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Review of Akeiro Kaikitan

SubjectAkeiro Kaikitan
Akeiro Kaikitan - Package Edition
ByHelpfulness: 4
Vote: 10
myahkey on 2020-09-02 last updated on 2020-09-04
ReviewAkeiro Kaikitan is a visual novel written by (in)famous Kazuki Fumi, the writer who brought you the 9-nine- series, Nanairo Reincarnation and Kimagure Temptation, which was announced for the English release by Sekai Project. The VN focuses on a pretty tired trope of the seven school mysteries, which combined with Fumi's writing style actually becomes very interesting. I'm gonna try and elaborate on why I found Akeiro so good.

The plot starts in a typical way: Saeki Yashiro, our protagonist, gets cursed by the ghost of the old school building. The curse is as follows: if you get cursed, then in a few days you should be ready for your remains to be scraped off of the asphalt below the old school building roof, just like what happened to four schoolgirls prior to the game's starting point. With the help of his friends Shuuji and Kana, his osananajimi-sister Misato, twin loli gods Ruri and Ruka and spirit experts Youko and Velvet, Yashiro must try to get this pile of mysteries solved, before he himself becomes a bloody pile of intestines.

The first thing I really want to talk about is the common route: it's honestly probably one of the best common routes in VNs I've ever seen. It has a heckton of content, yet it doesn't feel dragged out. Every playthrough is practically different from each other. Unlike a lot of VNs, where common routes are essentially the same with a few scenes shuffled here and there, in Akeiro there are just so many events, and the investigation can go in an absolutely different direction depending on your choices. For example, in Kana's part of common route you meet one of the dead girls' ghosts, yet she doesn't appear at all outside of that part of common. Common is an essential part of the story here, not just a one-time read with ctrl skipping in between new scenes.

The characters are also really, really good. They almost feel like genuine people and not just sprites on the screen. Interactions between Yashiro and Shuuji honestly remind me so much of my school days, every character has a believable quirk, dialogues flow extremely well, and jokes and gags are more hit than miss.

On the other hand, there is also the horror aspect, which is pretty nice. When Fumi wants the reader to feel unsettled, hell yeah he can do that. Akeiro might not be the scariest game ever, but it becomes uncomfortable, in a good sense of the word, aside from one scene in the true route.

However, after the common some problems do appear. Without spoilers: while I enjoyed the overall story very much, some routes, like Misato and Velvet's epilogue, can feel quite dragged out. Most of the events still make a lot of sense, so I can't really fault the game here, but just keep that in mind. While talking to /u/OavatosDK on Twitter he remarked that prolonged epilogues make the story and characters feel more human, since we can see their side after the events, in ordinary life, but IMO that doesn't really counter the point that some of that might feel too dragged out for some readers. Not gonna talk too much about the true route, it's good in context of the VN as in it ties up most of the hanging plot threads, so I'm gonna leave it at that.

All in all, Akeiro Kaikitan is a great experience which I urge every fan of Nanairo Reincarnation to try. Unfortunately, Sekai opted for Kimagure Temptation release rather than Akeiro, so no dice for English readers, but I hope that Sekai will eventually release Akeiro for the West.

[Originally published at link]
4 points