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TITLE: 失われた未来を求めて (Ushinawareta Mirai wo Motomete)
AKA: À la recherche du futur perdu, In Search of Lost Future, WaraMete;
DEVELOPER: Trumple
RATING: +18
TAGS: Sci-fi, Time Travel, Enforced playing order, School, Club, Group of friends,
PLATFORM: PC
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Uchihama Gakuen has seen an increase in enrolment in recent years and as a result, a new school building will be constructed. With the final school festival just around the corner, clubs are desperate to show off their greatness and fights ensue between them. The School Council resorts to asking the Astronomy club, whose members they deem highly capable of resolving the troubles that will surely begin to appear, to lend them a helping hand.
Akiyama Sou is a member of such club, though unlike the rest he doesn’t particularly poses any special abilities. As he’s resting in the infirmary after being knocked out cold by the Judo club whilst trying to resolve some trouble related to the festival’s timetable, the whole building shakes and he hears a loud sound upstairs. He rushes to the scene, thinking someone might be in trouble, and finds a mysterious naked girl that seems to know him. Her name is Yui, who will soon join the Astronomy Club… but there’s something very peculiar about her.
[WARNING!] This post does not contain any R18 content, but contains mild nudity and pantsu. Other than that, it's SFW.
With the anime airing, I decided to make a review of this VN that I
played ages ago. Wondering why I decided to play? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA have you seen this VN’s artwork?
The Story
I think the enormous faults the story presents are pretty obvious from
the summary I wrote. The fact that the student council would recur to
the Astronomy club to take care of things THEY should be taking care of baffles me. The members are like some sort of overpowered Avengers team, with Sou being the only useless git.
Story wise it’s your generic high school plot, BUT WITH A TWIST! It has a nice sci-fi subplot going on, though it’s not particularly amazing… most of the time it falls flat on its head, but I won’t deny that I enjoyed it and it did
give the story some creativity points. Those of you who are very into
sci-fi will most likely find it lacking, but those who aren’t too
worried about everything getting scientifically explained and making
perfect sense will find this to be a nice pleasant ride.
There are a few general comments that have to be made that kind of apply
to all of the routes. Firstly, this game has an enforced playing order
and a mystery that requires you to play all routes to resolve. Secondly,
if you take this game's TRUE END as the actual true end of it, this
game technically has no happy endings for the rest of the characters
(I'm trying very hard not to spoil here, bear with me...). Technically
they're 'alternative endings' to the original storyline, and all
of them make almost no sense in relation to this sci-fi subplot. Taking
this option (which can only be unblocked once you've completed the
character's main route) leaves you in the dark, and the alternative endings feel incomplete with loose ends that haven’t been tied up properly.
Thirdly, as you progress through the routes, these become longer and
provide more information about the whole sci-fi subplot—that was cool to
some extent, I guess. It kept the mystery going. But lastly, this sci-fi subplot makes no sense half the time anyway.
It’s like an extra to the story. It seems as if it loses its original
purpose halfway through, and then the endings comes along and BAM
everything’s just cut off, and we either swing right into a completely
different story (‘bad’ ends ultimately leading to the TRUE END) or
nothing really makes sense (‘alternative’ ends). The story concept is
cool, but the development of it was pretty bad.
The only ending that actually makes sense is the TRUE END, that actually
ties things up pretty neatly. The down side of it is that all the other
routes feel wrong and never meant to be after you’ve completed it, so it sort of ruins the other characters.
Incidentally, the name is based of the French novel series À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), but I highly doubt this any purpose other than to make the story feel more dramatic.
The Characters
Sasaki Kaori 佐々木 佳織
CV: Arisugawa Miyabi
How can I express how much I hated Kaori’s ‘Kya’s?? (ᗒᗣᗕ)՞
Kaori is the Vice president of the Astronomy Club and plays the
childhood friend-type character, though not really because she isn’t
really Sou’s childhood friend. She is the voice of reason and is one of
the top 3 girls boys want to make their waifu in the school. Her mother
is a researcher, and has known Sou’s parents (who we never actually get
to meet because they’re out somewhere investigating and neglecting their child,
as most VN parents do) for some time. He’s kind of been freeloading at
their house for the past 3 years (bad parenting skills, BAD. PARENTING. SKILLS.)
Kaori gets scared easily, is overly kawaii, and goes kya kya
every time Sou touches her. She’s everyone’s tea slave, since they’re
always bossing her around and having her make tea in the club room (kind
of like Asahina Mikuru but without the maid outfit), and my brain and I
had a hard time comprehending WHY on earth someone as useless as her is the vice president.
I know this is just a club, but come on! She even stops coming to the
club room for a while during her route because she has a squabble with
Sou… irresponsible b*tch
(╯°Д°）╯︵/(.□ . )
(╯°Д°）╯︵/(.□ . )
That said, her route wasn’t that bad. Her character is just the type that gets on my nerves, but I won’t deny her route was sweet. She shares this game’s main heroin position with Yui, and therefore her story with Sou progresses in a very natural, logical way.
However, it felt the least developed of all routes. Kaori’s route is
the first one you have to play and is the most confusing one, and it
just felt incomplete, sliced with a knife with a sudden full stop. Sure,
we’ll get more info in the next few routes, but it just kind of leaves
you hanging… especially her main route.
Hasekura Airi 支倉 愛理
CV: Kawashima Rino
Why do I love black haired character designs the most?
Airi is the Astronomy Club’s president, and the single most badass character in this visual novel.
She excels both academically and in physical strength, and is quite the
forcible person. You can always rely on her, and is one busy bee. She pushes herself too hard and tends not to rely on anybody to get things done,
causing others to often worry about her. Of course, she’s been crushing
on Sou since the very day he met him because apparently he said
something along the lines of ‘you have beautiful eyes’(?). Us girls just
love that sort of romantic shit, don’t we?
Aaaahhh I loved Airi. She was a big change from the overly-moe Kaori.
Airi has balls, or more like, a good pair of OVARIES. She’s crazy
strong, so much that she’s well known for her powerful kicks. The Judo club are scared stiff of her,
and she’s usually the one to save the day. I loved her to bits—it was
wonderful seeing how her tough attitude slowly crumbled down when she
was with Sou, and I thought their relationship was a cuteness overload.
BUT (there’s always a but, and you know it). Throughout all the routes, and especially during the TRUE END, Airi seems to know and understand what is going on with all this weird sci-fi shit.
This continues throughout her route too, but we never actually get an
answer as to WHY and HOW she found this out. In fact, sometimes it seems
as though she knows exactly what’s happening, and then it seems as if
she’s just making wild guesses and just MAGICALLY figured it out because
she’s such a GENIUS, you know… The sci-fi subplot just becomes a big
mess of incomprehensible and pointless plot points that seem to have
been added in just for the sake of it… or maybe I'm just stupid and didn't get it, idk.
Hanamiya Nagisa 華宮 凪沙
CV:Tamiyasu Tomoe
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
Nagisa was, initially, the character I least wanted to play for some
strange reason I fail to understand right now. She is a 3rd year
student, and scary as f*cuk—she is the one person in the school you do not, I repeat, DO NOT want to make an enemy out of.
She comes from a very rich and powerful family, hence she isn’t one to
be messed around with. Nagisa plays the
love-to-torture-my-cute-little-kouhai onee-san who can be very cruel
sometimes, but extremely cute when you get to know her better.
And to be honest, I’d take her as my waifu. She attempts to distance
herself from the group and doesn’t play much of an important part in any
route but hers and feels pretty much like a backdrop, which was a
little disappointing since she is beyond adorable.
I actually enjoyed Nagisa’s route the most, which was a very
surprising. Sou’s relationship with her is quite complicated, as she
gives him mixed signals and he’s not too sure about what she thinks of
him. Unlike with the rest of the characters, Nagisa’s main route leads to nowhere romance wise and because of this it’s quite the tragic end. Her alternative route, however, is perhaps the most hopeful out of the alternative routes, as it ends on a very happy note and we actually get to see some post-school marriage life. I can safely say this was possibly my favorite ending in the game.
UNFORTUNATELY, the investigation that takes place during her route is
the single most senseless, boring thing ever. Not that the other two
to-be resolved mysteries in the other routes were any good either, as
their potential was wasted too, but this one just made no sense and had
no resolution. In fact, they pretty much adopt somebody else’s hypothesis as their own and decide to bring the curtain down on their investigation.
Out of the three ‘normal’ heroines in the game, Nagisa’s route is
therefore the one with less sci-fi elements, as it pretty much gives up
on it halfway, which was sort of weird, because you’d expect her route
to have more clues in it about what is going on, seeing as she is the third character you have to play and this is supposed to be a progressive mystery…
Furukawa Yui 古川 ゆい
CV: Aoyama Yukari
Yui is the game’s mysterious character—the first year student
that Sou finds lying unconscious and stark naked in a room that’s known
as a spot where accidents (such as windows breaking or cardboard boxes
falling) frequently happen. She’s set on not telling them what she was doing there, but she seems to know Sou,
though he’s pretty sure he’s never seen her before. Yui is hardworking
and helplessly innocent and straight forwards, and will pretty much do
anything you ask her to take care of. She felt very mechanical,
especially when speaking to the others, and very childish (which is
actually fits with her back-story nicely, so I can’t really complain
about it).
Yui’s route is the longest of all routes, and actually has three
parts to it. The first two are what you could consider Yui’s main route,
the only difference between it and the other routes being that Yui’s
‘good end’ so to speak is actually attached to the’ bad end’—in other
words, the main route doesn’t branch off into two different short
endings of roughly the same length like with other routes, but rather
the good ending is actually part of the bad ending, as it continues from
where the bad ending finishes. The third part to Yui’s route is the
game’s TRUE END, that actually picks up from where the good ending
finishes and brings the game to a conclusion. Thus, Yui’s whole route is long as fork, and actually feels as the most rewarding story-wise out of the four heroines. It also ties up most of the loose ends, and easily becomes the most solid out of all routes, and thus feels right.
The Voice Acting
Ummmm do I have any special mentions? I’d say the cast was great
overall, but there wasn’t anything in particular that made me think WOW I
MUST MENTION THAT IN THIS REVIEW. Awesome voice casting, but as always
the KYAs where very over the top…
Props to Kenny’s CV though, Yamaguchi Kappei, for his funny Engurish lines (even if they made no sense half the time) and weird tones, because they actually made me laugh a lot.
The H scenes
Pretty good, I guess? Fap material for those who play VNs for the +18
content, decent scenes for those not too interested in it. As usual, we
never get to see the protagonist’s face (WHY?! I know this is a VN aimed at a male audience, BUT WHY?! It almost seems like she’s being raped by a no-head, no-body, only-penis man half the time ಠ_ಠ I WOULD LIKE TO SEE BOTH PARTIES, PLEASE).
There’s a total of 17 H scenes, which is quite a lot for an eroge that's actually not that
long. As you progress through the routes, each character gets an extra H
scene than the previous one, so Kaori has the least. Also, THEY WERE REALLY LONG.
There was a lot of chit-chat through it and before it. I actually quite
enjoyed them, though they sometimes became a little tedious and I found
myself wishing they were shorter. But overall, they were great. Heck, I
actually found some of the H scenes romantic. You hear me? Romantic. In an eroge. ROMANCTIC. Let that sink in.
The Artwork
Do I even have to make any comments?
Misaki Kurehito and Kuroya Shinobu's character designs and drawings are gorgeous.
Misaki Kurehito and Kuroya Shinobu's character designs and drawings are gorgeous.
And the characters are animated.
THEY’RE.
ANIMATED.
Their mouths move and their eyes blink.
And I shit you not, this VN has one of the best character movements
ever. Like, they move around the screen, and perspective is taken into
account. I tell you, it was just like watching an anime.
Music
There’s nothing that particularly stood out from the soundtrack, really.
I enjoyed the opening and ending theme songs, but not enough to listen
to them 24/7. The rest of the tracks mainly use the theme song tune, so
they quickly became boring and repetitive. The action scene pieces
actually really got on my nerves, and somehow it made the scenes drag on
for me. But the sci-fi pieces were great, and I actually stopped
playing just to listen to the background music.
We also get a whole load of new pieces during Yui’s TRUE END route that
you never get to hear during the rest of the game, which contributes to
her ending being the best out of all endings.
All in all, there were only one or two pieces that I actually liked in the whole game, and a bit too many I didn’t like.
System & Gameplay
Very straight forwards, very simple system. It has a few funky cool
futuristic features, and the design is very modern. The play screen is
VERY big, which I loved, and the buttons make funky sounds when you
hover your mouse over them. To unblock certain features you had to
finish certain routes, and I found that quite cool too.
Overall, very clean, neat and modern design. Loved it.
{ 2 Komentar ... read them below or Comment }
Jangan lupa berkomentar ya, baik kritik maupun saran akan sangat membantu dalam perbaikan postingan kami selanjutnya. Kami harap kalian berkomentar di setiap postnya, hanya itu saja kok dan terima kasih :D
Mega link missed part 8 :(
ReplyDeleteMega link, there's no part 8 without it, please reply and add part 8 in Mega, thanks :(
ReplyDelete