Feel free to discuss in this topic any of your good memories from Kagari’s route in Rewrite Harvest festa! Everything from Rewrite and from this route can be discussed without spoiler tags, but make sure to reference any information from other routes and other series with the appropriate [spoiler] tag.
How would you rate this route?
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I finally went ahead and re-read this scenario, so that I can talk about it. The scenario has some glaring faults that I will cover. But I think the good parts outshine the bad ones enough for this to earn 5 points. When addressing the good and bad parts of a story, I always find it easier to talk about the smaller part first, so I’ll go over the parts I don’t like first.
I figured out the reason behind me not remembering this scenario very well from a year ago is because, for large portions of the story, nothing happens.There are very few peaks of engagement as well as a not huge amount of build-up. This means you spend a lot of time just trudging along with the comedic scenes. The humor isn’t my issue. The joke about Kotarou returning Kotori’s chicken after it’d been cooked was wonderfully dark; that really cracked me up. My problem is how the homur is balanced with actual story. Basically, the pacing is not to my liking.
So what is actually good about this thing? Well, I’d say pretty much everything else. Even if this isn’t the final part of Rewrite chronologically, the scenario has a sense of finality fitting the last story we’re given. And as a piece of Rewrite as a whole, this scenario fits amazingly well in so many ways.
This really feels like the final route of a VN. Large parts of the story revolves around Kotarou helping the heroines with struggles from their original routes. Kotarou finally gets to grill saury with Shizuru, making her own HF scenario even more pointless. Lucia gets her moment with the sunflower familiar. It’s a bit of a silly scene, but we know how much sunflowers matter to her. Since Sakuya doesn’t exist in this world, Chihaya gets pushed into being comic relief. Similarly, Akane gets like a minute of screen time. Inoue also gets a little nudge. Biggest one is obviously Kotori. The thing I’m definitely not forgetting from this scenario is the final conversation between Kotarou and Kotori. How they bring up that she tried to commit suicide at one point. It may be a tiny thing, but I love the phrasing for their farewell.“Baibai, itsuka, dokoka no Kotarou-kun”, it’s recognizing that they are from different worlds but their relationship is the same anyway. So, like a final route, this is a story about how the occult club members help each other get back up when they’ve fallen; however, this story’s impact on Moon/Terra isn’t stated, so it could have been close to pointless.
This story’s relation to the rest of Rewrite is really interesting to me. There is very little we can actually say with certainty about that world except that this all happens before the events of the Moon route. We just know that Kagari took people about to give up on life from all parts of the garden and gave them a world where they could have fun until they recovered. At the same time, she makes a version of herself with a human’s level of understanding as a observer and protector. Due to this premise, we can’t say exactly what these character’s have gone through. For example, when Kotori loses her chickens, Kotarou says that it was always his job to chase her pets. That could never happen to the Kotarou we know from the original as Kotori can’t have pets while she’s a druid. The part we learn about Kotarou and Kotoris’ back stories is that Kotori had drunk poison and it seems like Kotarou tried to bite of his own tongue. So maybe all of the people who where there had tried to commit suicide but failed. Rewrite is very far from sunshine and rainbows but, for me at least, mass suicide is fucking dark. And that mood is what makes me think this scenario fits into Rewrite so well. Sasuga Tanaka-sensei. The mood basically follows the same pattern as the first novel. At the start, we have a pretty normal, happy setting, but something is off with peoples’ memories. Then towards the end, we hear of all the dark stuff but also how everyone is ready to live again. Then the climax emphasizes Kagari’s maternal feelings. That’s the same curve that was spread out over the whole first novel. This is probably Tanaka’s way of making Rewrite easier to understand. The stamp-card is a perfect example of that.
The climax scene deserves some extra attention in itself. First, seeing all the messages fucking breaks me. And obviously it’s too much for Kagari too. She blames herself for the hardships these people had to go through, and that world was made so she could deal with that guilt. It really hammers you with the image of Kagari as a maternal figure. But the messages show that the only one blaming her is herself because it’s totally not her fault. I really love that scene. The emotions and animations are super awesome.
