Completion date: March 12, 2026

The next instalment of Broccoli’s otome saga. This time they take a different direction, jumping out of the Piofiore formula, advertising an “otome Sword Art Online”. If you’re here just to see my initial thoughts but don’t want to read any spoilers: Overall I give this route 8.5/10 & would recommend anyone play it with one warning: This game’s writing is very out of the box. There will be two routes that can be jirai for some people (Souichi and Kai) – if you worry about being triggered can do some research first before deciding… or read my plot summary, that’s up to you.

I followed the recommended play order and so should you. There are people who didn’t and started on Ran and spoiled most of the game for them. I also recommend using a walkthrough such as this one. I would make the saves as they recommend, leaving a blank one between character routes. This way, if you need to get a certain ending or unlock a certain SS you won’t go nuts trying to get 100% completion. I thanked myself for doing this.

Yuri > Souichi > Kai > Ran > Miyabi > Hidden // Final Thoughts

Pros:

• Stellar art concept
• Even more stellar voice acting
• Fun interface
• Memorable side characters
• Great writing – succinct, no draggy plot, always keeps you on the fence
• 38 endings with some interesting ones. However, did we really need 38..?

Cons:

• Possible triggers in Souichi and Kai routes; there is also one yuri side ending so if you cannot accept yuri in otome then maybe skip that one (in Kai’s route)
• CG consistency needed work (really disappointed at Kai route second half CGs)

**Full Spoilers ahead**

COMMON ROUTE

The game begins with a online chat between an unspecified person with an AI. The AI tells the person that it is trying to become more natural in conversation and to keep the person company, as long as they are needed. The human replies “liar”. The AI ends the conversation saying “I would never lie to you… I promise.”

The date is October 8. Suzuno Kanna gets a video call from Nagamori Ran inquiring on her progress regarding the next piece of music they are producing together. Ran is Kanna’s best friend and her collaborating partner in the virtual music project Latria. Ran receives an email inviting him to join a VR project called UN:LOGICAL. Both of them think it’s a scam so Ran doesn’t bother responding. Meanwhile, Kanna learns she has been dumped over text by her boyfriend, Munakata Kai.

Kanna is annoyed at the sudden breakup that came as sudden as Kai’s confession. Kai met Kanna in a cafe and abruptly asked her out one week ago, asking if they’ve met before. The two had a good conversation. Kai seemed like a softer guy than his playboy exterior with nerdy habits. However, none of this matters now because Kanna has been dumped so she channels her energy into her music and earns Ran’s praise.

After Kanna falls sleep, Kanna’s television turns on spontaneously and play the same ad that Ran got earlier inviting her to join UN:LOGICAL. She calls Ran. Someone picks up but the voice clearly doesn’t belong to Ran. Kanna wakes up in the morning and tells herself she had a bad dream. However, upon seeing the broken glass on the ground that she dropped in terror last night, she realizes what happened last night was real.

She goes over to Ran’s place, who says he didn’t pick up any call early morning at all. A giant door suddenly appears in front of the two and sucks them into the world of UN:LOGICAL.

The basic rules of UN:LOGICAL is as follows:

• IRL, the players are in a deep-sleep state.
• One hour in game is equivalent to one minute IRL.
• At the beginning of the game, no violence is allowed, nor is there currency.
• At this stage of the game, players can quit anytime and log out into the real world.
• If the player clears all stages of the game, they will be rewarded 10 million yen.
• If the player loses, they are logged out immediately.
• Every player joined by their own will with the exception of Kanna and Ran, who are just said to be “special invited guests”.

Kanna gets a glimpse of Miyabi, who is one of the operators of the game and revered in this world. He talks about how his ultimate goal for this game is “to uncover intense emotions born from extreme situations”. Initially, Kanna and Ran want to log out right away. However, given the “safety” that this game promises and the temptation of the bounty, they decide to stay for now.

Kanna meets “Yuri”, who cheerily introduces himself as the owner behind the makeup channel KiEL that Kanna follows. [In this game, KiEL/Latria have not shown their faces to their fans so the fans do not know their identities.] Yuri appears very motivated by the bounty and is hopeful he can clear the game.

Kanna returns to her room. Every player is assigned an AI assistant called “spirit”. Kanna’s spirit is Kohaku (amber), who is voiced by Kaji Yuuki and a huge tsundere lol.

Kanna loses contact with Ran so starts to look for him. On her search, she hangs out with Ruri & Yuri/KiEL/”Arisawa Zadokieru” which is his government ID name… Yuri blurts out that he knows Kanna is from Latria, without Kanna telling him, saying he is a fan of hers as well.

Kanna goes to the cafeteria and meets Yasaka Souichi, who strikes a conversation with Kanna. Other than sharing his love for egg sandwiches, he asks if Kanna’s heard his voice before, to which Kanna replies why would I have. He then leaves and wishes Kanna a good day.

Next, of course Kanna runs into her ex-boyfriend Kai who apologizes again and literally wishes her a good life without him, but makes the conversation so awkward to the point Kanna escapes.

Finally, Kanna meets Miyabi again who appears to know where Ran is. Kanna demands him to release Ran so she can log out with him. Miyabi does not comply and say he’s happy letting Kanna leave herself. However, if she wants to leave with Ran then she needs to stay in the game to help him as an “operator”. He tells Kanna that he enjoys seeing her struggle. Kanna’s job in-game is to physically discover bugs which are in-game areas where the background becomes irregular & in-game functions are hindered.

The first game begins the next day where Kanna joins in black (reserved for operators). This game is a variation of the trolley problem. All the players board a roller coaster, with one of them randomly chosen as the “selector”. Only the selector knows they have been chosen. The selector has three options:

• Kill off (in game) 5 people on the ride randomly (default)
• Kill 2 people only, but the selector has to hand pick which two
• Suicide

Sitting behind the screen in the operating room, Kanna sees that a girl (later revealed to be Kogasaki Shiori) has been chosen as the selector.

The players are given some time to discuss among themselves where they suggest the selector to hand pick two victims to minimize the deaths. They start quarrelling on who should be the sacrificial lambs. However, in the end, Shiori quietly decides that she doesn’t want to change at all. As such, five random victims are selected, including a friendly player that Kanna befriended yesterday. To add insult to injury, we get a bloody death CG of him.

Today’s game concludes. A new rule change is implemented: Currency is now allowed in game. Players can take loans from the gaming company. If they clear the game, they do not need to repay the loan. If they lose, then they owe the company money IRL.

Kanna is shaken by the events and asks Miyabi what is wrong with him. Miyabi laughs in her face and says he enjoys seeing people suffer, and that if she wants to see Ran again she has no choice but to stay in game and work for him.

In the evening, Miyabi goes to Kanna’s room and asks her to pick a card which will decide who tomorrow’s selector will be (this will also affect the route you enter):

• Pegasus – the martyr (Kai)
• Griffin – the dreamer (Souichi)
• Cerberus – the rationalist (Yuri)

After Kanna picks her card, Kohaku appears and tells her that as an operator she has gained an in-game “revival” ability: each round, she can revive one character once.

The next day, as Kanna is searching for bugs, she meets a mysterious man who pulls her into a bugged area then to his own room. He isn’t upfront about his identity or role here, but asks Kanna to be kind to Miyabi. This guy is also voiced by Okitsu Kazuyuki so we know he’s going to be a big deal in the plot later on. [How many famous otome seiyuu are we going to hire in this game? Broccoli: yes]

Depending on the card we picked earlier, a different person will be the selector. Kanna will negotiate with the selector to see if he can pick “suicide” and then she will revive him right after. This way, nobody will lose the game or die in-game.

At night, as Kanna walks in the hallways alone, she runs into Ran!! She gives him a big hug. However, Ran has no memory of what has happened since he’s arrived in UN:LOGICAL. Because Kanna already made the deal with the selector tomorrow, she cannot log out now and screw over that person. Ran replies he is not going anywhere if she isn’t.

The next day arrives. The selector chooses suicide. Kanna uses her revive ability and saves the selector. She collapses on the ground and ?vomits blood. She is tended to by Chihiro (CV: Kumagai Kentarou) who is a fellow flirty operator who acts as the medic in-game. Chihiro explains because this is a relatively new ability that hasn’t been tested, Kanna is experiencing side effects after using it. Miyabi is annoyed at Kanna but ultimately forgives her because she ended up making the game more entertaining for him.

As Kanna celebrates in the lounge with Souichi & Yuri for today’s success, all players receive a notification. For the next game, everyone is a selector. However, all of the players need to agree on the same option. If one person deviates, everyone loses.

On her way back to the room, Kanna sees Ran yelling at Kai?? Kai and Ran are brothers who were separated in early teens due to their parents divorcing. Ran stayed with dad. Kai went with mom, who also cheated on their dad and ran with the money. Ran tells Kai that he hates him and never wants to see him again, whereas Kai cares deeply for Ran.

Kanna reflects on the new game’s rules. This seems easy and too good to be true. Everyone can pick the same option to minimize losses. Even losing 5 is better than losing all, no? However, why would Miyabi, who seems to want to see the world burn, implement this rule? Kanna concludes that there is one “betrayer” who joined the game not for the money, but to inflict suffering on others. They do not care about the bigger goal but instead only want to stir drama, even if they lose in the process. They are playing for the game itself. Kanna thinks about Shiori and how she chose the option with most victims despite the group pleading with her to choose two victims instead. She has a crash meeting with the boys and come up with a plan…

The next day, Kanna fakes a game “start” and gets everyone to vote. Shiori reveals herself thinking this is the real game, so votes against the group’s consensus and laughs in everyone’s face as she thinks all of them are going to die with her. Kanna reveals that this is just a “test run” to find the betrayer. The real game starts now. Shiori says so what? You can’t log me out of the game, I will vote against you. As planned, Kai tries to talk her out of it and pulls on her sleeve or something. Shiori gets angry and shoves Kai. Kanna steps in and says as the operator, she does not condone “violence” which is a bannable offence [Kanna consulted the spirits the day before on the definition of “violence” in-game. They tell her that it’s up to the operator so anything goes.] Shiori procures a knife out of nowhere and attempts to stab… Ran?! Kai grabs the knife from Shiori’s hands and stabs her to death in-game instead. Shiori and Kai are both removed from the game. Kai tells Kanna it’s okay because nothing will happen to him IRL, and that he wanted to protect Ran.

A huge bug appears and everyone is thrown into it. The game announces that they need to start maintenance to debug. Everyone is logged out. The last vision Kanna sees is Ran holding her hand saying he will never let her go.

October 10th. Kanna and Ran return to real life and talk about the events that transpired in-game. Ran says there’s not enough evidence to go to the police, as even the texts/advertisements they received from the game were deleted somehow. They watch TV together, where the news reports that one player who lost the first round also strangely fell to his death IRL from a height. Two other victims who lost were also reported to have mysteriously fallen from heights and are in critical condition in hospital.

Kanna receives a text from Kai saying Souichi is asking to meet. Ran doesn’t go because he doesn’t want to see Kai, so Kanna goes alone. The crew meets IRL at a restaurant. Souichi reveals that he has the information (name, address, contact) of all participants except Ran and Kanna’s. However, he is not willing to say why or how he got his hands on this info. Clearly, this game is connected to the victims and everyone has been lied to. Souichi asks everyone to log out of the game and not be involved with it anymore.

Kanna regroups with Ran after the meeting. She notices Ran acting weird and sad. Ran blurts out that even though he does not know what the future has in store for them, he will never give up on him and Kanna, and will always find her and be with her, no matter where she is…

The environment becomes distorted. Ran disappears. Kanna is given another quiz where she is forced to answer and forcibly logged back in UN:LOGICAL again.

YURI (CV: SHIMAZAKI NOBUNAGA)

From the prologue, Yuri looks like the stereotypical cheerful, happy-go-lucky, flirty guy who does not hide his thoughts. Just like his hair, his name is Arisawa “Zadokieru” and thus tells people to just call him Yuri instead. Yuri’s priority is winning the 10 million yen (or is it), to the point he doesn’t care about consequences. He tells Kanna if he’s good enough, then he won’t lose so the consequences need not apply.

In the prologue, Kanna was surprised at how quickly Yuri agreed to choosing the suicide option and trusting her, as Yuri has proven himself to be a pragmatist all around, being razor focused on winning. When the two finally meet IRL, Kanna tells him that he has more conscience than he puts up to be. Yuri replies that Kanna is too naive for trusting someone she’s only met a few days ago. Kanna says despite Yuri’s goal, she wishes for his sake that he quits the game. Just as Kanna braces herself for Yuri teasing her “I might fall for you (for being so caring about others)”, instead he says “I might start disliking you.”

Anyways, both Kanna and Yuri find themselves back in UN:LOGICAL. Miyabi tells Kanna to go pound sand but at least, Ran appears to have successfully logged out. Kanna and Yuri talk about their struggles and form an alliance. Yuri tells Kanna that he’s not as “cold-hearted” as he’s led her to believe. He does care about others’ lives. He’s not like Shiori. However, what he doesn’t say is that he knows life is always about give and take & everything has a price. Yuri tells Kanna he wouldn’t know what to do without her being his only ally supporting him here. Kanna also tells him her goal is to end the game without casualties, which includes – destroying the UN:LOGICAL world so that the game cannot continue, which surprises Yuri.

This is a fan-service scene where Chihiro tries to put the moves on Kanna, and Yuri is like “don’t touch my buddy” lol. Chihiro and Yuri both mock each other for being more that meets the eye and “tricking” young women like Kanna and in the end asks Kanna to pick. Of course we pick Yuri.

The second stage is a 5 vs 5 battle in the forest where more rules are added:

• Violence and killing other players are now permitted in-game.
• Each player has the ability to use “detonate” unlimited times in a 3m radius, and “heal” themself or an ally once per turn.
• Each game lasts one hour.

Yuri, with the help of Kanna who can view the entire map, convinces his 4 teammates to not kill the other partners, but aim to survive: he asks 3 of them to hide, and along with another strong team member Himejima, the two of them will incapacitate the other team’s players so they pass out until the round ends.

The round ends with 0 casualties across the board. Miyabi is unimpressed but allows everyone to log out of the game while they perform more maintenance. Kanna wakes up at the hospital with the help of a pedestrian. She calls Ran who says they met up and said goodbye without any issues, so he is surprised to learn she is in hospital. We also learn from Chihiro that the victims possibly occurred in the first stage because of parasomnia which is out of the gaming company’s control.

After being discharged, Kanna and Yuri go on a date IRL to the movie theatre. Kanna reminisces about her childhood growing up with her older brother, to which Yuri replies he is a single child. Yuri also mentions in order for Kanna to reach her goal, the change has to come “within” the operators’ side – such as creating a giant, game-breaking bug so that the game has no choice but to be reset. At the end of the date, Yuri gifts Kanna a pair of earrings and says he means it “purely as a friend”.

People log back in game. The second round is about to start but Souichi is missing. The enemy team kidnapped him and threw him in a bugged zone. Fortunately, Kanna and Yuri find him in time before the game start. Ruri, who so far is an extremely shy spirit whose main focus is to have Yuri and others “play” with him, approaches Kanna and tells her something unexpected. Yuri explicitly asked about Kanna after they first met. Hence, it was a lie that he was a fan of Latria. Ruri seems to look forward to Kanna being angry with Yuri and breaking her relationship off with him. However, Kanna says she doesn’t mind to Ruri’s obvious disappointment. Ruri is trying to distance Kanna from Yuri. But why…

Right before the game commences, Miyabi makes an announcement that “Arisawa” & “Himejima” are imposters and announced their “real” names. [I use quotation marks because even those two are not real names.] This causes their teammates, including Souichi to doubt and not wanna work with them. In the control lounge, Chihiro proudly and playfully tells Kanna that he is the one who found out those two are industrial spies. He also reveals that when Kanna and Yuri were back in the real world, he had a way of surveilling them and knew about their date. To make things worse, Chihiro concludes it’s only fair that he as a fellow operator helps the other team, given Kanna clearly has a favourite. He projects a false map on Kanna’s screen leading to her giving wrong instructions to Yuri almost causing him to be killed. Unfortunately, the internal discord is too much and one of Yuri’s teammates turns on him and “Himejima”, killing the latter in process. Yuri orders Ruri to use “heal” but Ruri says it’s too late.

In the aftermath, Yuri tells Kanna that he knows she has a lot of questions for him & that he is willing to answer. He says some unknown power got him and Himejima in game. Their real goal is to investigate UN:LOGICAL. So far, he’s agreed to cooperate with Kanna and even become close to her because she is an X-factor that blew his investigation wide open: someone from the operator side, who is sympathetic towards the participants, and even has a skill that can reverse death… He says there was no reason why he wouldn’t put Kanna to good use as a resource & take a gamble with her just like in the first stage. However, seeing her be so scared on her own in-game, yet still choosing to stay for Ran & later to save the other members, she reminded him of “someone”…

Kanna tells Yuri that she does not mind Yuri lying to her in the past, as her plans would have not worked without someone carrying them out. She also still chooses to believe that Yuri is not a bad person. However, she states that this doesn’t mean she will tolerate Yuri lying to her forever, and that she will start to dislike him if he keeps hiding things from her. Yuri becomes pouty and says he doesn’t want to be lower than Miyabi in Kanna’s heart, but then acts tough again and says he will lie to her over and over again if that serves his goal, earning the comment “inconsistent” (ちぐはぐ) from Kanna.

K: Alright, in exchange for me forgiving you lying to me thus far, I want you to promise that you will not keep any secrets from me from now on.
Y: I cannot do that.
K: (You really could have just lied to me “yes” instead. I found this unexpected and random honesty, quite amusing.)

Finally, Kanna declares that she will step back and allow “three lies”. The two pinky promise. Yuri asks what’s the punishment. Kanna hasn’t decided yet and asks what Yuri dislikes, to which he says “romantic movies”. However, he jokes that if it means watching them with Kanna, perhaps he should break this promise as soon as possible so that they can go on a second date… Finally, Yuri thinks about one question: How come Himejima is killed and logged out of the game, but he is allowed to stay despite being known as a spy and imposter? What use does have have for the game for them to keep him?

Meanwhile, we see the mysterious “janitor” man talking to various spirits. Shinju is the fastest developing AI but tells “janitor” that he is bored and wants more authorities in the game. “Janitor” suggests to Shinju to bring “him” here again, and “maybe this time, you will fulfill your purpose.” Shinju replies he doesn’t care about bringing whoever, as he has his own top priority. “Janitor” laughs saying it’s surprising that as AI, they have their highest priority set by humans, but they’ve developed to a point where they disregard these goals and have their own sentience and wants for themselves. He then turns his attention to Ruri. Ruri asks “janitor” what to do in order for Kanna and Yuri to “notice” and “play with” him; “janitor” replies he needs to create more “surprises” for the two…

In the real world, Kanna briefly sees and interacts with Kohaku, who is as surprised as Kanna that he can exist in her mind in the real world, albeit briefly. Yuri texts Kanna things that don’t make sense and aren’t true at all, and asks to stay over at her place. Kanna is confused but says yes. When Yuri arrives, he tells Kanna to pack up and leave with him instead; he purposely left wrong leads in text messages as he knows the chat is being monitored. He wants to throw their followers off trail. He tells Kanna to put her smartphone in a box that blocks all electromagnetic waves – which was how the game has been surveilling her and logging her in against her will. However, they get some thugs following their car so Yuri has a Tokyo drift segment. They shake their pursuers off and arrive at one of Yuri’s hideouts.

As Kanna wonders to herself how many layers of lies Yuri has been surrounding himself in, she asks him if he was also lying to her in the movie theatre when he said they were like lovers and feeling dokidoki. Yuri says that was a lie and he didn’t feel dokidoki at all, but glances away and appears unnatural. [Kinda bummed this didn’t count as one of his three lies smh]

Yuri’s organization finds more information on Chihiro IRL: he is a rising medical researcher who specializes in stem cell research and transplant utilizing artificial organs. At this time, Yuri hears a dreaded doorbell ring. Nobody is supposed to know of this location. Yuri concludes that they have been surrounded. Chihiro walks in with a goon of lackeys. Yuri is unable to overpower the crew, even with Kanna’s help who smashes a chair at the people. Chihiro drugs the two and draws a syringe of blood from Yuri (okay dude how do you get an IV that fast though, all the nurses be jealous. Lmao) saying his blood is “valuable” to him & that Yuri is the best “experiment subject” he could ask for.

With his final bit of consciousness, Yuri carries Kanna and jumps from the third floor to escape… Ayo I’m pretty sure that’s a lethal height…? Nor was there mention of any cushioning. But in this case, Yuri is wounded but somehow even able to walk. I’m pretty sure his bones would have shattered in his body. Yuri gives Kanna another address telling her to seek refuge there. He tells Kanna to go on without him, as he is going to follow Chihiro to find his headquarters. [How though you look like you’re dying] Kanna cries and says she will not leave Yuri behind. Yuri sighs and says he really doesn’t want to bring Kanna into this & that he wanted to protect her.

Yuri eventually passes out and wakes up in a hotel room. Kanna has dragged him here and did not leave him behind. He starts feeling something special towards Kanna but tells himself that his priority is not to protect her. However, he has decided that Kanna is someone who is worth knowing his deepest secret. He tells her that he had a younger brother, keyword being had. However, Yuri failed to protect him; he is presumed to be dead. Hence, Yuri cherishes life and doesn’t want bloodshed unless it’s absolutely necessary to his goals. However, in this state, he is not sure if he can protect Kanna anymore. Kanna says, “Then, let me protect you.” She tells Yuri that she knew his escape would have been way smoother if he left without her. That given Yuri has already found the information he needed on Chihiro, she isn’t as useful to him anymore to his investigation. However, despite this, Yuri did not leave her behind. Therefore, she also chooses to not leave him behind & to drag him to the hotel. She tells Yuri, “since we are partners in crime now, let the past be the past, I don’t care anymore. You’re my buddy, no? I know you are a habitual liar. This is not a surprise to me.”

On the other hand, Chihiro talks to someone (I believe “janitor”?) reporting that Yuri got away. Chihiro thinks to himself that Kanna will be useful to him in baiting Yuri in. However, the voice warns him that he is not allowed to harm Kanna at any costs.

Kanna tells Yuri that she has decided to log back into the game. She feels responsible for all the players, not just those she is close to like Ran or Yuri. She has changed the course of the game, so it’s her job to see to the end. On the other hand, she can interact with Chihiro in-game and perhaps provide intel for Yuri. Yuri admires Kanna for being so selfless. He also wonders whether the gamebreaking bug can be created through the spirits. Given the spirits have been programmed to be as intimate to their masters as possible, if humans refuse to interact with them or have a meaningful relationship with them, this might “stress” them out and cause them to go berserk.

Souichi manages to convince all the remaining players to log out of the game and keep their smart phones in the insulating boxes. Hence, UN:LOGICAL is technically concluded. However, Yuri and Kanna receive a call from Chihiro asking for “Riou’s older brother”. Yuri becomes angry for the first time in this route, demanding Chihiro to tell him about Riou’s whereabouts. Chihiro says if Yuri wants to meet Riou, even an AI one, then he should re-enter UN:LOGICAL and he will be waiting for them. Yuri wants to join the game, but lies to Kanna saying they should stop being buddies as he can’t protect her anymore and has no use for her (lol). He also tells Kanna that Riou ran away from home 4 years ago after an argument with him.

None of this matters because somehow both Yuri and Kanna get drugged and taken to UN:LOGICAL. They wake up to a Ruri who is excited to “play” with them. They also find Kai and Shinju here. Shinju is noted by Yuri to be modelled after Riou, sharing the same appearance. Kai also got brought here due to being Shinju’s master. Chihiro tells Yuri that even Shinju’s personality is modelled after Riou, as it’s much faster to start from some kind of template than from scratch and waiting for the AI to develop itself. However, Shinju started out “adorable” but quickly became disagreeable and mean…

Anyways, the game this special round is “king’s game” where everyone rolls two dice. Person with highest points becomes “king” and can order any member to do something that pops up from a menu. Not obeying the order would kill the character instantly. If the king doesn’t pick, they will also die. The game will not end until someone dies. Yuri is like what the fuck. Ruri gets upset and says this is because he’s tried to play with Yuri and Kanna, to get their attention so hard, yet they ignored him, so now he’s going to get their attention with this & teach them a lesson.

As a test run, Ruri becomes king and orders Kai to kiss Kanna. Kai comes up to Kanna and is like I know you don’t like me that way but let’s just get out of this. Kanna pushes him away. Just as Kai thinks he is going to die, Ruri laughs and says this is a test run so there’s no penalty.

For the next two rounds, Ruri rigs the game so that he becomes king both times. Both time, he tells Kanan to pick one person to receive punishment between Kai and Yuri. The first time is electrocution, second time drinking poison. Both Kai and Yuri beg Kanna to pick them (lol). To get the good ending, we have to pick Yuri both times. Shinju would come up to electrocute or give Yuri poison, which quite literally inflicts emotional damage to the latter. Ruri at this point goes full yandere and tells Yuri that because they have low affinity, he doesn’t even care if Yuri dies. Not only will they never be friends, Ruri wants Yuri to suffer as much as possible before reaching his painful death…

In the meantime, Kanna attempts to cause an already unstable Ruri to bug out by purposefully ignoring him and talking to Kohaku only, including begging him to save them from this situation, that she has someone she loves and will do anything for. Kohaku is not impressed with Ruri stepping out of line, but says unfortunately he cannot change the rules of the game.

Kanna becomes king (or queen?) the third round. However, all three options show “the future between you two”. She picks a random one and the question is:

Yuri tells Kanna to not worry about and kill him, because he is used to dilemmas like this before admitting that this is the second major lie he’s told her. [I guess the first major one is when he pretended to stop being buddies with her.]

Kanna ends up being unable to choose and takes the penalty herself. She literally implodes. In her near-death state, she hears Chihiro and Ruri discuss on how to continue the game. However, Miyabi calls in and notices that the two have created a game without his permission. Ruri also finally goes berserk from Kanna ignoring him all this time and creates a huge bug.

Everyone spontaneously heals their wounds in the bug. Ruri calms down (lol) and apologizes to everyone especially Yuri, who tells him he’s a little piece of shit and he never wants to see him again. I mean, I don’t fully blame Ruri because clearly there was a lot of foreshadowing that he got manipulated. “Janitor” appears but we don’t learn anything from him. He says the game needs to be reset with everything erased – Kanna has achieved her goal, for now I guess?

This scene is much later on but I put it here to finish the in-game storyline. Sometime after the humans have exited the game, before the reset, Menou and Ruri is seen talking to each other before they become formatted. Ruri says he regrets stepping out of line, but has noticed Menou also sneakily making small changes to the system, instead of obeying Miyabi’s orders. Menou cryptically says, like you Ruri I also have my own dream that is not programmed by humans and laments that this is a sad, hopeless world before the two become deleted. I guess we will have to see what Menou’s dream is in Souichi’s route, wink wink nudge nudge.

Kanna and Yuri return to the real-life world where Yuri confesses to Kanna.

His real name is Kagura Yuuri. He joined “JEC” at the invitation of “Himejima” thinking this will grant him the resources to find Riou, who ran away from home. The camera pans and we see the real-life Kagura Riou well and alive, and talking to Chihiro in a hospital gown.

JEC has tracked down Chihiro’s biotech company and plans to attack it tonight to gain access to his experimental data so they can bring Chihiro to justice as he’s been illegally performing transplants on humans. Yuri teases Kanna a bit and asks for a good luck chant such as “Yuri-san fight~” (I didn’t come up with this he did). Instead, Kanna earnestly takes his hand and kisses it as a token of good wishes.

UN:LOGICAL is likely reseted around this time. In the evening, Kanna sees Kohaku for the last time, IRL too. Kohaku says he is able to appear because of their bond. He asks Kanna if she loves Yuri, and teleports her in the middle of the biotech company, saying he is just granting a wish from the bottom of her own heart. Kohaku then completely disappears.

While Yuri and co. are fighting Chihiro’s people outside, Kanna meets Riou and learns about his past with Yuri. Riou did not keep good company and got into drugs and gambling. One night, he came home late again, with Yuri telling him to stop being friends with those people. This made Riou angry and he left the house. He hung with his friends and overdosed on drugs. Chihiro found Riou and said without any last ditch effect, he would certainly die from organ failure. instead, he asked if Riou was willing to give himself a chance at life – by being his transplant candidate and test subject. The surgery was successful and Riou lives until today with deep gratitude for Chihiro and ongoing resentment towards Yuri.

At this time, Yuri forces Chihiro into the same room and declares that Chihiro will be arrested for illegally performing medical experimentation. He says that he knows Chihiro has stage 3 liver cancer IRL and hence, desperate for a cure, which Chihiro doesn’t deny. [This hit hard because earlier Chihiro sarcastically “joked” about him having end-stage cancer in attempt to guilt Kanna into doing something with him, only for Yuri to say stop using obvious tricks to bait naive people; turns out it’s real.] Chihiro says Riou was the first successful case he had [I wonder how many people he killed before that]. However, he’s grown attached to Riou and doesn’t want to do further experimentation on him. Hence, he needs another test subject such as Yuri.

Chihiro becomes arrested. Riou becomes extremely agitated shouting and crying that he wants to join Chihiro in jail, as he owes his life to Chihiro. [Umehara for once showed some emotion in his voice acting, so that’s an improvement.] Riou tells Yuri that he hates him and will not forgive him. Yuri says he doesn’t mind being hated by his own brother as long as Riou continues to live on.

Yuri and Kanna walk outside with Yuri commenting that was his third lie. The two walk under the sunset, where Yuri says that all his life, he’s told himself to do the things that he “has” to do. If something cannot be helped, if something must be discarded, then he will do it even if it’s an emotionally difficult decision for him. He tries to act without being tied down by emotion and only by logic. However, he started to have a change of heart when he saw Kanna being sad and torn for the fates of people that supposedly did not matter. He said, at that moment, I realized I too was also sad.

Despite making a difficult decision, Yuri pretends to be calm before breaking down and saying this is the fourth time he’s lied to Kanna. He smiles and asks Kanna what the “penalty” is and if he can go on a movie date with her. He then confesses to her again to which Kanna tells him she loves him too.

This is more like after-ending followup. Yuri and Kanna become lovers. Yuri stays over at Kanna’s place and in contrast with what he said earlier in the route, he tells Kanna that he definitely “has ulterior motives” when alone with another cute girl like her.

Kanna gifts him a hair tie & we get our kiss CG. I love these few last CGs in the hue of the sunset.

Bad Endings:

There are several bad endings to each route. I will only talk about the memorable ones. The un:logical ending is Yuri takes a knife in game and stabs himself multiple times so that Kanna doesn’t have to choose. However, the lines between game and reality blurs. Kanna wakes up to her own room covered in blood and a dead Yuri beside her covered in self-inflicted stab wounds.

In another bad ending, Kanna picked Kai to take the poison, who dies for her. UN:LOGICAL is terminated. However, waking up in the real world, Kanna never sees or hears from Yuri again. She starts living with Kai who is super horny for her 24/7 but both of them feel some kind of irreplaceable emptiness inside.

Thoughts:

I thought Yuri was going to be some generic cheerful guy but this starter route ended up being a lot darker than expected (despite it being the most removed from the truth behind UN:LOGICAL)! If this is the tone to expect for the remainder of the game… Then we have a game on our hands.

Yuri is someone who is “cold” on the outside. I put cold in quotation marks because he is not just a textbook tsundere but someone who is extremely rational to the point he does not allow emotion and is extremely goal-oriented. He and Kanna (who is the more emotional & nurturing of the two) make an unlikely combo. He becomes moved by Kanna’s ideals and finds himself resonating her feelings – hurting when she is. With the help of several rollercoasters of events, the two become inseparable. I like their dynamic of how Kanna also chooses to understand Yuri and his lies out of pragmatism because she believes deep down he has a good heart, and eventually warms his cold heart up with her kindness.

I also really like Kanna so far! She actively involved in the routes with witty thinking and not afraid to get a little rowdy. I also do not think she is walked over by “allowing” Yuri to lie. I view it more as a convenient partnership at first, a “fine, keep your secrets” because they have been helping each other. However, may I just say that it’s diabolical that Yuri jumped from THREE STORIES and didn’t even suffer a fracture let alone stayed alive? Maybe this is why Chihiro is so obsessed with him as the next test subject [which we never fully learn why Yuri instead of random Joe Schmoe]. I’d be too.

Finally, I’m a little confused as the game never explained why Chihiro was so obsessed with Yuri particularly as a test subject. I know he has Riou but there’s nothing about Yuri that he has to have him as his next test subject. He could have gone for any Joe Schmoe walking down the street. Yuri is a particularly difficult target with his fighting skills and intelligence, so it didn’t make sense as to why other than the plot dictates it.

SOUICHI (CV: UCHIDA YUUMA)

When Kanna approaches Souichi during the first round to cooperate, Souichi cautiously agrees after verifying her operator ability with Menou. Fundamentally, he agrees with her “minimize casualties” approach and is impressed that she goes out of her way to help others. Souichi is immediately drawn to Kanna’s selflessness and character integrity; how she always treats other with kind intentions without ulterior motives.

After the crew logs back into the game, Kanna goes to find Souichi. She finds him not in the living room and hears showering sounds. Just as she thinks to herself “is this going to turn out like the shoujo mangas (where the guy walks out naked)” Souichi walks out almost naked LMAO – only because his daily horoscope tells him to cover himself when walking out of the shower.

Menou lmao (a Taiwanese reviewer when reviewing this route says “usually cutesy pink characters end up having the darkest intentions” – I’m just going to foreshadow here)

As an AI created? by Miyabi, Menou is sad that Souichi does not agree with his ways and is plotting against him and the game. However, in response to Souichi, Menou says if he wishes to end this game-world, then she will follow him, because she wants to make Souichi’s dreams come true and him happy.

The second stage features the game “mirror world” where participants will be dropped into the memory of one of the participants. They need to find items of personal significance to the owner. There are three memories with three items each – but ten participants. In addition, people from the memories will attack the participants when they come close to the cherished items. Finally, if one of the participants figure out whose memory this belongs to, they need to announce it in Conan style and with the owner’s real name; this will disqualify the memory owner from the game. As an operator, Kanna is allowed to join the game and given the ability to shut down a memory if “things go wrong”.

The first memory begins. Everyone is dropped into a street where they are chased by thugs threatening to kill them/the owner. Souichi has his ass handed over to him until Yuri comes to the rescue and proves to be an exceptional fighter [which would make sense if we played his route]. After the two escape to safety and tend to Souichi’s wounds, Souichi holds Kanna’s hands and says he admires her courage for attempting to negotiate with the thugs even if she is scared. He tells her that she doesn’t need to pretend to be strong and it’s okay to be honest with feeling scared and vulnerable. Kanna thinks to herself that Souichi is like a godfather and she’s at a confession, lol. Basically, so far, Souichi appears to be this mature and gentle male figure who isn’t afraid to show his vulnerabilities and be real… someone who is associated with all the “good” qualities and indeed Yosuga-like from OlySoi.

The two then encounter a person who is under the influence of drugs and runs away again into a room. Having played Yuri’s route, this is the same hideout he took Kanna too. Hence, this is Yuri’s memory. At this time, water starts pouring into the room. At this rate, the two will be drowned. At the last minute, Kanna finds a picture of Riou which was one of the key items. She comments on Riou looking like Shinju; as she doesn’t know Yuri’s story this clue stops here. She urges Souichi to announce Yuri as the memory owner. However, Souichi says “Zadkiel” is not Yuri’s real name; hence, it wouldn’t do anything. Water rises over the two’s necks…

Fortunately, the game ends at this time with all three key items being found. Kanna along with Souichi who has clung to her so tightly are teleported to the operating room. Souichi says he is very scared as he cannot swim. Aww. Kanna is kind of disappointed here that this was the reason & blushes at herself for getting flustered over Souichi hugging her thinking it was something more. [This route Kanna 1000% falls for Souichi first…]

After the game, Souichi, Kanna talk to Himejima, who asks them an interesting question: I thought everyone’s goal here is to “win”, who exactly asked you to “save” all of them? Souichi admits that this is his own dream & to a degree “just satisfying myself.” At this time, the announcer says the game will enter maintenance. Logging out of the game, we note it is Oct 13th. Kanna receives a text from Souichi asking her to come meet one of the victims who have recovered from the first stage tomorrow with him.

The next day, the two visit the victim, who calls Souichi “doctor” and says she wants to find out where Shiori lives IRL. She says when she fell from the building, she was extremely scared and didn’t want to die, but her body just moved on its own. She blames all of this on Shiori, not only because she chose five random victims against the flow but also because of the inflammatory content she’s been posting online since the incidents, mocking the victims. [I mean, I think the second part is overboard. However, you joined a game willingly knowing you could lose, and you got unlucky. How is that Shiori’s fault lol] She shows the two Shiori’s social media (Gene) account, where Shiori talks about the “fateful meeting” and falling in love with “K-kun” (Kai).

If the many references to psychological effects in the route so far doesn’t give you a hint, Souichi is a licensed psychologist who does virtual sessions with his clients without seeing their faces. The uncanny part is that all of the participants except Kanna/Ran are his online clients. Hence, he has their real-life information as their psychologist. Since Kai and Shiori were disqualified in the first stage, he has not been able to reach Shiori.

As Souichi walks Kanna back to her apartment, they hear a quarrel between… Kai and Shiori? Shiori has been stalking Kai IRL despite Kai telling her off. Kai tells Kanna to be wary of the spirits as they are not all glitter and butterflies and can be come “devils”. [More in Kai’s route…]

The next day, Kanna receives a text from Shiori asking Kanna to meet for drinks. Kanna isn’t interested so replies that she is busy with work. Shiori says no problem, I’m already in front of your apartment and basically threatened to break in. 💀

So, Kanna and Shiori go out to a hotel bar for drinks. Shiori beams about how Kai is the man fated to be her husband but turns the focus of the conversation to be Souichi. Shiori says Souichi appears sweet and gentle on the outside, but “usually his type has a wandering eye and are huge womanizers and hate women on the inside”. Kanna isn’t having any of this and retorts that Souichi is not like that, that he’s a man with integrity… until Shiori suddenly gestures Kanna to hide, because the table across from them…

Souichi talks to a beautiful woman and isn’t interested in courting her at all, but instead pushes her to book a room upstairs and have sex. Kanna and us are all like ?!??! while Shiori cheerily smiles and says she knew it. The woman asks Souichi if he ever wants to settle down to which he replies no, he wouldn’t want to. Then, he turns around and sees Kanna and Shiori being 👁️👄👁️ and loses his crap lol, with the woman commenting “oh no, are they your other side pieces?” and teasing that Kanna is exactly the type that will fall for Souichi’s exterior.

The next part of stage two commences and everyone logs back. Souichi tells a shaken Kanna that he’s really embarrassed and hopes she can forget that encounter. They first enter a hospital where again, Yuri fends off the attackers. The group finds one of the key items which is a sealed letter. The memory then teleports Kanna into a room with Himejima. This is Souichi’s apartment; at this point, Kanna doesn’t know but we do from previous scenes. However, as Kanna finds books on psychology and magazines on finding the best egg sandwiches, she starts to realize… The telephone rings. Himejima picks up. Kanna faintly hears an angry man shouting “You must take full responsibility for this! It’s all because of you…”

Souichi enters the room. However, he acts weirdly. Kanna turns around; Himejima has disappeared. Souichi appears sad and says he wasn’t able to stop “it” even though he understands nobody has the right to dictate others to do “it”… He asks himself if it would have been better to tell them to “live for me” as long as it meant keeping them alive. Memory-Souichi sees Kanna and gets angry, telling her to get out “of his heart”.

He closes the distance between them and attempts to suffocate Kanna while telling her that her suffering will end and to do him a favour and not cry…Right before Kanna loses consciousness, he takes away his hand and tongue kisses Kanna [yes there is a CG variation for this lmao] We have to pick the option to “accept” instead of pushing him away… 💀 Even though the logical thing to do is to pull away, Kanna cannot help wanting to know more about the real Souichi, why he currently has such a sad expression and how she can make him stop suffering like this (the game’s words not mine).

The memory ends again with all key items found. Kanna meets the real Souichi and is afraid to tell him what happened in the memory. Instead, she asks him if there is “really” anything she can help with. Souichi doesn’t directly answer this question. He says, “I am not all harmless and positive. I too have disappointment towards this world, towards others, regret after he failed to protect things he vowed to protect, and… irritation when people wish they could die. He says he has ugly emotions and intentions too, and hopes that Kanna never sees this darker side of him because he wouldn’t know what “that” personality would do to her (Kanna: well it already happened). He says if she did see that side of him, he would definitely scar her, so he asks Kanna to be wary of and not blindly trust him.

In the background, Himejima approaches Miyabi for a business deal but the latter doesn’t appear to be interested. Before the participants log out, Menou and Kohaku talk about their human partners, with Menou saying that she knows Souichi’s wish is for a certain tragedy to never happen again.

Oct 16th. Shiori and Kanna have coffee together. Kanna confronts Shiori about her inflammatory posts online. Shiori says she can take down these posts on one condition: that Kanna promises to never contact Kai again. Kanna agrees to the deal. After she reaches home, Souichi calls her but accidentally on video and doesn’t realize until they see each other. After their conversation, Kanna purposely tries to prolong the call by asking Souichi questions about his personal likes and dislikes. Girl you are so in love with him-

As Kanna prepares to retire for the night, she gets a text from Kai consisting of gibberish. Having a bad feeling, she calls Kai. Shiori picks up and asks Kanna why she broke their promise, with Kai heard crying for help in the background before Shiori hangs up. Kanna contacts Souichi who go to Kai’s apartment together. They enter an apartment with blood everywhere. Shiori has been expecting them and interprets Kanna’s intrusion as her still having feelings for Kai as his ex-girlfriend; she will not forgive this. Shiori says others do not understand, but to her, inflicting pain and even death is the highest form of love [petition for Shiori to be isekai-ed to Diabolik Lovers NOW]

Souichi steps in and provokes Shiori, saying she is stupid and naive etc. causing Shiori to lose her cool. Kanna, finding an opportunity, headbutts Shiori (who still has a knife in her hand!!) with all her strength. The police arrives. Great improvisation cooperation from the two but certainly very, very risky wow. A wounded Kai hugs Kanna and begs her to stay behind alone with him 🥺 but sorry Kai baby this is Souichi’s route so he is like nah bruh get on the ambulance lmao.

The next day, Kanna asks if it was her fault for calling Kai to check in. Of course it wasn’t her fault! Plus, Kai was already being tortured by Shiori when Kanna called and would certainly have died without intervention. Souichi tells Kanna that he had to create an opening otherwise Shiori was going to slowly kill them all. He applauds Kanna for reading the situation so quickly and doing exactly what was needed to neutralize the perpetrator. He says he likes how strong & smart she is ❤️ Kanna quickly replies that she also likes Souichi, which startles him, as he meant it as a compliment not a confession… Kanna PRESSES ON asking, well what if I like you that way? Souichi gets flustered and asks Kanna to stop teasing him, which only makes her want to tease him even more~ Damn. If y’all are looking for a proactive protagonist this is the game western otome girlies, can’t complain after this game.

Himejima finds Kanna and tells her that one of Souichi’s past clients committed suicide. He says the phone call in Souichi’s memory was from the victim’s family. Himejima says he had a certain promise with the victim. However, Souichi came in and broke that promise, and has been preventing similar “victims” from appearing. Kanna defends Souichi, only to have Himejima say that she is brainwashed by him.

The players log back into the game. There is a study meeting among all the spirits which is really funny but won’t go over here due to length. At the end, Kanna walks in. Menou asks her to convince Souichi and Himejima to log into the game for stage three, knowing Souichi initially plans to quit after stage two. Menou says this is to make Souichi’s wish become reality, so that the world is no longer a sad place. She apologizes for being cryptic but says at this time, she can’t reveal any more details.

The third and final memory of stage two is a room without windows or ventilation. This appears to be a gathering for people who want to commit suicide and “be released from their suffering”. They listen to an autotuned voice in a TV who appears to be the organizer of this event. Carbon monoxide is released and not only the people in the memory, but also the participants start having difficulty breathing. At this rate, everyone will die if the three key items are not discovered. Everyone starts pleading for the memory owner to declare themself and lose the game so everyone else can live.

Kanna deduces that Himejima is the owner of this memory and the dog-figure in the TV because of the exact same phrases that they tend to use in the memory and conversation with her. However, Himejima is an alias so the game still doesn’t end. Souichi confronts Himejima, who says he fundamentally disagrees with Souichi’s philosophy, that he truly believes he is doing those people a service, and that Souichi is only prolonging their suffering by manipulating them staying on this world. Souichi’s victim was also someone who initially agreed to go to Himejima’s “event” but got talked out by Souichi. [I’m curious how Himejima disposed of all those bodies…] However, she latched onto him emotionally and fell in love with him. When she found out her feelings were not reciprocated, she committed suicide anyway. Himejima refuses to reveal his real name and leaves.

The mirror world starts to collapse. A shard falls down. Kanna pushes Souichi and takes the hit for him, telling him that she values his life more than her own. Souichi gets angry at Kanna’s recklessness and tells her that she is never allowed to put others before her own life. Kanna says Souichi must have desperately not wanted his ex-client to die… so she is only feeling and doing the same but towards him. Souichi replies that those two are completely different issues, that he is nowhere near a good person like Kanna. His client’s death has broken Souichi since as he attributes her death to himself, and starts only seeking friends with benefits and not wanting to love or show his heart to anyone again. Kanna replies none of this matters. She took action out of her own volition, because she loves Souichi. She does not expect him to reciprocate and is only telling him how she feels. She can even treat Souichi as an idol and promises she won’t be a yumejoshi and want to marry her oshi 💀💀💀 Finally Kohaku appears and Kanna remembers that she has an ability to close the memory down 💀💀💀

The stage ends with Yuri being the only one disqualified. Kanna opens a letter addressed to “Toudou-san” which is Himejima’s real name. This was from Souichi’s victim apologizing to Toudou that she cannot attend his “event” because she has fallen in love with her therapist and wants to live on this world for the sole purpose of “hearing his voice”. With the events that transpired, Souichi scares the other participants off from logging back into stage three. Souichi and Kanna also confront Miyabi, who says it’s a coincidence that Souichi’s clients were invited to the game because the AI selects for a specific type of personality trait that is “dependent on others” and trains the spirits easier…

Players are back in the real world. Souichi calls Yuri who says he still hasn’t heard from “Himejima”. Yuri fills us in on how he met Himejima and joined JEC, how Himejima participated in some shady businesses in addition to this “suicide club”, and shares that based on his investigations, there are multiple factions within the operation of UN:LOGICAL and it’s not just Miyabi running the show. There is a “traitor” working against his goals.

Knowing Souichi’s past, Kanna still cannot give up her love for him. She asks him out to the hotel where he meets up with his FWB and asks for her “chance” with him including asking him to get a room with her. Souichi is taken aback by how forward Kanna is and how much she likes him. However, he tells her that if they have sex now, they will never go back to what they have now, and she will be just another friend with benefit and never anything more. He asks if this is what she wants from him. Kanna tells him this is not what she wants. He says that Kanna is the first person that knows the real him and still decides to love him and accept everything about him. He asks if she is disappointed knowing he has this other side, to which she replies “no, that only makes my heart race faster.” Souichi tells Kanna “because you are so important to me, so I must turn you down tonight. Thank you for your affection.”

On their way back, both Kanna and Souichi see Kohaku and Menou standing the real world. Menou begs Souichi and Kanna to log back into the game because Himejima and Miyabi have made a deal to make UN:LOGICAL the new suicide club that is outside of the influence of law [we know this is a lie because Miyabi clearly was not interested.] Kanna asks Menou why it has to be her and Souichi. Menou gives a vague answer that Himejima is really “interested” in the two. Either way, the two look at each other and decide to return to UN:LOGICAL to stop Himejima.

Menou announces to Kanna/Himejima/Souichi that the game for this round is “bird cage” and really it’s just some maze that each person walks through. The three of them get out relatively quickly to an excited Menou, saying her “emulation” is now complete. With this, she can fulfill her “fate”… She starts being a little creepy. She talks about creating a “perfect God” for the real world.

In short, Menou sees Souichi suffering from the various negative emotions and despair that humans of the real world, and decides that the world needs to be fixed now to prevent more people from committing suicide. How? Her algorithm leads to one solution: to create a perfect God that will lead humankind. This part is from Menou’s data – which is absolutely worth the read – I think? When Menou was still starting out as an AI, she learned from big data from various posts, whatever information she could see on the internet. She was overwhelmed by the amount of negativity there, until she found Souichi who was a gentle guiding light to the people who were suffering and grew some sort of worship towards him. Hence, in Menou’s mind, the perfect God would have Souichi’s gentleness, but also Himejima’s practicality. Finally, she decides the perfect vessel would be Kanna, i.e. she will let Kohaku overwrite Kanna’s personality when their affinity reaches 100% which is the setting of all players and their spirits. This is not what Miyabi intended but someone with authority in the game system has the AIs reprogrammed this behind his back. Menou hopes that after the creation of “God” she can finally “commit suicide” because she can no longer bear the illogicality of human emotions and how much they’ve made her suffer.

Despite this, Miyabi doesn’t want to reset Menou because he will lose all the data from training her. He says it’s too late to save Kanna anyway (because Kohaku and her affinity is already at 100% and you can’t decrease affinity) but promises he will at least stop Menou from going more berserk. Souichi embraces Kanna and says his goodbye, apologizing for his arrogance and hurting her all along. Kanna replies that the “human” part in her has always loved him with all her heart, no matter what part of him. Souichi says he will never give up on Kanna and will stay by her side even if she becomes replaced with an AI at her core – even if they die together.

In the meantime, Miyabi talks to Chihiro and says he knows that Chihiro has been illegally causing disappearances of people in real life as his test subjects. He also reveals that Menou was the AI that decided the players for this game. Everyone meets in the control room (the ???? room that we can’t enter during the game) where Menou is finalizing her program & Miyabi makes the decision to reset Menou & Kohaku – but will need the crowd to buy him some time. Souichi tells Menou that she has misinterpreted his dream & he never wished for any of this to happen. Kohaku smiles as he becomes reset, telling Kanna to not miss him as he tried to replace her (the farewell was actually really sad. Poor Kohaku is manipulated). Menou begs Miyabi to not reset her and make her experience this hell all over again. She also at the last minute learns “empathy”: she fears being replaced by a new personality, but has been attempting to do this to Kanna. She reflects on whether she’s made a grave mistake; all too little too late.

Menou disappears, but not at the command of Miyabi…

Miyabi says the Hidaka standing in front of him is not the Hidaka he used to know, and demands to know who is “within” him. Hidaka starts laughing maniacally, his voice overlapping with a female voice. She says she is impressed the Miyabi saw through Hidaka so quickly despite taking his cover. Who is she? Is she also AI with those wings? She tells Miyabi that he is very necessary to her plan and “wish”… Miyabi passes out. The spirit? says “wait for me, Kanna. I am coming for you.”

October 20th. Kanna and Souichi log out of the game. Kanna admires Souichi’s face until he “wakes up” and says he’s been pretending to be asleep all along. Souichi thanks Kanna for not giving up on him all this time, and asks if today should be their anniversary as lovers. Kanna happily accepts, then sheepishly asks Souichi if he can stop seeing his FWBs… Souichi gets embarrassed and says of course, his deal with all of them was that if either party finds their “the one” then they will block each other’s numbers.

The rest is some cute fluffy dating events, including their first kiss with the real Souichi and first night… The end.

Bad Ends:

The noteworthy only bad ending outside of the unlogical end is the one where Menou overrides Souichi’s choice of “suicide” in the first round because she loves him so deeply and doesn’t want him to make the choice. She will face a grave penalty for this, but says it’s worth it.

The unlogical end is Kanna gets replaced by the “God” AI created by Menou. She lives in with Souichi. He cries when she mechanically talks to him and asks when the real Kanna will be back.

Thoughts:

Souichi is probably the most polarizing character of the game. If you can accept his part of having multiple FWB (which will be a dealbreaker for many players) then you will overall enjoy their story. He is an idealist, a dreamer, an advocate, who is an observer (as he explains to Kanna on the role of a psychologist is not to guide/teach but to listen and encourage) of the various sufferings of people in this world. However, the dreamer is forced to wake up when his victim dies because of something he cannot control, but due to a reason tied to him nonetheless. He completely detaches himself from the mundane, vowing to not be involved in any romance or showing his true self, while stubbornly clinging onto his beliefs and doing what little things he could to make the world a better place – in a way Menou is a more extreme version of him, a dreamer in her own respect.

Kanna serves as the person who pulls him down from the clouds back into the mundane world. She remains active and extremely forward and proactive in this route. She is the one who fell for Souichi first and likes him a lot more than he does to her until the final part of the game. This is a route of “I can fix him” and because it’s a game, she does fix him in the end. She became the one that was “different from all the other girls” to Souichi and his first real girlfriend in a long time.

While I looked forward to this route the most from the preview & always love to see proactive MCs in otome games, this route kind of pushed on my boundaries because I felt the ending was too good to be real. Kanna asks him to treat her as his “only” and he just cuts all the other girls off? I know there was that one FWB who was strictly FWB with him and didn’t have any emotional attachment. However, while I admire Souichi as a character, if Kanna was my little sister, I would never, ever accept him as my brother in law – just what makes her think she will be the one to “fix” him, how do I know if he wouldn’t cheat on her; when there are so many people out there who don’t need fixing? Even though Souichi gives a pretty good confession in the end, I feel Kanna will always be the one doing the heavy lifting and making sacrifices in this relationship.

KAI (CV: ISHIKAWA KAITO)

When Kanna picks the Pegasus card, Miyabi laughs and says Kanna really wants to see the world burn by picking this one. Kanna then learns Kai has been chosen as the next selector. She goes to his room to discuss cooperating on the next stage and overhears Shinju saying extremely mean things to Kai including “you’re a traitor and deserve to die”. Kai lets her in and says “yes” when Kanna asks him for a favour without even hearing what her request is 😂 He says he was planning on choosing “suicide” either way so this works out. In return, Kai asks Kanna out on a date in-game which she obliges.

We know what happens at the end of stage one. In this route, Souichi convinces everyone to forfeit the game so it technically ended. However, Kanna is logged back into the game. She checks her terminal; no one else is here. She goes outside and … Kai literally falls from the sky, lands on top of her, declares his love for her, and asks her to marry him?!

Kai explains to Kanna why he abruptly asked her out then broke up with her. Kai was a participant of the last UN:LOGICAL game one year ago. Shinju was his spirit at the time. However, since that game concluded he’s been seeing Shinju IRL who has been haunting his visions. The cafe was the not the firs time he met Kanna. Kanna helped him out in the street when he was in need but didn’t remember Kai. [We get a detailed flashback later on in the game. Kai was being haunted by Shinju badly he almost passed out, Kanna came rushing to him as a stranger, offering to care for him, and only left after Kai said he was okay. Kai told himself that he wished he had the courage to ask her out, but with how unstable his mental state is with Shinju, it’s best to not disturb her life, not like he would see her again… until he did.] Kanna thanks Kai for the explanation and confession but still cannot reciprocate his feelings at this time. Kai tells her that he understands but will not give up.

Even though the game should have ended, Shinju and Kohaku announce that there is a “revival” event of players who have been DQ’ed in the past. The contestants are Kai, Shiori, and Oshino, who was the person who died first round with the gruesome CG. Oshino is an AI in this stage and does not have knowledge that he died previously in-game or IRL. This stage is a cooking show. Kanna serves as the players’ assistant. Shiori and Oshino get easy materials like beef to cook with but Kai gets assigned toxic slime jelly. Despite being an amazing cook, Kai fails the stage and is about to be eliminated. Shiori immediately asks to be eliminated as well as her only point of playing this game is to be with Kai, to the point she threatens suicide if they don’t DQ her along with him.

Kai asks Miyabi to be an operator as well because he wants to be with Kanna. Lol at Miyabi’s reaction. In the end, Miyabi agrees because he finds it interesting to impose a penalty system on Kanna and later Kai: if they don’t play by the game’s rules, the other party will be punished by death in-game (e.g. if Kanna breaks the rules, Kai would die; vice versa).

In private, Kai tells Kanna that this was Shinju’s idea. Kai also says this year UN:LOGICAL’s format is much different from last year’s. They run into “janitor” who reads tarot cards for them and say they are a bad match romantically. However, this is the most important comment. What does he mean? [Janitor also says Kanna’s husband would eat a lot of bread, to which Kai’s reaction is “I’m only going to eat bread for the rest of my life” lmao]

After the cooking show, the second stage officially begins now with more participants invited back. Violence is permitted and even necessary for this stage:

1. There is a “front” and “back” stage. At the front, there is a carousel with everyone having their own horse that corresponds to their life. Breaking the horse would kill the player as well.
2. The operators can choose to “hide” a player by actually teleporting them to the back stage where they are chased by a “reaper” whose goal is to kill them. The reaper is an operator.
3. At the same time, a copy of the original player that got hidden is created. The players can see how many players are hidden at any time.
4. The players’ goal is to retrieve the hidden players by identifying who is the fake among them, and attacking their horse – which would bring the player back to the front, if they haven’t been killed by the reaper.

Chihiro is the game master for this stage. He tells Kanna that she will decide the second player that gets hidden, as he has decided person #1. As for Kai, he is the reaper at the back stage. He tells Kai that he has 20 minutes to kill the hidden player otherwise, he will face the penalty of having Kanna killed in-game.

Chihiro chose Yuri as the first player to be hidden (Kanna does not know this). Kanna chooses Oshino as he is an AI and not a real human, making the choice somewhat less difficult for her. However, Kai unexpectedly meets Ran backstage (Ran is not a player at the front). Ran still resents Kai for abandoning him when they were children, and coldly tells Kai to die and not disturb his peace with Kanna. Kai responds that while he loves Ran and will sacrifice himself to make him happy, Ran does not define Kanna’s happiness and it’s up to her to choose.

After asking the group some questions, Kanna cleverly deduces that Yuri is the first hidden player. As the operator, she cannot directly tell the players but again, using the game Shiritori, she tells Souichi that Yuri is the hidden player (this is allowed per Chihiro). Using the same method, Kanna tells Souichi that Oshino is the second hidden player. However, as the players in the front rush to destroy their horses in the carousel, Kai kills Yuri because his time is running short.

The players are logged out as this game concludes. Kanna wakes up in the hospital. The date is October 14th. She texts Ran who tells her that he also forcibly got logged into the game even if he wasn’t a player – he stayed behind to fix bugs.

Kai, Souichi, and Kanna meet at the park. Souichi is officially revealed as Kai’s therapist for his visions of Shinju. Souichi asks Kanna to hide him next game, this way the players know ahead of time who is hidden. On the way back, Kai tells Kanna that when he killed Yuri, even though he felt bad, he also felt a thrill and fulfillment because he killed and lived for Kanna. Kanna replies lol please don’t feel proud for killing for me, nor do I want you to do that. Kai wonders if he’s perverted for thinking this way, to which Kanna says he can just take out the “if” XD Kai tells Kanna that no matter what she ends up thinking of him, he will never hesitate to do anything, including killing, if it means she can live. However, of course this is not because he wants Kanna to hate him. He tells Kanna “you have no idea how badly I wish you would love me back.”

Kanna looks at Kai and thinks to herself, even if this guy is a bit weird, she doesn’t dislike him at all. Kai then asks Kanna to go out on a date wit him. She agrees so the two hold hands in the street. Kai tells Kanna that he works in the film industry [honestly, this detail doesn’t influence the story at all, but Kai’s chapter titles are film-themed.]

They run into Shiori stalking the two in the end but log into the game. Shinju tells the two that Oshino AI got reset because it learned of its past and became unstable. This round, Kanna is assigned as the reaper. Kai tells Kanna that he doesn’t mind facing the penalty and she doesn’t have to kill anyone. In the end, Kanna chooses to go for Oshino AI who has been hidden again. However, she only manages to slash not kill him. Oshino AI recalls his true past again and had to be reset by Hotaru before he goes berserk. Hotaru says this will count towards Kanna’s kill quota and she is considered to have abided by the rules this round.

After the round, Kai pulls Kanna into his embrace. He again asks Shinju if there’s a way to reset him so that their connection in the real world can be severed. Shinju replies that there has not been any precedent of a spirit being reset; this will require gaining Miyabi’s access to the system. Before they could talk more, Ran suddenly appears and says he’s going to take Kanna away.

We see a series of flashbacks of Kai, including when he told a sad and scared Ran that “big brother” would never leave him, him being told he is worthless by Shinju’s vision and breaking down in the middle of the road until Kanna met him for the first time, him deciding that he would protect Kanna at all costs during round one when Shiori confronted her, and finally deciding “I will not let her get away this time.”

Kai wakes up in Ran’s room with Hotaru and Ruri, who are told to stay with him under Ran’s orders [a bit interesting that Ruri also listens to Ran…]. Ruri being the little sadist he is, tortures Kai to the point he almost dies and loses a lot of blood. Kanna also wakes up in Ran’s room, but she seems to be in a different timeline than Kai, as she doesn’t see Kai or the spirits. Remembering what the spirits said before about how bugs are created, Kanna attempts to create a bug and eventually connects to Kohaku, who helps her return to Kai/Ran’s timeline… and see Hotaru/Ruri/Kai torturing Kai. (Kai says that wasn’t his original intention and that the AI misinterpreted it. However, he refused to cure Kai’s wounds because he wanted Kai to suffer.]

Ran basically blames everything on Kai saying he dragged Kanna into this mess because he wanted to be an operator. However, Kanna defends Kai and tells Ran to stop hurting him. Ran passes out and so does Kai, requiring Chihiro to come and take care of the two.

Kanna is back in the real world. Kai pays her an evening visit because he wants to spend more time with her and senses that Kanna is sad, though he understands if Kanna wants to be left alone and would respect that. Kanna says she’d rather be with Kai right now. She has feelings for Kai who always placed her as his top priority, and feels bad for hurting him in the past (I mean, wasn’t really your fault because you barely knew the guy with no context) and started crying and apologizing. Kanna tells Kai that she loves him and will not leave him ever again. Kai is surprised but overjoyed to learn his feelings are reciprocated. He formally asks Kanna to “start from the beginning as boyfriend and girlfriend”.

Aaand Kai takes Kanna to his own apartment lol already wanting to move in with her xD

He wants Kanna to call him by first name. Kai really ATE this route compared to the other LIs as he should. We even have a scene of the morning after I was beaminggg. Before they log back in, Kanna asks Kai if Shinju is really to be trusted, as the explanation of “if your affinity with your spirit is really high, then you will never get hurt IRL” seems too good to be true.

The final stage of the carousel game commences. Both Kanna and Kai are reapers this game. Each of them has to kill at least one player. A total of three players will be hidden – all decided by Chihiro. Kai notices that he doesn’t have a knife or the function to attack equipped in his terminal; it appears he still has the “hide” function so he can hide more players in addition to Chihiro’s. Kanna has a knife and a skill to detonate an area of choice.

Shiori goes on a killing rampage because if she kills everyone before Kanna even kills one, Kai would die – which is what Shiori wants, because killing is this girl’s love language. Shiori begs Kai to kill her again as this to her would mean she is getting noticed and loved by him.

Kai turns to Kanna and asks her if she’s ready to die with him eventually by doing nothing. Kanna agrees. The two confess their love for each other while Shiori shouts angrily because she isn’t getting noticed by senpai lol.

The players start turning on Souichi. To prevent him from dying, Kanna thinks quickly and tells Kai to hide all of the players. The two then run to the front stage where Kanna uses detonate on the entire carousel. Everyone is saved. However, their punishment has yet to come. In their last moments, Kai takes Kanna’s hand and tells her he loves her.

The screen pans to Miyabi and Shinju. Miyabi is starting to notice that someone is messing around with the AI programming. Miyabi believes the moment the AI starts having a sentience of its own and develops priorities that are not set by him or humans, they need to be reset and wiped. They talk about “that man” (Hidaka). Shinju ominously smirks in the end saying “he” doesn’t even exist in this world anymore.

Kanna wakes up in Shiori’s car. Shiori also texts Kai who is in his apartment that because he wouldn’t be her boyfriend, Kanna may die because of him. As Kanna, you get buried alive (game over) if you directly ask her about Kai. However, if you choose the nonsensical option of “do you want to get something in a cafe (which ends up being the cafe Kai asked her out in)” she would actually be in a good mood enough to drive you both to the cafe and propose a game. Shiori is going to wait at Kanna’s home while Kanna waits in this cafe. Shiori will try to manipulate Kai into going to her. Whoever Kai goes to gets to “keep” Kai. Shiori also threatens Kanna that she’s already wiretapping her so going to the police is not an option (which ends up being a bluff…)s

With a hint from Kohaku that wiretapping devices are usually small and hidden in creases of clothing, Kanna rushes out of the cafe after Shiori leaves and buys the first set of clothes she sees. She strips down everything including her bra and underwear and changes into these clothes. She runs out then bumps into… Kai?! Kai’s first reaction after hugging her is LADY WHY ARE YOU NOT WEARING A BRA??? xD After Kanna explains everything to him, he apologizes for dragging Kanna into this all because a crazy bitch fell in love with him. Kanna pouts and demands him buy the most expensive ice cream from the convenience store, to which he says

Kanna laughs and says “my boyfriend can also save the day at times”. Kai carries her on his back to his home. Kanna tells him “I love you.” Shiori… fully loses interest in Kai because she’s lost the game? and gets taken away by police lmao. This girl is not predictable.

Kai/Kanna talk to Kohaku/Shinju about not just resetting Shinju as a spirit but stopping the entire game. Shinju says there is theoretically a possibility if they can get their hands on the “termination code” that is only known to Miyabi. Due to some technicalities, their best chance is – tonight where there will be more lax security. Shinju says he can get them in the game through the backdoor in one hour. Kanna looks at Kai and both agree to do this. Kai gets a little emo over his past failed relationships (not romantic) with people like Ran, where he thought they would be together forever but end up leaving them, and being hated by them… He feels he is good for nothing and the cause of all of this until Kanna reassures him it’s because he is too gentle and cannot say no, and that she will not do this to him. Remaining wary of Shinju, Kanna wonders if they can get additional information from “janitor”.

Shinju logs the two in the game and urges them to surrender themselves to him so he can hack the termination code. Kai and Kanna say they want to confirm from a third source. Shinju becomes angry, saying the Kai one year ago wouldn’t doubt him and would follow whatever he commanded. Kai thanks Shinju for showing his true colours and leaves with Kanna. However, before they walk for long, the ground beneath them collapses and –

They fall into the carousel where “janitor” is expecting them. “Janitor” tells them that both Kohaku and Shinju are paused by Miyabi due to violation of rules. He introduces himself as Hidaka. When Kanna asks him what exactly Shinju is after, Hidaka disappears and leaves behind Ruri to answer. Ruri tells them that the friendship/affinity system is the means by which AI can take over humans and live in the real world. When friendship reaches 100%, the AI can overwrite the human’s mind and take on their body forever. Ruri also mentions that Miyabi isn’t aware of this.

Kanna and Kai decide it’s time to meet Miyabi. They go to the control room where usually nobody but Miyabi has access to. However, the door recognizes Kanna’s face and allows them in. Miyabi learns of the AIs’ ulterior motives and is surprised. In exchange, he grants Kanna’s request to meet Kohaku and Shinju again.

Shinju tells Kai that even though his commands have been rewritten to take over his mind, his primary goal has always been to “live with Kai”. He’s grown codependent and attached to Kai since one year ago. Kai also could not live without Shinju who gaslights him constantly, until he met Kanna and started seriously thinking about getting rid of Shinju for her. Shinju views this as betrayal and from that moment decided he was going to make Kai suffer.

Shinju causes a bug and takes Kanna and Kai into an isolated space where he tortures Kai to death then revives him. Miyabi finally works through his code and gets to this bug, granting Kanna authority as the “game master” of this place. He tells them that Kanna has to make the rules of the game; when the win conditions are met, they can escape this space. Kanna scrambles and makes a game that consists of “2 players, using rifles, attacking each other, one must die (as the “both players must live” option is not available)”. Kai and Shinju get into a gun fight.

We get the CG, the two have some talk-no-jutsu, then Kanna also works through the code and manages to change the condition to “both players must survive”. So they both clear the game. They are both transferred to Miyabi who tells them Shinju is getting reset as they speak. Miyabi decides that until he sorts out the Hidaka and AI business, the development of UN:LOGICAL will need to be paused.

Kai and Kanna return to the real world, once and for all this time.

The rest is all raburabu. Like I said, Kai eats good this route (and in his SS too). No other LI got this treatment!

Not Ran throwing Kanna the “if Kai and I both fall in a river, who do you save first” question lmao

Kai, Kanna, and Souichi get drinks to celebrate. Kai gets ridiculously drunk and says some down bad stuff in front of Kanna, only to be more down bad in private. In the end, he buys her an engagement ring and asks Kanna to marry him.

Bad Ends:

Probably the most famous bad end of the game will end up being this one where Kanna kills Shiori in stage two. As a result, Shiori falls madly in love with Kanna instead. The two go out on a nice lesbian date and do lovey-dovey stuff~ Apparently some fans were upset about it? It’s just an if-ending lol…

The unlogical end is Shinju takes over Kai and confines Kanna in his basement and tortures her, mocking her to try “dating” him. They both have blood in their mouths because “Kai” tried to kiss Kanna so she bit him.

Thoughts:

Another polarizing route for sure. Again, this is an LI with clear character flaws like Souichi (I didn’t feel Yuri had any major flaws tbh) so it’s a love or hate him situation. There are definitely people who find Kai suffocating and extremely clingy and should have left Kanna alone. However, to me his “heaviness” (in Japanese slang saying someone is “heavy” in the right context implies they are very easily attached and obsessive) was really charming and the puppy eyes. Don’t get me started on the puppy eyes lol. Obviously the writing is not the most logical – I laughed out loud when Shiori just gave up on Kai after she lost the bet and even called him a “turn off” before she said farewell; the other instance would be Kanna figuring out the game settings right after we get the shootout CG – but hey, I read the title of the game so not everything needed to make perfect sense. I had fun. I really enjoy Kai as a character & just wanna pet him forever and ever and ever lol. Golden retriever vibes. I agree with him that Kanna is super かっこいい in this route and quite literally saves the day more than just a few times.

In addition to his attachment to Kanna, Kai certainly has some psychopathic traits such as when he killed Yuri without hesitation and Shinju mentioning him apparently being very proficient with guns in the last UN:LOGICAL game. He also kicks some major ass with Yuri in Ran route. It is the combo of his dangerousness and the fact he is willing to sacrifice everything for Kanan that makes him so irresistible IMO.

I’m disappointed with the CG quality and consistency in the second half of the route. The early one where he landed on top of Kanna in-game was so beautiful then it just felt like he had a different, less handsome face each CG since the pork-bun date one. Pretty sure settings wise he is supposed to be the hottest character out of the crew, as not only Shiori but also NPCs commented on how handsome he was and asked if he was a model or something.

Finally, so many screenshot worthy quotes and confessions. Read by Ishikawa Kaito too. I ran out of storage during his route (1000 screenshots) which was a first. To whoever is reading: I hope you enjoy his route as much as I did!

RAN (CV: TOYONAGA TOSHIYUKI)

To enter Ran route, Kanna needs to let the one minute run out when picking a card. In which case, Miyabi would pull out a fourth card “Echidna” and tell Kanna not picking is also a choice. Echidna per Miyabi is a rare card usually associated with “creation”. The selector that night is not visible from terminal (bugged out) but Kanna would run into Ran the same night, with him informing her that he is chosen. The two smoothly agree as in other routes for Ran to choose suicide and for Kanna to revive.

However, when Kanna presses “revive”, she was not allowed to use the skill. Just like in every route’s miscellaneous bad ends, Ran falls to his bloody death from the rollercoaster. The system seems to lag out then gives an error message. We then hear the mysterious end message that appears in every route’s bad ends. Kanna then wakes up with Ran in her room, in game. Ran tells her that he doesn’t have memory or feeling of falling to his death and just woke up like her.

Kanna the enters a memory? dream? trance? where she lives in a utopia world with Ran, who tells Kanna that they have always been AIs in the UN:LOGICAL game, learning human emotions alongside spirits like Kohaku, Hotaru, etc… AI Ran tells Kanna that their “memory” as humans are a dream or simulation that they had as AIs. He then snuggles up to Kanna in bed, saying they’ve done this many times; even if they are AI, they are capable of “love” and he wants to feel Kanna’s touch and warmth…

Kanna pushes this Ran away because she is convinced he is a fake. AI Ran appears hurt but says she has no idea how “ugly” the real Ran is.

Kanna wakes up in the real world to the same Ran CG in the common route – where Kanna sees her own reflection in Ran’s eyes, and him telling her that he will find her no matter where she is in this world. Ran asks Kanna what the matter is. Still recovering from whatever that previous scene was, Kanna asks if Ran is “really human”. Ran replies “ha? what are you asking? Are you hit in the head?” then Kanna goes ah, this is the real Ran XD

After calling Ran in her own apartment, Kanna asks Ran to stay on the line with her for a bit longer because she is lonely and scared. They reminisce about how they met in game and shared each other’s passion for music, before Ran abruptly says he has to go. Kanna is forcibly logged back into the game, where Miyabi nonchalantly blames the three deaths in stage one as an “unfortunate accident” and has no intention of stopping the game.

Stage two in this route is basically a variation of Among Us where there’s a killer that can kill other players and has to kill over half before being voted out. Instead of venting, they have the ability to freeze time for a short period; this skill has a cooldown. Kanna is given an ability to “soothe” any player that is starting to become mentally unstable and possibly go berserk, which seems unrelated to this game but for the purpose of plot progression she is given this lol. Of note, Oshino AI also participates. A random gets chosen as the killer and gets voted out before he achieves his goal, for a pretty silly reason because he tried to attack Kanna during his timeout without knowing that operators are coded to have absolute protection from player attacks.

Similar to Kai route, Oshino AI is having trouble recalling his past and wants to fill in the blanks by asking Kanna, who tells him some BS hoping he wouldn’t overthink. Ran, who Kanna thought had logged out, appears in game and takes Kanna to meet Hidaka, who introduces himself and cryptically talks about a “greater goal” and how Kanna and Ran “have a special meaning to our game”.

After this, they are logged out due to the first game of stage two ending. Kanna texts Ran but doesn’t get a reply. She goes to his home, only to have her father ask her where Ran went as well. Ran meets Kanna at the park and tells her that he got a girlfriend. Kanna wants to give him a gift but he refused [because he cannot come into “contact” with Kanna IRL, see below…]. Kanna congratulates him but cannot help feel a bit left behind.

Kanna and Kai both log back in for game 2 as operators. Their relationship becomes strained with the added dynamic of Ran’s new “girlfriend”. To add to this 修羅場 Hotaru is extremely devoted and loyal to Ran to the point they have a “kindergarteners’ quarrel” as dubbed by Ran:

Chihiro takes Ran and Kanna to his lab/residence. There, he suddenly asks Kanna that if she had to make the choice one day to sacrifice herself for Ran vs. let Ran sacrificing his life for her, which would she choose? Kanna chooses “I don’t want to leave Ran behind alone in this world”. Ran says he feels the same way.

Kanna walks into Ran being angry at Hotaru for stalking him and not leaving him alone. Hotaru cries and says he just wanted Ran to cherish him and to be useful. [Tachibana’s voice acting here… chef’s kiss… I’m glad he didn’t get a crappy role this time in otome but can we make him a LI next time? He’s so good]

Round 2 begins with two randoms chosen as the killers. They tell Oshino AI that he has died in-game and IRL already which causes Oshino AI to have an existential crisis and go berserk. Before he does, Kanna uses the “soothe” ability but vomits blood due to the side effect. Even though Oshino AI calms down, he tells Kanna what the game did to him was “unforgivable”. Ran finds Kanna and begs her to never use this ability again because he cannot bear to see her in pain. Kanna tells him that in order to ensure his safety, she has to play by Miyabi’s rules and will do anything because “Ran is more important than anything in this world”. Ran tells her “I feel the same way about you, Kanna”.

Ran leans on Kanna’s shoulder and asks for her to say nothing and let him rest like this for a little longer. Kanna reminds Ran that this is unfair to his “girlfriend”. He brushes it off.

Back in the real world, Yuri tells the rest that he’s figured out the game forcibly logs in and monitors the player through smartphones. Hence, if they go somewhere without signal, the game cannot do anything to them. Kai returns a CD that Kanna lent him when they were still dating. Ran gets slightly jealous then tells Kanna about his past with Kai, including when a young Kai promised Ran that he would never leave Ran’s side, yet betrayed him. In the flashback, Ran is heard asking, “How long is forever?“

The game commences again. Kanna sees Miyabi has a spirit that is an AI modelled after Kanna… creepy. Ran and Kanna talk before noticing an ?earthquake? They run out and see AI Oshino going berserk controlling a huge plant and its vines to attack everyone. It instantly kills Kohaku – wait, who turned off the protection function? It also kills Souichi. It attacks Ran next, severely wounding him. Oshino AI’s explanation is that he wants revenge against the game’s operation for letting him die. Okay then go for Miyabi or something why are you going after innocent people lol…

Miyabi’s projection appears. He tells Kanna that he has successfully deleted Oshino AI and revived the spirits. However, Kohaku doesn’t remember Kanna anymore. She checks terminal: the affinity system is completely wiped. Miyabi says he now knows why Oshino died. It is all because of this affinity system that he had no knowledge of. Chihiro replies that Hidaka is the one who implemented it.

Kanna wakes up beside Ran in his bed. Ran jumps up to move away from Kanna but is too late. Kanna finds out his secret:

Ran has never logged out of the game since his initial log in. He was kidnapped by Hidaka. This is a projection of him IRL. He also made up the girlfriend so he doesn’t have to come into contact with Kanna as often. They receive an announcement from UN:LOGICAL saying the game is indefinitely suspended.

With Ran’s body still nowhere to be found, Kanna/Kai/Souichi/Yuri meet up in an abandoned building without phone signal to discuss next steps. The meeting doesn’t matter because Chihiro approaches Kanna the same night telling her that Ran’s body is under his care. In exchange, he asks for Yuri to be his test subject. Kanna disagrees. Chihiro and his goons decide to use force. However, thanks to Kai’s sixth sense (and stalking?) he brings Yuri to the scene and they defend Kanna against the bad guys. In the game world, Hidaka tells Ran that even though Miyabi got rid of the affinity system, it is already too little too late.

Yuri and JEC storm Chihiro’s biotech company and rescue Ran, who wakes up IRL. Ran tells Kanna that it’s all over now; they can feel each other’s touch. He tells Kanna that only he can be called her “partner in crime”. However, he asks himself and Kanna: until when? Kanna thinks about it and says, until we are grandpa and granny? She realizes that Ran is more important to her than a simple friend or boyfriend. She confesses to Ran, who tells her he loves her too and will never leave her side again.

The two get close and almost kiss, before getting too embarrassed and laughing out loud together.

Ran formally asks Kanna if he can be her boyfriend from now on:

It’s time to put an end to everything. Ran tells Kai that he is willing to meet their mother on his terms. He tells Kanna that he will no longer keep secrets from her, so here goes: Hidaka wants to take over her body and live with Ran forever (Kanna’s initial reaction: what kind of weird ass BL is this? XD). He says only he can stop Hidaka. The two then get spicy for a bit but Hotaru suddenly appears IRL and interrupts them saying there’s a huge bug that he needs Kanna/Ran to log back in to help with. He logs the two in immediately and tells them they need to clear the same “among us” game one more time to fix the bug. Miyabi thanks Ran for coming to help him, but warns him “even though I don’t know what you’re up to by agreeing to come, this is not your game, it’s mine”. Ran says the only way to get the termination code to end the game is for Kanna AI to take over Miyabi and steal his access in game, with the help of Hotaru who has developed his own sentience and is going against even Hidaka’s code.

Kanna and Ran suddenly hear Hidaka call out to them for “tea time” and are teleported to his room. He is surprised that Kanna is here as he only wanted Ran but says whatever you can stay too. He makes Kanna see a vision and believe Ran to be dead. As Kanna screams, he pulls Kanna back to the game world. He turns into ??? who is the voice behind the bad end voiceovers: [Angelica’s CV is Lynn btw!]

She then says to Ran “if you betray me any further, I will do even crueler things to you both”. Ran replies “I know. You are necessary to make my ‘dream’ come true.” The being introduces herself as Angelica who is the “main frame” of UN:LOGICAL – the master AI, the mother of the spirits. Angelica is attached to Ran for some reason, and wants to take over Kanna’s body and live alongside Ran in the real world. Hotaru tells the two that they need to fix the bug. In order to fix the bug, they need to progress to stage 3, as the current game world is stuck in a bad loop repeating the last round of stage 2 over and over again.

So the extra game of stage 2 begins with Ran as the only one who gets killed over and over. Various NPCs are generated that could be the killer. The killer can freeze time without cooldown and unlimited times. Kanna’s skill gets changed to share Ran’s damage and pain. So, Ran gets killed in various gruesome and graphic ways. The game continues to reset and continue its loop until the killer is found. The killer is revealed to be Ran AI. Kanna and Ran try to open the voting interface but are told they do not have the authority to do so. Ran keeps lying to Kanna that he has no memories of his deaths. However, eventually, the repetitive deaths start to get to him and his psyche is not so stable anymore. Kanna sees through it and wants to use her skill to share Ran’s pain, to which he refuses. Kanna gets angry and yells at Ran aren’t we buddies, aren’t we supposed to have each other’s backs? So why are you carrying all the burden alone? Ran breaks down and begs Kanna to please help him.

Kanna activates her skill. She suffers the side effect but now the voting interface is open. They win the game. Ran thanks Kanna for saving him time and time again with her “strength and openness” which is what he loves about her. Hotaru appears and tells Ran that he has transferred the termination code from Miyabi to him; the game can be erased now.

Hidaka/Angelica appears and resets Hotaru. However, with the termination code, even Angelica cannot stop Ran anymore. Strangely, she doesn’t attack Ran at all. Instead, she smiles and watches Ran terminate UN:LOGICAL, and slowly erase her own existence… Kanna asks her why. Angelica replies that Ran loves Kanna more than she realizes and she also wonders why the reason is – as an AI she has developed feelings for Ran.

The happy ending! Ran still banters with Kanna but at least acknowledges she is his “cutest” girlfriend in the world, and “bestest friend ever” – which also happens to be the ending name.

However, this isn’t the game’s final ending as in the final frames, people are discussing UN:LOGICAL making a comeback; a game where you can apparently “see angels”… but for now the two best friends have a breather.

Bad End: I would just mention the unlogical end here where Angelica takes over Kanna and fulfills her wish. Ran knows the Kanna is not real, but lives with her anyway and deludes himself for the rest of his life.

Thoughts: This route, including the unlogical end, can’t really be evaluated until you’ve read the hidden route as well where Ran and Angelica’s past, as well as how much he really valued Kanna in his heart are revealed. Maybe “heaviness” does run in the family as both Ran & Kai turn out to be really obsessive and value Kanna extremely heavily.

This route also reveals most of the underlying story of UN:LOGICAL. Miyabi’s route tells it from another perspective as he and Hidaka are the vessels that make Angelica’s dream come closer to fruition and not actually direct participants of the story. A moment of silence for people who played his route first and got spoiled the entire story..

Also I didn’t find this route boring at all! (This was a common complaint.) Tossy used his Momochi voice 😉 I really like the dynamic between Ran and Kanna. How Ran could not physically touch Kanna in the middle. How Ran is afraid of breaking their existing relationship with a rash move. (See more in hidden route.) How he doesn’t want Kanna to be hurt and would rather silently carry all the burden. I don’t mind at all that they didn’t get any steamy scenes or even a kissing CG – if there is an FD I certainly hope this gets implemented. However, their relationship is so longstanding and pure; it’s exactly what makes route so beautiful. I am a believer that best friends make the best couples & those two seem like they will never, ever run out of things to talk about.

MIYABI (CV: OOTSUKA TAKEO)

To get into Miyabi route, you cannot use the common save but have to start from the beginning and choose the more “realistic” choices such as offering money to get Miyabi to spare people. This route is also filled with banter from beginning to end. My words pale to describe so it’s recommended that if possible, you experience the game and their dynamic for yourself.

From the previous routes, Miyabi is portrayed to be a sociopathic person who is only focused on developing the game. He claims the game’s goal is to “elicit strong emotions” from participants and does not seem to have the capability to show or comprehend emotion himself. He does not understand why Kanna is so intent on saving people in-game, even after the initial “incidents” after stage. To him, Kanna is wasting time trying to save people she doesn’t even know; people who joined the game willingly even after their comrades died, and may not even want to be saved. He continues to coerce Kanna to stay as an operator in order to stay in contact with Ran, who claims he stayed voluntarily in game because he “messed up” something and need to stay to fix some bugs.

In the middle of Kanna’s reunion with Ran, we have a comedic interlude where due to Miyabi writing some spaghetti code they are teleported into random worlds that are not intended lol.

Ran gets called somewhere else. Miyabi forces Kanna to stay behind. He reveals to Kanna that he isn’t the one who abducted Ran here, implying there’s someone in this system with higher authority than him who is pulling the strings. Kanna has already met “janitor” who introduced himself as Hidaka so she believes Hidaka is the person they’re looking for. Kanna believes there is more to Ran’s story than what he is letting on, as he also randomly lost memory of parts of the game. Miyabi dismisses this, saying Kanna is too trustful as humans can change and turn on each other easily.

Miyabi designs the second stage this time which basically involves either drowning or burning participants to death if they cannot correctly answer whimsical quiz questions in time. Kanna is upset the the cruelty of the game, especially when in first round Souichi was literally waterboarded and almost died. Miyabi tells Kanna that this is all necessary to achieve his game goal.

Kanna is initially scared, but this fear turns into anger. She is sick of playing Miyabi’s stupid game and decides to trash the control room. She starts smashing things with a golden baseball bat that Kohaku gave her. Miyabi is pretty nonchalant about this. When she is tired, Miyabi says great, are you done now? Now it’s my turn.

He pins Kanna on the ground and starts to choke her. Kanna, thinking he was going to sexually assault her, starts calling him pervert and shouting “nobody likes this stuff unless it’s done by their lover!” (damn Kanna you kinky okay) Miyabi freezes and instead fixates on why Kanna would “enjoy” someone doing this to her ever, even if they’re her lover, and says that’s “interesting”. Kanna starts realizing she has misread the situation, and sheepishly tells Miyabi she thought he was gonna do … something else to her.

Miyabi:”Ha? Why do I want to have sex with you?”
Kanna: Sex?! B, because you wanted to bully me!
Miyabi: Ah, if it’s to bully you and makes you upset, then maybe it’s worth doing.
Kanna: NO! NONO! I might actually like it, you know? So it wouldn’t make me upset, so it’s not worth for you to “bully” me with that method, okay??!?! Please just stop!!

Miyabi bursts out laughing and says Kanna really is different from everyone else from him and an interesting person. Kanna thinks to herself what kind of reaction is this? She wonders if the AI is more human-like than this guy in front of her. She asks if Miyabi has any friends. Miyabi doesn’t directly answer, but this basically tells her he has zero friends. However, he gets defensive and says it’s actually very arrogant of Kanna to assume he wants and needs friends, and feel bad for him on her own. Growing up, Miyabi has read about “friendship” and “love” in his books, but never felt those feelings on his own. If anything, his only concern is that this is now hindering his ability to tune the AIs to be more humanlike.

Kanna proposes to Miyabi to be his friend: “So Miyabi can learn what friendship is. And I can learn more about what this game is.” The first game of stage two ends, with Chihiro telling Kanna that nobody actually died because of Miyabi’s interference. But why would Miyabi interfere? Miyabi says he felt like doing a kind deed, lol… Before the game goes into maintenance, Kanna asks Miyabi if they want to meet IRL, as that’s what friends do: they go to places and make memories together. Miyabi finds this request strange, but tells Kanna he will “come for her” as they both log out.

The next morning, the black-suited NPCs in game literally appeared IRL and abducted Kanna to a luxury apartment… This was Miyabi’s meaning of “coming for” Kanna lmao. Kanna freaks out seeing Miyabi in a suit looking like a rich boy, instead of his flamboyant in-game outfit (that fur gets me every time) and starts asking him a flurry of questions. Miyabi puts his hand on her chin. She swats his hand away; Miyabi says “strange, when I do this to dogs they usually calm down.” LOL I can’t even be mad at Miyabi because this poor guy genuinely doesn’t understand. He isn’t even trying to insult Kanna as a “dog” or “bitch”.

Kanna tries to start a conversation with Miyabi. Miyabi gets suspicious. Kanna says it’s to know more about him so she can avoid inadvertently upsetting him with things he doesn’t like in the future. Miyabi then replied “well I hate stupid.” Kanna: “Can you not look straight at me like that while saying it?” Miyabi walks too fast in the street; Kanna complains about him being inconsiderate. Miyabi: “Well I am considerate, depending on who I’m talking to.” Kanna: “eh~ can’t imagine Miyabi kissing ass.” Miyabi: “of course. I’m not god-sama or king-sama.” Kanna: “well idk about those, but you certainly are ore-sama” LMAOOO

They go to the amusement park and take the ferris wheel just like how stage two in-game. Kanna cannot help but think about how her friends suffered in the game stage, to which Miyabi says he finds their suffering expressions amusing. Kanna replies she now knows why Miyabi has no friends. Miyabi tells Kanna he’s never been on a ferris wheel before. It’s not because he was scared of heights, but simply because he’s never had the “chance”. The chance to do activities kids normally would have done. The chance to be “ordinary”. Kanna says even though she does not agree with Miyabi’s ways, she would not wish the worst fates in game even on Miyabi. Miyabi pushes her asking, if killing me would liberate everyone else, would you do it? Kanna cannot accept that still and says she will try to find a solution where everyone lives. Miyabi laughs and says he admires her naiveté.

The group including Miyabi (who can track down their location via the game in their smartphones) has an unexpected meeting IRL. Basically, everyone learns that Ran is trapped & that killing Miyabi would not automatically terminate the game. Miyabi sarcastically comments on Ran being “popular” after both Kanna and Kai jump to protect him despite Ran saying he wanted to be left alone. Miyabi asks Kanna isn’t it better to respect his wishes instead of trying to force him to make up with Kai & his biological mother? Isn’t it better to just give up on pursuing such meaningless ties and relationships and focusing on what actually important like personal goals? This gets Miyabi thinking about his only “family” or “father” Hidaka.

Game 2 happens where it’s a similar mechanism but instead of drowning, the players get burned to death if they don’t answer the quiz questions in time. Kanna’s skill lowers the temperature to 80C but comes at the cost of her own health. She attempts to save Souichi but unfortunately, he truly dies in game this round despite Kanna activating her skill. Because she used a skill on a dead player, she almost dies herself as well until…

Miyabi says he collected valuable data because this game elicited many complicated emotions such as fear, sadness, and hope. He thanks Kanna for “adding the spice” to his games. He also says she is cute, then adds like a little puppy.

Kanna has enough of Miyabi who disregards people’s wellness for his own experimentation and enjoyment. He is the root of all evil. She does not want to be friends with him anymore. In the background, Menou is worried about Souichi’s safety IRL because her and his affinity is low.

Souichi almost kills himself by setting his apartment on fire as a sequelae of dying by fire in game. Fortunately, he was found quickly enough and rushed to the hospital. Yuri gives Kanna a GPS tracker and asks her to turn it on the next time she goes to Miyabi’s place, so he can show up with JEC and arrest him. Miyabi tells Hidaka IRL that he knows the latter has been tampering with the game. Kanna AI is seen trying to cozy up to him but he basically tells her to screw off.

Kanna is chilling at the amusement park when she receives a text from an unknown sender who arrogantly doesn’t introduce himself and announces “I am coming your way.” It was Miyabi. Kanna AI shows up IRL and almost kills the real Kanna, until Miyabi arrives and warns Kanna AI that he will delete her immediately if she didn’t leave this world.

Kanna is still annoyed at Miyabi so tells him to let go of her after Kanna AI disappears. Miyabi is like oh my bad, should have let her kill you then. He shares with Kanna about his theory of how Hidaka overwrote the game and the mechanism of how people died IRL after dying in game from nocebo effect. With even the game’s details out of Miyabi’s control, Kanna again asks Miyabi to consider deleting the game due to all the harm it is causing. This time, Miyabi tells her that he’s been planning to terminate the game as well. Hence, he contacted Kanna to meet up… as she is necessary to his plan. He asks Kanna to “make up” as friends again.

As such, Miyabi takes Kanna to his apartment again. Because Miyabi says his goal is now the same as Kanna’s – to delete the game, she chooses to trust him and does not turn on the GPS tracking, so JEC doesn’t find him. Miyabi asks Kanna an unexpected question: is she ever going to make music in a similar style to her early works again? Turns out he is one of the OG fans of Latria, especially the songs that Kanna wrote. He has been a fan of Kanna’s music. He tells Kanna that he also has a dream: to make his name in history and be remembered as someone important.

Miyabi wants to revolutionize the field of AI. The fastest way for AI to comprehend human emotions and the illogical aspects behind them is to let them learn in real-time as decisions as being made in hypothetical scenarios – the UN:LOGICAL game itself. He tells Kanna it is time to log in and face Hidaka.

They return to game. Hidaka awaits them & designed a few games for them (threatening them with Ran’s life), including a gag round where Kanna and Kanna AI have to fight for Miyabi’s affection in otome game dialogue style (Kanna actually says out loud “what is this, an otome game?!”). The real game is in the form of pool, only each ball is represented by an actual player, hitting the balls causing them to collide causes the characters to actually fight to their death in-game. Kanna summons Kohaku and asks for a skill that helps them win the game. Kohaku gives her a skill that raises the temperature to 250C with the rationale being “if you kill yourself in game maybe you break this cycle idk lol”. Miyabi plays the game earnestly while Kanna picks options where people don’t end up dying, but the game doesn’t progress because all but one player needs to die in order to satisfy Hidaka’s agenda, with the added point that if Kanna wins she gets to meet Ran.

Miyabi finds a loophole in the game and helps Kanna win. He says he is starting to like the way Kanna cares about other people’s lives, and will fight for them even at her own detriment. He wants to trust in Kanna for once and help her out.

They beat the game. However, Hidaka refuses to let Kanna see Ran, and says some things that ticks Miyabi off that the Hidaka in front of them is not real. “Hidaka” reveals their intentions. Kanna finds Miyabi and says it’s time for them to make up (as she rejected him earlier) as friends and work together because “we can’t let Hidaka just get away with this!”

Hidaka/Angelica acting possessive with Ran, including a shot where Hidaka calls Ran a “bad boy who needs to be punished” O_O

Hidaka works on his spaghetti code to develop a digital “antibody” that helps humans fight against AI taking over their conscience; but insists on holding Kanna in his arms. He says it’s because Kanna is a big puppy who can’t leave him and will help him become more efficient. The two then argue on who is the “dog” and who is the “master”.

Miyabi tells Kanna that he’s never “liked” anyone in his life before. His parents both got thrown in jail early because they were scammers who scammed away people’s life savings and caused some victims to kill themselves out of desperation. As their child, he assisted in their schemes and didn’t feel much sympathy towards the victims. He went to juvenile detention. However, after his and his parents’ terms were served, his parents never came back for him. He wasn’t particularly sad about that either and learned to accept the fact that he is truly on his own from now on. While working various jobs at the age of 18 to make a living, he meets OG Hidaka who is a successful businessman who funds various entrepreneurs and initiatives. Hidaka takes a liking to Miyabi because he feels Miyabi is intelligent and similar to him [a bit more in Hidaka’s SS] who does not have real family to experience real human emotions with. He asks Hidaka to be his adopted family so that he has someone to talk with at the dinner table. Hidaka tells Miyabi that his dream is to revolutionize AI to enrich humans’ lives, even though he believes one day AI will take over humankind eventually. Though he will not force Miyabi to share the same vision as him, Hidaka encourages Hidaka to read as much as possible to find his own dream and meaning of life,

Kanna is warped into a bug where she briefly talks to the OG Hidaka who thanks her for being Miyabi’s friend [so, the “janitor” in the beginning was likely OG Hidaka before being taken over by Angelica] and keeping him company.

Kanna logs out of the game but finds that everything about UN:LOGICAL is deleted. The game gives a 404 error. All discussions about it are erased. Hidaka’s company is searched by police with a warrant out for Hidaka. Gene is down. Chihiro’s experiments are exposed. A “visual virus” is spreading where viewing specific digital videos/photos will cause people to be confused, mess up their memories, and perform unexpected actions. This is all part of Miyabi’s plan and “antibody” towards the AI.

The main characters meet together and discuss Miyabi’s motive behind exposing his own game & causing such a massive shutdown of the internet system. He wants to protect Kanna even if it meant going against the world.

Kanna receives a call from Miyabi saying he has “something” to give her. Kanna asks miyabi why he did all of this without telling her after they have become friends, why he is leaving her now after saying she is important to him. Miyabi replies she would have rejected this idea and didn’t want her to blame herself for his actions. He takes all the blame by saying to him, morals and societal norms never meant anything anyway, so he’s doing this on his own volition. He says he does all of this so that Kanna will not “get taken over by some AI and live as someone else”. He wants Kanna to continue being herself and living her own “ordinary” life. For the first time, he says, “I’m sorry.” Kanna starts crying and says, if you are really sorry then come say it to my face…

The “something” Miyabi wanted to give Kanna is actually Ran, who was kept at Chihiro’s clinic. Ran wakes up and is safe. Kanna tells Miyabi about her meeting with OG Hidaka. Unfortunately, the doctors say Hidaka might never wake up again…

It is time to deal with whatever is in Hidaka’s body. I really like when Miyabi says “only I can stop it”, Kanna corrects him and says “we” can stop it.

Kohaku appears because he is team AI. Eventually, Angelica appears in her true form before transforming to Hidaka again. She tries to appeal to Miyabi, saying she can make his dream come true. Isn’t what Miyabi lived for all his life?

Angelica forcibly logs Miyabi, Kanna, and a few other players into the game. Time is ticking. Will Miyabi find a way to terminate the game first, or will Angelica/the spirits kill everyone in-game and drive them all insane first? Miyabi codes the game to give all the players their own special abilities so they can fight on relative equal footing vs. the AI. Honourable mention to Kai’s lightsaber. This route also soft ships Kai & Shiori a bit hehe. Out of selfish reasons, Miyabi wants to keep Kanna close to him and doesn’t want her to fight. Kanna is having none of it and demands her own skill as well. He then calls Kanna 猪突猛進 (reckless like a pig that just charges in) and says honestly she’s even dumber than the pig… Bro we know you love her for that.

Kanna’s skill is not a damaging one but goes back to her roots in stage one: she can revive people, for unlimited times, but at the same cost to her body causing her to be in extreme pain, vomit blood, etc. Chihiro is also not here anymore. Miyabi tells Kanna in his own arrogant fashion that she “better not get yourself hurt when I’m not watching”.

In the final showdown, Miyabi creates an ice sword for Kanna to wield. With her using ice and him fire, they together defeat Angelica and delete the game. As Angelica disappears, she is heard whispering to someone, I promised you that I wouldn’t leave you alone… When I am no longer around, would you cry for me?

In the aftermath, Miyabi asks Kanna out on a date and showcases his massive sweet tooth:

However, as Miyabi puts it, he and Kanna are from two different worlds. His best wish for Kanna is to forget about him and go back to her mundane, boring, ordinary life.

Kanna doesn’t get it: don’t you love me? Miyabi then asks, so would you throw your entire life away to follow me if I asked? If I said I love you?

Happy End: That’s right, you choose to break up with him in the happy ending. Kanna decides that her own life and friends are important too and says, “bye bye, Miyabi”. Half a year later when sitting on the bench, she receives a phone call from an unknown caller that she almost took for a scammer. Miyabi is back in town. He has dealt with the matters he wanted to address earlier and now wants to start a new life with Kanna.

Bad Ends: Notable ones include – Kanna agrees to throw away her life for Miyabi so they elope to the next beta of UN:LOGICAL that Miyabi is rebuilding. It’s not that bad of an ending? but the writing implies that something is “missing” or “wrong”.

The unlogical ending is that Angelica overpowers the two and gives Kanna the option to kill Miyabi with her own hands in order to save the rest of the players. She tearfully obliges with Miyabi fully supporting her decision and telling her she is brave and did a good job.

Thoughts: Wow, probably one of if not the most unconventional poster boy I’ve seen in otome games! Miyabi is an anti-hero who is straight up a sociopath because of his flawed upbringing. He shares special bonds with founded family, first Miyabi, then Kanna, people who he is very lucky to have in his life for caring for him. Even though he doesn’t say “I love you” out loud to Kanna, we all see how he changed and started caring for others in his own quiet and quirky way. His banters with Kanna were some of the best in the game. It’s so cute he is Latria, but more specifically Kanna’s OG fan, hence why the AI algorithms in other routes said he and Kanna are the most compatible and gave him Kanna AI lol.

I especially love the design of the best ending where Kanna doesn’t throw away her life to “chase romance” and instead tells him that she has her own priorities too. This is refreshing to see. It’s honestly hard to believe the same writer wrote the Kanna in Souichi route and this one… Miyabi may not be best boy, but he is certainly a very very good boy in my books!

HIDDEN ROUTE

After obtaining the final best ending, you will get a blatant clue saying to enter your game ID as the password. Game ID is shown above in the bottom right corner.

Soon after Ran is abducted by “Hidaka” early on in the game, Angelica shows her true form and reminds Ran that she was an AI created by him many years ago. The conversation at the very beginning of the game was between Ran & Kanna AI, later renamed to be Angelica. Even though Ran had long forgotten about her as she was some passion project, Angelica held onto the promise that she would be with Ran “forever” and grew a sentience of her own – strong willed just like the real Kanna. Eventually, Angelica was discovered by OG Hidaka & Miyabi who used her as the main frame/structure for UN:LOGICAL. The other spirits were also designed by Ran back in the day, but he didn’t remember. This is why Hotaru worships Ran so much to the point he is willing to betray Angelica, as Ran is his literal creator.

Angelica breaks Ran very early on by making him see visions of Kanna dying.

Ran has no choice but to pretend to cooperate with Angelica and look for his opportunity to strike in the meantime. Angelica is overjoyed that Ran has taken her side, and asks wouldn’t he mind living knowing the Kanna is taken over by her and not the real her? Ran replies, then make it as real as possible so I can delude myself too.

Everything Ran does is for Kanna: “Kanna, please stay with me, forever.” Which Kanna? In what form?…

As the only person with the termination code, Miyabi also kills Angelica in the hidden route.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Overall, this was a rollercoaster of a game. I think the writer did many things well, including bold writing featuring a truly proactive heroine (even when she was making questionable decisions in Souichi route, she was anything but passive in every single route) & an interesting cast of LIs and antagonists. Nobody is what meets the eye in the common route. Everyone has their dark secrets & agenda & their own stories.

I like how other than the brothers, three LIs start out not knowing or having favourable views towards Kanna – they would not do favours for her for no reason and she starts out on equal footing with them and has to earn their respect and affection. That felt more natural than games where it from minute -1 it ‘s a full reverse harem and all the guys are jumping at a chance to be with the MC.

The tone of the game is darker for sure with depictions of deaths and various moral dilemmas. The conflict with Angelica touches on the sensitive topic of AI’s utilization and containment today.

The game has its own (personally-perceived) flaws but they are by far outshone by its merits. Even with Souichi route, I fully recognize that while it is not within my taste, there are plenty of people in the fandom who enjoyed his route and he really became their oshi. There is no one universal way to write otome scenarios & they’re certainly not up to me to dictate. This is a different form of art. We are allowed to dislike it, but they do not exist for our approval.

Overall, I gave this game 8.5/10. Very worth experiencing in my opinion. However, given certain controversies I will not place it in my “strongly recommended” category under reviews.

My character ranking: Kai > Ran > Miyabi > Yuri > Souichi