Akane is a miracle of the universe.
Impression
Today, I got to witness Akane-sama coming out of the shower while wearing nothing but a loose bathrobe. My life is complete. She’s just too perfect. Ravishing a clean and fresh Akane doesn’t even begin to describe all the immoral things I want to do to her. I’m sure that scene was something from the early common route that I’d forgotten, not least of all because there was no sprite or CG for it until Harvest Festa, but don’t worry! I’ll never forget it now. I’m already a fan of the club room scenes because of the beautiful lighting and concept art that’s used for it, but from today I’ll also get to look forward to the many lewd Akanes wandering around in various states of undress. For a studio unfortunate enough to have to animate a scene of students walking in the hallways with terrible CGI, they sure have patrician taste when it comes to best girls. Last week’s camera angles of Akane focused on her thighs and legs, and this time it was her boobs and ass – and it’s not the forced sort of fanservice you sometimes get, with artificial sound effects or exaggeration. It’s just small movements, like Akane leaning back in her chair so a bit more of what’s under her bathrobe is exposed, or her curling up on the sofa in such a way that her blanket hugs her butt curves. I don’t know who’s responsible for this, but they’re doing god’s work.
Anyway. A butler, an old man and a flashy guy were all supposed to appear this episode, according to Tensho. While the butler and old man ended up being Sakuya and Esaka respectively, as many expected, the identity of the flashy guy was a surprise. You’d immediately think it’d be Imamiya, but it was Midou! I have three things to say about Midou. Firstly, I would love a Jasmine reference, no matter how subtle it is. Their relationship is one of those unexpected endgame surprises, and I’m hoping for a mention of her given that the anime hasn’t shied away from embracing Moon and Terra. Second, the relevance of both him and Krivoy Rog to the adaptation (as well as a brief appearance for Sakuya in his true form) indicates that the Kagari route will be making use of the several Chihaya route characters that never had any role in the other character routes, perhaps due to the lack of communication between the scenario writers of the original game – I hear this is something Rewrite+ aims to improve on, alongside adding new character sprites and CG images. Finally, was Midou really flashy? It’s only when he uses Fuego that I’d call him flashy, and just summoning a dog familiar doesn’t quite meet the mark for me, no matter how edgy his character design is. It also felt like the summons itself was rather dubious, both in terms of the cheap animation and the fact that it’s not exactly how the process is supposed to go from what I remember – was he creating it or calling it to his location? I really hope it’s the latter, because from my vague recollections of bird familiars and frog puppets in the Akane route, creating a familiar should take a lot longer than that.
In general, I thought it was an odd scene. For an adaptation that’s done so well with depicting Kotarou’s internal thoughts and personality (at least as far as the common route is concerned) I was hoping we’d get to hear more than Kotarou just running and panting from the dog the entire time. A related point is that Kotarou rewrote himself this episode – it was a great opportunity to finally go into detail about his Rewrite power and all the thorns that come with it, but his explanation felt like it barely scratched the surface. The most important thing to take away from it all is that the process is irreversible, and therefore each change must be made out of necessity and nothing else. His legs can never return to the way they were before, and there will come a point where, if he keeps rewriting them, they will no longer look like human legs. As for this scene’s place in the wider narrative, it’s rare that those dog familiars even end up in the real world to begin with – it wouldn’t be surprising at all if Kotarou stumbled across one in the alleyway entrance of the closed space replicating Kazamatsuri, but to see it chasing Kagari was really unexpected. It could be a consequence of Kagari having killed Krivoy Rog – Terrorist Greenpeace are now on the move, and Kotarou having unwittingly told Esaka about his experience might prompt Guardian to take action too. It’s a pity he ran into Midou of all people, actually – I remember a common route scene where a genuinely lost Kotarou was helped out by a kind Gaia cultist, who silently directed him to the exit. If not for Chihaya-san’s tree knight, it definitely would have been a bad end.
Shizuru was rather bold in healing his wound and then telling him that his encounter with both Midou and the dog was all a dream. As I said last week, underneath the slice-of-life facade of the common route, absolutely no-one is who they appear to be on the outside. Not even Shizuru. It’s amazing how many subtle things there are to pick up on in all the early-game scenes – the entire Esaka scene is a good example, but even seeing Kotarou enjoy school so much is a little melancholic. Nagai (or Tsukuno, I suppose) is also cuter than I thought she would be, and is equipped with an excellent poker face as I expected. Actually, she probably already knew that Kotarou was in Kazamatsuri High. It’d be more interesting if she ran into Nishikujou one day. I can’t remember why she managed to leave Guardian with her memories still intact, but she’s one of the very few who have.
It must have really hurt Esaka for him to have to ask Kotarou what his affiliation was. I mean, the answer clearly won’t be Guardian, or he’d already know about it. His aim was probably to ascertain exactly how much Kotarou knew at this point, because he was able to identify the dog as a ‘familiar’. I guess there was a slim possibility that he’d now be with Gaia – but even if he was, Esaka must be aware that it’d be the last thing Kotarou would reveal to a complete stranger who clearly didn’t recognise Esaka and his status in Guardian. Note that Esaka’s question would be just as valid even if he was absolutely certain that Kotarou was affiliated with Terrorist Greenpeace. It just goes to show that Gaia isn’t monolithic by any means, as we learned in the Akane route – and Gaia is a shitty organisation anyway, both in terms of its people and its goals. I’m sure I made this clear when I covered the game, but Guardian made a far better impression on me in practically all of the routes, even in Terra – and I think that’s what you were supposed to feel, especially given that Gaia treated Kotarou worse in the Akane route than Imamiya treated Bond when he first joined Guardian. Being with Akane is literally the only conceivable reason to join Gaia. She’s just that perfect.
You sure don’t care about spoilers do you? I did not notice in previous posts about rewrite but here you just went all out with VN knowledge. Not that I mind, it just stood out.
And the process of creating a familiar is also shown in Kotori’s route, where she’s working on creating a bird. And yeah, it’s difficult and takes time. No way Midou created that dog on the spot, he just summoned it. Anyway, good to see him. After the Krivoy Rog thing, I was sure he’d be left out.
I also liked the Akane fanservice but I wish they’d get more of her dialogue in the anime. So far, I don’t think the anime made justice to just how smart she is or how she and Kotarou can play of each other -they skipped the whole convincing Akane to come with them on the fat snake hunt and just showed her out there. Kotori’s been a victim of this too I guess.
Still, I enjoyed this episode for what it was. And contrary to my prediction last week, MAL has calmed down a lot.
I’ve kind of given up, to be honest. It’s not like I can pretend to speculate, and given that (i) the anime isn’t catered towards secondaries; and (ii) the majority of the (visible) readership have played the game, I’d rather talk candidly about the episode and all the foreshadowing instead of resorting to summarising what happened, which is what I’d have to do if I couldn’t mention anything from the VN (and I’m really not a fan of the latter). The comments have also been very spoiler-tastic every week, although I know this was the first time I explicitly mentioned Gaia and Guardian in the post itself.
As Midou didn’t appear at all in the OP, I thought he’d be left out as well. It feels like Akane’s being treated differently from the other girls – each of them have gotten some scenes animated from their common route encounters with Kotarou, and Akane just gets lewds. I’m not sure how to feel about that. They missed out some NEET lines of her dying after a few moments in the sun, as well as her reactions to all the flaming the occult club blog got. The scene of Kotarou discovering the terrifying power of the internet never even appeared, actually. Now I’m fearing for the Yoshino song.
As for Kotori, maybe she’ll play a part in the Kagari route? A Kagari route doesn’t imply an affiliation with either Gaia or Guardian, so it’d make sense if Kotori got more involvement. She’s been a victim in general, really – despite being Rewrite’s poster girl she was never its main heroine, while Kagari as its main heroine ended up not being very heroine-like at all.
I don’t want to bump episode 2 again but I have to say your line about a panda had me laughing for a while.
The dankest of memes.
I can’t remember the last time I saw an unironic post about getting past the panda. Won’t be much longer now, it’s summer after all.
You pretty much said what I want to say about current episode. Alse I liked the little things like Chihaya’s clumsiness,
Koutarou’s “chi-ha-ya”, Lucia face after chuni skit, hints of flame war in occult cult page, akane and tsukuno’s silent conversation, Esaka-san’s pause etc. Still don’t know where this route is going though. Hoping for Imamiya and more kagari next episode.
On the other hand I end up rereading Terra just to renew my knowledge about Kagari’s development and nature.
Terra kagari went from newborn to sheltered princess who have no knowledge of how the world work & no understanding humans to showing very human feeling like frustration (for there is nothing she can do but wait), irritation (for koutarou not being serious, IMO Koutarou was just awkward man trying impressed his first crush at that point ), despair (when koutarou report his failures). She even lashed out at the surrounding just like middle school koutarou. Sadly that was all that was shown because salvation approached and all she could do is hold it back with her will and hope koutarou delivered. At the end, I supposed she must have feel like she just saw a miracle cos she was just so happy that she even give him a reward which by her standard are one of horrible reproduction acts
.
Terra Kagari comes off as a being who not only is pragmatic(border on no moral) but also have great love for humanity and its future.
Moon Kagari somehow comes off even more pragmatic because she sacrificed her self, her sister, her only companion, 1/2 or more of human populations (part of credit for terra’s salvation goes to her for being a mastermind) for humanity’s future.
In the end I was reminded that A kagari is a phenomenon no matter how human or different they ended up as.
Also I realized Kotori is a very terrible druid. She does a horrible job of “guiding” kagari considering how she turned out in common route. Kotori somehow achieved Suzuki? (gaia) dude method of dealing with the key unknowingly.
Forgive my rambling, what I want to say is I am excited for how this route will deal with Kagari. Kotori VA said something about Kagari being impactful in anime later parts. However they did I hope they don’t make her lose that phenomenon part of her.
BTW what do you consider Terra ending is?
IMO Good end (for heroines, humanity, kagaris (at least they die with knowing about humanity’s future) Bad end (for Koutarou unless he developed unending love for humanity like kagaris).
Sorry about the wall of text and bad english.
A grumpy Akane is cute too. I’m hoping for more Sakuya scenes actually, Tennouji Yotarou is his fate after all. I rewatched the chuuni skit, and it’s actually criminal how unsubtle the foreshadowing is if you know what’s going on, especially because it feels comedic:
With the right context, this is 100% true. Lucia’s gloves do actually seal her corrosive hands, and Yoshino is actually terrified of and has experienced Asahi Haruka’s powers back in middle school. Kotarou does actually have secret cursed powers.
Don’t blame Kotori! She didn’t know any better, she was basically left all alone in the forest for 10 years with a whole load of emotional baggage and insecurity from all sorts of sources, with only that plant thing to give her instructions.
You’ve reminded me that Terra does actually develop Kagari quite a bit – and it does so as best as it realistically can, since as you say she’s a phenomenon created by the Earth and not a proper living organism. Having her own route implies that Kotarou goes after her romantically as post-coma Kotarou and not as Bond, which will be really interesting to see. Maybe we’ll get some horrible reproductive acts.
Terra is probably a good end, I would say. As good as it can possibly get, really – in a literal sense too, as in every single other potential future the Earth is eventually destroyed, as Moon Kagari learned. Kotarou does come back as a Sakuya-like familiar and so it feels like the occult club has been revived in some form. Still not as happy an end as Unlimited Rewrite Works (or maybe the Kotori route), those were far less melancholic than the others.
And no worries about writing lots! I haven’t been able to talk about Rewrite for two years now, I welcome walls of text!