Отоме Shuuen no Virche -Error:Salvation- (по ссылке на оф.сайт не переходите, если мигающие изображения для вас проблема) – это игра от Отомейт в жанре темное фэнтези о девушке по прозвищу Шинигами и всяких смертельных проклятьях. Дата выхода: 7 октября 2021.
Художник тот же, что рисовал Кен га Кими. В этой статье представлены сюжет, мир, понятия и герои, а также комментарии ко всему этому от разработчиков. Статья из B`s Log №6, 2021.
Сюжет:
Альпечер, небольшая страна в Западной Европе. Окруженные морем и черными цветами бедствия – Ликорис Новаж – со всех сторон, люди в этой стране рождаются с «проклятием смерти», которое приведет к кончине к 23 годам.
Альпечер, в которой смерть приходит равно к любому, стали называть – страна, зачарованная богом смерти.
Люди оплакивают свою недолговечную судьбу и сопротивляются ей. И после многих лет исследований они создали систему. Откажитесь от тела, которое умирает к 23 годам, и дайте выжить только памяти – «Загрузите память». Людей, которые живут вечно за счет «загрузок памяти», называют «реливерами» (пережившими), и они продолжают сопротивляться короткой жизни.
В этой стране жила девушка по прозвищу «Жнец Смерти», потому что всем приносила беды. В тот момент, когда оплакивающая свою жизнь девушка попыталась покончить с собой, перед ней появился таинственный мужчина, который утверждал, что является «Стражем Смерти».
Под руководством Стража девушка неизбежно приблизится к «Различным загадкам смерти», гнездящимся в этой стране. Не ведая того, что судьба тех, кто очарован богом смерти, кончается … отчаянием.
Это история, ведущая к вечной кончине…
Место действия: Альпечер
Другое название: Страна, зачарованная богом смерти. Маленькая страна в окружении цветов Ликорис Новаж и моря. Она изолирована в течение многих лет: из-за сильных океанских течений никто не приезжает из других стран. В основном разделена на три района: «Народный», «Состоятельный» и «Исследовательский». Люди в этой стране рождаются с Проклятием Смерти и умрут к 23 годам.
Ключевое слово: реливеры (пережившие)
Люди, которые выживают только по памяти, благодаря уникальной системе, созданной Шианом около 60 лет назад. Загрузив «данные памяти» в «клона», созданного на основе собственных генов, ты возобновляешь жизнедеятельность себя самого, становясь реливером.
Поскольку их физическая продолжительность жизни такая же, как и у обычных людей, их вечность составляет «23 года», после которых они умирают и заново повторяют этот процесс. Это универсальная система с точки зрения «выживания», но вы должны заплатить большую цену, чтобы стать реливером.
Ключевое слово: Кунэ (народный район)
Область, которая занимает большую часть Альпечера. Здесь много рынков и общественных заведений, самый оживленный район. Здесь живет обычный средний человек.
Ключевое слово: Шуди (район состоятельных)
Здесь живут люди, которые в основном инвестируют в исследовательские институты, и члены королевской семьи. Электросистема более развита, чем в районе для простых людей (Кунэ), и люди, живущие здесь, часто используют электромобили и экипажи в качестве средства передвижения.
Ключевое слово: Серневол (исследовательская зона).
Расположен в центре страны, здесь собраны многие важные объекты, такие как национальный исследовательский институт и королевский замок. Это самый технологичный район и волшебный уголок с точки зрения жителей квартала простых людей (Кунэ).
Ключевое слово: цветочное поле Ликорис Новаж
Цветочное поле Ликорис Новаж, расцветающее по периметру Альпечера.
Этот цветок также называют «Цветок катастрофы», потому что те, кто пытается сломать или уничтожить его, умирают, не дожидаясь окончания своей жизни, так что он отталкивает многих людей.
Примечание: в Японии цветы ликориса считаются символами смерти, поскольку их алые цветки обычно цветут рядом с кладбищами в период осеннего равноденствия. В японских мифах они описаны устрашающими цветами, растущими в загробном мире, что направляют мертвых к следующей реинкарнации.
Фоны места действия можно увидеть на скрине ниже.
Героиня:
Серес (не озвучена)
Главный герой этого произведения. Она потеряла родителей в младенчестве. Ее называют «Жнецом Смерти» и ненавидят, потому что люди, с которыми она пересекалась, попадали в несчастные случаи и внезапно умирали.
Когда она пессимистично оценивала свою жизнь, делающую других несчастными, и пыталась умереть, она встретила Анку и столкнулась с различными «смертями» в этой стране.
Возраст: 18 лет
Род занятий: Помогает приюту
От разработчиков:
Художнику поручили нарисовать героиню с короткой стрижкой и в желтых тонах. Пришлось помучиться, чтобы совместить короткие волосы у девушки с готикой и стилем эпохи, а также оптимистичный желтый с трагичной темой.
Захватываемые герои:
Ив (сэйю Сайто Сома)
Молодой человек, который работает разнорабочим в своей компании мастеров на все руки Крун и является членом народной дружины. Он серьезный и искренний человек и пользуется большим доверием у жителей города.
Он филантроп и считает, что даже плохие вещи в некоторых случаях можно принять. Родители бросили его из-за ожога, который он получил в результате несчастного случая в детстве.
Он верит, что если вы любите людей и продолжаете помогать, вы рано или поздно встретите того, кто вас полюбит.
Возраст: 18 лет
Род занятий: Разнорабочий (Крун) / дружинник
На картинке героиня впервые встречает парня в маске на половину лица (Ива) на поле, где он любовно касается цветов ликориса, которые все так ненавидят. Роняя слезу, он шепчет «люблю».
Вот видео, представляющее героя:
От разработчиков:
Художнику дали задание нарисовать его рыцарем, поэтому он выглядит таковым в любой одежде. Его образ перерисовывали много раз, но одно оставалось неизменным – его улыбка то ли мальчика, то ли юноши, который вот-вот заплачет.
Тема его сюжета: любовь. Родители его бросили из-за ожогов, изуродовавших половину его лица, поэтому он всю жизнь ищет любовь. Однако его «любовь» не во всем будет прекрасна, а подробности почему, узнаете в сюжете.
Люка Пруст (Хиракава Дайске ❤ )
Приглашенный учитель, который ходит в церкви и приюты, чтобы обучать детей. Часто бывает в приюте, где живет героиня.
С ним легко ужиться, но в нем также есть сильное чувство справедливости. У него больная младшая сестра, и он часто бывает в больнице.
Он верит в Бога и относится к детям как к цветам жизни.
Возраст: 22 года
Род деятельности: учитель
На картинке герой представлен на уроке с детишками идеальным учителем.
Вот видео, представляющее героя:
От разработчиков:
Дизайн его рисовался по красивому европейскому образцу: платиновый блондин, голубые глаза. Челкой ему скрыли брови, чтобы плохо читались его выражения лица и чтобы было ощущение меньшей характерности.
Тема его сюжета: вера. Добрая улыбка и любящее детей и Бога сердце, самый близкий к смерти персонаж из-за больной сестры и всего остального. В сюжете вам предстоят милые и теплые деньки общения с ним и его сестренкой в ожидании спасения от людей… или Бога?
Матис Клод (Амасаки Кохэй)
Мальчик из богатого района. Любит читать, и в его комнате полно книг. Он слабый и застенчивый, не любит смотреть в глаза и иногда не может нормально разговаривать. Его любимого старшего брата убил палач (блоу), и он ищет преступника, чтобы отомстить.
Возраст: 17 лет
Род занятий: Глава семьи Клод
На картинке герой пригласил героиню с друзьями, расследующими убийства в своем районе, к себе домой. Стеснительный парень едва мог представиться, прячась за книжкой.
Вот видео, представляющее героя:
От разработчиков:
Попытки перенести рисунок с бумаги в цифровой вариант постоянно меняли облик героя на непохожий.
Тема его сюжета: сам. Ведь месть за брата это одно, но действительно ли это нужно лично герою и каковы его личные устремления?
Шиан Брофиаз (Хосоя Ёсимаса ❤ )
Гениальный ученый, который является директором Национального исследовательского института и создал «загрузку памяти». Он загружал себя неоднократно и много лет жил как «реливер».
Считает, что люди – это одноразовые инструменты, а их эмоции – это ошибки. Во всем ищет эффективность и считает, что даже его собственная жизнь и его родственники являются частью исследовательского материала.
Возраст: 23 года (возраст тела)
Деятельность: научный сотрудник / директор Национального исследовательского института.
На картинке герой выполз из-под груды полотенец и халатов, недовольный, что его будят, хотя он 16 дней до этого не спал. Он пригрозил своему помощнику, что «перезагрузит» его за это.
Вот видео, представляющее героя:
От разработчиков:
В дизайне трудились совместить профессию с небрежностью и долго думали, где поместить отметку-тату реливера. В итоге по характеру художник решил, что будет на шее.
Тема сюжета: баг. Герой слишком материалистичен и все использует для выгоды и исследований, поэтому чувства для него просто баг, глюк такой. Естественно, он держится подальше от тех, кто считает, что чувства важны, и с ним трудно сойтись, тем более что он уже не простой человек, а реливер.
Адольф (Ясиро Таку)
Лидер народной дружины, выросший в том же приюте, что и героиня. В настоящее время проживает один на окраине города.
Хотя часто груб на слово, но мягкий в сердце, и людей, попавших в беду, не может не заметить. Для героини он как надежный старший брат.
Возраст: 21 год
Род занятий: лидер дружинников
На картинке герой вернулся раньше обычного и застал героиню посреди жуткой сцены – везде кровища и все такое. Схватив ее в объятия, ведь она ему словно сестра, он убедился, что она жива-здорова, а потом стал спрашивать, что случилось. Она и сама не понимала что, видимо, она как жнец смерти это сотворила…
Вот видео, представляющее героя:
От разработчиков:
В дизайне его сквозит позитив, и он наряду с другими дружинниками выглядит мужественно.
Тема сюжета: защитник. Он самый близкий и давний друг героини. А его меч защищает героиню… и не только?
Анку (сэйю Окицу Казуюки)
Загадочное существо, называющее себя «Страж смерти». Остановил самоубийство героини и предложил раскрыть тайну смерти в Альпечере.
Он ведет себя и говорит так, что просто бесит людей; трудно понять его истинные намерения.
Возраст: ??
На картинке герой появляется, когда героиня пытается покончить собой, и останавливает ее клинок голыми руками, говоря, что если уж назвалась Богом (Жнец Смерти дословно будет Бог Смерти), то должна и вести себя соответствующе – надменно смеясь над людишками, не заморачиваться их жизнями.
Вот видео, представляющее героя:
От разработчиков:
Художник надеется, что получилось нарисовать нечто неуловимое и привлекательное. Вначале думали нарисовать наряд вроде короля эльфов, но в итоге вышло нечто обратное.
Тема сюжета: секрет. В нем полно секретов, и он не появляется прилюдно. С его появлением жизнь героини сильно меняется. И что ее ждет с ним в будущем… это секрет.
Второстепенные персонажи:
Саломея.
Женщина-реливер, которая управляет приютом, где живет героиня, для всех как мать. Ее интеллект и некоторые медицинские знания предотвращают “несчастья”, причиняемые героиней в приюте. Возраст: 21 год (возраст тела). Род занятий: мама в приюте
Хьюго
Лучший друг Ива, который вместе с ним руководит Крун. Член дружины. Он веселый и заботливый, и ему очень доверяют окружающие. Он настроен позитивно, но у него также есть жизненный опыт реливера, поэтому он смотрит на вещи вдумчиво. Возраст: 22 года (возраст тела). Род занятий: Разнорабочий (в Крун) / Дружинник
Дахут
Мальчик, работающий заместителем директора Национального исследовательского института, которого называют вторым после Шиана гением. Хотя он заботится о личных делах Шиана, у которого нет жизненных навыков, с ним часто обращаются сурово. Дружелюбный и любит готовить сладости. Возраст: 15 лет (возраст тела). Должность: научный сотрудник, заместитель директора Национального исследовательского института.
Надя Пруст
Сестра Люки. Она весела и любит говорить о любви, как любая девушка в ее возрасте. Госпитализирована из-за необъяснимой болезни и не может выходить на улицу одна. Ее недавняя проблема в том, что у ее брата совсем нет личной жизни в романтическом плане. Возраст: 12 лет
Капуцине
Директор больницы, в которой госпитализирована Надя, и ее врач. У него на лице почти не отображается эмоций, и создается впечатление, что он неприступен, но у него сострадательное сердце к пациенту. Он является седьмым главой секты экзорцистов, которые считают реливеров злом, но в последнее время его тревожит отток верующих. Возраст: 22 года. Род занятий: Доктор / глава Экзорцистов
Жан
Жизнерадостный молодой человек, работающий дворецким в семье Клода, для Матиса как семья. Его беспокоит, что Матис будет преследовать Палача ради мести. Возраст: 19 лет. Род деятельности: дворецкий
Из интервью с режиссером:
Тема игры «жизнь и смерть» и то, как это не щадит никого вне зависимости от статуса и состояния. Эту тему в игре сделали повседневностью, а также добавили сплав готики с технологиями.
О названии: Shuuen – обычно означает конец жизни, кончина, но здесь записано через иероглиф «вечность». Смысл этого будет ясен лишь в игре. Virche – это придуманное слово, смысл его тоже раскроется в игре.
Не все люди в стране желают стать реливерами, некоторые думают прожить отпущенные 23 года и всё.
Кличка героини появилась после того, как с детьми и воспитателями ее приюта стали происходить загадочные смерти, а под конец случился большой пожар. Несмотря на то, что она до сих пор живет при приюте, помогая по хозяйству, все там ее избегают и сторонятся. Из-за этого она тихая и забитая.
Игра рекомендуется любителям трагичных плохих концовок. Именно под них она и написана. Тем не менее, конечно, будут и милые сценки, и даже хорошие концовки, но для них придется постараться.
Пример милой сценки, видимо:
Матис и героиня обалдевают от пьяных товарищей. Кстати, возрастной рейтинг игры: 17 лет и старше.
Ну и под конец небольшое интервью персонажей о выборах в жизни больших и маленьких, а также какой подарок стоит дарить.
В больших выборах все говорят о своем выборе профессии или цели жизни, а в остальном…
Ив: мучается, что приготовить, чтобы всем понравилось. В подарке отдает предпочтение тому, чтобы порадовать человека и оставить ему что-то памятное.
Люка: не знает, какие на этот раз купить больной сестренке цветочки. В подарке из-за богатого выбора совсем растерялся: тут и сласти, и книжки с картинками, и украшения, и цветы… да на тестах в школе проще ответить.
Матис: жизнь за него все решила, а мелкие выборы – читать всю ночь понравившуюся книгу или все же лечь спать. В подарок хотел бы подарить что-то в честь обещания, он такое в книгах читал.
Шиан: нагрубил в ответ, а в такой стране он смысла не видит заводить тех, кому стоит что-то дарить, ну а если стать реливером, то все зависит от эго.
Адольф: выборы пойти направо в патруле или налево. Подарок оставлять тем, кому жить всего 23 года тоже видит бессмысленным мученьем.
Анку: философски размышляя по теме, ушел от конкретных ответов. О подарке пошутил, что если он страж смерти, то цветы смерти в подарок будут уместны, ну а так, в такой крохотной стране без связи с внешним миром сложно найти уникальный не заезженный подарок.
:0 “” 000 МММ :))) 😉 ^_^ *
Ceres is a woman who brings a “curse” of death wherever she goes. It’s for this reason people call her a Shinigami or a “reaper”. She stays at an orphanage with a nun who decided to take her in even after all the incidents that occurred in the past. In a place called “Arpecheur” everyone is destined to die at 23 years old. Usually by 20 or 21 a person will start to feel the effects of a sort of respiratory disease that’ll kill them at 23. So in order to prolong people’s lives, research has been done to create clones known as “relivers” with people’s memories downloaded and implanted into them. Once a person has died, their memories are downloaded, a reliver is created, and they’re implanted into the new one. This way, people can live for another 23 years before doing the same process all over again.
After giving a letter to the research facility, Ceres comes back to the orphanage to see a man named Lucas teaching the children about becoming a “reviver” — those who clone themselves after their original body dies. Lucas himself is reaching the age where his body is starting to deteriorate. After he leaves, Ceres wakes up to one of the children coughing in another room. She immediately believes it’s her fault (so does the child) and decides to leave to go to an area near a cliff where black lycoris flowers are. There she spots a man with a mask which immediately makes her wary since he seems to recognize her. After running away, she figures he knew her because she’s known as the “reaper” but then realizes that he reminded her of a boy who helped save her in a fire that started 7 years ago.
After this, Ceres hears a dripping noise and finds herself in an alley where blood falls on her from a bunch of dead bodies. She screams in horror and Adolphe, who grew up in the same orphanage as her, comes to her aid. People start showing up and believe that Ceres is the cause but Adolphe defends her. Regardless, everyone wants Ceres gone from the orphanage and try to convince sister Salome to get rid of her. However, the same man Ceres saw briefly appears and defends her. When the incident of the fire 7 years ago is mentioned, he says it was an accident and she just happened to be there. After they leave, Yves and his friend Hugo come in for tea. Yves introduces himself as a handyman of a shop called Cloone who takes on various tasks of the common district.
Hugo also introduces himself as a handyman as well and while he came from the wealthy district which is called “Shudi”, he now lives in the common district. The two of them are also vigilante and Hugo works under Yves. They decide to ask Ceres some questions about what she saw in the alley and are hoping to investigate what they believe are murders that occurred. After this, Yves spots Ceres in the hallway and asks to talk to her. Suddenly, they hear Adolphe yelling at one of the orphanage children who has been angry at Ceres somehow obtained a chemical that they planned to use to kill her. It ends up reacting and causing an explosion, which supposedly kills Yves.
Ceres starts to realize she’s the cause of his death and steals Adolphe’s dagger before leaving. She takes his dagger to her throat and remembers all of the people who died because of her and decides it’s for the best if she kills herself. However, she is immediately stopped by a strange man who grabs her dagger. Ceres is in shock as starts but bleeding but reveals he’s not human as his wound heals immediately. He introduces himself as “Ankou” and considers himself the “death keeper” and someone who has come from the underworld to make a deal with Ceres. He promises that he’ll help her be reborn as a normal girl if she forms a contract with him. She asks just who he is and if he knows why people always die around her.
Ankou tells her he does know the reason, but when he tries to tell her, he can’t for some reason (like his words are blocked out and they legit have it censored in text LOL). However, since he is from the underworld the numerous deaths have been causing an imbalance for the reincarnated. He insists that she find out why this island is cursed with so much death and when she finds out the truth, he promises to have her live as a normal girl. Ceres doesn’t believe she deserves it after what happened with Yves, but Ankou tells her that Yves isn’t dead since he didn’t feel his soul enter the underworld yet. He tells her to think it over and disappears.
Ceres comes back to he orphanage to have Aldophe yelling at how worried they were. As Ankou had said, Yves was still alive and was resting in Ceres’ bed. Ceres apologies for running off and asks if she can help in their investigation of the deaths that occured. They agree to it since it’s better she leave the orphanage anyway and go to the wealthy district — Shudi. There, Ceres sees a prostitute being harassed after being underpaid and decides she wants to help her. Yves decides to help as well and they manage to get her away from a guard who was harassing her. Ceres is prompted by Yves to tell her that she thinks she’s a strong, beautiful woman who deserves to get what she’s worth. The woman thanks them and says she’ll give them a discount if they decide to become customers lol.
After this, a butler arrives in a car and says he has valuable information in regards to their investigation. He invites Adolphe, Ceres, and Hugo to his mansion. There, they meet Mathis who is from the rich Claude family that put a lot of money towards the reliever research. Mathis is super shy and reluctantly introduces himself, saying he knows about murders that took place in his mansion before which is why he wanted to tell them about it. Apparently there was a murderer known as the “executioner” who would leave a dagger in the body like one of the murders they’re investigating. This executioner was also the one who murdered Mathis’ brother which is why he wants to solve it in the first place to get revenge for his brother.
Ceres bumps into Mathis and tells him that she’s the rumored “god of death” which surprises Mathis. She expected that sort of reaction though and he tells her he doesn’t mind if he ends up dying as long as he can find the executioner. Although she reassures him she doesn’t intend to let him die. After this, Ceres goes to bed and both Hugo and Mathis talk outside. Hugo admits he’s a reliever while Mathis is still a pure human at 17 years old. Suddenly, Hugo is attacked by someone in a hood who Mathis immediately believes to be the executioner. Mathis immediately loses his shit and tries to kill them but is stopped by Ceres while Eve and Adolphe go after him. They fight him off until Mathis comes running at him with a knife but is almost stabbed until Ceres pushes him to the ground, saving him.
The executioner runs away and Mathis is clearly upset that he got away. Both Yves and Adolphe are treated at a hospital that is apparently owned by a cult known as the “Exorcist order” that are against revivers and believe people should die naturally as god intended. Capucine is one of the doctors at the hospital who informs them of the autopsy report of the victims from the murder. Apparently their hearts were removed from their bodies with daggers left in the hole where they were removed. Then there’s the odd deaths of the others who’s skin were scratched away at their chest but looks more like suicide. After this, Yves and Adolphe are told to stay overnight at the hospital. Meanwhile, Ceres meets a hospitalized little girl and helps her pick up a diary she dropped under her bed.
The next day, Yves brings Ceres and the rest of them to his workshop where Cloone takes tasks. But before they can be invited in, a boy named Dahut approaches them and says they’re being requested at the research facility. They’re brought there and Dahut explains that he’s actually a director at the facility and had been a reliever for years now. Relievers stay the same age when they have a new body, so when his original body died at 15 he continued to have that appearance ever since. Dahut brings them to Scien who is the chief of the research facility and established the entire reliever system 60 years ago. He requests that they retrieve the bodies of those who scratched themselves to death by grave robbing them; knowing full well this would help their investigation as well.
While they mull it over, Dahut comes in with tea and snacks and ends up calling Yves “Hugo”. Apparently Dahut made a mistake and Scien actually wanted to ask Hugo to do the request, not Yves. After this, Scien’s demeanor changes and he takes back the request. He also informs them that he actually had the royal guard send him bodies to dissect but they never made it to him in one piece because the executioner literally mutilated the bodies and killed the guards. So Scien and the rest of them remain of good terms so as long as they need to collaborate with each other for information. It’s also revealed that there is one flaw in becoming a reliever and that is the one emotion can’t be carried over to a clone is “love”.
The next day, the orphanage kid admits he did try to kill Ceres but wouldn’t tell where he got the chemical. After this, Scien appears and explains that the executioner was after the bodies he wanted and covered it up with the mutilated bodies. Because he took what he was after, Scien now wants to target the executioner. All the while, he forces Salome’s hand by having Ceres accompany them to observe her “curse” and have her assist. Salome is strongly against it but Ceres tells her it’s fine since she wanted to investigate along with them all anyway. So all of them, Ceres, Scien, Mathis, Yves, Lucas, and Adolphe all decide to make plans to catch the executioner together. They decide to stay at Adolphe’s home which is in the outskirts of town and Scien comes up with a plan of having rumors spread that one of the suicidal bodies is being grave robbed and using a dummy body as a decoy.
So since they have free time until they prepare, all of them get ready for tomorrow. Mathis notices Scien reading a book on a “Drifter” who was apparently the only person outside of the island to end up there. Because of the strong currents around the island, outsiders never approach it. In addition, people from the outside have aged normally while it’s just the island that has the curse. Apparently Scien’s grandfather approached this drifter 100 years ago to get some clues on how to extend their life. Scien’s grandfather managed to start research on genes, but never completed it. While there was a book the drifter gave him, there were also books that he never received.
The night before the plan, Yves cooks for everyone but apparently his food tastes awful and the only one who likes it is Mathis lmao. So everyone starts drinking and having a good time while Ceres finally feels like a normal happy girl. Well, the reason for this is because Ankou put a hold on her “death god” power so she’s been able to live normally. Ankou tells her she needs to make a choice about their contract since he can only keep it that way if she abides to it. Anyway, next day the plan goes into fruition and they plant the dummy body while everyone waits for the executioner to appear. When they finally do appear, they throw the dummy and immediately run away after getting hit Mathis’ dagger.
So they all follow Mathis into his car to chase him. Mathis’ personality takes a 180 when he drives apparently and so he speeds towards the executioner. He ends up crashing it, then Adolphe and Yves fight him on foot. Scien makes sure to tell them not to kill them since they need to find the location of the corpses they’ve taken. Alphen and Yves both fight the executioner until the two of them manage to stab them with their sword and incapacitate them. Suddenly, acid starts falling from above and hits the executioner whos flesh burns completely away. In the end, they’re killed but they’re unable to find the bodies that were hidden and unable to identify the executioner themselves.
Character Routes
Lucas Proust – (CV: Hirakawa Daisuke)
Lucas is a teacher who often visits churches and orphanages to teach children about relivers and the history of the island. He is a devout believer of God and often visits his sister who’s sick in the hospital. Ceres often encounters him because he usually comes to teach at the orphanage she lives in.
Ceres has tea with Lucas who tells her to stop blaming herself for what happened with Yves and the others. Suddenly, he starts having a coughing fit and Ceres realizes he’s getting closer to the age 23 and needs to make a decision on whether or not to become a reliver. Ceres decides to go to the church to consult Lucas and tells him about everything that’s happened with her and this “death keeper” she met. She says at first she wanted to investigate who killed the executioner, but now she wants to know the identity of the executioner and figures that would be safer to investigate. Lucas offers to help her and offer her to be his assistant since he was thinking of hiring an assistant due to his poor health and she agrees to it.
After getting the permission of the vigilante aka Yves and the others, Ceres starts to visit Lucas’ place as they read books and gather information. Ceres attends classes with the children that Lucas teaches and assists in helping him. Lucas gives a lesson and explains that people can’t transfer their memories and mind into another body because their DNA and memories need to be the same. Ceres also helps the children as well and is considered a teacher by them as well. Lucas pats Ceres on the head and tells her to keep doing her best while calling her his cute little assistant. A few days later, Ceres encounters Jean who is worried for Mathis since he’s been depressed ever since the aftermath of the executioners death. Ceres wonders if maybe knowing the identity of the killer would help, since he never properly got his revenge.
One day, Lucas again invites Ceres to assist him but instead have a recreational day where they play tag. As Ceres is being chased by a boy, she’s slammed into and almost falls to the ground. Lucas manages to catch her fall just in time. He tells the kids to be more careful when playing with her and they apologize. One day, Lucas decides to introduce Ceres to meet his sister Nadia in the hospital. She actually had already met Ceres when they were at the hospital before, which surprises Lucas. Nadia is happy to see her again and asks if they can be friends since she’s been unable to make any in her current condition. Ceres happily agrees to it and Lucas later thanks her for being friends with her.
One day, because a child is lashing out, Lucas offers to assist them. Meanwhile, a man suddenly appears at the orphanage looking for his son. He barges into the facility and asks for his son “Donny”. Apparently he’s an abusive dad who had abandoned him when he was broke and became a reliver. However, Donny is terrified of him and since he no longer has the capacity to love, his emotions have spiraled out of control and moreso worse than when he was human because he lost his ability to sympathize. Finally, Lucas appears and kicks him out before he can get violent, and then Donny and the rest of the kids start to realize they don’t want to become relivers if they’ll end up like that.
Lucas is thankful Ceres is okay and realizes a lot of children end up abandoned like that because when parents become relivers, they lose the ability to love their child and often become abusive. In addition, children who are abandoned because their parents die so early without becoming a reliver. They also believe true change needs to happen since the priority a reliver technology has always been the upper class. A few days later, Ceres visits Nadia again and she talks a bit about her past. Apparently her parents died recently but 8 years ago prior Lucas had a big fight with them and left while taking Nadia with him. The topic then changes to Nadia wondering if Ceres has romantic feelings for Lucas.
Ceres doesn’t say she does, but Nadia tells her that he writes about her a lot in the diary he and her keep. He often writes in it about his day so Nadia will have something to read and whenever he mentions Ceres he always talks about her as his loving angel. Ceres is embarrassed to hear this but the conversation is interrupted when Capucine comes in for his check in for Nadia. They hear the riots of the exorcist cult outside and he tells them that the founder was actually a woman and it wasn’t originally a group against relivers, but rather a cause to research how to lift the curse of death on the island. After this, Ceres visits Mathis’ mansion to deliver a letter from Lucas.
Lucas knows that Mathis has been depressed lately, so he wrote him a letter for tasks to do in order to keep him preoccupied so he could feel his life has more value. As she leaves, Mathis chases after Ceres to thank her. He tells her he appreciates what she and Lucas has done and promises to try and find something for himself. Suddenly, there’s a loud scream and a dismembered body is dropped in front of both Mathis and Ceres. There they see the executioner appear in front of them even though he should be dead. This shocks both Ceres and Mathis as the executioner continues to pull the heart from the body of his victim and put it into a container. As they’re suddenly chased by him, the executioner catches up to Ceres and almost hits her but Lucas appears and saves her just in time. The executioner leaves and Lucas takes Ceres back while Mathis goes back to his mansion, still in shock.
Ceres goes to the chapel with blood still on her clothes and Lucas comes in and comforts her. After this, Adolphe and Yves appear to help as the vigilante. However, the guards come with a decree from the kingdom to not interfere with trying to catch the executioner. Regardless, they believe Ceres needs protection so one of the guards mention that Lucas should be able to because his father was the leader of the vigilante and taught him self-defense. This shocks both Adolphe and Yves who were both trained by his father. After this, Ceres stays with Lucas to keep her safe. They continue to do their daily activities like visiting Nadia who wants Ceres and Lucas to be safe so she suggests that they visit her less even though it’d make her feel lonely.
Unfortunately, Nadia’s condition is only getting worse and she continuously tries to hide it whenever Ceres and Lucas visit. Meanwhile, Nadia is visited by Dahut who’s been visiting her often since he heard her coughing when he had business at the hospital. She starts crying and says she wants to at least be able to see her brother and Ceres without being in the hospital bed at least once. Meanwhile, while Ceres is staying at Lucas’ home, they get a call from Yves. He tells them that the person who is helping the executioner is most likely part of the research institute to make a reliver for them. In addition, the executioner is targeting relivers and the victim was the abusive father of the boy Donny. they tell Lucas they if he, Ceres, or anyone else involved dies because of this incident, the facility is willing to have them made as a reliver for free so as long as they have a backup prepared.
As soon as Yves mentions Lucas’ sister, Lucas declines and hangs up. Lucas states that he and his sister intend to live their lives normally as short as it may be. He also reveals he’s a member of the exorcist order. Lucas and Nadia were born from their parents who were two relivers. They didn’t have romantic love for each other but they had enough mutual respect to continue raising their family together. They were fine with becoming a reliver until one day Lucas witnessed a brother who became a reliver beat his sister to death. However, Nadia became sick so his parents wanted to make her a reliver to prolong her life. But Lucas wanted to find another way and left with his sister. Eventually, Nadia was admitted to the hospital run by the exorcist cult and they both vowed to live and die as people so they wouldn’t lose their affection for each other. Ceres respects his decision albeit she’s sad about it but Lucas thanks for respecting it and hopes she’ll continue to look after his sister when he’s gone.
As Ceres goes back to sleep, she’s woken up by Ankou who’s bloody all over. He tells her he’ll be fine and will heal but tries to tell her something about Lucas and to run away before he collapses. Ceres goes outside to investigate and make sure Lucas is okay. She suddenly hears a communication decide near the alley with Adolphe saying that another reliver victim is being targeted but since she and Mathis are humans, they won’t be a target. There, Ceres spots Lucas killing someone. In a flashback, Lucas tried with his father and had grown up with inhuman strength like his father. But Lucas didn’t want to be part of the guards like his father and would’ve rather been a teacher like his mother.
Eventually, Lucas took Nadia away from home since she didn’t want to lose her feelings for her brother. He went to see if he could find a doctor who would treat her. No one would until he met Capucine of the exorcist order who just opened their hospital. She was admitted there and they claim God “saved” her so they reassure him if he continues to believe in God and devote himself to him, she will be blessed by God. They tell him relivers are the devil to God and they must be eliminated by purifying them and sending them to heaven. The way of taking the devil’s heart, offering it to heaven, then then plunging a dagger into their chest.
When Ceres wakes up, she’s in their headquarters and greeted by Lucas and Capucine. Apparently the executioner they saw when Lucas was there was a fake and it was him when he performed the “ritual” in taking out the heart. He doesn’t kill humans unless necessary and would only injure Adolphe and Yves rather than kill them. Well, instead, they use the relivers to do human experimentation by making copies from the blood of the hearts they take. All in order to try and prolong and strengthen the lives of humans. Ultimately, Lucas doesn’t consider the lives of relivers lives at all. So Lucas intends to keep Ceres to himself as his beautiful angel so as long she doesn’t reveal this to anyone she won’t be killed. So he keeps her in (his ugu cage of love uwu) a cage in his home.
Lucas let’s Ceres out to eat albeit she feels extremely uncomfortable over it. Lucas then decides to let her go outside and they go visit Salome but Ceres doesn’t risk telling her anything (if she does, in a bad end, Lucas kills her lol). When she’s brought back to Lucas’ place, he lets her sleep on the bed albeit he keeps restraints on her. He feels bad that she never smiles anymore and Ceres tries to tell him its because realizing that everything was fake despite her falling in love with him, upsets her. He tries to comfort her but she accidently elbows him in the face. But instead of retaliating, he kisses her instead. He tells her he’s always loved her and never wanted to make her uncomfortable or unhappy and asks her to marry him.
Ceres doesn’t answer, but he then falls asleep and starts sleep talking and apologizing to those he’s killed, while saying he’s the true monster. The next day, Lucas brings Ceres to see Nadia but they meet Dahut there. He tells Lucas he’s become friends with his sister and tells him she has an incurable “genetic disease”. He figured he ought to know since he’s related to her and could have it as well. After this, Ceres and Lucas visit Nadia but she can feel the tension between the two of them. While Lucas goes to have tea, Ceres doesn’t give her the full story but tells Nadia that he confessed to her. Unfortunately there’s conflicting feelings that are causing tension. Ceres eventually asks if she remembers when she was hospitalized and she says she doesn’t. But not because it was 8 years ago, but because she was unconscious for a few months.
This doesn’t correlate to the story Lucas gave where she was “saved” and “healed” when they brought her in. Lucas suddenly appears and starts choking Ceres in front of Nadia. She begs Lucas to stop until he finally does when Capucine arrives. Lucas is confused since he doesn’t remember trying to choke Ceres and this upsets Nadia after witnessing this and her condition worsens again. Capucine tells them they’re a hindrance to her treatment and tells them to leave. Lucas is confused why she’s worsening and Capucine tells him he’s probably not purifying enough people. Ceres realizes that Capucine is essentially holding his sister hostage as his condition for treating his sister was to complete his “mission”. He then hands Lucas a huge list of relivers to kill and he starts coughing up blood.
Capucine tells Lucas he’s banned him from seeing Nadia and kicks him out. Weeks later, Lucas is going on a killing rampage and slowly losing his sanity. One night when Lucas comes back, Capucine visits and injects something into Lucas. He reveals to Ceres he’s been drugging up Lucas ever since he brought Nadia to him in order to make him lose his sanity while he did the reliver killings. He then leaves and Lucas starts losing his mind again while repeating over and over he needs to kill the relivers. Ceres manages to comfort him while still in the cage and tells him to let out all his suffering. Lucas finally starts saying how much he hates killing relivers and only wanted to live a normal life with his sister. After this, Lucas plans to go see his sister along with Ceres.
When they sneak in the hospital, they meet Nadia but she seems different. Lucas notices right away and a soldier arrives to say that Nadia has chosen to become a reliver after she died. Lucas starts losing it again and demands to know where the real Nadia. He slaughters the “fake” one and Capucine reveals through a communication device that he’s right and he has the real Nadia in his headquarters. They’re lead into a secret passage way, where they meet Capucine in his secret laboratory face to face. There, Capucine reveals he’s actually a reliver himself and became the head of the exorcist cult 40 years ago. Capucine’s real name was Otty and he became a genetic researcher at the facility.
There, he looked into combining genes but was expelled due to his reckless research. Eventually he joined the exorcist cult and found a way to alter his genes so he could continue to change his appearance as a reliver. He eventually found Lucas and intended to use him to gather people’s hearts for the sake of his own research on genes after making up his religious baloney on the “ritual” he needs to perform. Capucine kept Nadia hostage and was obsessed with her gene makeup that made her genetic disease. So much so that he reveals a monstrosity of genes he combined with Nadia to create a new being himself. As Lucas witnesses this, he screams in agony and tries to kill Capucine.
Unfortunately, his reborn sister tries to protect Capucine when he attacks because he implanted memories of him being his bride and erased all memories of Lucas. Ceres decides to throw different chemicals on the ground to make an escape with Lucas. But in the end, a fake executioner manages to find them and inject Lucas with more of that medicine Capucine had been using on him. This causes Lucas to go completely out of control and starts slaughtering everyone on the island including humans. He ultimately wants to kill Scien who created relivers in the first place so he heads towards the research facility and slaughters everyone there. Ceres arrives there and decides to let him kill her (I guess this was her plan???) Lucas then takes Ceres corpse and ends his brutal murder spree. In the despair end, Lucas keeps skeletal remains of Ceres’ body in a cage and puts a ring on her finger saying he’ll no longer kill and continue to protect her forever.
In Lucas’ relief end, Ceres manages to cut Lucas’ throat enough to stop him from continuing his rampage. Lucas regains his sanity and starts crying, realizing he’s done nothing but sin. But Ceres encourages him to live to grant any sort of wishes he may still want to carry out. So Lucas decides to head to where Capucine is to finish him off once and for all. They find Capucine back at his headquarters after infiltrating it. Capucine sends out his clones of Lucas to kill him but Lucas kills them all. Capucine is terrified by Lucas’ strength and has Nadia protect him. Unfortunately for him, Nadia manages to regain enough of her sanity to kill Capucine for hurting her brother.
After Capucine is killed, Nadia has a proper farewell with Lucas and Ceres. She then asks to be killed so she won’t be in pain anymore. She tells the two of them she loves them and Lucas kills her. Lucas realizes his own time is up and rests on Ceres’ lap. He tells her he wishes things could’ve ended differently but nevertheless tells Ceres he loves her. In the epilogue, a year passes and Scien is still alive since he had a backup. Lucas died and Ceres decided she too would join him. Ankou witnessed her about to kill herself and decided to let her use his dagger. Ankou visits her and Lucas’ grave which is together and watches a little girl put a flower on it.
Thoughts: I know I was supposed to feel bad for Lucas but it was kind of hard to when for the most part he’s in his right mind around Ceres so blaming everything on the fact he was drugged seemed too easy to justify his actions (I know he didn’t justify his own actions — but it was clear this was done to make it seem he was semi-innocent and I kind of hate shoehorned reasons). I also just didn’t care about his motives to save his sister because I’m legit tired of the sick imouto trope (I beg of you otomate, please find something more original than this). I also found it hilarious they added the infamous cage in his route LMAO… omg sometimes i just can’t take these games seriously. Regardless, at the very least I think his route was entertaining (especially when he put Ceres in a cage LMAO) but they really made it obvious he was the murderer when they made his sprite the exact same one as the executioner so that wasn’t a shock at all. I didn’t hate this route but I really didn’t care for Lucas at all and if you want the honest truth, part of the reason is because I can’t stand Daisuke Hirakawa’s voice (thinking of Laito’s annoying ass voice from Dialovers doesn’t help lmao). I know a lot of people like it but it annoys the hell out of me for some reason and when he was speaking so slowly at the end of his relief end I legit started skipping so I wouldn’t have to hear it LOL. Anyways, regardless if you like him or not he doesn’t exactly get a happy end… but after all the shit Ankou went through, I don’t get why he’s is so readily willing to let her kill herself for Lucas in the relief end. I also hate the idea that the heroine can’t be happy unless she kills herself for her mans… but alas.
Mathis Claude (CV: Amasaki Kouhei)
Mathis is a shy boy who lives in a mansion as a member of the wealthy Claude family. He loves to read books but has trouble making conversation because he doesn’t interact with other people often. His brother was killed by the executioner so his main goal is to avenge him.
Jean visits Ceres at the orphanage and requests she take on the job of being a maid at his mansion in exchange for him fixing up the orphanage warehouse. Jean is worried about Mathis who shuts himself up in his room and since he sucks at cooking, he hopes Ceres’ meals can cheer him up. So Ceres agrees to it and comes to the mansion. Jean gives Ceres a maid uniform to wear and so she visits Mathis’ in his room to surprise him. He’s still upset about the fact he never got his own revenge for his brother nor did he ever know the true identity of the killer. She manages to cheer him up though by making him food and he realizes he’s glad to be alive so he can eat the food she makes. Mathis feels better after talking with her and remakes a contract for her so that she’ll continue talking to him which he happily agrees to.
After this, Ceres is about to leave but Jean is adamant for her to stay so she can be by Mathis’ side. However, Mathis tells him that his lover may get the wrong idea if she does because apparently Jean has a woman partner that he talks about all the time. That being said, Mathis never met this woman but is happy to see Jean happy since he views him like another brother that is part of his family. The next day, Mathis flips out when Ceres tries to wash his underwear lmao. Afterwards, Ceres visits Mathis in his room and notices there’s a lot more books. Mathis explains he’s looking at books that his Claude family had translated and hopes he too could translate for the royal family.
After this, Ceres learns from Jean that he can’t meet his significant other because her parents don’t approve of them seeing each other while they don’t intend to become relivers. Jean is and his lover are apparently a rare case of people who don’t want to become relivers, but instead focus on their love for each other because it becomes lost when you become a reliver. After this, Ceres finds out Mathis is writing his own novel for fun and he asks if she wants to help him with it. Ceres agrees so they continue to work on it over the next few days. One day, Mathis runs out of manuscript paper and Ceres offers to get it for him. She’s afraid she’ll get lost and decides to go with her. Unfortunately, Mathis is still very anxious around people so Ceres asks if there’s a particular reason.
Mathis explains his past and apparently his parents were super abusive because they considered him the failure of the Claude family. Mathis’ brother Camille was their ideal son while Mathis was the shy, introverted son they would abuse and lock in a dungeon without food or water because he pissed them off when he wasn’t learning properly according to them. Ceres completely understands why he would be so afraid of people after that, but Mathis tells her despite all of it he had happy times when his brother and Jean would sneak him books and food. Mathis then takes Ceres hand and tells her he’ll okay because he was to be especially if he’s to protect his important person.
After this, Ceres finds a foreign book with poems about love. Mathis offers to give her materials so she can understand it and thanks her for cooking dishes for him and being so kind to him. The next day, Ceres finds that Jean was in a bit of a car accident because of Dahut’s driver. They take Jean and Mathis back to their mansion and Jean drops a necklace by his feet that’s damaged. It has a photo of his lover on it and when Scien sees it, he recognizes the woman and thinks he has a strange habit. The rest of them think he’s being insensitive though and Jean takes the necklace back, saying he’ll fix it himself. That night, Ceres wipes Mathis’ hair after he showers and he tells her not to treat him like a kid. She kinds something weird on his neck but Mathis falls asleep after saying something weird about her causing mischief as usual.
After this, Yves, Hugo, and Adolphe appear to tell Mathis and Ceres that there’s been a series of missing prostitute cases. Jean and Mathis knew about the situation but figured the guards were handling it. Regardless, they tell Ceres to be careful when going out since the target has only been women. Mathis walks Ceres home until the two of them are suddenly covered in blood. There, they spot the executioner who’s killing a woman while their brother watches in horror. Mathis completely loses it and tries to kill him but Ceres tries to stop him. He immediately tells her to back off and yells at her that he won’t have his revenge stopped by the likes of a shinigami. This shocks Eve and also realizes the person who was killed was the prostitute they helped before. Ceres is then knocked out by the executioner.
After this, Ceres wakes up in the hospital and learns that Mathis hadn’t come back to the mansion so Jean is worried. Ceres decides to go to the mansion and wait for Mathis’ return. When she goes into Mathis room, she notices manuscripts laying on his desk. Suddenly, Mathis appears but his attitude is completely different. When Ceres tries to ask where he was he tells her to shut up and only came back to get a new dagger since his broke. He throws off his manuscript and almost tramples it but Ceres stops him. She asks why he’s doing this but he just gets more annoyed saying she’d never understand what it’s like to lose someone she loves and almost hits her. Jean immediately comes into the room and slaps Mathis in the face. He tells him he’s acting just like his parents who abused him. When Mathis realizes what he’s done, he starts crying and collapses on the floor with a fever.
[Okay but in all seriousness wtf is this CG LMAO??? Otomate taking tips from BL games???]
When Mathis wakes up in bed, he starts crying and apologizes for what he said to Ceres. He explains that he still intends to get revenge and it’s the only thing he’s really lived for. For that, Ceres intends to help him so that Adolphe and the others don’t get to him first. After this, Ceres figures out from Jean that his lover is actually already dead. The reason that Scien made the comment of him having a strange habit is because Jean took the picture when she was already dead. He of course didn’t have her become a reliver because the two of them vowed to not become one. He never told Mathis about this and asks Ceres to keep it a secret since he knows it would make him sad and promises he’ll go along with their plan to capture the executioner.
Ceres eventually goes to the church and Lucas tells her and the rest of the group about a rumor he heard. They go to a bar and a woman talks about a myth that the prostitutes believe in which a man with a beautiful face will take women off of the island to a different country if they hold a bottle of flowers near the beach. To test this, Ceres offers to do so herself since it can only women can do it. When she does, Mathis appears dressed as a woman with a dagger to the throat of a man. The man is actually Capucine who saw Ceres and intended to call out to her and claims he isn’t this delivery person they’re talking about. Mathis explains he intended to lure out the culprit himself by dressing as a woman.
After this, Mathis decides to give the story he was writing to Ceres just in case he tries to destroy it again. He also tells her he wrote his feelings in there as well. Ceres didn’t know what he meant until she read his book and saw the confession he wrote in it saying he loves her. Although one weird thing Ceres notices is that Mathis’ novel is written the same as the novel Mathis’ mother wrote when Salome showed her it. The next day, Ceres finds out the memory data had been stolen from the cloning facility. Scien doesn’t see why someone would take it though since downloading memory in another person doesn’t work and the only theory to perhaps do it is if you do so to a fetus when the mother is pregnant. Even then, it typically doesn’t last long.
Scien also reveals one of his cameras went missing and typically no one has one unless they specifically borrow it from the facility. This reminds Ceres that Jean has a camera and wonders why he’d lie about it being his. Suddenly, there’s a commotion since the executioner has appeared again. Scien’s driver gives Yves and Ceres a ride to where he is so they can find Mathis who is already chasing after him. Ceres eventually finds Mathis trying to kill the executioner. He also asks him why he killed his brother, but the executioner actually speaks and tells him he doesn’t know who he’s talking about and that he never killed his brother. This confuses him and eventually Ceres is helped by a woman who was apparently the daughter of Jean’s lover but they don’t know a “Jean” and Camille never had a childhood friend or a younger brother.
This only raises more questions for Ceres and then Jean himself appears and takes Ceres and Mathis to his real room. There, Jean reveals that he himself is Camille Claude — the single son to the Claude family. In addition, Mathis is not human nor is he a reliver but an artificial being created with different memories of different people implanted in him by using the special cells of women he sacrificed. There were different people that they met or heard about that had similar traits to Mathis because his memories were implanted from them (like an intense driver who acted like Mathis when he drove). Camille was the single son of the Claude family and his parents expected him to become a reliver to continue their lineage. However, this changed when he met and fell in love with a prostitute named Rosalie and he no longer wanted to become a reliver.
Rosalie eventually became pregnant but their happiness didn’t last long. A jealous angry prostitute killed her and stabbed her child in her stomach because she was living a happy prestigious life. Camille still has Rosalie’s body and needed to cultivate fake memories to implant in her which is why Mathis was born. Camille was able to do this by capturing pregnant prostitutes and obtaining prenatal cells because they don’t have a developed mind yet so you can use them to download memories. Camille wants Ceres as well because she’s the reason that Mathis had “romantic feelings” which are crucial to making Rosalie reborn with this. So Camille tells them he’ll continue to have Mathis’ feelings of anger, sadness, and fear cycle each day and temporarily leaves.
Mathis starts crying and starts believing all his feelings were fake but Ceres reassures him that what he felt was real and he created his own memories with her the Shinigami girl. She tells him she loves him and they decided that they’ll try their best to continue their love for each other no matter how many times Mathis’ personality changes. So each day, Mathis’ personality is changed to violence, self-protection, strict, gloomy, and despise. And each and every time Mathis remembers his love for Ceres. Even though it’s what Camille wants, it starts to make him jealous and frustrated so he tells them he’s going to do one last experiment and then he should have the romantic feelings he needs to revive Rosalie.
So finally he downloads the memory of a murderer who kills women into Mathis. Due to this, Mathis immediately tries to kill Ceres and stabs her leg. He manages to grab her and starts choking her. Ceres tries to get him to remember his feelings for her which he eventually does before trying to kill her. But before he does, he stops and says he doesn’t want to kill her. Ceres starts to believe that Mathis is back to normal but suddenly he starts talking like Camille because apparently his feelings for Rosalie were downloaded and he sees her as Rosalie, not Ceres. In the first bad end, Ceres goes along with being “Rosalie” and Mathis now takes on the personality of Camile and they marry each other. In the 2nd bad end, Ceres tries to run away with Mathis’ help but is caught by Camille. He puts her in a tube like Rosalie and so he manages to convince Mathis to continue helping him lure prostitutes.
In the relief end, Mathis stabs himself instead of Ceres and regains control of himself. He apologizes for hurting Ceres but she tells him she’s okay. After this, Camille comes back to witness Mathis has regained his “self” which ruins his plan to create “romantic feelings” with his fake memories. Mathis criticizes Camille by saying he can see he doesn’t truly love Rosalie for who she is but who she was at the time he loved him. He doesn’t think someone like him deserves Rosalie if he can’t love all of her — even the her that wasn’t in love with Camille at the time. This makes Camille angry and he continuously denies it. However, soon the laboratory starts to collapse due to bombs being set off. Mathis realizes that Camille is trapped and can’t escape with them. Mathis tries to convince Camille that he can atone for his sins but he knows it’s too late for him.
Camille convinces Mathis to leave with Ceres and tells them he intends to stay with Rosalie so she doesn’t die alone. Apparently Mathis was born from the cells of Rosalie’s unborn child so while he’s calling him “brother” he’s actually more like his son. After this, Ceres and Mathis sit near the beach and spend the time they have left together since Mathis’ data is starting to deteriorate. He mentions how he didn’t get to finish his novel but wanted to rewrite it anyway about a Shinigami and android falling in love. He asks her to promise him that he’ll be reborn and fall in love with her again and kisses her before his brain completely corrupts.
In the epilogue, Mathis’ data has been preserved enough that it’s possible for him to be reborn as a reliver. Ceres is meanwhile saving up to become a reliver herself so she can be with Mathis if he becomes a reliver, knowing she could lose her feelings of love. Because Scien successfully makes Mathis into a reliver, Ceres suddenly encounters him at the market and he grabs her arm. He apologizes but tells her that the moment he saw her, it was love at first sight and asks if they can be together. Ceres says yes and he smiles happily at her.
Thoughts: I really loved Mathis… I felt so bad for him. I think this is a great way to write a route because to be honest, I didn’t expect this route to take the direction it did. The fact that his memories weren’t his own was a really interesting plot twist. Unlike Lucas, I was legit empathetic for him because he was literally created as a tool and that shit hits hard — especially with how sweet Mathis is. I legit felt really sad seeing his memory start to deteriorate. I think his relief end was sad but bittersweet and seeing Ceres reunite with Mathis was really all I needed. I’m really glad that they didn’t just kill Mathis because this sweet boy does not deserve that kind of ending. But damn this game sure loves to justify MURdEr (like no Jean I dont feel bad for you after you murdered innocent women). So yeah good try otomate but no I’m not going to like your shitty side characters who do stupid things for dumb reasons. What’s funny though is that this route gave me Il from Cafe Enchante vibes and I guess it makes sense because apparently the same scenario writer for this game wrote for Il’s route. I mean, I’m here for it because I love robot / android tropes but I honestly didn’t realize there was a scenario writer from Cafe Enchante on the team.
Scien Brofiise (CV: Hosoya Yoshimasa)
Scien is a scientist and chief of the research facility that established the entire reliever system 60 years ago. As the one who create the reliver system, he too has lived many years as a reliver (I guess you could technically say he’s an old man lmao). He’s efficient in his research but considers things such as eating a nuisance so he often eats finger food like sandwiches. He considers emotions “bugs” in programming that interfere with critical thoughts.
One day, Salome asks Ceres to deliver another letter to Scien at the research institute. In doing so, Salome asks her to take a girl from the orphanage with her. When she arrives, she’s suddenly invited inside to see Scien directly. He gets to the point and tells her his room is too much of a mess he’s having a hard time taking naps and doing his work. Dahut usually will cave and clean it but because he’s pissed he hadn’t been doing it recently. He also doesn’t want to waste time and energy doing it himself since it’ll just get dirty again. So he asks Ceres to clean for him, knowing she wouldn’t do anything suspicious behind his back. He tells her to do so within an hour and leaves while Ceres and the girl she brought along start cleaning up. After she finishes, something accidentally breaks but Scien literally doesn’t care since he didn’t want it to begin with.
After this, he gives her some money and lets her leave. This pisses off Salome who apparently knew Scien and even though she knows he’s smart she can’t stand his attitude. She also tells Ceres he’s got and can make tons of backups for himself in a matter of months since someone of his status it’s super easy for him. Ceres doesn’t believe he’s that bad of a person though since he did indeed pay her for his services. The next day, Scien drives to the orphanage to tell Ceres he wants her to be his personal assistant until Dahut is in a better mood to do it himself. This makes Adolphe and Salome flip out but Scien takes it further to threaten Ceres into working to pay for the item she broke. Ceres finally agrees to doing it since she doesn’t believe Dahut will be angry for long.
After that, Ceres meets with Ankou who is wary of her associating with Scien. He tells her that he believes he would immediately try and do something to her if he found out about her death curse so he makes sure to warn her to never let him know of it. And if he does try to harm her, he intends to kill him and no matter how many back ups he has. So Ceres starts her job as Scien’s assistant. He tells her to only do the minimum amount of cleaning though (if you choose to move something, you get a bad end where a random guy kills you LMAO). After this, Ceres is suggested by Jean to make a homemade meal for Scien who finds even eating a task. She decides to make sandwiches since he can eat it with one hand and just basically hands it to him while he works.
Scien doesn’t even notice she was handing him sandwiches until he finally saw her there. Scien is super impressed by this because he finds it annoying when people call out to him and he has to go out of his way to eat such big lavish meals and Dahut always throws away his stuff. But since Ceres is different, he’s pleased with her work so he tells her she’s welcome to actually walk around the facility if she wants to. He also claims she’s “his” now and intends to keep her working for him as a permanent worker. So Ceres eventually encounters Scien and Dahut arguing about their research and ultimately it’s about the different factions their research has.
On one hand, Scien focuses on the research of relivers to enhance them to survive the curse and not worry about carrying over strong emotions. On the other hand, Dahut is focusing on the research of not worrying so much about the lifespan but creating relivers that can withhold all of their emotions. Ceres wonders why Scien isn’t interested in research that retains emotions and he tells her it’s because he believes that emotions are like “bugs” that interfere with critical thinking. Especially “love” which he believes is a hindrance to one’s perfect reasoning. Ceres doesn’t argue with his reasoning but believes emotions are important. Scien then gives Ceres a lab coat and uniform for her to “officially” start the next day.
So Ceres continues to work for Scien and handles his food, laundry, and cleaning of his room. Scien eventually decides she should take a day off since he doesn’t want her overworked and not doing a good job anymore. Ceres believes this is his way of showing concern and asks that he at least tries to better his eating habits. He tells her he can’t promise he will but he’ll at least consider it. So after Ceres’ break she goes back to work and spots Scien laughing to himself on the ground. Apparently he’s assembling a jigsaw puzzle which Ceres had never heard of before but noticed the pieces of puzzles laying around when she was cleaning. She’s glad she didn’t throw them out since Scien is enjoying them so much and he tells her that’s why he hired her cause she doesn’t throw out everything she sees unlike Dahut.
The mere fact that Ceres has consideration for people’s things made Scien realize “yep, I want to keep her around” lol. A few days later, Scien decides to show Ceres the laboratory where relivers are made because of what Dahut brought up about trying to show Ceres gratitude in some way. Scien doesn’t directly tell Ceres why he’s showing her though and says there’s no particular reason. Scien then begins to explain the process in which a human’s memories are stored in a sort of server that converts them into numerals. A person’s memories are downloaded directly from the brain via a special headgear they place on the “original” before implanting it into the clone. So they do a test run where there’s an egg-like cocoon that clones come out of.
After this, a random researcher suddenly holds Ceres hostage. He demands that Scien hands over his chief authority to Dahut instead, destroy all his back up data, and die (okay?? 😂). He absolutely hates that Scien doesn’t care enough to focus his research on retaining human emotions and rather focus on prolonging human life. The reason he’s so upset about this is because his wife no longer loved him after becoming a reliver. Ceres knows full well that Scien wouldn’t care if she’s taken hostage so she kind of nonchalantly tells him he and her aren’t involved romantically so he doesn’t have anything to lose by killing her. This confuses the researcher and Ceres manages to shove him off her anyway. This allows for Scien to restrain him and before he can do anything else Dahut appears and stops the commotion by shooting a tranquilizer at the guy.
Scien later talks to Ceres at a bar and tells her that this isn’t the first time someone has tried to assassinate him because from a lot of people’s perspective, he’s the “evil one”. He believes his purpose in life was to be a savior for the people and once he’s out of that position, he will no longer have any purpose and will essentially cease to exist. Scien then decides to take Ceres to another area in the facility where human experimentation is done on prisoners as requested by the royal family. Scien had apparently been an apathetic person since he was human which made it easy for him to do experiments on criminals and people who were dying. After his father, he continued his research until he was successful in making himself a reliver once he was 23.
However, Scien emphasizes he doesn’t do human experimentation as a hobby but rather to improve human life. He doesn’t intend to stop his research until he can find a true way to prevent the death curse since reliver technology is only a temporary solution. But he wants Ceres to know he doesn’t consider himself to be this “good person”, rather a sinner who does things for his own self interest. After this, Ceres talks to Dahut who talks about how he likes Scien because he has the same hair color as his dead mother (uhh… okay?) and he respects him. He’s actually working on his research to keep human emotions in relivers because if he were to bring back his mother, he’d want her as close to human as possible. He also believes that it’s possible that Scien could change his mind about human experimentation if Ceres uses the power of love since he thinks he has somewhat of an attraction to her and wouldn’t keep her around if he didn’t.
A few days later Ceres comes back to the facility to witness a member of the royal family named Simon barge into the reliver laboratory to have a body made for himself. He believes the technology has advanced to the point where he’ll be able to live more satisfactory life in a new body. He notices someone else is being cloned so he literally destroys the capsule and ultimately kills the person being cloned because the memory data being downloaded is destroyed. Scien comes in and demands to know what he’s doing. Simon begins to explain but Scien just decides to beat the crap out of him and tells him that only people on the verge of death will get reliver bodies and blocks his genes so he can’t obtain a new body in the future — which is ultimately a death sentence. Simon begs for forgiveness but ultimately Scien doesn’t listen.
After this, Scien treats Ceres’ wound from when Simon pushed her down when she tried to stop him. Ceres is surprised Scien showed concern for her and gives him the lunch she brought before the incident. Scien is confused why she’s still sticking around and wonders if she forgot what he said to her before or ultimately accepted it. But Ceres doesn’t intend to stop working for him and knows if she does stop he’ll stop eating properly. She also wants to see the puzzle he’s working on get finished and so Scien calls for her to feed him more sandwiches 😂. Unfortunately, the next day there’s protesting against Scien because rumors have spread that he’s the murderer in the suspicious death cases and not the executioner. Since the victims have been only relivers, they believe he created defective ones on purpose to kill them.
Ceres decides to visits Scien herself since she’s worried about the situation surrounding him. He and Dahut assures her they had nothing to do with the murder case. Unfortunately, Scien is in the position where they’ll probably try and make Dahut the director instead of him since he’s his number 2. So Ceres decides to stay with Scien at the facility so she can look out for him. But the situation continues to get worse as even Dahut is put in a difficult situation with no choice but to go against Scien for the sake of not causing internal conflict within the facility. After the rest of the vigilante group checks up on Ceres, Scien suddenly asks Ceres if she’s interested in anyone. He starts to realize that Ceres has feelings for him since she clearly wants to be around him so much.
Unfortunately for Ceres, Scien emphasizes that he’ll never have feelings of love for her. Ceres doesn’t know how to respond but they’re immediately interrupted by guards who claim that Scien created a defective reliver of the royal family member named Simon who broke the incubator before. Scien denies this because he was the one who blocked his data so he wonders who unblocked it. Scien then realizes someone else created a reliver with prototype data which is why he has a defect. Simon ends up dying right in front of them and suddenly a voice of a royal named Côme Reve Poir (I think is his name — a lot of them are french) speaks on the intercom that can be heard by all residents states that Scien is a criminal who killed Simon and has been creating relivers with defects on purpose.
He continues to defame him by stating he was conducting experiments on purpose and his family is the real Shinigami curse. He continues on that the fact that people have to be reborn as emotionless beings is Scien’s fault. After this, Dahut comes in to announce that a decree from the king has decided that Scien has been expelled from the laboratory and will be executed for his crimes. Dahut apologizes but states he can’t go against the royal family and it’ll also work for him who can now focus the research on emotional memory. But Scien doesn’t go down without a fight and kicks a guard so he can grab a sword and run along with Ceres, Hugo, and Yves. Scien decides to throw some smoke bombs to keep the guards away but suddenly the executioner appears even though they thought he was dead.
They fend him off for a while until the executioner decides to hit the ground with his giant halberd, causing the floor to collapse. The executioner jumps into the hole and drags Scien along with him. Scien ends up in the basement of the facility which looks like a sewer. He doesn’t recognize where he is but he soon spots the executioner and fights him. Ceres, Hugo, and Yves eventually follow after them but find Scien severely injured on the ground. Yves and Hugo try to fend off the executioner but he goes straight for Scien who isn’t quite dead yet. Ceres instinctively protects Scien by hugging him to shield him. Fortunately, Scien becomes conscious enough to use a knife to protect the both of them.
Suddenly a voice through Yves or Hugo’s communicator states something happened at the orphanage. Apparently someone related to Côme named Dominic has declared those at the children’s facility traitors because Ceres and the others assisted Scien. Ceres, Yves, Hugo and Scien eventually make it out of the sewer and are driven to the orphanage by Jean to find out what happened. There, they find all the children of the orphanage were slaughtered and when they come into the facility, they witness Adolph be killed by decapitation. Before the guards can do any more damage, the executioner appears and kills them. Ceres and the others use this chance to run away and hide in a vacant house.
Ceres is in shock by everything but for some reason is unable to cry. Meanwhile, Salome is freaking out and crying while holding Adolph’s decapitated head hoping they could somehow use his brain to make a reliver. The rest of them manage to convince her to let them bury it and in doing so she has a complete meltdown. After that, everyone decides to rest but Scien is in pain. Ceres decides to help him since he was badly wounded but when she takes off his shirt, she’s shocked by a lot of scars on him. He admits that he’s used the prototype data body on himself so he’s usually in a lot of pain and takes medication to suppress it. So whenever he experiments on criminals, he’d often do it on himself first.
Scien wonders if she blames him for what happened since she associated with him but she says she doesn’t know because if anything it’s her fault too for wanting to be with him. He then brings her in for a hug and tells her it’s pointless to blame herself for something she had no control over the out. He tells her she should think about the future instead and that he still intends to overtake the research facility and continue his research. Ceres doesn’t understand why he wants to continue his research for the people who betrayed him but Scien tells her he can’t abandon his duty as a savior of the world. He also liked having her as his assistant and would feel bad that she’d end up dying without prolonging her life if he gave up now. Scien tells her it’s okay to go ahead and cry and so she does in his arms.
The next day, Salome has another breakdown so she’s told to rest by everyone else. She ends up telling Ceres that she was actually involved with helping Scien obtain children with special cases like her and Adolph. She became a reliver about 60 years ago and became involved with the royal family and the exorcist order. Eventually she met Scien and decided to join his research for the sake of solving the death curse. While she did see the children as experiments at first, she says she grew to love them like her own. Ceres believes that and hugs her. So after this, Scien is slowly recovering but needs a new body soon since his is slowly dying. Ceres tries to get him to stop but he starts talking about how his way to improve the body didn’t work.
Ceres asks Scien if he’s only focusing on improving the power of the reliver body rather than the curse itself. While they may be earning more time, they’re still delaying the inevitable. Scien denies this at first but starts to realize that his focus was more on withstanding the curse rather than actually breaking free from it. Scien starts laughing and realizing how ridiculous he’s been. He wanted to spread the idea that emotions are useless and make more people like him so people would understand him. He merely wanted someone else to turn away from the curse with him but now realizes that his true goal is to create an existence that isn’t bound by the curse. So now Scien realizes he wants to revaluate everything he’s done without sacrificing anyone anymore by adding “emotions” to the mix.
So Scien and the others get ready to infiltrate the facility. Scien plans on using his own body to show that he can implement emotions into himself so the royal guard can see he’s a valuable asset to their emotion research. However, Salome is against bothering to try and convince them and would rather just destroy the royal guard by killing them. However, Scien wants to take control of the situation, not eradicate everyone for revenge. Later, Ceres decides to tell Scien about her own curse and that she believes it could be related to the curse on the island. She suggests that Scien experiment on her but he tells her that he doesn’t need to and he also says he wouldn’t experiment on a woman he intends to be his future partner.
So Scien and the rest of them infiltrate the facility by entering the underground sewer they ended up in before. Yves and Hugo stay behind to fend off the executioner, while Scien and Ceres go into the cloning laboratory so Scien can create a new body for himself. Before doing so, Scien kisses Ceres and tells her he wants her to be the one he falls in love with when he has emotions. So, he goes into the incubator and starts the process of recreating a new body with emotions. Unfortunately, the executioner arrives while Scien is still in the incubator and kills Ceres on the spot while she tries to protect Scien.
When Scien gets out of the incubator, he immediately tries to save Ceres by cloning her. In the bad end, Scien is unable to save Ceres and make her a reliver so he downloads her memories into himself. So Ceres is essentially living in Scien’s brain as he talks to her alone in his room while still promising he’s trying to find a way to break the curse. However, because Scien has emotions now, he feels like he’s suffering because he has feelings of love for Ceres and she isn’t truly there. In the 2nd bad end, Salome kills Ceres in order to make it seem like it was the royal family and force Scien into killing them.
In Scien’s relief end, he manages to successfully make a reliver that can retain “emotions”. Scien claims he now intends to find an actual cure for the curse and also have a few kids with Ceres 😂. Dahut decides to completely side with Scien and his research since it brings them closer to creating normal human beings. Everything about this infuriates Côme but Scien mocks him and tells him he can go ahead and kill him if he likes, but the royal family would be useless without him or Dahut. After this, the citizens are in a panic due to what they overheard on a broadcast system but Scien reassures them it’s the royals who are corrupt. Suddenly, Salome appears and kills Côme and Dahut. Unfortunately because the data was destroyed by the royals, Dahut has no backup.
Salome then targets Ceres and takes her hostage. She starts yelling at how she needs to kill the royal family and that it’s for the sake of her dead child and Adolphe. Scien realizes that Salome has pretty much had an overload in memory which has caused her to literally go out of control. Ceres is saved by Scien who manages to apprehend Salome by commanding soldiers to injure her. Scien says the only way to save her is to make a new reliver of her that can hold the capacity of her memory or kill her. Ceres begs Scien to help Salome so he decides to use Dominic Reve Poire as his guinea pig to perfect a reliver for Salome that can retain enough memory.
In the end, Scien creates a new reliver body for Salome and tells her to atone for her sins in her own way. Scien and Ceres decide to look for flowers for Dahut’s grave and Scien even picks a flower for her privately because he thought it suited her. ❤️❤️❤️ He goes to her room and decides to test out his new feelings of affection for her. He tells her he now knows he has feelings of love for her and tells her he loves her. Ceres wonders if he really wants her of all people but he tells her he can’t imagine anyone else by his side and kisses her. He’s already known that she was attracted to him but asks for her response and so she tells him she’s also in love with him. So, Scien promises to find a cure for her curse but in the meantime… sexy times!!
[God I wish that hand touching the boob was mine]
Thoughts: What more can I say other than the fact Scien is a hot sexy piece of ass. But seriously omg he’s definitely the route I liked the most. I think his route felt the most like an otome game because there was actually more romance by the end of it (minus the part where children got slaughtered). In terms of his character, I honestly found no flaws. Scien was actually the one who was the most logical half the time and ended up solving everyone’s problems lmao. My only issue with this route (not at the fault of Scien) is that it was honestly hard to feel a real connection between Ceres and Scien. Like, I couldn’t even figure out when Ceres fell in love with Scien because not much happened that would indicate a romance between them??? All Ceres ever did was clean his room while he worked and sometimes did puzzles… lol. But alas, this was one of the biggest flaws in this game imo; romance was so secondary that when it happened, it kind of felt shoehorned in. It’s really unfortunate because I like to think if there was better pacing instead of large text dumps of plot information all the time it could be really well-written. At the very least the route had good story writing and Scien is a well-written character but don’t expect a very well-written romance between Ceres and Scien. Oh well, at least his good end was legit one of the best.
Yves (CV: Saitou Souma)
Yves is a sort of jack-of-all trades who works as a handyman at his handiwork place called “Cloone”. He’s also part of the vigilante group and has earned the trust of his fellow vigilante members as well as the people of the city. He burned his face seven years ago which caused his parents to abandon him so hides his scar with a mask. He’s also a philanthropist who loves others hoping that one day someone will love him.
One day, Yves requests if Ceres can join Clune — the handiwork place that he and Hugo are a part of as a sort of assistant to do housework where they reside. So Yves takes Ceres to the Clune base which he’s only ever had Hugo work alongside him. In addition to this, Ceres requests to investigate more about the executioner and the mysterious deaths. This means she’d be more active alongside the vigilante. Unfortunately, the other vigilante aren’t exactly pleased by having Ceres involved because of her being the known “Shinigami” to bring misfortune. But Adolphe tells them that he can’t make them not feel uneasy about it, but reassures them that Ceres will be the one in charge of cooking meals so they don’t have to eat Yves terrible food.
One day, Ceres helps Yves try and help a bird. Yves manages to help it, but Yves falls while on a ladder and hurts himself. Ceres finds it strange he doesn’t seem to be phased by his injuries as if he feels no pain. Meanwhile, Hugo tells Ceres to be aware that Yves isn’t the person she thinks he is and is an idiot who recklessly trusts and helps everyone. Ceres is confused by this but Hugo doesn’t elaborate and apologizes her first job turned out to be a bigger ordeal than planned. Back at the orphanage, Salome reveals that she actually purposely made sure Ceres never met Yves to ease the guilt she may feel for what happened to him. But she regrets it now and Ceres is surprisingly not mad about yet, rather she knows that Salome was just looking out for her.
The next day, Yves, Hugo, and Ceres do more tasks together by helping a farm. After that, Yves is suddenly stabbed by some man while walking back. Yves doesn’t react to the pain but instead they take the man to the church to ask him his motive for doing something like that. The man claims that his lover who became a reliver fell in love with Yves instead of him who is kind to everyone. Hugo immediately wants to pummel the guy but because Yves is a kind person who tries to see everyone’s sides, he tells him he understands but doesn’t believe that justifies hurting people. After they take him away, Yves collapses due to poison that was on the knife that cut him. Scien happened to be there and helps treat the poison back at his home.
Yves has a fever so they let him rest in his bed. Hugo states this is what he meant when he said that Yves is an idiot and too trusting because he loves everyone equally, he tends to put himself in reckless situations. Hugo leaves to get some air and Ceres tries to take off Yves’ mask to help treat him. He tells her not to and Ceres asks him about his past. He tells her he grew up ordinarily but when he went to visit a friend at the orphanage, that’s when the fire started and he saved Ceres who was about to let herself die. After that, he suffered severe burns especially to his face which made not only normal people reject him, but even his parents called him a monster who had been cursed by the Shinigami and abandoned him. Yves then stayed at another orphanage where he met a merchant who gave him the mask he wears.
Ceres starts to feel bad again but he tells her not to because she was someone who became friends with her without showing sympathy or pity. The reason that Yves decided to “love everyone” is because he wanted to be loved without people feeling sorry for him about what happened. But even if people never reciprocated, he still intended to love them anyway and can’t change this way of life he’s chosen. The next day, Ceres continues assisting the vigilante and rumors about her and Yves start to circulate about them being a couple. Adolphe points this out when Yves get drunk at his place but Ceres denies they’re a thing even though she gets embarrassed by it. Meanwhile, Yves sleeps on her lap after getting drunk and Hugo sends her home but wants to talk to her first.
Hugo takes Ceres to a bar and admits he hasn’t taken a woman out in a while and before he was a reliver he’d hook up with women. However, he gets straight to the point and asks Ceres how she feels about Yves because if she has half-hearted feelings for him, he intends to keep them apart. The reason being that most of the people who joined the vigilante couldn’t handle Yves and ended up leaving or calling him a monster after seeing his burnt face behind his mask. This led to Yves getting hurt which is what Hugo wants to avoid. Hugo then tells Ceres about how he met Yves and that he was part of the wealthy district. Thankfully Hugo was wealthy enough to become a reliver without worrying about paying for it.
It had been 18 years since he became one (so he’s technically 40 I guess?). He met Yves when he was 14 and witnessed him help a drunk guy who was on the verge of killing himself and other people at a bar. Seeing this, Hugo decided to leave his family and join Yves at his handyman shop where they worked together. Ceres can’t answer right away about her feelings for Yves but knows that she is really happy around him. When Hugo gets back, Yves already can tell Hugo isn’t fond of Ceres and sees her as a threat. The next day, Ceres visits the hospital where she meets Lucas’ sister Nadia. She ends up seeing a medical file about her parents who killed themselves by stabbing themselves in the chest before she was born. Even though her mother was pregnant with her, she was saved and sent to the orphanage.
Ceres wants to know more about her past so she tries to meet Ankou in the lycoris field. There, she meets Yves instead who reveals that he’s a “lycoris guardian” — those who protect the lycoris field due to a promise made with the god of death. Ceres thinks it’s wonderful that something that people consider cursed is so loved by him. She thinks it’s especially nice because she almost considers the black lycoris “family” because she understands what it’s liked to be hated and seen as a curse. Yves is relieved to see someone else show love to the flowers because he treasures them. Yves then gives Ceres a hair clip of a red lycoris that his grandfather made to put in her hair. Ceres then tells Yves about what happened to her parents and they hope to find what exactly happened to them.
Unfortunately there’s another mysterious death and Ceres is suddenly accused of being the reason for it because she’s a Shinigami. Yves immediately defends her but figures this puts Ceres in danger and suggests letting her stay at his place while Scien agrees to help investigate the deaths to prove Ceres is innocent. When Yves take Ceres back to his place, Hugo gets mad that he’s going to this length to defend Ceres when she may end up betraying him after seeing his face and call him a monster. Yves tells him it’s possible he’s right, but wants to protect Ceres no matter what. Hugo decides to leave Clune for now and yells at him to not die as he leaves to cool off.
After this, Yves continues investigations while keeping Ceres at his place to protect her. Eventually Yves and there others figure out a pattern of the mysterious deaths which is that it’s always a man and woman reliver couple who end up dead. However, apparently these couples died right after showing some sort of affection of love. This leads then to suspect that falling in love causes relivers to die. Unfortunately, the situation continues to get worse and Yves’ reputation is ruined by the fact he’s hiding Ceres who the consider a “Shinigami”. Ceres feels bad bad about putting Yves in danger and wants him to reconsider keeping her there. But Yves is relentless even when people start to vandalize his home and throw stones at him.
So because Yves and Ceres are made into scapegoats by the royal family, eventually the villagers try to burn Yves’ black lycoris flowers he has around his home. Ceres manages to stop them but then Yves soon comes out to help but when he gets in the way his mask is thrown off. Immediately after this, Yves has a mental breakdown and tells them not to look at him. The villagers are shocked by how repulsive Yves looks so they run away. Hugo then appears and covers Yves’ face after angrily yelling at Ceres. He blames her for everything that has happened and says she’s ruined everything that Yves has built for himself. He tells her to go inside as they let Yves rest in his room. Hugo is mad and tells Ceres he hated her since he ever met her since she robbed Yves of his happiness and asks her to die.
But Ceres doesn’t comply and in the end Hugo realizes he “lost” to her when he saw how calm she was when she saw Yves’ burned scar for the first time. Hugo was actually terrified of him at first but Ceres instead tried to speak to him. Hugo realizes that no matter what, Yves would continue to love Ceres. Hugo looks as if he’s about to cry before stating that Ceres’ naivete is probably part of the reason he fell in love with her. After he leaves, Yves wakes up and tries to cover his face again because he’s a afraid Ceres will stop loving him. But Ceres stops him and tells him that his scar looks beautiful and the color reminds her of the lycoris. Yves realizes he doesn’t want to share his love with anyone else but her and confesses that he loves her and Ceres also kisses his scar. Unfortunately, when Ceres and Yves step outside they find Hugo’s dead body.
Meanwhile, Scien invades Capucine’s hideout and finds both him and Lucas. Scien calls out Capucine’s true identity beig Otti who was a researcher obsessed with gene research. Lucas is shocked but tries to kill Scien as Capucine continues to threaten Lucas’ sister. In the end, Lucas is put to sleep with a sleeping gas drug and is dragged away as Scien tells Capucine that he intends to dig all information about his research out of him. Yves also somehow contracts the lung disease that kills people at 23 years old. Yves is then bedridden but can’t get help from any doctors since no one wants to go near him and Ceres. He’s still severely upset about what happened with Hugo but his death throws them for a loop in the mysterious death cases since he’s one person and not a couple in love.
Yves starts to get worse so Ceres tries to contact Capucine but Scien answers instead. He tells Ceres to come to his research facility with Yves blood and in doing so, he’ll send a doctor to help Yves. Ceres complies and also donates her blood as well and Scien explains he believes Ceres and Yves are connected to this curse. Especially Ceres, who’s parents named “Chloe” and “Daryl” died in the lycoris garden after giving birth to her. They were apparently Scien’s second reliver experiments after himself and were given “feelings of love” which caused them to crash. Relivers have a recovery function prevent an overload of memory. The most complex and intense human emotions tend to put the memory in a sort of defense mechanism that protects it from overloading.
Usually when it’s “feelings of love” it gives an alerting signal that will repeat about 5 times until they reach the point where it’s too much pain in their heart that they literally claw at their chest until they die all so they can remove it. Ceres wonders why exactly this would happen to Hugo then since he wasn’t with anyone and Scien confirms it could be a one-sided crush or feeling of love (not realizing it’s obviously Yves). Scien goes on to explain that Ceres’ parents was a rare case because normally most people don’t have such strong feelings of love, knowing they lose that ability when they become relivers and plan ahead with that knowledge. However, Scien believes that it has occurred more rapidly because someone hacked the system where memory is generated and had the input of the clones’ memory strength set to low.
Meanwhile, Yves is almost killed by other villagers but the guy he once helped years ago sacrificed himself to save Yves and eventually Ankou appears as well. He thanks Yves for keeping his promise and will release him from his duty. Yves is only semi-conscious but Ankou then tells him to dig up his grandfather’s grave in order to find out the truth of the lycoris and Ceres. When Yves does this, he finds a book left behind by his grandfather. He was a drifter who came to the island by accident but found it strange that the humans there would all die at 23. So, Yves’ grandfather agreed to help by giving his medical books to researchers on the island. However, they became obsessed to the point where he became a target of experimentation due to his normal lifespan.
Yves’ grandfather decided to run away with his wife that he met there and went into hiding. He had a child with her and eventually met the Shinigami who created the black lycoris flowers in order to protect them. The lycoris were not originally black but red and we’re flowers of disaster but rather flowers that absorb it. Through the process of allelopathy, the lycoris flowers would absorb the soils toxins, making it turn a black color. The Shinigami was protecting the land by having his grandfather take the task of caring for the lycoris that would absorb the toxins. So in reality, it was never a unscientific “curse” but rather a poison. Scien overhears this through the communicator and finally realizes what exactly happened to Ceres.
Apparently some sort of toxin poisoned the DNA of the ancestors who lived on the island due to the contaminated soil. This infected the 23 chromosomes of a person’s DNA which is the reason they only lived for 23 years. So everyone eventually inherited this mutated gene for years. So because Ceres was born from relivers with unstable genes and in a lycoris garden, she essentially became a lycoris flower herself because she absorbed more toxins into her body which made her literally a living poison that could effect the people around her because the poison she withholds is beyond what a normal person can intake. She’s also (literally) flammable so the fire and explosions that occurred was due to her toxins. It apparently also weakens relivers memory capacities as well.
So apparently Scien’s solution to this since he can’t create an antibody is to clone Ceres as a human lycoris and have her buried alive on the island to absorb as much of the toxins as possible. Ceres is surprisingly relieved she can finally help instead of causing death so she goes along with the plan while Yves strongly objects over the communicator. Scien tells him he should respect her wishes and if he interferes he’ll crush them. After this, Yves is almost killed by the royal guard but he manages to escape with Mathis and hides out at Lucas’ place after Nadia takes them there. Dahut and Adolphe are also there and wonder what Yves wants to do next. Yves struggles for an answer at first because Ceres seemed so happy to die that she literally said “I’m glad” to being a sacrifice.
Yves also can’t help but partially blame Ceres for what happened to Hugo but knows it’s not her fault. Regardless, he wants to be the reason for her to live because he loves her. So he decides that he wants to save her. So Yves and Adolph infiltrate the research facility to save Ceres. Lucas also escapes after being captured and decides to help them save Ceres. They manage to fend off facility guards with the help of Yves’ vigilante team that had turned against him before. Unfortunately, Yves is shoved aside to go help Ceres himself when Adolph pushes him through an emergency door that locks him in. Adolph stays behind but dies in front of him and Lucas follows after him. Lucas leaves him to go on his own, but mentions he noticed that for the most part Yves can’t feel pain. Yves confirms that it was a result of his burns.
Eventually, he makes it to the main facility room where Ceres and Scien are thanks to Dahut’s help. Ceres tries to tell Yves to leave her be and that she doesn’t deserve to live and Yves is surprisingly blunt in saying that indeed she is a Shinigami who brings death. But he doesn’t want to let her die for the sake of mere strangers. Nor does he want to show love to everyone like he did before. And while he still holds blame towards her, it doesn’t matter because he loves her. Unfortunately, they’re interrupted by Scien who immediately gets ready to fight Yves. The two of them do so while Yves asks if he’s such a genius, why didn’t he notice such a simple thing as there being a toxin present on their land. He also criticizes him for focusing more attention on prolonging life than actually curing the disease itself.
Yves grandfather was the one who had the books of research on it but they dismissed it completely and didn’t bother to try and find out more about it. Hence, his grandfather going into hiding because he was afraid he’d merely be used as a human test subject. Yves believes that all he needed to do was ask for help if he wanted to solve the curse but had too much pride and wanted to play god. This truth obviously throws Scien off guard and Yves manages to defeat him and he gives in. Yves tries to get Ceres to leave the cloning capsule but all of a sudden Scien is shocked to notice the system has gone out of control. Because of this, the toxins pretty much spray out of Ceres and cause the facility to explode.
Ceres manages to find Yves collapsed on the ground but his sickness had gotten worse and Scien tells her to get away from him because her toxins are so bad she’ll kill anyone she’s near. And even if she died, her toxins could release, killing everyone in the research facility. So Ceres ends up falling into the sewage area and running away. When Yves wakes up, he finds he and Scien alone in the destroyed facility. Scien tells Yves what happened and if he wants to go after her, he should do it now. Yves wonders why his demeanor changed all of a sudden and Scien explains that his grandfather was a collaborator of his but didn’t want to pursue human experiments and left. He owes a debt to him though because he was the one who brought the recipe of bread to them which was his brain power food lol.
Scien gives Yves a sort of suppressant medicine that’ll reduce Ceres’ toxins temporarily so Yves can approach her. Meanwhile, Ceres makes her way to the cliff where the lycoris garden is so she can die without hurting anyone. Villagers then try to attack her but they end up being engulfed by flames due to her poison causing the land to catch fire. Yves soon finds her as she struggles to try and kill herself. Yves slowly approaches her even while she’s surrounded by flames. Ceres tells him to stay away but he reaches for her hand and in the process, his entire body burns. Ceres is in compete shock and while at first she screams in horror, as the flames let up, she sees Yves charcoaled body laying there. She completely loses it and starts laughing, saying that Yves was a genius because there’s no way her curse can affect him if he’s dead. So she takes his burnt hand and kisses it while stating she can be together with him in this state.
In the relief end, Yves walks up to Ceres within the flames, whips out some lycoris flowers, and asks her to marry him. Ceres tries to reject him since she’s afraid of hurting him, but Yves tells her he intends to follow her to the depths of hell and that he loves her. Ceres calls him an idiot but admits she loves him too and kisses him as they’re enveloped in the flames. A few months later, Yves and Ceres are living together in an underground cave. Apparently the rain extinguished the fire and Yves was okay because he had antibodies from eating the bulbs of the lycoris flower (because he was weird food tastes lol). So the two of them continue to live out their lives together while keeping hidden and vow to be together until they die.
Thoughts: Yves good end was fairly short but I guess that’s because his route is semi-long?? At least, its definitely longer than Lucas, Scien, and Mathis. Overall, this definitely was a well written route — probably the best one. The pacing was good, story and romance was balanced in a way that the relationship between Ceres and Yves didn’t feel lacking or underdeveloped. Unfortunately, his good end felt rushed imo and it wasn’t really concluded in a satisfying way (even if it was meant to be sad). That being said, Yves was pretty meh to me. He’s really not a bad character at all but… there was something about him that lacked substance for me (he’s not really my type anyway though). Like, I think I would’ve liked him more if there was more to his character other than being someone who wants to be loved because of a scar that I daresay looks better than his ugly ass mask. Why was he scorned as much as he was for being a “monster” for a burn scar??? Like, are people that petty??? The scar isn’t even that bad LMAO like what the hell. I’d be more traumatized from the fire itself… yet he was so willing to just waltz right into it. Oh, and apparently Huugo’s existence made Japanese fans mad?? He died because he felt “romantic feelings” for Yves so this one sided gay love was apparently considered BL even though there was literally nothing “romantic” that happened between them? Honestly, I thought it was just an interesting addition to the game — it’s not like there hasn’t been female rivals (that I daresay are worse) in otome games before, what difference does it make if they’re male? Jeez.
Adolphe (CV: Yashiro Taku) / Ankou (Okitsu Kazuyuki)
[Both Adolphe and Ankou have the same route]
Adolphe is a member who the vigilante group who grew up in the same orphanage as Ceres before she was taken in. He looks after Ceres as a reliable older brother figure so while he’s seemingly harsh, he can be overly protective of her at times. Ankou is a mysterious immortal man who claims he’s the “death keeper” of the underworld to Ceres.
Adolphe is part of the orphanage where Salome stays and met Ceres when he found her alone in the rain. He was the one who took her to where Salome lived where they became family and he viewed her like a little sister. Ceres wanted to die after the explosion in the orphanage but after she met Ankou who stopped her, she almost drifted off alone in the rain until Adolphe found her. Ceres tells him she’s practically given up because she doesn’t want to kill anymore people even though he tries to reason with her and continues to tell her she’s not a Shinigami. Ultimately, he tells her that if she intends to die, he’ll die along with her. But if she’s going to live, he intends to stay alive with her and protect what’s important to her.
After this, Adolphe brings Ceres back to his place so she can rest. Ceres ends up having a bad dream where Adolphe dies because of her so she literally puts her head to his chest to make sure he’s alive. Adolphe is startled at first but reassures her everything is fine. The next day, Adolphe suggests a change of pace so the two of them ride a horse named Roland that Adolphe takes care of. Eventually they run into Eve who’s basically recovered from the explosion. He tells both Ceres and Adolphe about how his grandfather met the grim reaper and how he’s the guardian of the black lycoris. Ceres also starts to wonder if maybe the Shinigami is Ankou since he was described the same way.
That evening, Ceres overhears Adolphe talking to Hugo about how the murders have continued even though he lied and told Ceres everything was fine. Hugo also mentions how he knows Adolphe doesn’t intend to become a reliver so he should figure out what to do with Ceres instead of protecting her 24/7 until he dies in a few years, leaving Ceres all alone with no where to go. Ceres is shocked about this and runs away. Adolphe realizes she was listening and goes after her. Ankou encounters Ceres first but Adolphe appears and tells him to get away from her. Ankou criticizes Adolphe’s methods of “protecting” Ceres and claims he’s done nothing to change how she felt about herself because ultimately he’s just keeping her locked up instead of facing reality.
Ceres then decides that she wants to accept the deal she made with Ankou to try to live like a normal person with his help. Adolphe is completely against it but Ceres manages to convince the two of them to force themselves to get along or she’ll ditch the both of them. So Ankou stays at Adolphe’s house while the two of them continue to bicker with each other. The next morning, Adolph continues to do vigilante work and Ankou stays with Ceres. Ankou confirms he is the “Shinigami” that Eve’s grandparents met but didn’t cause the curse that had been going on hundreds of years before. Meanwhile, Adolphe visits Salome who is weary of Adolphe getting involved with the research facility since she hates the royal family and wants people to live like normal humans again.
When Adolphe comes back home, he spots Ankou writing in his planner and gets pissed. The two of them argue for a bit until they get a call from Yves. He asks for Ceres to visit Lucas’ sister Nadia to keep her company while also meeting Dahut who befriended her there. Dahut talks about how the drifter was the catalyst for the reliver work so the research should be in the royal library. Unfortunately, only the royal family has access so when Ceres comes back to Adolphe’s home, Ankou immediately suggests sneaking in to find out more about solving the curse. However, they end up getting caught by Dahut who sends them into the cloning facility to ask why they wanted to sneak in. They tell him they want to learn more about the curse but Dahut tells them that if it was that easy, Scien would’ve solved it by now.
Regardless, Dahut reassures them he’ll try and help them sneak into the library. After that, Adolphe tells Ceres she doesn’t need to worry about solving the curse in order to save him and should focus on herself. He doesn’t believe he’s qualified anyway because he’s always lied to her about something but doesn’t tell her anymore than that. So finally the day to infiltrate the library comes and both Ceres and Adolphe sneak in with Dahut’s help. Ankou also somehow slips in so he can keep an eye out for Ceres. They manage to make it to the library and search for a while until Ceres accidently opens the way to a hidden room where more books are piled up. There, they find a book by a “Christine Reve Poire” who was the queen of Arpecheur.
At 18 is when Christine took the throne and worked to try and find a cure for the curse. However, the royals were merely concerned about ways to extend their life and didn’t care about solving the curse anymore. She even tried to do her own research but was almost killed in the process because they sent people to assassinate her. She eventually had a child that she hoped to survive since it’s possible he could be a target for assassination as he was an heir to the throne. She believed in both a good and fair government and was the one who’s established the reliver rules such as a written oath to become a reliver. According to the documents they read, she got sick and died along with her son.
After this, Ceres and Adolphe relay this information to Dahut who thinks Ceres could be related to one of the royals since her DNA reacted to the hidden underground library entrance that couldn’t normally be opened. Dahut reveals to Adolphe that he intends to revive his mother with normal human emotions. However, he wants her to be able to live with a normal lifespan which is why he wants to break the curse. Adolphe eventually admits he doesn’t want to be a reliver for a simple reason which is that he’s just completely freaked out by the idea of cloning and relivers in general. Dahut finds this super simple reason to be hilarious but admits it makes him special in a way.
So a few days later Ceres visits the hospital and sees Nadia who’s reading a letter from Dahut. He promises he intends to solve the curse so he can help her. Lucas suddenly gets stressed out all of a sudden and Capucine arrives just in time to drug him up again — unknown to both Ceres and Nadia. That night Yves, Mathis, Scien and Ceres all work together to try and catch the executioner. They manage to find him and try to catch him but in the end Ceres gets split up because he ends up targeting her. Ankou then appears to help her and chases away the executioner since the injuries he sustains heal right away anyway. Suddenly Salome appears but is eager to confine Ceres and had already done so to Adolphe.
Salome claims she just wants to protect Ceres but Ankou pretty much calls out her bullshit. He says he knows full well she just wants to hold her hostage so she can get Ankou, who’s immortal, to do her bidding. Thankfully, Ankou manages to prevent Salone from holding Ceres hostage. Meanwhile, Capucine had been ordering Lucas, the executioner, to kill Ceres which is why he was attacking Ceres in the first place. Lucas doesn’t want to listen to him anymore but Capucine just keeps brainwashing him by drugging him up. They managed to get Ceres’ blood when Lucas attacked her so Capucine is ordered by some unknown person to sample Ceres’ blood. Meanwhile, Ceres hides out in an underground cave with Ankou who apparently feeds on the lycoris flowers.
Ankou reveals he’s known about Ceres ever since she was born and thanks her for continuing to live. Ceres thanks him as well and notices he has Adolphe’s dagger. When she asks about it, he tells her he accidentally broke it and intends to give it back to him after fixing it. After this, Adolphe finally makes it to Ceres and Ankou’s hideout after escaping from Salome. Huugo then contacts Adolphe via the communicator to tell them that Scien has been killed by the executioner. Meanwhile, Jean’s lover who’s memories he’s been trying to revive, is taken away by Capucine as a research experiment. Since Jean’s memory research has reached completion, the Exorcist supporters have no use for Jean.
The king Benoit Reve Poire happily announces Scien’s death and boasts over the fact that the Reve Poire family will take over Arpecheur. All the while a mysterious voice over a communicator claims that they will be able to live as immortal beings without the use of Scien’s reliver technology. The voice claims they want to rejoin the royal family in exchange for using the saint of lycoris — Ceres — as a sacrifice. They already have the information about the lycoris absorbing the poison and intend to utilize that knowledge. So everyone on the island starts to panic since the reliver technology has been destroyed. The king announces to the people to rest assured that they’ll be able to live normally without the curse so as long as they sacrifice Ceres the “saint” who can absorb the curse. In addition, they’re also looking for Ankou who is with Ceres so they can use him as an experimental body to obtain immortality like him.
Apparently Mathis was killed as well and it’s Huugo who relays this information via communicator to both Ceres and Adolphe. Meanwhile, Ankou leaves to check the grave of Yves’ grandfather where the book on the lycoris was hidden. Unfortunately, it’s been dug up, which Ankou had already suspected it was already stolen. Yves then appears and asks if Ankou is the death god that his grandfather met. Ankou confirms he is but says he’s a death keeper not a death god. Yves starts to wonder if he’s some fairy tale being that intends to propose to Ceres since he read a romance story like that which flusters Ankou 😂. Thankfully, Yves spots a locked box that contains an original copy of his grandfather’s research. Ankou suggests they have it translated but before they can head to Mathis’ mansion to find his translation materials, they’re attacked by Lucas.
Yves and Ceres are unfortunately ambushed by villagers who beg for Ceres to give up her life for them. They manage to escape and find that Ankou’s been attacked by Lucas and put into a bag to be kidnapped. While Ceres and Yves are shocked to see Lucas as the executioner, they’re also ambushed by the same villagers who want Ceres to sacrifice herself for them. They start attacking Adolphe so Ceres makes herself the messiah again by telling them she’ll go with them. Ceres goes with them to meet the king and his daughter Mariette. They explain to Ceres about her origin and how she’s basically a human version of the lycoris flower that can absorb the curse’s toxins. In addition, they explain how they’ve surpassed Scien’s research and will create immortal beings using Scien’s memory data and gene manipulation research.
Ceres is held prisoner in an underground dungeon where Dahut too is being held there as well for not agreeing with the plans of the royal family. He pretty much has given up on his dreams to bring back his mother or recreate a human and leaves his dream to Ceres. Before he’s taken away to be executed, he helps Ceres by giving her a strand of his hair for DNA so she can access Scien’s room. He tells her it’s likely Ankou will be held there and she’ll probably be taken to the experiment room. Eventually, they take Ceres to get her blood drawn again and she meets Capucine there. He pretty much confirms he’s the one who gave the idea for the gene experiments and is testing on Adolphe in the cloning incubator.
However, even though Capucine figures his gene manipulation experiment will result in Adolphe’s death, he surprisingly lives. This confuses Capucine and so he checks Adolphe’s gene data which reveals his big secret. That secret being that he’s actually a normal human with a normal lifespan and is unaffected by the curse because of this. In fact, he’s the 2nd drifter that came to the island while being an outsider himself. So they decide that Adolphe may not be so useless after all and continue to experiment on him. Eventually he’s temporarily thrown into the same cell as Ceres. He tells her he’s actually 25 years old and the only one who knows about him being a normal human is Salome who helped hide his identity.
Adolphe feels guilty I guess and feels like he ultimately couldn’t keep his promise of making her happy. But of course Ceres says she’s always been happy about Adolphe. This causes him to accidentally blurt out that he’s in love with her. When Ceres asks if it’s true, he admits he has since a few years ago. So in regards to Adolphe’s past, where he was from there was a declining birth rate so Adolphe’s parents got repeatedly pregnant. They sold their kids but thought Adolphe was worthless so they tossed him into the ocean near a so-called death island. That’s when Adolphe decided to try and live in order to make his way to land. He makes it to Arpecheur where he meets Salome for the first time who takes him in.
Adolphe lived with Salome until he met Ceres and always figured now that he was living on this island he’d also die when he’s 23 years old. He pretty much came to terms with this and was completely fine with dying peacefully somewhere when it happens. Unfortunately, reality hits him that he’s not like anyone in the island and when his 23rd birthday comes around, he doesn’t die. Adolphe is about to try to kill himself until Ceres interrupts and asks if whatever is going on is her fault. In the heat of the moment or I guess in his delusion he ironically believes it is indeed her being a Shinigami that’s interfering with his so-called destiny and preventing his death. Ceres is pretty calm about it and pretty much says “I get it, go ahead and hate me if you need to” cause apparently he’s too kind to blame others anyway.
From then on, Adolphe fell in love with Ceres and swore to never call her a Shinigami ever again and protect her. After this, Ceres finalizes her plans to try and escape to Scien’s room in order to find Ankou. This plan is quickened when all of a sudden the king and other royals end up dead due to a memory crash. This terrifies the gathering citizens and gives Ceres an opportunity to escape to Scien’s room. When he gets there, she finds Ankou’s head in a sort of container with special liquid that weakens him. He apologizes for not being able to help her or create an antibody. Ceres decides to take his head with her and brings it back to Ankou who manages to escape the cell they were locked in. The two of them manage to escape through the underground sewer that leads to Mathis’ mansion.
The reason they find out about this is because apparently Scien is actually alive, along with Mathis and Jean at their mansion. Lucas never killed Scien but instead begged him to “save him” in order to help Nadia. Yves is also with them and survived as well. Jean reveals that he was the one who had been killing prostitutes for his fake memory research but is only working with them all because Capucine took Jean’s lover hostage. Before Scien can explain anymore, his communication device cuts off from Ceres and Adolphe. The two of them eventually reach another room where they find Dahut alive and introduces his real name which is “Liam Reve Poire”. He’s been the mastermind pulling the strings of the royals into believing they can achieve immortality.
Liam was the son of Christine Reve Poire who was assassinated in the past and died in the lycoris field. Liam was supposed to be killed as well but on the day of his execution, he managed to escape. He managed to live by deforming his face and stealing food. It was until he got enough money to become a reliver at 15 years old that he was able to live his new life as “Dahut” and join the reliver research with Scien. In addition, the reason Arpecheur has toxins in it’s soil is because it used to be a normal island that was often a target during war. Because this island didn’t have enough manpower to defend itself, the people of the island decided to create a sort of invisible wall made with chemicals. This idea backfired when it ultimately just contaminated the island instead.
Ultimately, everything worked out for Dahut because in order to revive his mother he needs her genes to use as a base. And Ceres’ allelopathic ability doesn’t just work for the toxins, but human genes as well which means she has the former queen — Christine’s — genes inside her because she died on the same soil where she was born. Because of this, Dahut wants to use Ceres to resurrect his mother. Adolphe thinks his whole idea is crazy and wants nothing to do with it but if anything, Dahut is just more and more impressed by how Adolphe is a normal human and wants him alive so he can ask him more about “humanity”. Dahut sends his clone of Lucas to capture Ceres but before it can, Ankou finally regenerates himself from inside the container and protects her. Unfortunately, the clone manages to catch Ceres, leaving both Ankou and Adolphe in the sewers.
Ceres is brought back to where Dahut is and in the meantime, Dahut declares war on Arpecheur via a live video broadcast. He decides that the humans and relivers on the islanded are tainted and need to be eliminated. So his plan is to have bombs explode all over the island at midnight so people will fall into a toxic water that’ll kill them all. That way, he’ll recreate ordinary humans instead. While the whole idea seems crazy to Ceres, Dahut admits it may seem that way but it’s also for the sake of the world as well. Arpecheur is separated from the rest of the world and the technology and ideas they’ve produced would be considered dangerous from their perspective. So in order for this technology to not get into the wrong hands, Dahut wants to make sure he eliminates it entirely.
Meanwhile, Adolphe and the others are back in the cave hideout, trying to figure out what exactly is going on. Ankou suggests preparing a medicine that’ll decrease the effects of the toxins if they’re exposed. But Adolphe is still in his “I can’t protect” mode so he tries to shove saving Ceres on Yves instead and suggests he’s unable to. Yves has to convince him otherwise and so Adolphe finally realizes he wants to hear the response to his confession. After that, Adolphe confronts Ankou in how he knows he’s not really a “death keeper” or man of the underworld. Rather, he’s just a normal human with regenerative abilities. So, whenever he used a smoke to disappear it was all an act apparently.
Ceres is still with Dahut but Nadia is brought there as well. Dahut really does care about what happens to Nadia and doesn’t want to kill her as well. Regardless, he understands if she hates him since he was technically the reason Lucas ended up getting drugged by Capucine because he indirectly introduced them. So Adolphe and everyone else make their plan to infiltrate the castle and save Ceres. Yves and Hugo fend off the executioner clones (while Hugo gets ドキドキ pain from his love for Yves lol). Unfortunately, Dahut releases more poison so Scien suggests they all retreat except for Ankou and Adolphe who aren’t affected. Adolphe makes his way to where Ceres is being kept and confesses his love to her again. Dahut believes it’s a wonderful confession but soon after sends out a clone of Lucas’ father — who he claims couldn’t protect his mother.
Adolphe fights the clone until he manages to defeat him with Ankou’s help. His arm is also cut off but apparently it regenerated because the experiments that Capucine did on him gave him the same ability as Ankou. Dahut is super pissed to see that Adolphe “betrayed” him in the sense he’s no longer a normal human. But Adolphe tells him if he wants to blame someone he should blame Capucine who was the reason he ended up like that in the first place. So they manage to stop Dahut who seemingly has given up. But that doesn’t stop him from using iris recognition for his device to continue his annihilation plan. Fortunately, this plan is immediately thwarted by Salome who stabs Dahut and reveals her real identity to be Christine Reve Poire or Dahut’s mother. Scien was the one who saved her and made her a reliver after backing up her data.
Salome created the exorcist order but was killed not long after. After she was recreated with another reliver body, she continued to work under Scien with the idea of raising smart orphanage kids. Although in order to keep her identity hidden, her appearance was changed. She apologizes for not realizing he was alive sooner but her memory of him gradually got more clouded because of how many times she was made a reliver. Dahut is surprised she was so close all along and wish he found her sooner. Salome suggests they die again and be reborn so they can start new lives. Unfortunately, he only sees her as a betrayal of what he believed his mother was especially since she’s died and became a reliver so many times. Dahut suddenly stabs her and calls her a sinner of a queen who abandoned her duties.
Dahut then takes Ceres and throws her back into the device she was in so he can start the process of resurrecting his mother again. Her body suddenly becomes covered in marks that look like lycoris flowers due to her body becoming ten times more absorbent of toxins. Ankou demands that they use his blood to create an antibody but Dahut claims it won’t work anyway so it’s pointless even trying. Ankou refuses to listen to him and feeds Ceres his blood to try and stop the process of her body destroying itself. Ankou angrily screams at Dahut but suddenly he’s stabbed by Salome who was still alive. She apologizes for allowing this to happen and asks Ankou and Adolphe to save Ceres. Dahut hugs her and the two of them die together as mother and son.
Unfortunately, Ankou is enraged what Dahut had already done to Ceres and stabs Dahut’s dead body over and over. Adolphe manages to stop him but he attacks Adolphe with a dagger that looks like his and decides to take Ceres himself since he believes Adolphe is useless. He takes her to where she tried to kill herself and demands to know why no matter what he does he can’t save her. Slowly, Ceres finally starts to realize patterns and similarities between Ankou and Adolphe. She soon realizes that the two of them are the same person. Adolphe slowly became “Ankou” when he witnessed Ceres had killed herself. After that, he decided to do research on his body with Scien’s help. This in turn made his body immortal and he obtained regenerative abilities.
It was 103 years later that Ankou decided that he would try and use time travel technology to save Ceres. With the help of Yves, he plants lycoris flowers on Arpecheur 500 years in the past. It takes hundreds of years but they finally grow. This ultimately changes Adolphe’s appearance as well so Ankou believes he wouldn’t even be recognized as “Adolphe” anymore. Unfortunately, they don’t absorb all the toxins. Ankou decides to talk with one of Yves’ ancestors and he tells Ankou that he shouldn’t focus his attention on the lycoris flowers, but the poison itself. What he should do is find a way to create an antibody for the poison because the flowers can only absorb the poison, not destroy it. Ultimately, he suggests that Ankou becomes an antibody himself by eating the lycoris flowers.
After giving Ankou his new name, Ankou thanks him for his kindness and behind trying to make an antibody. Having to feed on the lycoris is so agonizing for Ankou that he starts to become hopeless because it’s taking forever for Ceres to be born. Finally, Ceres is born and Ankou is able to meet her for the first time in many years. Unfortunately, he needs more time creating the antibody so he has to watch as she lives as a “Shinigami”. But he couldn’t tell Ceres anything he knew now and didn’t know back then so he came up with a lie about the underworld. In reality, he stopped Ceres’ poison from spreading by feeding her his blood.
Ankou asks for Ceres to die along with him since he can’t imagine a world where she’s not alive. But Ceres tells him she wants to live especially since she needs to answer his confession. Ankou is shocked at how strong Ceres has become and decides to have a duel with Adolphe to determine whether his former self is worthy for Ceres. They battle with each other for a bit until Ankou manages to transfer his genes to Adolphe so he has the full regenerative abilities like him. Ankou tells Adolphe to use his cells and Ceres’ contaminated ones to save her. then takes out a special gun and shoots his heart so he’ll die permanently. Before dying, Adolphe helps him gather lycoris flowers for a bouquet to do a mock proposal for Ceres because apparently that was his goal when he’d see her again. Ankou dies after telling Ceres he’s always loved her.
About 5 years later, the island is open to visit for tourists. Apparently a vaccine was made from using Ankou’s antibody and Yves blood. Everyone there is able to live like a normal human being. Relivers still exist but live as normal humans with the use of human cells but the technology is no longer needed so they’re no longer made. Lucas has recovered from rehab from the drugs and Nadia is cured of her disease and can walk around freely. For some reason Jean is still working as Mathis’ butler (even though he murdered prostitutes with no remorse wtf) and is being forced to turn the mansion into a nursery by taking care of a child by Scien. Mathis himself is an Android so he needs to be reprogrammed by Scien here and there but he’s working on figuring out how to figure out to make him normal.
Yves and Hugo go on a trip far east together and Scien is now the one who governs the island as a political leader. Ceres and Adolphe are together in a field of white lycoris flowers. Adolphe’s cells have changed rapidly into a superhuman like pace where they can repel any kind of disease — so his blood was used to save Ceres who has been cured. But apparently Adolphe’s cells didn’t mutate anymore so he’s a normal human (I guess?? What kind of logic is this idk LMAO). Anyway, Ceres finally confesses her feelings of love to Adolphe. In Ankou’s despair end, Ankou decides to die alongside Ceres by burning everything to the ground. In Adolphe’s despair end, Ankou suggests using time travel to save Ceres like he did. Adolphe agrees to it and decides he will become like Ankou.
Thoughts: Man where do I even begin. I guess I’ll start off by saying that this route was definitely a giant text dump of information that had its pros and cons. I’m not gonna say this route was terrible, but there are some things that I couldn’t overlook — especially when this is essentially the true route. First, I really liked Ankou as a character, I think he made the game more interesting because of his mysterious aura and exaggerated appearance. But… I was pretty disappointed with how he ended up. I didn’t exactly want a merged route of two characters. I want to make it clear, I don’t like Adolphe. I think he sucked as a character, his attitude towards Ceres at first bothered me, and he’s honestly not a likable character in my opinion. I felt literally no connection between him and Ceres whatsoever so you must understand how fucking shocked and annoyed I was to find out he was actually Ankou. I hate Adolphe, so why does the other route have to be another version of him??? UGH. Also Adolphe knew Ceres for like, what, 2 years?? And you’re telling me he was madly in love with Ceres to the point he was willing to suffer for over hundreds of years just to save her life??? yeah, I don’t buy it. Especially with how he’d act towards her at times like when he called her a Shinigami and blamed her for his problems for no reason (then fell in love with her like what the fuck is this shit romance). Adolphe’s chemistry with Ceres was complete garbage imo so I guess in extension that means her chemistry with Ankou was too (I really wish Ankou was his own character). I’ll never not hate the trope of the older brother figure liking their “little sister” either — so yay it was everything I never wanted. Oh and even if Ankou was the one who actually went through shit, he still isn’t the one to actually be with Ceres which is hilarious to me because it just makes past Adolphe seem less significant as a character yet he’s more deserving of Ceres somehow?? So yeah after not giving two flying fucks about Adolphe — his route just dragged on for me and I slowly started to lose interest. I think some of the twists were interesting especially with Dahut and Salome but it still felt like it had to be shoved in there last minute.
Overall Thoughts
This definitely felt like a game that had great characters and plot but poor execution to certain degree. I’m not going to sit here and say it was a bad game, because it really wasn’t. I did like it and I honestly enjoyed it up until the final route. This unfortunately seems to happen from time to time where I’ll enjoy a lot of different aspects of the game but it’ll be the way it concludes that disappoints me. Ultimately what this game struggled with was a balance of plot and romance. As an otome game, we expect a bit of romance, that’s fair. But this game was so focused on the plot, it felt like it forgot it was an otome game — hence the romance feeling forced. I don’t even mind a game with little romance (Cafe Enchante for example?) but this game had pacing issues in which it had to text dump so much information that there was no room for character development in between. I also really wish Otomate would focus their attention on their heroines for once in a while because I feel bad for Ceres. Not just because of what she went through, but how she was written. Ultimately, Ceres wasn’t a heroine that felt like she really “fit” into the story. Excluding Adolphe, whenever you began a route, Ceres would only get involved with a love interest because they want her for her domestic skills such as cooking, cleaning, ect (I’m not even kidding though). Ceres sometimes felt like an afterthought and I began to notice this more and more when she’d often become the damsel that had to be saved. That is a common trope in otome games, so it’s not necessarily strange, but it’s the amount of times that the story would change POVs to other characters that got frustrating. It suddenly felt like the story was more focused on the other characters and Ceres was just a plot device to get the plot moving. It felt like she was the damsel because they didn’t know what else to do with her (e.g. her having Dahut’s mother’s genes seemed shoehorned in for plot reasons). And I get Ceres had her reasons for being self-depreciating, but was there really no room for growth? Cardia from Code: Realize was in the same position as her, but she didn’t become a martyr every chance she got. I think this is part of why I struggled to feel a connection between Ceres and any of the love interests — it never felt like she truly connected with any of them. Lastly, for being the true route, Adolphe’s love for the heroine felt super shoehorned and unrealistic. This ultimately made his and Ankou’s route unenjoyable because I didn’t feel like there was a romantic spark between her and Adolphe. Literally, I felt like the romance between Adolphe and Ceres was the worst, yet I had to sit through this supposedly heart wrenching romance? Like, where the hell was Adolphe in other routes? Half the time he was killed or wasn’t there. I don’t understand how he could be the true route when the guy wasn’t exactly present in Ceres life for that long. Why not Yves? Adolphe clearly wanted to shove her off to him anyway — how is he not a better candidate for this plot heavy, text dump of a true route. He was mean to her at first, lied to her, and hid that he was a normal human… for what? I’m sorry but, Adolphe’s chemistry with Ceres was so bad I couldn’t even enjoy the final route and that’s pretty disappointing. Well, at least Scien and Mathis exist — who are definitely my favorites in this game. Scien was so damn hot and Mathis was a poor baby who deserved better.
Story – This story takes place on a fictional island surrounded by “death” called “Arpecheur” — where everyone is destined to die at 23 years old due to a curse. Ceres is the heroine who often finds herself present whenever people mysteriously die — hence her being named a “Shinigami”. There is a lot to uncover in every individual route and slowly you’ll find out more about Ceres and the curse itself. While there’s seemingly some borrowed aspects of this story from previous Otomate games (e.g. Code: Realize) that doesn’t make this game any less enjoyable. Rather, the well-written story is one of the best aspects of it that’ll keep you engaged. However, at times, there seems to be a struggle between balancing the story and romance. There are things that become a bit convoluted due to the massive amount of information you’re fed nearing the end of the game.
Characters – The main cast of characters are definitely another redeeming aspect to this game. While there may be an exception or two for me personally, this really is a memorable cast that could use more polish if there are future titles. One of the issues I found was that you had a great cast of characters that needed a bit more character development to really shine. That being said, I think characters themselves were written well but because there was so much plot that needed to be covered, there wasn’t enough room for romance or development of the heroine’s relationship with everyone. Ultimately, I think you have this really good cast put in a story that is too focused on the plot that it starts to neglect the writing of each character’s individual traits and relationships with other characters. Lastly, there’s the sub characters, which are unfortunately often used as plot devices to move the story along; usually deeming them unlikeable when or if they turn against the main cast.
Visuals – This should probably be where the highest praise goes. The artwork of this game is absolutely stunning. Visually, there are literally no flaws and it’s actually some of the best effort I’ve seen in recent Otomate games. Yomi definitely deserves the praise for that because I literally could not keep my eyes of every CG because they just looked so good. Every route got a fair amount of CGs too so it didn’t feel like they were lacking at any point. If anything, it felt like there’s was more than plenty. Even the UI felt like it matched the tone of the game itself and I think this is probably a game with the best visuals in a while (Cupid Parasite was probably the last game I played where the visuals wowed me so much). It’s unfortunate there was so little romance a lot of the time, imagine how beautiful those scenes would look with this quality art.
System – There usually isn’t too much to say about an otome game’s system unless they had specific features. I do wish sometimes the skip wasn’t always so slow, but thankfully and surprisingly this game had a jump to next choice feature. There was also a flowchart but I wasn’t really a fan of how it was formatted — I think it could’ve looked a bit better? But it’s not like that really effects the game much because I barely even looked at it.
Music – Not much to say about he OST other than I think it did a great job of capturing the atmosphere of each scene. Some of the tracks were more upbeat than others (particularly one that would play when Scien appeared) but I think they were all fine. The OP and ED tracks definitely gave you the feeling of despair at times — I honestly really liked them a lot. Particularly the ED track that would play when you got the good ending; I think that one stuck out the most.
Final Thoughts: I want to make it clear, I did like this game. I’m just very nitpicky about certain things because it’s a game that had potential to be better than it was. I think for a good story, you need balance. Sometimes, this game didn’t know what it wanted to be — a really dark visual novel with no happy moments — or a dark visual novel with some happy moments and a touch of romance. I don’t mind a visual novel with very little romance — games like Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk did it really well. However, unlike Virche it kept in mind it was still an otome game and made sure there was a romance slowly being built between the characters. Because there’s SO much plot to be uncovered, a lot of other aspects became diluted — like the romance. This game almost felt like a normal visual novel that literally didn’t even had romance in it. If you’re not considering how the relationship between a character the heroine will be, suddenly throwing them together nearing the end only feels forced. I’ll admit, Mathis in particular, I didn’t really feel that way but there was still this underlying feeling of thinking that Ceres didn’t really connect with these characters as well as she could have.
So, do I recommend this game? Yes, flaws aside, I think its good enough to be played. It’s not like the characters themselves were terrible and the routes are pretty interesting. I just they needed to focus less on the plot and backstory and more on the characters themselves. I don’t really need a long backstory on the sub characters if the main characters themselves are lacking a bit in the development department. Also, Ceres wasn’t a terrible heroine but sometimes she felt like she didn’t belong in the story. If you think of a heroine like Kotone from Cafe Enchante, you know she didn’t have any supernatural powers to assist in fighting alongside the main cast — yet she still felt like she belonged in her story. Ceres, sometimes felt like she was placed in situations because she had to be — not because she felt like she belonged there. Instead, Ceres is constantly tortured and made to endure hardships for… not much actually. Sure, she got her man, but she had no internal growth from her own struggles. The will to live, yes, at times… but they usually they kept her incapacitated so she could be used as a plot device to move the story along. As such, the amount of times it would switch from the heroine to different POVs started to feel excessive.
This is probably supposed to be Otomate’s newest dark, edgy cashcow title like Collar x Malice or Piofiore so there are aspects of it that don’t really surprise me (like the cage making a reappearance). But ultimately, the story didn’t blow me away and it’s not like it didn’t take aspects from other games like Amnesia. It’s also really hard to feel invested in a story that at times, feels like it’s shoehorning in twists and turns that feel semi-unrealistic. I don’t even think it was a terrible idea to lock the good ends until you finished all the routes and their bad end. But, it honestly didn’t really make a difference in the end? There was nothing that was done or said that even mattered if you were able to do the good ends first. I thought there would be spoiler reasons, but there actually wasn’t — so it felt pointless, I guess? I can see what this game was trying to do, but I do think they could of done it differently if it doesn’t even matter much in the end. So overall, this is a good game that ultimately fell flat in certain areas. That being said, if you like dark stories that focus on plot and despair (more so than romance) then this is definitely a game you’ll enjoy regardless of my criticisms.
There exists a small island called Alpeciel in which the government is ruled by a royal family – the Revpowells. However it’s not a regular island – as the people of this island are doomed to die before age 23. Before they hit 23, their lungs stop functioning and they eventually die due to lack of oxygen. In order to combat the rapidly shrinking population, the island managed to create a super technological advancement that allowed them to clone someone’s memory and body in the process called “ReLife”. Because of this, the citizens of the island would no longer fear death and would no longer take life seriously because who cares, you’ll just be reborn anyway. And when they are reborn, they are the same age as they died so most of the population physically looks between 20-23 years of age. Recently however there has been a girl by the named of Ceres, our story’s heroine. Everyone that she comes in contact with seems to die of the lung disease faster or get into a fire related accident. Because of this Ceres spends her life growing up being called a grim reaper because everything around her dies. Convinced that she’s a grim reaper that doesn’t deserve to live, at the age of 18, Ceres decides to end her life.
As usual, big fat spoilers – 11k words of spoilers. If you plan to play the game, skip to my final thoughts as usual. If you’re ready to read a novel, grab a bowl of a popcorn or a cup of coffee, we’re going to have a bumpy ride. 😱 Warning this post contains gory details and is not for the faint of heart.
First I’m going to go into more details of the common route before I go into the individual routes. At the age of 11, Ceres was involved in a burning fire which killed everyone at the orphanage she was at – or so she thought. Turns out there was 1 sole survivor, Yves, who sustained grotesque burns to his left side of the face that he had to wear a mask his whole life so people wouldn’t run shrieking in the other direction. Although I will explain in detail in other routes why this is a thing, Ceres has a certain thing in her body that basically does quick the lung death of those on the island. After the fire at the orphanage, nobody wanted to adopt her, except one woman named Salome who adopted her as her own daughter along with her adopted son Adolphe. Even though Adolphe pretends to be a good brother, he’s got his own issues and deep inside he’s hated Ceres the whole time. Even when Ceres tries to go out to buy groceries or something, the people don’t want anything to do with her.
Eventually she happens to run into Yves who is 18 now and is the head of the vigilante group. She’s so happy that he survived the fire but feels guilty to the scar she caused him. Then another explosion happens at her current orphanage (though it doesn’t start a fire) but it injures Yves again. Ceres can’t take it anymore so she goes to the spider lily field on the outskirt of the island to end her life. However, before she can actually do it, she is stopped by a mysterious man named Ankou. He then lets her drink some of his blood saying that it will suppress her grim reaper powers and that he is also the ~lord of the underworld~ 😂 Ceres believes this and after drinking his blood, she notices there seems to be less casualties around her. Unfortunately as you go through the game it’s revealed that there’s no grim reapers or any magic and that everything is a political science experiment.
On top of this, there’s a serial killer on the loose killing people randomly at night so now everyone’s on edge and the vigilantes are trying to get to the bottom of this.
Mathis Claude – Mathis lives in Shudie and is trying to find the criminal who killed his older brother. The murderer has a unique way of leaving his victims with a giant hole in their bodies after killing them. The reason is because he literally rips out and steals their organs. One day when Ceres visits his house, that night the killer actually shows up and Mathis goes into revenge mode. On top of this, she even saves his life when the killer nearly stabs him. As a child, Mathis was abused by his parents and thrown into a prison cell when he “didn’t behave”. Only his older brother Camille and butler Jean would sneak in and give him food and talk to him there. His parents didn’t tell anyone they had a second child because they thought he was an embarrassment to the family and only physically and verbally abused him. His parents were killed (but whatever fuck them) and after his brother was killed he was left all alone with only Jean to tend to him and the Claude inheritance. Jean asks Ceres to come be Mathis’ maid because apparently after years of training Jean can’t cook.
Since Ceres can she accepts the offer and also figures she will help Mathis cheer up after the anticlimactic death of his brother’s killer. However one day they discover that the killer isn’t dead and when seeing him again, Mathis goes berserk and runs off after him, after pushing Ceres away and calling her a grim reaper. When he comes back a few days later he’s not a boku who likes to write novels anymore… He’s an angry dude set on revenge and just came back to restock his weapons. He almost hits Ceres for trying to protect his manuscript, until Jean slaps the sense back into him and he’s horrified at what he was about to do. He falls in bed with a fever and starts crying and apologizing for everything he did to Ceres saying he has no idea why he did any of it. He tells her that until he kills the guy who killed his brother, he can’t move on with his life and he’s afraid to hurt Ceres again. He also then says he needs to do this because he wants to go back to living a peaceful life with Ceres, the girl he loves. Ceres agrees to let him go on the condition that she and the vigilantes also try to catch the killer before he does, so that he doesn’t become a murderer himself. So then it turns out that not only is Camille not dead, turns out Camille is Jean’s true identity.
Not only that but he’s the one who’s been killing all the prostitutes in town to hide the connection to his former lover who was also a prostitute. Turns out that Mathis is just Camille’ science experiment, a homunculus that’s made from the unborn fetuses of all the prostitutes he’s killed and all of their memories. That’s why he kept thinking that he had a brother who was killed and that he had abusive parents that were also killed. We get a flashback to the past where they reveal that Camille’ parents were in a political marriage and had a son to continue the Claude bloodline. They told him he can do whatever he wants until it’s time for him to be reborn as leader, so he went and screwed a bunch of prostitutes until he met one named Rosaly who he fell in love at first sight with. They got engaged and he broke the promise with his parents by agreeing with Rosaly that they would not be reborn since being reborn meant they’d lose their love for each other. Rosaly was pregnant with his child and on her way to the doctor, another prostitute killed her out of jealousy that she was marrying a rich dude while the rest of them had to continue selling their bodies. So like in Full Metal Alchemist, Camille decided to bring Rosaly back to life somehow by stealing technology from the government and creating Mathis as a test subject. He even went as far as relifing himself so he could continue his research. He basically needed to figure out a way to create false memories for Rosaly since there was no backup for her. After hearing this Mathis has a meltdown because he realizes his entire life and memory has been a life. Normally transplanting fake memories to a cloned body will cause it to die (just like in nier Replicant!!)
However with Mathis it’s different because he was “created” with the new memories in mind by using unborn fetuses from the prostitutes he’s killed. Because Ceres was able to trigger feelings of love in Mathis, Camille kidnaps her too because he needs her to continue the experiment to make sure the Rosaly he makes still loves him. While Camille is gone for a bit, Mathis tells Ceres to run away and that his feelings for her are probably fake but she tells him that the time he spent with her are new memories that only he created for himself. She also tells him that she loves him, a feeling she thought she was never allowed to have. She gives him one final kiss because the next day Camille messes with his memory once again and not only has he forgotten who Ceres is, but he’s crude and violent towards her. 😰 So basically this continues and Ceres accepts each and every one of these extreme personalities as each one of them ends up falling in love with her. So yeah uh this game kinda forces you to do bad ends before you can see the good ends and they even throw cringy bad end cgs as a bonus! 🙄 So in bad end one Camille throws in the most violent in personality – aka himself, as the final test and of course he stabs Ceres to death and as she’s dying he briefly remembers her and his love her for her. But since this is a bad end it’s not Ceres he remembers, it’s Rosaly. I don’t fucking know how Ceres came out of that ordeal alive but she basically has to now marry Mathis, who’s basically Camille now and she pretends that she’s Rosaly and nobody has any clue to anything being off. 😬
In the 2nd bad end Ceres and Mathis try to escape but are unsuccessful. When Mathis wakes up he finds Ceres in the same water tube as Rosaly and then Camille is like lol now you know how I feel so yeah continue helping my experiments bro! And so basically Mathis becomes the guy that now lures pregnant prostitutes for Camille’s experiments. In the good end Mathis manages to snap out of it, and instead of stabbing Ceres, he stabs himself. When Camille returns, Mathis owns by saying that instead of loving Rosaly, he’s just focused on her reviving corpse like an object since he won’t even think to hug or kiss her “body” now. Before he can make a decision to append for his crimes, there’s a huge explosion from Dahut’s underground facility which causes Camille’s mini science lab to start to crumble and fall apart. Just then Adolphe and Yves burst in to rescue Ceres and Mathis and Ceres plan to run for it, but Camille says he’s going to stay back and die with Rosaly (well she’s already dead lol.) After Mathis and Ceres run off, Camille reveals that Mathis was created from the fetus of Camille and Rosaly’s dead fetus, so technically, Camille isn’t his oniisan, it’s his dad lol. The reason they found Ceres is because Ankou told them where she was since he basically stalks her 24/7 lol. Mathis and Ceres then go off to the seaside alone together to spend whatever remaining time he has left before his memory wipes itself again. He kisses her goodbye before his memory shuts down. In the epilogue, Scien turned Mathis from a homunculus to a relifer. Ceres starts working to save up money to become a relifer as well so she can live at the same time as Mathis, knowing full well that her current feelings for him will change once she undergoes the process. One day while she’s shopping, she runs into the reborn Mathis, who tells her he’s fallen in love with her at first sight. The final CG was super cute, but such a bittersweet ending.
Lucas Proust – Lucas is the teacher at the church where Ceres lives even though he’s only 22 and is still a human and not a relief. Since he’s close to the age where you die of the lung disease, he will sometimes have bouts of a bad cough but he tries to hide it. In order to try to help him, Ceres becomes his teaching assistant. Lucas also has a younger sister named Nadia who is bed ridden because she is permanently paralyzed and unable to walk by herself. Nadia knows that her oniisama wants to hit that shit and is already mentally preparing for Ceres to be her future sister in law 😏. In fact she even one day tells Ceres how she and Lucas have kept an exchange diary for many years… And in it Lucas has constantly written about how much he loves Ceres indirectly. Nadia picked up on it but never knew who it was until she met Ceres. Unfortunately not only does Ceres feel unfit to be his lover, but Nadia starts to get to the end of her life as the lung disease progresses further and further. After running into the murderer one night, Lucas decides to have Ceres live with him for a bit for her safety. When Yves and Hugo offer both for Lucas and Nadia to become relifers, he promptly refuses and says he wants to live and die as a human. Both of them were born to relifer parents, and he had nothing against becoming one himself eventually. Then one day he saw a friend of his become a relifer and then kill his younger sister.
After witnessing this Lucas decided that becoming a relifer would turn you into a monster like his friend and decided he would never become one. Because Nadia was born ill, the parents urged her to get relifed, but she refused so Lucas took her and ran away from home together. He’s then been working to the bone to give her expensive hospital treatment to prolong her life at a hospital that respected patients wishes to live and die as humans. When Ceres finds out about all of this and the fact that Lucas only has a few months to live, she’s heartbroken. But all the sadness is instantly dispelled when the game suddenly reveals that not only was Camille the killer of the prostitutes, Lucas was going around killing relifers because the exorcist group who hates them told him to do so. In exchange, they agreed to keep Nadia at their hospital and treat her heavy illness. So while Camille was ripping out fetuses, Lucas has been ripping out the hearts because the exorcists told him it would “purge the demons.” Lucas brings Ceres to the exorcist HQ which is basically a human experiment lab to try to figure out a way to treat the disease that kills people at 23. However they don’t want to use pure “humans” so they kidnap relifers to use on their experiments along with the hearts of all the people Lucas kills and brings to them. (;;;・_・) So then Otomate remembered that sleep meds and cages are funny again after Amnesia, and decided to bring it back for this route! 😂😂😂
So Lucas locks Ceres in a cage telling her that she has to stay there when he’s not around, otherwise she’s “free” as long as she doesn’t “have a change of heart” lol. He’s been giving her sleeping meds so she would sleep during the time he goes out & kills people but since Ankou woke her up to warn her she found out the truth. (But then Ankou got sliced up into bits & pieces by Lucas after rip.) Ceres has a moment to gather her thoughts, realizes the dude she fell for is fucking cray and decides that she can’t just sit back and let him kill a ton of people. But when one night he pours out all of his feelings for her and basically says he fell in love with her when he found out she basically walked out of the burning orphanage without a single wound. The fact that she didn’t feel sorry for Nadia and befriended her, and the fact that she was always so helpful in the orphanage contributed to his feelings for her. So now Ceres is torn because 1) ayy my hot sensei loves me 2) but he’s a serial killer 3) and he gonna die in like half a year rip lol. 😅 But anyway all that goes out the window as they spend the entire night making out in his bed. The next morning she hears Lucas talking in his sleep saying he’s sorry for killing everyone, and that he’s a monster that doesn’t deserve forgiveness.
The following day Dahut stops by the hospital to explain to Lucas that Nadia is forever ill because it’s a genetic disease and there’s no “cure” for it. (I mean I thought it was obvious but I guess the characters aren’t aware of the term.) When they go to Nadia’s room, while they are talking, suddenly Lucas randomly starts strangling Ceres, and when he snaps out of it he has no idea what he’s done. Freaking Cappucino also then gives Lucas a new hitlist and tells him that if he doesn’t kill them all, he will not be allowed to visit Nadia again. He then starts coughing blood because his disease is progressing further and further and he finds out the sad truth that once he dies, they will just let Nadia die too – and not help her live longer like Lucas thought. Lucas goes into yandere mode, locks up Ceres in his uguu cage of love, and then goes on a killing spree of relifers. Even when he returns back to his house, asshole Cappucino stops by, feeds him some more brainwashing drugs so all he can think about is more killings. After Fuckaccino leaves, Ceres grabs Lucas through the cage and tells him he can stop “Trying hard by himself” and that its ok to be upset. It helps calm him down and he starts to say his true feelings, and how he doesn’t want to be a killer, and that he’s tired of “trying hard” all by himself and fuck genetic diseases.
So then they go to visit Nadia at night and turns out she’s now a relifer, because she could no longer live in her human body. One of the hospital employees showed him the contract that Nadia supposedly signed agreeing to be reborn as a clone. Not believing this, and refusing to accept Nadia as a clone, Lucas rages and kills the relifer version of his sister on the spot. They get a message from Crapaccino and he says he has the real Nadia with him, and when they go into his underground creepy ass doll museum they find out he’s a 40＋ year old relifer. He’s also revealed to be a scientist who used to work in the government long ago who was banned and arrested because he tried to tamper with DNA to create a flawless human being. Or rather, he just wanted to keep reproducing his own DNA to live forever, so he kep cloning 99% of himself but would change the other 1%. The idiot government and stupid Scien made the mistake of not permanently arresting him. Crapaccino, aka Otis, managed to escape, took over the exorcist organization for his own illegal research, brainwashed everyone and then used Lucas as a tool for his gross experiments. Normally when you create a clone relifer body, all the DNA is the same – appearance and all and that’s why Dahut said that even if they were to relife Nadia, she would be forever ill because the illness is imbedded in her genes. So then Lucas is like wtf doe Nadia have to do with this, and Crapaccino’s like ahh I’ve fallen in love with her genes˜. Does this make him a genetic pedo? ╏ ” ⊚ ͟ʖ ⊚ ” ╏
Pedroccino reveals what has become of Nadia, and she’s basically a weird homonculus mixed up of 20 women’s DNAs. Not only that but Pedroccino messed with her memory so she only thinks that the pedro is her groom and has no idea who Ceres or Lucas are. Lucas is horrified and shocked to react, so Ceres throws a gas bomb from the lab and escapes with him. Unfortunately, someone who works for Pedroccino catches up to them, injects Lucas with more brainwashing drugs and he goes on another lifer killing spree with his final target as Scien, the creator of the Relifer system. He ends up killing everyone, including Ceres who knew he would kill her because he’s so delusioned on DNA steroids. After he awakens from his murder trance, he goes into a yandere trance, and then goes to live on some remote cave of the island with Ceres’ skeleton who he puts a ring on to be his “bride” ugh lmao. NOT THE KIND OF WEDDING END I WANTED PART 2. 😰😨😭Anyway eventually his time runs out and the lung disease kills him too. In the other bad end, Ceres realizes that there’s no saving Lucas and so she puts him out of his misery with Ankou’s help. When someone bursts in to ask her what’s going on, she identifies herself as Lucas’ “wife” and is then publicly executed for his crimes. Adolphe and co knew that she’s innocent but the dumb government just wanted to put the blame on someone and Ceres lost the will to live without Lucas anyway. In all the other bad ends any attempt for Ceres to get help or run away just ended in her instantly dying. 😒
In the good end in order to stop Lucas from going cray after the whole thing with zombie Nadia, Ceres stabs him in the neck to snap him out of his murder trance. And now this ending becomes a great example of why forcing people to do the good ends at the end fails miserably. I honestly forgot everything that happened other than Pedoccino turning Nadia into a monster but because this is like 3 days ago as I’m playing this, seeing this again 3 days later the impact is just not the same. So somehow despite being stabbed in the neck Lucas is not only able to fight off his clone army, he is able to finally reach out to Nadia’s subconscious to get her to awaken. Or rather, one of Dahut’s many clones woke up being like u can do it Nadia before immediately dying again. And so Nadia regains some sense of herself, kills the Pedroccino, and then says she loves her oniichan and oneechan before Lucas puts her out of her misery. In the epilogue, as usual Scien is alive since he always backs up his data as he’s constantly a murder target lol. After Lucas had died, Ceres decided to join him in death and killed herself too. They were buried together in the lily garden and Ankou visits it a year later, and sees a little girl run to the grave and put a flower on it. Some “happy” end this is. ಠ_ʖಠ
Scien Brofiise – Scien is the inventor of the relife system and has “rebirthed” himself many times so he’s like an 80 year old grandpa, despite looking forever 23. (GILF!? 🤣🤣)Because of this he has no emotional attachment to “life” so everything to him is a science experiment and he thinks emotions are a “systematic bug” now. So because Scien is a slob and Ceres cleans his room, he goes to her orphanage and demands that she basically work for him as his personal assistant (aka maid lol). She figures it’s ok to do but Ankou is really against this because he’s afraid if Scien finds out she has real death powers, he will try to experiment on her. While working for him, Ceres even gets to watch the entire relifer process as these clones pop out of this sci-fi glass egg. However one day suddenly one of the workers there whips out a knife and takes Ceres hostage. The reason is they want Dahut to become the leader instead of Scien, because he wants to try to instill emotions back into relifers while Scien doesn’t give a shit. The threat also doesn’t work on Scien anyway because he has no emotional attachment to anyone or anything, including Ceres. Even Ceres is like yea I knew he won’t stand up for me, and I’m not his lover so uh you won’t get anything out of holding me hostage. She also then kicks the guy away and escapes on her own which leaves the guy open enough for Scien to knock him down and arrest him. When he tries to lunge at Scien again, Dahut shows up and shoots a tranquilizer at the guy. Dahut explains the guy was mad at Scien for not figuring out how to transfer emotions because his fiance who was relifed, ended up losing her feelings of love for him and marrying some other guy instead.
Scien takes Ceres out to dinner after this or Dahut will rage at him, and there he basically says his entire existance is to upkeep the relife system and if that’s no longer needed, his purpose in life is over. After this he reveals to her that he’s doing human experiments on prisoners as directed by the royal family. So honestly it’s no different than what Crapaccino was doing, but Scien is doing it “legally” and not because he has some gene fetish but in order to improve/advance the relife system. He inherited the science lab from his father and began doing human experiments as requested by the royal family. Once he completed the relife system, he was his first successful experiment and was the first one to live past age 23. He also explains the reason he continues the human experiments is because the relife system is just a temporary solution until he can figure out how to stop the disease plaguing the island. One day one of the royal princes, Simon Revpowel bursts in demanding he get a new body because of the system being updated would surely give him a better one than the one he has now even if it’s not time to switch yet. Even though there’s already a person in there getting reborn, the asshole just destroys the container, killing the clone inside and for some idiotic reason nobody keeps the backup of the data after it’s transferred to the clone so it means the person is now permanently dead. When Scien comes over and sees his system being destroyed like this, he’s fucking pissed and starts beating the shit out of the prince lmao. 😂😂
He gives absolutely no fucks and even permanently block the idiot prince from ever having his body reborn again. Ceres feels bad she couldn’t stop the moron with the sword and cries but Scien after cleaning up the dead body takes her back to his office to tend to her wounds from being knocked down. He suggests that maybe she stop working for him but being attached to him Ceres doesn’t want to leave so she blabs about how without her he won’t even eat hi lunches properly…so he lets her stay. ☺️ The next day things take a turn for the worse when a bunch of people spread a rumor that Scien is responsible for the deaths of the relifers (that are actually being killed by Lucas). Even within the organization there’s quite a lot of people who want Scien to retire and for Dahut to be the next president. After this the prince who got blocked gets pissed and uses his connections to effectively get even Dahut to follow his orders, and for everyone to turn on Scien except Ceres. Scien knows that she has a crush on him but he promptly reminds her that she can like him all she wants but he will never return those feelings. Suddenly the royals burst in, and complain that the Prince who got blocked from the system is suddenly dying from the lung disease. Turns out someone else had created a new body for him but since they’re not as good as Scien, they made some defective one he dies within a week.
All of the royals are now against Scien and they make a country wide announcement saying that Scien killed him. He blabs out an out of context announcement that Scien used people for experiments (even though the royals told him to). Just then Dahut comes in an announces that Scien is banned from his own lab and is now to be executed for his crimes… Saying he can’t go against the royals wishes and now he can continue to do research to create clones with emotions. Scien doesn’t care that his lab is being taken but he refuses to go down without a fight so he grabs Ceres and runs. They get split up and Scien ends up falling into some underground facility in the sewers that he didn’t know existed, only to be ambushed by a murdering Lucas. By the time Ceres, Hugo and Yves get down there it seems like Scien is dead, but despite being all bloody he’s somehow still alive enough to fight Lucas off. Meanwhile shit hits the fan at the orphanage, when Prince Dominic bursts in saying that the orphanage harbored a grim reaper and that she was escorting Scien and is a traitor too. They manage to escape thanks to Mathis but it’s so weird cause Jean/Camille is there too and we know he’s a traitor so it felt so awkward to me lmao. They head to the orphanage only to find dead children everywhere, and when they burst into the room Ceres watches as they slice Adolphe’s head off. 😱
Just then Lucas (stlil in disguise so nobody but me knows who it is lol) bursts in and starts slashing the guards with his halberd. Realizing he has no allies left, Dominic runs away leaving a mindbroken Ceres, and horrified everyone else except Scien who as usual has no emotion. They take hideout somewhere and Salome completely loses it as she sits there holding Adolphe’s disembodied head while repeating his name. Everyone tries to take the head away from her to bury before it rots but she refuses and cries saying they can still save him as long as they have his brain to clone him. Scien calmly explains to her that once someone dies, there’s no way to revive them without a backup beforehand. While recovering Scien also admits that he’s been doing experiments on himself as well to improve the system and his own body is covered in scars. So then Ceres points out that Scien has been focusing so much on making stronger relifers all this time that he completely forgot to focus on actually getting rid of the disease that causes death in the first place. Scien then has a breakdown that the whole time he created emotionless dolls like himself so that there would be someone else to “ignore” the curse in exchange for just adding more time to their life. He finally remembers what his true goal was and he states he will find a way to save everyone without anymore sacrifices. And so they sneak into the lab so that Scien can swap bodies cause his current one is close to reaching its limit. Before he starts the procedure, he kisses Ceres and says that when he manages to recover emotions in relifers, he wants her to be his first lover. Just then though, Lucas (probably?) comes in with his halberd and kills Ceres who tries and fails to stop him.
Scien manages to safely change his body, and then Lucas just randomly leaves like…why did you even come here, wasn’t your goal to kill Scien??? Lmao. After he gets out he immediately stuffs Ceres into the glass egg to save her but unfortunately he is unable to. He instead successfully regains his emotions, and goes crazy from despair and mentally breaks down because he downloaded her memories inside himself. He imagines that she’s still alive and serving him while he sits alone in his lab trying to find a solution to the disease. One of the other bad ends Salome kills Ceres because she won’t agree with her plan to kill the royal family. It’s so ridiculous just like most of the bad ends where the characters suddenly go o/c and randomly kill the heroine. In the good end, Scien creates a clone of himself that can withstand emotions without crashing his brain. And then he’s like anyway gonna find a cure for the disease and also bang Ceres and have 2 kids. 🤣🤣😳
A few days later during a public ceremony, Salome shows up and stabs and kills Comb Revpowell, and then also stabs and kills Dahut (lol tfw you kill your own son without realizing it.) She then takes Ceres hostage, and yells that she must kill every single member of the royal family. She basically had a memory crash after seeing Adolphe killed in front of her, so they shoot arrows at her to free Ceres and arrest her. Dominic Revpowell rambles that there’s no need to save Salome, and for the first time Scien feels the emotion of irritation and anger at him. He decides to use Dominic as his lab rat in order to create a more stable emotional memory for Salome’s next clone. In the epilogue, Salome is relifed again, and since all the royals are now dead there’s nobody left to prosecute her so she just returns to the orphanage. Scien and Ceres buy flowers for Dahut’s grave (and I’m still in disbelief that he didn’t have like 3 backup clones.) Scien then takes her back to her room at the orphanage, tells her that yep, he’s confirmed now that he’s in love with her and they make out in her bed. (~￣³￣)~ 💕💕 Scien honestly had the most satisfying -otomesque- ending for me so I’m glad I left his happy end for last.
Yves Noirouge – Yves is revealed to be the boy who gets in the way of the explosion at the orphanage when Ceres was younger, effectively saving her life. Because of that the burns on his face are so traumatizingly bad, he wears a mask to cover the left side of his face so to not scare others. In this route Ceres decides to work and live with Yves and the vigilantes. Unfortunately other than Yves, Adolphe and Hugo, all the other guys really don’t want her there. Yves is notoriously bad at cooking and they finally accept Ceres when they find out that she can actually cook. The reason that Ceres never seen him until now is Salome intentionally talked to the orphanage where he was staying and told them to keep him away so that Ceres wouldn’t have any survivor guilt or guilt for his injuries. However, Yves seems to be immune to injuries because he constantly gets hurt to the point of heavy bleeding, but walks away like nothing. One night Yves reveals that the reason he got involved in the fire is he was just spending time with a church friend. Afterwards, because of his badly burned face, his dogshit parents basically abandoned him and he was taken in out of pity by another church. Just then Ankou showed up one day and gave him the face mask to cover his wounds as a weird apology because he knew Yves’ fate ahead of time but was unable to do anything. So after that Yves then tried to live a life of finding someone who will love and accept him and not pity him because of his injury. Unable to do so, he gave up and decided he would just wait until he’s reborn as a relifer because then the scar would be gone since it’s not genetic. Since Ceres spends a lot of time with Yves, the other guys start shipping them and call her his waifu. 🤭
When Adolphe and Hugo ask her about this rumor Ceres denies it saying she’s unfit to be his lover and she’s happy just being friends. A few days later Ceres goes to the Pedoccino hospital and finds out that her parents died of the lung disease at the black spider lilly field while her mother was pregnant. To be technical, the disease got so bad they basically tore their own chest open and killed themselves. Ceres then like birthed herself out when they found her and so she was basically orphaned since she was born. Shocked at this truth, she goes to check out the flower field once more only to find Yves there who then tells her that he’s a descendant of a line of “black lilly guardians” whose mission in life is to make sure all the flowers grow so he frequently comes over there to tend to his garden. After Ceres she sees the flowers as another family to her, Yves is so happy that finally someone out there exists that doesn’t hate them. Unfortunately one again more people are killed by another mystery murderer and everyone starts calling Ceres a grim reaper again. The only one on her side is Yves, and Hugo gets so irritated that Yves is protecting her that he ragequits the vigilante. Ceres overhears their arguing and figures it’s best for her to leave, but befoer she can run out the window Yves comes in and stops her. So they continue to stay at his love shack despite the angry villagers demanding that he release her. They also notice the pattern with all the murders seems to be focused on couples in love. So things just keep getting worse because being a dumb tiny island, the idiot royals need a scape goat for all their problems, and they decide to blame the murders on Yves and Ceres because hur dur death girl. 🙄
One night when the villagers try to set Yves’ house on fire, Ceres and Yves come outside to ask them to stop and in the scuffle Yves’ mask comes off revealing his burned face. He’s so horrified at Ceres seeing this from past trauma, he starts screaming at her not to look at him. Just then Hugo shows up and pushes her away hiding Yves’ face and yells at her saying it’s all her fault that she ruined everything Yves worked for all his life. Hugo asks her to die and put Yves out of his misery, but Ceres refuses because Yves wanted her to live. After Hugo fucks off, Ceres goes back to Yves, tells him his scar is beautiful and reminds her of the black spider lilies. Yves, who thought the person he loved was going to reject him, starts crying and then says that he’s gonna stop trying to “love everyone” and will only love her from now on. Ceres kisses his scar, and after they leave his house they unfortunately discover Hugo’s dead body (which for some reason had a CG like holy shit there was no dead body CGs for literally anyone else until now jfc.) Meanwhile elsewhere, Scien uncovers Crapaccino’s underground lab and discovers that Lucas is working for him. Scien then tells Lucas that Crapaccino’s real name is Otis and he knocks Lucas out and has his guards take him away. Without his weapon to protect him, Scien grills him for answers on his bullshit experiments and underground lab. Back to Yves and Ceres, after finding Hugo’s dead body, Yves starts to have a blood coughing fit, the kind similar to the island lung disease which is unusual for someone his age.
None of the doctors want to take him in to treat him because he associates with the grim reaper girl so he just sits there suffering in bed at his house. Not knowing who else to turn to for help, she calls Crapaccino, but fortunately the one who answers the call is fortunately Scien. He tells her as long as she donates her blood to his research, so she heads over, after kissing Yves goodbye. When she goes to Scien, he reveals to her that Ceres’ parents were his 2nd subjects to undergo the relife process after himself. And so he reveals that the reason they died clawing at their hearts is because apparently if you’re a relifer with too strong love emotion, your brain has a “systematic crash” and you end up killing yourself trying to rip out the source of the pain – your heart. So that is why her parents were found dead but with smiles on their faces in that spider lilly field. This is also why Scien was against transferring emotions to relifers and why all the recent deaths were couples clawing out their hearts. This doesn’t necessarily limit to couples, it can be a one sided love, which explains Hugo’s death since he was sp emotional over Yves. 🥴 Scien says that someone probably hacked into the system and made it so that even a little bit of love emotion would crash and make people kill themselves which is why there was a sudden increase in couple deaths. Meanwhile the angry mob drives the doctor who was helping Yves away, and when they try to kill Yves who can barely move out of bed, the drunk guy who he helped out a few years back take the hit and saves him.
Just when the stupid angry mob is about to attack again, Ankou comes out of nowhere and kills them all. (Bro what have you been doing all this time.) He tells Yves to go to his grandfather’s grave, dig it up and he would find out Ceres’ truth and he also makes his lung disease suddenly go away. When he digs up his grandpa’s grave, he finds a diary. Inside gramps basically says he was a merchant from the far east who traveled west to make money, but got hit by a storm and landed on this island. He was shocked to find out that nobody on this island had lived beyond the age of 23, and told them how people outside this island live to age 60 or 70. A scientist on the island begged for knowledge from the outside world so gramps gave him a book on the human DNA. Despite giving him a lot of books, the scientist went mad and wanted to use gramps for human experiments to figure out why he lives longer than 23. He went into hiding along with his new wife and figured he’d just quietly die on this island. His wife died early so he ended up living with just his child until the day he met the grim reaper. They also find an entry saying that the red spider lilies in his country are supposed to bring good luck, not bring doom. So it turns out that the ground on the island spews out poison, and the spider lilies that are red turned black because they absorbed the poison via allelopathy (god I had to look this up) which is why whenever people would try to destroy them, there would be more deaths on the island. And this is also why the grim reaper left the task of caring for them to Yves’ family.
Scien overhears all of this info through a tracking device he implanted on Yves. So it’s like basically the entire island has some radioactive soil that messed up everyone’s DNA and caused a chromosome defect that made them all die of this disease at age 23. Since it’s such a small island that rarely gets visitors, there was no chance for anyone to leave or seek help so eventually basically this thing spread down generations. And so what would happen is every year the person would lose 1 chromosome, and since a person has 23 chromosomes, by the time they hit age 23 they basically die of necrosis. Soo basically everyone on the island is born with a genetic disease that is guaranteed to kill them, and it has nothing to do with grim reapers or curses. So what does Ceres have to do with this? Well since she popped out right in the middle of the spider lilly field, it had a huge effect on her DNA and she basically magically inherited the purification and poison absorbing power of the spider lilly. And so because she absorbed the poison into herself like the flowers do, she was basically a walking bag of poison and spread it around to everyone who came in contact with her. This would explain why people like Yves suddenly started getting the symptoms earlier than expected. Not only that but her poison is also apparently flammable so the random explosion that happened 7 years earlier was because it was like throwing a matchstick into a gas leak. 😨
And also her gas apparently would corrupt the memory of unstable individuals (such as the case with Hugo). So in a way, she’s now scientifically proven to be “Death” because she’s going around spewing poison …..just like Cardia in Code Realize (also a game by the same writer 😂😂). So Scien’s immediate response is alright girl, we’re gonna use your DNA to create clones that can withstand the poison. (And honestly I find the entire concept hilarious because WHY DOES NOBODY THINK TO LEAVE THE RADIOACTIVE ISLAND FOR FUCKS SAKE LOL.) Scien thinks they should just clone Ceres’ body and bury it alive all over the island LMFAOWTF bro come on. But despite Yves’ protests, Ceres is like ah yes, I must sacrifice myself like Jesus and save everyone. Also even though I thought they had arrested Crapaccino for being a big pedo, for some reason he’s not a pedo in this route, and in fact he’s got his eyes on Ceres’ genes instead lol. The other guys get together with Yves who doesn’t want Ceres to become a poison sponge army. So then Yves and co break into the lab to rescue Ceres, but like everyone just dies except Yves and Lucas (who was awakened and helping them) so that he can get to Ceres. He makes it to the main room because Dahut betrays Scien and takes Yves’ side. When Yves gets to her he’s basically like pls don’t die baby I love you. ( ˘ ³˘)♥ While Yves fights with Scien, he rages the reason they were all too stupid to find the cause of this sooner is because they were so obsessed with extending their life span that Yves’ gramps had to hide to not be used as a lab rat. They didn’t read any of his research of books that he gave to them and instead went off on a tangent to create clones, that would just repeat the 23 year life span because the chromosomal death was now embedded into their DNA.
Even though Yves wins the fight, the system goes out of control before Ceres is able to escape the egg pod. Because of this Ceres becomes a massive poison spewing machine and sets the entire lab on fire while exacerbating Yves’ lung disease again. Scien tells her that anyone shes near now is gonna instantly die and if she tries to kill herself, all the poison inside her is gonna explode and kill everyone on the island lmao WELP. Because of the fire, the lab starts crumbling and Ceres falls into the sewage level. Ceres walks over to the edge of the island in hopes if she dies there, nobody will be affected. However a bunch of idiot villagers ambush her there and attack her, which causes the poison to start a fire all around her and kill them all lmao. ಠ∀ಠ Yves chases her down, gives her a medicine to suppress her poison temporarily that was given to him by Scien. Unfortunately it ends just as you would expect – Yves is burned alive in front of Ceres in an instant to the point that he’s unrecognizable. Ceres goes completely cray and decides her charcoalled boyfriend will be with her forever now that he’s “dead” and therefore it’s no longer a problem that her poison will kill him! 🤪
In the other bad end, Yves survives but instead Ceres gives her blood to Dahut before burying herself alive in the spider lilly garden. It’s easy to tell where she is because the lilies there are red, as they don’t need to absorb the poison since her body is doing it automatically. O and she also leaves her disembodied hand for Yves that Dahut has preserved from decomposing because she “wanted to hold Yves’ hand” before dying. M O R B I D W T F. 😨😱 Yves then kills himself so he can be with her forever in death. Also apparently the fact that Hugo was yanhomo for Yves made a bunch of fangirls rage and give this game 1 star reviews calling it a BL game. Clearly someone has not played UtaPri Debut here. 🤣🤣🤣 In the good end, Yves gives Ceres a bouquet of burnt spider lilies and asks her to marry him, surrounded by fire lol. Talk about a hot proposal! 🔥🔥 Ceres is like eh fuck it, I might kill him but ehh I love him, and they make out amidst the flames lol. But hey as it turns out apparently Yves added spider lilies to his diet and bullshit cooking and so he actually developed some antibodies of his own just like Ankou! And so in the epilogue, they both survive cause the rain put out the fire. Since Ceres is still a poison spewing tank, she lives with Yves in that cave hideout underneath the lily garden until the two of them eventually will die. Great. 😒
Ankou/Adolphe – The route starts the game over like a “redo” to give us all the happy end we’ve been waiting for. In this route Ceres ends up staying with Adolphe because she wanted to die alone in the rain after the explosion at the orphanage that hurt Yves. Adolphe is like oniichan to her because she was raised as his step sister by Salome. Adolphe has no plans to become a relifer, but after he dies he doesn’t know what to do with Ceres because without him, having left the orphanage, she has nowhere to go. Ankou shows up and calls him out on it saying that Ceres wanted to be a normal girl, but Adolphe treated her like she’s really at fault and isolated her from everyone. So they end up arguing and somehow we derail into a 3P route with Ankou and Adolphe at the love shack with Ceres. 😂😂 I didn’t mention it in other routes but Ankou is basically invincible and any wounds or injuries will eventually repair themselves. Even if he’s cut up into pieces they will eventually fuse back together and regenerate his form (which is how he came back to life after Lucas butchered him.) So then Ceres starts to realize there’s this invisible wall that Adolphe keeps putting between her, but when she tries to find out what it is he tells her he’s been lying to her all these years but doesn’t specify why.
Thanks to Dahut they get access to a secret underground library at the royal palace, and they find the diary of the former queen named Christine Revpowell. She wanted to try to find out the cause of the fatal disease but everyone of her family including her husband the king then, didn’t give a fuck and just wanted to keep relifing themselves. And when she tried to do research on her own, they sent assassins after her. When Salome finds out that Adolphe and Ceres are trying to find out the truth, she locks Adolphe in the orphanage basement dungeon and tries to do the same to Ceres, but Ankou saves her and lets her escape. When they get to the spider lilly field, Ankou starts stuffing them in his mouth saying it’s his regular diet. 🥴 Meanwhile, the king orders Scien to be killed and it’s revealed that his daughter is none other than Salome, real name Mariette Revpowell. A mysterious voice who’s been giving orders to Crapaccino and the Revpowells promises them new bodies that will grant them eternal life as long as they bring to him Ceres and Ankou. The townspeople go into a panic because Scien is dead, and they think that they can no longer be relifed. Comb Revpowell (I’m calling him that cause wtf is コーム) comes to the entire island speaker and tells everyone that they have found the solution to the curse aka Ceres.
Meanwhile Ceres, Ankou and Adolphe hide in some underground cave bunker while the citizens on the island are in chaos looking for them. After hearing the announcement, Ankou runs out to Yves’ grandpa’s grave only to find out its been dug up and the royals stole his diary – which is how they discovered the truth about Ceres and her flower power. So eventually the angry mob chases them down, Lucas chops up Ankou and in order to save Adolphe from being beaten to death she agrees to go to the royal palace. There she discovers the the royals in general just want to have eternal life, and made Scien work on those bodies for them and that the relife system was just an afterthought excuse to hide all of this from the rest of the citizens. Once they attain eternal life they don’t care that the rest of the island basically dies out. After this Ceres is thrown into an underground cell, right next to Dahut who was imprisoned for protesting against their stupid decisions. Unfortunately he’s taken out to be executed shortly after but before he goes he tells her a way to escape and go to the lab where most likely Ankou is being held. After that it appears like Dahut is taken to be executed. Not only that but they capture Adolphe to use him as their first test subject to see if he will get an invincible body from Ankou, before they run this system on the royals.
Somehow he ends up surviving the experiment, and after Crapaccino looks at his DNA, they found out Adolphe’s secret: He’s the 2nd person who somehow drifted to this island and therefore has normal human DNA, unaffected by the poison and will not die at age 23. I still don’t get why he wasn’t affected by the poison living here for years, meanwhile Yves’ grandpa and all of his kids/grandkids all got affected. Is it just living there too long I guess vs only being there say 10-12 years?? Adolphe reveals he’s 25 years old, and offers them information about outside countries as well as cooperation with experiments as a distraction in hopes Ceres can escape and save Ankou. After a bunch of painful experiments they throw him into the same cell as Ceres and while he’s out of it lying in her lap he confesses that he’s been in love with her for the last 2 years. I honestly couldn’t tell whose route this was with Ankou around but this scene finally made me realize it was Adolphe lol. Adolphe’s shit parents sold all their kids but becauses nobody wanted to buy him, they just threw him into the ocean. Like wow imagine having multiple kids and going through pregnancies, and then throwing them away like some used toilet paper. 🤪 Adolphe didn’t want to die alone in the ocean, so he decided to keep trying to swim until he ended up on the island and was found by Salome who adopted him as her stepson. Adolphe was hoping he’d just die at 23, but when his birthday came and he was fine, he realized he’s going to live a long miserable life. He was about to kill himself until 16 year old Ceres came into the room and stopped him. Adolphe had a mental break down and blamed his “lack of death” on Ceres lol. Ceres was like yea, I guess it’s my fault, sorry? And suddenly that made Adolphe’s heart go ズキューン for her lol. 😅🤣
When the day comes to present Ceres to the people of the island, suddenly everyone starts having a memory crash and clawing their hearts out including the royals. Within the chaos Ceres uses the opportunity to run to the Scien’s office as instructed by Dahut. She finds Ankou’s disembodied head, and he apologizes for being unable to save her. Ceres grab’s Ankou’s disembodied head tube, and goes to rescue Adolphe from the dungeon. Just when they don’t know where out to run, they get a call from Scien who’s at Camille’s lab with Mathis and Yves who are fortunately not dead at all lol. 😂 I mean I had a feeling Scien was a badass who survived but how the fuk did Yves survive Lucas’ attack…. Also Camille agrees to cooperate cause Mathis is like fucking fine dude I’ll help you revive your dead prostitute girlfriend. Anyway as I had guessed a few routes back, Dahut is the final boss but fortunately he’s on our side. He’s the son of Christine Revpowell, real name Liam Revpowell. He’s always talked about reviving his dead mother, so everything fit perfectly. Giving eternal life to his relatives was all a sham he ran in the background, and when he gave them that “power” it turned them into hideous creatures that no longer even looked human (think of Ed’s revived “mom” in Full Metal Alchemist lol.)
We then see a flashback of how Christine tried to solve the reason for the disease and then the royals killed her in front of Dahut. Dahut then spent years running away, even burning his face so he wouldn’t be recognizable by any of the town folk and one man took him and raised him. At age 15 he then climbed his way to the top by joining Scien and became VP of the entire research team while working to find a way to revive his mother. He also then worked in the background giving orders to people desperate to cling to life like Crapaccino and the royals. Dahut also admits to introducing Lucas to Crapaccino as revenge because Lucas’ father, who was supposed to be Christine’s guard, was unable to protect her. On top of this, the reason there’s radioactive poison on the island, is because many years ago, the idiot royal family decided to try to build a nuclear wall around the island so they wouldn’t be conquered by outside nations. Instead, they dun’ goofed and basically spread radiation poisoning in the entire country. GG. ಠ,_｣ಠ And because Ceres was born in the same lilly field where Christine’s bloody remains were dropped off, somehow magically Ceres inherited her genes inside herself too. LMFAO. OK OTOMATE. So yea Dahut wants to revive mommy using Ceres but before he can capture her, Ankou revives in the nick of time and helps them escape. (Honestly the dude has his eyes on like every place on the island where is there even places to run to??)
Of course Dahut sends his Lucas clone after them and he captures Ceres and tells her to make herself “comfy” in his underground lab lmao. He then sends a PSA to the island that he’s going to kill everyone because he wants to end the entire concept of relifers. The reason is if anyone from this island leaves and goes to the outside world and tells of this technology, it would create chaos in the world. Everyone on this island doesn’t take life seriously because they figure they’ll just “be reborn”. He wants to turn this country to being back like normal humans, like Adolphe. So like he’s totally reasonable, and since I love revenge, I honestly can’t hate the guy and I give him props for being this much of a calculating genius lol. Dahut even saved Nadia from Pedroccino and became friends with her because of her will to never lose her feelings of brotherly love that reminded him of his mom. Meanwhile back at the hideout cave with Scien and co, they casually reveal that Ankou is just a regular human with a “regenerating” power and the whole “disappearing in a cloud of smoke” was just a smoke bomb he used to act all mystical and shit 🤣🤣🤣. Anyway once Dahut sets off the poison gas everyone has to retreat except Adolphe and Ankou who are unaffected. Dahut watches the love confession from Adolphe again, goes aww…anyway, and sends more of his Lucas/Lucas dad clones to fight Adolphe. Unfortunately for Dahut, because Adolphe was subject to Crapaccino’s experiments, he also gained the ability to regenerate his body, so even though he had his hand chopped off last time it grew back lmao.
Dahut gets so pissed because Adolphe was the last true “human” on the island and even now that was ruined forever. They rescue Ceres out and this also stops the mass murder of the island citizens, so Dahut admits defeat….or so they thought, and while they are deciding on what to do with him, he sets off the mass murder system after all. 🤪 Just then Salome shows up, and reveals that she’s Dahut’s mom, Christine Revpowell…before stabbing Dahut with a knife. The reason she survived was because Scien found her after they had beat her up badly, but because she was still alive he took her backup data (since all the royals had it done) and relifed her. She kept getting killed so he had to do this over and over until he put her in charge of an orphanage. Despite being relifed, she never lost her will to be a mother which was strengthened when she adopted Adolphe and Ceres. She had no idea her son Liam was alive because she thought he was killed shortly after she was supposed to be. Thanks to Scien’s appearance changing technology, she was able to hide in plain sight all this time. Because of a memory lapse from all the relifing, Christine was never able to remember Liam’s face which is why she had no idea he was alive either. Salome suggests that she and Dahut die together and restart fresh and that she will give him the love she wanted to all these years. However Dahut is like “nah fuck u, instead of trying to find the truth about the disease, you spent all this time hiding and relifing yourself, you ain’t my momma!!! 😡😡”
The Dahut that Salome stabbed dies, and just then one of his other many clones shows up, stabs Salome and stuffs Ceres back into the LCL tank. Adolphe is like wtf, we found your mom why do you need Ceres anymore. After she breaks out of the tank, her entire body is covered in scars that look like spider lilies. Apparently her body now absorbs the poison at like 10x the rate which will eventually overwhelm her body and kill her just like how spider lilies turn black after absorbing the poison. Ankou tries to save her by dripping his blood down her throat because apparently he’s a researcher who’s spent hundreds of years trying to create an antibody to dispel the poison (and how he ended up gaining an invincible body.) Just then Salome manages to get her bearings, and then she stabs Dahut clone #whatever through the heart. She tells Dahut that he’s right, she got jaded to being killed so many times and being revived over and over. She hugs him and they both die peacefully but Ankou is fucking pissed like “yo what the fuck u just go and die peacefully with mommy while leaving Ceres a complete suffering wreck 🤬🤬”. He then starts stabbing Dahut’s corpse over and over raging until Adolphe stops him. Ankou then takes Ceres and walks out of the lab into the lily field crying that he couldn’t save her again – revealing that he’s actually Adolphe from the future jumping back into time over and over trying to save her. Oh hey Ukyo, nice to see you again. 🤪🤣
So after the intro where Ceres killed herself, was the start of when Adolphe decided to work with Scien and offered his body for experiments. Because of this he gained a completely regenerating body and then 103 years went by as he searched to find the cure for the disease. He then found out other countries have a time travel option (clearly he visited the world of Tearblade AMIRITE?) so he decided to leave the island to find this technology. He stole the technology and travelled back to right before Ceres was born. Because of all the travelling his appearance change and he no longer even looks like Adolphe anymore. He then dressed up as the grim reaper and went to see Yves’ grandpa to be like “ayy I command you to plant those flowers to help with the poison” but grandpa tells him that it’s not about the flowers, but about making an antibody for the poison. And of course the best way to do that is to shove the poison filled flowers down his throat in hopes his body would create those antibodies lol. It was pretty painful since spider lilies have their own poison in them. So when he first met Ceres, his text was bleeped because he was not allowed to speak things his present self wouldn’t have known at the time. So the best he could do is make Ceres drink his blood which contained antibodies to help subdue the poison in her body so that she could be around others without having them instantly drop dead within days. So that’s why he made up the whole thing about being the lord of the underworld and that he would magically use his powers to turn her into a “normal girl”.
After telling her the entire story, Ankou asks Ceres to die with him before she turns into a spider lily monster. Ceres is like nah, no matter how painful I want to try to live. So then the 2 Adolphes have a gun vs sword man battle to see if present Adolphe is fit enough to protect her lol. ¯_ಠ_ಠ_/¯ But really it was an excuse to mess around with Adolphe’s genes to give him full regenerative abilities like his future self in hopes that would help cure Ceres one day. Ankou then shoots himself in the heart with a special bullet that would actually stop his regenerative ability and end his life for good. Damn, I actually liked him more than present Adolphe LOL. 😭 As he’s dying, Adolphe makes a wedding boquet (???) out of a bunch of nearby lilies and gives it to Ankou who’s like bleeding to death so he can “propose” to Ceres before he dies. Ankou then basically says that he enjoyed his time with her as Ankou, more than he ever did when he was Adolphe. In the epilogue 5 years later, they open the island to outside visitors. The royal family ruling dies out and instead it’s ruled by a government who obviously Scien is on top of. They also created a vaccine and antibodies for the disease so the relifer technology was deemed useless as people were able to live beyond age 23. I guess they cured Nadia too as she’s able to go outside while going through rehab. Lucas has gone through mental rehab to cure his murderous intentions too. Jean returns to being Mathis’ butler, and Mathis continues to need memory constantly downloaded into his brain but Scien is taking care of that in hopes to someday end the process. Mathis also continues his writing hobbies while Jean is forced to adopt an orphaned baby to raise. Yves goes travelling outside the island and Hugo decides to go with him lol (is this what the amazon reviews raged about?🤣) Yves secretly regrets that he got NTRed by Adolphe though lol. Scien is busy with government duties but he visits the grave of Salome and Dahut, who are buried together, every once in a while. Meanwhile for my fucking first happy end in this game, Adolphe and Ceres live happily together as she’s recovered from the poison thanks to the antibodies, though she still has some scars left.
For some reason even though it’s been 5 years and they’re obviously both in love, Ceres still hasn’t given him an answer to his love confession. 🤪 So now that she finally confessed to him he can finally kiss her for the first time in 5 years lol. Honestly it’s so disappointing to me because I really liked Ankou, and even though present time Adolphe makes more sense, compared to Ankou he didn’t do shit for Ceres. Ankou spent his entire life, hundreds of years to save her and in the end ended his life for her but what did Adolphe do? Blame her for his lack of dying, make her feel shitty, and then try to push her off to Yves because he was more fit for her while suppressing his own feelings. BLEH, Ankout FTW. 😭😭So anyway if my brain hasn’t suffered enough here’s some final bad ends for the road. In the despair end, it’s technically a 3P end with Ankou and Adolphe but unfortunately Ceres is basically dying and can’t actually enjoy it lmao rip. In the other end, Ankou is like nah fuck this island, we’re gonna just die in a fire together and then everyone else can rip afterwards. Before they both burn though he’s like damn girl you should have picked Yves someone else not useless me lol. He gives her one last goodbye kiss. 😭 In yet another bad end, they’re unable to save Ceres after all, so Ankou tells Adolphe to kill her to put her out of her misery. After he kills her Ankou offers him to repeat his despair to become invincible and time travel to try and save her again…..welp time for Ankou #2. In one of the other bad ends, the memory of Christine Revpowell awakens inside of Ceres and she goes to the royal palace like a zombie out to kill everyone who hurt her son Liam. Somehow she’s able to overpower a bunch of guards with just a knife in her hands, and when she awakens from her trance she has no idea what just happened.
Woooweee where do I even start with this one. I’m gonna say straight out – as far as the game is concerned I have no complaints. The story was pretty solid (even if it copied a lot of elements from other games). The graphics were beautiful and I never saw inconsistencies or any derpy CGs. The routes didn’t feel like copy pasta and everything was relatively unique to each route. The system was nice allowing you to jump to next choice/unread text (though the loading time was kinda slow.) However the execution and direction is where the game falls apart for me.
First of all, the game requires you to basically complete bad ends before you can see good ones. There’s 2 types of bad ends: The one that should have been a good end but is instead a despairingly long and winded bad end. The 2nd one is just the typical “you looked out the window instead of going out the back door, you instantly died.” So because you basically spend HOURS AND HOURS seeing blood, gore, death and despair, by the time you get to the bad end your brain is tired. The game makes you basically see the “true end” first before allowing you to see the “good” ends of the other characters. I expected then the good ends of all the other characters to follow canon of the true end: they did not. So even though in the true end a certain character was alive and kicking, in his good end, he still died. So ultimately there was absolutely no fucking reason to force players to do bad ends first. None of them broke canon, none of them affected your perception on the story and some of them didn’t even fucking feel like good ends. (ノ# ﾟдﾟ)ﾉ ┫:･’∵:．┻┻:･’．:∵ Seriously the only ends I could call good was for Adolphe and Scien. The other ends ranged from bittersweet to just “less bad than the bloody gory bad ends”.
I literally cannot understand the point of requiring to sit through so much bad shit. I understand the game was going for that whole ~despair~ shtick, and I honestly think there was plenty of despair to go around without this.
Secondly, the SHEER AMOUNT OF VIOLENCE. Ya anyone of you who saw that Cero D rating and think it was for sexy times: it wasn’t. Not even implied. It was all violence, blood everywhere, heads rolling. Fortunately most of it was in text form only but even some CGs were so violent and bloody honestly it felt like a waste of the artist’s skills lol. You can still do despair and sad endings without having to have SO MUCH VIOLENCE. As you all know I’ve played a LOT of otome games, but I have never played such a violent game in my life. MoshiKami came pretty close, but this game puts that to shame. There was so much fucking blood and violence that my brain just became jaded to everything and by the time I got to the happy endings, aside from Scien (who was my favorite) I really couldn’t give 2 fucks about anything. I intentionally avoided games like Chaos;Head and anything by NitroChiral but welp I guess Otomate decided to grab a chapter from their book. I should be thankful I didn’t see any of this in picture form at least!?
And finally, the lack of balance between story and otome elements in this game is just downright poor. Only Mathis and Scien’s routes felt romantic to me. All the others felt forced or just downright lacking in general that left me unsatisfied and disappointed. I won’t spoil it, but the true route – I actually was extremely unhappy of how that panned out. I wanted Ceres to end up with the other guy, not the one she ended up with because he did so much for her and he just gets tossed aside like that. They really did him dirty. There’s plenty of otome games that still manage to somewhat balance romance and despair (like Code Realize, or Collar Malice). They were trying to push the despair shtick so hard, they ended up forgetting like “oh shit uh we should add some happy endings right”. Some of the happy ends felt like an afterthought, and they weren’t even really happy or satisfying to me. Speaking of Collar x Malice, just like in that one, I actually liked the TRUE villain – because I generally love revenge themed stories, so in that sense, despite the drawbacks, that was one of my favorite things in the story.
So should you play this game? Well this comes down to how much you can stomach in terms of violence. A friend of mine heard me ranting about it and was like FUCK YEAA DESPAIIR I’M SO EXCITED. So honestly if you just wanna see everyone be miserable from start to finish, then this game is right up your alley. If you’re looking for a good balance of story but ultimately want an “otome romance game” then this might be a huge disappointment. It feels even more disappointing because if they only executed it better (starting with not forcing you to play all the bad ends first) it might have been less dissatisfying (to a degree depending on the route lol). They probably can’t even have a happy fluffy FD because it breaks the canon of almost every single “good end”.
And one final note, apparently this game got under fire from Japanese fans claiming that it has BL. Here’s my take on this: The BL is as much of an after thought as the happy ends. In fact I didn’t even fucking THINK it was BL until I saw the Amazon reviews. It’s literally 1 side character, is revealed to have potentially been in love with one of the main love interests after his death. That’s it. Outside of this one brief indirect revelation, there is absolutely NO HINTS OF BL. You’ll find more BL in UtaPri Debut than you will in this game. The fact that people on Amazon Japan gave this game 1 star reviews because of this, vs you know, the fact that you have to sit through shitty bad ends for 30 hours, just blows my mind. Supposedly most of the rage stems from the Stellaworth tokuten booklet, which I didn’t buy, so I can’t comment.
「 This is the story of the path towards eternal demise. 」
Shuuen no Virche -ErroR:salvation- (終遠のヴィルシュ・The Virche of Demise) is a Nintendo Switch game by Otomate. The game is slated to be released on October 7, 2021.
ARTIST Yomi (Ken ga Kimi)
SCENARIO WRITER Nakayami Satomi (Cafe Enchante, Variable Barricade, Code Realize)
DIRECTOR Yoshida Misa (Tlicolity Eyes)
PRODUCER Tatematsu Fumiyoshi (Cupid Parasite)
.
STORY
Alpciel: a small country located in the West Europe.
Surrounded by the ocean and black flowers of calamity — Lycoris noige — the people of this country are born with the《curse of death》, which causes death to befall them before the age of 23.
Alpciel, where all are equally met with the death, eventually became known as…
“The country cursed by the God of Death.”
In the face of death, the citizens grieved and resisted. After years of research, a system that would allow people to abandon their bodies at the age of 23 and have only their memories live on forever was born: “Memory Download.” Those who gained the ability to live forever and fight against death with “Memory Download” came to be known as “Relivers.” hELP THIS SETTING IS SO CHUUNI I CANT KDLSFJSFSA
Somewhere else in this land is a girl who brings misfortune to all those around her — a girl known as the《God of Death》. Driven to despair by her own existence, the girl decides to end her life. Right at that moment, a mysterious man referring to himself as the《Gatekeeper of Death》appears before her.
Guided by the gatekeeper, the girl inevitably comes in contact with the《many mysteries of death》that haunt this country.
Unbeknownst to her, only despair awaits those cursed by the God of Death…
WORLD
Alpciel (アルペシェール・arupeshēru)
※ this applies to all the place names but i lowkey have no clue what they are supposed to be in english so please bear with me🥲🥲
Also known the country cursed by the God of Death.
A small country surrounded by《black flowers of calamity》Lycoris noige and the ocean. The country has been closed to the outside for many years; because of the rough oceanic current, there are no foreign visitors to begin with. The land is largely divided into the Commoner District, the Noble District, and the Research District.
ah yes, the three genders: rich, poor, and SCIENTIST
The people of this country are born with the《curse of death》, causing death to befall them before the age of 23.
Relivers (リライバー・riraibā)
A term referring to those who have continued to live with just their memories, using the system developed by Scien about 60 years ago. By downloading their “memory data” into a “clone” made from their genetic information, these people are able to start living again as Relivers.
As their physical lifespan is still the same as everyone else’s, Relivers repeatedly live《23 years》before having to start over again. While the system is able to prolong one’s life for an unlimited amount of time, Relivers must pay a huge price in order to do so.
Commoner District: Kuhne (クーネ・kūne)
The district that takes up a majority of Alpciel’s land. Home to the market and orphanage, this district is the most lively. Most citizens live here.
Noble District: Syude (シュディ・shudi)
Those who invest in the research facilities and royal family live here. The electrical facilities are more developed here than in Kuhne; many of those living here travel by electric cars or horse carriages.
lowkey the peasant district is prettier than this one w
Research District: Cerunevor (セルネヴォル・serunevoru)
Located in the centre of the country, many important buildings, like the state research institute and the royal palace, can be found here. The most technologically developed district, this district almost feels magical to those from Kuhne.
The Fields of Lycoris Noige
The outer edge of Alpciel is lined with fields of Lycoris noige. Because those who have picked or destroyed these flowers have died before the end of their lifespan, these flowers are also known as the《flowers of calamity》, and are avoided by most of the citizens.
CHARACTERS
The girl who parts with the fate of death’s curse
Ceres (セレス)
cv. n/a
“O, Lord… I……I have killed so many people.”
｜AGE 18
｜OCCUPATION Assistant at children’s home
The heroine of this game. Her parents passed away when she was very young. Because those involved with her have gotten into accidents or suddenly passed away, she became known the《God of Death》and is shunned by everyone else.
Driven to despair by how she has brought misfortune to others her whole life, she decides to kill herself and encounters Ankou. She becomes faced with the many forms of《death》in this country.
The man who relishes the fate of loving others
Yves (イヴ)
cv. Saitou Souma
“——Even if there is nobody that loves me, I will continue to love everything in this world.” man…MAN……….
｜AGE 18
｜OCCUPATION Handyman, member of Vigilante Corps
A young man who runs the handyman service “Krewn” (クルーン・kurūn) and a member of the vigilante corps. He has an earnest and genuine character, earning the trust of the citizens around him. Yves is a humanitarian who believes bad deeds may be acceptable depending on the situation.
He was abandoned as a child due to a burn scar he got when he was in a fire. He believes that if he loves others and keeps on helping them, he will one day meet someone who will love him back.
THE PHAAAAAAANTOM OF HT EOPERA IS HERE
The man who yearns for the fate of guiding others
Lucas Proust (リュカ・プルースト)
cv. Hirakawa Daisuke ＯＮＥ Ｆ ＥＡＲ
“I believe teaching is truly the vocation that God bestowed upon me.”
｜AGE 22
｜OCCUPATION Teacher
A visiting teacher who holds classes in various churches and children’s homes. He occasionally visits the orphanage where the heroine lives. He has a meticulous personality and is generally friendly, but also has a strong sense of justice.
He has a sickly younger sister whom he often visits at the hospital. Lucas is very religious — he believes children are a gift from the heavens and treats them with particular care.
The man who rejects the fate of forgiving others
Mathis Claude (マティス・クロード)
cv. Amasaki Kouhei
“The man who murdered my brother…I will kill him with my own hands……!”
｜AGE 17
｜OCCUPATION Master of the Claude House
A young man who lives in the Noble District. He enjoys reading – his room is practically overflowing with books. Timid and very shy, he struggles to meet eyes with others and hold conversations.
Since the murder of his older brother, whom he admired deeply, Mathis has been searching for the killer. i want to aggressively pat him and read him bedtime stories………
The man in a rage for the fate of keeping others alive
Scien Brofiise (シアン・ブロフィワーズ)
cv. Hosoya Yoshimasa
“The body is ultimately just a vessel to carry the brain and heart.”
｜AGE 23 (physical)
｜OCCUPATION Researcher, head of State Research Institute
The head of the state research institute, he is the genius scientist who created the “Memory Download” system. By downloading himself over and over again, he has lived for a very long time as a “Reliver”. He believes humans are disposable tools and that emotions are technical bugs. 🙄🙄 the way i rolled my eyes at this. Omg XD Bro you’re such a Scientist! Everything is just a program to you huh bro XDDD
He believes in efficiency over anything else and sees even his own life and his friends’ lives as research materials.
so ur telling me.. this guy is just one big asshole? nice 🙂
The man who resonates with the fate of seeking others
Adolphe (アドルフ)
cv. Yashiro Taku
“……They haven’t changed at all. The people of these country are still the same at heart.”
｜AGE 21
｜OCCUPATION Leader of Vigilante Corps
The leader of the vigilante corps who grew up in the same orphanage as the heroine. He currently lives alone on the outskirts of town. His words and actions can come off as blunt, but he has a kind heart and cannot turn a blind eye to those in need. He is like an older brother to the heroine.
i see. You are the one who has been selected as the Brother™️ of this game. welcome
The man who toys with the fate of governing death
Ankou (アンクゥ)
cv. Okitsu Kazuyuki
“If you keep the promise you made to me…I shall allow you to be reborn as an ‘ordinary girl.’”
｜AGE ???
A mysterious and elusive existence who calls himself the《Gatekeeper of Death》. He prevents the heroine’s suicide and proposes that the heroine solves the mystery of the deaths in this country.
He often confuses and throws others off with his behaviour, making it difficult to grasp what his true intentions are.
THOUGHTS
yomi designs are so tasty…..thank u for the food!!!!!!!! im so glad to see them working for something new because as far as i know they’ve never done anything outside of ken ga kimi despite being such a 神絵師;v;;;
understandably everyone is very excited about this game!!!! i think i’m going to wait for more developments and stuff (like full PV..?) — the premise is a tad bit too edgy for me sdflska but i’m a sucker for anything that will make me cry so i hope that’s the direction they go in..!!!!!!!
in terms of characters, i was the most interested in lucas at first (yes its because he is pretty and has long hair I KNOW!!!!) but uhhhhhhhh if he’s cv. hirarin………..uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
<war flashbacks of laito>
ANYWAY i will protect mathis with my life please do not speak to me or my son ever again( ˙▿˙ )
honestly i’m surprised by some of the seiyuu choices??? i imagined a lower voice for yves and maybe like okanobu for ankou and
……not hirarin for lucas………….DSKFLSAKDF sorry hirakawa daisuke seems like such a kind person in the events i’ve seen and his voice is really nice but he’s voiced so many eerie scary charcters i feel my fight or flight response activate whenever he talks（失礼
also i have literally no reason to hate scien so much, maybe he’s a cool guy for all i know but i just hATE rude arrogant characters :”))))))) i know seeing them ~being changed by the heroine~ is meant to be part of their charm but MAN i just cant accept them unless they really do sth to redeem themselves
maybe i’d hate him less if i knew more about him but his character description on its own…..GOD………… 👊 👊 👊💢💢
anyway BUSTAFELLOWS deluxe ver. re-release/en localization/sequel are coming so i will be thinking about that until anything new comes out for virche (yes i have completely become a believer of extend😇💗)
hope anyone that reads this has a wonderful day!!!(*ˊᵕˋ* )