Soshite Ashita no Sekai Yori review

Hmm…that took a while, didn’t it? I thought that I’d finish this right after Eden*, and then do 2 reviews about the world ending together. Anyway, I went into this game for the Ryo Ueda art, the I’ve Sound music, and the 健 速 scenarios. All three were different from what I thought they’d be, but all three were amazing in their own ways. Now I’m crossing my fingers for more Etude games~

Premise (stolen from VNDB):

A small island. There is nothing special but the shining sun, clear sea and verdant forests. The main character is Subaru. He is an ordinary high school student. His old friend, Hinata. His English teacher, Asahi. His cousin, Aoba. A new student, Minami. He lives a peaceful life with them. Everyone on the island believes their peaceful life will last forever…. Yes, until that day…. “A meteor will strike the earth in three months.” A sudden announcement. Only three months left. People get panicked, and they somehow try to keep their cool…. What will happen to them in the end…?

Saved the best for last, phew

My love for 健 速 has been restored. Itsuki Aoba seemed like another happy tomboy, but oh WOW was her story good. I haven’t been this into a path since…the imouto path in Moshiraba. I can’t believe it’s been so many months already.

Plot in short: Aoba likes Subaru.

That felt short

Maybe it’s because I played it over a longer length of time than the routes before, but Minami’s route in Asuseka felt extremely short. There was also this sense that nothing much happened.

Even the ending song sounds worse than the others… Which is too bad, because personality wise, I thought that Minami was the most interesting at first, and I was really looking forward to her story when she said that she didn’t care about dying (it was because she was sickly to begin with). I wish that they took the story in a different direction, but I guess there was a need to go through the different types of conflicts.

Hmm…only one route to go, then Ayakashibito (I need a bit of action now). Yes, yes, I know what I said, but my cold convinced me that it’s there’s some higher power trying to tell me that I shouldn’t stop playing eroge.

The best normal ending

Normally, normal endings aren’t that special. In fact, in most cases, a normal ending with the protagonist being in no romantic relationships with anyone is usually a bad ending, a short after thought.

Not in Asuseka. Their normal ending is better than good endings in most other games. It maintained its atmosphere even with added tension and drama, I even cried a little when Subaru remembered how Asahi was sure they were going to catch a big fish. I have a renewed respect for 健速 (just when I thought I couldn’t love his works anymore than I already did).

Attachment

Some time ago, I used to find it odd when a person doesn’t finish all the endings in a visual novel. They’d talk about how a certain girl is just so hot/sweet/insert-whatever-here that the rest of the stories doesn’t really matter. I didn’t feel that kind of attraction for specific characters and just went ahead and completed all endings. However, this has changed with Asuseka, where I was distracted, DISTRACTED from the cute little romance by worrying about Yuuhi. Well, there have been other instances where one character captures all my attention, but they are usually A: a side character without their own story or B: part of the true ending, in which case it doesn’t matter if I don’t care about the rest of the characters any more.

Maybe it’s just because I always root for imoutos.

This is one of those stories where EVERY SINGLE TIME the 2 people are alone together they get interrupted by someone/something. And so-WHOA THE GUY ACTUALLY DECIDED TO FINISH WRITING THE NEXT VOLUME OF THE HARUHI NOVEL!

……

…

Or maybe it’s just because I get distracted too easily…

Aww…

Ah, crap, I should be studying for my finals right now…oh well.

I just finished Yuuhi’s route in Asuseka, and I’d have to say that it was nice. She really got on my nerves at first (clingy+squeaky=>﹏<), but once the story revealed how considerate she was and just how much she cared about Subaru she got my sympathy (this wasn’t unlike what I felt about Harumi). Just like M3rry, I felt that a lot of the events were unnecessary while I was playing, but by the time the credits (with an euphonis ending song) rolled around, everything felt…right. Ah, it’s nice to feel that 健速 magic again (seriously, EVERYTHING that guy writes is amazing).

Read on if you want a story summary (spoiler warning, obviously).

Starting soshite ashita no sekai yori

Okay, that’s it, I’m calling it Asushita, the whole thing is WAYYYYY too long. Anyway, this is another story about the world ending, though how the people deal with it is (I expect) completely different from Eden*. Seems like the mood will be closer to Moshiraba, but hey, I just started. The music is really nice too (once again, really close to Moshiraba), I’ve sound did a good job of it (I thought it was going to be all techno or something…) And the art…well…you can judge for yourself. I personally love everything that Ueda Ryo has ever churned out, and the warmth of the colors is especially nice after Eden* (EVERYTHING was cold in that game). Also, the backgrounds are Makoto Shinkai worthy, with the effects in the system fully complementing it. The one thing that I feel like complaining about is that the main girl is much too squeaky for her own good. Anyway, I expect good things from the game, and I’ll look forward to seeing the world be destroyed again.

They’re trying to kill me

Eden* just came out in Chinese (a few hours ago).

2 days before, soshite ashita no sekai yori came out too.

This might be good news for you people because I’ll be sure to write about the two of them. But they’re bad news for me since they guarantee that I absolutely won’t have the time during the holidays to do everything that needs to be done. I’ll apologize in advance for not finishing the drawings, Eternal. Now someone else needs to go and explain to my teacher why I didn’t finish my book report (by the way, if you have the time, Monkey beach is a very interesting read).

This is all an evil ploy, you know, the Chinese nerds out there ar trying to drown me in games and become a mindless zombie so I’l serve them in their quest for world domination!

*goes to dig up her old discs for the games (I know they’re there somewhere…)