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Old 01-28-2013, 01:06 AM   #1
big bad birtha
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Rewrite



After many hours of constant reading, I am finally finished with Rewrite! This has been a really fun ride. Unlike most Key games, this focuses more on the plot than the characters, which is kind of refreshing. The plot itself is interesting enough to keep me focused, which is pretty uncommon nowadays. Sadly there have been a few obvious flaws in the writing here and there, but they weren't enough to discourage me. Things got even better when the Terra route started.

General Plot
Rewrite starts with Tennouji Kotarou, the main character, making a speech about how he wasted his childhood being by himself, so he decides to change it by making friends and making a club. He eventually joins an existing "club" called the "Occult Research Club", even if it's just an excuse for Senri Akane to have a private room at school. Kotarou takes the club name literally and investigates supernatural events happening at the town. Some other acquaintances of Kotarou who also don't fit in eventually join. During Kotarou's investigations, he begins to realize there's something big happening in town, but he has no idea what. However, it seems all of the members of the club are somehow involved.

Characters/Routes



Kanbe Kotori - She is Kotarou's childhood friend. Kotori spends most of her time in the forest around town, and is good at raising plants. She's a charming character. I love her interactions with Kotarou. They always have inside jokes with each other. Kotori's path itself is pretty good, but there's one terrible scene which really put a bad taste in my mouth for the path overall.



Ohtori Chihaya - She is a transfer student who arrived at the start of Rewrite. She's insanely strong. Chihaya is also dumb to accompany that. Thankfully they don't write her as being excessively stupid. Though her reaction to everyone treating her like an idiot is always amusing. For her path, it's okay by itself, but it makes no sense when compared to the other paths. It's like the writer (different than the one who wrote most of the others) didn't care about the Rewrite plot at all and just made a shounen route.



Konohana Lucia - Lucia is the class representative of Kotarou's class. She's the overly serious character who often blows up at the smallest things. She always wears gloves and everyone treats her as a neat freak. I umm....I hated her when I first saw her. Lucia is the representation of almost everything I hate in harems, and something Key SHOULD be too good to resort to. Ahem, anyway, despite that, her route is really good. It's one of the better romance paths I have been through in a VN.



Nakatsu Shizuru - Shizuru is the moe character in Rewrite. She's quiet and always hangs around Lucia. She's also reasonable, which balances the duo of her and Lucia out. Shizuru is pretty charming. It's just a shame that her route sucks. The writer just wants to make the entire path moe moe love-dovey time with Shizuru with no real sense to it. Though if it's any consolation, atleast it's better than Kud's route?



Senri Akane - Akane is the president of the Occult Research club. Despite this, she openly denies the supernatural. During most of the club's adventures, Akane strongly rejects going out with them, since going outside is a bother. She's probably my favorite heroine. Thankfully she's treated to a good route. It has a few flaws here and there, but it's one of the few paths where the main guy is actually useful.

Moon - After finishing the character routes this is unlocked. The Moon route is basically an epilogue to the character routes and a prologue to the Terra routes. I leaves some closure to some paths that might not have had any. It was pretty nice.



Terra - This is where shit gets real. This is more about Kotarou than anything. It goes over his past and answers the remaining questions left. I can't say too much about this without spoiling anything. Though Kotarou probably has the most interesting backstory of the entire cast, which is really nice. The main character should have the best backstory. Though my biggest problem with this is that it gets rushed towards the end and not many of the girls are even involved. Why make me play this after the heroine routes if YOU AREN'T GOING TO INVOLVE THEM IN THE LAST ROUTE?! Other than that, it was a really nice ride.

God I've spent too much god damn time on this post. Overall, I really enjoyed reading Rewrite. Every bit of my focus went to this title when reading this, even when I wasn't reading. Actually it got me pondering about various things. The characters aren't as charming as the Little Busters characters, but the plot is infinitely better. Though LB doesn't really have much of one. Rewrite gets a 9 from me. This is probably the second longest VN I have ever read (Clannad being first). It took me a total of two weeks of straight reading to finish this, and I'm confident in my VN reading speed.
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Old 01-28-2013, 01:43 AM   #2
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Quote:
Originally Posted by big bad birtha View Post
It took me a total of two weeks of straight reading to finish this, and I'm confident in my VN reading speed.
It's going to take me five years to finish this!

Fudge!
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Old 01-28-2013, 01:58 AM   #3
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The paragraph headed "General Plot" sounded so interesting I ... will have to make room for this. >_> But I haven't got room. Dammit.
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Old 03-30-2013, 12:24 AM   #4
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Heck yeah, five years, I remember making that post. We'll show my past self who's a bloody idiot!

I started Rewrite. Not too far in it (4 October), but maybe I've become too affectionate over Little Busters because of the prolonged experience I had with the characters. What took BBB...not very long to finish took me months, so perhaps my opinion is being bent due to the over-exposure I had toward LB.

What I mean to imply is I like pretty much nothing in Rewrite thus far, sans the widescreen presentation and stunning background images. In this respect, both resemble Muv-Luv Alternative. But the story/characters/comedy thus far is way below LB and I wasn't even a huge LB comedy fan at first.

Actually, it's kind of weird. LB was similar to Muv-Luv, presumably this has stuff related to Alternative.

Stuff I've taken note of:

Spoiler: show

Ohtori weird reaction ('when we first met' line)
Kotori (has friends?)
Kotaro (wants to change?)

The names are curious. -tori in two girls, Ko- in a boy and girl.
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Old 04-06-2013, 11:21 PM   #5
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I'm mostly just making this post as a reminder to Doppel.

You can only do Shizuru's route after you do Kotori's route, and you can only do Akane's after you do Chihaya's. Lucia's doesn't have any prerequisites.

I guess I can mention who writes all the routes.

Tanaka Romeo, mostly known for writing Cross Channel and Shimashita, did most of the plot for Rewrite. He did the common route, Kotori's route, Akane's route, the Moon route, and the Terra route.

Tonokawa, the only writer who is actually in Key, did Chihaya and Shizuru's routes. For what you're familiar with, he also did Kurugaya and Komari's routes in Little Busters.

Ryukishi did Lucia's route. In her route it's pretty damn obvious there's a different writer, because he does whatever the hell he wants with her route.
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Old 04-07-2013, 05:40 AM   #6
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I have no idea where I am in Kotori's Path.

Spoiler: show
Koutaro found her in the forest and she revealed some of her secrets. It would have been super difficult to forecast her power from the common path alone. All it did was give vague interests of hers that wasn't enough to make a declarative guess. I'd have to be taking shots in the dark to figure it out.

Now, something did catch my attention. She's now using "druid" to address herself, like the RPG class. It makes me wonder if, barring the layer of subtle RPG meta talk the characters use, if the Occult Club members actually represent real RPG characters. Akane, an actual Sorceress/witch, and Kotori a druid. Chihaya might be a Berserker, Shizuru an archer (due to her keen eyesight), and Lucia a priest/paladin? BBB mentioned one of the characters has a healing power, and that's characteristic of a priest. Lucia is a paladin and is similarly offensive like Chihaya, so perhaps that's her role. It would explain how Lucia could deal so much damage to Koutaro during her out of control moralistic temper tantrums yet he survives and comes out fine.

Given how Kotori orders around her parents, I think they're familiars. Meaning they're probably dead.
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Old 04-08-2013, 08:25 AM   #7
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I finished Kotori's Route before going to sleep.

On the whole, it was good. However, I did have some disagreements with it. Koutaro's not a dunder-head and has some legitimate memory issues, but there's some things that happen which he doesn't notice, and it seems silly/out of place to me when it happens and he doesn't comment on it. That comes across as incongruous writing, where the author has something occur, then drops it and brings it up a bit later.

Kotori's Route isn't exactly linear, either, and the development happens in splooshes, with her acting normal until suddenly breaking down. BBB and I liked different scenes in the route and happened to dislike the scene the other liked!

There were some legitimate curveballs that fell for strikes against me. The reveal of how Koutaro looks down on others, and a leap of logic at the end (which I should have suspected, but Koutaro never brought up) were surprising.

All in all, I'd put it at a 6/10. That's about par for a decent novel, it could have used a lot more ligation to seal in the logic gaps. Simply too much was chaotically happening around me that wasn't explained.

I'm going for Chihaya next even though I don't like her.
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Old 04-15-2013, 01:46 AM   #8
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Started Chihaya's Route.

Spoiler: show
I'm kind of surprised...shocked even, that I didn't figure Chihaya-Akane were allied with the Cloaked Figures who have the dog familiars. It seems pretty evident given Kotori's working on her own, while Lucia-Shizuru are Hunters along with Esaka. I guess my senses are just dull right now.
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Old 04-17-2013, 12:11 PM   #9
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Gah, quadruple post! Mesa hates them!

Chihaya Route

Spoiler: show
Chihaya controls the "strongest familiar in Gaia"...perhaps that's the T-Rex? The T-Rex, Shizuru, and Kotori were all present at the end of Kotori's Route, so perhaps that beastly dinosaur is the one Chihaya's insinuating about?


Haha, embarrassing.

Spoiler: show
I guess it is Sakuya after all?
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Old 04-17-2013, 02:53 PM   #10
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I guess I can throw a post to keep it from going past quadruple? I mentioned this before, but Chihaya's route has quite a few moments similar to a VN we have all played. Actually, I was like "Holy shit! This is like ****!"(I wasn't excited btw).

It's actually kinda like (Not a spoiler, but if you want to find out for yourself, then don't look I guess)
Spoiler: show
FSN
.

I WAS going to respond to your post with a "Come on! You already have the answer inside yourself!", but I guess you already came across your answer.

Oh, two things to look forward to when you complete Akane and Shizuru's routes. They both come with special endings. I think both of them sound really nice. Here's Shizuru's (DO NOT READ THE COMMENTS! Those assholes spoil almost the whole thing!)

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Old 04-17-2013, 06:21 PM   #11
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Something I need to comment on is the prevalence of "meta commentary" in Chihaya's route.

Spoiler: show

I like the improved action in Chihaya's Route, but the writing doesn't really come across as tense or as exciting as Kotori's. Rather, it feels like a Yu-Gi-Oh! game, what with sorcerers bring forth monsters to do their bidding, and the monsters having defined weak-points like in a video game.

Kotori/The Hunters/Koutaro frequently make references to video games or manga when they're in scenarios that seem otherworldly. The more this happens, the less I like it. It's hurting the story's ability to suspended disbelief. Manga/video games are simplifications of reality, following writer-defined rules. Following the rules enables things that wouldn't happen in reality to be possible in the game scenario. I get the feeling Tonokawa is doing this to give Rewrite some distinction from other stories that also feature fantastical creatures and battles, but he's not distancing those comparisons at all. Rather, it feels like Koutaro has fallen into a scripted RPG rather than a story with creatures "straight out" of an RPG.

When Koutaro repeatedly makes reference to fighting monsters as "this is just like a game!" I'm mentally comparing this scenario to a game, and that drains all the sense of tension that Koutaro is allegedly feeling. In his fight with the spider familiar, the game presents some dummy choices (which annoyed me) to give the reader a bit of interaction, but those choices accomplished nothing more than denigrade the pacing. It's tough to empathize with Koutaro's fear when he's consistently saying "I have no more strength left" yet he's still fighting, then talking about how scary the monster is, yet how it must have a weakness...because all puzzle bosses have weak points!

Now, I like the battles. But not in the typical VN-sense of liking a battle. It really does feel like I'm reading a non-card version of a YGO duel. While exciting, that doesn't compare to the environment crafted by the guy in Kotori's Route.
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Old 04-21-2013, 01:26 AM   #12
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At long last, I have thoroughly dominated the Chihaya Route.

It's a lot worse than Kotori's, I felt. It spills a lot of plot points rather clumsily, without the grace of Kotori's Route, and is inconsistent in a lot of characters and scene presentation. It's a lot more action-oriented but quickly runs into over-the-top territory. I wasn't as touched emotionally as Kotori's even though I didn't like the ending scene of Kotori's Route. It's just a weaker route overall...less interesting heroine, feeble pacing/character development, and a kind of crazy plot progression.

I'd give it a 6/10. It's not a bad route, but it peaked really early and started to drag a lot.

Shizuru next. Looking for a sweet F5 from eye-patch girl.
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Old 05-01-2013, 04:44 AM   #13
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In an odd twist of fate, I've beaten Shizuru's Path ahead of schedule. See, it takes me weeks to beat each route, but only took 10+ days for me to plow through this beast.

I liked it. A lot more than BBB did, but that's because of split preference. This route embodies a lot of the things BBB hates, which on this axis diametrically oppose my own likes.

Spoiler: show
For one thing, I was disappointed we didn't get the apocalyptic ending in Kotori's Route, the neutral one, and found it strange that Guardian fails in Shizuru's. However, I wasn't all too happy with how it worked out here. I didn't get the sense of impending doom that was in Kotori's, and the plot events were spoiled by Chihaya's Route.

However, before the big fight went down, I really liked this path. Yeah, Koutaro had a bit of a personality change that I didn't care for (and other behaviours that didn't agree with other routes), but Shizuru was so fun she kind of overwhelmed it. She really does resemble Kud in some way and her innocence, combined with her rationality, made her a fun character to interact with.


Misc notes

Spoiler: show

The route didn't introduce anything new, sadly, but did confirm/support some things.

-Akane may be a yaobikuni, the 900 year old witch from Ever17 lore. It's suggested she's an embodiment of the founder of Gaia, whose name I cannot remember, and might help to explain how she can paradoxically control two super familiars yet her personal one is a small weak treeman. It also suggests why she's bored with human interaction or whatever. I think Akane might have been born after the previous destruction.

-The Key's decision on destruction, or as Kotori put it "reformatting" has nothing to do with humanity's actions. It's a decision made on a whim, practically, based on its own experiences. So the idea that humans polluting the world = destruction isn't right.

-Guardian sees the Key as an agent of destruction. Gaia sees it as an agent of salvation. Both interpret what the Key does incorrectly. Kotori's got the right idea.

-Stuff gets left behind whenever the Key reformats. Not everything gets turned to Tang (or Hikari ni Nare!, more specifically), plants seem to endure. Koutaro/Sakuya turned into trees and the mistletoe from the druids stayed put.

-The Key read Koutaro's memories, but he's missing some of them so she couldn't read what he didn't know.

-There's a voice inside Koutaro, who may be related to Kotori(?) given their history, who disappeared when Koutaro became Shizuru's familiar. It's not the Key or Koutaro himself given what I saw.


Akane is next, then Lucia. Good to hear they're good routes.
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Old 05-03-2013, 12:04 AM   #14
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I BEAT AKANE'S PATH YAY ME

YAY

I GIVE IT AN 8/10 IT WASN'T THE KIND OF DEVELOPMENT I WAS EXPECTING, BUT WAS NEVERTHELESS SATISFYING

I forgot to rate Shizuru's. 6/10...yeah, it's kind of a cop-out to rate all the other routes the same, but I really liked Shizuru's and it had some nice scenes. It's difficult to characterize but before Akane's Route I didn't really have a strong route to point out what was good and what wasn't. Akane's had good scenes, good development, good action and a good resolution. I wasn't pleased with everything, but that's why it's only a solid 8 instead of a 9 or 10.

Lucia next. Woo woo!
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Old 05-05-2013, 02:28 AM   #15
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Some stuff delayed me, but I think I'm half-way through Lucia's Route?

Spoiler: show
I think Asahi Haruka is Lucia. The name might be different, which caused Lucia to not recognize it at first (since Haruka was initially from an orphanage), but their abilities are similar. Not long after I said this, Lucia is introduced where Koutaro mistakes her for a grown-up Asahi Haruka.
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Old 05-05-2013, 01:08 PM   #16
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I'd say you're halfway through the mystery in Lucia's route, but that's just a small part of her route. There's still quite a bit more to go through.

I was going to ask you this last night, but I'll go ahead and put it here. Don't read until the Asahi Haruka mystery is solved:
Spoiler: show
What do you think of the unreliable narrator thing Ryukishi does this route? It didn't bother me when I read it, but when I thought about it a bit more, it felt like a cop-out how he tried to force out the suspect by making her think and do stuff she really isn't thinking/doing. Lucia tried to throw him off her trail the entire time, but when Ryukishi switched to Lucia's PoV, she was earnestly trying to help him.


Also so far your route scores are generally the same as mine. The only difference is I gave Kotori a 7 and Shizuru a 4.
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Old 05-05-2013, 03:00 PM   #17
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I had a feeling you would bring that up after I finished the mystery. I did not like it, although it didn't throw me off the right answer hardly at all. The only difference was I assumed that Asahi Haruka was some form of repressed memory, I was genuinely surprised that Lucia remembered everything and was manipulating people, but the only reason for that was because of the unnecessary trick.

The church scene was hilarious to me, because what Koutaro/Lucia were functionally doing was exchanging vows, i.e. it was a marriage ceremony. I correctly predicted the dumb cosplay too although I found the costume ugly.

I'm surprised there was more to the route, to be honest. I thought it would end with that church scene! I am however a bit pleased that the "don't wake" me line had a double meaning beyond the "don't remind me of bad memories" angle - it's also referring to the time capsule induced isolation future Lucia's going to be banished to.

I notice that Ryukishi gives the characters verbal tics they didn't have in other routes. Shizuru's "guar" is distracting and she's abnormally well-spoken in Lucia's route, compared to the bullet sentences she usually gives.

Right now, I just got out of the cosplay scene. How far is that in this route?
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Old 05-05-2013, 09:57 PM   #18
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I'd say you're about halfway through. The route picks up when Shizuru gets sick from eating too much candy.

Also do you also think Lucia's VA is overacting this route, or is it just me? It wasn't enough to bother me, but it was enough for me to notice.
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Old 05-05-2013, 10:57 PM   #19
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I don't think she's over-reacting, but I felt from the bus scene to the mall, her personality was simplified to the point of caricature. I felt like those two scenes were nothing but twenty minutes of Koutaro saying something, Lucia getting embarrassed, Koutaro feeling guilty, and so on. This is in stark contrast to the kind of dissonant behaviour she displayed earlier in the route that made her more interesting.

Needless to say, I didn't like that banter. Lucia being so "easy to read" as Shizuru put it harkens back to the narcissism Akane and Kotori brought up in their routes, it's not an appreciation of a distinct, thinking individual, but induced behaviour. Such happened in MLA too and I'm still not a fan.
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Old 05-06-2013, 08:12 AM   #20
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OK, I finished this train-wreck.

Spoiler: show

Chihaya is freaking dumb.

"You poisoned the city! You're about to nuke the city! It's your fault! You bastards should have just left the Key to us, it would have destroyed this world!"

Koutaro got really giga-dense toward the end. I was so frustrated I wanted to beat the snot out of him. IT WAS AWFUL. I was literally grinding my teeth as he consistently uttered the same things over and over. Absolutely maddening. I've been told Takeru did similar stuff in MLA, but that had legitimate reason - dude was faced with novel scenarios that he had to overcome while suffering from past trauma. This was Koutaro stumbling over the same issue, multiple times in the same sentence!

I wanted to give the route a 7...but I'm giving it a 5, borderline 6. It was a pretty predictable route, all things considered, and while the Lucia character development was superior (as good as Akane's) I had some serious problems with it past the initial ghost story.

-Shizuru acted a bit out of character, she was far more well-spoken and articulate than in other routes, and so was a lot more reliable than vulnerable
-Chihaya was also presented as smarter/more perceptive than normal
-Nishikujou was dumber than bricks in Lucia's route, and she got fleeced at every opportune
-Koutaro varied in intelligence, from awesome to painfully thick.
-I hated how the Roman Catholic Church got demonized as child mutilators.
-I hated how everyone was an arsehole. The scientists who were trying to help Lucia were the worst and were inexpicably stupid.

I also hated how things how things were either dragged out (like during the initial parfait munching) or repeated (during the final confrontation).

All in all, I thought the route would have ended in the church, and I wish it did, because the writing, for the most part, took a snow dive right down Jacob's Ladder. Ending at the church, I'd have ranked it an 8. Everything after that just pulled it down, down, down.

The action scenes were also inappropriate. As a joke, I said to myself "hah, Lucia better not fight everyone in the building in one on one fights! There's a nuke heading for their position...it would be like Planet Namek".

BUT IT HAPPENED.

Ryukishi07 is really good with mystery. That's his bread and butter. He did that well. He has a firm grasp of characterization. But his writing was so dang clumsy, and it ate up so much time needlessly with repetition and filler, it just drove me bonkers.

BBB's main criticism of this route is that Lucia's CV over-reacts. I maintain that if she didn't have the opening for it (that is, emotional scenes) she wouldn't have to throw dowo so much emotion. Well, because of the constant barrage of despair Ryukishi threw on Lucia, she's perpetually in cry mode, so it's understandable how someone could get annoyed.


That route left such a bad after-taste it's killed some of my enthusiasm for Moon. My disappointment knows no deeper a valley.
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Old 05-07-2013, 01:40 AM   #21
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Alright, I can't take this anymore! I gotta play Terra! Moon was too awesome for words!

But my god dang pride won't let me give up on trying to figure stuff out ahead of time, so here's the speculation.

Spoiler: show

Koutaro is 20 years old in Moon, since he apparently lost 3 years of time to his coma. That makes him 3 years older than Kotori. He said he's never had a normal child-hood, but he did attend elementary school and middle school. So,

-New Generation Project with Lucia
-Koutaro was in elementary school, then he used his power
-The guy he tried to beat was possibly Imayia
-Gaia and/or Guardian became alert to his power, and identified him as a superhuman
-His parents took him to Gaia to get tests/evaluation
-Eventually, because he stopped using his abilities, people concluded he lost them
-Koutaro met Kotori but was always a jerk to her, like Pero was
-Pero dies, then Kotori's parents die, she becomes a druid
-Koutaro went into the forest
-Kagari tore him up while he tried to save a girl in a tree
-Someone pleaded to heal him, implied it was Kotori volunteering her life to the Key, but I don't think so. I think Kotori might actually have not liked Koutaro that much, and the girl in the tree pleaded for him, or a third party. It wasn't Moon Kagari and I find it odd that Earth Kagari would. Akane is a good guess because she knew Kotarou as a child.
-Before or after, there's a huge skirmish between Gaia and Guardian, where part of the city is destroyed and later rebuilt, and Suzaki captures the Key, but it escapes
-Akane is adopted because of her interaction with the Key (there had to be a reason Sakura went for her aside from the brain cell issue)
-Shizuru's parents lose their memories, all the girls become orphaned
-Koutaro enters a coma for 3 years, wakes up and has a "rebellious" phase against his parents
-Koutaro finishes middle school and enters Kazamatsuri
-Chihaya is transferred by Gaia to Kazamatsuri to investigate the Key. Akane is already seated there as Kashima Sakura's heir


From that, I have little information about connections the Occult Club members had prior to 2011, save However,-!

Spoiler: show
It looks to me like Koutaro had a REALLY STRONG relationship with Akane. Akane might have been the one to plead for his life in fact. In Moon, he tells her he loves her, which he didn't do to anyone but Kagari, and he went super far with her in her route.



TEN SECONDS IN

Spoiler: show
It looks like Koutaro is indeed older, he's 20 years old in an international troupe, so maybe he was originally a Guardian member? How did he get turned back into an adolescent?


ELEVEN MINUTES IN?

Spoiler: show
Koutaro saved Yoshino as a kid? From bullying? That would explain why Yoshino always looked at him as a strong opponent!
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Last edited by Doppleganger; 05-07-2013 at 02:15 AM.
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Old 05-07-2013, 03:40 AM   #22
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Holy crackers I'm going to fail my final because of this mofo!

Spoiler: show
I'm at the training camp with Imamiya and Nishikujou. Koutaro just got beaten up by Esaka. It looks to me like Koutaro has a summoner's personality (introverted) with a superhuman's abilities. This is what makes him special, since all the summoners in the Occult Club were introverts, while all the hunters were extroverted in a way (even Shizuru). And his abilities seem to draw from a limitless source...the Earth's aura? Or perhaps the Moon's?


...

Spoiler: show
It looks like Koutaro's waaaaaaaay older than 20! He's 20 as of the first harvest festival when everyone was a kid...he must be a full-fledged adult in the present. But he's only 17 in the common route? Huh?
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Old 05-07-2013, 02:44 PM   #23
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New speculation

Spoiler: show
Koutaro looks like a kid because he rewrote himself and altered his own memories. The group he founds with Jasmine becomes Terra! He's about to go back home right now.
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Old 08-22-2016, 02:58 PM   #24
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I guess I'll revive this dead beast to go on about the anime. It seems Visualarts has greenlit Rewrite+ in English. Rewrite+'s plot is apparently modified a bit by Romeo, has extra character models, and has extra CGs. It also includes Harvest Festa. Unfortunately, we have no idea when this will happen, because they're still delaying the hell out of Harmonia. Maybe Romeo will make Shizuru, Lucia, and Chihaya's routes less dumb and simplistic?

Onto comparisons! I'll try to be optimistic, but that won't mean I think the adaptation is good. I think it's a dull imitation of Rewrite.

Episode 5
Spoiler: show
I like what they did with the Asahi Haruka "mystery". Instead of that irritating cop-out Ryukishi did with the unreliable narrator, Lucia's actions were obvious.

They did away with how Ryukishi made Yoshino too friendly. That's a plus. Though Kotaro having Yoshino's phone number makes no sense.

Love how they felt the need to close in on her underwear whenever they got the chance (sarcasm).

This episode proved to me about something that bugged me in the VN. That was Lucia's voice actor. In the VN, it seemed like she was overacting. She makes weird noises and grunts, and talks like a freaking baby in "romantic" scenes. There's none of this in the anime, which is a plus. I think Ryukishi has some sort of control over this, because when going back, I realized that Shizuru and Chihaya did similar nonsense in Lucia's route.

The church scene locked otherwise impossible opportunities. Outside of Lucia's route, she's fairly cold to Kotaro. Next episode proves this.

I liked the fact that they decided to make their own special ED for Lucia's episode. This wasn't in the VN. It wasn't as high quality as Shizuru's, but that's expected. It always bugged me that Shizuru and Akane's routes were the only ones with special EDs, and Akane's had nothing to do with her character theme.


Episode 6
Spoiler: show
So we get an episode dedicated to Occult Club nonsense. I despaired when I saw the scene transitions. The scene transitions were references to Yo-Shi-No, which means they decided to not do that scene at all! What the hell?! It's the best damn scene in the common route!

The Guardian sandwitch never happened, obviously. If Lucia is that open with Kotaro, Shizuru is a wingman. If Shizuru is that open with Kotaro, Lucia is extra hostile.

It sucks how they did nothing with the candy shop quest. It was originally a pretty touching, though kind of cliche, quest.

Let's have close-ups on them titties! Take every chance you get!


Episode 7
Spoiler: show
Now we have the episode where the plot actually gets going. Huzzah!

Not sure how to feel about the presence of the raptors. They're supposed to be fairly high level, and very few summoners are supposed to be able to summon them. Yet here they are, like regular 'ol cannon fodder. They also don't appear until much later on.

Woooooow. Way to spoil a huge plot detail. Good job on spoiling a route you won't even go over. Hopefully most people won't catch on.

The final confrontation was a bit more satisfying than it originally was. They attempted to explain why the familiars were attacking everyone, which they originally didn't even bother to explain. If Akane was there, you would think Akane would let Gaia know, and the summoners wouldn't go around attacking her club-mates. Atleast they tried to make an explanation for that. Sakuya being there was a nice detail too. He originally wasn't, which made no sense when Chihaya was in such a dangerous area. Also for some reason, I loved how he left with Akane and Chihaya. Carrying both of them like a fucking boss!


Episode 8
Spoiler: show
Uhhhhhhhh......."Kagari-chan"? I guess this is where we get into made-for-TV territory. Actually I'm not sure if this is made-for-tv, or Kagari's route from Harvest Festa. The episode started off like Kotori's route, with Kotaro testing out his powers, and Kagari invading his house.

Kagari's personality proved to be interesting. She's fairly fun when she actually reveals her personality. Shame that doesn't happen until Terra.

Shimako is not that friendly. Hell, her interactions with Kotaro was considered "friendly" and she ran away from him when he didn't keep an eye on her.

Shouldn't Kotori be more panicked? I won't say why, but considering the circumstances, Kotori should be a bit more nervous.

I like the fact that they did a new OP and ED for the part where the plot starts. It seems like 8bit is trying, but despite that, it's still just a shallow imitation of Rewrite.
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