サリーランド ナーサリーライム

Completion Date: October 6, 2026

Play time: 23 hours. Finished the game in 2 days thanks to this awful, nasty flu that someone at work was spreading. After runny nose, lung-breaking cough, I am now in the mucus-hacking phase – under none of these phases was I suited for going to work without a hazmat suit.

My play order: Kiseki > Tera > Neo > Shima > Ryokuha

The last three routes are locked in order. It doesn’t matter if you play Kiseki or Tera first, as only the last three routes touch the game’s truth. All endings will be covered in this game because they’re all high-quality.

I’m going to put the discussion upfront. It is spoiler-free. Individual route discussions are end of each section.

Verdict: This game does its main job very well – overarching story, romance, art. However, it comes with major flaws (mainly in Tera & Shima routes; or see cons section) that I could not justify myself giving above 8/10 even if the other parts were so memorable and made me emotionally resonate with the characters.

Rating: 7.5/10

Personal ranking: Neo > Ryokuha > Kiseki > ??? >> Tera > Shima

I liked Ryokuha’s story the most but Neo as a character just made me an emotional mess, in a good way… so he is my favourite. If I self-inserted, I would want Neo to look at me (and no one else). Usually, 推し and 最も好きなキャラ are the same person and ranking is easy, but this game forces me to examine into this nuance as they are not the same. Or the easier explanation: Marry Ryokuha but Date Neo XD

Pros:

• The story overall made sense. Each route cleverly ties back to the nursery rhyme it referenced.
• Romance is overall very good
• There is truly no filler ending. You can always count on Natsuno Kei to write those merry-bad or outright bad endings.
• Interesting way of telling the story through investigations & uncovering fragments of the main characters’ memory
• Dynamic interactions between the main characters; founded family
• Gorgeous art with high consistency in CGs and sprites
• Gameplay was interesting and diverse
• Music
• Even though I initially wasn’t a fan of the style, I grew to love the crisp UI

Cons:

• Biggest issue: What I like to call the “trying to sit on two chairs at once” phenomenon leading to almost “split personality” of the LI (where they constantly flip between being a happy, positive high school kid vs. being the most traumatized, unhinged trainwreck vowing to burn the world down) for five chapters straight before the route dips into good/bad end where the heroine just yells, cries, or kisses the LI out of their dark thoughts… It came too easy? Pacing wise I was not a fan and would have benefitted splitting paths earlier.
• While the big story is there, the technicalities are not refined – I wouldn’t call them plot holes, but don’t make sense [see Shima route, a lot of the items in the process of his investigations were far-fetched which also tanked my review of his route in addition to the rest. Shima: unlucky]
• The CERO D rating comes from the gore not the spice. Other than the bad endings, you really just get some spicy crumbs in Shima route that’s about it. If I want to see body parts flying I can just fire up Silent Hill or Biohazard not find an otome game…
• I nearly dropped the game at the common route for how boring it was (but glad I sticked through)
• Forgettable heroine (she isn’t bad, just meh) with inconsistencies even in same route (see rant in Shima’s)
• Classic Otomate turn-the-other-cheek logic “revenge is bad” “make up with your abuser” like this needs to be contained if you want to write darker games
• Voice acting wasn’t bad by any means, but kinda mid – which is a rare comment from me because usually I always glaze the voice acting

All my reviews contain full spoilers.

COMMON ROUTE

You play as Mikami Amane, a high school junior (grade 11) that recently returned to Japan from overseas after a decade to your hometown, Marenis. Named after the religion this town subscribes to, your city/high school/university are all called Marenis. You reunite with your childhood playmates – Kiseki, Tera, Neo, Shima, and Ryokuha – during a school festival planning council meeting. Your older twin sister Tsuki was also part of the childhood crew. However, for some reason while you and your parents returned to Marenis she stayed behind to study overseas.

Amane is talking to her classmates one day until everyone around her faints & her surroundings morph to nighttime with elements of the underworld – or Sullyland, by the believers of Marenis. A mischievous mouse by the name of Shiro says he forcibly summoned the six of them to participate in a game. The city of Marenis sits at the border between humanity & underworld (Sullyland). The God Marenis Himself is displeased with how modern people are becoming less faithful which tips the “scale between worlds” which will eventually result in the fusion of two worlds and destruction of the city. Unless these six kids (five high school and Shima who is an undergrad student) participate in Shiro’s game to solve puzzles & retrieve memory fragments (belonging to the protagonists of memories that they chose to seal away and extracted by someone to protect their psyche) of course.

Shiro dubs these games “night classes” during which dark shadows also roam the school hallways and attack people they see. They almost succumb to one before an unknown power protects them. Shiro explains these shadows arise from humans’ negative emotions.

In the five chapters of the common route the focus is put on each of the five LIs where Amane spends some time with them & participate in a night class as a group, recovering a seemingly harmless childhood memory fragment that belonged to each LI with the exception of Ryokuha.

In the final class, Shiro poisons Amane but the group is able to acquire the antidote by passing his quizzes. At the end, Shiro announces all of this is a ruse to pick a “sacrifice” to Marenis as the scale is kept balanced with human sacrifices’ souls. Shiro says the current sacrifice’s soul is insufficient to keep the scale balanced, hence why the two worlds are fusing.

Shiro picks one of the five LIs as the sacrifice until a tattooed pigeon (lmao that’s the best way I could describe) comes out introducing herself as Elshika (エルシカ), the sister god of Marenis that this town has neglected to worship. Elshika is revealed to be the same dove that the crew buried as children which allowed her to recover to a weakened version today. She stops Shiro’s plan to “overwhelm these people with despair by releasing their memories at once” & summons an also weakened Marenis to create a “trial” for the chosen sacrifice & Amane (who is hinted to have a special connection to Elshika).

If they can uncover the full story (i.e. all fragments) of the one memory fragment relevant to the character in the common route while maintaining their sanity, then Elshika will eliminate the need for a sacrifice & the world will go on as usual. [Don’t ask me why she can’t do it now, she’s “weakened” XD] If either of them die, or succumbs to darkness, either the sacrifice has to be made or the world ends.

Takanashi Kiseki (CV: Yamashita Seiichirou)

“Mary had a pretty bird,
With feathers bright and yellow,
Slender legs – upon my word,
He was a pretty fellow.

The sweetest notes he always sang,
Which much delighted Mary;
And near the cage she’d ever sit,
To hear her own Canary.“

Kiseki is the shortest out of the LIs (and often made fun for it; still 8cm taller than MC at 166cm) but makes up with his athleticism & sunny (and fiery) personality. He is the only one in Amane’s class and helped her become closer with her classmates. During the two-truths-one-lie icebreaker of the festival council, he confesses that Amane is his childhood crush. While he backtracks by saying this is no longer the case as they were children – this is very much still the case regardless of whose route you’re in. He has a fear of dolls but despite the fear, he overcame it during the first night class & carried Amane in his arms and dashed out of the dollhouse when the dolls became sentient and aggressive.

He is good at playing basketball and the guitar – under the influence of his father – and hopes to be a professional band guitarist. His parents divorced at a young age with Kiseki staying with his mother and maternal grandfather. Unfortunately, his mother didn’t take the divorce well & ended up being hospitalized long-term in a mental hospital and is pretty much non-communicative and only talks to her doll that she named Kiseki.

Kiseki’s memory: Starting with only a memory of a young Kiseki in a car driven by a woman that was not his mother, the question he got to pass his trial was “What happened that day at the Takanashi household?”

Kiseki’s dad is the middle son and black sheep of his family who owns a big construction firm in Marenis. Kiseki’s paternal grandfather never approved of his mom so his dad changed his last name to Takanashi (which is Kiseki’s mom’s last name) and limited contact with his own family. Unfortunately Kiseki’s dad could not keep his dick in his pants (a recurrent theme this game) & started an affair with a kyabajou who wanted to replace Kiseki’s mom and get a piece of daddy’s family fortune [I thought dad cut his family off but I guess he’s still receiving money?].

Kiseki’s mom was ready to forgive him and endure like the average Japanese housewife but the kyabajou kept escalating and mocking her so that she will divorce and make room for her. The kyabajou is in fact, so batshit crazy she abducted Kiseki in her own car because “the child is the only reason why he won’t divorce his wife and marry me” which was the initial memory fragment. Up until this point Kiseki’s mom is super angry but stayed calm and collected and formally demanded dad cut ties with this kyabajou.

Dad tried to pay the kyabajou off; obviously didn’t work. The kyabajou started stalking the whole family so mom got paranoid and forbade Kiseki from going to kindergarten, locking him in her room full of dolls she made modelled after her acquaintances, including a doll of the kyabajou that mom stabs with scissors and cursed at.

Eventually, the kyabajou broke into Kiseki’s house on one fateful day with a kitchen knife and started screaming she’s going to kill Kiseki so his dad will marry her crazy ass. In an attempt to stop her from hunting down Kiseki who was hiding in a closet [which is why he is also claustrophobic], Kiseki’s dad accidentally killed her. Reluctantly, he contacted his powerful family who cleaned up and let him walk away for free, because “Kiseki can’t have a father who is a murderer” family honour and all that.

On that day, Kiseki’s mother broke down mentally seeing them dispose of the kyabajou’s body. On a family trip to the sea, she nearly drove the entire family into the sea as a murder-suicide attempt before coming to her senses and hitting the guardrails. After that, Kiseki’s parents divorced, mom gets hospitalized, and he stays with gramps.

Romance:

By being her classmate and childhood friend, Kiseki naturally is close to Amane. One night, when she had to pick up something from his dorm room, she walks in finding a post-shower shirtless Kiseki acting like nothing is wrong, making her blush. Kiseki claims he doesn’t know why she is embarrassed but home boy knew exactly what he was doing lmfao. He puts on clothes & kabedons Amane saying she’s finally realizing he’s a man before doing the copout haha jk unless…?

Amane spends a lot of time with Shima at the library investigating Kiseki’s parents’ backstory and what exactly happened. Kiseki acts nonchalant but spams the hell out of Shima’s DMs because he’s insecure that Amane is falling for Shima. He eventually gets so worried he walks to the library to check in on them, finding Amane not falling but falling on top of Shima at this unfortunate moment. Amane desperately explains that there is nothing going on between them. Kiseki takes her to the rooftop and confesses his feelings for her.

After that, Kiseki starts approaching Amane more, such as asking to hold her hand, which Amane doesn’t refuse and actually likes (hehehe).

At the basketball court, a kouhai confesses to Kiseki, making Amane jealous. This makes Kiseki happy. The two take a selfie at a cafe after the game with Kiseki coming really close and hugging Amane’s shoulder.

While investigating the kyabajou’s ex-boyfriends for clues, they arrive at a concert where some nanpa dude starts making the moves on Amane… Of course Kiseki comes to her rescue… 😍

Eventually, seeing Amane interact with other guys & overthinking makes Kiseki feel he’s losing control over her. He impulsively tells the group chat that from now on, he doesn’t want any help in the investigation and will only work with Amane to resolve. Deep down Amane doesn’t agree, but to calm Kiseki down she agrees to go with it & reassures him that she fully reciprocates his feelings and likes him back, so he shouldn’t worry as much. [So in the first three routes supposedly these CGs end with a passionate kiss but sureee that’s all that happened ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) whatever keeps this game sellable on Switch platform]

Conflict:

Kiseki’s mother’s extreme obsession over Kiseki forms the shadows that roam the campus. As Kiseki got closer to the truth, his psyche became less stable & started worrying that Amane was going to leave him for any of the other four guys that he perceives are better than him forms the second shadow that roams on the campus grounds calling out for Amane, attacking his friends in the process.

Catharsis:

Seeing Amane get hurt by his shadow awakens Kiseki in the good end so they can focus on facing his mother’s shadow. There was a bit of physical violence here. The two really suffered. Kiseki’s cries reach his mother who awakens to reality & realizes her son is not the doll in her arms but the wounded teenage boy in front of her. Elshika announces that with resolution of the trauma left behind, the two have passed the trial.

In the epilogue, the two sign out of the council meeting early to go on a date (with Kiseki of course rubbing this in everyone’s face especially Neo’s). Kiseki’s dad turns himself into the police while his mom works on her recovery.

Lunatic: Overwhelmed with the desire to keep Amane to himself, Kiseki is unable to overcome his shadow & kills all Amane’s friends and classmates (there is actually a partial CG of Ryokuha’s head being tossed in front of Amane). This corrupts his soul, concluding the trial in failure.

Kiseki chains Amane in his room, feeding her necessities and calls her “my adorable baby bird”. As the world is destroyed, Amane tells Kiseki she loves him until the end of time while strangling Kiseki with her own chains.

Nightmare: Similar to the developments in Lunatic, Kiseki tries to lock Amane in his room, hitting her head and accidentally killing her in the process. As Elshika announces that the trial has failed & Kiseki is designated as the next sacrifice, he gives Amane’s corpse a bath as if she were still alive.

Thoughts:

1. Kiseki’s route is about “control”. Starting with the obsessive control his mother exhibited towards him after a traumatizing experience with his father’s affair partner, Kiseki often talked about a darker instinct within him that he inherited from his mother. It’s very relatable how much he overthinks & catastrophizes situations with an “all-or-nothing” thinking pattern. Hence, he is extremely insecure when seeing Amane with other people & very anxiously attached. In fact, not only in his route, whenever Amane is physically close with any of the other guys in public (and before she officially becomes their gf), he would always “casually” physically come in the middle of them, derail the conversation, and straight up cockblock the guy. XD

His last name is one commonly seen in anime/manga/games but rarer IRL 小鳥遊 which you do not pronounce by combining the individual kanji readings. The last name literally means “a freely roaming little bird” but the pronunciation is 鷹なし – no eagles in the sky. When there are no eagles in the sky, the birds are free to roam.

After the abduction, Kiseki’s mother views everyone and everything as an eagle that will hunt her little bird, and so does Kiseki towards the other guys in Amane’s group later on in the game. While some eagles are real, how many of those were created in their heads?

2. Even though the Kiseki & his mom just kinda woke up after seeing blood/crying which was a bit too sharp IMO, I loved Kiseki as a character. I don’t typically fall for the childhood friend type but even though Kiseki isn’t the tallest, strongest, or smoothest, he wears his heart on his sleeve and gives it all to Amane. While this game in general advertises yandere elements, I stayed for how pure and intense his love was for Amane that spanned since childhood and reignited at the reunion. Even when he tried to “casually” flex his muscles and shirtless look in front of Amane, I laughed so hard and found it adorable that he’s trying so hard to (goofily) get her attention. It’s really cute~

3. I don’t usually like otome LIs talking about “me man you woman me protect you and let’s play our roles” but while Kiseki is goofy IRL he has proven multiple times in his route that he does man up and step up when it matters to protect Amane, even if he is afraid inside as well.

4. The main conflict of this route is very much centred around family drama to the point I joked if I was watching the Maury show. Hence, I understand why it’s a hit or miss. However, I wouldn’t let this detract from your enjoyment in who Kiseki is as a character. I find it very hard to dislike him and want to make a case to why you should love him too!

Higana Tera (CV: Tamaru Atsushi)

“Baa, baa, black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes, sir, yes, sir,
Three bags full;
Two* for the master,
And one for the dame,
And none* for the little boy
Who is crying down the lane*.”

*The canon modern version is slightly different.

Tera is the tallest of the group & a big aloof teddy bear. He is in Amane’s year but keeps to himself and is extremely shy when talking to people face to face, often stammering. He is a big nerd that opens up his chatterbox when discussing niche including his favourite novelist, Ryuuguu Karuma.

By chance, Amane also discovers his interest in the supernatural & occult, and that he ran a currently inactive video channel called ASAYAMI (“morning & night”) where he is YAMI and has a partner called ASA. When Tera isn’t seeing the other party’s face and talking about subjects he enjoys, he becomes a charismatic speaker [this game really gave us a few crumbs of what it COULD have been with Tamarun’s voice then took it away T_T].

He’s chronically online so also acts as the “hacker” for the group. In Shima’s route, he even hacks into the Dark Web like damn boy. He also straight up says he’s very good at online stalking which I identify with on a personal level [given I’m always the “give me 30 minutes and I’ll tell you everything about this guy” person in the group.]

Despite his often overlooked talents, Tera has extremely low self-esteem. He thinks people do not want to be friends with him & that he is a bother to everyone. Tera only has one good (male) friend called Asakura Mei, aka ASA online. Mei is happy that Amane is becoming friends with Tera and encourages her to continue doing so. However, something clearly happened between Mei & Tera because Mei keeps finding excuses not to stream podcasts with Tera anymore as ASAYAMI together and talks about going solo. He hints at some kind of online scandal that Tera got himself in and says it isn’t good for their image.

Tera’s memory: Initially, we are given a flashback of little Tera looking at a girl called Hina crying at the bottom of a pit. After that incident, all the kids in the kindergarten refused to play with Tera, who used to be popular, anymore. The hint states “Find the liar & the (black) sheep”.

Tera used to be an outgoing and popular child. However, he’s actually met Mei [aka the liar in this route] in kindergarten before who became insanely jealous of him. This little girl Hina really likes Tera & only wants Tera to play with herself. Tera refuses and she accidentally fell in the pit and got a fracture. Mei spread the rumour that Tera pushed Hina down the pit so no kid wanted to play with him anymore.

Tera & Mei reunited in high school but Mei acted like they didn’t know each other before. Sharing interest in supernatural content, they created ASAYAMI together but quickly Tera outshone Mei again in pulling followers. People started subscribing to the channel mainly for YAMI. A female streamer that Mei crushed on was invited as a guest to the channel to costream a few podcasts also developed a massive crush on Tera and even asked Mei if he had a girlfriend and how she could get with him.

Mei got jealous again and orchestrated an online attack (literally paying people to write online bullying comments such as “kill yourself”) against Tera/YAMI, fabricating sexual rumours between him & this streamer who ended up quitting the internet at the same time, presumably due to the relationship not working out. When Tera eventually found the courage to call and confront this streamer, she said she was happy she became “associated” to Tera even in this scandalous way. In fact, she intentionally posted suggestive statuses on her timeline to bait people to think they were dating. Once the online bullying started, she felt bad for Tera but to clear the air would mean admitting that she liked him, which she was scared of so instead left him to suffer I guess..

Tera became depressed at the online bullying that he thought was real, started thinking he was human trash and didn’t deserve to live. He even opened an alt account just to write in his timeline that he wished he was dead because he was good for nothing.

Romance:

Even though Tera is shy & thinks very lowly of himself, he manages to tell some suspicious people who tried to film Amane at the zoo. Amane tells him that he is “reliable” which surprises him, saying this is the #3 of his “most impossible things people will say about me”. He also has a “top list of phrases I will never say” but blushes and tells Amane that the content on both those lists are a secret, before asking Amane to repeat it and again and praise him~

The group goes to the arcade because Tera is just so out of it. Being the gamer he is, he manages to grab the dinosaur toy – that no one has been able to grab for 3 months – Amane wanted. Seeing Amane smile made him super happy.

As part of the app challenge (see more in Climax) his daily challenge is to post a picture with a girl. He asks Amane to hold hands with him in order to post it and get likes. He set the timer to 10 seconds but after 10 seconds they realize it was set to 30. So they hold each others hands and stare into each other’s eyes… for what feels like an eternity.

With ASAYAMI on hiatus, Tera misses streaming, so Amane suggests he open an alt account and stream there. Tera and her end up streaming a survival game and start gaining fans from zero.

After the stream, he offers Amane some sweets and accidentally feeds her. Embarrassed yet determined, he musters the courage to confess to Amane… before the phone rings, lmfao.

However, since that day, Tera pays a lot more attention to Amane & who she is hanging with. He gets jealous of Mei who talks to Amane privately during recess, comes and grabs her hand and leaves. Amane takes Tera out and explains to Tera that literally there is nothing going on between them, Tera feels embarrassed for messing up again, but also decides to face his feelings and confess to her.

Climax:

In this route, students start committing suicides at night by jumping off the building, many of them caught by patrolling people or Amane’s group while investigating at night. This is the doing of an application called “Black Sheep” that brands itself as a self-help app, starting with innocent prompts of “post a photo of you eating breakfast”. After the user posts, other people will like it, giving the user a dopamine boost.

Tera also received an invitation to participate in the app. Initially, he promises people he is just taking a look because it’s related to the nursery rhyme in his memory fragments. However, with time, he became severely addicted to the application, skipping school and ditching his friends to complete the prompts that are escalating in risk.

The application also always plays a cartoon of a black sheep jumping in the field, but with one frame of a person jumping off a building added in later videos. Given Tera’s low self-esteem, he is extremely insecure and often resorts to playing the videos and telling himself that he “will become stronger” by completing more prompts in this app and getting more likes.

When finding out that Mei had been the lier sabotaging his life all along, Tera breaks down and says he doesn’t want to find out the truth anymore. His entire life comes crashing down on this already suicidal boy. He takes a paper cutter and slashes his wrist and forcibly holds a scared Amane asking if she will betray him too.

On the final night of the trial, all the users in the app receive their final prompt to jump off the school roof and commit suicide – but the app frames it as starting a new life. Mei is behind this application working with the ??? character who stirs up chaos in every route, as harvesting negative emotions seems to benefit his plan.

Amane rushes up the stairs to find Mei transformed into half shadow, and a brainwashed Tera saying he’s going to also jump to his new life.

Catharsis:

Amane literally kisses Tera out of his brainwashing……… yep there was a CG for it…. I…

Mei gets pissed that Tera didn’t kill himself like he always wished for but Tera just charges up to a transformed Mei and headbutts him. He then proceeds to yell at Mei how much he valued Mei as a friend, how Mei was the light of his life, and how he always felt inferior to Mei, and just yelled him out of it all of it…?

Anyways, we collect our last memory fragment & pass the trial I guess..

Amane & Tera officially start dating. Mei apologizes to everyone and I guess that’s all he needed to do to be forgiven in this route. ASAYAMI ends up being revived with them planning to stream together again (this is after story). However, Tera focuses his attention on cultivating his new couples gaming stream with Amane.

In the end, Amane asks Tera about what lines are on the lists he mentioned in the beginning. He tells Amane that #1 for both “things people will never say to me”/”things I will never say to people” are the same line. Amane smiles and the two say the line to each other.

Lunatic: Tera does not wake up to Amane’s call. When she comes close to grab him, he pulls her in her arms and commits double suicide by jumping off the building. The author even gives you an after-scene of “heaven” before blood splatters on the screen and you hear bones cracking.

Nightmare: Tera learns that when he is hurt, he gets Amane’s full undivided attention. He starts cutting off his fingers and sends them to Amane. He fails the trial. His soul is sent to Sullyland where he suffers in eternity, continuing to self-harm and begging for Amane to pay attention to him.

Thoughts:

Buckle up because there’s a lot I want to share about Tera route.

1. The romance is extremely well written & Tera is such a lovable character. There are so many cute moments & CGs between the two. How Tera always wanted to make Amane smile despite feeling inadequate to be her boyfriend & how Amane always placed her unwavering trust in him to become a better and braver person. This is the biggest positive point of this route.

2. Tera’s route also touches on contemporary and very important issues with the digitalization of teenagers’ life. It explores themes of online bullying, online addiction (to being online, and getting the dopamine rush from likes – and people doing dangerous things for likes). This is very good.

However, the execution of this route was poorly done.

3. I get the concept that this was a self-fulfilling prophecy where Tera doesn’t believe in himself –> isolates himself from people –> people don’t bother to deal with him –> he thinks he sucks, and it’s perfectly understandable for him to feel the way he feels, however unfortunate that is.

However, the way Catharsis ending reached its resolution rubbed me the wrong way. It felt like straight out of a shounen anime where the protagonists have a physical fight to “demonstrate their feelings” and yell at each other, solving the conflict through talk-no-jutsu. Just because he views himself lowly (thanks to Mei’s scheming) doesn’t negate the fact he is privileged as a good-looking, tall guy good at video games, knowledgeable in niche fields and attracts people to be his friend or girlfriend. The game failed to acknowledge his gifts all together and kind of made it into a “woe is me” route that we all have to handle him with kid gloves because… well he feels this way. If that makes sense? It is giving me vibes of elementary school when someone cries they “only got 98” on the test, like FOH, lol.

4. I yelled out “NO GOD NO” Office style when I saw that Tera & Mei made up & revived ASAYAMI together. While this is an idealistic Otomate game ending it is such a slap to Tera’s face, who suffered such psychological abuse and bullying by Mei. Some things are not mended with “big sorry” & they both need to move on without each other for their own good. I don’t see any world where this is healthy or conducive to Tera’s mental recovery. This is like saying Kiseki’s parents got remarried after the Catharsis ending. It was so ridiculous that my opinion of the route immediately soured.

5. The dedication Mei had to sabotaging Tera is crazy it felt comical when you factor in he was the same liar in kindergarten. If he was just the high school bully I can totally see it happening but understand the game needs to tie him back to Tera’s childhood trauma. Mei bro if you took half the dedication, time, money and worked on yourself, you’d probably actually be better than Tera at everything he does except his height.

6. I was getting pissed at how many times that creepy sheep video replayed. If you think OlySoi flashbacks were back here’s OlySoi flashbacks in 2026.

7. So what was the point of the graffiti of black sheep around campus?? I honestly think the author could have scrapped this because this was not required as a plot device to introduce the application. Could have just invited Tera to the app and reveal the evil plans in the end.

8. Ayo what was that Lunatic ending also… The CG is pretty but I feel so bad for Amane… girl out there catching strays

9. Final point: Getting Tamaru Atsushi to voice a コミュ障 is a war crime. You are telling TAMARU ATSUSHI to stutter for an entire route?! The only entertaining part was hearing Tera burying his head in his pillow and literally going like AAAAAA and saying stuff like I’M A FILTHY WORM XDDD but I felt it was such a waste of his beautiful voice. I guess he needs to venture out of his comfort zone…

(10. I know the art is to show Tera has eye bags for being chronically online and probably no sleep schedule, but can we talk about how good guys look with eyeliner?)

Azumi Neo (CV: Saitou Souma)

“Ladybird, ladybird fly away home,
Your house is on fire and your children are gone,
All except one, and her name is Ann,
And she hid under the baking pan.”

Neo is the most junior out of the council as a first-year (=grade 10 =sophomore because JP high school is 3 years). Abandoned as a baby, he grew up in orphanages before being adopted by his parents today. He is said to be extremely good-looking and even works as a part-time model under the wing of his manager “Ena-chan” (who is a man). While he is clearly very good at being filmed at, he also like photography.

Neo has caught my attention since the prologue/common route. He is the most quick-witted out of the group. In the first two routes, he encouraged each LI to confess their feelings to Amane, being the first to notice that their dynamic had changed. He is also known for “knowing but not following social cues” or in English – dude does not give a flying fuck about anything. This results in him asking the most unhinged but necessary questions during investigations in each route in order to push the plot forward. Aside from not giving a fuck, he just asks intelligent questions in general and has a skeptical and almost cynical approach to all information that comes his way. [You have no idea how attractive this is… Smart & gets shit done… the perfect guy doesn’t exi-]

He has this nonchalant attitude towards everything in life, accepting things as they come and go and not worrying or caring about any of it. He treats his life as a game and takes enjoyment in flirting with Amane and knowing he looks good doing it [I would think he did this to other girls as well even though the author tries her best to steer him “clean” of this to avoid making him “landmine” … see discussion in Thoughts]. Maybe a bit chuunibyou, but he tells Amane that he doesn’t feel “alive” and he adopts so many personalities though acting and pranking people by putting various faces on, because “I’m empty inside.”

Neo’s memory: In the common route, Neo’s night class has to do with candles and it is revealed he has a fear of flames. Neo’s memory fragment involves him being bullied by another boy at his orphanage; the other boy coerces him to admit he “also” played with flames as a child; then a fire happened at night that supposedly destroyed everything. The prompt being: “What truth did the flames destroy that night?”

Neo had to change orphanages at a young age because his burned down one night with him as the sole survivor, having somehow climbed out of the kitchen window. Due to his memories being sealed away in fragments, he could not remember details of the fire. He felt significant survivor’s guilt & wondered whether he was truly responsible for starting the fire. He also remembered his favourite teacher abandoning him to rescue the other kid who kept bullying him in flashbacks. Even though both his teacher & his bully died in the fire, he comments that he felt empty since: If I don’t give my heart out again, I will not care when someone is inevitably chosen over me which is the core of Neo’s nihilistic philosophy.

Starting with Neo’s route, we learn more about the hidden truths of Marenis’ church & Shiro’s game. Neither Neo nor his bully set the fire that killed everyone that night. This was all due to a cover-up scheme by the church. High-ups at the church posed as foster parents but those kids were all used for some human experiment and no longer trackable years after. The owner of the orphanage got suspicious and investigated, found out too much and had to be silenced. To make matters worse, the church person who set the fire, put sleeping pills in the adults’ medications, and killed everyone was no other than Ena-chan who approached Neo later as a modelling agent, partly to atone for his sins but also to keep tabs on him.

As for Neo’s favourite teacher Ringo-sensei, Ringo sensei wanted to save both of them but only had time to take one child with her. After hearing from one of her colleagues Yamazaki who claimed he would take care of Neo (Yamazaki was the one who sold the orphanage to the church and was killed in the fire by Ena-chan because he knew too much), Ringo sensei left with the other kid. So his teacher never abandoned him. She thought Yamazaki would go to his rescue.

Romance: I apologize for the number of screenshots… This route is just so good, I really couldn’t decide which SS to take out.. I think everyone deserves to see them all and appreciate those lines!! 😍

Initially, Neo tries to put Amane out of her comfort zone, teasing her, asking to rest in her lap, only for Amane to go like this:

which to some degree did pique his interest because she isn’t like the “other girls” that always begged for his attention.

Neo does a photoshoot at school but the cameraman keeps saying his look is not natural enough. As such, Ena-chan asks Amane to pose the photo with him, so he can chat with her and look more natural while having his photos taken.

He takes Amane to a cafe date after, where he asks Amane’s type, and is happy to learn that Amane has never had a boyfriend and not a type either. He immediately tells Amane that she’s his type.

In the common room, Neo walks in and sees Amane getting coffee or something but almost falls. He reaches to help her but she takes Ryokuha’s hand instead, who is closer. Neo looks hurt & ends the conversation early with Amane who tries to chat with him.

This is end of Ch. 1 btw 💀

After realizing what happened, Amane quickly pushes Neo aside. “I can’t believe you just did that… I’m going back to my room.” She hears him laughing. Thinking that this is all some kind of cruel entertainment for him only, Amane feels very hurt… yet she did not dislike the feeling.

Unfortunately, the investigation and trial still needs to continue so the two talk it out on the roof where Neo apologizes but takes Amane on another date where they indirectly kiss by sharing a straw. They talk a bit about Neo’s dream of being a photographer. He also tells Amane that he finds her interesting to the point that “maybe this world is worth staying in”. He then asks Amane if she will be sad for him if he ends up failing the trial and becoming the sacrifice anyway. Amane says no, because in that case she will be sacrificed alongside him; they will stick together to the bitter end.

They pass by some extremists who want to burn down the Marenis tower that is very close to finishing construction [they do end up burning the tower down in the end.]. Someone started a fire that catches onto Neo’s sleeve. In the heat of the moment (no pun intended), Amane puts it out with her bare hand and gets burned slightly in the process.

With Neo being a playboy it was only a matter of time before his fangirls? ex-girlfriends/FWBs? corners him in school demanding to know why he isn’t hanging out with them anymore.

They unexpectedly get invited into the deceased orphanage owner’s house (by the owner’s father) because gramps is demented and thinks the owner is still alive and a child, and that Neo/Amane are his classmates 😂😂 This is where Neo uncovers the partial memory where he is led to believe Ringo sensei abandoned him in the fire for the other kid. He starts spiralling because once again, he was not chosen.

Amane goes to check on Neo in his room who hugs her, confessing and asking her to be his girlfriend. Amane realizes her feelings for him too and says she likes him too.

Thus, Neo & Amane become official. On their next date they watch a movie.

Climax: Being intentionally misled by ???, Kurokawa Saki – a genki kouhai from the occult club who has been very wary of Neo around Amane and butting her head in the orphanage fire’s investigations eventually stabs Neo in the stomach because she is the daughter of Ringo-sensei and believes Neo was the perpetrator of the fire. She is also the one who sent harassment mail & made online rumours of Neo being a murderer and arsonist.

Neo survives the stabbing but remains hospitalized.

This is also when Ena-chan leaves behind his pen with the church’s inscription, leading to final confirmation that he was the one who set Neo’s orphanage on fire. After returning back to the dorm from hospital (damn you recovered fast), Neo pulls Amane into his room and …

Neo snaps out in the last minute and is horrified and what he almost succumbed to. He tells Amane to keep some distance from him, because he is scared of hurting her. Amane instead firmly tells him that she will stay by his side through thick & thin because she is his girlfriend.

They go to the newly built Marenis Tower together. Ryokuha manages to get into the church archives and demonstrate that the children in Neo’s orphanage were supplied as human experiment subjects to the church, and that Ena-chan did the “clean-up”. Neo confronts Ena-chan who of course is not going down without a fight. However, kind of like how Mei’s betrayal was Tera’s last straw, confirming that Ena (probably still cared about him a bit) prioritized the church and deceived him for so many years, and placing this invisible burden on Neo breaks him:

Catharsis: Amane makes for a run and is mercilessly captured. Fortunately, the second last memory fragment arrives where Amane is able to travel back in time to choose either Neo or his friend. It’s a timed sequence and waiting out the first half will give you to choose the third option “save both” (lol). Seeing this, Neo returns to normal and the two escape out of the burning tower. The final memory piece is where Neo learns that Ringo sensei never gave up on him either and entrusted him to Yamazaki. He covers his mouth and tears start to fall…

This concludes the trial. In the aftermath, Neo and Amane visit the grave of the victims of the fire, where a ladybug flies on the sleeve of their holding hands, something that Ringo sensei symbolizes good luck.

Lunatic: Amane is captured by Neo and burns with the tower that goes down in the fire. They fail the trial. As the apocalypse arrives, Neo tends to Amane’s wounds, the latter starting to become addicted to this mixture of pain and pleasure…

Nightmare: Neo accidentally strangles Amane to death and is sent to Sullyland as the sacrifice, where he mindlessly walks through piles and piles of corpses. Obsessed with “finding” Amane, he plucks out various body parts that he thinks resembles her and puts together his “Amane”, only for this body to say mean things to him such as “murderer” “nobody will ever love you” before falling apart into flesh pieces. Over and over again, he continues this Sisyphean effort until the end of time, while the voice of Shiro tells Amane to “return” to him [as he does at the end of every nightmare route when the sacrifice is made.. but more on that in Ryokuha route.]

Thoughts:

While Ryokuha’s route and endings were my favourite in terms of plot, Neo is the character that I just couldn’t get out of my mind every since completing the game. Other than the ??? character, this is the heaviest yandere of the game.

Neo is the youngest, yet has an air of nihilism that doesn’t match his age. Due to survivor guilt as well as the impression that nobody cared about him enough to prioritize him, he also stopped caring but deep down craves that one person to hold his beautiful face in their hands and tell him that he is more important than everyone else in the world.

This route is so full of romantic lines, with my favourite one being “so let me be your first and last boyfriend”. Since the stage play scene in the common route, the chemistry between them is so strong it is undeniable. Even though I know Neo is a massive playboy who took interest in Amane because despite how nice she was to Neo (and didn’t give him favourable treatment, treated him like “any other guy” – this was explicitly said by him in game) she was unattainable and made him want to chase her. In other words, she wasn’t like the other girls who were desperate for his attention. While this seems like a cliche reason the ample amount of well-written romance & Saitou Souma’s voice made me go, let me just be loyal to how I feel for once and stop thinking about anything else.

In addition the romance, I’ve hinted in the beginning of the section that Neo is so smart & asks all the right questions. He gets to the point without “padding” the words and is something I find incredibly refreshing and attractive when everyone else is えっと… the world is ending guys chop chop. He is cynical and sees through disguise easily in other routes. He picks up on unspoken changes in dynamic and encourages other LIs to confess to Amane and propels their relationship forward. While he acts like he doesn’t read the air, he reads it better than everyone else.

There are of course flaws to the logic of Neo route, such as where are his foster parents? Do they not love him or something? Why did he break down after Ena-chan betrayed him. Would the girls who are infatuated with him not view him more important than everyone else in his life, why Amane? The author also makes him more palatable by making him promise to Amane that he will stay loyal to her now that they are exclusive and she is the only girl he has “wanted” to chase. Again, none of this would be real in real life but alas, this is fiction.

Tatewaki Shima (CV: Ishikawa Kaito)

“Oranges and lemons, Say the bells of St. Clement’s.
You owe me five farthings, Say the bells of St. Martin’s.
When will you pay me? Say the bells at Old Bailey.
When I grow rich, Say the bells at Shoreditch. When will that be? Say the bells of Stepney.
I do not know, Says the great bell at Bow.
Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!
Chip chop chip chop the last man is dead.“

Shima is around 5-6 years older than Amane, being a graduating undergrad student who got his credits early so is just waiting for his diploma and working in the high school dorm for some extra income in the meantime, with many girls in Amane’s high school crushing on him, going to his office hours just to talk to him.

He is a kind and gentle person who gives house-husband vibes with him comparing prices at shops and bringing his bags and all that. Despite being quite a bit older than the rest, he isn’t the most assertive or decisive – often delegating to Ryokuha & a sassy Neo asking questions.

Shima’s memory: This revolves around finding the truth behind the death of Shima’s birth father (Akihito), who was a famous novelist with the pen name Ryuuguu Karuma. However, Shima’s dad committed suicide by hanging himself in their house, leaving behind a letter saying he got himself into too much debt by being involved with loan sharks. Shima refuses to believe his father would commit suicide and for that reason so this trial’s and his own objectives are one.

[It was also super hilarious that when Tera did internet searches he would literally search for “loan shark” “illegal loans” 闇金融 and they actually found the firm… Like who is going to upload their website and say we are illegal lmfao. This church also stores their shady stuff on the Dark Web instead of a physical USB drive, and Tera as a high school streamer kid manages to get into the Dark Web just like that. While I know the story needs to continue this is all starting to sound a little less believable.]

Shima’s mother later remarried a family friend, Satoru, who is a high-ranking official in the church & assumed a father figure to Shima, who continued to publish novels under the name Ryuuguu Karuma. Shima refuses to believe his father would commit suicide and for that reason. Interestingly, Satoru changed his last name to Tatewaki instead of … making Shima’s mom change hers. The large sum of money was paid off with Akihito’s life insurance. [I did some research online. It appears insurance companies generally will pay out even if it’s a suicide but with a “suicide free period” otherwise it encourages suicidal people to game the system. So it’s not illogical writing here.]

The truth is that since childhood, Satoru has some kind of NTR complex where he likes to “steal other people’s stuff” – be it family, lovers, or talents. From a young age, he would identify people he envies, then mimic their talent: imitate the way they talk, sing, draw.. However, all those years, Akihito and his magic with words as a novelist was the only person he could never become. Therefore, it became Satoru’s life goal to replace Akihito and steal his wife and son [the fact he charmed Shima’s mom into marrying him is also, something.] and live under his skin. Hence, he developed the whole elaborate loan shark theme and baited an unsuspecting Akihito to be a guarantor for his coworker who was in on the job. Eventually, he murdered Akihito and faked his death to be a suicide and wrote in his handwriting saying he couldn’t bear the burden of having to pay back so much money.

At the same time, Akihito wanted to write some religious elements in his next novel so he goes to Marenis church to gain inspiration, but runs into the child-trafficking human experiment & coverup story that happened in Neo route. Being a church official, Satoru was ordered to monitor Akihito, who was determined to expose the doings of the church for justice.

As they uncover the orphanage scandal, they also stumble in the church’s tradition that is tied to the history of Marenis. This land used to be watched over twin gods: brother Marenis who governed death & sister Elshika who governed hope and living. There was a plague in the village & due to a misunderstanding the villagers believed killing Elshika and eating her heart together will cure the plague. They hunted Elshika and hurt her but were stopped by Marenis, who decided to punish the humans for hurting his sister & turned them into the same black shadowy monsters we’ve been seeing this game. The village was shrouded in darkness & Elshika volunteered for the remaining humans to eat her heart and pray for the shadows to be changed back. This worked but Elshika fell into a slumber. Therefore, in order for the people living on this land to repent forever, Marenis created Sullyland & the Scale, ordered that every one hundred years, one child that has to be a twin, would be offered as sacrifice to keep the scale even so that the real world does not turn into Sullyland or hell.

[Now I am reading it for the second time, I am so pissed!! So initially Elshika didn’t have to die at all, but because her dumbass brother went ahead and turned humans into monsters & didn’t have the power to change them back, with her being so kind and selfless she had to offer her heart and lose her powers and be stuck in this bird form. I want to say this is dumb, but it kind of is like a lot of mythology where … dumb shit happens. Attaching SS of the game to prove I’m not making this up. I went back and read this.]

Shima eventually confronts Satoru who obviously declines and turns into the shadow. However, when he seems Shima holding the knife, he mocks Shima and tells him to kill him if he dares. After all, he will be ruined too in the process of revenge… Shima descends into darkness and does stab Satoru, who stopped fighting back, and cutting through Amane’s hand in the process. A desperate Amane prays to Elshika who conveniently appears and wakes Shima up with her… powers.

Catharsis:

Their prayers manifest a magical pen and book. Shima announces that he will not choose revenge or going to Sullyland with Satoru. He and Amane hold the pen and Satoru is absorbed into Sullyland.

They uncover the last memory fragment which is basically Akihito telling Shima that the answer to his riddle was “courage” and tells Shima to live on with a just heart and the courage to always do the right thing. He passes the trial.

In the after story, Shima gives Amane a promise ring as Amane starts her university applications with the plan of being his – Tatewaki Shima, not Ryuuguu Karuma – editor as promised.

Romance:

Shima asks Amane help pick out a birthday gift for his mother. As thank you, he takes her to a cafe to treat her but thanks her for coming out with him to this “date”. When Amane asks him if he goes out with girls on dates, he plays dumb as if it’s a “friends’ date” and says he’s busy etc. and doesn’t have a GF yadi yada but then cuts a piece of the dessert and wants to feed Amane, “since you mentioned… why don’t we do something people do on dates…?” Amane is startled and he says haha jk unless…? Then Amane says she will do it as a practice for real dates in the future.

Amane asks for Shima’s helping in editing her school essay. Because reviewing over the phone takes too long, she visits his room and finds beer cans in his room. Shima appears sad and knows he is drinking, so he says maybe Amane should think twice before entering a drunk guy’s room at night. Amane concludes she is worried about him & “can’t leave him alone like this” [girl you are 16 and he is like 22, he will be okay]. While sitting on the couch with Amane, he puts his hand on Amane’s, saying he doesn’t want to lose her like he lost his dad. Amane puts her hand on top of Shima’s [as a friend] and tells him that just because he’s the oldest doesn’t mean he has to act tough all the time. He can rely on others too. She will be here for him.

Shima is really popular among the girls at Amane’s high school (duh). He has office hours for university application counselling & tells Amane if she isn’t sure what to do with her future, she can come be his personal editor.

Shima is moved by Amane’s kindness but is conflicted because he doesn’t really want her implicated in his search for Akihito’s killer, as darker secrets surface. Yet, he also clings onto her emotionally and says “I want to keep her warmth all to myself.” Amane continues to offer her support, even saying things like “let me help. You won’t regret it.”

Kiseki susses out that the two have feelings for each other & tells Shima to “please (treat her well) don’t make her cry”. In other guys’ routes, he threatens to beat them up if they make her cry but he respects Shima too much to yell and wave his fist like that wwww

On their next visit to some old guy’s estate (the owner asks them to stay over because it got dark and too far from their home), Shima gets drunk & confesses to Amane.

After Shima finds out that Satoru is his dad’s killer, he becomes overwhelmed with the news, saying he no longer wants to know the truth anymore. His dark side takes over saying he wants to kill Satoru. Amane begs him to not be a murderer; however, if he goes through with it, even if the world doesn’t forgive him, she will always stay by his side. Shima says okay let’s descend into darkness together (basically the promo content) & Amane says no matter how many times we descend, I will always re-ascend and bring you back… and then we have the finger in tongue scene ……

Lunatic: Shima kills Satoru with the knife. Staying true to his word to “make Amane descend into darkness” with him, he holds her hand, forcing her to hold the knife and also stab Satoru, so that they committed the crime together. He also cuts down one finger of Amane’s.

They don’t care about the trial anymore. Every day and night they made love like animals. He cooks Amane’s finger in a pot of soup and drinks it with her to “share the burden the sin”.

The soup is laced with sleeping pills. After Amane falls asleep, he strangles her to death before wrapping his neck with the noose and kicking the stool below him, just like how Akihito supposedly did…

Nightmare: Shima saves Amane from being run over by a truck but becomes at least hemiplegic and disabled. He becomes more and more paranoid of losing Amane to other men, demanding her to take off clothes and get on top of him.. When Amane refuses, he says it’s because he isn’t worth of being loved by her anymore. He fails the trial and is sent to Sullyland as the new sacrifice.

Thoughts:

Man, usually I am pretty good at predicting who I will like but not this time. I preordered Shima’s Stellaworth set. Now it’s like an offering I made to IshiKai.

1. Biggest issue I had is with their relationship dynamic. It’s hot and cute until you think about how Amane is 16 and Shima is 22. Add 5 years to both their ages and I wouldn’t have cared one bit (make them all college kids & Shima an office worker or something, idk). From the beginning, Shima would say things that “led on” Amane such as calling a normal outing a “date” then offering to feed her and “do couples things since we are out on a date”, and innocently suggesting her to be his “personal editor” … I don’t do too well with this trope, see my rant on Tenma’s route in Glass Heart Princess. I just find it too predatory even though this was never the author’s intent.
2. The fact their first two intimate encounters both involved alcohol (the third one is that weird ass finger in mouth scene). Him getting drunk and touching Amane’s hand, then getting drunk and holding Amane in his lap and confessing… Not a recipe for success lol like how much of it was substance and how much of it was true feeling?
3. Amane switching from reciprocating Shima’s offer to feed her to “practice for future dates” to blushing near the end of route when Shima’s fingers touch her… Is this the same person?
4. Amane, he’s 22, he doesn’t need a 16-year-old girl to look after his drunk ass. Girl, he will be fine. “I can’t leave you alone” yes, yes you can… And if he really can’t take care of himself not your job to be his mommy.. While it’s a common trope for MC to become LI’s emotional support, using that here is misplaced, IMO.
5. If I were Shima I’d also wanna kill Satoru. Using this as the basis for his “descent to darkness” is a bit forced. Also, why the hell would he say to Amane in the first drunk scene when he holds her hand, that he doesn’t want to lose her either? Bro’s a bit of a drunk mess this route and I just … didn’t get the appeal whatsoever. Final nail in the coffin is that IshiKai used a higher, younger voice that’s different than his usual & I didn’t like it… =/

Kuga Ryokuha (CV: Ban Taito)

“There once were two cats of Kilkenny,
Each thought there was one cat too many,
So they fought and they fit,
And they scratched and they bit,
Till, excepting their nails
And the tips of their tails,
Instead of two cats, there weren’t any.“

Ryokuha is the reliable leader of the council. Take a shot every time he says “let’s organize our thoughts”. He is calm, rational, and dependable. He is the son of Kuga Tatsuomi, a prominent priest at the Marenis church. His route is the truth route and extra long, but a very good one.

The story

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That day when Amane discovered the corpse of the “dove” that was Elshika’s body, she made a prayer: she doesn’t want people to die a sad, lonely death just like this dove. Because of their strong connection, this awakened Elshika who granted her wish in response to Amane’s prayers and her own reasons. That day, only Amane, “Ryokuha”, and Tsuki were there. However, in Amane’s memory, there were 7 people, including:

• Kiseki, who actually died from a suicide attempt of his mother driving into the sea
• Tera, who died from being pushed by his playmate as a prank in the same spot Hina fell
• Neo, who died in the fire that wiped out his orphanage
• Shima, who was killed by Satoru for walking into him killing Akihito

[Those were also the extra stories after the lunatic end.]

Elshika says when she awakened, she sensed that something very wrong was going to happen (this was before Tsuki became sacrificed). However, she could not directly revert it. All she could do was to “create irregularity” such as bringing back 4 children that should have died back to life, in attempt to mess up the timeline & buy time. And that’s what she did.

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In this route, another student joins Marenis high school: Sui. He is popular, outgoing, yet seems to heavily dislike Ryokuha. Sui is actually Ryokuha’s deceased brother, Kairi, who died the same night Ryokuha’s eye was hurt. Kairi believed that Ryokuha killed him & was revived by Tsuki to help his plans and get revenge on Ryokuha.

The issue is, Ryokuha wasn’t Kairi’s killer. His family (Kuga) served as the leader of the village when the ignorant villagers ate Elshika’s heart and became punished by Marenis. As such, the Kuga family had a curse: that no matter what happens, only one child will survive to pass on the bloodline. If more than one were born, all of them would die but one.

Ryokuha’s dad Tatsuomi married his mom but the two were not able to conceive a child for a long time. As yet another man who can’t keep his dick in his pants, he took on a lover who gave birth to Kairi, completing the task of continuing the family bloodline. However, after Kairi was born, Ryokuha’s mom became pregnant with Ryokuha & refused to get an abortion. Due to the curse, she did not give birth to a human but a literal pile of flesh.

Tatsuomi still cared about Ryokuha/this blob of flesh, so he stole a relic or a piece of Elshika’s heart & along with Kairi’s hair, turned this pile of flesh into Ryokuha and carried on his life with two children. However, Ryokuha’s mom hated Kairi because he was the child of her husband’s lover. Tatsuomi also knew deep down that the curse will take place one day and had decided that Ryokuha was the more valuable and “proper” son despite Kairi being better than Ryokuha at everything he did.

Kairi was extremely hurt by the differential treatment he was getting from his parents. He joined a random play group as “Ryokuha” and acted mischievously as a smear campaign to Ryokuha who was the quieter one. Hence, the outgoing Kuga boy that always liked to prank Amane who buried Elshika with her was not Ryokuha but actually Kairi.

Eventually, Kairi became so upset & jealous of Ryokuha getting all the attention from his parents that one night, he went into Ryokuha’s room and attempted to strangle Ryokuha to death. This is on the background of Kairi always physically abusing Ryokuha, who would tend to his wounds in silence not wanting to worry his parents. Ryokuha fought back, but Kairi had a pair of scissors in his hands & drove the scissors in Ryokuha’s left eye. [So Ryokuha’s eye now is a prosthesis? Or just randomly grew with a new colour because… Elshika’s relic and stuff? The game never elaborated.]

Kairi believed that Ryokuha eventually came out on top and killed him, hence had been holding all grudges against him (even though he went to kill Ryokuha, bruh…) until Elshika showed a memory piece of Tastsuomi’s that revealed after finding the two children wounded, Tatsuomi decided this infighting had to stop. If the curse was inevitable he might as well take it into his own hands and decide which son to keep. As such, he strangled Kairi to death, allowing Ryokuha to live today. Because Ryokuha felt guilty for Kairi’s death (and believed he did it to him), Tatsuomi lied to him saying there’s a religious ceremony that will allow Kairi’s soul to possess his body and replace him living in this world but he has to wait until Ryokuha turns 20, so that Ryokuha doesn’t commit suicide.

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Remember in Shima’s route, there is a Marenis’ tradition of sacrificing one child (that has to be part of twins) every hundred years? The chosen child is said to have an especially strong connection to Elshika and will hear a message from her in their dream. To identify this child, the church holds “twins’ parties” and the staff will ask the children if any of them saw a dream. Amane saw the dream. However, Tsuki told her to lie and not admit to it, while she volunteered herself as the next sacrifice by saying she saw the dream. [Tsuki was hinted in the common route to be an especially gifted child.] Because Tsuki wasn’t the correct sacrifice, the Scale is losing balance. Hence, the church is desperate to fix this “mistake” so Marenis will not be destroyed.

Throughout the game it is also hinted that Tsuki doesn’t exist on this world, as Amane would talk to her on the phone yet we never hear her voice or see her grown-up sprite. In fact, is Tsuki really her twin sister, or…?

Like Marenis to Elshika, Tsuki (aka Shiro aka ???) is Amane’s twin brother who had an especially strong bond towards Amane since birth. He started dressing and acting like a girl and always wanted to be the same as Amane which got their parents very concerned. As a child, Amane told Tsuki when she grew up, she would be oniichan’s bride but Tsuki replied siblings cannot get married. Amane got very upset and started kicking & crying, so Tsuki said he would find a way to make it happen; little did we know it involved all of… this.

After Tsuki was sacrificed and his death covered up as a missing child incident, Amane couldn’t accept his death & descended into mental illness, coping by believing Tsuki is her big sister and still alive, and would play out those phone calls (in this route, she was making a call in front of Tera, but her phone had no reception). Her parents took her abroad to get out of this city for a new start.

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After Amane remembers everything in her past & who Shiro is & who Tsuki was, Tsuki invites her to the world he created just for her with the powers he inherited from Marenis, as the two worlds begin to merge. However, Amane replies while she loves Tsuki, she will not sacrifice anyone, especially not Ryokuha, that Tsuki sees as his biggest threat because Amane is in love with him.

Tsuki tells Ryokuha that he was never meant to be human or deserve to live anyway, so why get in the way of making Kiseki/Tera/Neo/Shima suffer when he could create a perfect world with “perfect” endings for them, and Amane, but he would not be in it.

Tsuki takes Ryokuha to the new world? illusion? that he created, where everyone seemed to be happy but are they…? Kiseki is gaining fame as a rising guitarist, Tera a famous streamer YAMI (and kicked out ASA in the duo because “he only holds me back”, Shima stopped thinking about revenge and continues to live his life (by purposely getting into an accident so he couldn’t use his right hand anymore to kill Satoru, and gave up writing in the process), even Kairi stays alive as Tatsuomi’s oldest son because in this world, Tsuki got rid of the curse. Ryokuha says hi to his old friends & classmates but they don’t recognize him and act appalled saying he is an ugly monster.

At this time, “Kuga Tsuki” arrives as the most popular guy in the school and acts lovey dovey with Amane, while everyone congratulates them for being “the perfect couple”. Ryokuha says hi to Amane but she also doesn’t recognize him and gets flustered and runs away.

Ryokuha walks to the seaside, saying he is “tired” and that perhaps the world will be a better place without him alive. He thinks of Amane, who calls out for his name. Because of Elshika’s powers, she doesn’t see Ryokuha as a monster but in his human form. She apologizes for running away from Ryokuha earlier and notes something is familiar about him, and that something is off with her life… Have we met before?

Ryokuha tells Amane that they have met a long time ago as children, when she sang to his piano accompaniment, and was the only one whose face he could see clearly . He taught this girl a little self-affirmation when she got nervous. However, (in this world) she doesn’t remember him anymore. He tells Amane he loves her.

Tsuki appears saying oh no don’t you take away my girl from me. Both of them extend their hand to Amane who has to make the final choice…

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Romance:

No sacrifice is “chosen” by Shiro this route who kills Marenis at the end. Elshika barely manages to seal Shiro/Tsuki’s power & says they have three months to find a way to save the world.

Ryokuha & Amane are assigned to some church festival’s music performance where Amane sings & Ryokuha plays the piano. They share a music player & listen to the songs they will be performing together. They get close & blush, especially thinking about the “kissing” incident at the beginning of the route where Ryokuha apologizes for.

Ryokuha is nervous about his upcoming performance. Amane teaches Ryokuha a little trick to calm down when nervous: close your eyes, and pretend there’s a music box; when it opens, it seals all the “bad feelings” in it, and when it closes, imagine someone holding your hand…

Under the influence of Tsuki, rumours start to spread in the school that Ryokuha is a murderer. His friends get angry and want to clear this rumour. However, Ryokuha says let them be and doesn’t fight it, because deep down believes himself to be the killer of Kairi. Sensing he is quietly suffering, Amane gets Ryokuha (who has a sweet tooth) some sweets and asks him to go to the amusement park with everyone this weekend.

At the amusement park, Neo takes photos of everyone and edits funny effects into them. They take the ferris wheel ride but can only be in pairs. Ryokuha gets to be in the same group with Amane, who notes he is having a lot of fun and gets him blustered. The carriage suddenly shakes. The two touch hands. Ryokuha slowly hugs Amane from behind and asks to “stay like this for a bit longer”.

When they get off the ride, it starts pouring. Ryokuha covers his jacket over Amane but the wind makes it that they get wet anyway. They laugh in the rain together.

After Sui confronts Ryokuha and reveals himself to be Kairi, Ryokuha becomes dejected telling Amane he killed Kairi as a child. He is a murderer like Kairi says. He tells Amane that she shouldn’t get mixed with a guy like him, that she should leave him alone. Amane says I will not leave until you promise me you’re not going to do anything stupid!

Man I have so many thoughts on this scene, but will leave to the discussion. Amane replies even if you force me like this, I will still not leave you alone, I trust you senpai… Ryokuha is like I give up woman, so resumes their musical practice the next day.

Ryokuha thinks back of a memory when he and Amane were both children. He was playing the piano in the church and Amane walked over and started singing. In the past chapter, the game has shown from Ryokuha’s POV that he actually can’t see anyone’s faces. However, Amane was the only one’s face he could only see since children. He was also the one who taught Amane that little self-affirmation trick, but Amane forgot, until she has a dream in the present time and remembers. At the time, Amane also had some kind of communication disorder. She was unable to speak and only sing. It was with Ryokuha’s affirmation did she gain more confidence and became the person today.

She finds Ryokuha asking if he was the boy who played the piano when they were children. Ryokuha affirms and says he is surprised she still remembers the affirmation. However, even when they’re practicing for the performance, Ryokuha still tells Amane he will willingly die to bring Kairi back when he turns 20 (holding onto the lie Tatsuomi told him). He again, tells Amane to stop associating herself with him to which she confesses:

After this is the church performance and the reveal of the backstory as described prior.

Ryokuha Catharsis:

Amane takes Ryokuha’s hand and is transported back to reality with him. Elshika tells them that the only way to solve the problem is to destroy the Scale itself. A lot of monsters appear on the way. Amane’s friends stay behind to distract them as she makes it to the Scale with Ryokuha. Thinking about the times they supported each other through all those years, they destroy the Scale and restore Marenis to its old form.

Everything is now over…

The next spring, Ryokuha leaves for university and tells Amane that for all the remaining years in his life, he wants to see the sakura blossoms with her.

Tsuki Catharsis (Nightmare):

We get two scenes earlier with Tsuki that are just him flirting with her and dropping hints about knowing “absolutely everything” about Amane.

If you choose to take Tsuki’s hand in the end, you get an ending where they become a couple. Ryokuha doesn’t exist in this world. When Tsuki plays Ryokuha’s song, Amane cannot stop crying but doesn’t know what is wrong. Tsuki holds Amane and tells her she doesn’t need to think so hard. After all, she’s promised her entire being to him & this is their happy ending…

Ryokuha Lunatic: Amane chooses Ryokuha but had to sacrifice a part of her soul to fix the Scale. In the aftermath, Ryokuha visits her regularly. However, Amane calls him “Tsuki”. Sometimes, she regains memory but as time passes, she is lucid less and less with Ryokuha helplessly holding her.

Thoughts:

Other than that one scene where it felt like a scene out of NilAdo “there I am kissing you and forcing myself upon you so you better turn back now!” got me like ???????? this route was beautifully written from the story to the romance. I love how pure the love was between Ryokuha & Amane; how many heartstring-pulling moments were described through silence and subtle bodily contact.

The bond of fate between them is very strong. From their childhood connections, to Ryokuha literally only being able to see Amane’s face in this world, to Amane confessing first to Ryokuha (in every other route, the LI confesses to her).

Tsuki is a yandere through and through. He was just built different and extremely gifted to the point he came up with all these ideas as a child. It’s also funny how Uchida Yuuma just voiced a “pure love” character (Lise/Crazy Chain) & is now voicing “obsessive love” in this game (this is how the promo material introduced him). However, even though he tried his best to change his fate, the world he created was far from perfect, & I love the merry-bad ending feel in his “catharsis” end.

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Overall, a perfect finale to this rollercoaster of a very good, but not quite perfect game given some smaller issues and my personal preference. I had a lot of fun and would recommend it to anyone who is okay with darker content.

First weeks’ sales wise, it sold just short of 4000 copies. MiraMys sold 6700 in its week while releasing alongside the new Fire Emblem game. This came as a bit of a surprise but likely from the following reasons:

1. Too many games in this time period (MiraMys, many gamers crossover into FEFW) with Sullyland being the last one so budget wise cannot afford all
2. MiraMys promoted the game a lot more (since it’s LicoBITS’ focus) with demos where as Sullyland not as much. I also don’t think putting out the common route as a demo will do any favours as it was the weaker part of the game.
3. Not everyone is okay with darker content but everyone is okay with a standard, pretty game like MiraMys… which is my next game! So until next time.