Norn9: Var Commons

I have needed you for a long, long time. You are the one–the only one–I have been searching for.
Come. Stand up and dry your eyes. I will guide you. Leave everything to me…

Sorata Suzuhara (CV: Atsushi Abe) is on a field trip to the Diet Building with his class when something strange happens. He hears the voice of a girl and then a song, but no one else can hear it. Suddenly he’s not there anymore but at a strange place where everything is in monochrome, without the ability to walk and his body is turning cold. But to his rescue comes a pink haired girl. She tells him he’s in the Taishou era and then takes him to a flying ship, when she learns he’s from the future. It turns out the ship is full of espers, the girl being one of them, but just as they are starting to get settled the day after getting on it, there’s an attack…

Due to the length of the post, you can skip the summary and jump to the Thoughts section by clicking here. If you want my thoughts on the translation, specifically and nothing else, click here.

This game has three heroines, so let me start by introducing them. All three heroines’ names are changeable.

Koharu (CV: Ayumi Fujimura) is the one who finds Sorata after he suddenly time travels a century back in time to the Taishou era. She doesn’t really know anything about how to treat people or how to react to things, nor her name, but she knows she’s 17. She’s pretty spaced out and naive, but really unreliable. She has lived alone the majority of her life, shunned by other people, except for a traveler that became her father figure. She’s in a team with Masamune, Kakeru and Senri and her power is wielding fire.

Mikoto Kuga (CV: Ayahi Takagaki) seems to be a leader type and is pretty blunt when she speaks and was the one who, together with Nanami, stopped an attack on Koharu and Sorata by two of the boys. She’s in the team made up by herself, Sakuya and Itsuki. Her power is to make protective barriers around everything she wishes, and she has one around the ship.

Nanami Shiranui (CV: Asami Seto) is the cool kind of person, but is very gentle and caring underneath that colder outer appearance. She helped Mikoto stop the attack on Koharu and Sorata. She comes from a clan of shinobi and she carries a kunai on her at all times, but has never been trained in the art herself. Her team also includes Ron, Heishi and Akito and her power is erasing memories.

Senri Ichinose (CV: Hiro Shimono)
Senri avoids everyone and prefers staying inside his room at the ship. He can be pretty negative and seems really depressed at times. But he really enjoys water and swimming and he’s really good at avoiding doing things he doesn’t want to do.. He’s the youngest in Koharu’s team, making him a year younger than Koharu and his power is water.

Bad End
After the attack, Mikoto suggests there is a traitor among them and Kakeru suggest pairing up and the girls chooses their partner first because then there will be a guy to protect them and Kakeru also thinks it’s a guy that is the traitor. Koharu decides to pick Senri, and although Senri’s not happy about it, he definitely preferred her over any of the others.

But Koharu doesn’t see Senri much at all for the days that pass because Kakeru kidnaps him and eventually it gets too much for Senri, because during the attack, Senri’s door was broken so Kakeru can just barge in whenever. Luckily, Koharu rescues him and makes sure the boy gets to rest. Thanks to that they get a bit closer and Senri can open up to Koharu a little. When Kakeru gets sick in the flu, the two of them decide to fix the door, despite the fact it’ll anger Kakeru. After all, Senri can’t relax at all without the door and he’s hesitant to stay in Koharu’s room, especially after Kakeru has made fun of him for sleeping in it.

After they fix his door – with help from both Masamune and Kakeru at the very end, with the condition that Koharu keeps the room key – Senri asks Koharu if she likes someone. Not completely understanding the meaning of it, she tells him she likes everyone on the ship and it would make her sad to be separated by them. Naturally that makes Senri sad and he shuts himself inside his room again. Koharu is troubled about it, and Itsuki uses his power to put her in a dream as Snow White. She needs to find her important person, but she can’t finds Senri and she’s really worried about it, and no one seem to have seen him, and Kakeru (witch) is trying to forcibly make Koharu “eat” him while Masamune (prince) don’t even seem to know who Senri is and wants to take her to his castle. But she eventually finds Senri and when she wakes up, she is starting to be aware of her feelings, which makes her avoid Senri, and he doesn’t help her, as he wants to make her understand how he feels about her, confusing her even more.

One day the ship lands in a town in a war zone. Koharu stays to look after the ship because of how spaced out she is. She decide to take a walk and leaves the ship. There she meets a familiar person – the traveler that to some extent has taken care of her until the ship picked her up, and who told her she would be picked up. It turns out he knows the ship’s name. Not only that, Koharu learns he created The World, which is what keeps the world from war. The next day no one has returned, but the traveler comes back. The town is under attack and he wants her to escape, but Koharu can’t accept that and makes him take her to town. There she uses her powers to stop enemies from attacking and the people of the town are overjoyed about it. then Heishi sends a message to her to ask if where she is and the traveler say it’s probably a different town. Koharu returns to the ship, warned by the traveler not to tell anyone about what has happened and to stay on the ship until it leaves the area.

But she receives orders to help the national army against rebels and Koharu joins the others in a different town the next day. There she finds out the people she helped the day before were the rebels, and she starts questioning whose side is right. Unable to choose and unable to tell what has happened, she joins the traveler who has helped her so many times and who has wanted her powers, making enemies with her friends. Senri decides to try get her back, but he’s too late to stop her from burning down a city and is no match against the traveler who knows exactly what to tell Koharu to keep her from leaving his side. So, unable to leave Koharu, Senri ends up staying with Koharu, locked up in a cage.

Good End
Koharu receives orders to help the national army, and she learns the people she helps were the enemy. It takes a toll on her mentally, because of her confusion. She chooses to join the traveler because he says it’s the right thing to do. Senri decides to go get her back. He manages to get there before she arrives to town – a capital of a country she’s supposed to burn down – and the two of them start fighting with their powers – Koharu trying to burn down the country she’s been ordered to, and Senri using water to stop her. But he’s losing his strength and Koharu can see that. But he tells her it’s not his intention to hurt anyone, but to buy time. He hugs her and says they’ll go home. If she says no, he’d curse her to be bound to him forever, and Koharu says he already cast that curse on her.

The enemy finds them, and Koharu is ready to fight, but Senri makes them run and they safely return to the ship. They’ll now use their powers to get rid of weapons and bring peace to the world. But Senri keeps staying in his room all the time… And one morning when Koharu goes to his room to wake him up, he gives her a rabbit he had promised to carve if he had time. And then he showed her a lot of them, because that single one had seemed so lonely.

Akito Shukuri (CV: Noriaki Sugiyama)*
He can be pretty rough both in actions and in speech, but is in reality just pretty clumsy in how to express himself. He’s a good stay at home husband cook and he’s caring. He also get’s embarrassed when praised, but he and Nanami don’t get along. He’s also scared of the chicks for unknown reasons.

*The official writing for Shukuri is Syukuri according to the Japanese site, but Shukuri in the English localization

Bad End
After the attack Nanami chooses to pair up with Akito, because she feels he might be the suspected traitor, as he has a grudge against her. She stalks him around the place because he doesn’t want to be paired with her and Sakuya notices that. He says he’ll tell Akito to be more careful with his way of speaking, but Nanami doesn’t want that, as she feels it’s her fault.

One day Akito deviates from his habits and Nanami follows him. She finds him on the roof talking to someone, but the person disappears. She tries to explain why she decided to pair up with Akito, but she starts feeling unwell and leans to what she thinks is a wall. Akito catches her and tries to save her, risking his own life, and luckily Kakeru appears to save them both before the fall out of the ship. He puts handcuffs on them because they can’t get along and now Akito and Nanami have to be together all the time, except for 30 minutes at a time, which is supposed to be for toilet breaks and baths. Akito decides to disconnect them and 30 minutes passes… Akito has been shocked and Nanami has to connect the cuffs again for it to stop. The two have to stay together, when night falls, Akito disconnect them again, ready to take the shocks rather than staying by Nanami. But Nanami can’t stand knowing he’s having electricity run through his body constantly. She searches for him and when she finds him, she connects the handcuffs again. They decide to switch partners when morning comes. But when it does, Mikoto and Ron have gone missing and Akito and Nanami search for them on the roof. They don’t find any clues, but Nanami realizes Mikoto has a barrier around the ship and uses her kunai to see if it’s still there. It is, which means that Mikoto is definitely still alive. In all that happens, they get the key to the handcuffs as well and they are free again.

That night Nanami has a dream. It’s pretty weird but she’s told to leave. She does and ends up in a forest where she finds Akito. But Akito has ears and something fluffy wrapped around his neck and Nanami can’t help but touch his ears. Wolf!Akito then runs off and Nanami realizes the forest looks like something from her memories and she thinks back on it. That’s when Akito appears again – but this time it’s a normal-looking Akito. He’s hateful and grabs her neck and she can’t breath. The dream makes another memory for her appear. But then Wolf!Akito appears and beats the crap out of Normal!Akito, and before Nanami wakes up, he tells her it’s not a dream. When she has woke up, Akito enters her room and embraces her telling her “That guy wasn’t me!” and asks why she didn’t resist. She doesn’t answer and instead asks why it seems like he’s the one suffering and wonder what he wants her to do. Now it’s her turn to not receive an answer.

The ship has landed and they head out to search for Mikoto. Akito shows kindness and Nanami doesn’t know how to feel about it and decide she needs to leave. She runs off and into a man. When the man is being an a-hole, Akito turns up to save her. Nanami is still confused about the kindness and runs back to the ship, where Heishi senses her feelings and gets all protective of Nanami. He stays with her until she goes to bed and then Itsuki takes the opportunity to talk to Nanami and also make Akito tell Itsuki what he thinks of her without knowing that Nanami is hearing he’s thoughts of her. Akito runs off to talk it out with Heishi, which ends up in a fight and the next morning Nanami finds a chick outside Akito’s room that can’t enter because Akito’s scared of it. She takes over and Akito let’s her in. In the evening they are going to eat dinner, but they find Heishi outside and he suddenly senses a lot of feelings and tells everyone to head to the roof, because Mikoto would be there.

Mikoto, in the company of two strangers and Ron, tries to say something, but is interrupted because a man saying he’s a messenger from The World and his army comes. He tells the ones who are on the ship to move to a different ship to be taken to their location, but the espers don’t agree of what to do. Akito, however, isn’t going to board the new ship. Nanami stays at well. After the ones who chose to leave, have left, Akito takes Nanami into town and decides to buy a her something, to prove her she looks good in things that aren’t plain. When he tells her she’s cute, she faints. When she wakes up says Akito is like Itsuki, because he has said different kinds of comments that she feel are more like the kind Itsuki would use and not Akito.

Nanami, however, notices that Akito’s body is under stress and think back to before some stayed behind and some left. Akito and herself had gone to Senri’s room and Akito had offered to take the rest of Senri’s power. He tells Senri that he’s actually his older brother. Senri doesn’t believe it at first, but eventually understands that must be the case. Akito takes the power from Senri, who gets very tired and falls asleep. He made a deal with Nanami and to forgive her for taking his younger’s brother’s memories of him in the past, she needs to erase the conversation that just happened.

Masamune returns to the ship after Nanami and Akito do and it turns out he had been captured by the enemy, with whom the others had gone with. Nanami is really worried about the others, but Akito says he believes it’ll be fine. That’s when vines suddenly approach them, seemingly with killing intent. Akito decides to fight it. It tires him out so much, he can’t move and Nanami cares for him. They reach The World and is told that they are to Reset the world. But they don’t have all powers, so they can’t. Nanami learns that Masamune can show the past and takes the opportunity to show hers to Akito. While seeing the past, Akito decides to change what he did and Nanami and Akito never return the the present.

Normal End
While looking at the past, Akito decide he want to change what has happened, but Nanami stops him, reminding him that nothing will change and not one wants him to change what has happened.

Aion breaks, Sorata decides to continue his research to see Aion again, some random spoilers from other routes. While Heishi and Itsuki are trying to gather everyone again, Akito is still weak and Nanami is caring for him and they’re pretty much just being a couple with together. However, she regrets erasing Senri’s memories from when Akito took his power, but Akito still believes it’s for the best. But she can’t help but wonder what would happen if she didn’t erase Senri’s memories…

Good End
Pretty much the same as the good end for a while. Everyone, except Mikoto and Sakuya, returns and Senri and Koharu knock on the door to the place Nanami and Akito are. Akito realizes Nanami didn’t actually erase Senri’s memories and although it makes things really awkward, he’s glad that she didn’t.

Heishi Otomaru (CV: Hiroyuki Yoshino)
His power is telepathic – he can both send telepathic messages to people around him and sense what’s going on in their hearts. Because of his power he’s a very honest person, but he tries to keep his emotions under control. He plays the flute express his emotions without them overflowing through telepathy.

Bad End
Nanami chooses to partner up with Heishi, and her days are pretty much lacking in anything happening. She spends the days playing cards with Heishi and Itsuki until Nanami reminds Itsuki that he’s paired up with Mikoto and should probably be with her. Heishi completely forgot about the pair-up though. Heishi and Nanami then keep living their life normally. Nanami is worried about him, but learns Heishi chooses not to be suspicious of anyone because he doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings and so they keep living a seemingly careless life of games. Nanami’s feelings for Heishi grows and she slowly comes to understand them as she, together with Heishi, watches Mikoto and Kagami.

One day, after everyone has been part of a scary maze at the ship, Heishi and Nanami coincidentally meet up and head to the roof. There Heishi tells her about his dream to have a wife and children and tells Nanami he loves her. But he suddenly senses a malicious aura and is knocked out right after. It’s the mystery attacker and… Ron?! Natsuhiko figures out who Nanami is and she is threatened into erasing Heishi’s memories from when they entered the roof, removing his confession and everything. It pains her, but she sees no other way.

She starts avoiding Heishi while still being threatened by Ron. One night she, together with everyone else, enters a dream. Nanami, being Little Red Riding Hood, is supposed to head to the person playing her grandmother, but Akito stops her. He tells her Itsuki only can give one person a dream, but Heishi can broadcast it and it dawns to Nanami how terrifying that could be, especially with her power. Then Ron – the hunter – comes out and shoots Akito and talks Nanami into going with him because else he’ll kill everyone. Heishi comes and stops it, and learns Ron is the traitor. Heishi ends the dream and lets everyone know.

While searching for Ron, Nanami tells him she erased his memories and why she doesn’t want to be with him anymore. Heishi doesn’t want to be apart from Nanami, but she lies to him, refusing to accept his feelings. Instead they grow distant from each other. This however, changes when Heishi decides to approach Nanami during some bad weather that locked her in at the dining hall. They decide to run away and do so the next time they’ve head into town. Knowing Nanami is in danger is slowly chipping off Heishi’s sanity as he’s always feeling stressed and pressured. One day Akito and Itsuki comes to their place and to protect them, Nanami erases all memories of herself from Heishi’s mind. They go to the island with Aion where Nanami has her memories erased as well.

Good End
Heishi and Nanami decide to run away, and try to figure out what to do, but Nanami hesitates, because Heishi’s goal isn’t hers anymore. She tells him, which leads Heishi to change his mindset. On the day Itsuki and Mikoto helps them out, by getting them necesities and following them part of the way to the station. However they are found by Masamune, who tries to stop them, but Nanami erases his memory before they head out to their own journey of happiness, traveling to new places all the time.

Sakuya Nijo (CV: Mitsuki Saiga)**
He is a childhood friend of Mikoto’s and he seems very caring towards everyone, although more so towards Mikoto. But in reality he’s rather cold towards everyone else. He tries to keep his distance and it’s because he promised Mikoto to never love anyone. His power is to see the future.

**The usual romanization for Nijo would be Nijou as that’s how it’s written in kana and that’s also what the official Japanese site says.

Bad End
Mikoto chooses Sakuya, because although she doesn’t want anyone to be left out without a partner, she feels that leaving Sakuya alone would be worse. But Sakuya and Mikoto don’t get along. Sakuya more or less just follows Mikoto around when she’s doing things like looking for clues. However, when invited to a tea party to eat peach pie by Akito, Sakuya is really happy for her. He tells her to go. During the party with Nanami and Koharu the topic end up on their relationship, which causes Mikoto to snap at them. That’s when the male partner appears. Koharu and Nanami leave the dining hall with their partners, and as Mikoto and Sakuya are about to do the same, Mikoto collapses. She wakes up in the girls’ room, with Sakuya watching over her. He tells her she’s believed to have food poisoning and Kakeru later thinks it might be an allergic reaction due to exhaustion.

After resting up, Mikoto eats breakfast with Sakuya before they head up to the roof. There Sakuya throws out konpeito that Mikoto got from Koharu because they are a problem according to him. On the way down, Mikoto decides to check for clues on the third floor. While doing so, they suddenly hear a noise and a tree falls at Mikoto. Sakuya tries to protect her, getting injured himself. Terrified, Mikoto run from the scene while others run to help Sakuya, but she is caught by the traitor and is knocked unconscious and put into a dark place. When she comes to, she finds herself in a cold and dark place, tied up. But she’s worried about Sakuya, and it’s making it hard for her to think of a rational way to get out of the situation she’s in. Suddenly, however, Sakuya is there, despite his injuries. He unties her and they return to everyone else.

Because of everything, Sakuya and Mikoto need to tell the rest what has happened, but Mikoto can’t remember anything from the attack on her, and suspicion is cast on Sakuya because he seemed to know where Mikoto was. Kakeru tries to get everything on the table, to remove all suspicion from Sakuya, which leads to Sakuya telling everyone what his power is and that he can’t control it. The meeting ends when Nanami and Koharu can’t stand Mikoto getting bullied anymore and the girls leave. Some time later Itsuki finds the girls in the cafeteria and he gets a game out. He teases the girls until they agree to play, but then refuses to tell them the result.

That night Mikoto, Nanami and Koharu have a dream where they are characters from fairy tales. Mikoto is Cinderella and she thinks she’s going to be in a tournament. But while walking in the forest, Itsuki appears and talks with the girl about Sakuya’s and Mikoto’s mutual feelings and says he’ll make her accept them. The world changes and suddenly Mikoto is in Sakuya’s arms. At least, he looks like Sakuya. But he’s much more passionate than Sakuya would ever be, and the dream turns into a nightmare for Mikoto as she remembers the vision Sakuya had as a child: He’ll die protecting the girl he loves. Mikoto can’t help but remember the past. Itsuki learns about why Mikoto keeps Sakuya at a distance, but in her confused state the one she sees is Sakuya and she expresses her love to Itsuki Sakuya, who holds her in pity. The real Sakuya, however, sees the Mikoto hug and confess her love to Itsuki.

The next day Mikoto tells the other girls they should be with their original partners, and not entirely willing to, the girls goes back to their pairs. For some reason Sakuya is upset though, and Mikoto isn’t entirely sure why nor does she know how to deal with it. During breakfast they then learn that they will soon arrive to The World and Sakuya and Mikoto head to Sakuya’s room so he can get his bandages changed before they start searching for clues about the traitor. Sakuya’s still upset though and he says things that would suggest Mikoto has been clinging to some man. Mikoto doesn’t understand, so Sakuya mentions the dream. Naturally, it makes her embarrassed. But then Sakuya mentions what he saw. But it’s not what Mikoto dreamt. Sakuya snaps, because he wanted Mikoto for himself. He can’t hold back how sad and angry he is. He eventually leaves his room and Mikoto does too, after a while. She starts searching for Sakuya, and finds him talking to Itsuki. She’s about to leave when she hears what they talk about. Nanami and Heishi then finds her and she can’t help but cry her heart out.

That night Itsuki and Heishi invites Mikoto to a dream where the three can talk about Sakuya. After the dream, Mikoto searches for Sakuya and finds him on the roof, in the rain. He says he’s trying to cool down his head so he could apologize for what he did earlier. But Mikoto attacks him and explains that she can’t stand that he’d die. She wants him to always be there with her.

Later they have a new meeting to plan Operation Sakuya’s Great Escape. It’s a meeting which include the girls, Kakeru, Heishi and Sakuya (although it’s in Itsuki’s dream, so he’s there as well) and they want to figure out a way to let Sakuya stay alive. It’s during this meeting Sakuya learn that the one Mikoto confessed to wasn’t Itsuki, but to him. He gets so happy he’d be fine if he died (which he was before too, if he could protect Mikoto). Nanami and Koharu are removed from the specific dream of the others, because to start deciding what to do they need the information first, and Sakuya will show them the future he saw.

From the information they get, they figure out Sakuya will be shot by a gun and that it’s likely that the traitor also carries one. They decide to move in groups and the time pass with no incident until they arrive to their destination. They meet Aion who mentions that there are ten espers and Itsuki is the one who isn’t one. After that she goes ahead and explain everything about the world to them and how they have to make a choice between doing a Reset to their time, or not doing it, while answering 9 questions the espers have. Four of the remaining espers can watch the past or the future and it’s decided Ron and Koharu will watch the future that Sakuya will show and that Heishi and Kakeru will see the past that Masamune shows. But while those four were away, the attacker – Natsuhiko – appeared, ready to kill everyone. Mikoto tries to save everyone. But she fails, and Sakuya dies, shot in the chest with a gun by Natsuhiko.

Good End
Mikoto tries to save everyone during the attack from Natsuhiko. She takes the chance that Sakuya mentioned and Natsuhiko is severely injured. Kakeru, Heishi, Koharu and Ron return and when seeing Ron, Natsuhiko tell him to kill all of them. But Koharu destroys them and Ron puts Natsuhiko to eternal sleep (no, not death, really eternal sleep). Everyone discusses whether to do the Reset or not, and they make the choice to do it.

Some of the espers decide to travel the world when it was all over. Sakuya suggests Mikoto and he do the same as they have no home to return to, but Mikoto says she doesn’t want to do that. She says she doesn’t want to be in a place which is extremely hot or cold. Then that the country should have four seasons. And then admits she wants to be where Sakuya is. They confess their love and then Sakuya goes to make dinner. While thinking about Sakuya, Sorata appear before Mikoto. She asks him what he plans to do and he tells her he’ll bring back a friend of his. He’s not very confident, but Mikoto convinces him that he can do it and lets him know Sakuya and she will stay for a while so if he needs help he can ask them. She runs after Sakuya to tell him he never was a burden to her. When he asks her to wait for him while he figure out what to do with his future, she tells him, she’ll walk with him.

Itsuki Kagami (CV: Kouji Yusa)
Itsuki is a pretty flirty guy who is constantly on Mikoto, although he will call any of the girls cute at any time he sees them or make inappropriate comments if he gets the chance. He prefers not doing anything seriously, and he makes fun of pretty much anything alive. His power is creating dreams.

Bad End
Mikoto chooses to pair up with Itsuki, because she can trust Sakuya. Sakuya, however, takes it very harshly. After making a horrible breakfast, she drags Itsuki along to find clues and Itsuki suggest some could be planted, but Mikoto insists. While they are at the roof Itsuki then decides to sexually harrass Mikoto and the girl almost loses consciousness, dropping the barrier she had put up to keep Itsuki on a distance. But she slaps the man away and then a tree almost kills her, but she’s saved by Itsuki.

After that Itsuki invites Mikoto to hang out with Heishi and Nanami, and the day after that he starts coming up with excuses so they can’t search for the traitor. After days of chasing Itsuki, Mikoto finds him sleeping on the roof and he says that by searching for clues, she’s making herself a target. While talking the two sees Sakuya and Nanami and it stirs Mikoto’s emotions. Itsuki notices and says she must really love Sakuya, but Mikoto says there’s nothing of the sort. Itsuki then tells her to fall in love with him and let him protect her, who protects everyone else. Itsuki tries to touch Mikoto, and manages and Mikoto runs off. Sakuya, who overheard at least part of the conversation, asks Itsuki if he was serious, but Itsuki says he was just joking. When Sakuya has proclaimed Mikoto is like an older sister to him, he leaves Itsuki on the roof and Itsuki can’t understand why Sakuya and Mikoto are like that.

The next morning Mikoto can’t look Itsuki in the face but manages to fight with him after breakfast. However, Itsuki ruins the flow by telling her she’ll be alone if she lives her life as she does. It hurts her and she starts avoiding Itsuki. During that time she ends up talking with Koharu and Nanami about not being understood and Itsuki comes out with an amidakuji. He tells them he’ll let them know the result later.

During that night the girls dream and Mikoto tried to fight the martial arts contest. However, Itsuki forces her to go to Sakuya in the castle. But Mikoto wanted to speak with Itsuki and forced her way to him and they talk. Mikoto makes clear she doesn’t see Sakuya as anything else than a younger brother and Itsuki gets into his head that she loves him instead, so he takes Mikoto to a hot spring in the dreams, but they’re stopped by Sakuya who comes to Mikoto’s rescue.

A few days later Mikoto has gone back to not avoiding Itsuki. But she tries to ignore as much of his advances as possible, because he has turned more indecent and he’s more nonchalant in his way of touching her. After breakfast Mikoto plans on going on a traitor hunt, but Itsuki runs off with Ron. Heishi’s worried about Itsuki acting weird, and Mikoto chooses to head to the waterfall where she has seen the two talk before. When she’s asked what they were talking about, Itsuki tries to avoid talking about it, but he uses a term Mikoto isn’t familiar with so his innuendo flies over her head. Itsuki tries to make them slack off, but it backfires because Mikoto remembered they could write letters instead of hunting for clues.

At the library Itsuki earnestly write a letter and then gives it to Mikoto. They kiss, which is followed by Mikoto running off. She falls into the lake and Itsuki runs after her. Akito, Senri and the other girls wonder what’s going on as Mikoto is swimming away from Itsuki, who’s trying to catch up with her. When Sakuya offers his hand to Mikoto who’ve reached the other side, Itsuki has caught up and helps her up instead. They head to their rooms to get changed, and it’s then Sakuya sees his future has been changed, which Mikoto – who always has worried about it – is really happy about. Sakuya says he’s not feeling well, and Itsuki follows him to his room.

After that Itsuki stays in his room. Mikoto tries to visit, because she’s worried, but she had a lot of conflicted feelings and thoughts about it and when Heishi opens the door in her face, her instinct is to flee. But there is an announcement they’re about to arrive to their destination and Mikoto tell Itsuki about it. They confess their feelings and they move to the bed. The next morning they try to sneak Mikoto out and somehow manages, but they notice Itsuki and Mikoto holding hands and Mikoto tries to say she mistook it for chopsticks. She gets embarrassed and tries to set up a barrier, but it’s missing and while eating the ship is suddenly attacked. While Mikoto is trying to protect everyone, the ship suddenly tilts. She’s caught be Itsuki and everything turns black.

Mikoto wakes up in a small house. She lives a happy, carefree life with Itsuki, but… from time to time Itsuki starts disappearing in front of her and she hears Sakuya’s and Koharu’s voices. Everything that has been so beautiful, suddenly doesn’t look real to her anymore and Mikoto realizes she’s in a dream. But Itsuki says he’ll never release her – she’ll never have to feel any pain and no one will die. The dream goes back to it’s initial state. One day Itsuki fades away completely and Itsuki make a copy of himself. As he fades, he cries.

Good End
After Mikoto realizes she’s in a dream and confronts Itsuki about it, her memories go blank when she tries to figure out how to get out. But she starts to remember things, such as when she almost lost consciousness, and that Itsuki wanted Mikoto to imagine how there was an ocean beyond the fields. She realizes how Itsuki’s powers work and suddenly Itsuki disappears. Crying out for him, Mikoto wakes up to a reality where the ship has crashed to the earth and Itsuki is gravely injured. While tending his wounds and waiting for him to wake up, she finds the letter Itsuki wrote, and reads it. While she cries from reading it, Itsuki wakes up. Soon after Ron appears and he wants to trade. Mikoto now knows why her barrier isn’t working anymore and after speaking to Kakeru about it, Mikoto and Itsuki flees the ship as none of them have an offensive power.

Mikoto and Itsuki has lived in th town closest to where the ship crashed for a while now. They have found no trace of anyone or the ship, and sometimes they think of them. But they still live a happy life and plan on getting married one of these days.

Kakeru Yuiga (CV: Yuuki Kaji)
It can be hard to tell if Kakeru gets along with someone and if he’s serious or not, because he tends to be calculating, rational, a bully, wanting to have his fun and caring all at the same time. His power is creating, growing and controlling plants.

Bad End 1
Koharu chooses Kakeru as a partner and at first Kakeru tries to mess with Koharu, but Koharu’s purity and inability to understand his jokes makes him feel guilty when she misunderstands him and instead he’s just a little more straight forward about things. Koharu’s straight-fowardness and inability to understand what’s proper results in Kakeru being embarrassed. But Koharu finds a friend in Kakeru, who starts helping her raise a strawberry plant. She almost kills it in the process, but Kakeru teaches her better and the plant grows healthy again and they choose to transfer it to the fields. There Mikoto finds Koharu covered in dirt and she tells Koharu a proper lady keep themselves presentable at all times. Koharu connects this to fairy tales and decides to copy Mikoto to learn how to be a proper lady.

It doesn’t go well and one night Koharu can’t sleep. She goes out and meets Kakeru and explain she wanted to be a lady for him, but he tells her he never wanted that. They talk a bit, but when Koharu gets stuck because she can’t talk about her powers, Kakeru says they’ll take it slow.

Soon after Kakeru gets sick. Koharu nurses him back to health but while she’s out, Kakeru’s earring goes missing. No matter how much she and Akito tries to find it together with Kakeru, they can’t Kakeru puts up a front and it’s breaking Koharu’s heart. And while trying to find a way to cheer him up, Sakuya does a divination – which gives him a fracture of a gear. He tells Koharu the vision he had, and while Koharu doesn’t understand it, Sakuya can’t tell her more.

After being shown a dream where she’s Snow White and Kakeru’s the poisoned apple whom she kiss, Koharu has to go out to cool down, and she finds Ron sleeping on a bench with the earring in hand. She takes it by force, using her powers, to make sure Kakeru can get it back, but she get’s insecure because she doesn’t want anyone to know about her powers. The next morning Kakeru mentions a dream. When they’re interrupted in their blushing and awkwardness, Kakeru drags Koharu to the library to talk a bit more about the dream. He wonders if Koharu in real life, also will accept him the way he is. Koharu tries to cheer him up, but in horror at her mistake she covers her mouth and the earring falls out. Kakeru puts it on, and he’s once again controlled…

Bad End 2
Koharu tells Kakeru that he can be his real self in front of her and kiss him. Then someone enters the library and Kakeru pulls her close. After a while the person leaves and embarrassed, Koharu bumps into a bookshelf behind her. While picking up the books, Kakeru finds his earring that fell out of Koharu’s pocket, and he’s relieved. But a page in a book on tarot cards stands out to Koharu. It fits the premonition Sakuya had and she tells Kakeru that perhaps he shouldn’t wear the accessory since it’s so important to him. He agrees, since he has Koharu to give him strength now.

Happily Koharu returns to her room, but is soon reminded of the fact that everyone will be assigned in different countries when they’ve met with The World. On top of that there is an announcement that the ship will land for the last resupply and it’s a definite sign that the journey is at its end to Koharu, and she’ll soon have to be away from Kakeru. She can’t sleep sleeå because of the worries and early in the morning she gets up to drink, but meets Kakeru. He says he’ll try to find a way for her not to worry and cry, and after drinking, Koharu returns to bed. And doesn’t get up.

Hours later, Mikoto and Nanami worry and decide to head out to town to get Kakeru, and for a short while Koharu sleeps. She gets up, ready to head out to find Mikoto and Nanami to keep them from interrupting the party Heishi had planned, but Ron appeares. He had stayed on the ship apparently and Koharu takes the chance to ask about the earring. Ron doesn’t exactly answer her question, but says he and Kakeru are alike, but that Kakeru is better at playing his role than Ron is. Koharu disagrees. However, while they were talking, robot soldiers have invaded the ship. Koharu is taken hostage by one of them, and Ron can’t allow it, so he’s ready to kill her. But Koharu uses her power and burns the doll. Right after that is when the others start returning to the ship. Akito and Kakeru tries to fight it, but they are powerless against it. After Akito has gotten unconscious and Kakeru is in danger, Koharu decides to use her power, despite her fear of beind judged for it.

Frightened to be hated, Koharu chooses to hide in her room. When she doesn’t come out even when Kakeru tells her to, Nanami gives Kakeru a key, so he can get inside. Koharu asks for forgiveness for being such an awful person, for not telling anyone about her powers. Kakeru, however, promises no one is angry or frightened by her. He stays with her all night. In the morning they go to breakfast together and Nanami and Mikoto, as well as Sorata and very much relieved to see her alright. The girls also thanks her for protecting the ship. But after breakfast they are suddenly attacked. Everyone gathers in the dining room aside from Senri, Masamune and Kakeru (and Ron, but no one remembers that, apparently). Koharu runs out and hears a gun shot. She rushes upwards, trying to find Ron. What she finds is the traveler, who gave her the uniform she wears and the name she’s called, and Kakeru, shot in the chest. The traveller wants to take Koharu with him, but Masamune and Natsuhiko arrive, and the traveller, Shirou Yuiga, escapes the ship with Kakeru.

The days pass and the remaining people manage to get to The World. There they meet Aion who explains what is going to happen next. However, they won’t be able to do the Reset because Kakeru is missing. But instead, everyone will still be able to return their powers. It’s a relief to Koharu that she will be free. But she wants Aion to save Kakeru, and if Aion doesn’t do it, she will. That’s when she’s told that Kakeru has been brainwashed and that he’s just been following orders, and that Shirou wanted her. In other words, her willingness to save Kakeru is more or less the same as Shirou having her in his hands. Koharu wants to defend Kakeru, but she can’t get the words out. But Heishi says he felt Kakeru’s love for Koharu clearly, and Aion says that if Heishi says so, it’s possible the love was true and that is the key to save him. But before she can get any further, The World is attacked. While getting ready to fight, Natsuhiko and Ron comes, with no intent to fight. Natsuhiko will fight Shirou to death and Akito and Koharu follows along as they have offensive powers.

In the fight, things start going badly for Koharu and the others as a brainwashed Kakeru is attacking them with his vines. He wins the battle and takes Koharu to his father. He tells her that if she asks nicely, surely Shirou will call her by her name, but he probably won’t have much need to all for her anymore. He leaves Koharu and Shirou alone as Shirou holds Koharu, wanting to know how much she has grown since he left her…

Good End
During the battle, Kakeru and Ron starts fighting one-on-one. When it starts to go down, Nanami decides to stand to protect Ron, even at the cost of her life and it reminds Koharu about what Kakeru said – that her fire was to protect, not hurt. With Aion’s words about how her powers being for rebirth and as long as her heart is pure, her fire will hurt no one, she approaches Kakeru with her fire, waking him up from his brainwashed state.

The two live together in Koharu’s old home after that. Kakeru’s health got really bad and in hope to allow him to get better, Koharu took him there. Akito, Heishi and Senri also moved to the close by town.

Ron Muroboshi (CV: Tomokazu Sugita)
Ron spends much of his time asleep, and much isn’t known about him. He’s older than Nanami, but is by no means more reliable than she is. He can be somewhat threatening, and seems to find it amusing to figure out how Nanami works. His power is forgetting everyone on the ship. (lol)

Bad End 1
Nanami chooses Ron, and spends day after day watching Ron sleep. But when he’s not asleep he’s annoying her, and he’s very inconsistent in his behaviour. Despite that she chooses not to change partner, even if it’s a possibility. Instead she lies to Koharu and Heishi that she’s getting along with Ron, and Heishi invites the two to take care of some of the shopping in town the next day. Nanami agrees, but while in town the next day, something is spilled on her. It’s making her confused, and she runs off to a forest, but can’t really remember how she ended up there. She eventually passes out in the rain.

She wakes up in a strange room, almost naked in a chilly bed. Ron found her, and took her to a cottage. When she asks who owns it, he just says everything will be fine. They talk about things, and Ron claims that she would never win against him. He proves this by pressing her down on the bed. She tries to get him off, but realizes he let her ”escape” and she punches him in the face. The next day the two rejoins everyone at the ship – Nanami feeling much better, in many ways.

Days pass by and everything is just day-to-day life again. Nanami receives complaints about Ron, and finds out Masamune and Itsuki tend to drink alcohol with Ron. The morning after the three have drunk, Ron isn’t coming to breakfast. Akito complains about it, so Nanami goes to wake him up. There, in his hungover state, he drags her into his bed and embraces her. He asks her to wait for a bit so he can sleep some more, and they talk a bit, and he naps, then they talk some more. Suddenly Nanami wakes up, realizing she fell asleep, and Ron is nowhere to be seen. That’s when Heishi sends an announcement that an accident has happened and that the girls should stay away. Nanami can’t help but be worried, so she heads out and finds Mikoto being flustered. Before she can approach her, Ron is there and hits Mikoto’s neck so that she passes out. He tells Nanami he is going to hurt Mikoto, but he could switch: He’ll let Mikoto go if he gets Nanami instead. Nanami erases part of Mikoto’s memory. There is a meeting later and Mikoto can’t say anything about what happened, and Kakeru is unsure if the target was Mikoto or not. Afterwards Nanami tells Ron all about her powers that he wants to know. And she tells him she erased Mikoto’s memories to allow him to come clean.

Later Nanami finds Ron sleeping outside and she wakes him up. When she says he can fall asleep again instead of talking to her, he does. She punches him as a response, and they talk some more. Nanami finds out he likes when she doesn’t do what he says, so she decides to just do what he tells her. He tells her she’s childish, but she says she’s more of an adult than he is. He decides to take advantage of this and asks her to kiss him, but Nanami asks if kissing someone she didn’t like would prove she was an adult, and Ron backs off with an apology.

And then starts the shitty dream shit that is in basically every goddamn route. Blablabla the girls talk, Itsuki shows up. You’d read this shit enough times to know what happens, if you’ve read this far in my post anyway. Nanami enters a dream and sees no wolves, but Koharu appears and gives Nanami a basket to do a delivery, because Itsuki forgot to give it to her. Koharu says she has to find Kakeru, because Itsuki said her goal is to find someone important and Nanami asks if she likes Kakeru. Koharu agrees and asks if Nanami has someone she cares about, but Nanami says she doesn’t know, because of multiple reasons. But since Nanami thought of someone, Koharu points out the person must be important already.

While walking around, Akito appears. When he sees Nanami, he attacks her and starts strangling her. Although it comes as a surprise, she doesn’t fight back. She knows why he’s strangling her. But she hears a gunshot and Akito disappears. Ron tells her it was an illusion she created and is angry, asking her why she didn’t fight back. He then leaves the dream, allowing Nanami to wake up. She goes to see Ron, who is surprised she’s already awake, asking if she foudn the one she was looking for, but she never was looking for anyone. She had been able to escape the dream when he disappeared. They go to talk in Ron’s room. He tells her to erase all of his memories, but she doesn’t want to and starts crying. Ron then kisses her. Suddenly a beeping sound is heard. Nanami wonders what it is and Ron tells her it was a hiyoko that he has had in bed because he’s lonely. Nanami runs off.

She couldn’t sleep after that and Mikoto and Koharu want to hear all the juicy bits after breakfast, but Nanami runs off. While looking for Ron, she finds him pointing a gun at Mikoto, who tells Nanami to run. Ron lowers his gun and leaves and suddenly explosions happen all around the ship. Masamune tells them to go to the dining hall, but Nanami rund after Ron and asks him to take her with him.

After proving she will obey Ron, Nanami lives as Ron’s tool, erasing people’s memories. She wears a blindfold and rarely ever speaks, but she’s fine with that, as long as she can stay with Ron.

Bad End 2
Kakeru and Koharu appears to stop Ron and Natsuhiko right after Nanami asks Ron to take her with them. They get away though and the ship crashes. But thanks to Mikoto, there is no real damage to it, and aside from Mikoto and Sakuya, the rest heads to The World by foot, since the ship landed close to their destination. The arrive, Aion explains the situation, and Masamune says he’ll let Sakuya and Mikoto know. It’s decided they’ll make a decision the next day. But Nanami feels she has no right to make the deicion, because she hid that Ron was the traitor and hence is the cause of Mikoto using her power too much, and for the ship to crash.

While talking about this with Koharu (and Aion) Ron appears. He shoots his gun and Koharu faints. He takes the opportunity to steal her power, which – luckily for him – is fire. Everyone, aside from Mikoto and Sakuya as well as Koharu who’s in shock, discuss what has happened. They come to the comclusion water is the only power that can fight against Ron, but no one claims they have the power of water. The next day everyone returns to Aion, again missing Mikoto and Sakuya. Natsuhiko, Ron and Setsu decides to join the party as well – to kill the espers. But Ron lowers Natsuhiko’s gun and burns Aion instead. He also removes his artificial eye and throws it in the flames, nulling the deal he had with Natsuhiko.

Senri tries to take the fire out with his little power, but can’t do it. Kakeru praises him though, making Senri feel better about it. Some of them leaves to help save people who live on the island, but Nanami chooses to leave. She needs to see Ron, and end this. Struggling with pain and doubts, Nanami erases the memories of Ron carries, erasing what made him Ron. And to make sure he didn’t become the person he once was, Nanami is bound to watch over him for the rest of her life.

Good End
Nanami erases Ron’s memories. They want to start again, from the beginning.

Senri comes to visit and let’s her know everyone is worried and that some people are missing her. He also asks – on behalf of everyone else – if she would like to join everyone on a trip to keep peace in the world, as that is what Aion wished for. Though she was artificial and couldn’t really wish for anything. Nanami tells him, he won’t come along, but that she and Ron will go on a journey on their own to try find Natsuhiko so that Ron can get his eyesight back. She’s happy, but a heavy responsibility lies on her shoulders. But she has made a choice to trust Ron.

Masamune Toya (CV: Takuya Satou)***
Masamune is everyone’s go to guy for things that need to be done, or to break up fights. He’s the leader character of the ship and is the one in contact with The World. He’s reliable, but often ends up being in worse shape than the people he tries to help. His power is seeing the past.

***Toya is written Tooya in kana and is romanized To-ya on the official Norn9 site in Japanese, but is written Toya in the localized game. I personally would had preferred if they wrote Tooya or Tohya.

Bad End 1 Harem End
Koharu chooses to partner up with Masamune, but she quickly realizes Masamune is more or less anywhere other than by her side. Troubled, she tries to help him to make sure she isn’t a burden, but just causes more trouble. She decides to change partners, but Masamune talks her out of it, because he’d be worried sick if she wasn’t by his side. So she tags along with him and he also starts teaching her common subjects she should know. And is totally my type of guy because those glasses.

One day Kakeru catches a cold. Masamune takes care of him and Koharu is frustrated because she doens’t know what to do for Masamune, who might also catch the cold. Heishi suggests baking something sweet. He bothers Akito to come to the kitchen, and when Akito does, he blows off steam on Heishi before saying he’ll go to sleep. Heishi offers to help with the cookies instead and Nanami joins in.

Masamune skeptically eats them, and he goes into a really bad sugar high that never ends, and he makes the ship his personal kingdom, making the girls his.

Bad End 2
Koharu and Mikoto makes cookies after Koharu declines the help from Heishi. She gives them to Masamune who cautiously, but politely takes them. During the evening Koharu can’t fall asleep because she’s worried about the reaction she got from Masamune. She goes out to get a drink, but notices Masamune sneaking around… with her bag of cookies. She follows him up on the roof, worried he might throw them away. Seeing that he eats them, she turns around and tries to leave quietly, but accidentally makes some noise. When she turns around, Masamune is right behind her. He embraces her, calling her cute and kisses her. She runs off because she feels Masamune is weird.

Some time later Koharu is going to get another lesson from Masamune, and while waiting she is reading fairy tales. Mikoto and Nanami are there as well, and Koharu starts talking about kisses – asking if they are equally special in real life as they are in the stories. Mikoto gets flustered and can’t answer, while Nanami simply doesn’t know, but Sakuya appears and says that they are indeed equally special. Nanami then runs off to see Ron after Koharu asks questions that makes her flustered this time. Masamune eventually comes and he teaches her like always. And then falls off his chair when she told him she was thinking about the kiss. He apologizes to her for doing something like that without her consent and says they’ll break up the partnership. Koharu is forced to agree, because he says he can’t single anyone out as special.

Koharu avoids Masamune after that, as she doesn’t want to trouble him. She, however, wants to thank him and one evening she heads out to look for him. She hears from Sorata that Masamune headed to Ron’s room, and that where she goes. Masamune isn’t there but she’s invited in, and she chooses to go inside of it. The drunk men talk about and to her and eventually Koharu remembers she isn’t supposed to enter a man’s room. That’s when Masamune appears and Koharu can return to her room. However, no one hears of sees anything of Ron and Itsuki ever again…

Bad End 3
Koharu chooses to wait for Masamune outside Ron’s room. She’s praised by Masamune when he returns, and the ”good girl” stings in her soul. She thanks him for all what he has done while they were partners and hurries back to the room.

Later the girls are having love issues, when HEISHI comes along with an amidakuji. The girls refuses to pick a line because they here Itsuki is involved with it. But Heishi makes Sakuya and Masamune choose something when he finds the chance.

Dream sequence happens and Koharu finds chick!Senri and is going to take care of everything in the household whil she stays, but before she even finishes talk, Kakeru knocks on the door and she says she needs to find the prince. So Kakeru attacks her (Senri has already run away, of course), but before anything happens, Masamune comes riding and saves the princess from the poison apple. She tells Masamune the dream will end if they follow the order of the story and hence they head to the castle. While getting there she asks if it’s alright with Masamune since they’ll be married, and Masamune takes it as that she doesn’t want to. But she tells him how she really feels – how she still wanted to be partners – and Masamune confesses that she’s growing in importance to him and he can’t have that. It’s also difficult for him to hold back. They decide to continue the romance once they have reached their destination and the marriage in the dream is just practice.

Life continues as usual after that. Masamune and Koharu are partners again. But one day Mikoto breaks down in front of Koharu. Koharu realizes it’s about Sakuya and tries to do what she can for Mikoto, so she’s getting a cup of tea to calm her down. But she doesn’t know what to make and that’s when Sakuya comes to the kitchen. He talks to Koharu about how he feels as well, and Koharu tells him his feelings are not wrong. When he asks if he could go with the cup of tea, Koharu says it’s fine, and she crashes at Nanami’s, saying she REALLY wanted to talk about geology with Nanami RIGHT NOW.

The next day there is an announcement. There is a rebellion in a town and The World ordered them to help out. They are stationed based on their powers or the lack of knowledge of powers, so Koharu helps out in first aid. She rarely see Masamune at all and he’s not able to come back to the ship until several days later. Koharu takes the chance to talk a bit to him. The next day they run out of bandages at the battlefield and Kohary heads out to get more, but a creep starts chasing her. After a while Natsuhiko appears as well, and he’ll kill Koharu, but Masamune suddenly stops it. Natsuhiko leaves again, together with the creep, who’s Setsu. Masamune and Koharu then take a break for a while, before they head back to their duties and did Koharu remember to talk to Masamune about the bandages?

The rebellion is still going on, but Masamune has managed to convince The World that they leave. But Mikoto doesn’t believe it and heads back into town. Sakuya runs after her and protects her as her exhaustion catches up on her, and Sakuya dies. To protect her friend, Koharu uses her power and the counrty’s army starts using her power non-stop. Masamune doesn’t know what to do, but he visits her regularly. One night Koharu chooses to return to the ship without permission. She goes to Mikoto and tells her it’s all her – Koharu’s – fault that Sakuya died. It wasn’t Mikoto’s. So Mikoto should blame Koharu for the death of Mikoto’s beloved.

After that, at the battlefield, Koharu is finally starting to feel the exhaustion of using her powers so much, day in and day out. And the powers go out of control, which leads Koharu to collapse. Masamune, who went out to the battlefield to see how Koharu was doing after hearing she was alone out there, takes her back to the ship. She sleeps for three days, and then, when waking up, she goes to Mikoto. She promises Mikoto to stay there while Mikoto sleeps, and if she has a nightmare, she’ll wake her up. Soon after Mikoto manages to sleep, soldiers come into the room. They have come to take Koharu back, but then they see Mikoto and plan on taking both. Koharu can’t allow that and chases them out with her fire, making sure Mikoto stays asleep. She has chosen to protect Mikoto for the rest of her life.

Good End
Koharu sneaks on board on the ship and goes to see Masamune. Just as she is about to change her mind because it might be a bad idea, Masamune opens the door. He has opened the door several times already, because he felt like Koharu would be there, and this time she really was. They speak for a bit, before Koharu runs back to the town.

After that the exhaustion is finally getting to her and her flames go berserk. Masamune had been told by Sakuya that Koharu would need him and that he could not let her go. So when he finds her surrounded by her flames, all alone at the battlefield, he embrasses her. The touch makes him see her past. Koharu screams, begging Masamune to let her go, but he tells her that he’s not burning. He will not burn as long as she cares for him.

After she calms down, he suggest they run away so she’ll never be forced to use her powers again. But Koharu can’t agree with that. He needs to fulfill his duty to take them all safely to the destination, and she… She wants to protect Mikoto in Sakuya’s stead. But now it’s Masamune’s turn to disagree. He will take her away by force if he has to. He contacts Natsuhiko, who helps him plan the escape. And Masamune does use force. With Nanami’s and Itsuki’s powers, Koharu forgets everyone and everything on the ship – all the good and the bad times, and Itsuki gives her a dream. And finally, Masamune takes her away from everything bad…

They live with Natsuhiko and his band of rebels while Masamune studies how to fly and maintain a plane. They are happy, but they would like to live alone one day. But the circumstances suddenly change and they can finally have a home of their own anywhere they want.

Natsuhiko Azuma (CV: Daisuke Ono)
He’s not part of the espers on the ship, but rather the attacker of their ship. He wields a gun and has as a goal to kill all espers. When meeting Mikoto he asks her to come with him, but she refuses.

Bad End
Mikoto chooses to not partner up with anyone and she plans on investigating the traitor alone, but Sakuya sends Sorata to be her knight in shining armour, so he tags along with her. The leads they found point to that Masamune might be doing something… off. He has a weird reaction to the word “gun”, he knows the person Mikoto scribbled was a man (which only Sakuya knew when asked, the others didn’t even know it was a human), and when out and about in a small town they learn that something is off with the pace they are going. She then is warned by Sakuya that something bad will happen and Mikoto chooses to kick Sorata’s butt right after he gave her some info about Masamune heading to the roof to report to the world. She heads up there, and while looking for Masamune, she meets up with Ron who claims the guy in the drawing has been seen. She follows him, but is pushed off the roof by Ron and caught by the barbarian.

She starts living with Natsuhiko, being his prisoner in his labratory, and she has trouble both sleeping and eating. Natsuhiko manages however to make her eat and after a while she’s taken to the battlefield where she, together with Setsu and Natsuhiko saves a town. Natsuhiko then creates her a chick to take care of her because she’s very weak, but refuses his (and obviously Setsu’s) help. She eventually live more freely with Natsuhiko and Setsu, without being a prisoner and helping out. And she and Natsuhiko start growing closer as they begin looking at the stars together.

One day they are having a day to resupply and rest and Natsuhiko gives Mikoto a book about the stars to read. She reads it and in her wonder she runs out to tell Natsuhiko about what she read, even though he surely had already read it. That’s when she is reminded that Natsuhiko is out to kill all of the espers, as she accidentally overheard the conversation between him and Setsu. Feeling betrayed, she runs back to her room. Natsuhiko comes and after asking if he could just not kill everyone, he tells her about the Reset and how it came to be. She then hears Heishi, Nanami and Koharu inside her head, and fighting happens nearby, so Mikoto and Hatsuhiko heads out. They are in danger, but Mikoto’s power isn’t responding.

The plan crashes and both Natsuhiko and Mikoto are injured. Natsuhiko managed to carry Mikoto to a village, where they both get cared for by a doctor. Natsuhiko’s injuries are worse though and will take a lot of time to heal, so when Mikoto has healed up, she takes care of Natsuhiko. But aside from the physical injuries, Natsuhiko has also forgotten who he is. The only thing he remembered was Mikoto’s name. With his memory loss, Mikoto notices a change in personality, and he rarely asks her about his past. Though she doesn’t want to talk about it either. They lead a normal life until Ron suddenly appear out of nowhere, and Natsuhiko’s memories return.

They return to the home base and Natsuhiko work on a weapon to kill Shiro Yuiga, who have gotten on the good side of the other espers. He does neither have time for Mikoto nor the stars he loves so much. Eventually they depart to meet Aion, and find everyone but Kakeru on the island where Aion is. There they learn Shito Yuiga died from degration, but his weapons are left. After a discussion with Aion, which ends with Mikoto asking what conclusion Aion had come to, Natsuhiko declares he will make sure to rid of the weapons spread by Shiro.

He refuses to take Mikoto with her, and to save her from the despair which would lead her to take her own life, Nanami erases the memories of Natsuhiko, and Sakuya takes her back home.

Good End
After hearing Aion’s conclusion that the only way to stop war Natsuhiko first thinks that there’s no way he can do that. But then he realizes he’s just like the people he doesn’t want to alike. So he does what Aion wishes for and abandons his power. He chooses Mikoto over the power his weapons give him.

Some time later Sakuya, Akito, Senri, Koharu and Nanami are returning home after returning their powers to Aion. Mikoto has chosen to stay with Natsuhiko, who’s researching how the Reset affected the galaxy or something. Heishi and Itsuki ran off to find Kakeru, and as the others leave, Natsuhiko gets word that Kakeru has been found. He takes Mikoto along so she can tell the others good bye and that Kakeru was found, and then they’ll pick Kakeru, Heishi and Itsuki up. It’s a very joyful day for Mikoto.

UNLOCKABLE ROUTE
Sorata finds things a little… weird, to say the least. Kakeru controls plants, Heishi sleep talks through telepathy, and whenever Sorata mentions a girl no one else seem to see Masamune appears out of nowhere to interrupt him. One time while Masamune tried to cough it away, Sorata saw his chance of faking illness to learn the truth about the Ghost Girl. Koharu takes him in to her room, and he tells her about the Ghost Girl. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, so it’s so weird no one else sees her. But Koharu suggests it’s because the girl came to see Sorata and doesn’t want anyone else to see her. He tries to talk to Ghost Girl, but she never answers. One day when the girls are baking Ghost Girl appear and Sorata asks her if she wants to be introduced to the girls, but she doesn’t seem to want that.

At another time Heishi thinks of having a scary maze and Kakeru makes up a story about some espers dying. Mikoto says there’s no way ghosts exist, but Sorata can’t help but to think about Ghost Girl. He’s then asked to help out with the scary maze in whatever way he’s best at. While deciding what to do, Ghost Girl appears in the chick room and Sorata finds out the chicks also can see her. He asks them for her name and one says it’s a secret, while the Hiyocoder asks Sorata to look at something. He gets the name Aine from it and starts calling Ghost Girl that. He says that even though he can’t become the person she’s waiting for or a girl, he will try to get along with her.

Aine and Sorata hears about and accident from Heishi through telepathy. Sorata says they should head back to the room, but they stop at the third floor on their way down form the roof. Sakuya is muttering something about the future. Sorata asks Aine if she can’t do something and she gets really close to Sakuya, who then runs off finding Mikoto, who has disappeared. Although no one knew about the basement she was in, Sakuya had found her, with no clue how. But Sorata had an idea of what had happened: Aine did something.

They reach their destination and although Sorata has tried, he has gotten nothing out of Masamune about Aine. Now he’s supposed to meet some important people that will solve the problem with Sorata being lost in time. They walk further and Sorata sees things that should be impossible. Things that didn’t exist in the Taisho Era he knew, but rather… his own time. What’s more, they are worn from years of exposure to weather. And that’s when the Diet Building comes into his vision. The other’s are wondering about how everything is in ruins and if it’s really The World. Masamune says it has been so since 2080, and to Sorata it’s a hint of the truth.

They enter the building and Masamune calls for Aion. Aine appears and everyone learns that she’s The World. Sorata had envisioned The World as something alike the UN, but it’s just Aine. Aine – or Aion, which Sorata misread as Aine – tells them about the Reset and why it’s been undertaken and what their duty is. What Sorata get’s stuck about is not so much the Reset but as to the year. It’s now year 8075, and the year has been reseted 4 times. So which 2015 is Sorata from? But Akito stops his train of thought. Akito noticed Masamune isn’t at all gaced by the situation, and Masamune just calmly says Akito can hit him all he wants, Masamune will still join when they make a decision. Aion is about to shut down, so they don’t have much time. And that’s why she’s not speaking to Sorata – she’s conserving her energy.

It turns out Sorata didn’t exactly travel in time. He was asleep for 2000 years and is from the last 2015 that had been. Sorata is devastated. He has lost all of his friends and his family. He knows no one. He wants to know why he had to go through that and Masamune tells him it’s because he is Sorata Suzuhara. He carries the same set of DNA as the creator of Aion, and the scientists of the island think that perhaps he has the ability to save Aion, who has run longer that she was expected to. He don’t think he can save Aion, but when no one wants to enter the door of the past, he chooses to go in hope that he can get enough information to save Aion.

When he wakes up Shiro Yuiga is there, which doesn’t make sense. Shiro Yuiga… lived 6000 years ago and was the one who redesign the previous Sorata’s android to Aion. But Shiro isn’t human anymore. The two talk and talk and seem to only come to the conclusion that Sorata is human and Shiro is not. After a really long talk, Shiro is going to kill Sorata, but Aion tries to save Sorata. He’s still shot, and soon after the girls come in. Koharu makes Shiro leave and Sorata tells Aion it’s fine to talk to him again. Soon after she stops working and the Reset can’t be made, but Sorata has decided that he will see Aine again.

THOUGHTS

 

BEWARE! Usually I try to keep my thoughts are relatively spoiler free, but this time I do a lot of references to things in game when I start talking about the translation. The translation thoughts are at the very bottom of this section and you can jump to them by clicking here. I will start, however, with my general thoughts on this game, then go on to giving my thoughts on more specific aspects, so they come after that. You will find another warning before the section about the translation.

If we put everything together I would say it’s a game with very good story with thoughtout characters and interactions between them, but it was ruined a lot by the translation. It was also going a lot in an opposite curve of suspense, where the story reaches a peak of no suspense before it has a turning point and stuff happens, so some might get bothered by the slow pace of more or less nothing in the middle of each route. Naturally, I also see that people may not want to play it after the first girl because they need to more or less go through the same thing until chapter 2, but I suggest taking a bit of a break between each new girl, and you should be fine if you’re easily bored. A game worth playing, but not in English. I’m definitely seeing myself playing Last Era one of these days. I just need to clear some of these games off my ever-growing backlog first.

My recommended play order is a bit unorthodox – at least compared with the ones I’ve seen by other people – and I’m sure there are people who very strongly disagree with it, but regardless, this is my recommendation:
Senri -> Heishi -> Sakuya -> Itsuki -> Kakeru -> Akito -> Ron -> Masamune -> Natsuhiko -> Epilogue (Unlocked after all routes are cleared)

If you really want to, you could switch Heishi’s and Senri’s routes, or just play Heishi’s whenever you want. I picked Senri first because playing as Koharu first makes the most sense when following up on the prologue, although I would prefer playing Heishi first myself.

I don’t want my powers. I never wanted powers.
In fact, I hate them so much I wish I could just throw them away forever.
What I want…

Initially I thought I wouldn’t like Senri. I mean, his personality is so bad it’s almost painful to just think about it. But as the story kept going forward, I started to like him, but not because I got used to him, but because he opened up and evolved over time. I think he and Koharu were a great combination, actually, because even though they have different personalities, they do understand each other very well because they do also share similarities and experiences. He is pretty possessive though and gets jealous VERY easily. The extra scene barely included Senri at all and it kind of showed even more possessiveness than he show in the rest of the game.

I really never liked Kakeru. He seemed like a jerk in the other routes. He seemed like a jerk in his own route. He had a reason to be a jerk, but still… jerk. That being said, this route is both spoilerish and the ending really hints toward what’s happening in the other routes. It’s both a good first route, and a horrible one – depending on whether you want all the cards on the table right away or if you want more clues as time passes. I’m the latter and I’m glad I didn’t play Kakeru’s route first. However, I didn’t particularly like playing his route and some of the issues I had in the beginning of the game (mainly Senri’s route) resurfaced and I was so pissed off I ragequit for a while. Though ragequitting this game happened a lot. I would had enjoyed the extra scene if I didn’t know what a jerk he is. Like, Kakeru is both a jerk and really nice at the same time, and it’s annoying me so much at all times.

Reliable dork, who wears glasses when teaching Koharu? I’m all for it! Sugar highs that make him like a bad drunk? NOPE. I was so happy when Masamune turned out to be a glasses guy, and a dork who selflessly helped everyone. It was so cute. Then he eats a goddamn cookie and everything was ruined. He’s the worst. Or not. He’s not Ron. Or Jerkeru. The extra scene was cute, but since I have an issue with sugar high Masamune, so it basically ended on a slightly discomfortable note for me. I think anyone who likes Masamune would like the extra scene as well though.

All people have sinned, be it in great or small ways. All people hide pain in their hearts. Do you understand this?
Gods do not exist. Even if they did, they do nothing to save humankind.
If the gods did create humans, then they are also the ones that created sadness and pain. Do you understand?
What ways do you think there are for removing pain and sadness from the world?
There exists only one true way—your powers.

Akito is so ridiculously cute. I like how he actually grows to like Nanami, just like Nanami starts caring for him rather than only feeling guilty about stuff. Unlike Senri which I played before Akito, their love seems to grow more naturally. I also like the characters depth and, just like Senri and Koharu, I feel these two are a very good match. Let’s not forget that he had animal ears, which almost killed me with cuteness. I did get annoyed a lot during the route though, because there were a lot of issues with the translation while in Akito’s route. Akito is also a bit possessive and get jealous, especially at Heishi, so in that regard he’s similar to Senri. The extra scene was really cute as well.

Heishi’s route is pretty short. Nothing really happens and it’s only focused on Nanami and Heishi’s relationship, to be honest. I played this third, because I got a recommended play order, but I really wish I had played this route first. Or second, like I’ve recommended. Although it hints to some spoilers, they would have gone over my head and seemed like foreshadowing, had I not played Akito’s route already. I did like his route, although not so much as the Senri’s and Akito’s and the voice actor – Hiroyuki Yoshino – ruined the mood because no matter what he said I kept thinking of Auger from Black Wolves Saga. You will so understand why that’s not exactly a good thing some day when I manage to finish BWS, but considering how much issues I seem to have with computers and BWS, who knows when that’ll happen? Anyway, I’ll admit the extra scene was cute, even though I sometimes thought of Auger, which just made it incredibly creepy. Violins in particular comes to mind… Yeah, I reallt can’t think of Heishi without connecting him to Auger.

Ron was… Yeah, okay, I suffered so much while playing his route. He was interesting but he also basically harrassed Nanami all the time. It sucked so much. I didn’t like Kakeru to begin with and I thought he’d be my least fav character, but gosh, Ron managed to take that place despite my neutral opinion about him to start with. His extra scene was incredibly frustrating to read too. Lol. But it was fun to hear Sugitan play a role that wasn’t basically the comic relief (which is what I’m used to). I really did enjoy that part. I want more stuff like that. Anyone know a game with him playing more serious roles? Lol. But maybe not any which are “I can change him” kind of roles. I don’t generally like those.

I have the power to protect everyone. Not using it would be a grave sin.

My head firmly re-exerted control over my heart. It was my duty to protect everyone. That was the creed I had lived my life by.

But… what about now?

I was saved by the one I should be saving, and he wound up injured for it–perhaps gravely. Not only that, I had run away.

Am I truly worthy of wielding this power?

Sakuya’s route had its few funny moments, but to be honest I felt pretty neutral about it. It was easy to push through in three sessions, but I was neither impressed nor disappointed. But I felt it didn’t have that pacing issue I found in the other routes. At this point in my gaming I felt every route had been laid up so that either nothing happened or everything happened at once. Both Mikoto and Sakuya had room to grow in this particular route, but I did get annoyed with Mikoto a lot. Despite the fact it had potential to be really heart-breaking… Yeah, I don’t know, somehow it was ruined. I know it would had been much more enjoyable for me personally if I had felt more connected to either Sakuya or Mikoto, but I spent three sessions missing my real life boyfriend instead of feeling my heart break into a thousand pieces over a fake one. I guess the premise of the route just didn’t really talk to me and Sakuya being a childhood friends just reminded me of my own partner. The extra scene was more or less just Sakuya being Sakuya and Mikoto being Mikoto. I’m equally neutral to it as to Sakuya’s route, really.

Itsuki, you horny idiot. I have mixed feelings about this route. I liked him at times, then he ruined it, then Mikoto was cute, then she ruined it. It was especially bad how he kept pushing Mikoto to Sakuya. I don’t know. He was kind of meh, in the end. But Mikoto was cute. I’d date her. Especially in the extra scene, lol. She was the cutest in that one. Itsuki was a little less annoying than in the main game too, but it’s probably because of where it fits into the timeline and he wasn’t as pushy.

I don’t know, I guess I feel rather meh about Natsuhiko at the time of writing. I guess having two stubborn and prideful people clash wasn’t really my cup of tea. He did have some beautiful CGs though, but in the end they felt so wasted on him. (Lol) I didn’t dislike Natsuhiko, because he seems wonderfully nerdy, I just couldn’t deal with the personality clash though. I think a different personality in the girl would have been better for Natsuhiko. That said, I didn’t dislike Mikoto either. But I like them in the extra scene, which is mainly because they didn’t clash. But still, it didn’t really save the route.

The Truth Route – or Epilogue, really – gives us the answers about what the hell Sorata has to do with anything (because he basically doesn’t exist in the rest of the game) and I liked it. I also had a pretty good idea what was going on very early into the game, so it was somewhat predictable, but not in a bad way. I would had like the truth route to have choices, but there only was one choice – the one to get it. After that it was kinetic novel all the way, lol.

I really enjoyed the soundtrack, I can say that much. It’s very fitting to the game and the chosen tracks fits perfectly to the scenes. But the game isn’t afraid to have silent times, which is definitely something I appreciate.
The art by Teita is both pretty and in my opinion very appropriate for this game. Unlike the issue with Code: Realize where the background were better than the sprites and the sprites better than the CGs, the art in this game in this is of consistent quality and nothing really overshadows something else. Despite the darker theme that resides within the story, the art is very colourful and does give it a more cheerful feel, which I don’t think is a bad thing. As I mentioned, they are very isolated from the outside world while on the ship, and that’s where the majority of the colour also is found, while the outside world uses a less bright colour scheme.

As I mentioned before, I like the characters, how they interact and how they are consistent (in spoken Japanese anyway) in the actions. For most part character interaction is actually the most important part in this game, as well as the back story of the heroines and/or the romanceable options. The story is a mystery sci-fi and I personally do really enjoy that you kind of need to play all the routes to get all the clues, and need to play them all to learn everything about the characters. Having three heroines also mean you get different point of views. What this game lacks, however, is any kind of sense of time. Suddenly a few days passes by. Then a few more. And eventually you’re not sure if what passed was a month or half a year because you just don’t know. Like, how much time passed from Sorata meeting Koharu to the end of the game (before the route epilogues)? A few weeks? Months? I don’t know! I just don’t know! They spent a lot of time just doing chores or being friends and stuff like that, so you kind of don’t really know what the hell is going on outside the ship, but then again, some times that is exactly how it is – they are pretty isolated from the outside world. The Epilogue isn’t very helpful for that either, as it skips between things that happened.

Another downside is the copy pasta called as the dream sequence. It’s goddamn annoying. You get to skip the start of the dream, but even though the stuff leading up to the dream is basically the same, we can’t skip that?! I just force skipped it eventually, because it’s the same goddamn thing every time, just different dudes. It’s so goddamn annoying I want to punch someone. I mean, I would honestly be more fine with it if I didn’t get an option halfway through asking if I want to skip it or watch it. I WANT THAT RIGHT AWAY. Or do what happened in Masamune’s route where HEISHI changed it up. Why did I have to play so many routes with the dream sequence and it’s buildup so many times as I did? I DON’T GET IT. There’s some more copy pasta, but the dream sequence was the hard one to swallow.

This game has a mini game that was added to the Vita port in Japan and it’s called NORN9 QUEST. You choose a character to play as and then the computer chooses 3 enemies that may vary in level. The characters will end up in situations that will give or remove points and the situations can be really funny. I do find the 8bit music very annoying in my ears and it’s a little sad you can’t really do much in the game, but it’s really funny. If you want the Norn9 Quest Master trophy, I suggest playing this before and after every session and every time you’re a little bored and you’ll reach 5000 points without much effort. Don’t play it after you’ve played the entire game, you’ll most likely regret it.

BEWARE! From this point on I talk about translation.

Skip to the very last paragraph for a TL;DR!

THIS TRANSLATION. It starts off really badly. Why? Because it just doesn’t do it right. It translates things differently, it adds things that are completely unnecessary to the meaning or just entire change what is said to something completely different. AND THAT’S JUST BEFORE THE PROLOGUE SCREEN. OH. MAI. GAWD. If I ever get the chance, I’ll high-five the translator. In the face. With a huge fucking cactus. Because that’s how just the beginning of the translation felt to me. THE BEGINNING. And I sat through THE. ENTIRE. THING. I PAID 300 SEK FOR THIS. ON A DIGITAL VERSION OF THE GAME. OF COURSE I will sit through this shit, since I can’t sell it.

When we get past the prologue screen, it gets worse. It actually has moments where the English feels all over the place.

It’s fine to use expressions fitting the time, but at least keep it to a single kind of English. But all-over-the-place English is not the worst offense to this point of the game, no. The translator(s) thought it fitting to entirely ignore what is written and just went with whatever.

And no, I haven’t even gotten past the prologue yet when pointing out these things. This is probably less than an hour in (unless you write a review and tweet while playing). By chapter one I was so pained by the translation I rarely reacted to the crap mentioned so far that was thrown into my face over and over again.

When you get into the actual game and start playing as the heroine of choice and choose a partner, you will come across personality changes, as you learn more about the guys. One of the people I reacted the first to was Akito. He is pretty tsun-tsun in Japanese, but is more rude and rough in English. I know translating a tsundere is hard (Amnesia’s Shin suffered as well), but this was just sad. Senri’s lines got meaning changes and added sentences, which changed his personality slightly as well. Just to make examples on how personalities were change.

Another thing that gets more than just a bit weird is the name translation conventions. In Japan there are several ways to address a person and they have a varying degree of formality. Koharu is in general very polite and proper in her speech and when she is supposed to choose how to address Sorata, she starts with “Sorata-san” (-san is a suffix that can be used on everyone ans is the same as miss/mr/mrs), which is a somewhat familiar way to address him because it uses his first name, while the most distant way would be Suzuhara-san. Admittedly though, Sorata only says his first name, so she doesn’t have much choice to use it. Sorata dislikes this because he’s 5 years younger than Koharu and hence asks her to use just Sorata without a suffix. Koharu can’t accept this, and they meet midway with “Sorata-kun” which is normal to call a younger boy (but -kun can also be used in other situation, but let’s not go into that kind of specifics).

Basically, if we’re going to list the options from most polite to least polite (top to bottom) and most distant to least (left to right):

Suzuhara-san -> Sorata-san
Suzuhara-kun -> Sorata-kun
Suzuhara -> Sorata

In English they start with “Mr Sorata”, then go plain Sorata and then go Suzuhara, although this would at least to me seem very odd. I mean, even if Mr Sorata is extremely formal, it’s less distanced than Suzuhara. By going from Sorata (given name) to Suzuhara (family name), the translator chose to distance Koharu from Sorata, but she continues to be familiar with Sorata, but different levels of politeness. I would say Mr Suzuhara -> Mr Sorata would had been more natural. And I’ll repeat myself, but Sorata NEVER SAID HIS LAST NAME in Japanese.

But that’s not the only problem. How she chooses to address people changes from people to people. No, not as in choosing to be more polite to those older than her, but in the fact translator changed it. Senri is called “Senri-kun” in Japanese, which by above choice would be “Ichinose”, but he’s called Mr Senri. Same with Akito, who is “Akito-kun” in Japanese, but “Mr. Akito” in English. Kakeru, however, is “Kakeru-kun” in Japanese and Yuiga in English? And then there’s Itsuki, which she call by first name +san and it’s just “Itsuki”. Let’s make a list.

Senri-kun = Mr. Senri (and just “Senri” in Akito’s route)
Kakeru-kun = Yuiga
Masamune-san = Mr. Masamune
Akito-kun = Mr. Akito
Heishi-kun = Mr. Heishi
Itsuki-san = Itsuki?
Sakuya-san = Sakuya

Could this get more confusing? To make another example, we can take a look at Kakeru’s route:

During the Hiyoko Channel inteview with Sakuya and Heishi, Heishi realizes Koharu calls him ”Heishi-kun”, but Sakuya is ”Sakuya-san”. The latter is more respectful and as Sakuya and Heishi are the same age, it upsets Heishi to be treated differently. In the translation is ”Mr. Heishi” and ”Yuiga” (= Kakeru). It just gets really weird because of the inconsistency in the naming in English and in reality the one who’s called ”Mister” is Sakuya, not Heishi, while Kakeru is mentioned as also being called “-kun”. Heishi would be just Heishi, and that’s what he’s reacting to. It’s so weird and it’s painful to even be reminded of this crappy naming system whoever trashed this game came up with.

As for Nanami and Mikoto. Koharu uses “-chan” as a suffix for them both, which often is very familiar, but based on Koharu’s feel of need to be formal to everyone, to her it’s less familiar than just “Nanami”. However, the translator has chosen to call “Nanami-chan” Nanami, although I would personally say this has the same meaning as “Kakeru-kun”, “Sorata-kun” and “Senri-kun”. That would mean it’d be “Shiranui” and “Kuga” or “Ms. Nanami” and “Ms. Mikoto”. I might add the latter isn’t something I’ve seen in game at all, although Itsuki uses “ojousan” which has been translated to “miss”.

Now let’s turn to Nanami, because she has a different personality, which naturally means she chooses to adress the characters in the game differently. She’s a bit more distance with people in general.

For instance, she calls Akito and Heishi by their last names, Shukuri and Otomaru, and has chosen to use “-san” as a suffix. Based on what I noted above, it’s the most polite, but also less familiar. This however has been translated to just Shukuri, which put the politeness and familiarity on the same level as Koharu’s first name+kun, which is not really the case. This is also the case when she addresses Senri or Itsuki, who she calls Ichinose-san and Kagami-san.

Finally, Mikoto calls people around her by first name, without any suffix. Itsuki, Akito, Masamune… It really doesn’t matter what their age is. It’s really the only time it feels like the translation is accurate. But the difference doesn’t come across considering all the other weird stuff they’ve done with the names.

I think you can see how I see various issues with the translation when it comes to names and I haven’t even mentioned the guys’ choices of speech yet.

Anyway, at some point in, after spending some time flipping out about the naming system, I felt like I was getting immune to the translation and just screenshotted typos, odd sentences, lines with unfamiliar words and funny moments. I was even making fun of it with a line from the game. But then….

I snapped. Reason?

This supposed to be a pun, as Koharu says Cinderella goes to a ball, but Mikoto thinks she says “tournament”. Naturally, this doesn’t translate well, but there are NO notes explaining what these words means and what pisses me off the most is the fact they wrote the Japanese words just like that with no explanations, BUT COULDN’T DO A PROPER JOB WITH THE NAMES. AT ALL. Like ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! You throw in Japanese words that OBVIOUSLY people aren’t going to get, but you can’t use suffixes and instead go for some weird name-translation rules that no one will understand because there is no logic in what you crappy little shits who work on this translation did because you fucks couldn’t decide what the hell to go for when you translated the names. IT. IS. NOT. THAT. HARD. Unless you know absolutely nothing about how politeness works, I SUPPOSE. I MEAN, KOHARU IS BEING POLITE WITH EVERYONE, WHY COULDN’T YOU BE CONSISTENT WITH THIS SHIT? WHY ARE YOU THROWING IN JAPANESE WORDS JUST BECAUSE IT’S A PUN BUT IT MAKES NO SENSE ANYWAY? WHO THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO SLAP?! Not to mention, whoever did this translation is responsible for me being so upset at the time of writing that my nose started to bleed. A LOT. I keep wiping off blood from my face while fucking writing this. THANKS.

When I came into my second route (I know what you’re thinking: EEEEEEH?! ALL THIS THAT I JUST READ WAS ONE ROUTE?!), I noticed missing words almost right away. But now I’ve built up some resistance to things that just bothered the shit out of me from the beginning and I’m not sure if the screenshot below is of a fault in Koharu’s point of view as well or a mistake in Nanami’s. Regardless, it’s still early on in the game and I can’t believe anyone missed this IF it was quality checked or looked upon by an editor.

What’s more, when I passed the same thing in Mikoto’s route, I looked to see if it was typo’d as well, but I didn’t see anything, so I’m pretty confident that this is a route specific typo.

I’m sure no one is going be surprised about me pointing out that there are typos. I must say though, I expected more of them. That being said, pretty much everything else just kind of overshadows typos, so I might just have missed them because everything with this game is so wrong one could weep over it.

Except for the random missing words early on, there’s a shit

load of sentences that are in new lines, despite the fact they would easily

fit into the same line. It’s really annoying, especially since they are cut off after one or two line of text and sometimes

not even a full line.

I think you see what I mean, just by trying to read my review. It feels more like a coding problem or translator messing up, than an aesthetic choice, but who the hell checked this? It’s one thing if the line really is too long, but the screen fits 4 lines and often these sentences are cut off in ways that makes little to no sense, meaning it’s not to cause a pause of suspense, but is just shit.

Also, I don’t know how many “tch” I read that were completely not fitting the situation. Nanami is surprised by Akito being kind? “Tch.” Like that. Like, what the hell? Both Nanami and Akito also go “tch” while they kiss. LOL. WHO CLICKS THEIR TONGUE WHEN THEY KISS?! It’s hilariously bad. Like, just think about it! You kiss your partner and they go “tch”. I might not be the most romantic human being on this earth, but even I wouldn’t go “I love you too, honey” without it dripping with sarcasm in that situation. In Heishi’s route the kiss was “argh”. That’s just as bad.

Heishi’s route also suffered from questions being turned into statements. A lot of questions where missing a question mark and instead they had used a full stop. Don’t you know what question marks are for or something? Seriously!

In Sakuya’s route there was a weird mistranslation. 雷 (I assume, considering Sakuya says “kaminari”), which means thunder, was read as 雪, meaning snow. This means that Mikoto suddenly got scared of snow. You would had thought the translator would had gone “wait a second” and gone back to check that it was really the right meaning, because generally people aren’t afraid of snow. But maybe the translator was in fact not very good at kanji and didn’t know how thunder looks like and just assumed it was snow? Who knows? Regardless, that was really weird. Someone should have questioned it, but I doubt there really was an editor or quality check, so whatever. It’s weird, it not right, and I want to blame someone so I’ll blame Aksys.

Aside from that translation error, things were messed up in other ways, but similarly. At one point Mikoto and Nanami’s names were confused, for instance, and in Itsuki’s route a lot of lines were mistranslated so that what you read what completely different from what they said in Japanese in sense of meaning. There was also an instance where Itsuki referred to Sakuya in Japanese, but in English he was talking about himself and it was hilarious.

And I’m sad to say, even the mini game had typos.

TL;DR:

This translation is totally not worth ANYONE’s money. I don’t even suggest buying it on a sale. Putting all things together it’s not only very inaccurate, I would say it’s a abomination. It’s blasphemy against any game genre to have something like this released. I don’t care if you want to support Aksys or localizations, just don’t think this support anything but shitting out crap no one deserves. The translation is not worth it, I swear. To just quickly sum up the things this games is a victim of:
– THE GODDAMN NAMES
– Changed meanings
– Added things that made absolutely no difference in how people interpret the situation
– Inconsistencies in what should and shouldn’t be translated as well as how things are translated
– Personality changes
– Added memes that had no reason to be added
– Missing words
– Typos
– Usage of phrases that don’t fit together
– Lots of “tch” for no reason in the Nanami routes
– Cut off sentences
– Missing question marks in Heishi’s route
– Inconsistencies in lines between different routes, even though they really were the same line
– Mistranslated kanji in Mikoto’s route, but right in a different route (LMAO WHY)
– Messed up names
– Messed up meanings
– Inconsistencies in whether it was in the past or present
– Why do I feel like they kept skipping commas?

And… It was just tiring, you know? I kept giving up. I’m not a native English speaker, so when it’s really messed up, I actually have to stop, read back, read the same line over and over, and hope it’ll make sense. This just gets really hard for anyone without a very good understanding of the English language and who can very fast fill in blanks. It was easier to spot typos or added words, but missing words or even just “fancy” words could completely throw me off. And I read a lot in English. Actually, the main language I use in a day is English. DESPITE THAT, this was extremely tiring. Just tiring. I even cried once. I got so tired of the trashy crap of a trashlation, I just… cried.

During part of the period of playing this I was working at a translation company and I know translation is hard. But this isn’t okay. If I presented something like this to a client in the company’s name I would probably never get to translate again. Ever.

How was this translation ever allowed to be sold?

(Btw, I promised to make a count between Norn9 and Code: Realize on typos and such, so look out on Tumblr for it. It should be up some time after this post – whenever I have time to go through my thousands of screenshots to count them. I’ll share some of my favourite typo moments as well.)

---

This post is available thanks to the love and support of my readers and patrons. If you want to support the blog, read this page!

If you want me to review your work, email theannyblog@gmail.com or send me a message on my Twitter for more information.

---

Buy the game and support me while at it!

You can get the Japanese version on Vita on CDJapan or Play-Asia!