Congrats!
Preliminary Comments (immediately after one play-through):
It's... interesting. I'm still having mixed feelings about it and a sense of disorientation, as if I'm not quite sure what to make of it, or how to experience it properly.
Art:
Haha, speaking as part of the creative community and not as a user, I found it very enjoyable to spot who did what pieces of art.
The three art styles of the characters are so distinct that it's very clear which artist was responsible. (And the girl in the first story really DID look like Nagato... with a bit of child Yukina's hair)
However, speaking critically, I would say that some of the art styles tended to clash with one another. I speak primarily about the first story, since it's most noticeable there. The BG shot of the town/school combined with the blurry people in front seemed rather strange. The difference between modified-from-real-photos and drawn-from-scratch was too obvious and glaring in black and white. (Perhaps colour might have looked better, but I don't know). And both of them clashed with the CG event that BCS drew (girl with book). The girl sprite on top of the damaged street background looked okay though.
The second story obviously had very clear art coordination between background and sprite, and it shows. The third story had art styles that were close enough to blend fairly well. I didn't notice many obvious discrepancies.
Music
Music-wise, I found the first melody of the first story disturbing (as it was probably meant to be). Still, it sort of discouraged me slightly from wanting to continue. Maybe a slightly more attractive opening piece would have been better. (But then again, I'm not very partial to the gloom-and-doom kind of story anyway, so maybe it's just a matter of taste. Someone who likes that kind of mood might fully enjoy such a weird melody as the opening piece). The second story's music was barely adequate, but I think it should have been stronger. I get the feeling it was almost-but-not-quite ballroom dance music. That's just the sense I get. Something is slightly off. You can tell it's meant to be a dance piece like a waltz or something, but there's just a little niggly thing (which I can't identify) that keeps it from being all right. The music for the third story was the best. I felt it perfectly suited the story and theme.
Direction and layout:
First, I fully appreciate how you structured this to be an anthology. It's a great idea, and something I'd like to try myself one of these days. I would suggest removing the dual-language descriptors for everything in the Main Menu, though. I found it redundant to have Czech labels for the English stories, and English labels for the Czech stories. Maybe a clearer separation between the two languages (like a boundary box) could be better, too.
I also liked the flashing poems on the left-side, though there was one passage which faded out a bit too fast. I can't remember the exact words, but I know it was the longest passage. I managed to read all the others in time, but that one was just a little too long for the timespan given. You might want to adjust that.
Now, as for
plot, theme and translation:
First, the translations were quite well done.
There were a couple of things which I found a little awkward, but I guess that's part of the problem when trying to translate from one language to another. I know what it's like, so I can understand the difficulty. You went for more of a word-for-word translation rather than a meaning-for-meaning one, didn't you? It comes out - not so much in the grammar or word choice, but in the style of expression. Fluency might be the best way to put it. The meaning still gets across well, but it's not as 'fluent' (i.e. doesn't "flow" as well) as when a native English speaker would have written it. Maybe a meaning-for-meaning translation might prove to be interesting. We could then compare and contrast the two. But that's just side speculation. I think the translation is good as it is.
Story-wise, I liked the third one the best, because of the sudden open ending.
The first was metaphorical (is anyone else reminded of "The Little Match Girl"?), the second was very much trying to capture the mood of the moment, but the third was drama. And I like drama.
I got a clearer sense of the story in Unkept Promise than I did in the other two. The way you left the last line just hanging there without a real explanation lets the reader imagine what they want, and that's always attractive to people like me. Did she turn into a "body without a soul"? Was she not there at all? Is she dead? Did something stop the protagonist from getting past the top of the hill? Is the tree itself gone? Who knows? But it's fun to speculate.
The Last Dance was... weak, I felt. I don't know. I'm still trying to find a word to articulate how I felt when I read it. I think it was either the usage of second-person, or the ineffectiveness of the narration, but it just didn't have much
power in it. It's like... neither here nor there. The transition between present and past wasn't... strong enough? clear enough? (Argh - What's the word to describe it?) No... rhythm, maybe. It just didn't all come together well for me. Maybe the use of a repeated symbol or phrase might have strengthened it. (It's hard to explain without using examples, but the only examples I have are from my own writing).
The first story was nice. There are, of course, a lot of things left unexplained. (What happened in the past? Why are they going to school? What are they afraid of? Why doesn't the boy go home to sleep?) It starts off normally but get increasingly weirder. The sequence with the girl in the damaged street is the only part that counts, really. Their coming together, sleeping together, and going off into the sea together is the central point of the story for me. I'm SO reminded of "The Little Match Girl", by Hans Christian Andersen. Did the ending mean that they died? Did they find happiness together? What does the shift of scene from city to ocean represent? Is it freedom? Is it beauty? The end of loneliness and monotony, perhaps. Who knows?
Overall, it's a interesting piece. I wouldn't want to play it over and over again, but it's good for display purposes as an example of an artistic work. (IMHO this is an example of a work by an Artiste, not an Entertainer, for those of you who were following
the other thread.)
<End of Preliminary Comments>
-Dizzy-