Her whole reason to get the sakura trees to stay was because valuable memories of her and Takafumi (brother)
It seems like people are having problems agreeing on the central theme of Rewrite, so I guess I’ll chime in with what I have.
Rewrite’s central theme is power. This is something that’s brought up in every route, but people often don’t catch all of it at first glance, which is why its recommended that you read it more than once. This is also a part of the why the routes seem so inconsistent; because each route focuses on a different aspect of power, which unfortunately means that other areas might have received less time and resources. Now before I start, let me state that there is a canonical route order, which should hopefully be apparent below.
Starting off with the Common Route, I’m pretty sure everybody agrees here that Kotarou has power. The problem here is that he doesn’t use it. The only times Kotarou uses his abilities in the common route is when his survival is at stake; i.e. he has to use it. He knows that there will be consequences for using it, so he is avoiding it as much as possible. This “fear” of his power is what leads him into the first of the main routes.
Kotori’s Route deals with the consequences of NOT using power. Honestly speaking, Kotarou is a failure in this route. He only used his power when needed; which left him too weak to do anything when he needed to protect more than just himself.
As if that wasn’t enough of a reason, This leads Kotarou into Shizuru’s Route, which deals with the reasons you need power. In Shizuru’s route, Kotarou learns that there are people he wants to protect; things he wants to see happen. The only means for doing these things is by attaining more power. It’s probably worth noting that Kotarou is also a failure in this route; as he was unable to protect everyone, and in fact ends up sacrificing himself for what little he did do.
Though he now knows that he will have to use his power, he is still hesitant to use it; afraid of the consequences. Fortunately for him, Lucia’s Route deals with the consequences of power and how to live with them. It seems like most people understood this part the most, so I probably won’t spend as much time explaining it; but the key here is that unlike most other routes where he learns from himself/his mistakes, he learns his lesson this time from Lucia, which makes him much less hesitant to use his powers after seeing someone else do it.
Now that he is more willing to use his own powers, he jumps right into Chihaya’s route, which deals with power’s usefulness and what can be done with it. No longer hesitant, Kotarou now uses his power almost every chance he gets. This is where Sakuya comes in though, and shows Kotarou that he should be using his power for a purpose. Though he is still not immune to making mistakes, the major turning point in this route is when he decides what to do with his power.
Now that Kotarou has overcome his fear of his powers and knows what to use them for, what comes next? control. Akane’s Route is all about controlling his powers, making them do what he wants them to do. The easiest part of this to see is with the form of his Aurora. It has become a beast with a mind of its own, only tied to him because he gives it life. Most of the time when he uses it, he struggles to keep it under his control while still allowing it to fulfill its purpose. By the end of the route, he is able to fine tune his powers to do what is necessary. (think evolution scene)
side note: Control also plays a big part in the route itself (not including the overarching plot), and Kotarou and Akane juggle it all around between each other and some of the great Gaian leaders. I would love to write another essay on just that, but I’m trying to keep this short and concise, so I’ll leave it out for now.
This trend does continue into Moon and Terra, but albeit in a slightly different way. By the time we get to Moon, Kotarou has basically mastered his powers, which leads him to ask some of the only questions left: why does he have his powers? where do they come from? and other things of the sort. to anyone who’s read the route, it should be pretty obvious that the first half of Moon deals with these questions. The second half, however, becomes a showcase of everything he has learned in all the other routes.
Side note: It’s stated in moon that the 5 routes are not the only lives he has lived, and that there are many others. The reason only these 5 routes were shown is because they are the ones that had the greatest impact on him.
Rather than look at why he should use it or what he should use it for, Terra looks at the worth of Kotarou’s power. Every encounter in Terra has both a value and a cost, both in large scale and immediate outcome. Many times in this route Kotarou is forced to sacrifice his current wants in order to move closer to completing his long term goals. It’s only towards the end where he starts rewriting himself with reckless abandon that his short term gains outweigh his long term goals.
And there you have it, a central theme broken up into how its supported by each route. I should also state that this is by no means the only central theme, and this is definitely not all the evidence there is to support this theme; so there should be a lot of room for discussion on some of the other themes/supporting evidence out there, so have at it!
Bonus: Oppai route is basically an alternate scenario in which Kotarou is given near infinite power, absolute control of said power, and little to no consequences to using that power. Needless to say, I think he had fun playing around with those abilities.
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Yeah whaaat. Tomoyo’s route was about the struggle of choosing between her love for Tomoya, and her hope for her family’s future. TA expands on it a lot too.
This is actually the order I played it in~ I preferred Shizuru over Chihaya when I finished Kotori’s route. (That bike scene with Chihaya was very cute though.)
I thought that the theme of Rewrite was Power as well. The deciding factor between all of the routes was whether Kotarou embraced his power or not. I think this can even be seen in the “change yourself/change the world” question.
Remember, what was the hope… the saving grace… or the Terra route? What did Kotarou & Co. plan for the future via all those chat messages? They wanted to keep the world going with “power.” Summoner powers this time around. They wanted to group up together and use their life force in order to reduce the stress of the planet. (The planet being another theme~)
Well I did say that “It sort of shows in the individual routes as he does a lot of “rewriting” in all of them. But Terra gives it away more than anything.”
Like how he rewrites himself to become a bodyguard in Akane’s route, or how he becomes a shounen manga type fighter in Chihaya route to best Sakuya. All routes keep this theme.
My bad, though, I should have worded it better. I didn’t mean to say that the individual routes do not contain the theme at all, rather, what I meant to say is that they don’t make themselves apparent.
But hey, now that you do mention it, they are a lot more apparent than I remembered! For Clannad, at least. LB not so much 
Hmm after reading this, I can’t disagree with it for sure, but I just find that “finding your place” is a stronger theme than “power”. Perhaps it’s a more personal thing?
But I like how you included the Bonus section 
I had some ideas of how a Rewrite anime might work. The tl;dr is we use Moon Kagari as a framing device.
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I guess that is feasible. I honestly thought that it could work with just having alternate routes and labeling them as such (a la Amagami anime), then tying them all together in a (probably second season) Moon route episode, before proceeding to Terra.
Basically I just want them to animate a VN the way you would play it
I’ve thought the same thing. It’s very easy to tell all the stories independently without combining them into one continuity, as long as you establish the world tree. You don’t even have to show Kagari, just show an image of the world tree reaching a dead end at the end of each route, and seeing a finger trace a new line through the tree, entering into the next route. Maybe reveal a bit more of what’s going on after each route.
When you think about it, alternate worlds that intersect with the main story in Key games is a very common pattern. In Kanon it was the dream sequences, in Air we had the Summer story, in Clannad the illusionary world. Little Busters was a little different, but it’s still there. Rewrite kinda springs the Moon world on us at the very end. I actually think it’d feel a lot nicer if they foreshadowed the events of Moon throughout the entire story, that would feel a lot more natural to me. It would totally make the Anime more easy to understand, and probably improve the flow of the story overall. Once again, just think back to how Kanon and Clannad handled it.
Man, your thoughts pretty much mimic mine word for word. Guess I don’t need to write this stuff down after all. Especially about Akane’s route. Sure, Akane is more off to the side, but seeing Kotarou go about his business in a cold and calculated manner was refreshing, especially in contrast to Chihaya’s route where he refuses to take a life. Of course, Terra pushes this ahead several levels in terms of scale, and ends up being simply fantastic.
Still, the route opinions for this game really have a lot of variance. It’s great to see everybody’s reasoning behind their preferences.
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Rewrite was amazing. Actually, amazing doesn’t cut it.
In order, my opinion of routes are Lucia > Shizuru > Akane > Moon > Kotori > Terra > Chihaya. Not to hate on any Chihaya fans, hers was good, but the others outclass her imo
Kotori: I played this route first. And it was DARK. Like, holy shit, you see Kotori acting all goofy and having fun all the time and then you find out it’s all an act. And bam, it smacks you right in the face. You’re forced to help her out of sympathy and still end up getting rejected. Also, her route ending was terrible. They could’ve had Kotarou walk up to Kotori and there’d be another version of her 8th grade CG with her waiting for him, and it ends off with her accepting him.
But I guess that’s why we have Harvest Festa.
Chihaya: More like Sakuya. Honestly, the romance came out of nowhere. Chihaya’s a great character, but she had better development in other routes than her own.
Her route kicked ass though. Literally. Applause for the ending.
Lucia: Ryukishi at work again. Loved the first half with the Asahi Haruka horror story, Ryu was really getting into it but Key was probably like “YOU CAN’T END IT LIKE THAT”. So he brought in Guardian and Gaia and the weird bitch lady that tricked Lucia yet again. Also, Kotarou near the end pissed me off by being so dense.
The Shizuru fight was the best scene in the game imo. Chihaya and Shizuru were amazing in this one.
Shizuru: Best girl. Didn’t like how Kotarou was so weak in this one compared to the others, but Shizuru made up for it.
The ending caught me off guard, and I cried a bit too. But still, not a great way to end that after all that work. And the problem with her parents were never resolved too. What a shame.
Akane: And to finish it off, I played Akane last. Her route was pure novel material, but it didn’t have much of an impact on me as the others. Having Kotarou grow into a murderer was exciting though. When the MC goes bloodthirsty for the girl., that’s where shit gets interesting.
When Shimako cried out at the end I bawled. I loved the ending song.
Moon and Terra get nothing due to me not caring much about them and it’d take another hour for me to type. They were still good though.
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Ah I’m so late to the discussion, I’ll probably just say stuff that everyone else already wrote
But hmm, I just finished Rewrite myself and wrote some thoughts on my blog. I like that they tried something new, and they definitely went in an interesting direction, but I don’t feel they pulled it off that well. It had it’s great points (the humour in the common route was amazing), and it had points where the writing just seemed to fall through to me.
Moon and Terra were interesting, but especially Terra felt so disconnected from the rest, like it was a completely different novel. I feel they could have connected those stories much better.
I liked Shizuru’s ending, I liked the connection with what you learned in Chihaya’s route, and it was so sweet (sad >_<). Lucia’s route was awesome up until a certain point.
I loved Akane as a char, but as mentioned her route didn’t really work for me. I liked the development Kotarou got, and how his life’s story turned out so differently, but the rest was a bit… eh.
Looking forward to Harvest Festa though.
Most of the routes hold up on their own, so even though there is a large disconnect across the whole VN, it works well as a bunch of individual stories set in the same overall universe.
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I think so too, I mean, I DO like the VN quite a lot and all the diversity you get with it. But as a whole it’s kinda sloppy outside of the Tanaka bits, which can be difficult to grasp.
Something that came up in the chat today:
If there was a Rewrite anime, how do you think would the routes be connected? Obviously they can’t just connect them like in other Key adaptations, the storylines go in completely different directions.
Some of us talked about this some time ago, in this thread actually~ and in the Individual routes having bearing thread.
I agree with the idea of using the Moon route to link it all together. Foreshadow stuff~
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Oops, I didn’t even notice.
I’m not particularly fond of the idea though. It sounds like it would become Higurashi-esque what with everything resetting after every arc. Some of the routes just kinda end without there being much reason for them to end, and if then everything just begins anew that would just leave viewers confused. It’s not like in the visual novel where you yourself click New Game.
I mean, could you imagine it if an anime you didn’t know did that? Just cut out after the main character and one of the heroines got happy together? It’d be weird and frustrating, wouldn’t it?
That’s how I hope most route-reliant VNs end up adapted >> Litbus why? ;A;
I don’t think that’s true. Every Rewrite route ends when the conflict ends, and it’s implied that the planet is left to die.
My favorite thing about an anime is starting out confused, and then realizing what’s going on as the anime progresses. I feel that’s what Rewrite was trying to do anyway.
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I just can’t really see it working. While you can make an argument that the Rewrite arcs do end at logical points, it’s still very different from Higurashi where at the end of pretty much every arc most of the main characters are dead.
I guess the best way to illustate my problem with it is… imagine if in Higurashi, the second arc, Watanagashi-hen, ended with ‘Mion’ accepting her guilt and turning herself in. And then Keiichi and Rena lived “happily ever after” in the village. To me that is similar to how Rewrite’s arcs end. And IMO, that just would not fit.
Most of the routes would work perfectly if you rolled some credits. The only one I can think of that wouldn’t really work well is Chihaya’s. They could probably settle it with Kotarou narrating how the world will still end, but they’ll live happily, or something. Actually, didn’t he do that in the VN anyway? I can see that being quite a powerful scene if done right~
Okay, just finished Rewrite!
There was such an immense amount of humour that I loved so much about it. Definitely some extraordinarily funny moments. The oppai ending was fantastic.
Overall extremely enjoyable to me but a few things bothered me.
I’m actually surprised at how right everyone is with talking about how it’s badly written and inconsistent between routes. I thought that I wouldn’t be that bothered by it but it really did bother me sometimes.
As some other people have said, the Terra ending really felt like it was building up to something and then the ending was just eh. I really didn’t fully understand it and was expecting something far more dramatic.
How is humanity better off at the end of Terra rather than at the end of Akane’s? To me, they left humanity in pretty similar situations. I guess salvation was halted halfway through in Terra, so I guess that could be a good thing. Ultimately surely the world will still die shortly like it’s expected to? I don’t really understand how Terra is the perfect route that saves humanity.
That’s all the main things I can think of right now.
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