely self-less and oblivious character, and the way that's kind of warping the story around him. Idk. I'm not that far in.

If anyone has any Strong Opinions on Mahoyo or Type-Moon in general, I'd be curious to hear them. Maybe wrapped in spoiler tags until I finish this though :P

(Also if you play FGO on NA servers add me: 673,150,384)

OH AND ALSO
Me seeing Aoko and Alice's NP from FGO meant when I was reading the VN I pointed directly at the screen of my Switch and did the soyjack face when they did the thing there too. So that was pretty cool. Peep this:

https://youtu.be/ih_qbbeaYZ0

https://youtu.be/T4IkXTW7oUI

https://youtu.be/DUql9h7bsys

What I recall is that it teaches you about a lot of core, foundational concepts that appear across the Nasuverse. And when I read it, I was like, "wow a lot of slice of life" but then after the fact, like weeks later, I remembered the SoL a lot, and it felt like a core component of the story.

I also think that Soujyuro is pretty different from Shirou.

Ok I finished it.

I think in general it was very meh? Most of the story was fairly slice-of-life-y about Aoko, Alice, and their pet dog, but not in a way that really made the finale land emotional blows - they bantered a lot, but there wasn't much deep interaction comparatively. It was definitely written by Nasu, with magical metaphysics infodump which I'm broadly a fan of, but most of those metaphysics were disconnected from each other, and half of it felt more like characters namedropping concepts just for the sake of namedropping (including stuff like the shifted 10 minutes) I thought the entire plot of the werewolf, from introduction to resolution, was just pretty bad writing.

The Ploys were cute, and Touko as a villain at least had a realistic motivation with some interesting family dynamics even if "and then she leaves everyone alive" made me go ???.

The concept of the Ploys and their execution was pretty cute, but also just in general all of the fights felt kind of...idk, like Uno reverse card after Uno reverse card, where after every action there was a "X instantly wins" monologue followed by "Y instantly wins", which was pretty annoying.

Have you read Tsukihime (or the remake)? Is this anomalous for Nasu?

Basically the only Type Moon content I've consumed is FGO so I don't know lol. I wouldn't be surprised if other VNs I'd have a fairly similar reaction to - some of FGO is also like this, and half of it isn't even written by Nasu but guest authors.