Rewrite - General Discussion

About Rewrite
Rewrite Anime General Discussion

Route Topics
Common Route Discussion
Kotori Kanbe Route & Character Discussion
Chihaya Ohtori Route & Character Discussion
Lucia Konohana Route & Character Discussion
Shizuru Nakatsu Route & Character Discussion
Akane Senri Route & Character Discussion
Moon Arc Discussion
Terra Arc Discussion

Character Topics
Kotarou Tennouji Character Discussion
Haruhiko Yoshino Character Discussion
Kagari Character Discussion
Inoue Character Discussion

Harvest festa! Topics
Rewrite Harvest festa! General Discussion
Harvest festa! Kotori Route Discussion
Harvest festa! Chihaya Route Discussion
Harvest festa! Lucia Route Discussion
Harvest festa! Shizuru Route Discussion
Harvest festa! Akane Route Discussion
Harvest festa! Kagari Route Discussion
Rewrite Quest Discussion

Miscellaneous Topics
Rewrite Quotes & Screenshots
Rewrite Fanart

General discussion thread for the Rewrite Visual Novel and it’s adaptations. Please tag late-game spoilers with the [spoiler] tag.
This was notable for being a Key game with no writing from Jun Maeda, and managed to distance itself significantly from Key’s typical formula of nakige. Do you like the direction Rewrite took from Key’s usual style? Would you like to see Key produce more stories with this darker, more serious tone? Or would you prefer a return to their nakige roots? What did you think of Rewrite as a whole, and how does it rank compared to Key’s other works? Or is it incomparable? Discuss!

I pretty much think all of Tanaka Romeo’s routes are badly written, with varying levels of enjoyably regardless. Moon being the peak, most of Kotori being the bottom. I say most, because the Inoue parts of Kotori’s route were some of the best parts of the game.

Other than that, Shizuru’s route is fairly average, Lucia’s is pretty good.

But Sakuya’s route blows the rest of the game away I think, it was just perfect, I believe I described it as ‘absolutely idiotic’ which is completely and utterly fitting for Chihaya’s route, it is absolutely idiotic, but it’s so incredibly fun I’d take it over the entire rest of the game every time.

I know I’m certainly going to get some looks for that last one.

No, you’re right.

We talked about this on Skype with Kluck (Who I think is yet to make his account despite the invite).

It’s like… Chihaya’s, or Sakuya’s rather, route is the best one in the game. But it’s so disconnected it doesn’t even feel like part of the overall game.

Lucia’s route was fascinating, so I generally go with that for being the best route in Rewrite.

Terra was… weird.

I really enjoyed Rewrite. It was my first Key VN and also the first VN where I played every route. Each route had something special about them. Kotori’s had the biggest emotional impact on me, Lucia’s had really good romance and mystery, Saku- Chihaya’s route has some really good fights and seeing Kotarou develop into a strong character was nice. Akane’s…well it was nice seeing Kotarou change into a coldblooded murderer compared the other routes where he refused to kill. As for Shizuru… it was kinda despairing towards the end (Shizuru x Tree) and it was my least favorite so I don’t have much to say.

Now Moon and Terra were great. Moon towards the end felt nostalgic and intense. Wasn’t expecting the ending twist too. Terra was my favorite, I don’t know why but I love it when a story goes into a separate timeline. We got to see more Esaka, Imamiya, and Nishikujou, Kotarou had some awesome development, Kagari became more likable (I love those moments when she proposes an idea). It all just tied in really well. Now I wouldn’t say it’s perfect, it didn’t really have as big of an emotional impact on me as Kotori’s route. Kagari was likable but I didn’t feel that attached to her.

Overall I had a blast playing this VN, it was a great read. I wouldn’t consider it a masterpiece but it felt close. It definitely had some room to improve here and there.

My route ranking:
Terra & Moon > Kotori > Lucia > Chihaya > Akane > Shizuru

Also @Aspirety I’m looking forward to your Moon and Terra Reflections~ :smile:

I wasn’t overly fond of Kotori’s route at all, honestly.

I understand she was meant to play a neutral role, but the whole route just ended up being an infodump and was… boring, honestly.

Man Rabla when did your Rewrite opinions sync up almost exactly like mine.
Aside from treating Sakuya’s routes disconnect as a bad thing worth knocking it below Lucia, you’re spot on.

Oh right, and Oppai route best route, I forgot that.

I always said I don’t treat it as a Rewrite route, its like a fun bonus story.

Lucia best Rewrite route.

Chihaya’s route was definitely fun, but it didn’t mesh well with the other routes. It was a nice change of pace, but it also felt very shallow, so I have quite conflicting feelings about it.

I can’t agree that Kotori’s route was bad though. It was meant to pull you into this sense of despair and hopelessness, which unfortunately was blown away after playing Chihaya’s route, haha. Kotori’s route addressed a lot of deep questions, like the nature of life and human morality. I was shocked by how dark it was, and at the climax, I was fully expecting a bad end. It left me drained, but I can’t say I didn’t appreciate it. In fact, all of Romeo’s routes shared this feeling of overwhelming despair that drained all hope and good from the world, right before restoring just a little bit at the end. To me, that’s the biggest thing that differentiates Rewrite from most of Key’s other stories, where the happy end was chosen at the last moment in favour of a much bleaker outcome. They had balls writing Rewrite, I admire that a lot.

I’ll reserve my final thoughts on Moon and Terra for my reflection blogs, though. Glad you’re looking forward to them @Red, hopefully I’ll be able to get back into them once the site is all set up!

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From best to worse, my opinion on route rankings is this:
“Terra > Moon > Lucia > Akane > Shizuru > Chihaya > Kotori”
(Spoilers for all routes)

Terra was amazing, I think that’s something most of us can agree on~ Ahaha~
Moon was interesting, and I think Yoshino is my favorite “best friend” character from a VN because of his actions in Moon.

I explained my opinion on the Akane route in the relevant discussion topic, but I’ll explain briefly here~ It felt rushed, didn’t include much romance, and contradicted the other routes occasionally. However I felt that it was the most engaging.
Sure we didn’t get to connect much with Akane or any other characters, but I was okay with that. It was just Kotarou and the world… and Kotarou was actually kinda smart compared to other routes. It also explained quite a bit, such as Kotarou’s ability to rewrite his mind to be more of a familiar, and his ability to rewrite his Aurora. Living Aurora blades are OP~ Ahaha

I thought Lucia’s was amazing. The music was beautiful (Yuriha, Sunbright, Yami no Kanata e, and Scene Shifts There) and the story was… emotional. Before starting the route Lucia was my least favorite character… by the end of the route she had become my favorite. It had an interesting background story to it, and an antagonist named Brenda who actually felt threatening somewhat. Actually, you could argue there were two threatening antagonists. Brenda was a heartless person who didn’t deserve to continue living… but Asahi Haruka was pretty scary too.
I think the story was great, and the pacing was perfect. Unfortunately, the ending ruined it… because Kotarou was irritating. In Lucia’s route, Kotarou reached Emiya Shirou levels of idiocy! That’s the worst thing you can do to a protagonist (unless you are talking about Chaos;Head)
If Kotarou wasn’t stupid in this route, it might have been perfect for me… Instead I spent an hour screaming “YOU REWROTE YOUR BODY SO THAT YOU CAN BE WITH HER!!! JUST TELL HER THAT!!!”

Shizuru’s was… Well, I’m not sure what there is to say. It was cute, and the ending was sweet… but nothing in the route was memorable apart from the theme music ‘Love Song’ and ‘Love Letter’

I don’t like Chihaya… sorry…
Apart from Makoto Sawatari and Haruka Saigusa, I don’t like any airheaded/cheerful characters… The ending of the route was nice though. It’s nice to have a happy ending somewhere in the VN.

Kotori was the first route I read, and I didn’t know what I was getting into. My memories of it revolve around a one-sided romance, awkward conversations, and a main character who tries to kill big monsters with no training.
The ending was really good, and the overall fantasy feel was nice, but I couldn’t appreciate the rest of the route.

Auu… That was a lot of typing… T~T I didn’t mean to spend so much time on this.

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My route order is something like Chihaya >>>>>>>>>>>>> The Inoue parts at the start of Kotori > Lucia > Moon > Shizuru > Akane > Terra > the rest of Kotori. I’ll go dig up my thoughts proper if anyone wants to hear them.

No see that’s what’s so good about it, it’s simple and utterly idiotic, it’s PERFECT for Chihaya.
I firmly believe something doesn’t need to be deep or complex to be good, and Chihaya’s route is a great example of this I find.

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For me, Rewrite isn’t really about which route is the best since it’s more of an ensemble in which individual stories and romance only play a second role. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t be able to point out my favorite route, I don’t really have one. My favorite characters are Kotori for her witty personality (a Key main heroine who makes toilet humor, you can’t beat that!) and Lucia for her infinite moeness (both being aspects I didn’t expect from those characters when I first saw them, funnily enough). But in term of story, I’m more interested by the main focus of the game: its ambitious plot about the fate of the world, and how it holds this bargain pretty well.

Like always, the VN is overly long, and I’m sure there are things to criticize in the writing itself, but the scenario also does a lot of things right: the bigger plot involving the life and death of many people prevents the individual routes from having the usual naive feel of Chara-ge, and of course every route plays a role in the big scheme of things; the story doesn’t actually go for an environmentalist moral (and the method used to the save the world from its doom is pretty original and thought-provoking); it doesn’t shy from a bittersweet (yet satisfying) final ending like Little Busters did; and it also has an actually useful and interesting bad ending, for the first time in Key history as far I know (and overall there is also a lack of pointless bad endings and choices in the routes).

One detail I also really liked is that a logical explanation is given as to why love saves the day! And I can’t recall any other fiction which did that too.

Anyway, you mix all of these good ideas with Key’s colorful characters, and you have the best Key game made so far. And I hope they are going to continue making original games like this one that break the usual mold of Chara-ge.

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Well I was going to make a thread for this but this site sucks and I couldn’t tag it right so it’s here now wwwwwwwwwwww

Because why the hell not exactly? Time for a Rewrite power level discussion!

Obviously massive spoilers for the entire game in here. If a character has Xroute! before their name it’s because they’re different enough in that route to the rest to warrant an entire different placement.

Spoilers for the entire game of course

Absolutely absurdly powerful tier(Everything in this tier is completely and utterly broken):

Oppai!Kotarou

World destroying tier(Could easily take down entire worlds solo, not just Rewrites):

Moon!Kotarou
The Key
Final Familiar!Sakuya
Lucia!Lucia

Extremely powerful tier(Have no reason to lose to anything lower):

Terra!Kotarou
Chihaya!Kotarou = Sakuya
Sakuya HB
Earth Dragon(So they say, even if it failed to live up to any expectations at all)
Shizuru
Esaka
Midou and Fuego
Kilimanjaro
Krivoy Rog

Decently powerful tier(The most balanced and common level of power):

Lucia
Chihaya
Kotori with familiars
Akane!Kotarou
Takasago
Nishikujou
Imamiya(Presumed, if he kept up with Nishikujou)
Old man Gen and his posse(Not as a single entity, they’re all presumed around this same level of power)
Luis
Stronger generic familiars
Leaf Dragon
Chibimoth
Kagari
Weaker generic familiars

Weak as shit(Stronger than normal humans for the most part, but could easily lose to normal humans if they got just a few numbers going):

Lucia!Kotarou
Shizuru!Kotarou
Kotori!Kotarou
Akane with familiars
Shimako with familiars
Lowest level familiars
Pani
Gil
Yoshino
Inoue
Kotori
Akane

If someone isn’t featured they are too irrelevant/didn’t show off enough to be gauged/I forgot. Feel free to argue

I stumbled across this on a blog ages ago~ I didn’t know that was you~! >A< I can’t remember how I found it though…
I was either randomly searching for Rewrite stuff, or someone on Twitter sent the link to me…

Yeah I have a blog I use rather infrequently to dump random things every now and then, I was just thinking of a way to get some discussion here and remembered it.

Rewrite was the first Key VN that I’ve ever read. Before that, I only had watched the anime adaptations of Key’s works (which were generally more than enough for me to like them). That’s kind of ironic, since I began reading Rewrite knowing full well that it was departure from their style and that Maeda was not writing anything.

So, I’ll try to keep it short (already wrote a full review for a Brazillian site that I participate): To me, Rewrite was good, but not a “masterpiece” by any means.
You see, my main problem with the story is it’s lack of consistency. Even though the multiple writers format does pay off during the experience (to me, one of the best aspects of Rewrite was not knowing what was coming up next, since the routes were so different), it’s also it’s biggest weakness. The routes are just so different and the story gets so convoluted that somethings were simply “out of their place” in my opinion.

While the protagonist changing his ways through varying circunstances in the differing routes is a given in most visual novels, here I just couldn’t buy into all of Kotarou’s “mutations”, with the biggest drawback being Akane’s route, where I felt he was simply going with the script without any actual resolve or much character development until the very end. While in Terra route Kotarou struggled to find strength in his power for an example, in Chiahaya’s route he pretty much becomes a super-hero fairly easily with all the shounen tropes and such.

Lucia’s route was one of the best to me, but it’s just waaaay too unrelated to the bigger picture. She does virtually nothing in the rest of the story and her backstory and struggle, which I found to be the most engaging, is simply not even mentioned as an issue in the rest of the VN.

The salvation thing was also quite confusing to me, as it happens differently in two routes (three, if you count Terra) for no real reason. We just have to kind of assume that the Key had some sort of power as to how the whole shebang would take place, and she decided to it differently from time to time.

Also, characters that served purpose only on their respective routes to never be seen again, mostly the villains. Midou, Tenjin, Tenma, Brenda, Takasago (though he still makes a brief appearance in Terra) and, the ones that actually got me kind of pissed, Gil and Pani. I just loved those two, and they only have any sort of role in two routes. It’s like they don’t exist on all the other routes, and the reason they are not summoned by Kotarou in Moon to at least support the fight was just like a “screw you, they’re not my characters” by Tanaka Romeo to me. I kept hoping they would somehow appear in Terra, but nope. Midou’s group is also not an issue outside of Chihaya’s scenario. I guess Gaia deals with them offscreen in some unmentioned way every other time, even though they are stated to possess three of the strongest familiars in the whole organization.

Also, while Moon got me really pumped, I don’t think Terra offered a proper payoff to such a long visual novel. It had it’s fair share of really nice moments, but also a lot of scenes and arcs that I think dragged on for waaay too long (the middle east portion comes to mind…also, I think this whole portion was just bizarre and came out of left field). Terra was like a roller-coaster of quality to me, and I still have mixed feelings about the ending. While I think it made sense with the overall message of the story and had a nice bittersweet feeling, it also left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

All of those things might make it sound like I dislike Rewrite, but that’s far from the truth. I liked it overall, it was a very interesting read full of very good ideas and deep, emotional messages. It’s just that for every outstanding moment (every route has at least one), there were scenes that dragged too long, spriteless characters, consistency issues and the like.

Wow…that’s one long post…hope somebody reads it, hahaha.

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Yeah, Rewrite is hurt the most by its abysmal production quality and multiple writers.
Every KEY game has multiple writers, mind you, but they don’t usually suffer from it quite so much either because there’s some actual oversight or because the storyline is simple enough to not need that kind of consistency.
That said, routes are pretty consistent within but not between writers… the reason that Salvation is so different in Shizuru’s route and in Akane/Terra is because I don’t really think Tonokawa knew what Salvation really entailed, and that lack of understanding of Romeo’s concepts is a pretty big issue with his routes in general.
Lucia, by the way, was added later in development (even though her route was finished first) which is probably why she’s not really involved in anything else…

I don’t really consider it out of left field, but the funny thing about that section that nobody really realizes is that Midou and his friends make an appearance in it.

I see this complaint a lot. Can you articulate why? Because I absolutely loved Terra’s ending.

I moved 4 posts to an existing topic: Rewrite - Terra Discussion

Focus was shifting heavily to Terra, so I cleaned it up a bit.

Since it might be announced one of these years, I was wondering what everyone’s thoughts were on a Rewrite anime adaptation.
How does everyone think it would work? I sort of doubt the approach from the previous Key adaptations would fit well with how the routes play out…

Well I thought Clannad and Little Busters! would have had the Higurashi approach… but neither did x.x
Rewrite is a lot more dependent on arcs being separate “routes” but I wouldn’t be surprised if they somehow trimmed it down to a single true route~ ^^;

Well, the issue I have with that is that, like, Moon/Terra pretty much -have- to be separate, yeah?
You could mush all the heroine routes together, sure, but if you already have separate “timelines” (not really an accurate word in Rewrite but you get my drift) for the true routes, than you already have a precedent for -not- mushing them together, you know?
…Really, it’s obvious why nobody has picked this up yet.