#i love that aini does all of this
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Though the secret ending implies Tokiko was right all along.
oh i do have some thoughts about this! rotates diverge route in my brain. this is just personal opinion and a lot of just. interpretation and looking at things in a meta-narrative sense, so feel free to disagree entirely lmao, but! anyways.
(also im so sorry anon this got really long and rambly sldkfhgsdg i did not mean for this to happen)
for me at least, the nil ending stuff doesn’t really end as a “she was actually right!” sort of thing, but rather, it feels like more of a direct challenge to the player and their expectation of what a narrative “should” give and what a secret ending “should” be. the ending itself breaks the 4th wall directly, it gives the choice of whether or not it happens directly to the player- it even relies on (from what i understand) a random number, so you can’t cheat it. You need to play the game to see your own personal nil number.
The game is presenting you with a ‘final twist’- this world is a game, something that you as a player have known all along. It is a fictional world, Tokiko is right- they just dropped the pretense. for a very brief moment, Ryuki sees the ‘truth’ of the world, and Tokiko then gives you as the player an option: you can tell him everything, change the course of history to try to reach a “better ending”, or you can let him forget and let events play out the same as they did before.
When I play through the diverge route content, it gives off a very strong feeling of things feeling... off. It rings a bit hollow, almost like a pyrrhic victory- it should be a better world, Uru was stopped in time, Komeji is alive, Amame is free, none of the explosion end stuff happened. And yet, it feels like there’s still a heavy cost to it, to Ryuki’s own psyche. The awareness that we granted him weighs him down- he’s disconnected from the people around him, he got promoted but barely leaves his office anymore, even Tama is more blunt about not believing him about this ‘other timeline’.
This world should feel better, but something has been lost- not just for Ryuki, but the player as well. All of the bonds that were forged, the emotions we just went through in the story... all of them were washed away by our doing.
Now, I’m not saying this to claim “oh we as the players are villains! we’re doing a bad thing and helping tokiko win!”, because I honestly do not believe that either. I don’t think that’s the point of the ending- its not making any sort of accusation at the player, but rather, it’s asking us why we may feel the way we do about it. If it feels hollow to some, why does it feel hollow? Why does it seem to linger?
When playing games, its natural to want to find all the secrets- especially in a mystery game such as this. The ‘Frayer” question is presented extremely early on in the story, and it may linger in a player’s mind. It’s a secret, so of course you want to figure out what it means. Seeking that sort of information is an understandable, and likely intended response, especially considering this is a literal murder mystery game. Almost every LP i’ve seen has people stop and try to guess at numbers for a while before moving on, and hell, I did that myself!
So when the game gives you the nil number at the end, and asks you what you want to do with it, its just the obvious thing to do. You want more answers, you want more time with this game, you want to uncover every mystery and secret that you can. The achievements in-game help with this a bit on a meta level, too- you know there’s secrets to find, so go find them!
Objectively, in the true end timeline, people suffered far more. People died, Amame is in jail, everything that happened in the explosion end- but for all of the suffering and pain, it wasn’t a world without meaning. Ryuki and the Mizukis were both still fighting in their own ways for the truth, to solve things- perhaps the past couldn’t be changed, and that better world may not exist to them, but their world still has meaning. Things may still be bittersweet, its not a perfect happy ending- but those are rare in life. Everyone is still finding their own way forward as best they can, and making the most of the life they’re living. No matter how you’ve struggled, there is still value in that life, and finding that value is something so very important.
(Please note I’m not saying that people should suffer in life, or that you need to suffer for your life to have meaning- rather, I just want to say that a life where you have suffered is not meaningless. Experiencing loss and hardship is tragic, and often times traumatic, but your life still has meaning and you are not defined by the hardships you’ve experienced. There is always the chance that you will find a way to make things better tomorrow, that you will find the strength to start picking yourself up if you need to, and that is important and extremely meaningful.)
In the diverge route, everything is better, but the emotional connection with the player is gone. You’ve found what you were looking for, you’ve found that ‘happier ending’, and now the game is asking you what that should mean to you. What do you consider important from the narrative? What makes a story satisfying to you? What parts of this were drawing you in, investing you? We’ve removed the facade, this world is just a game- but it was a game that meant something to you, it got you invested, made you care, and it was satisfying as a result. It doesn’t matter that it was a game- we go along with it because we care, because we want to see what happens to these characters we like, and because seeing them struggle and fight and ultimately claim that ending song they so very deserved is a reward of its own.
So to me, the nil number is essentially asking you to think about your own personal relationships to media. What is it about the ending of a story that matters to you? Is a “perfect ending” all that matters for you to be happy, or are you actually looking for something else? It’s not intended to be a happy ending, despite it being a better one- it’s nil. A process has occurred, and something has changed, yet you have no more or less than you did before.
Apologies again for rambling on here lmao I’m sure you probably did not intend for that. And again, this is just my personal interpretations of the ending- I’m sure other people will have their own too, and that’s part of the fun to me! It’s very ripe for analysis and discussion, I don’t want to present my views as the only “correct” way to look at things, I’m just giving my case here as best I can in hopes some people may enjoy reading my thoughts on the matter.
The diverge route stuff is fascinating to me because its challenging, it lingers, it makes me think about it and want more in a way that I know I’ll be better off never getting it. Expanding on the ending in the game would honestly feel counterproductive- it works so well to me because it feels hollow. We have frayed at the edges, and now we get to see what we’ve done. (not to say i won’t read fic tho bc there’s some cool fic out there already on the topic. hell yeah.)
So, yeah! I hope that made at least a little bit of sense to read through, thanks for reading if you did, and I hope that even if you don’t agree it was still a fun thing to look over lmao.
#aini#aini spoilers#nirvana initiative#nirvana initiative spoilers#kuruto ryuki#tokiko shigure#nirvanai#nirvanai spoilers#replies#anon#adhd brain truly do go brrrr sometimes#i like just. thinking abt uchikoshi's games!! the themes n questions are fun!!#media that makes you think about your relationship to the medium is fun!!#it makes me happy and i love it so much#i love that aini does all of this#and that it's given me questions and feelings that are mine to sort through#and i LOVE thinking abt it for what it means for ryuki too#altho i dont focus too much on that in this post bc its more looking at it from a meta perspective
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extended aitsf soul eater au ideas
weapons:
aiba: standard issue pistol with a little bug decal on it :] | meister[s]: date, mizuki [briefly]
tama: bright red chain whip | meister[s]: ryuki
mizuki: her pipe, obvs | meister[s]: herself
ota: taser | meister[s]: iris
renju: sniper rifle | meister[s]: pewter, shoko [previously]
saito: carving knife | meister[s]: himself, rohan [previously]
bibi: i don't know.... *head in hands* i want to make mizuki and her different but it is so hard :[
kizuna: very fancy rapier | meister[s]: lien
amame: trident | meister[s]: herself, maybe gen?, maybe iris??
#aitsf spoilers#aini spoilers#obvs not everyone is here some people i just dont have ideas for atm#or they are just a meister so not really much to say#anyways aiba and tama [and marco i guess but idk much about them] were like artificially made by pewter somehow#so they can technically like bond with anyone even other weapons#which is why mizuki was able to be aiba meister for a bit#i think tama was also supposed to take a similar form to aiba but she just didnt and pewter didnt feel like fighting her on it#ryuki was just given a serperate normal gun he can use if he needs it but he never does#also just like imagine ryuki's cool fucking martial arts shit but now with a cool whip to pull people around with#renju is a sniper rifle entirely cause i think its cool#i think once pewter gives him the watch there is a cool gold like ring on the gun near the hilt when he transforms#saito carving knife hehe#kizzy is a rapier cause it felt the most fairy tale-y to me#also brief interlude i think lien used bibi as his weapon when they worked together which i wouldve included if i knew bibi weapon :[[#oh also mizuki and bibi would like be each other meisters and fight together like the cowboy bitches from actual soul eater#but again idk what bibi is cause i dont really want her to just be the exact same pipe#also uhh amame i love her being a trident but idk who would be her meister like at all#i think she'd let multiple people use her?#klepto talks to himself
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mushy may 2024 - day 1 ; cuteness aggression
pairing(s): aether/rain
tags: sleep deprivation, semi-crack, domestic fluff
words: approx. 800
read under the cut or on ao3 :)
“What’cha reading, Aeth?”
Aether startles and looks up at Rain’s voice, surprised to hear anyone else’s voice in the usually abandoned library. “Oh hey, Rainy. What’re you doing in the library? It’s late.”
Rain shakes his head and smiles in affectionate disbelief. “I came to get you, idiot. It’s late,” he mimics.
“Yeah, but it’s not that la–” A glance at the watch on his wrist is enough to shut Aether up. He sets his book down and scrubs his hands over his face. “Fuck, where did the time go? I swear it was only seven about an hour ago.”
“And now it’ll be seven in about an hour,” Rain reminds him, holding out his hands ready to haul Aether to his feet. “C’mon, up you get, love. It’s way past your bedtime,” he teases.
“I can get up by myself,” Aether protests, but he still takes hold of the water ghoul’s hands and allows him to pull him and his stiff joints to his feet. He groans as his knees twinge from hours of disuse and his vision turns into static for a moment. Rain allows him a few moments to get his bearings before he’s taking the quintessence ghoul’s hand and gently guiding him back to the ghouls’ den.
“Have you eaten?” Rain asks him, pulling him around a corner and into the hidden short-cut corridor that Aether always forgets about.
He nods. “Grabbed leftovers from last night before I headed out, don’t you worry, Rainy.”
Rain hums, pleased. “Good. What’d you have?”
“Pasta.”
“Carbonara?” They’re almost at the ghoul den now. Aether really should begin to take note of all the hidden passages and shortcuts built into the Abbey’s architecture, they’ve shaved at least ten minutes off of an otherwise long and boring journey through the cold corridors.
“You know it.”
“How does Mount manage to make it so fucking well?” Rain almost takes a wrong turn, clearly preoccupied with the idea of stealing the last serving of leftover carbonara for breakfast.
“Magic?” Aether offers. He lowers his voice conspiratorially. “Maybe he’s a pasta ghoul…”
Rain stops dead in his tracks. “Aeth, darling, light of my life,” he begins. “I love you more than life itself but I think the sleep deprivation might be getting to you.”
Aether shakes his head emphatically. “Nuh uh,” he protests. “Think about it. Pasta is made from wheat and where does wheat come from?”
Rain just stares at him, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“The earth!” Aether spreads his arms out wide, his eyes widening too, shocked that Rain isn’t as affected by this newfound discovery as he is.
Rain rolls his eyes and continues to drag Aether along, grinning uncontrollably at the absurdity of his adorably sleep deprived packmate. Aether doesn’t understand it, Rain shouldn’t be smiling, he should be horrified at the secret Mountain, their ‘earth’ ghoul has been keeping from them all these years!
The two of them make their way quietly to Aether’s room, ignoring the signs and sounds of life floating from the kitchen. The rest of the world may be waking up now, but Rain is adamant that Aether needs his sleep and who would Aether be if he ignored the wishes of the water ghoul who so kindly came to fetch him from working himself to madness in the library.
“I think you’re already there, love,” Rain says kindly. “Some sleep’ll put you right again though.”
Ah, he must have said that out loud.
“Yep, you did.”
Aether should really stop talking out loud in his head.
Rain stops seemingly for no reason and turns to face Aether. “I can’t fucking take it anymore, you’re too fucking cute when you’re sleepy!” He takes Aether’s face in his hands and smooshes his cheeks together.
“Wha’re you do’n’ ‘ainy?” He’s trying to ask Rain what he’s doing but his voice is all muffled from the water ghoul’s manipulation of his mouth.
“Squishing you,” Rain says simply. “Because I love you and I can’t handle how silly you get when you’re tired.” He takes a deep breath, stares at Aether’s face and suddenly, out of nowhere, screams. “Ahhh!” Right at Aether.
“I fink you ‘re ‘eepy ‘oo…” Aether hadn’t noticed until now but Rain must be tired as well, he’s got a ring of darkness underneath his eyes that differs from his usual markings.
Rain lets go of Aether’s face and the quintessence ghoul wiggles his jaw, getting used to the feeling of being in command of his own muscles again. “...That may be a possibility.”
Aether grabs Rain’s hand and leads him in the direction of his bedroom. “C’mon, we’ll both go sleep.” He narrows his eyes as they walk past Mountain’s door. “An’ then we can talk about Mountain being made of pasta…”
#mushy may 2024#husband ficlets#aether ghoul#rain ghoul#nameless ghouls#the band ghost#husband's mushy may '24
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In Defense of Tearer
Character writing, not the uncountable crimes
AI:TSF Nirvana Initiative is a very divisive game, for many reasons, some of which I’ve discussed before even. With its twists and split storytelling, and a horrible no spoilers policy that leaves fans of the first game with no connective tissue that respects the time they spent with those characters in the first game, it was destined for controversy, no matter how many good ideas and interesting characters it contained. And make no mistake, Nirvana Initiative has many interesting, even consistently well executed ideas. There are some things in Nirvana Initiative that I think are better than they ever were in the first game, like the serial killer at the center of it all.
Apparently, Tearer is controversial. Some think he is lesser than Saito. Less presence. Weaker. Uninteresting. Irrelevant. They think his only purpose is to provide a motive for Amame, who is actually the interesting culprit. But I believe all of that is incorrect. It misunderstands what makes Saito compelling, what makes Amame compelling, and most importantly, for my purposes, why fucking Tearer fucking rules. Tearer is critical to the fundamental nature of not just AINI’s plot, but it’s themes; he is essential to the conversation about love, determinism, and trauma and without him this game is weak and flavorless, and all the other things you like about it would be worse. Under the cut.
Part Zero: S**TO
AITSF is about love. It’s in the title. Water is wet. But for the sake of drawing clearer parallels, let’s actually talk about Sejima Saito.
Saito cannot feel love or happiness from anything from murder, because of a brain disorder, or more accurately, he would have been able to if even one person loved him to begin with. I say this because Date exists within the same body, and he’s able to get by on medication. Because people cared about Date, and wanted him to be happy; they loved him. But Sejima Sou, the world’s worst man, does not care about Saito. His son killed animals, and he did nothing. His son killed his mistress, and he covered it up, but didn’t look into the root issue. He doesn’t care. On a literal level, Saito cannot feel love because of a brain disorder, but on a thematic level, he cannot feel it because no one ever offered it to him. He does not know what it is. (From this perspective, you could say that Saito is a victim of ableism and not only just. A problematic trope, although like it’s all definitely like still here)
And the sad thing is, Saito does not know what love is, he cannot understand it, yet he still wants it from his father! He’s on record saying this is why he killed Manaka because she stole him away. Sejima does not care about him, and he recognizes that, and it bothers him. He wants what he cannot have, so he kills instead. He has to rip that which his father loves away from him. That’s why killing her makes him happy! Are you seeing the bigger picture? The dopamine rush from killing is just the literal read; Saito derives pleasure from murder because he is ripping love away from others, a thing he wants but thinks he cannot have.
Saito switches into several different bodies that do not have the same brain disorder that his did, but this doesn’t make him understand love, because the problem isn’t actually the brain disorder. It’s that at this point, he has gone so long without ever being loved, without ever knowing what love is, with wanting it but never being allowed to have it, that he absolutely refuses to conceive of a version of himself where he could be happy and capable of it. He looks at Date, in his body, who is happy, and living a life full of love, with people who care about him, and its incomprehensible to him. That should not be possible. Date is using that body wrong because to be Saito is to be without love.
Saito has defined himself as loveless, as someone who could only ever be happy when he’s making everyone as miserable as he is. Sejima did not love him, and did not support him, but even once Saito became an adult with the resources and wealth that name possesses, he did not seek out happiness elsewhere, away from the people who failed him. When he gets second chances in different bodies, he does not seek out love, no matter how false it may be. Instead he uses whatever love someone might have for whoever used to live in that body as a tool to carry out his ends, because he is determined to stay as he is. He was not loved, so he will never be loved, and so no one else should ever be either.
This is how Saito is used in the narrative of the first game. In a story where love saves and redeems, about the connections we make with others no matter how fleeting, and the strength it gives us to pull through, the antagonist is someone who was denied it, and because he was denied it is now determined to destroy it for everyone else.
Now that we’ve laid the groundwork, by talking about Saito, let’s move to the main event.
Part One: Forsaken | Child
Carrying on the thematic torch, we get to AINI, and like with any sequel, the discussion about love has shifted. To simplify things, the discussion in the first game is “love good not loving bad.” Characters you’re meant to like are filled with love to give and are loved in return, characters who aren’t well...aren’t. It is good to love. I agree. But AINI takes this theme a step further: who/what do you love, and how? What does love mean to you?
This question shows up at multiple points. Komeji loves his family so dearly, but his pursuit of his dream he loves just as much keeps putting them in danger and costs him his wife and later his life. Shouma struggles to admit he loves his father, constantly fighting with him, until it is too late, and he’s gone, and there is nowhere for this love to go. At the cathedral Ryuki has to pick between Date and Tama: who does he love more? I could go on like this (we will get to Amame), but this all comes back to one source: Tearer. So, who does Tearer love, and how? What does love mean to him?
Tearer loves one person: his ‘mother’, Shigure Tokiko, the world’s worst woman. (I promise we’ll get to Amame when we fucking get there.) Like Saito, he is desperate for the approval and love of his parent, something he too does not get, but there are several fundamental differences. The first, and perhaps most obvious, is that while Sejima Sou is Saito’s literal father, and has not legally forfeit his parentage over him no matter how garbage and bereft of love he may be, Shigure Tokiko is not Tearer’s mother in any sense of the word. She did not give birth to him, she didn’t adopt him, she does not raise him with love or compassion—no. She and her partner/ex Horadori Chikara (the world’s other worst man) kidnapped him and keep him trapped in the fucking basement so they can harvest his fucking organs and body parts for their biological son they gave up but actually love, Furue Jin.
And as obvious as saying that might be, it’s actually pretty critical to begin here. Both of these environments are loveless. Sejima is implicitly neglectful, and I don’t like need to tell you what’s wrong with what Shigure and Horadori are doing, yet the results are fundamentally different. There are two reasons for this. The first is that Saito was always a Sejima, and his life began in a house without love, thus he never knew it in the first place, Tearer was once a little boy not unlike any other, happy, innocent, loved up until the day he was kidnapped. For a brief moment, he knew what love was, and that will always matter.
And this difference leads to the second, which is far more interesting to me. Saito decided that if he could not have love then no one could, that he would destroy every instance of it within his grasp with his bare hands out of spite purely because he could not have it and never knew it, and never once attempted to know it himself. But every single thing Tearer does is all in the name of love. He wants the world to laud him as a hero and savior, to recognize him as important. He does not care that he killed Komeji, or that he is going to kill billions of others, because from his point of view, he believes he is bringing them to true freedom. An act of service for humanity at large. This, as warped as it may be, is a version of love, and a request for reciprocation. He is obviously wrong to think like this, even if he himself cannot understand or comprehend it, but even if he somehow did, it’s secondary to his real motive, which again is for his ‘mother,’ who he loves more than anyone else in the world.
Everything he does, with the exception of trying to convince Amame of his totally based and epic gamer plan to wipe out all human life that also involved murdering her dad, is for her. That plan he came up with is based on her beliefs about the world that he dedicated himself to because she taught them to him, and he is devoted to her without question. Shigure may say that Naix is more scientific than a cult, and is thus better than whatever Horadori is doing, but Tearer is their #1 worshipper, and that is because he adores her. He wants to prove her beliefs correct, to brings everyone to Moksha, because yes everyone will love him and worship him as a hero obviously and his endless pain and torment will end and be retconned into having not happened, but mostly because it would make her happy to be right, and if he makes her happy, then surely she will love him in return, right?
Nonentity Incognito is a somnium about Tearer’s absolute desperation for Shigure to love him in the same way she loves Jin. He wants to be her son. He cries to be let out, somebody, “MOM HELP ME,” but she won’t, and no one else will. They take his ideas, his work, his organs, his skin—everything from him, while they leave him locked in a rusty cell in a basement with a door that cannot open from the inside, and yet he still cries from the bottom of his heart “I love you so much! Why won’t you love me? Why, mom, why?” But he knows exactly why she won’t. Because Shigure loves Jin, or at least she did at one point (she doesn’t anymore care much anymore given she’s all for Tearer’s plan that killed him). As much as he screams and cries and begs, she will never love him. She never has loved him. To her, he was just a child with the right DNA that could be used to save the kid that mattered to her. When asked if Tearer is her son, even when he is right there, she does not answer; the silence speaks for itself. Nothing he does will ever make her love him. He will never be her son, no matter how much he wants to be.
Some may wonder then, with this level of horrific abuse, why would he even want to? Especially since he hates Horadori and Jin for his torment, something that is no secret and is clearly illustrated within and outside his somnium. I mean he explicitly picks both of them as targets because he hates them that much. Horadori only tortures him, and Jin gets not only what Horadori takes but Shigure’s love, the one thing he wants, but why does he want it? Why does he want her love?
Part Two: Damned | Destiny
Shigure Tokiko has given Tearer exactly one thing. Not freedom, not remorse, not even a half-hearted apology, no she didn’t give him anything for his sake, but she did give him something. She taught him about her shitty cult ideology. Shigure believes the world is a simulation. Nothing is real, so there is no pain, and no sorrow, and no unhappiness if we just leave this false prison. She promises him that if he follows her, they can leave this fake world together, where true happiness, paradise, lies. . She does not tell him this because she feels sorry for him, it’s not for him, but because his obvious suffering is a confrontation of her guilt. He is in constant agony because they steal his literal body from him and keep him trapped in a dingy prison in the basement living off preserved food in a broken refrigerator, and if his torture is real, then she is culpable for it. It is her fault he suffers, so it cannot be real. This world where something this horrific happened, where she is enabling and partaking in something this cruel because she loved her son she gave up, Furue Jin—she cannot accept it. She promises him a world where he does not feel pain, and she does not feel guilt.
This obviously is just like shitty, and evil, which yeah, she runs a cult and kidnapped a child, of course she is shitty and evil, but he would not see it that way. To him, an orphan kidnapped overnight who routinely has had his organs taken from him by one of his abductors for another child who gets to be loved (or at least receives some approximation of it) instead, this manipulative bullshit looks like kindness. He’s so young. They took him when he was only six, and now this woman is promising him she can take him to a world where not only will he not be in pain anymore, but it will have never happened.
No one comes for him. He cannot escape. Even if he could somehow get the door open, they’ve taken enough of his lungs he has trouble breathing when he sleeps, so imagine every other physical challenge he could face in a body they routinely steal from. Of course, he clings onto her promises, her teachings; He has to believe her. What choice does he have? He just wants it not to hurt anymore! He is trapped in a cell, and she is telling him that they can leave it if they leave this world behind. He can be free. He doesn’t have to hurt. He will never hurt again. What she has to offer him is insincere, it is not helpful, and it is not even truly for his benefit (they even steal his work for Naix, insane, cant have shit in horaken), but who else is there to offer him anything? Shigure Tokiko does not and will never love him; she will never view him as her son. At most she sees him as a brilliant tool to further her agenda, a convenience as well as an organ donor, but he cannot leave. He is their prisoner, trapped, so her self-self-serving ‘kindness’ is the only thing he has.
They don’t let him go outside, cause obviously their unwilling organ donator can’t escape, and he’s only allowed to learn and do the things they think would be useful to them, (quantum mechanics, molecular biology, electrical engineering, Naix’ fucking teachings, etc), he has no friends or actual family, he’s lost his name, he’s lost half his face and body—what does he have that is his own? What can he have that is his own? What choices can he make that are truly his, when he has so little freedom? What else can he do?
This is where determinism comes into play. Because Nirvana Initiative is not just about love, it is about choices, and how those things often intersect and tie together: the things you do for those you love, the things you do to get it, how far you’re willing to go in its name. Tearer was willing to end the world in the name of Shigure Tokiko, because he loves her. He loves her because he has no choice but to love her, because in the situation they put him in he can make no choices at all.
When Horadori Chikara and Shigure Tokiko made that decision to abduct the child with the right DNA to save their son from his half body tumors, they sealed that child’s fate. Their love, however warped it may be, damned him into being Tearer.
Regrettably for literally everyone besides Shigure, this means he kills people, takes people hostage, blows up a building, tries to commit world genocide, dresses like a clown, and all in all just kind of sucks and posts cringe 24/7. My poor little meow meow lmao. He is the principal antagonist of the game, even if he turns out to be fucking dead for half of it. This is in part, of course, because this fucking unhinged maniac has no hobbies outside of Zero Escape and vaporwave and designed all of his plans to work with or without him being alive, but like Saito in the first game, Tearer is also representative of an idea. You may have already figured out what purpose he serves already, but if not, I think it’ll become much clearer once we talk about how he affects the story as the antagonist.
Talking about every single detail in AINI would take too long and waste a lot of time, especially since not everything that happens in the game is ties back to the HB case (hence some of the controversy), so our purposes we will focus on the characters most affected by Tearer: Ryuki Kuruto and Doi Amame. Ryuki first!
Part Three: Fractured | Mind
Now, to be completely fair, ya boi Ryuki was already going the fuck through it before the half body incident even started. Ryuki’s became a psyncer because of a childish sense of justice he cannot let go of because of the horrifying way he lost his twin brother, who was hit by a truck in pursuit of a criminal and half of his body was crushed beyond recognition. It was his brother with the heroic dreams, Ryuki is just carrying the torch. While the localization uses a reference to My Hero Academia, in the original Japanese, his catchphrase is an Anpanman reference, a superhero show for small children. He wants to do good, he wants to be a hero, to help people, but those naïve ideals can be easily twisted by his trauma and his grief, most notably into a profound hatred of criminals.
So, imagine you’re Ryuki, it’s the time of year your brother died, and now there’s a serial killer going around killing people by leaving half bodies: how do you think that’s going to go? And yeah! It goes like shit! He makes mistake after mistake after mistake, he’s constantly dissociating, memory lapses, he’s vibrating with anticipating waiting for Tama to give him the okay to kill some guys he thinks are tied to the incident, Ryuki shoots an unarmed civilian because he thinks they might be Tearer! He cannot separate his trauma from the case! And frankly, how could he be expected to?
I am not going to lie to you and pretend that Tearer designed the half body incident to trigger Ryuki’s personal issues deliberately. He didn’t. That guy doesn’t go outside lmao. But like Ryuki’s brother, Tearer too has been halved, and so he halves Horadori and Jin as punishment for what has happened to him. What is his catharsis is Ryuki’s trigger, and this inevitably leads Ryuki right into his grasp to be used, where the real shitshow begins.
Tearer has sabotaged Tama. He will kill her if Ryuki does not do what he wants, and what he wants is for Ryuki to kill Date and deal with any other minor nuisances in the meantime. And Ryuki shoots Bibi with a stun bullet, even if it worsens Bibi’s heart condition, because he loves Tama. He cannot bear Tama being destroyed, no matter how much Bibi screams at him, no matter how much she hates him.
He is under Tearer’s thrall up through to the cathedral, and he has one job. Shoot Date. Shoot Date, and Kizuna and Tama and everyone else in the cathedral gets to live! Seems easy, right? Even Date says he should shoot him. But despite this. Despite everything, despite all that is at stake, he can’t. Ryuki cannot shoot Date. It is the guilt of having shot Bibi, yes, but he loves Date. How could he ever shoot him? How can Tearer ask him to choose between the two people he loves more than anyone else in the world? How could he ever make this choice?
He can’t, so Tearer makes it for him, because Tearer has been making his decisions for him ever since he took Tama prisoner. He blows up the cathedral, and Mizuki loses her eye, and Kizuna is paralyzes, and Date is ‘killed,’ and Ryuki never moves on from this. He spends the next six years drinking into oblivion, his PTSD worsening, unable to forgive, unable to forget, unable to move forward. When ‘Jin’s other half’ drops he throws himself back into the case, still a wreck, still hallucinating, still having manic and dissociative episodes, to the point he doesn’t even seem to know what year it is, often interacting with others like it is 2020.
You might remember he caught TC-Perge, the bioweapon Tearer had Horadori Institute make, but the literal elements of a text are never just literal. When Ryuki dissociates or he hallucinates, it comes in the form of glitches to the matrix. Tearer believes in simulation theory, because of Shigure. She and Horadori kept him imprisoned, and she taught him the world itself is a fake they must escape from. For him, this virus is an escape attempt, but like how cutting people in half is cathartic for him but triggering for Ryuki, TC-PERGE is his prison.
Tearer is dead, but it is what remains of him haunts. It lingers, it possesses, and it does not let Ryuki forget or move forward. Ryuki is stuck in place, in February 2020 during the Half-Body Incident, because since it kept triggering him he ended up trapped, forced to do the bidding of the one that reminds him most of his trauma against those he loves most. He is trapped in the time Tearer stripped his agency from him, used his love against him, and that love is now his cage. It has transformed into guilt.
Who do you love, and how? What does love mean to you? Ryuki loved his brother, to the point that he choose to live the live he should have had, to uphold his ideals of justice. For Ryuki, love is grief is trauma. It is a list of reasons for him to hate himself. Tearer only adds to that list. He puts Ryuki in the same place he is, unable to move, clinging on to your own self destruction. For Tearer, it is the Nirvana Initiative, and for Ryuki, it’s the alcoholism, and the self-loathing, and the belief he has to solve and fix it all himself or die trying because it is the only way he can possibly atone. He takes a bullet for Date, even after he gets the pep talk from them and told they forgive him, and the only way he can atone is by working together to move forward. It seems only by taking it does he find his way out.
Ryuki gets cured. He will heal from his gunshot wound. Tama is free from Tearer’s clutches, and Date is fucking fine, and Ryuki will be okay. There was a way out of this hellish nightmare Tearer put him in, and it did not involve making the villains and himself pay forever indefinitely, it involved forgiveness. It involved accepting the love offered to you, because it should not be a prison, but freedom.
But the other person was not so lucky.
Part Four: Choose | Correctly
Okay to just take care of this, Tearer thinks he’s thinks he’s in love with Amame, but what’s actually happening is he hasn’t like seen a human woman who isn’t his ‘mom’ for like two decades, and his maturity levels are out of wack cause of the human experimentation prison cell thing, so his hormones are just going crazy. I have nothing further to say about this aspect. It’s just sad, and a little gross, and it’s not interesting. We’re moving on.
Determinism and causality already haunt Amame before Tearer kills her father. Doi Amame is a girl split in two. Every decision presented to her, every choice she makes is logged deep within her heart and kept perfectly preserved in bubbles, and sometimes she takes them out and rotates them, let’s the light distort their colors into something new. What if she stayed with her father during the divorce? What if she worked a different job? Less hours? Part of her is always in the past, ruminating on what could have been if only she had done something different, maybe it would have been better. In that sense, she and Ryuki have a lot in common, and it’s also why Ryuki should have been the protagonist full time, but this is not that essay.
We will briefly have to talk about Komeji, the king of bad decisions. If there were ever a reason for Amame to be constantly thinking about the consequences of her actions, it would be looking at her dad and going “Jesus Christ.” He loves family dearly, but he consistently makes short-sighted decisions that sound great in the moment, but get him and the people he loves further in hot water. This is why he thought it was a great idea to blackmail the serial killer with the body he found and stole, cause he was wasted, and hey it’ll get him money which he can pay the loan sharks with and then his kids will be safe right? WRONG. SO WRONG DUDE. Guy was a hot mess, and he pays for it with his life.
It because of that Amame and Tearer meet. Amame hides Furue Jin’s left half in the freezer in Brahman, and she shows up at Studio Dvaita just in time for Tearer to be finishing up arranging her father’s corpse, although she does not know it’s his at first. Their fates are now inexorably intertwined. “I met the person of my destiny.” Amame discovers her father in the body-bag.
While Tearer develops a bunch of fantasies about her over the course of six years, because what else is he going to fucking do I guess, Amame grieves and mourns. Her pile of capsuled choices only grows with every minute of every day, and she spends more time looking at them. Thinking about them. Wondering which choice was the correct one. Maybe she should have stayed with her father. Maybe she should have told the truth and worked less hours to come home early. Maybe she should have comforted him when Furue Jin’s body dropped on Face to Faith, because she knew he needed it. Could she have saved him then? Would he still be alive now? Yes, Komeji was a hot mess, but he was her dad! She loved him! And now he’s gone, forever.
Maybe she could have made peace with that, had her encounters with Tearer ended there. While it would never be fair, or right, knowledge that Komeji never made good choices, and that it was another bad choice that lead him to Tearer could be made peace with. With a lack of specifics about what Tearer was even trying to do before or after her father got involved with his plans, she could fill in the blanks herself, tell herself similar stories like the what ifs she conjures because there are no answers to her questions. But that is not what fate has in store for her.
Amame gets a phone call from Tearer. He wants to meet with her, because he is convinced, for reasons we will get to in a second, that she will understand him. And Amame, although she knows she hates him, knows she cannot forgive him for what he has done to her father, knows she is plagued by the decisions she has made that she can never undo, she does not call the police. She does not tell anyone. She accepts his offer, and she goes. She just wants to know what he has to say, right? She just wants answers. Only that. Then she’ll leave. Finally, an explanation for why her father was killed.
And she gets it! And it’s the worst explanation she’s ever heard in her entire life! Simulation? Moksha? Nirvana Initiative? What the fuck is he talking about? Her dad died for this? She asks him if he remembers what happened on February 13th, 2020, the day her dad was murdered. She is trying to gauge if he remembers what he did to her father, if he even cares at all. And all he has to say is “That was the fateful day I met you.” Her father? He doesn’t matter. Komeji died because he needed a body to put at Misetan since Jin’s other half was never returned, and Tearer considers this entire thing a performance and a game. It wasn’t personal, like Horadori, or Furue Jin. It meant next to nothing to him. Her father died for no reason. He just moves on! He laughs! He’s blathers on maniacally about his plans to destroy all life on earth in the name of liberation or whatever, right in front of a woman whose dad he killed that he doesn’t remember or consider important!
He thinks she thinks this is super based, and that he’s like the smartest guy ever, and that he’s going to save the day, and that it’s an honor she is getting the chance to work with him, that she is considered intelligent and special enough to know about their ideals. Why does he think this? Is he delusional? Has he lost his mind? Well, yes, obviously, that happened like ages ago when they started stealing his organs and trapped him in the basement, but there’s another layer. Shigure Tokiko does not love him, but she only ever validated him when he supported her cult ideology, and his other relationships do not exist. She is his only frame of reference. He wishes to connect with Amame because he wishes to connect with another human being and be understood, and Amame was there, but he only knows how to do that through this shitty cult he is thoroughly indoctrinated in to the point he kills people and plans genocide for it, and with all that in mind, the result is inevitable.
It was bold of him to turn his back to her. She was never going to understand him. Enda Amame knocks him out with a wrench, drags him to the slicer, and kills him in the same way he killed her father. Another decision she can never take back. But she was not alone. Shigure saw her kill him, and now she is under her thrall. She has to move not just his body, but hers, or else her secret will get out. So she helps Shigure with her plan, to keep her secret, and lives the next couple of days quiet and somber, lost in her what ifs and her grief. She cannot bear this weight much longer. Not just her loss, or the weight of the secret she now keeps, but the ever-mounting regrets that began years ago.
“I did what was best for me! I don’t care if people attack me for it, I have no regrets! I have no regrets!” Amame cries at the end of Nightmare Irreconcilable, a Somnium that plays through each of her regrets, and the things she could have done instead. She wants so desperately to believe this, because while she can imagine going to see Komeji instead of Iris, or picking him in the divorce, she can’t picture not killing Tearer, even though her regrets all lead her to that point. Even though killing him did not bring her father back, but just took her away from her brother, and Gen, and her other best friends.
When Tearer calls Amame “the person of his destiny,” he is correct, but not for the reason he thinks he is. Before him, Amame’s life is full of people who love her, and of people who love her in return. Yes, her father is a mess, and the divorce was hard, but she’s okay. She has support, and she’s kind and self-sacrificing and a little eccentric, but that just makes her lovable. The choices she makes matter but they are not a fixation of hers. The world is open. She is free.
But that day in Dvaita, the world starts to close up. She is still loved, and she still loves people, and she’s still gentle and eccentric, but she’s starting to close off. Her dad’s decisions lead to the slicer. What does that mean for her? Was the world always so small? He’s gone, and there are no answers, just a hole that will never heal, no matter how much people love her, or how much she loves in return. The pathways for her get narrower and narrower and narrower, leading her directly to that dingy cell that seals her fate. And just like the man she killed that was trapped down there, she too is treated as another disposable tool by Shigure Tokiko, and is currently trapped in a cell, not unlike where he used to be.
To talk about Tearer is to talk about Amame because to talk about Amame is to talk about Tearer. They are direct responses to one another. Tearer was damned into being so at age six. His ability to choose, to love, to decide were all taken from him when he was stolen from that orphanage. And this monstrous cruelty contaminates everything it touches. Tearer desperately tries to escape to a world where his trauma never happened because it is all that he is, and like him she fixates on imagined possibilities where things are better, because the pain of her loss is too much to bear.
The world was available to Amame, until it was infected by him, by what he had no choice but to become. He killed her father, and although the world was still available to her, she was still free, she could not see it. All she saw was the past she could not undo, the family she lost forever, and the man who was to blame. For that one moment, Amame threw out all the love the world still had to offer her because she hated him more, and immediately regretted it. It’s the cycle of cruelty, of abuse, of trauma.
Conclusion: Trauma | Symbolism
This is why Tearer fucking rules, more than anything else. He is the embodiment of trauma, the breathing symbol of thematic horror the cast is trying to overcome. That’s why half his body is literally fucking chitin, a visual representation of the wounds that do not heal. That’s why his personality is entirely formed by the horrific experiences he had at the hands of Horadori and Shigure, and why everything he does is motivated by that experience, down to his fucking name! He was literally trapped because when you’re traumatized it often feels like you cannot move from where you are. He clings to Shigure and her idealogy because she stands for nihilism. She promises all those that enter her grasp that this world is meaningless and the only real way to find happiness is by ending it all: a death wish. He never leaves the narrative, even after he’s killed, and killing him cannot defeat him, just perpetuates the cycle. Amame only comes out of that even more traumatized, more guilt-ridden and horrified, it adds to her trauma. Trauma is not something you kill. His plan to kill everyone is to make people destroy themselves from the inside out, by ruining their minds so they cannot interact with one another without inevitably causing pain.
The only way to stop him is through unity and attempting to mend bridges, by process the things that hurt you instead of bottling them up. Accept the love that people give you. Embrace the opportunities that the world still has to offer.
Bonus: Somezuki Uru
You must have one question left. How come in this entire essay, I never once called him by his real name? I even pretended for a second he lost it forever somehow. Well, that’s because…Tearer is an idea, isn’t he? He is entirely shaped by the horrors forced upon him. Like I just said, he is trauma. We don’t know anything about Somezuki Uru, other than he was orphan, a normal boy, and honestly based on knowledge of Sejima’s cursed dick and balls, his brilliance in technical achievement as Tearer is probably an indicator of something significant going on in his brain that just isn’t to the same degree as cancer or the oxytocin deficiency. My money is on autism (source: autistic). Everything else we get is shaped by the horrors, and I just talked about those at length. But if I still have you here…
It is 1996, and tucked into his bed at Aioen orphanage, Uru wonders what tomorrow may bring? Rain or sunshine? Outside the open window, the moon that hangs high in the half-clouded sky has no clear answers. The breeze smells wet. Maybe it’ll rain after all. Didn’t Mr. Chieda get that new game for the computer….? That might be fun to try. He yawns. The breeze smells dry again, but he’ll worry about it tomorrow. This great big world full of possibilities isn’t going anywhere.
I hope the world you live in right now is kind to you. Thank you for reading this.
#nirvana initiative#ai the somnium files#ai nirvana initiative#uru somezuki#somezuki uru#kuruto ryuki#ryuki kuruto#amame doi#doi amame#hope.txt#my meta#aini#ai series#I HAD A LOT OF THOUGHTS ABOUT MY GUY#SO HERE WE ARE#as for that second to last paragraph#its up to you how you interpret it#be kind to one another#okay?
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//spoilers for the first AITSF game
I've been playing Ai the somnium files nirvana initiative (AiNi) and you know I liked the ryudate ship at first it was cute and while I do like Hitomi/Date as well, it's always felt eh because it felt like Hitomi was in love with Falco not Date, and I've always seen the both of them as separate identities, like in the end of the first game Date asks to be called Date because that's who he really is, his experiences have made him into a different man than Falco was (also I'm not buying that the mask thing is for the ladies, I think he does suffer from body dysmorphia because all his memories and relationships are from when he looked like Saito, in his mind even if unconsciously that's just his body and how he looks, like imagine now just having a different body and being told you are a different person, that must be incredibly taxing mentally).
But I've been playing more AiNi and holy shit, people weren't exaggerating, it's really fucking gay, like Ryuki has a big fat crush on Date I'm sorry but I can't see it any other way, physical relationship???? What does that mean??????
#ai the somnium files#ai nirvana initiative#kaname date#playing though aini and my thoughts#kuruto ryuki#aitsf
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Umm… what is this resemblance between Evalie and the FL of Alphatart’s new novel that’s coming out on April 4th 😱
More pics
I was like ‘does Ergi have blue eyes?’ because I remembered the weird hinted love triangle between him Evalie, and Lebetti, in the side stories, but he has green eyes, not blue 😵💫
But at first when I read ‘blue eyes’ I thought of these two who are in love with Aini… but Aini doesn’t look like the FL and their love isn’t like that lol, It’s more pure love 😭😭
Who else has blue eyes in Alphatart’s works? The chairman (like the main villain in MOTH), but he doesn’t have any illustrations yet… and there’s also Evalie’s twin, Dartha
But tbh, the webtoon version of Evalie looks more like the FL in that cover
This could all just be a coincidence, so pls don’t take this seriously 🤣 I just randomly thought of this at 3 am while distracting myself from studying (it worked)
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a list of literary references in aitsf: nirvana initiative chapter titles
tidied up this ol' twitter thread. basically: every single chapter title in aini is a reference to a work of literature, i figured out most of them. here's an explanation of where they came from and what they mean. let us begin.
edit: some gaps filled in by the discord user aaabatteries! thank you!
"a strange tale"/"dispossessed"/"alone" (chapter 0) reference 'the turn of the screw' by henry james.
the framing device of this novella is a group of friends reading a manuscript written by someone else. ryuki being interrogated by mizuki is something of a framing device for what we perceive as his 'side' of the story, six years ago. this is also a quintessential piece of gothic fiction, which is famously concerned with the subconscious and repression- two themes aitsf is very interested in!
"anyone imagines"/"ought to know" (ryuki chapter 1) reference the bible verse corinthians 8:2
"If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know"
naix is an ideology that has the power of religion over its believers. this quotation reflects that people who don't believe in the ideology who think they understand the nature of the world (and believe it's real) are ignorant to the fact it's a simulation.
"nothing to be done"/"go" (ryuki chapter 2) reference 'waiting for godot' by samuel beckett
"nothing to be done" is something of a reoccurring joke in the play. much time is spent watching characters act aimlessly, accomplish little, and lack purpose. these chapters in the game have a lot to do with ryuki feeling frustrated by tokiko's indecipherable philosophical ramblings.
"farewell"/"joy for anguish"/"smile for tears" (ryuki chapter 3) reference 'farewell' by anne bronte.
"And who can tell but Heaven, at last,
May answer all my thousand prayers,
And bid the future pay the past
With joy for anguish, smiles for tears?"
this poem is about the pain of saying goodbye to a loved one. of course, "saying goodbye" is a classic euphemism for death. these titles likely reference shoma reckoning with komeji's death. the joy/anguish duo are strange parallel chapters where komeji lives or dies.
"well known"/"mind of god" (ryuki c4 r1) reference 'a brief history of time' by stephen hawking
"If we do discover a theory of everything…it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we would truly know the mind of God."
these chapters introduce us to tearer as a character, who is, of course, closely linked to naix and their ideology. naix believe they understood the nature of human existence, and accomplished the goal of knowing 'the mind of god'.
"i found me"/"past its ken" (ryuki c4 r2) reference "the masked face" by thomas hardy
"I found me in a great surging space, I"
At either end a door"
...
"There once complained a goosequill pen
To the scribe of the Infinite
Of the words it had to write
Because they were past its ken."
this poem is about people with a negative outlook who struggle to comprehend that there is more to the world than they know. shoma only believed in shallow simulation theory to justify his depression. "past its ken" means beyond one's established knowledge.
"not all a dream"/"she was the universe" (ryuki chapter 5 r1) reference "darkness" by lord byron
"I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd"
...
"Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe."
this poem describes an apocalypse that resembles a natural disaster. fitting that this route leads to the explosion ending, involving the collapse of the underground cave. darkness becomes "the universe"- ryuki is traumatised.
"pass mildly away"/"end where i begun" (mizuki c1) reference "a valediction: forbidding mourning" by john donne
"As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go"
…
"Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun."
this poem is about two lovers parting, but i think the game uses it to reflect platonic relationships. kizuna has lost bibi. bibi lost mizuki. mizuki lost date. family members who love each other deeply have been apart for a long time.
"the expense of spirit"/"hell" (mizuki chapter 3) reference sonnet 129 by william shakespeare.
"The expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action..."
this poem theorises that after people satisfy their lust (their desires), they're left with shame. this could be a metaphor for chikara's experiments, but he doesn't seem to feel shame. i think it's about mizuki wanting answers about the institute until she gets them and they're painful.
"all living things"/"of arms and of man" (mizuki chapter 4 m2) references virgil's "the aenid".
"I sing of arms and of the man, fated to be an exile, who long since left the land of Troy and came to Italy to the shores of Lavinium"
i think a parallel is drawn between lien and the protag of the aenid, aeneas. he flees the fall of troy and travels to rome, becoming the original descendant of the ancient romans. lien escapes the 'tragedy' of his life of crime and becomes something of a hero to kizuna.
"who's there"/"bid the soldiers shoot" (mizuki chapter 4 m2/m3) reference the first and final lines of william shakespeare's "hamlet".
the first line is spoken by a guard who hears the ghost of hamlet sr. in this route, jin's corpse is found in the freezer... not quite a ghost. the final line is spoken by fortinbras, an invading prince, upon storming the palace and finding the corpses of the whole cast. he commands the shots to commemorate the deaths of the royalty. lien and kizuna escape among the gunfire of chieda's armed goons... some commemoration.
"all that we are" (mizuki c5 m2) is a buddha quote.
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts and made up of our thoughts. If a man speak or act with an evil thought, suffering follows him as the wheel follows the hoof of the beast that draws the wagon…. If a man speak or act with a good thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him.”
this chapter precedes gen and amame's end. gen highlights that he considers amame to be a naturally kind and loving person in a way that others haven't been towards him. this quotation implies that good things follow kind people, which doesn't follow considering the tragic end amame gets here.
"sweet silent thought" (mizuki chapter 5 m3) references shakespeare's sonnet 30
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste
this poem is about regrets. when you think "sweet silent thoughts" (contemplate your life), you feel unhappy and consumed by what-ifs. interesting that this chapter is the direct opposite of the poem- lien and kizuna take their chance and run away together. no regrets!
"births"/"the end of craving" (mizuki c5 m1) is a buddha quote once more.
simply put, to reach the end of craving is to achieve the titular nirvana and a higher state of being.
"braver than all flowers" (epilogue) references "proof of immortality "by william carlos williams
"for there is one thing braver than all flowers;
richer than clear gems; wider than the sky"
this is a sort of humorous poem about how the one thing that humans throughout history have in common is ignorance. maybe it's a ref to how the mizukis used their wit and investigation skills to overcome that ignorance and win the day?
"all this happened, more or less" (ryuki diverge) references the opening line of slaughterhouse-five by kurt vonnegut.
this is regarded as a crazy opening line for a crazy novel. it's the literary equivalent of "well, that happened" for better or worse, much like this ending.
the only currently missing reference is 'traveler'/'left behind'.
#aitsf#aini#ai the somnium files#aini spoilers#aitsf nirvana initiative#there are so many tags for this game man#literature#misspost
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AI3 predictions + headcanons
Aitsf and AINI spoilers ofc
Date will come back looking like Falco wearing a Vochlocho with the Greg Chun voice in it
It is revealed that Horadori Institute’s sole sperm donor was So Sejima
I scared myself with this one, this sounds like something that would actually 100% happen
Meaning Iris and Mizuki would be bio half-sisters
So gets murdered finally
And the detectives are like uh oh, we have no leads, the killer could’ve literally been anyone ever
Date and Hitomi actually spend time together and reconnect fr and it’s good
Iris’s next somnium is Among Us themed
She witnesses something important, but her somnium hides it under a puzzle where we have to do tasks and correctly identify the impostor that symbolizes what actually happened. The AI ball is crewmate-shaped like Shovelforge Aiba
We’ll be able to play as Marco/Maruko
If the effects of somnium make Aiba more silly instead of logical and Tama more nervous instead of confident, maybe they make Marco loud and expressive while they’re usually shy and quiet in eye form
Aiba returns to Date and Mizuki gets a new partner
We learn significantly more Adorabbit lore (is it a cartoon or something, or is it like a fucked up parody of Sanrio characters?)
There is a character named Adorat that Bibi likes
They put Shoma on some sort of hormone therapy
He starts working for Pewter
Maybe gets a scholarship/grant from ABIS so he can go to uni for robotics. This way he can get the education without debt and then support Mame when she gets out so she can get back on track and have the ability to find something better than Sunfish Pocket.
Go go Boss blackmailing Riichi to help the Enda-Dois as a parallel to her blackmailing So to save Iris
Unlike Pewter, Amame actually stays in prison for a while, but not a super long time
We meet Mrs. Doi as an NPC and she’s comically normal
We will psync with Moma (hopefully they’ll dial down on his A-Set obsession)
Omg imagine psyncing with Ritsuko the secretary
Naix starts revering Tokiko like a deity
The game starts with Tokiko speaking directly to you, the player, as a sort of narrator figure
The characters call on Lien to pick locks again but his role is very minor like that of Moma in AINI
Bigger Hitomi role please
We get to go to Boss and Bibi’s home as was apparently planned for this game at some point
Screw it, throw in Ryuki’s place too. He probably lives in a fuckin mansion
Mizuki inherited two companies from Ren yet she lives in Date’s studio apartment. Sure, she secretly loves him and wouldn’t actually want to move out, but what does she do with the money she must be making? Donate a ton of it? Saving and investing?
Minor subplot where Date and Tama end up working together for some horrible, terrifying reason
Aiba’s interest in bugs and fish becomes relevant to the case
Another iteration of that hilarious highway scene where all the psyncers are driving to the same destination in their own ridiculous vehicles instead of everyone just going in the limo. Or would it be funnier if they were all in one car? How about both in one game.
In AI1 they said there were six psyncers at ABIS. We’ve met Date, Ryuki, and Bibi, plus Mizuki, so there must be at least three other psyncers and AI balls we haven’t met yet.
The game title will obviously be full of puns so what if AI3 (AI san) is about the first psyncer and AI ball? I’m not thinking a prequel, but it could explain the origins of ABIS and be related to the first case solved using psyncing.
It’d be neat if the main character is a more senior detective, like maybe a Jane Marple type figure. It would be cool to see an old protagonist since the end of VLR
Idk what Marco/Maruko’s gender settings are supposed to be since Marco is a masculine name and Maruko is feminine, but I hope we get a male AI-ball in general
What tacky vehicles would the new character(s) ride? A convertible? Badass futuristic motorcycle?
The English title will have the number 3 represent the letter E and “AI” somewhere in it. Perhaps they will use <3 to reference ai as in love
Polyamorous relationship between three people to represent “ai 3”
Man imagine AI4… knowing that one of the ways to say 4 sounds like “death” and is considered super unlucky in Japanese, they’d go crazy stuffing the title with double meanings
Canon wlw representation please,,, there aren’t enough gay women in the Uchiverse
Mentally undoing the Michael Bubleification of Ryuki’s solo in The Song, pure homophobia
(Feel free to add on)
#long post#aitsf#aini#nirvana initiative#nirvanai#ai the somnium files#ai: the somnium files#ai nirvana initiative#aitsf spoilers#ai spoilers#aini spoilers#nirvana initiative spoilers#kaname date#mizuki date#ryuki kuruto#kuruto ryuki#bibi kuranushi#mizuki kuranushi#ai3
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Rating: 3/5
Book BlurB:Julie Murphy meets Casey McQuiston in this unforgettable queer romance about a teen girl whose foray into fantasy tabletop roleplaying brings her new confidence, true friends, and a shot at real, swoon-worthy love.
Hollis Beckwith isn’t trying to get a girl—she’s just trying to get by. For a fat, broke girl with anxiety, the start of senior year brings enough to worry about. And besides, she already has a boyfriend: Chris. Their relationship isn’t particularly exciting, but it’s comfortable and familiar, and Hollis wants it to survive beyond senior year. To prove she’s a girlfriend worth keeping, Hollis decides to learn Chris’s favorite tabletop roleplaying game, Secrets & Sorcery—but his unfortunate “No Girlfriends at the Table” rule means she’ll need to find her own group if she wants in.
Enter: Gloria Castañeda and her all-girls game of S&S! Crowded at the table in Gloria’s cozy Ohio apartment, the six girls battle twisted magic in-game and become fast friends outside it. With her character as armor, Hollis starts to believe that maybe she can be more than just fat, anxious, and a little lost.
But then an in-game crush develops between Hollis’s character and the bard played by charismatic Aini Amin-Shaw, whose wide, cocky grin makes Hollis’s stomach flutter. As their gentle flirting sparks into something deeper, Hollis is no longer sure what she wants…or if she’s content to just play pretend.
Review:
A teen girl finds friendship and possibly new romance when she begins her journey into fantasy tabletop roleplaying. Hollis Beckwith just wants to connect withe her boyfriend Christ and his friends, and since they've made a "No-Girlfriend Rule" for whenever they play S&S (essentially D&D), Hollis decides she'll try and play the game and get good enough to be allowed to play with her boyfriend and his friends. When her first game goes bad she discovers a flyer looking for fellow friendly female players who would be open to joining and she decides to give it a go. Soon Hollis finds herself spending every Friday night with a group of girls who make her comfortable and happy, giving her confidence and friendship that she's never had before. Yet this new group of girls unlocks a new part of Hollis that she's never expected, she feels more herself and she finds herself falling for the charismatic Aini Amin-Shaw, a girl who makes her heart flutter in a way her boyfriend has never done. The more Hollis comes into being herself the bigger the difference she is beginning to see in how her boyfriend treats her vs how the girls treat her... and she might finally be able to stop pretending to be someone she's not and finally embrace herself. Overall this was a pretty cute coming of age story about a girl discovering herself and what she likes while also discovering who she likes. I'd definitely recommend it for young readers who are discovering themselves and finding their own confidence. Hollis has a lot of growing up to do and she does up exactly where she needs to be and I am happy for her. The friend group was really cute and supportive, and overall it's a cute book.
*Thanks Netgalley and Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing, Atheneum Books for Young Readers for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*
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uhhh............. ososan oc infodump but i laser u after u finish reading bc i am... out my comfort zone. vulnerable to everything (cries) I HATE BEING SELF CONSCIOUS . plz... read under the cut.. haha.
So I made three in one go, bc I wanted to have a trio...badly. They were initially just my basic ocs, but I realized it would be funny to change them and put them in hell. (stripped of their powers and forced to be human ??!!) Their og clothes were good (they're cute ashell but I NEEDED them to be in casual clothing). So I was thinking about ososan, then my brain clicked. After like 3 weeks of me losing files, getting petrified. drawing something else to cope, and staring at other ppls stuff... I came up with those designs. I AM SHY PLEASE FORGIVE ME and the grammar idk it's 3am...and im a bit nervous
So there's Aini (she/her..5'2) . "what the hell is that "fufufu~" for??" "..I-It's my signature laugh..shut up..". She has a complex where she thinks she's better than everyone else. Cocky. She's a (squints) a chunibyo...and a tsun___.She finds this world boring and a waste of time. She believes that she is a demon, and that she is surrounded by petty humans. Don't mind her, she's harmless. Unless she gets like flustered, then she pulls out a gun and gets trigger happy. (misses every time). She does know deep down, that she's playing a delusion...but she immediately removes that thought once she spots an unsuspecting victim. I think she just likes making rivals. She does get emotional and will break her act when she is at her most vulnerable state. It's rare, but it happens. She is a walking anime stereotype.
Then there's Molly (she/they..5'7). They are a sweetheart...most of the time. She's a bit of a pushover at times, but she does have another side. They care for their friends very, very much. She's the tallest of the three. Why does she always look afraid? Like they just saw a ghost...what...? Nothing is there, everything is a-okay. She lovesssss anything sweet. They get fraps...every, single, day. They can't help but drop an unusual amount of money on a sweet treat. She shares with Aini and Usiuii, they both r foreva grateful for her kindness.
Usiuii. (she/her..5'3). Stoic. Stop staring at me...why is she getting closer?? I don't know what's going on in her head, but she has some sinister vibe that travels with her every step. (jk she just wants to say hi :3!!!!) ...okay she does have some slightly evil tendencies. Keeps Aini in check by slamming her in the head with her bass. (just imagine Usiuii holding it like a bat and aiming for Aini's legs) She has a shark-toothed smiley face, wishes she can eat gum properly. High pain tolerance. She has a side gig. It's suspicious. If you do find her at that gig, do not approach her. She will spiral if she sees anyone she knows at this place, and will chase you down.
They all love pachinko. Molly thinks it's like Vegas, so she drags Aini and Usiuii with them. Aini loses the most, Usiuii is in the middle, Molly wins the most. Aini goes into a frenzy and starts to violently shake the machine, trying to force those damn silver balls to start pouring out. In the midst of her frenzy, Aini accidentally smacks Usiuii in the face. They both start fighting, looking like idiots. Molly gets her cash and pulls both of them by the collars with a disturbing look. They leave. Aini is quietly sobbing. Usiuii is counting Molly's winnings. Molly is staring at the sunset while pulling the two. (fucking idiots: she thinks while giving them a warm smile)
As for jobs: Molly works in the corporate world. She hates it...but alas, it pays well; they're just gonna have to force a smile and keep going. Every waking moment, her boss keeps giving them more work to do. Pushing her around...Molly silently gets angrier by the day. They are testing me, she smiles through the pain.
Usiuii and Aini work in a convenience store. They both love it, they can be as stupid as they want to be. Huhuhu!~ Pathetic humans in need of MY service?? Hmph. I SUPPOSE I can help you. "....isn't that your job." ".....uh....y-yeah....." (i guess u can imagine Aini leaning over the counter when a customer is about to pay...saying that...plz stop aini, you're being bizarre.) Usiuii gets realllyyyy close and welcomes anyone who comes in, she finds their reactions funny. Takes 15 steps to you: WELCOME...!~ (she gives them a wide smile, then she bursts into laughter)
The three of them would befriend Chibita. ummm bc they pay their tab as soon as they finish. And they love. love eating his oden. like it was a gift sent from the heavens. I guess they would also rant to him about their lives.
Aini thinks the matsus are figments, like how are there that many copies of one person...just there? (this is just her trying to make life a bit more interesting..don't try and school her on sextuplets, she will tune you out. ("I AM NOT A FOOL! I KNOW THEY'RE REAL, IDIOT. DON'T RUIN THIS FOR ME..." teary-eyed) Molly tries to believe they r all good citizens, blah blah blah... sees them in action. ....immediate mood change.
I think the 3 would befriend totty first....bc uh...let's just assume he still works at the cafe, okay? since molly is always getting frappes and stuff. She eventually makes small talk with totty, and yknow yay a friend!11!! They rant to him a lot, considers him a dear friend.
Ummm maybe aini would "befriend" oso at some point but like its a rivalry thing idk. it's funny. to me.. It would prob be over pachinko, aini won for the first time and she rubs it in his face. he wins, he rubs it in her face hahaha (stares at wall) .they find each other slightly annoying, but good company. i think aini would be playing one day, and stumble upon him being there..then stuff insues, omg yay friend. they both knock each other out. idk they prob get drunk one night and kiss but its like ewww cooties!!11!1 then they stare at each other. silence. "....that was gay." "....pardon?" (slams head on counter)
Usiuii hmm would be fwiends with choro bc she finds him funny .,,,looking. got em yeah. okay..fine jk they both love idols. but Usiuii does NOT want anyone to know. she begs choro not to tell a soul, threatening to take his if he dares. usiuii...what. she's supposed to be the cool one, not the one who goes bonkers over idols. but..yknow. they both fangirl over stuffz yeah...
WHAT IS ROMANCE. I DONT KNOW. (I fold on real-time romance…expect goofy shit instead. like in the anime’s!!!1!!)
umm yyahhh im exhausted. thank you for reading. i will work on their ref sheets very soon!!!!`` lhahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha oc brainrot starts......when i wake up in the morning . line up -> infodump -> ref
EDIT: i add stuff as i lay here in bed (steam comes out of head)
They all drink. but in moderation…maybe. then they beat the shit out of _____________ ____________ group attack i think. gag. haha (puts finger down)
who would get drunk (first to last): aini usiuii molly
Molly has warm hands, but when she gets nervous, they have the tendency to fidget them together a bit. Then they catch fire. oh no…..
Usiuii keeps putting her hand in the oden, to take a bite she gets yelled at every time. She says she feels no pain, therefore it’s gonna be okay guys. (she smirks, chibita chucks a hot piece at her)
Aini sometimes wears those anime head wing thingys for fun. but uhhh she plays the role. they’re not real, stop wearing them on the job. (Someone just roleplay with her for a few minutes. Then she won’t have to be so cruel with her words)
I think molly is like retsuko (yknow from aggretsuko) since their job pisses them off. she breaks, and goes on a long winded rant, full of evil. Then it wears off, and she’s all like “oh my god??!! im sososoosossoos sorry..!” then they look like they killed someone. plz forgive her.
okay they love u very much, but they might kill u in a triple attack (hearto)
#AUGHHHHH#(dies)#this was my top 3 longest rambles#i need a shirley temple#thank u for reading.#MY GRAMMAR GETS BAD TOWARDS THE END#ososan oc#ppp
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I finally finished nirvanA Initiative yesterday and boy. do I have thoughts. mainly mixed. AINI has some cool moments and it did get me laughing at times and nearly made me cry at one point but the more I think about the game, the more mixed and somewhat disappointed I feel
spoilers under cut for both the original AITSF and AINI
the reasons I feel mixed about AINI are the game's big twist and the way it treats the older cast of characters
Date was done dirty in this game. the mask thing doesn't bother me as much as others as when I think about it, it kinda makes sense, but I also understand why people don't like it. I too would've loved to see Falco do the funny unhinged shit. but at the same time, Saito's face was Date's face for 6 years and he didn't know any better, and... Date putting on the mask to attract more ladies is in character. like come on. the man is a hopeless simp.
why does he sound like Saito again if he's back into his Falco body? well, in the Japanese version of AITSF, Saito and Falco share the same VA, so maybe in universe, Date can do a Saito impression. or maybe he's using a vochlocho as when he's disguised as gen he sounds just like him. although Falco having the ability to do spot on impression of others is a much funnier explanation and honestly, I kinda wanna roll with that one
why does Date seemingly have Saito's physique again? yeah no I agree that's dumb
nah what disappointed me was how he was given amnesia which lasted 6 years AGAIN. the amnesia in the first game was a very important part of his character development and although he regained his memories and original body he came out of it almost reformed into a new man, rejecting his Falco/Hayato Yagyu identity and embracing the Kaname Date one. and you're telling me the amnesia he got this time didn't have this effect on him? he just goes back to being the Date we know upon seeing news about Jin Furue's corpse? just throws away whatever changes that happened to him in these 6 years? when the 6 year long amnesia in the first game changed him? it just feels like the amnesia he gains in this game undermines the first one
Mizuki and Date also feel somewhat... flanderized in AINI. I know Mizuki's animosity towards Date is played for laughs, but in the Mizuki route in the original game, when Date wakes up after Mizuki psyncs with him she jumps in the air, ready to punch Date but he stops her (though I believe she was actually holding back like come on, she's stronger than Date, I don't think Saito's body would've been able to stop her), she calls him stupid and the two hug each other. and Date wasn't unconscious for long when this happened. in AINI, he's missing for 6 years and when she meets him again she doesn't react dramatically but instead seems annoyed. yeah I know he's wearing a costume and she's changed as a person but wouldn't she at least be somewhat... moved by seeing her adoptive father? being alive and all that? plus him being missing is her biggest motivator for solving the HB case. like come on. and yeah I get she's 12 in AITSF so her handling of emotions is different but again. we're talking about her adoptive father
Aiba's character also feels assassinated in AINI. in the original, she was specifically made for Date, acting as a replacement for his left eye, though she was also really important for him as he had been swapped into a body with a brain that couldn't secrete its own oxytocin, so she had to supply him with it. and it's really important as the body Date is in belongs to Saito, who became a monster as a result of having a malfunctioning pituitary gland as well as his father not taking appropriate care of him, and he's so far gone that even switching into bodies with brains that can secrete oxytocin doesn't help. Aiba sacrifices herself to save Hitomi, and her revival at the end of the resolution route is a huge deal, and one of the options when she appears is having Date cry!
in AINI, not too long after she's returned, she and Date have an argument and Aiba leaves Date because... he watches inappropriate VR videos (not saying the P word I'm so tired of reporting bots). like come on, she's probably seen worse when she was with him for the 6 years when he was in Saito's body. and this was the straw that broke the camel's back? really? eyepatch Date looks cool but... come on
seeing how bad of an influence Date was on her when Aiba is with either Mizukis is funny though (I seriously can't believe she says "big tiddy" when you examine the receptionist lady), and while either Mizuki isn't as much of a clown as Date is, the dynamic between either with Aiba is still enjoyable
but yeah, even when Date's back after these 6 years Aiba would rather be with Mizuki. it just doesn't feel right. it especially feels insulting when Aiba says she's home when she gets back into Date's eye socket, only to leave him a few minutes later. I know character development can happen but ashdfhasdfh this just doesn't feel right. it feels so forced. I get why Aiba was with either Mizukis, and especially in Mizuki Date's case. he was missing and I think it's actually kinda cool as it's the biggest thing she has from him. but idk
now, the twist
boy, where do I begin. I get what it's supposed to be and that it's supposed to tie with the game's overall theme, but it makes me feel like I was being gaslit. the twist doesn't work for me bc it's the player who's being misled and not the characters. plot twists in general work for me when the audience and the characters are figuring out together what's going on, and it makes the story more engaging in return. in AITSF's case it works beautifully bc you're figuring out the mystery with Date and Aiba. in AINI you're left in the dark and nobody questions why some things aren't adding up. if AINI instead had a character you were following who was trying to piece together what's going on and had the same confusion as the player it would've been different. I wouldn't have felt as crazy. hell I thought I somehow had accidentally sequence broken the game at points by doing something ultra specific bc of where the narrative jumped and how the characters acted at times. or some crazy time displacement or a loop or whatever was going on. the abandoned chemical plant in particular did. I really don't feel like I'm journeying with the characters in this game even though I'm also trying to figure out the HB case with them.
I also don't get why Ryuki being alive is supposed to be a fun surprise gift for Bibi and Mizuki as I don't recall them being particularly attached to Ryuki. hell Bibi knocked him out on a few occasions
also why is Bibi's name also Mizuki. this is dumb. I know the twist hinged on this but come on
with that said the game isn't all bad. I like the new cast of the characters and I think they're actually the strongest point. I LOVE how expressive Aiba's hamster form portrait is compared to the original where... she isn't expressive at all (is it just a static image?). Komeji's death actually stings, and in my case it did so even more as I got the Komeji/Shoma ending before the explosion one. the QoL is great and the somniums in this game feel even more creative than the ones in the original, although they don't feel as atmospheric. the Kizuna and Gen ones are probably my favourite, and masked woman's is cool as well though god I hate stealth. the VR sections are cool and I kinda wish the original had them as well as I absolutely would've LOVED to see Aiba pushing Date into acting out crime scenes. eyepatch Date is good and I love the expressions he makes in this game. the nods to the original game are cool (although they got grating towards the end). and Gen. just Gen. he's so good
Kusemon Go was great. how about Kusemon Mystery Dungeon too?
also surprised that this game never brings up quantum entanglement or gnosticism as it feels like these two would've absolutely been home, although I suppose the focus was more on Buddhism. but quantum entanglement not being mentioned feels strange considering the game's theme
anyways, by the end of the day, the original AITSF was a good standalone title and didn't need a sequel. I also kinda preferred it when Mizuki's superhuman strength remained unexplained. man who's perpetually horny on main with an adoptive daughter who can easily bench press 100kg with no explanation provided is much funnier. why is this girl so strong? who cares, she can kick ass and is useful in taking down goons so just roll with it
I don't know if I want AI3, but if it becomes reality, I'd love to see Falco more. I REALLY want to see him doing the funny Date faces and the funny unhinged Date shit. like fuck it give me catboy Falco! but I know it's probably not happening as most people are used to the Saito look. oh well. at least fan art exists, and I do want to draw him as well...
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Haiiiii, continuing the ask game of random top5s
Top 5 videogame characters
Omg I didn’t know this was going around 😭
(Not counting characters from VNs because otherwise the whole list would just be Higurashi and Umineko characters djdjdkdkdk)
1. Mae Borowski (Night in the Woods)
Ah. Yeah KJFDNJFDKKNJD cat girl blinded and chained by nostalgia that she doesn't want to leave behind, while also being weighed down by her past mistakes as she still struggles with the guilt and the mental illness of it all. Reconnecting with old friends, only to find that they've changed and they're becoming farther and farther away for you to reach out to. Finding a way to cope with all of that and simply leaving with "I'll just continue to live" in the end — AUGH. Night in the Woods my beloved, Mae Borowski my beloved...
2. Akane Kurashiki (Zero Escape)
I remember playing 999 on the ds and just being shocked, and I remember playing vlr on the 3ds also being pretty shocked. And I didn't quite understand Akane as a character at the time because I was like 14 and I couldn't comprehend shit. But when I revisit her character now and I read a bunch of analysis stuff regarding her, I now realize just how well she's written to be in Zero Escape's narrative. For a girl to sacrifice the normality and life she had left for the sake of the world, forsaking timelines again and again so she can find the right outcome, but leaving the one she loved most behind — it's heartbreaking. It's cruel and tragic, because Akane had her life tragically ripped away too soon, so she never got to truly live at all. But to see her at the same time be cold-hearted and leave behind Junpei and the others also hurts to see. She's very well written and complex and I love her for it
3. Yosuke Hanamura (Persona 4)
I don't talk much about Yosuke, but he's a character I have a lot of beef with personally. He's a character that I look at and go "Shit, I can't help but see my teenage self in you" and it's like damn 💀 I struggled with the same goddamn things this guy did and I was shitty just like he is, and I'm looking at a mirror every time I see content about him I swear. Persona 4 was a game that got me through my teenage years, so it checks out tbh. I appreciate the growth that Yosuke himself goes through, but I do think the game does him dirty development wise 😭
4. Mizuki Okiura/Date (Ai: The Somnium Files)
I think this goes in hand with my personal experiences, but I relate to Mizuki a lot tbh. I relate to her loneliness as a child, but it was also so happy and fulfilling to see this girl get the family she deserved in the end and to see her grow up into a better version of herself, who's come to terms with her grief. I have more complicated feelings with how they handled some of her character aspects in aini, but I still appreciate how we got to see Mizuki older and see how much she's grown as a person from her 12 yr old self in aitsf
5. Ryunosuke Naruhodo (Ace Attorney/The Great Ace Attorney)
Keeping this one brief and without spoilers since I have a moot who's going through tgaa rn, but I love Ryunosuke as a protag much more than Phoenix tbh, his development throughout the duology is so good! He's silly, he's grieving, he finds a passion in something he didn't think he would excel in. His character arc overall is just very satisfying to see, and he's one of the more enjoyable protags I've played in any video game ngl
#honorable mentions go to Sunny from Omori and Kaveh from genshin because I relate to them a bit too much lmao#thank u Zerk!!!#asks#Zerk
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For the ask game
Any snippets/headcanon you would like to give about Nári, your Balrog OC?
Always💕 thank you so much for asking about her!
One thing about Nári that I haven't touched on too much in fics and posts is that she's a hedonist. She enjoys all sorts of carnal delights she encountered in Arda - fighting, feasting with her brothers and, yes, sex too. The latter especially comes with a few pitfalls if you're a Balrog attempting to woo fragile incarnate ladies, but she tries her best.
As far as food is concerned, Nári loves hearty and spicy food in particular and is very much a "meat is back on the menu" girlie. A Balrog also burns through it quickly so she can eat a lot and does so at every opportunity she gets. Naturally, as an Aini she doesn't need food, but will nevertheless claim to be hungry and attempt to snack on various things (and people).
Eönwë has become her favorite target for poultry-related jokes and she keeps pestering him about eggs, wielding a frying pan as an intimidation tactic. Said pan is actually superfluous because she is very much able to roast things by placing them somewhere on her body.
Nári can also drink like an absolute champ and would put even Tulkas to shame, however it's worth noting that Balrog body heat evaporates alcohol so swiftly that they're technically just cheating.
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I liked AINI a lot, but the game would be seriously improved if they just made Ryuki the protagonist, because he's the one that has a story arc, and a meaningful tie to the case, and meanwhile it's very clear that both Mizukis exist not to have character arcs but for the sake of the timeline twist. More under the cut.
Part One: The Mizuki Problem
Date Mizuki doesn't have a character arc, which is a shame, because she's a rightly beloved character from the first game, and with the way her story ended there, they could have done so much more with her in the lead role. You don't even have to change any of the plot points of AINI for this, bar the meta ones. You could keep her as a genetic experiment and clone, dealing with the revelation that her shitty parents actually adopted her, while struggling because once again her father (Date) was ripped away from her. She'll even learn she has a sister, who watched over her and tried to protect her, but in doing so left her alone. That's a lot of meaty stuff! It's a lot to wrestle with, to make peace with. To grow up as a girl who had to raise herself, and the loneliness that entails, the longing for a different childhood, imagining what could have been. She'd be an excellent counterpart to Amame, who also went down her violent path out of love for her family, and is now just as paralyzed by regret. It's all right there!!
But they can't explore any of that. They rush past her feelings about all of those things, bringing them up for a scene, and then resolve them in a later scene with no in between. They do this for three key reasons, two of which I'll talk about here. The first is that half of her screen time is not actually her, it is Bibi. So they nixed half the time to explore it. Oops. But the more offensive problem, at least in my eyes, is the no spoilers policy that informed the writing. This game has a spoiler toggle, and that means the game has to be completely understandable to a hypothetical player without relying on any knowledge from the first game. Any references to the first game have to be short enough they can be excised without audiences feeling like they missed something important. So if her character arc is based on her trauma, trauma that was a key thing to explore in the first game, and how that trauma informs how she responds the revelations/events of this game—well, then anyone who is playing without spoilers for the first game would be barred from her half of the story. So we get one scene where she brings up her complicated feelings about this, where all the dialogue related to the first game can be easily cut, and then a follow up where she expresses she's fine with all this actually, and that's all she's allowed to have. I can't imagine the version of the game as it is with no spoilers, where the only thing she contends with is being a clone. How weak; how insubstantial.
Kuranushi Mizuki is first and foremost a plot device. I am not saying this because I hate her (I do not); it is just objective fact. In order for the writers to deceive us about what events happen in the past and what happens in the future, there needs to be a Mizuki identical to the one in the present six years in the past. Enter Bibi. Because of this, Bibi does not have a character arc. She can't, because she has to pass as Date Mizuki. This is the third reason that they can't give Date Mizuki a character arc: both Mizukis have to be indistinct from each other so as not to give the game up before they want to reveal the real flow chart. If they were to really get into the meat of either of their traumas, then it would cause greater suspicion in the players before the writers are ready to show their hands.
And that's unfortunate. Kuranushi Mizuki could easily be a great secondary character that could enhance Mizuki's story, in the same way our Mizuki was to Date. She's her sister, her progenitor, and everything she does is out of a desire to protect her, even her misguided choices. Their reunion, and rebuilding of a sisterly bond after they both overcome the ways their various traumatic upbringings affected them could be extremely emotional, and a worthwhile read. But they can't do any of that. Because "Mizuki" as a protagonist exists to serve the meta plot twist about the timeline, and distinct character journeys would undermine that. Because any arc that the Mizukis would undergo together would have to discuss the things that happened to our Mizuki in the first game, and they can't do that, because the game has to be a comprehensible entry point for new players.
Part Two: Ryuki's Half Slaps!
You know who doesn't have these problems? Ryuki. Ryuki Kuruto was introduced in this game, which means there is no prior context that's locked off from new players entering the series. All of Ryuki's screen-time is actually just his own, because he's an adult so they don't need to invent another identical looking character to explain why he still looks the same in both time periods. Now, he still risks having two character arcs that conflict with each other, if the Ryuki of 6 years ago has different priorities and needs compared to his present self, however the game resolves this one just fine.
Ryuki is wracked by trauma, no matter what half of the timeline he's in. The thing that he needs most is to make peace with his mistakes and trauma. His brother's tragic death and his resulting warped sense of justice, his failings during the initial HB investigation being informed by the trauma of his brother's death that happened around that time and with identical results, how that lead to Tearer manipulating and using him, and his endless guilt over that betrayal. At any point in his story, he's spiralling, just for different reasons, and you can blur the details on that just enough so every scene moves seamlessly from one to the next. The detail blurring even justifies itself because of TC-PERGE and his other mental illnesses have fucked with his perception of time and the world around him. Ryuki's side just works. He's a character with a story that's designed to work with the structure they want to have.
And you can tell it works, that Ryuki as a protagonist truly hits because I don't think a single person has played this game who came away hating him. So many people love Ryuki. It's so easy to love Ryuki, because things are happening with him, not just to him. He gets worse, he gets so much worse the more time we spend with him, and we want him to get better because when he seems to be doing alright, he's a likeable guy! He's a dork!! He's awkward!! He has his silly little hero worship gay crush on Date!! We don't want him to suffer, to go through the things he does, we want him to get better and find peace. As someone stuck on his past decisions wrestling with endless regrets, he's another foil to Amame. Someone who makes choices and wonders what it would have been like if he could undo them (hello diverge route). He's just a well-written protagonist!!
Part Three: Split Protagonists? Split Story. False Timeline? Cancelled Story.
There's only one problem: he has to share the game with two Mizukis, who have nothing going on internally, and much of what they have going on externally has very little to do with him. Bibi hates him for what he did to her under Tearer's influence, which should be very relevant and add to his story, but the structure impedes that somewhat. 18-year-old Bibi sees Ryuki just as a coworker until he shoots her. She can't value him as a friend, or have any feelings stronger than 'he's a guy she works with sometimes' because Mizuki doesn't really know him or have a relationship with him, and that would be a contradiction that gives the game up. (I mean, they could just give our Mizuki reasons care a lot about him too, but they chose not to try). Then she hates him, because he shot her and made her condition worse, a betrayal that would hurt more if I felt like they had a meaningful bond, but they don't have one. Still, there is some weight there, so I'll give them that. We mostly see this enmity from her when she's the masked woman, so...when we don't know it's her, or why she hates him, because it's a plot twist. Good replay value. But she gets over it pretty fast at the end. Still, I'll forgive all this, because it is the only thing either Mizuki has going on that really has to do with him.
Our Mizuki does not seem to care at all about her eye; she likes having Aiba, which is the opposite of a conflict. She doesn't know Ryuki betrayed them either, and she doesn't have a relationship with him, so she does a lot of investigating into the half body serial killings which she cares about for....some reason. I guess because she was there? I would say it's because of what happened to Date during explosion end, how it ripped her family apart again, but I already talked about how they can't and won't get into that, so she cares for like no reason at all. She similarly treats what happened to Kizuna as just kind of this tragic accident, but it's not what motivates her. Nothing motivates her. She investigates a bunch of stuff, and sometimes she sees Ryuki, but she doesn't have any motivations related to him, so every minute he spends off screen while she's at the helm has adds nothing to his story, for the sake of a character they refuse to give one.
I lied earlier when I said Bibi has nothing going on. Unlike her sister she has motives, and because she was a character introduced in this game she can have a character arc related to those motives because it won't spoil the first one. There's still the damning problem regarding the fact that she categorically can't be her own character in any of the scenes we play as her, but she has a motive. The hitch is her impetus has nothing to do with the HB incident, which is the thing most affecting Ryuki. She's investigating the Horadori Institute's genetic experiments on children, because that's why Horadori abused her and her sister. The things she learns about Tearer happen while trying to do something else. Horadori and Shigure didn't abduct Uru to genetically modify him; he was just a organ donor for their son. He experienced abuses, but they aren't the abuses she underwent, so they're not the focus of her investigation. The stuff that happened to Gen and Shouma is of more importance to her, because it's the same as what happened to her. Narratively, this is why Gen and Shouma are genetic experiments. They further her investigation, and add to her story. Or at least they would, if she didn't have to pass for Mizuki all the time when you play as her. We don't get to truly explore how she feels about there being other victims she could not protect, who contend with their traumas just like she does. We don't really see her make peace with all that happened, or decide to let go and move on—it just is why she's doing the things she does, while looking suspicious in a mask. Another potential character arc wasted by meta component.
Why are the strings that tie our three protagonists together so thin? To be clear, both Mizukis are extremely tied together, for obvious reasons. But their ties to Ryuki are weak. Bibi was betrayed by him and knows it, so she doesn't trust him, and wants Mizuki to stay away from him because of it, but Mizuki doesn't have a lot of strong opinions about him. He was just a guy she met while he was investigating, and he was there when she lost her eye (and dad), and now he's doing worse. He's very fucked up about what he's done to everyone, including them, because of the HB case, but one Mizuki isn't motivated by the HB case, and the other Mizuki just isn't motivated by anything. Their side adds to Ryuki's story when he's present in the scenes, but when he's gone, so is his storyline. I loved when Date talked Ryuki out of his downward spiral, and I loved his big damn heroes moment, and his sacrifice and forgiveness, and seeing him alive and well at the end. But I wish I could have seen him react to Amame's second somnium. I wish I could have seen him more in the investigations. I wish that when he was offscreen, the things that happened still reflected him in some way, just like how I wish that both Mizukis were allowed to have character arcs on full display throughout the entire game.
There is one protagonist who is affected by the plot of the game, who has ties to the other leads, and undergoes a journey in his half, but is out of focus in the back half in favor of the other two leads, but the other two protagonists are blocked from having anything, because of the restrictions imposed by meta and production elements of the game.
Part Four: So can it be fixed?
Well sure it can. The beautiful thing about fiction is there are any number of ways to solve a writing problem. The first is fuck the no spoilers policy straight to hell, even ignoring everything I just talked about, it affects the game in a bunch of smaller, annoying ways, and kinda steps on Date's story in the last game by not letting him exist in his actual body. You can take any approach you want after that knowing that whatever you do with returning characters it will acknowledge and further what came before.
After that though, there's a lot of options. You don't even have to throw the meta fuckshit to hell! I sorta opened this whole analysis with one, but I'm gonna list a few, and what kind of things they might entail, in order of the amount of work it involves:
Make Ryuki the sole protagonist. Have every part of the investigation be his own from his eyes. You can keep the timeline twist, it would still work for the reasons I said it worked in his half earlier. He's the one with the motivations, he's the one most directly affected by the HB case, and I'm fairly certain the game was initially structured with him as the sole protagonist in mind until they made some changes to account for Mizuki's popularity. It's also the easiest to do because a lot of the material for it is just already there, you just have to expand it. Mizuki and Bibi can both exist and work to serve the time fuckshit in the same way they do in canon, and he can still by what happened to them, and even investigate the stuff more personal to Bibi. Maybe he does that in part because he thinks he owes it to her, in the same way he thinks solving the HB case is what he owes to everyone. It's easy, it's strong, you can give our Mizuki emotional beats where she reacts to those reveals and struggles with her trauma, etc, but she does it as a prominent secondary character like she did in the first game, but hey she gets to do something!! She and Bibi can even afford to be more distinct from each other, more expressive of their differing motivations and needs, but their presence can blur together because Ryuki's sense of reality is fucked up. I'll admit this one is also my favorite, but can you blame me? It has everything in the base game in its best form, with the character it was designed for at the center, and it improves on all the weaker shit.
Move the Timeline Later: As in, set the events of the game in 2026, so everyone is old enough to be an adult. This one you cut Bibi. Mizuki gets to be Mizuki the entire time you play as her, and because we told the no spoiler policy to go to hell, she can have character arcs!! and motivations!!! Of course, you don't get the Bibi related stuff, but there's still plenty there. The other major change you'd have to make though is give her and Ryuki a more significant relationship. You can keep the time fuckshit, cause she'll just look the same in the past and present like basically everyone else (a detail other people nitpick but I don't give a shit about because it's just anime logic who cares). This one is roughly the same amount of work as the first one, because again the base is there, you just need to add a character story to Mizuki, and better tie to Ryuki's, which is done by changing their relationship.
Sole Protag Ryuki, no returning characters: This is the same as the other one, but you don't have to worry about old characters. In many ways this might be seem easier than the first one, cause your cast is smaller, but if you keep Bibi (because she's a new character), you need to rework her and all of her relationships. Even if you just graft her relationship she had with Mizuki onto someone who already exists in the game and don't invent another OC—you see where the extra work comes in. Again, you could cut her entirely, but I think the story is weaker as a whole if there is no character who exemplifies Ryuki's guilt and self hatred, and that's Bibi, who hates him for his betrayal. So...I'd keep her, even if it's more work, especially since he's your sole protagonist.
Sole Protagonist Mizuki: This one is for the people who want Mizuki to be the protagonist of her own game by herself, because it has very little to do most of the plot of nirvana initiative. Thus, it'ss objectively the most work. This one is gonna play more like the first game, set several years down the line, and it expands on Mizuki's story from the first game in her history as a child of abuse and neglect, and the stress of recently losing her dad again. The investigation is a serial killing incident, but the serial killing is directly tied to Horadori's genetic experiments, like say all the victims are people at his lab guilty of abusing people. There's no time fuckshit, there is no meta element, it's not the HB case, and all the characters stuff related to the HB side of things will have to be reworked so they're about the new case and/or the experiments instead. So like....Somezuki Uru wants revenge for the experiments done to him, that ruined his life, for example. Bibi still exists in a prominent secondary role, she can even be the masked woman for the first part of it until her reveal, which further's Mizuki's story, and because explosion end won't happen, Date will have to disappear for other reasons related to this case (like he got too close and the killer, Uru, abducted him to get rid of the threat), especially if you want that to motivate Mizuki. You might have to cut Ryuki for this story though, unless you rebuild his entire character so every last bit of his trauma connects to this new case you're inventing wholecloth, but I mean if this is the fix you're invested in, you're already doing so much work, so you might as well.
Conclusion: Man....
It's a shame the game was fucked from the start because of the dumbass no spoiler policy. You can make everything else work except that. The real enemy is studio execs who think marketing to the nonexistent demo of "people who play sequels without playing earlier entries" is a good idea.
Thank you for your time if you read this. This was way longer than I thought it would be.
#hope.txt#my meta#WELP#i literally wrote 2.5k of fanfic#stopped#then wrote 3.5k of meta#aka this post#am i insane?#yes#next question#also i know i wrote this insane lengthy criticism but swear i like the game#i wouldnt be working on fanfiction for something i don't like!!#PLEASE BELIEVE ME THIS COMES FROM LOVE#I LOVE THE IDEAS AND THATS WHY I WANT THEM TO BE BETTER
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aitsf
guessing it's for the fandom section lol
001 | Send me a fandom and I will tell you my:
Favorite character:
at this point i can admit that's gonna be. date. mr sex himself. he's the reason i dyed my hair blond last year. chewing on him. such a good character but by god he needs his ass beat posthaste
Least Favorite character:
shoko lol she's just. Bad. well-written but acknowledging that does not make me hate her less
5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon):
uhh that's gonna be datomi. and. that's it. i don't really care much about other ships. i guess jupewter is neat? and boss/tokiko is some sexy evil yuri? dunno
Character I find most attractive:
boss.... what can i say. women. they are good. would love a milf that'd spank me and call me a nasty little b- *is dragged offstage*
Character I would marry:
hitomi!!! she's so sweet and kind but has that streak of fire in her that'd make me lose it lol
Character I would be best friends with:
iris would be my girl bestie But. i would get wasted on cheap beer and vodka with date lol
A random thought:
wish they weren't all cops... sad. but i guess that's the inherent flaw of most detective fiction :/ plus i can't see any of them (maybe except mizuki and mayyybeee ryuki) quitting
An unpopular opinion:
speaking of, it'd be so sexy if boss used her sexy blackmail powers to do Some Good & not seeing that was kind of a waste :/
My canon OTP:
datomi <3 they're so married
Non-canon OTP:
ok this one's. super not canon but mizuki and the gf i gave her in sunshowers lol
Most badass character:
mizuki!!!!!!!!!! GET EM GIRL
Pairing I am not a fan of:
ryu//date 🤢 a) date is definitely into men but he's super married, b) ryuki needs therapy and some taste before getting into a relationship, c) i think it's more interesting if this remains unrequited
Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another):
uh mama i guess?? especially in aini. like she's not a flat character but her transness could've been written much better. and then there's that change in design 🫣
Favourite friendship:
boss & date <3 there's so much there that we don't know, but what we do makes me crazyinsane like. "all she did, she did for you", she's the one who gave him the name, the way they bicker but also care about each other... AUGH
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Wappy, then is Aini Anya's reincarnation? And then what about Latil? Is she Domis's reincarnation? If yes, then why does Aini gets fragment of memories from Domis's life?
And did Girgol turn all sinister and twisted after this one-sided love? Yes, you said he wasn't innocent either before; but did he become worse after this encounter? And if Ranamun is the adversary, then aren't things supposed to get sour/bitter between him and Latil? Idk, girl, either I'm too dumb or the storyline is too confusing! Help me! 😭😭😭😭😭
Yeah, Aini is sister Anya’s reincarnation and Latil is Domis’ reincarnation.
You know about Domis & Anya’s oath, right? Domis gave Anya her memories of Carlein in exchange of not killing Carlein, and not killing the non-human species and finding a way for them to live. That way, when the next adversary is reborn (Aini), Carlein is supposed to fall in love with them and think they’re Domis’ reincarnation.
The reason why Aini has fragments of Domis’ memories is because when Girgol killed Anya (after domis died), Domis & Anya’s oath failed, and Anya’s soul got torn in half : one part reincarnated into Aini’s body and the other into Domis’ body that Anya’s in. It also explains why Ranamun has 1/2 of the adversary’s powers (the strongest of them), but Aini and Anyadomis have 1/4 of the adversary’s powers (became Anya’s soul was split in half)
(Ch 377) it’s confusing, but this chapter explains it a bit
- Yes, Girgol did kind of turn sinister and twisted, but there wasn’t really any details into it. We just know that he trained Anya as the adversary…
- Lol, yeah, things are supposed to be sour between Latil & Ranamun, but Ranamun is lazy and isn’t really righteous or cares about his adversary duties 😂 that’s why it kind of worked out between them
- No, you’re not dumb, the storyline is just so confusing. I even have a hard time understanding it. But lots of stuff makes sense as the story goes on, so it’s just confusing on purpose.
+ if you’re still confused: Check ch 369 for the oath’s explanation, ch 375 for when Aini finds out she’s Anya’s reincarnation, and ch 377 explains a bit about the whole torn souls thing
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