There’s something about visual novels that always seems to return me to younger days, and my own high school and high school-adjacent experiences. Of course, I never actually had a high school experience like the one perpetually portrayed in anime and visual novels – I never sat in that back right window seat, and I never developed the passionate, tangled web of romantic longing that seems to define Anime Youth. But the thing is, I actually was in high school at the same time I was watching through many of these properties, and my own memories are thus tethered not just to my physical experiences, but to the aesthetics that informed my view of what high school life is “supposed to be like.”

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