First of all, I’m not saying that specializing the aurora blade for use on the Earth Dragon made it completely useless on the Key. What I did find strange was the assumption that the Key and the Earth Dragon are made from the same stuff. I don’t remember any part of the game that would hint at that. (maybe Kotori route info, not sure if spoiler) The Key is a familiar created by the Earth itself. All other familiars have been made by humans. Sure, the Earth Dragon is older than any other familiar made by Gaia and nobody knows how to make one, but that thing is not as old as the Earth itself. When did Gaia have the chance to capture and analyze the Key and apply the knowledge? And if they did, how come it did not lead to salvation?
I’m more looking t it from the route of the fact that they’re both extremely high-level familiars. If any random combination of any random materials were equally viable, we’d see a lot more familiars at or even above their level. This tells me that for that amount of power to be contained within that size, the variation of materials used between them would have to be limited.
The last of the heroine routes I played - I enjoyed Akane’s cynical sense of humour and sceptical personality during common and the prelude to her route so I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t enjoy the route as much as I’d hoped. There wasn’t much in the route to suggest that Gaia were anything other than the nihilistic bad guys, but it was pleasing to see that the antagonistic Suzaki rather than the arch-villain was against the extremist approach and turned out to be more moderate than expected, even if his own aims weren’t necessarily “good”.
I’m not into the fights at all so mashed my way through those. Kotarou’s developing maturity and the manner in which he tried to support Akane and the rescue the evacuees was probably the best part of the route for me.
Akane herself takes the back seat for a good part of the route and I didn’t find the romance with Kotarou very convincing although I appreciate it was deliberately understated unlike so many others in Key stories. She never came across to me as “evil”, rather as someone who was fated to her role, with the suggestion of a pseudo brainwashing for all the girls who became disciples. Nonetheless we can feel that she genuinely seeks to atone for her deed and I did enjoy the hopeful ending which was a necessary upbeat after all the doomsday stuff!
Like most of the other routes, I reckon it needs to be seen in context of the VN as a whole once completed and so it’s on towards “Moon”.
2 Likes
