playing the directors cut of saya no uta

!mentions of sex, mentions of violent/"bad" sex scenes and my negative perception of sex ig!

i played the censored version 2ish years ago when i was ~14 (i actually convinced my dad to buy it for me so that i could write an essay about it) and uh obviously really liked the game, but figured i should wait till i was older to play the full version/directors cut with the sex and stuff. 

WELL i finally pirated it from internet archive started playing the directors cut version and tbh im not sure what to think! obviously all of the sex scenes are uncomfortable at best and disgusting at worst, and they are (according to some people anyway) what really makes the game pop off in terms of vibes/atmosphere. 

im gonna preface my opinion with 2 pieces of information: 1, i am asexual and vaguely sex-repulsed, and 2, im also playing gore screaming show right now. im ngl, i have some trouble connecting sex to, like, love the way it's supposed(?) to be. idk if that's because of my asexuality or exposure to really unhealthy ideas of love and sex as a dumbass kid. irrelevant either way. so... idk, the scenes in saya no uta have kind of... matched my perception of sex in general? second: gore screaming show is another horror vn, and it involves a lot more sex scenes. some of them are nice, i guess (see my comment about my perceptions of sex), but a lot of them are, um, not. theyre gorier, longer, and more brutal. so, in that sense, especially after hearing how awful and disturbing the (full) saya no uta is (especially after having not found the censored version super disturbing), i was kind of expecting the scenes to be more similar to gore screaming show.

so, overall, is the directors cut more horrifying? do the sex scenes add to the game? 

my opinion is: ehhh, i guess so? i think the story/atmosphere is strong enough without them that they absolutely aren't necessary for the plot or even really the ambiance. theyre also not as bad as i heard theyd be tbh. i WILL say that they absolutely dont drag on (they are there for a reason, to show specific thing/s, and when those things have been shown, the scenes end), and imo they don't sexualize or glorify any of the stuff going on in them (all of them are from fuminori's pov so obv he's enjoying himself, which is reflected in the art/"camera" angles and writing, but on a broader level, we know he's fucked up and what he's doing is wrong. to the readers, it's disgusting instead of fun or gratifying). 

since this is a blog and no one's gonna read this, i will add one thing: although i dont consider any of the scenes particularly necessary as i mentioned, there's one moment that i think drove the final nail into the coffin, and demonstrated how utterly yoh had been dehumanized-- both in the sense of saya and fuminori don't see her as a human, and in the literal sense of saya twisting her into a monster with questionable levels of sentience and cognition. i don't know if the sex was absolutely necessary, but it hit the nail on the head and drove that point home perfectly, in addition to being absolutely stomach-turning. 

tldr the sex scenes aren't necessary at all but they are sort of a (rotten) cherry on top to the game, and may be a good place to start in terms of vn sex scenes for fucked up purposes/reasons. please don't rawdog gore screaming show uncensored as your first real nsfw vn like i did.