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Review of Aiyoku no Eustia

SubjectAiyoku no Eustia
Aiyoku no Eustia - First Press Edition
ByHelpfulness: 0
Vote: 9
potatotototatpo on 2023-06-02 last updated on 2023-06-04
ReviewEustia is about a lot of things, it explores many themes throughout its long story, which is deeply related to the world it is set in. In fact, if I can only say one thing about Eustia, it would be of the world building. The world of Eustia is extremely well fleshed out, and seems to expand fluidly as our protagonist climbs out of the slums, into the middle class streets, joining the aristocrats' world, searching for answers about the nature of the world. None of the locations seem out of place in their relation to the rest of the world and the characters act appropriately as well. This gives the story a lot more realism, as in strengthening the suspension of disbelief: the feeling that this fantastical world, nothing like ours can actually exist, thus the actions and consequences of the characters have extra weight as a result. Considering how authors generally just base their world upon some portion of the the real world, effectively cutting out all the effort to convince the reader to care about the world by dumping the wikipedia at the reader's face, deciding to craft a fantasy world almost from scratch is impressive by itself, and Eustia doesn't just do it, it does it really well.

The rules governing the world are also well established, as vague as the number one rule being its crushing unfairness is. The way the world impedes characters' actions, suffocates them under the weight of the utter pointlessness of their choices under the face of impending crisis, making fools out of those who just want to make their bread and monsters out of those with even the best of intentions, is just impeccable. In fact, the story going out of its way to kick you while you are down, every single time, gives some semblance of predictability, fairness even, in the way tragedy is dished out. This is a good thing, as a storyteller, we want the world we tell our story in to be stable, its rules to remain unyielding, even as the very soil we stand on gives way.

About the themes explored in the story, most importantly, would be finding the purpose of one's life in a deeply purposeless world. Throughout the story characters constantly contemplate what point of living is, in such a world that just being in the wrong place at the wrong time would spell instant death. What the point of all the suffering one has endured would be if there is no light at the end of the tunnel. This goes on to the extent where characters would justify committing atrocities for a perceived noble goal, as 'What was the point of the lives of those I killed if I just stopped killing people now', to which, is an example of the sunk-cost fallacy: there is none, never was, stop trying to justify murder with murder you bloody murderer. Needless to say, the story takes a very nihilistic stance, until it doesn't, which is why it really needed to land its ending, which it doesn't. More on that later.

OST is incredible, almost every character has their own theme, each location has its set of unique tracks, and two of the tracks(that I caught) are used only once, and they all fit well.

Plot is, perhaps as a result, very intriguing. To describe it in one sentence: Former male prostitute candidate turned assassin turned bodyguard Kaim adopts a sister, and as a result, sets off a chain of events resulting in him being put in situations where he must cajole increasingly younger women to live with him as his sister, eventually turning the Earth herself into his sister.

Praise now out of the way, I would like to highlight the biggest issue I had with Eustia that has nothing to do with the ending, the ladder system.

A ladder system is where each character(heroine) arc is somewhat(in the case of this story, almost entirely) embedded in the common route, the story flowing naturally from one arc to the other unless, in the case of Eustia, the reader picks the 'I wanna pork the woman' button when it makes itself clear(believe me when I say it makes itself more than clear, half the time). Now I will not deny that I do not like this system, mainly because it takes away from realism, especially when(and in ladder systems there often is) an impending threat that approaches seemingly regardless of the protagonist's actions. Hence, I picture(looking at a certain Demon on a particular violin string) the coldblooded murderer with the Machiavellian mind and a unquenchable obsession for bloodshed, looking through sniper-scope at the target of his schemes settling down with a nice lass with large tits and a plump ass, going ' Ay, mate I do want to murder that bad boy but he sure does give some good head so I guess it can't be helped' as he orders a ticket to Hawaii, packs up all his murder equipment, undoes all his pre-laid explosives and flies into retirement. This issue is exacerbated in Eustia when the story's equivalent is the literal collapse of the entire island into the story's equivalent of hellfire, condemning the final bastion of mankind, Kaim and his chosen spouse and all into eternal damnation, within a year at best. As such I do hope I am not the only one who feels some dissonance with Kaim going 'We are still changing for the better' or 'What matters is not our past, but what we do now'. To an extent, this is lampshaded with Lucius telling Kaim(and the viewer perhaps) that inaction yielding from ignorance can be forgiven but to know the stakes yet choose to do nothing, is to sin. Yet this just makes it all the harder to go back to the previous choices and have Kaim choose ignorance. In fact, with how the heroine branches are just porking, planning about future living with spouse, more porking and roll credits, why not just offload them to the unlockables screen as 'what-if' scenarios like they had to already do when they killed off tia(I know they did not really, but counterpoint, they might as well have) with a downer ending(as in protagonist completely, utterly and irredeemably fails to accomplish what he set out to do, definition of downer ending) .


The next issue I had was the final arc and the ending, which is hard to explain without spoilers, so mid level spoiler warning. So only Tia's arc is left with a fifth of the cast dead including the big bad and his mad dog and suddenly opening 2 plays , implying that everything before has been just setting the stage for this one final arc and that things have only just started, which is somewhat true. In fact, the part that build up from previous arc, a crisis the fault of no one(alive) pits former allies against each other due to conflicting interest in the face of perceived doom and imperfect information, with no clear villain or instigator in sight (at least until someone crosses the line from self defense to full on genocide) , is well written enough. What is not is that, Kaim, the one with direct ties all all of these characters, who is described as quick witted, self-serving, yet kind to friends and overall a somewhat competent dude, who spends the entire story giving life lessons to other characters and helping them at their time of need in spite of conflicting interest, when pushed to make a decision, deciding to bugger off and wallow in self-pity, at points literally avoiding the problems that he knows fully well will come back to bite him, waiting out the clock until everything has been completely fucked before finally making a decision, then changing his goddamned mind, and then when everything is truly far too late, finally doing something (and failing) . To add insult in injury, Kaim has literally done this before, in Eris' arc. And here I thought people were supposed to learn from their mistakes. This as well as, the cliche nature of the world ending threat, how it is supposedly established that force feeding a puppy drugs would somehow stop the threat(it was not established, did not stop the threat until it did for bullshit reasons, vaporizing the puppy while at it, also for bullshit reasons) and lack of reader input to stop Kaim from being an indecisive rock, made for the last arc to be a less than pleasant reading experience. Ironically like the fate of the island itself , the story starts off flying like an acrobat, building up tension as it falls spinning gracefully in the air, then lands face first, breaking its neck. A downer end is fine if the characters try their best against all odd and are beaten. This would imply the world is inherently nihilistic. If the result is a happy ending, there is yet hope in the world. But, when the characters sit on their asses the whole time and somehow get the most equitable possible end for all the wrong reasons yet, something is wrong.

All in all, Eustia is extremely engaging with its stellar world building and intriguing characters but unfortunately falls short in the final lap. Despite that, I still recommend it, just adjust your expectations for the finale.
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