The first time I’ve finished ONE, I just thought that for the first Key-like/nakige, it was good. After that, I watched the anime adaptations and over time my love for the VN grew bigger, today ONE is among my favorites Key VNs and that’s for a pretty personal reason:
the Eternal World. After finishing the VN, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. This world is really intriguing and yet it’s also extremely sad, just thinking about it makes me feel like my soul was slowly drifting into it. The music Eternity perfectly expresses these feelings and is my favorite theme with Rain.
Prior to reading ONE, I passed 2-3 years to develop a game where the MC is trapped into his own “Eternal World”. The world that I created obsessed me and I passed a lot of time to add details and to build a complex structure for it. So my obsession with the Eternal World was bound to happen the moment I started to read this VN.
Here’s my interpretation about the main story and about the role of Mizuka with it (since I think she’s way more than a cover girl).
Everything started with the death of Misao. Kouhei was overwhelmed with despair. At this time, two major events happened in his life:
- he met Mizuka
- he made the pledge of eternity
The Eternal World comes for those that don’t want to live in this world anymore. When you’ve accepted the pledge of eternity, the only thing that can stop the process is something strong that ties you with the real world (usually a person you love, as it is said in the Shun route).
You don’t enter in the Eternal World instantly but the process is still pretty fast, we see that in the Akane route with her childhood friend that disappeared when they were still young. However, it took something like 10 years to Kouhei to disappear into the Eternal World which is weird.
It’s the reason why I think Mizuka is so important. She appeared at a time when Kouhei was really depressed and she managed to make him happier. She became something that was “anchoring him to this world”, not an anchor that was strong enough yet to totally stop the Eternal World but an anchor that was still strong enough to slow down the process.
When we start the VN, the Eternal World only shows up during the dreams of Kouhei. Later, the influences of the EW becomes stronger, Kouhei feels like his soul is pulled outside of the world, at the peak of the symptoms, everyone starts to forget about him and then he disappears.
I think the reason why the influence of the EW is so strong when Kouhei sleeps is because it’s also the moment where he’s the most vulnerable and the less attached to the real world. I think that’s also why he has sleep troubles (returning to reality becomes more and more difficult) and why Mizuka keeps awaken him every morning (she continues to be an anchor for him that lessen the influence of the EW and brings him back to reality even if indirectly).
If you don’t follow the main story, Kouhei finds eventually a girl that will be able to keep him in the real world (well as long as you don’t have a bad ending). If you follow it, the relationship between Kouhei and Mizuka changes and after some hard trials they become lovers. Mizuka becomes an anchor strong enough for Kouhei to stay in the real world.
(ONE and CLANNAD spoilers)
Maeda told exactly the same story in CLANNAD with a few twists and in a much less poetic and more realistic way. Replace Kouhei with Tomoya, replace Misao by Nagisa, replace Mizuka by Nagisa/Ushio and replace the Eternal World by the period of depression/alcoholism/game addiction (everything that can act as a way to escape reality) of Tomoya and you obtain the same story.
Interesting fact, the fact that Tomoya accepts changes is in opposition to the concept of Eternity of the EW.
(end of CLANNAD spoilers)
The identity of the Eternal World girl is very hard to figure out and the VN loves to be the most confusing possible about it.
It seems to make sense for her to be Misao. Since Kouhei’s problems come from the death of her sister it seems very logical for him to join a world where she exists and where nothing bad can happen for them anymore (concept of eternity), moreover by leaving the EW and her sister forever, he shows that he has accepted her death.
The Misao scene at the end starts with “After all, you’ve remained a child this whole time…”, immediately followed by the crying of Misao. Later on, Kouhei says “And if living means having to face such sadness, then I would rather stay here. Here, where I can always be together with Misao.”. The end of the Shun route also seems to imply that the EW has some kind of connection with the world of the dead (Shun is compared to a corpse before disappearing and Kouhei calls the EW “a world which everyone will one day visit”).
However, the EW girl has the appearance of a young Mizuka.
After the Misao scene there is another scene where we learn that Kouhei met a girl in the new town where he moved and that he made a pledge of eternity with her.
And if you do the Mizuka route, the end of the scene changes and Kouhei says the name of the EW girl: Mizuka (in the Mizuka route: “After all, you’ve remained a child this whole time… …Mizuka.”, in the other routes: “After all, you’ve remained a child this whole time… You are… (…)”).
So the EW girl would be Mizuka? I don’t think that’s the case.
At the very beginning of the VN we have a flashback scene where Kouhei meets Mizuka for the very first time. We can see that he holds a grudge against her and that he was very mean to her at the beginning of their relationship. Kouhei acts very differently towards Mizuka and the girl that made him the pledge of eternity. Moreover, Mizuka acts totally differently than this other girl (during this scene and during all the story). Also, the pledge scene seems to imply that the girl was all the time with Kouhei (“on clear days, clouded days, and days when the rain came sprinkling down… …she would be there beside me” and “Every day, she would find me”), she seems to be a supernatural being.
Furthermore, Mizuka has absolutely no memory at all of the pledge of eternity.
So the EW girl is not Misao and she’s also not Mizuka.
The EW girl is a creation of the EW, she’s an idealized vision of what Kouhei wants.
I think that she first took the form of Misao and then, at the time where Kouhei met Mizuka, the EW girl took the visual appearance of Mizuka because she held a positive influence on him. If you do the Mizuka route, Kouhei recognizes the EW girl as being Mizuka because she has even more influences on him.
Kouhei was traumatized by the death of her sister, he didn’t want to lose the people he loved (Misao or Mizuka) anymore, being with the person he loves (the EW girl as an idealized vision of Misao/Mizuka) in a world where nothing bad can happen anymore is what the EW proposed to him. However, Kouhei will show that he can accept the harsh things of life now that he has grown and now that he has found a new reason to live for.
(I think that the true reason why the EW girl is so tied to Mizuka is because the developers wanted to make you know that Mizuka was the important girl of the game, exactly like in Kanon where there’s a scene with Ayu in every route of the VN where
(Kanon spoiler) we see her leaving. That’s why the whole thing is so cryptic.)
So now here’s my opinion of each character/route of the VN:
Mizuka:
I didn’t care about her at first, her daily complaints were annoying, now I love her so much that she’s among my favorite Key characters.
I really like the fact that Kouhei and her are buddies. You can argue that Kouhei is mean to her but that’s also the case for Mizuka sometimes, it’s because of her that Nanase punches him in the face and Mizuka dumps Kouhei pretty hard if you propose to go out with her but without making the right choices. Also there are some moments of true friendships between the 2 characters like during the famous “Nagamori from the Planet After All, You Know” scene or during the scene where they eat crepes.
And that friendship between the 2 characters is what makes this route so sad. Through a combination of circumstances, Kouhei asks Mizuka to go out with him as a joke and she accepts.
And now that he knows her feelings, Kouhei can’t undo what he has done easily so he decides to continue and to see if this relationship is going to work.
…And that’s not the case at all, Kouhei starts to hate Mizuka because for him she’s still his childhood friend, being forced to consider her in a different way is what irritates him.
At this point you’ve my favorite choices of every Key VNs:
- the first time, you obviously choose to be nice to Mizuka and you see that Kouhei will never like her like that
- so you need to choose the hard path and to be an asshole. Honestly, I was in empathy with Kouhei and understood exactly why he needed to do that but it still hurt to make these choices. As you know, the thing escalates and Mizuka is abused/raped. Kouhei realizes how much his hatred changed him into a piece of shit and that what he has done to his precious Mizuka can’t be undone. His internal conflict is cured but his heart is full of sorrow and regrets (well that’s at least how I saw it but he seems pretty sad in the scene, you know
).
But Mizuka is too gentle and even after that, she decides to forgive Kouhei in the best scene of her route. Afterwards, I still felt in empathy with Kouhei and regretted what I had done to her, so every moment of happiness for Mizuka was a blessing for me, that made me fall in love with her.
And after that there are still good scenes like the disappearance of Kouhei with the bunny or the embrace of Mizuka in public (which is so well done in True Stories).
So yeah it’s my favorite route and I think it’s among the best ones of the VN. But I know that a lot of people hate it and I can easily see why (obviously Maeda was still in his MOON period). So, for liking this route you need to be in empathy with the characters and to understand why they act like that, also you need to have beliefs that doesn’t condemn the way this story works.
Akane:
My second favorite route. Rain is my favorite music of the game (with Eternity) and I think a lot about this music whenever it rains in real life.
ONE told an original story by applying the problem on the MC, however it’s also its biggest flaw since you experience the same story 6 times in total. I think the routes of Mizuka, Misaki and Akane do a good enough job to retell the story but I think Akane’s route is the one that does the best job with it.
Akane’s story is sad, she needed to come at that empty lot every day to remember her childhood friend and when she met Kouhei, the man who made her forget her lost friend, she experiences again her trauma. The end makes me want to cry every time, it’s just so well done. “Now, even more than before… the tears… won’t stop…”
There are also some great scenes in this story like the dumped scene, the scene where Kouhei waits for her in the rain or the scene where Shiiko forgets about Kouhei during a short period of time and where Akane faces the rain, fully aware of what happened (you almost need to reread this scene after finishing the route to fully understand its impact).
This type of character that is very unfriendly at the beginning and very loveable later on, became one of the favorite archetypes of Hisaya. For example, Aono from sola and Shione from Sola no Method work exactly the same way as Akane.
Misaki:
One particularity of ONE is the fact that we have disabled heroines, a thing that we’ll never see again in Key stories.
My favorite thing about this route is its moral, beautiful but also very sad.
The best scene to see that is the scene where Kouhei and Misaki are on the rooftop at night. An awesome CG illustrated the scene where Misaki is in front of a beautiful starry sky that she can’t see. She explains that even if she can’t directly profit of the beauty of the world, she can profit of it through other people. And then, we understand why she frequently asks Kouhei if the sunset is beautiful.
I also like Misaki’s growth about accepting her handicap and about accepting that she can be in couple with someone else.
(sola and Misaki spoilers) what I love about sola is that in it Hisaya tells the same moral as this route in a totally different way. Matsuri can’t see the sky but through Yorito she can still enjoy it and there are some very good surreal scenes to illustrate that. This time we learn the moral not long before they die which is more sad than for Misaki.
Mio:
Mio is the most unique Key character I’ve seen.
It wasn’t easy to make a likeable character that is mute but I think Hisaya did a great job with her. Mio is very expressive with her body and she uses her sketchbook to write messages that we see in the textbox.
On top of that she’s an adorable cheerful loli, it’s very hard to dislike her.
Her problem is that she can’t express herself (“There are so many things I want to say”). So, she joined the drama club to express herself through art. When I entered the Key community I wasn’t very good with English (even worse than now), it was extremely difficult for me to say what I wanted to say and that was always very frustrating. So, I feel close to her for that reason.
Other than that, that route has a pretty good focus on Kouhei’s disappearance and on his development but that’s really the only good things about it, so that’s why I don’t think it’s a good route.
Mayu:
Mayu was my first route and that was my favorite with the one of Mizuka until I read it again and noticed that it wasn’t that good. For this reason, I think that the first route you read in this VN is important because it’s the route where you’re going to experience the main story for the first time and think that it’s awesome.
Mayu is very slow and has the behaviour of a child. I think she’s also part of the handicap theme of the VN even if that’s not a permanent one.
Mayu has a pretty good drama epilogue where we can see Mayu growing, I love how the fact that we have access to her thoughts makes us realize that she’s far less dumb than she seems to be. Because of her epilogue, I think that this is a better route than the one of Mio and Nanase even if it’s not that long.
Nanase:
I love the fact that Nanase is a classic tsundere, she becomes absolutely adorable when you start to go out with her.
That’s a really funny route (the Christmas scene was maybe the funniest moment of the VN for me), that’s also a pretty good route for romance and for interaction since there are a lot of choices and interactive parts in this route (the part where you need to awaken Kouhei was my favorite interactive moment).
But I don’t think the drama part is that good honestly. Nanase is an ancient kendo champion that tries to change her life to become a lady, however she tries a little too hard and becomes persecuted by a bully. Okay, that’s nice but I don’t see where I’m supposed to feel a big impact of any sort. I like the scene where Kouhei and her are dancing under the stars and I like the CGs where she’s under a tree and the seasons change, that’s a quite good illustration of the VN.
Shun: Shun is very interesting. For me, he’s like a meta character because he knows basically everything, even things that he shouldn’t know, it’s like if the writers were talking to us through him. We see more of him in the first anime where he keeps the same enigmatic role. He shares the same voice actor as Boy from MOON and I think it’s very interesting when you know how much they’re similar. He says some pretty interesting things like “Miracles always stem from the bonds you share with others” which is a thing that is true for a lot of Key stories. A very short route but a very good one in my opinion.
