That was the point, I think. You are supposed to be angry because that’s not what they’re supposed to be doing. It makes you feel bad inside but… it’s something that so many people end up doing in the real life.
On that note, IIRC, the sex doesn’t happen in the normal ending right? It only happens in the good ending? Or am I mistaken? :x
Wat. The normal/bad ending sex scene was the most impacting sex scene of the series, how could you forget?
By not actually reading the sex scenes?
(and by being pepe, that helps a lot)
I read without h scenes, but the context of the moment they have sex is very significant.
Well then I guess just being pepe with horrible memory is the sole cause of my forgetfulness
So, in the Normal Ending, Minagi and Yukito are just running away from their problems? I mean, for her to be dependent on him and leave town together with him is upsetting because that won’t make the problems go away, it’s a temporary solution, not a permanent one.
In the Good Ending (the Canon Ending to Minagi’s route), Minagi herself was able to reconcile with her mother, and her father called her to tell her to visit his new family. She was able to solve her problems with aid from Yukito, who is about to leave town? (AIR Spoilers for the events in Misuzu’s Route, as well as for the True Ending to her route) Wait, wasn’t he suppose to look for the Girl in the Sky (Misuzu)? Why is Yukito leaving town now? Of course, before he even left, Minagi talks to him about the letter she got from her father. I just want to ask, isn’t the Good ending (the ending talked about in this paragraph) the True ending to Minagi’s route?
You’re right. It sort of feeds into Yukito’s character. He’s always trying to get out of town. And if you go down Minagi’s route, he’s already given up on finding the girl in the sky in that town. So him leaving town might be disagreeable to some, but it makes sense. It’s pretty lame that the dialogue choice that decides which ending you get is whether you ask for a kiss or not.
But yes, the Good Ending to Minagi’s route is the True Ending to Minagi’s route. Minagi and Yukito amicably part ways, and Yukito leaves town, which he had planned to do anyway.
So, as you said, the Good Ending to Minagi’s Route is the True, Canon Ending to said Route, correct? What I mean is if the Good Ending is Canon to Minagi’s Route specifically, especially since unlike her Normal Ending, her Good (True) Ending has credits and it’s the resolution to her problems as she and Yukito part ways on good terms with him leaving town.
I wonder, didn’t Minagi go to her father’s home to see her little sister at the end of her route? Also, does Yukito stay in the town at the end of Kano’s Route? Why would he stay if he thinks that the Girl in the Sky isn’t there? Did he choose to give up on his quest entirely and live for his own happiness. Thanks for your answers, Rin. I hope that you can answer these new ones. Heck, can anyone here answer my questions? I’d appreciate it.
@Aspirety Hello, Aspirety, I covered the spoilers about the events of the Good Ending, or most blatantly the True Ending, to Minagi’s Route with spoiler tags.
Also, is the Good Ending the True, Canon Ending to specifically Minagi’s Route? I talked about this in my spoilered post that has the spoiler tags. Can you answer my questions that are on that post? It was posted yesterday.
Now that I think about it, Yukito can only help out only one of the three heroines with their problems, the other two are blatantly forgetten. Doesn’t this bother you? I mean, by the time you get to the Air Route (the Final Route) (Air Route Spoilers as well as Minagi, Misuzu, and Kano’s Routes Spoilers) you’re basically going over Misuzu’s Route as you have done in the Dream Arc, only with Yukito as a crow while the Yukito in the Air Route disappears later when he sacrificed himself for Misuzu as he had done in her route in the Dream Arc, the first arc of the story of AIR. However, Kano and Minagi’s problems are not solved and are forgetten in the Air Route.
In fact, those two heroines have very short cameos in the Air Route, so I would very much like the ending to the Air Route (unlike what we got) to be better than their (Kano and Minagi) individual True Endings in their own Routes since you (and Yukito) are basically abaddoning everything you have done for those two (due to the fact that you haven’t interact with them at all in the Air Route as human Yukito) when going for the Final Route, which is basically Misuzu’s Route, revised. I don’t think that Death and Birdification are good consequences (for Yukito (both as a crow and human in Air Route and Misuzu’s route), Misuzu and the other two heroines) for not helping with Kano’s ghost psycho problems with her deceased mother and Minagi’s problems with her own family problems with her mentally-ill mother and estranged father. Also, Misuzu’s Route in the Dream Arc, what happens to Misuzu after Yukito disappears into light(?) after sacrificing himself to give her more time? I need some clarification on this.
Minagi does indeed go to her father’s house at the end of her Good Ending, and it’s symbolic that her new half-sister has the appearance that Michiru had. As for Yukito leaving town at the end of Kano’s route, I don’t think he does,
since he’s got an established job and love life. Whether he gives up on his quest for the girl in the sky or not is entirely up for you to decide, but I choose to think he just decided he wanted to live life without worrying about it anymore.
After the stuff he’s seen, who can blame him?
“True Ending” is a very vague term… but for all intents and purposes, yes, it is. I think that’s what makes this route very mature for its time; eloping with the girl, which would in most other dating sims be seen as the “good” ending, is not the True Ending in this sense: more important than getting the girl is the internalization of Yukito’s character, and pushing him to not give up in his quest to find the girl in the sky, but still helping those around him while in the process,
Yes, that is heavily implied
@RickyNg1994 On this topic, you don’t need to put spoiler tags for Minagi’s Good ending. What you do need to spoiler tag is your mention of Kano’s route above.
It bothers all of us, don’t you worry 
It’s probably one of, if not the biggest gripe that most people have against AIR.
(Overall AIR Spoilers) What I think is the value of this is the learning that we, the readers, get from the character routes. Even if the characters themselves aren’t helped at the end of the AIR route, we, as Yukito, are able to experience this things which make us grow. And that growth, I feel, makes us appreciate what happens in the AIR route more as it involves themes that are echoed by the relationships in both Minagi and Kano’s route. While the plot wouldn’t change per se, I’d say the appreciation of the ending of AIR increases because we were able to help the other two.
(Questions about Overall AIR Spoilers) So, what you’re saying is that while characters (specifically Minagi and Kano) aren’t help in the AIR Route like they are in their individual routes, the themes and lessons we learned from their routes stick with us and grow mature with the experience? This helps us appreciate the ending of AIR because of the experiences of helping both Minagi and Kano in their routes in the padt, despite the fact that they aren’t helped out in the AIR Route?
I understand that while their (Kano and Minagi) problems aren’t resolved in the AIR Route (since Yukito hasn’t helped them), the lessons their resolutions gave us stay with us and echo in the AIR Route.
This is true even though the overall ending to the AIR Route ends with Misuzu’s death. Is that correct, @Pepe?
Also, However, isn’t the AIR Route very similar to Misuzu’s Route in the Dream Arc? Can you also answer my questions about Kano’s Route on her route discussion page? It’s on a post of mine there which was split off from here, and it relates to Yukito’s willingness to keep on searching for the Girl in the Sky for Kano’s Route.
Yes, that is correct. Or, at least, that is my opinion on how you should view these routes.
Hello, Pepe, that’s is very true from what you say about Yukito, about internalizing his character and pushing him to not give up on his quest to find the girl in the sky (even if she’s not in that town), but also helping those around him while trying to search for the girl in the sky.
In fact, he was able to help Minagi with her problems and get her reconcile with her mother and Michiru, who is the spirit of very likely her diseased sister in the past. This allowed Minagi to come to terms with her family problems, as seen as she tells Yukito the next morning before he leaves town to continue searching for the girl in the sky that she got a letter from her father that she can visit to see her new younger half-sister, who looks like Michiru (after she vanished in front of her and Yukito after seeing that Minagi can go forward and not have regrets). That is Minagi’s True Ending, the ending where Yukito was able to actually help her with her problems without runnning away and that he still hasn’t given up on his quest.
This is contrasted with Minagi’s Normal Ending, where as discussed here, Minagi is just running away from her family problems, and even Michiru can no longer help her. Sure, Yukito asked Minagi to come with him so that he can show her the outside world (and not a dream), but he’s forced to give up on his quest to search for the girl in the sky to do so! This doesn’t help with Minagi becoming dependent on Yukito, where she NEEDS to be able to handle things on her own. As we see, Minagi and Yukito leave town via bus, but it still isn’t on resolving her problems and it’s only a matter of time before they bite both of them in the butt.
That’s why I liked Minagi’s True/Good Ending because it helped her resolve her family problems with Yukito and Michiru’s help (before the red-haired girl vanishes after seeing that Minagi can now move forward with no regrets). Of course, Minagi tells Yukito that she’s going to her father’s home to see her little half-sister just before he (Yukito) leaves town. I think I’m getting this at least in the right interpretation, correct?
However, it doesn’t excuse that Misuzu and Kano are just blatantly gone in this route, with the former saying good-bye to Yukito. In fact, both of them no longer appear in Minagi’s route as we get into it. What the heck? Again, this is one of the biggest problems that AIR has, as you just stated, Pepe.
Hey there guys! I listened to the Minagi podcast and reread through all the posts here and I must say there is a lot of great discussion going on! Particularly in the podcast, some very interesting points were brought up that really made me think about this route from different perspectives. Great job guys!
I’m going to apologize in advance for making a ridiculously long post. 
Lots of the posts from this thread and the discussions from the podcast have influenced my thoughts and I‘ll do my best to respond to those points already brought up without repeating too much of what’s already been said.**
Let me start by saying, Minagi’s route was a trip that ranged from the brightest to the darkest of what Key is capable of. Because of this, Minagi’s route really stands out compared to Kano and Misuzu’s route and is part of why I see Air as an outlier compared to all of Key’s other works. I love this route quite a bit and both endings left a deep impact on me in very different ways. So now I’m going to delve into why…
Minagi’s introduction in Air’s story is very indicative of how her route plays out and hints quite a bit at what’s really going on in her life. This fact stands for all 3 of Air’s heroines, but I’ll expand on that in other threads. When Yukito first sees the train station, his first thought is “It’s just sitting right there, unaffected by the passage of time” and later says “It’s calming, in a way”. These thoughts both reflect the fact that the station is largely the place where Minagi’s dream has been perpetuating, ignoring the passage of time and clinging to the past. It’s her comfort zone, the place she can find happiness with Michiru despite her painful life outside of that. When Yukito first sees Minagi herself, blowing bubbles in the sunset he thinks “It’s like a scene out of a fairy tale, I feel like I’m lost in a forest of dreams” Almost directly confirming the feeling established earlier that this place is separate from time, or caught in a dream. This route does a very good job of setting the tone for what’s happening with seemingly innocuous lines like this.
When Michiru is first introduced, she is doing what she spends a lot of the route doing:
Yeah… Well, this kind of annoying bit has a good deal of significance. @Misuzu brought up a great point that:
I’m not sure how much significance this rhyme actually carries in Japanese culture or if the writers specifically referenced it, but it seems almost uncanny that Michiru, a miscarriaged daughter, can’t blow bubbles (which represent life) no matter how hard she tries. Really a very interesting point! Serious props to @Misuzu for making that connection! In that same vein, I felt that Michiru not being able to blow bubbles not only referenced the fact that she was never able to live, but it also references the fact that Minagi is stuck with her in this dream, never able to fully come to form and move on from the past. And the fact that “WAPU!” keeps happening over and over again to a point that is almost annoying makes the reader want it to end, paints the dream in a painfully repetitive light showing it needs to stop for the benefit of everyone. Perhaps I read too much into this specific detail, but this is the feeling I got from it. Either way, the WAPU helps to set the mood for this route quite well.
Also, I just have to bring up a very interesting point mentioned by @EisenKoubu in the podcast, being the emphasis this route places on pairs. Yukito notices 2 crows in the sky, they find 2 cats at the shrine, Yukito performs for 2 random young girls, he says making “breakfast for 2” even though there are 3 of them staying at the station and these are just instances brought up in the podcast, I’m sure there are more examples. But it goes even deeper than that, there are 2 songs in the soundtrack called Sōsei (Twin Stars) and Futari (2 people) both of which play fairly often during this route, especially Futari. This evokes the feeling on an almost subconscious level that there are supposed to be only two people and that the third (Michiru) is actually out of place. Once again, these seemingly random details actually contribute pretty masterfully to setting up the overall narrative. Great job noticing this @EisenKoubu!
Now, I want to talk about the good end of this route. To me, this entire conclusion was executed almost perfectly. In my mind, Key is unparalleled at creating the perfect happy ending where all the closure is granted, all the loose ends are tied in a sweet, comfy little knot and literally everyone is happy. Most importantly of all, these perfect endings are earned. These endearing characters fought for their happiness and they genuinely deserve it. This good ending is the epitome of all of these things that Key stands for. I believe @EisenKoubu described it as the most “tried-and-true” of the 3 routes and I can’t agree more.
Minagi was able to conquer her fears; she was able to face what had been causing her to hide in this dream with Michiru for so long and was ultimately able to move on and find her own true happiness. Minagi also helped her mother get over the loss of Michiru in the very powerful meal scene. And through this she even helped Michiru find happiness as well by letting her meet her mother that she never even had the chance to love. Even though Minagi had dealt with a lot of hardship, she was still able to push through that and find happiness for her whole family.
Now, this goodbye scene was something else. For lack of a better word, it was simply beautiful. They say their goodbyes with the most heartfelt words they can manage. Michiru (bless her heart) makes so much effort to be sure that Minagi can be happy from here on. She tells her to keep smiling no matter what. She made sure that Minagi could smile not just for her, but for Yukito, herself, everyone. It certainly helped that Gin’iro was playing the whole time. And this CG is definitely my favorite from Air:
This scene hit home with me. Hard. Last July, my girlfriend who I love very much left the country to live in Japan for some indeterminate amount of time. When she left, she told me she wanted me to leave her with a smile. She wanted more than anything for me to be happy even if she couldn’t be by my side. <3 Not long after, when I played this route I still felt lost. I was consistently getting depressed and hadn’t even remotely gotten used to living alone again. But sweet, loving Michiru here was telling me, telling Minagi, that even if it hurts beyond belief keep smiling. Even if it gets so hard you feel like you can’t go on, don’t give up no matter what. Just like my girlfriend had told me. <3 – This is love. It was exactly what I needed to hear. I cried quite a bit from this scene, not out of sadness but out of being so happy for these characters and feeling completely at peace during a really hard time in my life. This is the sweet catharsis that Key has mastered and has become known for.
So that’s the good end of Minagi’s route. As you can see, I love it quite a lot! So now we’re going to see the opposite end of the spectrum. The piece that screwed with my head for months, caused me to take 9 months to finish this game, and ultimately led me to this forum: Minagi’s bad?/normal?/good? ending. Originally, I could only bring myself to call it a bad ending, but after hearing everyone’s arguments, I’ll concede with the general sentiment here and call it the normal ending.
One point that immediately stood out to me was Yukito’s ascent to the school roof leading to Minagi’s breakdown. In the good end, this is a long, drawn out sequence where Yukito is facing tons of perils to find Minagi. Every step up the stairs to the roof is testing the very limit of his ability, he finally drudges his way up to the roof after what seems like forever etc… In the normal end, Yukito goes to the school and almost immediately finds himself on the roof, completely ignoring the trial from the alternate story. Laying it on a bit thick there already…
Here…Minagi hasn’t found the courage to reconcile with her mother. At this point, she is scared, broken, and very much alone. She falls to the ground in despair, feels completely lost, but amongst her darkness, she looks up at the one person she has been able to smile for besides Michiru, the one place she has found happiness outside of her dream, the man who, mind you, has asked her to go on a journey with him, Yukito. Essentially, she cries out for help, desperately begging on her knees for some kind of comfort, some kind of peace. Yukito harshly rejects this plea then says “what did you expect?” At this point, I was almost yelling at the screen “An ounce of kindness from the one she loves!!!” This was the turning point for me. After this there was a mention in Yukito’s inner monologue of how Minagi, curled up on the ground, looked like a fetus (geez…) and she and Yukito both internally and externally kept harping over and over about how Minagi hadn’t accomplished anything and how her efforts are detestable and aren’t good enough.
All of this made me simply irate and dug painfully straight to my core. Did you not even remotely listen to Minagi’s past? Do you not see the pain she has endured, the burden she has selflessly carried for years? Over this many years in her situation, Minagi’s self-worth has very likely degraded to almost nothing, by no fault of her own other than love for her mother, and here you are shoving into the ground her years of painful experience you have no real concept of. What gives you the right!!??
This point of contention agonized me to no end. What the hell are you trying to say to me Key? So Minagi spends years upon years being as strong as she possibly can, supporting the burden of her whole family, giving everything and gaining nothing. She finally finds someone real outside of this nightmare who can give her happiness, someone she loves. She shows a moment of weakness by suggesting to abandon this family burden that has only brought her pain and follow the only real person who has shown her happiness in the past 10 years? Detestable, apparently. Or at least I feel that’s the way it was painted.
This observation by @Pepe is interesting and shows almost a statement by Key shouting against typical dating vns, and actually a lot of aspects about Key games corroborate this. In particular, most of their H-scenes seem almost intentionally bad or rushed. Like, Key: “yup this is an eroge alright. But this ‘ero’ part here really doesn’t matter at all and is pointless crap. The true beauty of VN’s is the meaningful story it tells, you fools!” (Damn right! 
) Well that’s what I got out of it anyway. But I digress…
The way this route is set up, Minagi basically has two choices: She can either follow her mother or follow Yukito. I believe both of these to be perfectly viable options. It is very clearly shown that following her mother ends happily. But what of Yukito? Following the person you love (the typical bishoujo route) rather than your family is painted in an awful light in this route, and that sentiment really does not sit right with me.
This! Family is not something you choose, it is forced on you at birth. Family can be an extremely beautiful thing. It is a recurring theme throughout all of Key’s works and has been shown by them to be a great source of life fulfillment. But this ending… it almost seems to be saying that you must stick by your family no matter how horrible they are to you. “You found much truer happiness elsewhere? No, family is all that matters. How dare you even suggest otherwise.”
In this case Minagi was lucky. When she tried to reconcile with her mother, it worked out to the benefit of everyone, but a lot of people aren’t so lucky. Many children are disowned by their parents or are physically or emotionally abused, and they are basically trapped in this if they are a child. Minagi’s mother wasn’t intentionally harming Minagi, but in that situation they were trapped in, Minagi was suffering. What if when Minagi tried to confront her mother, she never recognized her? What if her mother was caught in that dream no matter what she did? Should she have stayed by her mother’s side even if it continued her pain? Is that what Minagi’s mother would have wanted? The feeling I am getting from this ending is “yes”…
So, all of this mess caused me to temporarily hate Yukito, made the rest of the ending feel like a preachy sermon telling me that romance is filth and family is the only way and worst of all, made me question Key in general for awhile. Like, this isn’t the Key I came to love so dearly. This isn’t the Key that is a signpost for a lot of my life values and warmly embraces me during the darkest parts of my life. Have I been deluding myself? Is Key not something that should be such an important part of my life? Right along with these thoughts I immediately questioned myself. Am I just wrong? Is all this negative feeling just a defense mechanism covering for my own weakness? Should Minagi be condemned for this after all? If I were in her situation, I probably would have run back to Yukito as well…
These thoughts really screwed with my head for quite awhile. Kind of ruined my experience with Kano’s route which I played right after Minagi’s and then I just dropped the game for nearly 7 months. I came back to finish Misuzu’s route and mostly came to terms with all this, (thank god) but what a downer. And after such an uplifting good end…
The kind of frustrating part about all this is that, the normal end didn’t really have much all that extreme actually happen. Yukito was very harsh to Minagi at first, but he then encouraged her to stand up on her own (LB! Spoiler) almost like Kyousuke and they had a nice, warm embrace. Finally at the very end they go off on the bus together on a journey which is the ending I wanted the most of all, really! But it was all twinged with this unhealthy sense that this isn’t ok. After they embrace there is a sex scene where the consent is questionable at best and the whole thing is really just emphasizing the shame Minagi feels. 
Then, really cementing the feeling from before, when the 2 are getting on the bus, Yukito says he’ll carry Minagi’s bag. Minagi says she can carry it for herself, but Yukito insists, “No, I will carry it”. Sigh So Yukito is, almost annoyedly just taking all of Minagi’s burden and carrying it all by himself. People who love each other should cooperate and share their burdens. 
I find this pretty tragic. It was brought up in the podcast that Yukito and Minagi are a great couple. They balance each other’s strengths and weaknesses wonderfully and make each other more complete. Now they’re actually together!.. But their genuine romance doesn’t feel realized at all.
Finally, @Aspirety brought up a very insightful idea in the podcast. This ending is realistic. And after looking back, that is so true. Yukito was harsh to Minagi, almost ridiculously so, but Yukito doesn’t know how to deal with someone who is lost and crying. This has been directly shown in the game when he was helping a lost child in the common route. So that rooftop scene was Yukito telling Minagi what he believed she needed to hear at that time, albeit clumsily, in his own way. It was harsh and painful, but that’s how Yukito is. Underneath it all, he really is kind and had Minagi’s best interest at heart. Misuzu will definitely attest to that! And the unbalanced, unhealthy couple dynamic that Yukito and Minagi end up in is probably indicative of a lot of couples in real life. Most people aren’t so lucky to find someone they can have a perfectly developed love with.
TLDR: Minagi’s good end soars majestically into the sunset, filling all the nooks and crannies of your heart with pure, unhinged love! <3
Minagi’s normal end is tough-love Yukito-kun shoving your face into the pavement giving you a sour, biting dose of reality. And sour stuff gives me really bad indigestion…that lasts for half a year…-_-
So, that’s it!
Anyone, please feel free to comment on any of the points I’ve talked about!
Also, I’m sorry. I’ve actually shortened this post multiple times, but I think it’s probably still too long. I’m going to really try working on condensing my writing so it’s easier to read and doesn’t stray from the point quite so much.
I’m planning on posting in Kano’s thread next. It will definitely be more concise than this one! Of course I’ll listen to the podcast first! I really enjoyed listening to Minagi’s podcast so I’m looking forward to Kano’s as well!
I’d definitely love to comment on your thoughts regarding the normal ending, because it having sat with me after all these years, I’ve grown to have a certain understanding about it that kind of fits in with the grander narrative of AIR, I feel.
As you mentioned about the good end, the exact reason why it is so good is that…
Here is the key point of the good end, I feel: Minagi acheived this happiness because she struggled for it. She struggled to fight against her own mother’s acceptance and, by extension, was able to accept her sister’s death. This allowed her to move forward, and meet her new half-sister which, in my opinion, isn’t just “here you can have your michiru and eat it too”. No, this represents that the will to move forward will be rewarded with hope down the road. That you don’t need to keep clinging on to the past because the future has so much more happiness in store for you.
Now, to move on to the normal end, it is a bit of a reversal of the good end. In the normal end, there is no fighting, and there is no struggle. Minagi falls in love with Yukito, and decides then-and-there that her happiness lies with him. She gives up trying to get over her past and helping her mother get over it, and instead chases her happiness in a different direction. Maybe it is unbalanced and unhealthy for a person to love someone else despite being so broken, but, it is as you say:
Now, that doesn’t mean that Minagi will end up scarred and sad for the rest of her life. Definitely not! I can definitely see her being happy in the arms of Yukito for the rest of her life and, while their relationship wouldn’t be perfect, it would work (albeit with much more effort coming from Yukito’s side). But, at the end of the day, she could still end up happy.
It’s just not the best outcome for all parties involved, and I think anybody who read the entire story can agree. She would have become a stronger person from the good end, and she would probably be even more happy than she would have been by just following Yukito. But sometimes, a little happiness is all we need to get by, and while we may regret the choices we made in life that brought us down a not-so-ideal path, we must learn to treasure this little happiness that comes by in life.
Which is why I refuse to call it a bad ending 
Well @Takafumi seems to have summed things up very well for me with his first port here. Where the anime felt like an 800m race where the competitors lined up thinking it was 1500m the VN is more like a marathon where you come out of the final bend expecting the home straight only to see more bends ahead…
Nonetheless, I enjoyed the route and the lovely Minagi is my favourite character in AIR. So much depends though for so long on trying to understand the strange chalk and cheese friendship with Michiru. If Michiru is meant to be annoying then IMO they succeeded but I did come around to actually caring about the way her path ended, and this is where the extra story length helped.
So, the “normal end” isn’t the typical bad end, it doesn’t feel right to me but perhaps there’s just enough between Yukito and Minagi that it might just work out - but it’s still about running away from the problems rather than facing them square on. It seems to me that Minagi is kind of going with the tide rather than swimming.
The “Good End”, well it’s all just a bit too pat maybe ( I mean the very end not exactly subtle about the theme of rebirth/reincarnation) but it does feel like we have a proper resolution for Minagi - except that what happens with Misuzu all this time…?
So another 4/5 from me. And not to do with the route but the Gao Gao translation has a lot off grammar errors which is distracting.
Finished reading Minagi’s route a few days ago and loved it. While I didn’t end up particularly liking Minagi or Michiru, this route hit me like a truck. Even without caring that much about her, Michiru still got me choking up on the verge of breaking down at certain parts. And while Michiru was the highlight of the route for me, I praised Minagi for having this internal crisis so damn unique. When else do you see “I killed my unborn sister and now I have to atone for that?” It’s heavy stuff.
Really looking forward to the actual story of Air with the Misuzu, Summer, and Air arcs after this fantastic route.
I really really like this route, though I have a complaint that the ending would have been perfect if that was the only ending and we didn’t have that runaround with Michiru leaving and then not actually leaving. I think the story of Minagi and her mother was very touching, and Michiru’s existence is a bit ambiguous but it isn’t a game-breaker. I cried, probably at the same scenes many of you cried at.
I enjoy Minagi as a character. She was a little difficult to read for me at first, especially with how jarringly different Michiru is in comparison to her. But after getting used to her, it became easier and more pleasant. She has a pretty nice voice performance, too. To be honest, as I sit here typing this up, I find myself trying to think of why exactly I like Minagi. And I am coming up empty. All I know is that I really do like her, and I really do like this route.
