Japanese Reading Report: 21 September 2025

Island

My busy final semester continues to get busier. Somehow I was still able to finish Island and make a good start on Fata Morgana. Unfortunately I didn't have much free time, so Rance 01 didn't make the cut this week. Hopefully soon I can get back into the thick of it.

ISLAND

Would you believe that Island has one last route? Well, it's half true. After finishing the final major route I was sent back to something like the original timeline with a few new options to make things turn out better. Notably Setsuna uses his awareness of the original timeline to convince all the major characters to trust him much earlier, and he also gets involved with Sara's mother right from the start, giving him some insight into her research on genetics and 煤紋病.

The story plays out sort of how you might expect; Setsuna is able to grow closer to Rinne by refusing to play into her fantasy as a revival of her old Setsuna. We eventually find out that the other Setsuna was actually the Ohara family son, which was fairly interesting as it mirrors the Winter timeline relationship neatly. The story also peppers in hints about Rinne's true lineage, suggesting that she is actually Linne from Wintertime, that she arrived in Summertime before Setsuna, and then experienced a short amnesiac life as Rinne. This information culminates in the first (and only) real test of the game where you have to "correctly" explain Rinne's situation between the start of her memories and that moment. The first time you go through this sequence your answers actually don't matter much, and you get railroaded onto the final cosy ending, forging a new relationship with Rinne, getting permission from Kuon, and having a cute marriage shortly after.

After the previous ending the final menu option opens up, allowing you to watch a cute vignette from Rinne's perspective of the day before her wedding. I really liked that the narration in this section was fully voiced and I also liked that, despite being from her point of view, Rinne was still included as a visual character in this section. I've learned to enjoy the "point of view" perspective of visual novels, and I think that the format would lose some personality if every VN made the player a "ghost" viewer like in the Rinne vignette, but I also just felt much more engaged with Rinne's emotions in a way that I never really connected to Setsuna because of how she was able to put her thoughts into spoken words.

Finally, I had one more question: how do I get the second choice during the Kuon dialogue to finally access the true secret final ending? Just going to the choice with Kuon wasn't working so I figured it had something to do with my choices about Rinne's past. I was right, but I kept getting the questions wrong which lead to me looking up the solution to the questions. It's just funny to me that I basically never look things up in games, but in a game with no meaningful choices I felt like I had to look up the correct sequence in a 4x3 multiple choice quiz. As it turns out I had everything right except for "What did Rinne call out when she woke up?", which turned out to be 切那, not セツナ (or was it the other way around... now I can't recall). In hindsight I suppose that makes sense.
I got to the final choice with Kuon, who I had suspected was Linne since about halfway through the Winter route, said that I'd "make Linne happy", and then moved onto the final route.

Kuon gets mad, tells us that Setsuna still doesn't understand, and tells him not to associate with Rinne or her. Setsuna approaches Maria (Sara's mum) to ask about Kuon's backstory, and he finds out that she, like Rinne, was a bit of an enigma. After a return visit to 暴竜島, the island where Rinne was suspended by the cryogenics for five years, Setsuna is shown one last piece of evidence—Linne's workshop. It's ancient and decrepit... It turns out the Winter route is not our future, it's our past. Setsuna gathers the knowledge and courage to return to the Ohara residence. First he meets with Rinne, who he promises to love (but not as a partner), and then he goes to Kuon's room. She's sleeping on the floor, just like Linne used to, surrounded by a mess of scientific papers about time travel. She is for certain, no bones about it, Linne. Setsuna recalls scenes with Linne (scenes that I'm not sure were in the Winter route) to heal Kuon's heart, and they promise to work together to finally figure out this time travel business. Then there's a small time skip and we return to 暴竜島 to fulfil our destiny and continue the cycle and learning that this is not the first, and it won't be the last, time that Setsuna has experienced all of these events.

I don't think I fully got the story in the end. I'll try to recap my interpretation here: I don't know when the timeline "starts", but basically up to this point there has never been a case of backwards time travel. Setsuna jumps between Summer and Winter through repeated use of suspended animation which takes him 20,000 years into the future, and he's been doing this for an awfully long time. The ultimate goal is to keep incrementally working on time travel with Linne and Kuon until eventually one of them masters the technology so that Setsuna can then go back to the true beginning and "save the world". If Setsuna ever breaks this path, he'll fail to reach the end, meaning he'll never start his journey, creating a time paradox, so he "chooses" to keep going with hopes for an ultimate good outcome for every Rinne, Linne, and Kuon who will ever be born.
So what do I like about this interpretation? I like that Setsuna doesn't settle for one girl. It's sort of like a really positive version of a "just friends" ending, and I think it's sweet (though it obviously suggests an ultimate true love resolution, but in terms of the content of the game it's pretty mature). I also like that the game is full of twists but ultimately was about what it said on the tin. From the very first line of the game I suspected that Setsuna's path was going to be circular, and as much as people might want to "rules lawyer" it, I think it's unambiguously about an unbroken loop of sorts. I think the use of time is quite clever, and I think Setsuna's relationship with Rinne and Kuon is the best it can be in the final moments. Also Linne is just perfect.

Final notes and nitpicks: I think it takes a lot of stretching your believe to assume that time is actually a "flat circle" (as people on the internet love to say). I appreciated that the final CG at least implies that each "loop" has minute differences, suggested by the different ways Setsuna and Rinne's names are spelt (セシナ and リソネ were amusing) . I found it quite annoying that the game just constantly, over and over, lies to your face about every little thing. It's one thing for the player to fall into assumptions but it's another thing to quiz the player on "facts" that aren't even the case (maybe? I'm honestly still unsure and I can't tell if it's a result of poor comprehension or gaslighting by the story). I think it's especially annoying as a language learner because every point of doubt was doubled by being unsure if the game was being dishonest or if I just made a mistake eight hours ago when a concept was introduced.
Ultra Nitpick #1: Setsuna compares beautiful blue skies to Mappa, a studio that didn't exist until after the events of the game.
Ultra Nitpick #2: During his discussion of the Akashic Records, Setsuna refers to the storage capacity of Blu-ray, something that didn't exist until after the events of the game.
Am I to believe that Setsuna is some kind of... time traveller? Let's get real, guys.

ファタモルガーナの館

I tried playing this game mid-2022 and was "filtered" by the first door. Three years later and wiser, I think I'm enjoying the game a lot more this time. I'm still in the first door, and I still find some of the music a little bit grating at times, but my comprehension is a little bit better and I'm feeling more connected to the main three characters in this story, Mel, Nelly, and the white-haired girl. I've also come to enjoy the guide's narration. I really like how her tone is so different to the other characters. You can really feel like she's searching for the best words to compel her listener to stay engaged in the story. Looking forward to seeing more soon.

薫る花は凛と咲く

I watched this upon recommendation from a friend of mine (the same friend who recommended Food Wars, but in fairness that series was not immediately interesting to me whereas this one is a bit more to my taste). So far it appears to be a pure love romance between two fairly typical students. The main gimmick of the setting appears to be that Rintarou, the male lead, and Kaoruko, the female lead, attend neighbouring unisex schools with a bitter history. It's sort of like Romeo and Juliet if the Montagues were all men and the Capulets were all women.

Rintarou is the main point of view character and we see most of the story through his eyes. We are given a lot of information about his inner world and private life, giving him a lot of depth. On the other hand, Kaoruko has mostly been seen from Rintarou's perspective so far, limiting her depth at around "a perfect, short, pretty girl". But she is very cute. I hope to learn more about her as the series goes on.

Speaking of Kaoruko development, the best part of the series so far was the small arc between episodes four and six involving Kaoruko's childhood friend Subaru. Subaru enters the show at the end of episode three, and her "deal" for the arc is basically that she's opposed to Kaoruko seeing Rintarou. It creates a temporary rift between the main couple, but the climax where Kaoruko resolves Subaru's feelings was pretty well done, and I like that Subaru and Rintarou become friends at the end of it.

ねずみの初恋

I ended up reading one more volume of this at the last minute. Continuing from last week, Ao finishes his training and manages to make his first kill. After a very brief rest and reward from Nezumi it's back to business, and Ao is given more targets to assassinate.

Nezumi is given a single target—a small child whose death feels senseless—and it seems like the first assassination of hers that leaves a mark. She behaves somewhat irrationally afterwards, going back to the scene of the crime to retrieve a memento. Ao's new targets are a group of three men, but he's instructed to kill anyone else at the location to ensure there are no witnesses. After finishing his job, Ao's eyes meet the eyes of a young woman who appears to be under the influence. He decides to spare her, perhaps assuming that she was too "out of it" to know who he was or what happened... but she remembers.

The volume ends with Ao captured and tortured once again (this time by a rival gang). Nezumi's gang are planning to let him die, but when Nezumi hears about it she begs Iruka to let her go there and clean up the mess Ao made (by massacring the entire rival gang and leaving no trace).