Chuusotsu! 1st Graduation: Time After Time is a visual novel that is set in a dystopian future where people are places directly in jobs based on their skillsets that they display at certain testing periods throughout their lives.  The main character of the story is one of the unlucky few that managed to completely fail these tests, and thus has fallen through the cracks of society, and her struggle to attempt to find her place back in it after basically being cast aside.  But the real question is how it holds up as a visual novel.

From the novel basis of things, the story may seem pretty complex as it uses nanotech to enhance everyone in the society; but it is very clearly an allegory for Japanese culture where people are simply expected to take a job and spend the rest of their lives in it.  This isn’t to say that it isn’t well written, and that the character are endearing, just that it seemed like their might have been a pretty clear message about things from the moment that the game started up.

The art style is spot on, which after the last handful of visual novel reviews is a very pleasant and wonderful thing to point out.  Half the time the stills in the game look like they could have been promotional material for an upcoming anime of some kind, and never really dipped in quality during the time spent with it.  Several times while playing the game there were moments that it would not have been surprising if someone had used one of the images as a desktop wallpaper at some point in the past.

The long and short of it is that Chuusotsu! is a well written and illustrated game that only really falters when it is trying to slightly skew what it is really about—and only doing that through the thinnest of veils to begin with.  If visuals novels are something that interest you in any way, this is a must pick up.  Even if you have been looking to get into the genre, this is a pretty easy starting point with a low entry point that isn’t going to deliver that many shocks.