I think it was more like Kotori was extremely afraid of the thought that she might have turned Kotarou into a familiar (in a sense, taking away his humanity). Or at least that’s how I took it.
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For sure - she was really worried about that. And it is kind of implied she sorta did, at least a little, but it is also implied that the familiars might have more “heart” than she believed. By the end because they never really committed to a “Being Human is #1” theme or “Familiars Have Feelings Too” theme I didn’t feel like my feelings were in sync with how the visual novel presented the climax.
I mean, the climax was the Key being shot, no? I would say, therefore, that the theme is kinda about futility. Humans are futile, familiars are futile. Maybe both are good, maybe both are bad? You’re right, Kotori’s route ultimately just poses a billion questions, offering zero answers. Did Kotarou accomplish his goal? Did he even understand what his goal was, or if he even had one?
Lots of people complain about the inconclusivity of this route, but personally it reminds me of the ending of one of my favorite books, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. The context and themes of the two stories are very different, but I somehow find something oddly satisfying about this kind of “so much has happened, and yet in the end we’re walking right back, returning to almost where we started.”
I still need to write about Terra and my experience with Rewrite overall, but I can say that, after finishing, I think I kinda understand the ending of this route better. It conveys a certain theme that didnt really become clear to me until I kinda realized what ultimately Rewrite is “all about.”
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I thought the climax was when Yoshino suddenly appeared to help Kotarou and Kotori, and I got the message that rivalries blur in the time that those close to you need help… But I guess we all got a different thing from this route, huh
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Yeah, the climax was the Key being shot and the falling action the struggle for them to make it back and get Kotarou treated. I just felt that framing behind the events lacked emotional conviction. I got that what the Key wanted was to see humans struggle to survive, its just for all the scenes I enjoyed in this route I don’t feel like any one theme was developed enough to make the route feel complete story in its own right. If the theme was supposed to be futility I don’t think they managed to capture the hopelessness of futility. Since Kotarou is the POV character, the way they frame his determination to keep trying is against Kotori’s hopelessness that I never felt as a reader that things were beyond the point of working out.
I don’t know enough about Rewrite at this point to think of this route as a piece of the greater story, so maybe it makes more thematic sense in the scheme of the whole visual novel, but as an arc I found it “good” but I am unable to shake the fact that I felt unfulfilled at the end because all of the larger questions it got me interested in kind of just faded away.
I really didn’t care for this route. I still have 3 character routes plus Moon + Terra to read so I may find a newfound respect for it when I’m done with the game but I really feel like this route doesn’t stand on it’s own. It intentionally tries to introduce you to the world while leaving things vague to be explored in other routes. But I really don’t think the world needs to dedicate a route for an introduction. I read Lucia’s route first and at no point was I confused about anything. The Key, Gaia and Guardian, familiars, this stuff is all explained pretty well, at least in Lucia’s route. Maybe if I went into this route blind I’d feel better about it but I think routes should be able to stand out on their own. You should be able to go in knowing nothing or everything about the world and it should still be enjoyable. It was also disappointed to see the leave dragon killed by lazy writing just so they can make the dinosaur look more badass. And the dinosaur didn’t even do anything. The whole route just seems kind of lazy by Key’s standards.
All being said, that ending was damn good. Everything from leaving the sanctuary onward I don’t have any major complaints with. The last scene with Kotori’s parents felt a bit tacked on for emotional oomph but it was well executed so I can forgive it. I really thought they may give the route a bad ending there for a while, and Yoshino’s appearcance at the end was well placed. I do wish we got just a bit more from the final scene though. I guess I’ll have to wait until Harvest Fiesta.
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I seriously doubt that I will be able to bring anything new to this thread.
As of now I didn’t even take my time yet to read it through… But I’ll probably do that later.
But, well, excuse me for doing it all backwards. Besides, I was almost asleep when I had that wild idea that I absolutely have to write my thoughts on Kotori and her route.
I can pretty much assume that it was caused by a state of euforia, which came to me today after I’ve ended TLing HF Kotori’s story. Well, that doesn’t really has anything to do with this…
Okay, so where should I start? I came to know Rewrite through my friend. He liked it… And I kinda felt that I may give it a go as well. I didn’t really had any idea about what is it all going to be about. I didn’t even check who has made story ofr this novel. Of course, I knew what Key was famous for. Nakige, nakige, and, once again, nakige.
I sort of expected a lot of drama, likeable characters, and… Well, thats all.
Besides, I rarely read any VNs before… Not because I couldn’t, I just couldn’t read most of them through. I kind of found them tiring… Yes, I just didn’t try any really good ones. But then again, I always had a thing for animation.
So, back to Rewrite. It started with an interesting but not really catching from the 1st glimpse monologue of Kotarou. I liked it, but wrongly assumed that Rewrite is just going to be another love story with a little bit of angst along the way.
Then there was Yoshino and his DUEL… Rikako… Searching through the forest for the girl, who likes to play there a lot. Alone.
Then Kotarou (alongside with me) managed to find Kotori. She was cute. No, extremely cute. That appearance and that love for cash~ Saito Chiwa did an extremely good work bringing her to live. She felt alive.
Going forward, I went through the story without guide and liked all of the girls in different ways. I thought that it was going pretty nice, but then it was just engulged in dream and I’ve been brought back to titles screen.
Well, not really strange, right? I mean, I’ve tried to be good with all of them… But you can’t catch two hares at once. And neither 5 of them.
I’ve looked for a guide, I found one. It didn’t really forced any order of route’s playthrough, but I just went with Kotori=>C=>L=>S=>A. This time I’ve focused on Kotori. I got more events with her, I’ve got that mappie fragment with her and managed to do seed planting quest. Though, I’ve almost missed one plant-point on the mappie with black dogs.
I’ve read with a bit more attention that time. Rewrite escalated through common route from yours typical slice of life to something more outrageous.
The whole scene with Oka-ken going on a search for Inoue and the way it resolved had more impact on me than when I’ve read it for the 1st time. I started to wonder why did Green Draggon try to attack Kotori while ignoring both Chihaya and Akane. I thought that Kotarous aurora was way too useful in all that segment, but, well…
I’ve slipped into Kotori’s route.
Disappearance and strained reunion… Kotarous memories coming back. That may sound strange, but I’ve actually came to like this novel exactly at this point. I was awed at how much different everything was. I didn’t like Kotarous scene with all of his classmates encouraging him, but I did like Yoshino’s reactions. I had troubles understanding motives behind Kotori’s actions. It was fun to read. It was engaging. Like 1st pieces of a giant puzzle finally started to get assembled.
Unnatural atmosphere that run between Kotarou and Kotori from the very begining… And truth behind Kotori’s past.
Starting from the scene where Yoshino snapped at Kotarou and all the way to the end. Not even for a slight of a moment did this route dissapoint me. Every single next scene was stronger than the one before.
I really emphatized with characters. I could relate to Kotarou’s feeling. I could relate to his wishes to protect Kotori. And I couldn’t understand to the very end why Kotori acted they way she did.
I find it strange to write, but Kotori’s agony and despair were done exceptionally well. Her occasional whispering to herself about giving up it alltogether. Her moments of weakness. All of it felt real. I cried when Chibimoth died. And I wondered… what the hell was Imamiya saying. I’ve cried when Chibimoth went Pero. It was breathtaking how Kotori’s self-persuasion was cracking under the reality. She being a Druid and knowing pretty much nothing. She felt so important and so insignificant at the same time. And that ominous Kagi-girl.
…then escape from the Sanctuary. Then reappearance of Kotori’s parents. That was strong. I think I’ve actually despaired at that scene. At what it implied. Last shards of “everyday life” nurtured in common route felt apart for me there.
A bit of fast-forwarding…
Kotori, Kotarou, Key, and Kotori’s parents resting in shack.
Kotori’s emotional breakdown… Truth about her parents, or, actually, insight on their death.
A reality of Kotori being really broken. Broken at the core. Then Kotarous question… and that answer. That was just something. Then death of Kotori’s parents. I actually thought at that moment that there would be no happy end at all.
Through all of Kotori’s route my perception of Rewrite as whole considerably shifted. I made assumptions. Some were right, some were not.
At every single playthrough past that 2nd one (which was the true 1st one for me) I found myself being charmed with Kotori.
I may like Chihaya. And I do. I find Akane’s story as the most amazing from the point of novel (alongside with Terra and Moon)… But I just can’t forget about Kotori. I believed and still believe that she is the one who should be with Kotarou.
…yet her Rewrite’s story felt both complete and incomplete. But it was resolved with Harvest festa.
I hope that this post didn’t get too emotional or unreadable in process. More than a clear insight it looks like a burst of emotions, that I had for all this time. Probably, Kotori is one of the best characters I’ve ever come to know about. And one of the most “real” out of them.
She is broken. Broken behind salvation. But she still manages to balance just on the edge of the Abyss.
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I thought kotori’s route was ok. i wouldnt say it was terrible but i wouldnt say its the greatest. My personal favorite was shizuru or chihaya as they had a completely different retrospective to the storyline
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Personally, I thought Kotori’s route was marvellously fascinating (and I am willing to say the same for every other Rewrite route). As with most of the other Key VNs, the perspective of the story and even the atmosphere in the setting or tone in the prose is tinted in colours, metaphorically speaking, of whichever route readers fall into. This, I feel, comes through most starkly in Rewrite, since Rewrite is (as per my knowledge) the only Key VN where most of the routes are primarily founded on the conflict for the Key, and revolve around a single aspect: the concept of salvation - which coincides with the main theme of Romeo Tanaka’s previous VN, Cross+Channel. Since every route is somehow majorly involved with the finding of the Key (except Lucia’s route - but that can be debated), the flavour of each route, and more importantly, the attitude that the route takes on regarding the whole pew-pew-bang-bang for the Key, can be very easily differentiated.
All of the main heroines are practically forced into their roles, and desire to be rid of all the mess, but despite this commonality, the motivations behind our heroines and the themes behind the different routes are all quite unique and distinct. Shizuru’s route can be said to orbit around loss, belonging, and homecoming; Akane’s route - 厭離穢土 (abhorrence of living in an impure world - this one’s staring us right in the face); Chihaya’s route - unyielding faith, optimism, grit, strength, raw shounen power, sunshine and rainbows and unicorns, etc.; Lucia’s route - purpose, individual and society, disgust and shame. All these are just some of the main themes of Rewrite’s routes, but even a cursory glance shows that behind all these routes, there is a potent will to action - definitive action which gets them to where they want to be - that drives all of the aforementioned heroines.
I think Kotori’s route stands out as the only exception. Her route, in my opinion, serves as the quietist, absurdist counterpoint to almost every other route. As some of us have mentioned above, there’s a great deal of angst, futility, suffering, and most uniquely, non-resolution in this route.
Rewrite is incredibly complex, so much so that it’s even invited some Biblical readings, such as this http://www.beneaththetangles.com/2015/04/04/rewrites-biblical-meta-narrative/
I would like to contribute to the interpretative scene of Rewrite, and in this post, I unapologetically pitch in my short and unsolicited two cents worth on Kotori’s route, an absurdist reading of the Kotoroute and a partially quietist reading on Kotori’s characterisation, simply because I feel it’s far too much of a waste to reduce Kotori’s route to nothing but an introductory route, a case of poor writing/direction (I like to hold Key to a very high standard), or a red herring that detracts from the main conflict in Rewrite. I am even willing to go so far as to claim that any reader who doesn’t notice the suffocating psychological focus of Kotori’s route, has missed one of the key points of the route. Additionally, I feel that amongst all the five character routes, Kotori’s route is so fragmented and opaque that it becomes the most difficult to read and appreciate of them all.
To clarify things, here I consider absurdism to simply refer to the idea that the search for meaning and purpose is directly pitted against “the silence of the universe”, that shreds the pursuit of inherent meaning and doubts the value of subjective meaning.
Unfortunately, I have underestimated this task, and the amount of work to be done on this has greatly overwhelmed my expectations. Circumstances dictate that I cannot currently invest myself whole-heartedly to this endeavour, much as I would love to. Alas, I don’t even the time to proofread this, so there may be some errors here and there - do pardon me. And this has just become so sprawling that I can only lead this analysis following the chronological order of events in the Kotoroute, so once again, I apologize if the arguments are not very cogent (just yet), and the flow leaving much to be desired. There’ll be lots of cross-referencing between routes, so the whole post has a bit of a spoiler-y tone to it, fyi.
Kotori’s Swansong: An Absurdist yet Quietist Reading of Kotori’s Route
Part 1
To begin with, I’d like to briefly discuss the importance of philosophy and world-views in the VN.
Perhaps the most obvious place to start, would be the title of the OP. In every Key VN, the title of the opening song encapsulates the essence of the VN to some degree. For Air, there is Tori No Uta. For Clannad, there is Mag Mell i.e. (The) Plain of Joy - an afterlife from Irish mythology. For Little Busters, there is Little Busters!. And in Rewrite, we have Philosophyz - which seems to ground itself on the pursuit of meaning. Seen from this angle, it becomes quite clear that Rewrite revolves around philosophies (and to some extent, philosophy - but I’ll get to that). Just as how every main character has different backstories and motivations, their philosophies also vastly differ - and I pose that every one of their routes revolves around philosophies and ideologies. When even the clash between Guardian and Gaia stems from a near irreconcilable ideological difference, it’s difficult for me to argue against this.
One powerful demonstration of this lies in the most crucial decision in the entire VN.
‘The World’
‘Myself’
‘I Can’t Answer That’
It’s just a simple survey that Kotarou fills in for Akane’s eyes alone, that ought to have close to no relation with plot progression whatsoever. However, the fact that this choice is the main factor that delineates the path of the VN, suggests that here, Kotarou defines himself - or rather, the reader defines Kotarou. In elucidating his stand on the question, “Would you rather change the world, or yourself?”, and putting it down on paper - Kotarou clarifies to himself his stance on the issue. And this proves to be no mere party question; not only does it change the route Kotarou is on, it also gives the general direction of the plot that helps to shape his personality, his identity. In my view, this choice is also the biggest piece of foreshadowing for one of the greatest nuggets in Kotori’s route, that Kotarou is a partial-familiar. He’s effectively a born-again. This choice strongly, but subtly, echoes how Kotarou is really starting from a blank slate. Every other major character in the VN had answered this question before him. I think that the reason why you have to unlock the choices one by one, is that it stems from how Kotarou changes in the preliminary routes. Put it this way: it seems to all be a simulation occurring in the Moon route, where Kagari and Kotarou fiddle with the history of life.
In Kotori’s route, Kotarou ends up having to change himself to accommodate Kotori, and to transform himself from a partial-familiar to an autonomous being once more, unlocking the choice: “Myself”. In Chihaya’s route, Kotarou changes the world around him by brute force, giving everyone a happy ending that unfortunately, proves to not help the world live on, according to Moon, and unlocks the choice: “The World”. Humorously, the only choice you have in the beginning is “I Can’t Answer That” - you literally have no other option.
If we choose ‘I Can’t Answer That’, Kotarou then gives his frank opinion: the question is too heavy. He can’t imagine what would happen if he tried either. And this is well represented in Kotori’s and Chihaya’s route. In Akane’s and Shizuru’s routes, Kotarou struggles with trying to change either the world around him or himself, right off the bat. But in Kotori’s and Chihaya’s routes, we find him caught in the in-between, and he slowly works the puzzle out from there. Here, I consider Chihaya’s route and Kotori’s route to hold diametrically opposed outlooks. In Chihaya’s route, Kotarou’s indecision blossoms into a fervent recognition and validation of joie de vivre, as he and Chihaya blaze through the conflict without regard for any ideological differences, working towards the ending they want. Clearly Chihaya isn’t the thinking kind, not that she needs to be. Kotori’s route, on the other hand, turns its introspective eye on the human condition. Instead of gun-busting optimism, there is angst, forlornness, despair, isolation, and potent absurdity clouding even the moments of tentative ease. In all the routes, the fantastical element dominates the landscape. Kotori’s route isn’t different in this regard - but here, it is far from magical and wondrous. The ‘magic’ here, I think, is not miraculous. It is not even conclusive - and I say, it adds to the absurdity.
Perhaps we may take Kotori’s route as a sombre introductory route to Rewrite. I can’t dispute that it feels like one, since the route is brimming with intrigue and confusion, helping to set the scene for the rest of the VN - but I personally think it offers much more than just a support for the other routes. Rather, I’d like to view it as an ‘ending’ route - precisely because the lack of information and the highly claustrophobic atmosphere of this route is best appreciated as integral aspects of the route once we have a bearing on the universe of Rewrite.
The Kotoroute starts on a dark note, and I mean this literally too. If you pay attention to the title cards that help to separate the five character routes from the common route, you may notice that Kotori’s card is the only one with a black background. Maybe Akane’s too, but all my save files have been wiped out so I can’t check. I thought it was quite impressionable; throughout the common route, the day-transition cards mostly have white backgrounds, and this to me seems to foreshadow the darker themes and plot that dominate the Kotoroute. At the start of it, all the Occult Club Members have vanished without a trace. Despite being in the midst of his classmates, Kotarou is isolated - having lost the dream team that granted him an memorable school experience. In this route, Kotarou’s psychological dependence on the Occult Club is laid bare; they provide him the meaning of his life in school - and perhaps, help him flee existential angst and despair. Unlike in other routes, where Kotarou picks himself up with relative ease due to the strength of his own will or the support he receives from others, here he is visibly distraught. From Terra, we are made aware from its bad end that Kotarou’s desire to live as fulfilling a school life as possible arises from his emptiness. Just as George Orwell wrote, “Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.” As revealed in Terra, Kotarou’s lack of a past thanks to his amnesia effectively leaves him as a hollowed shell of who he was. His family is largely missing from his life, but he never seems to bother much about them, and perhaps this is simply because he doesn’t have the basis of memory to find them a significant part of his life in any way. He lacks an outlook on life, and even a bearing on his character. I pose that Kotarou is essentially empty, and he chooses to try and derive meaning from his time in school, in an attempt to be free from existential anguish. For me, this explains the staggering fluidity of Kotarou’s character throughout the routes, and further reinforces the importance of Akane’s survey. If in the other routes, Kotarou chooses to make a “leap of faith” by reorientating himself to his new conditions and chooses to believe in finding purpose, in continuing with everyday life even after the Occult Club dissolves, here Kotarou struggles to even stand.
Even from the beginning, the absurdity in the Kotoroute is very palpable. Apart from the infamous leaf-dragon scene that reroutes the VN sharply and establishes a great deal of shock and dread when read for the first time, here the seemingly purposeless, chaotic universe of Rewrite denies Kotarou’s quest to discover inherent value in his life by taking away his valued Occult Club, the place where he wanted to build “real relationships”. It reverts Kotarou into a state of uncertainty, where he questions the worth of his life. When we also take into consideration his worry for the other members, and his state of great confusion, it is no wonder that Kotarou is thrown into a state of turmoil. Putting it in his own words, he becomes “mentally unstable just because [Kotori] left at a bad time.” But comparing this with his attitude in other routes, I highly doubt it’s simply that.
Here, Kotarou’s rejection of his classmates’ goodwill - effectively the kindness of strangers - is understandable. As he puts it, “none of the people I’m looking for are there.” Essentially, he clearly segregates for himself who his friends are - those who add value to his days, who he values - and his acquaintances. In this regard, Kotarou truly is an “ungrateful asshole”, in Yoshino’s words. Wallowing in the midst of his despair, Kotarou seems to lump all his other classmates together as nameless, faceless acquaintances, to whom he is - at best - obliged to be friendly towards. Their kindness is meaningless to Kotarou, and this seems to be at the heart of Yoshino’s anger towards him. Kotarou does not even realise this; I think, in his depressed state, he fails to consider that his classmates’ kindness has to be “repaid”, that it takes two hands to clap - a stark contrast to Kotarou’s attitude in the common route, where he goes around town befriending people by the legions, and seems to have no qualms indexing them all in the “Friends” list. As Confucius said, “射有似乎君子、失諸正鵠、反求諸其身。” In archery we have something akin to the way of the superior man. When the archer misses the center of the target, he seeks for the cause of his failure in himself. Here, Kotarou’s desperate search for meaning, for something to replace the Occult Club, for Kotori in particular, has blinded him to his growing self-centredness. Perhaps the only thing he got right here was this: “There’s never a right answer to any difficulties that arise.”
Some weeks later, at home, Kotarou spots three shadows walking past. The VN subtly hints that Kotori’s family has returned: “One of them walks under a streetlight.” I suggest that here, by only referring to Kotori as “[one] of them”, not only do the writers introduce an element of suspense and delay the relief we get from knowing of Kotori’s return, here the diction of otherness likens Kotori to a stranger - foreshadowing the revelation of Kotori’s enigmatism. Kotarou rushes out to greet Kotori, who seems in low spirits. She makes up yet another fantastic excuse to explain her long absence and incommunicability, saying she gave an idol concert at the Budoukan to thunderous applause.
Here it’s quite striking that, despite Kotarou having known her his whole life, Kotarou seems to not know a thing about Kotori. As a matter of fact, neither do we. At this point, everything about Kotori is shrouded in mystery. Though there were numerous occasions in the Common Route where the warmth and gentleness of Kotori’s personality, this Kotoroute reveals the coldness, and great distance that actually separates Kotarou and her. When she says to him, “[your] fun club activities are over”, Kotarou ‘corrects’ her, and tells her that those fun times belonged to everyone, Kotori simply acknowledges his statement and apologizes. Of course, Kotarou’s “At least that’s not what I wanted it to be,” gives the self-reflective lie to his words. Amongst all the heroines, Kotori seems to not only be the least invested in the Occult Club, but also the most emotionally distant. In Lucia’s route, the relationship between Chihaya, Lucia, and Shizuru feature quite prominently. In Akane’s route, she and Kotarou discuss the Occult Club and reminisce on it. The same applies to Shizuru’s route, and I don’t I even need to mention Chihaya’s route on this one. Only Kotori never seems to dwell on the Occult Club. Her use of the pronoun “your” is, one on hand, completely apt. After all, Kotarou started the Occult Club largely for himself, at first. Yet, it reveals that Kotori sounds as if she’s completely detached from the situation, as though she was mostly unaffected by the dissolution of the club. Even when the Occult Club was active, Kotori was the most distant within the merry band, evident in her blatant absence in all the other character routes. She is hardly referred to by name, and it is mostly Kotarou who remembers her - though briefly, at best. Her biggest appearance in other routes comes in Shizuru’s, but even there she’s just a disembodied voice that Kotarou doesn’t really recognise, and she is even implied to die, sacrificing herself to waken Shizuru from her coma.
This great and apparently unbridgeable distance between Kotori and Kotarou manifests itself most clearly in the dramatic love confession.
“I love you, Kotori.”
“Nn.”
What originally starts off as an expression marking his relief and his gratitude, ends up transforming into a dialogue where Kotarou rails against his inability to understand Kotori, and the vast chasm between them. Kotarou, unable to understand and reach out to Kotori, feels absolutely “powerless” in this exchange. Despite it being his second time confessing to Kotori, he doesn’t as much as faze her. The character who, in the Common Route, had the most screen-time, and seemed to be closest to Kotarou, ironically is the one who is most distant to him. Instead of properly responding to him, she neither accepts nor rejects him. She attempts to brush it aside, and jokingly denies knowing that he had always loved her. She wishes that he had forgotten about it all. She apologizes repeatedly, for having rejected him but still remaining by his side. And as Kotarou most keenly observes, it was “as if [his] feelings were being treated like an illusion,” which is, ironically, exactly the case. Kotori suspects that Kotarou’s feelings for her are a by-product of him being a half-familiar. Subverting the usual notion of love confessions as romantic, this scene presents itself as anything but. The tone suddenly shifts from ease and thankfulness, to frustration, anger, indignation - very nearly boiling down to physical violence. And on Kotori’s note, a whole heaping of guilt - guilt that she can’t redirect or resolve, as she refrains from divulging the truth of the matter to Kotarou.
Why then, does Kotori try so very hard to keep Kotarou in the dark? In all the other routes, Kotarou learns about the truth of the matter with relative ease, and without all the optional pain and suffering in Kotori’s route. Perhaps the answer lies in a range of factors, such as Kotori’s keeping everyone at more than an arm’s length away, or Kotori’s wish, as exemplified by this quote: “All I want is for you to be happy.” But at this point, Kotori has proven herself to be so slippery, it’s hard for Kotarou to distinguish between the cliches and her sincere remarks. He couldn’t even see through her facade in the Common Route; it is only at this tipping point when this fact becomes apparent to him. Kotori skilfully gets him to drop the subject by appeasing him, comforting him, and showering him with her motherly, all-encompassing attitude.
Even if we have read the other routes available, the Kotoroute raises more questions than there are evident answers. We can infer why Kotori looks so worn-out, but then the question begs: why did she return? It can even be argued that Kotori was actually expecting him. Is Kotori even duplicitous? How can we reject Kotori’s happy-go-lucky, capricious spirit as not an authentic part of her? I won’t propose an answer to these questions just yet. But I can safely say that on the whole, I view Kotori as truly a character of contradictions - one of Key’s most ambivalent, most human characters thus far.
Of course, it can’t be denied that this is meant to be a touching reunion, but the atmosphere is so muddy, negative, and toxic, that any hope of romance here is shattered. Incidentally, I can see this as a microcosm of the route’s entire treatment of the romantic prospects between the two. Kotarou’s reaction to Kotori’s return seems less innocent than just what would be expected from a heartfelt reunion. Kotarou notes how Kotori’s body feels “fragile” when he hugs her, out of intense relief and delight. It seems to suggest that Kotarou sees Kotori as a symbol of “fragile” everyday happiness, and he comments to himself that he would neither take her return for granted nor, by extension, the frailty of life. In fact, Kotarou looks as if he requires Kotori’s validation, which oozes out of his desire for her to reciprocate his feelings for her: “I have to make myself believe that [I’ll have another chance at getting Kotori]… completely… and only then can I control myself,” or “I don’t want the strength to endure [Kotori leaving me].” When he vows to himself to forget the Occult Club, and instead remarks: “I can’t afford to take my eyes off what I still have,” he forces himself into the position that Kotori had always tried to get him away from: dependence on her. At this point, it is easy to see that Kotori has become Kotarou’s main reason for living. His instability - his self-deception in his fleeing from angst and forlorness - pushes him to latch onto, find comfort in Kotori. In this light, maybe Kotori was correct after all; what Kotarou feels for Kotori might just be an illusion after all. Even at the end of the scene, this theme of dishonest emotions surfaces in Kotarou’s thoughts, where he thinks that Kotori definitely feels something, be it love or not, for him, and he tells him that isn’t just his “delusion”.
But beyond Kotarou, who goes through an emotional roller-coaster: shifting from relief to love, to shock, to melancholy and despair, to indignation, to stubbornness, there is also Kotori’s part of the dialogue, which is equally rich, if not more so. Here, I’d like to split her dialogue in this scene into three simple segments: evasion, hesitance, and truth. In the first part of the confession scene, Kotori’s lines are peppered with fabrications. All of them are clearly unbelievable - she blatantly lies about facts: where she’s been, what she did, why she went away.
Does this indicate that she’s just a bad liar? Personally, taking into consideration how she managed to hide her past from everyone, her movements, et cetera, for so long, it seems to me that Kotori is too shaken by the guilt she feels over Kotarou. In the beginning, her lies are joking, in her trademark comedic fashion - a subtle move to deflate tension in the situation and try to get Kotarou off her back on the issue of her disappearance.
Then, as the conversation progresses, Kotarou begins hammering down on more sensitive issues: the emotional wall between the two, their tentative relationship, and above all, the cruelty of Kotori’s actions. It is from here where Kotori falters. She sports difficult, saddened expressions. Her excuses become less believable, and she stops using them altogether. Rolling down a gradient of silence, she first hesitates in her words and begins giving non-answers, before having to pause in her sentences, and finally shutting down in complete silence as Kotarou’s outpouring of emotions overwhelms the atmosphere. The extent of how much Kotarou’s words affect her can be evidenced by her line, “I was worried you might hit me or something… you’re really grown-up, Kotarou-kun.” She’s even prepared to take a beating from him without too many qualms, possibly reflecting an aching conscience here. Throughout it all, when Kotori is not being outright evasive, her words are tinged in resignation, and a strange kind of “motherly” affection, as she puts it.
It is only when Kotarou says the following morbid lines that Kotori’s expression changes, and her lines become more sincere, more revealing of her character than ever before.
“…we can’t be together forever, right?
There’s going to be… an end… someday.”
The first thing she does is apologize, admit that she can’t explain it to Kotarou, that she would rather not reveal the details, putting the matter to rest - an about-turn from her previous attitude. If only a little, we now glean some insight into Kotori’s character.
When Kotarou brings up the uncertainty of life, the unpredictability of the world, that nothing lasts forever - Kotori gives this incredibly depressing response: “For me… [life] is [predictable].” Even her expression momentarily changes into one of resignation and despair, for that one line alone. She say she’ll never find someone else to be her partner like it were a fact, and she plainly states how she’s never gotten close to others. She states that she’s “not interested in [love]”, looking out into the distance, not meeting Kotarou’s eyes, for the first time in their conversation (save for the times when she looks down or closes her eyes).
Here, if Kotarou, having been shaken by the sharp, violent dissolution of the Occult Club, is recognising the absurdity of the human condition and of the indomitable flow of time, railing out against the tragedy of change, Kotori seems to take the opposite stance. Kotarou has experienced tumultuous change in recent days, yet Kotori - his closest friend - is at the other end of the spectrum: her life is unchanging. But this is logically impossible. After all, as the adage goes: all things must pass.
With all this in mind, I propose thus: Kotori has effectively given up hope on herself, succumbed to despair, and submitted to quiescence and isolation. She has abandoned her own life. She is the only heroine who is so staunchly shown to be disinterested in her life. To illustrate my argument, I contrast the Kotoroute with the other dark route: Akane’s route. Even Akane constantly wavers between her identity as the Holy Woman and her personal life with Kotarou. Kotori lacks that sort of choice. Furthermore, Akane contemplates suicide, but Kotori does not. Some might take this contemplation on self-murder as proof that Akane values her life less than Kotori, but here I’d like to offer an alternative viewpoint. In both their routes, death is treated as an escape. They have both, to large extents, judged their lives to be not worth living. So why do I think Kotori is more tragic for not thinking of suicide as a serious course of action? I quote this dialogue involving Thales, the first of Greece’s seven sages.
THALES: There is no difference between life and death.
Q.: Then why do you not die?
THALES: Because there is no difference.
In Akane’s route, death is liberation. Mass cleansing of the human race is a sort of salvation. Life is added with meaning through death. Or so Akane thinks before she is shuffled into the shelter. Kotori’s route has no such grand ideas. There is sin and salvation for Akane. There is only silence for Kotori. Death is just an escape from the feeling of absurdity, which is demonstrated in the only time Kotori presses for suicide, where she desires to kill Kagari, which would effectively cause her to die too since Kotarou would drain her life away. In Akane’s route, Kotarou supports Akane - in a way, he is powerful. That sense of power is lacking in Kotarou in the Kotoroute. If in Akane’s route, Kotarou watches the gradual hollowing out of an individual who pretends to forsake her will to live, here, Kotarou witnesses the decay of an individual whose will to live is paper-thin, and the VN does nothing to hide Kotori’s emptiness.
To build on this point of mine, I would like to reference the next part of the love confession scene.
The conversation changes subject, now focusing on Kotori’s plans for her future.
Then, Kotori drops this bombshell: “After all, I’ve always planned on thinking about myself after you find your happiness, Kotarou-kun.” Clearly, the topic was on Kotori’s happiness - so why did it even switch to Kotarou’s happiness? They both wonder along with us:
“Why are you waiting for me?”
“I wonder why… I’m not too sure.”
Since Kotori finds it difficult to put her “feelings into words”, here I would like to offer an explanation for her. Kotori guesses she “feels like a mother”, but I posit that this is just a nice, cushy way of describing Kotori’s vicariously living through Kotarou. I pose that having given up on herself, Kotori finds solace in Kotarou’s happiness. Kotarou effectively becomes a receptacle of purpose for Kotori. Unable to find meaning in her own life, she seeks to find it in Kotarou’s. From this angle, we can see a truly sad paralleling at work here. Kotori is Kotarou’s vessel of meaning - he needs her to extract meaning, to escape angst. Kotarou is, I dare say, Kotori’s ‘life support’ - since in Shizuru’s route, Kotori sacrifices herself for Kotarou’s happiness.
To sum up my point on this section, I end off with this quote of Kotori’s, addressed to Kotarou when they’re in the forest later on.
“I don’t care whether I live or die, but if I’m going to live… I want something to come from it! What do I get out of this? Tell me, what’s the point of this? This better mean something! I want you… to be the proof that I lived.”
In a way, they feed off each other, in a way. They are so very close to each other, and they mean so much to each other. Yet, as Kotarou asks, “[why] does she keep drawing [a] line” between them?
Kotori’s response is as such, “Because I don’t want to lose what we have now… I guess?”
And though Kotarou accuses her of offering him an empty cliche, Kotori simply says she can’t explain. So is it just a cliche? Maybe so. Maybe not; by breaking the barrier between the two, Kotarou will inevitably be thrust into Kotori’s hellish world, which certainly would not be in the interests of Kotarou’s happiness or continued survival, at least in Kotori’s view; here, ignorance is bliss.
As a response to Kotarou’s words, Kotori’s “eyes feel lonely”. This can be read in many ways, but here, I’d like to take it as a hint of lamentation over their massive disconnect. The scene showed a completely failed attempt at communication, and hence, connection between the two.
Now all Kotarou can do is grapple at his feelings. Now all Kotori can do is apologize.
“This hurts,” he says, as the fact that Kotori refuses to lay herself bare to him begins to sink in. The confession, which Kotarou had hoped would be a catalyst of meaning, ends up bringing him nowhere. His only takeaway is that he discovers that something is off with Kotori. But he takes it all his stride, choosing not to regret his decision to confess.
Eventually, the power dynamics of the scene shifts to Kotori’s favour. At the start, Kotarou asserts his dominance over the flow of the conversation by pushing Kotori into a corner, by letting his emotions flow out. Now, Kotarou is all but worn by the dialogue, and Kotori reverts to her strategy at the beginning; she gives a simple excuse, and comforts him.
“All my questions and frustrations are suppressed, as if wrapped up and shoved aside.”
Thus, the love confession ends.
The mood lightens when they return to school, and a contrived semblance of slice-of-life spirit is re-established.
And for now, my analysis ends. It’s an incredibly hectic time now, so I’ll continue this in parts some time later. I never expected that this undertaking would be so heavy. I predict that with the amount of content the whole reading will take, I’ll probably have to shift this to my Wordpress. In fact, now that I think about it, that’s probably the better course of action. Still, I’ll wait until a complaint is directed at me - as I usually do. I sincerely apologize if this post is too long, or does not belong.
8 Likes
So I finished Kotori’s route. It was my first playthrough and I let myself get wherever my choices got me. Since I liked Kotori the most out of all the other members of the cast, I decided to go for her, a fortunate decision considering how many regard this as the best introductory route.
I have mixed feelings about this route. There were some very well done things as well as some horribly executed details. I’ll start with the things that bother me the most.
First off, some context and things that also apply to the common route. I wandered into Rewrite thinking that this wasn’t going to be like other KEY VNs mainly because most of the developers didn’t have much to do with other KEY works, but I still expected romance or drama at some point. Well, turns out that at first, this was a slice of life genre, then, on the 13th of November, the story took a radical turn and suddenly action took over. Then we go back to the normal life, but with mystery surrounding almost every aspect of that life. Now we enter Kotori’s route and suddenly this is a romance VN. But then we are back to mystery with Inoue and Kotori’s disappearance. Finally, drama unfolds and we get a happy ending. What’s the issue with all this? Well, I finished the whole playthrough and it wasn’t until the very end that I grasped what the VN was gonna focus on. It treats very different situations in many different ways, but it focuses on none of those, which leads into romance being fucking lame and incomplete, drama not impacting you as much as it could’ve, and mystery not being resolved properly.
Takafumi sums it up very well here:
Sincerely, it’s not that the route had bad material or it was badly executed in itself. It’s the whole common route + Kotori route structure what displeased me the most. As a result, I got a feeling that I intrinsically liked Kotori’s route, but I wasn’t mentally prepared (as in being receptive) for what the route had to offer, so I didn’t enjoy it to the fullest, and this is something that I vastly regret and really bothers me on a deep emotional level. It’s almost as if someone had spoiled me the entirety of Little Busters! or CLANNAD, except that I somehow find this to be partly my fault. I wonder how I’d have felt if I had read another route first. Mainly because Kotori was my favorite character and I have the feeling that I lost a valuable experience that I won’t ever be able to recover.
Anyway, moving on, another complaint I have is that, while Rewrite OST has awesome tracks, I think that micromanagement on those was far from ideal. I mean, at some points, the entrance of a dramatic track didn’t really match the text. Sometimes tracks were played a bit before or after the point at which their entrance would have had the most effect, giving me the feeling that either I was being explicitly manipulated or weirding me out because I didn’t know if this was a relaxed scene or an important one.
Something mildly related to this is how some comedic events, jokes or “comedic writing styles” took place in the middle of high tension scenes and, instead of acting as a relief, they felt really out of place. While for the OST tracks I can’t provide a clear example, I can with this matter. When Kotori disappears, and Kotarou has read Inoue’s diary, he goes to the forest. There’s a very tense atmosphere because anything could jump out and kill him at any point. Well, he then finds these wood carvings that keep the magic barrier going. Instead of Kotarou thinking “Crap! This looks important, I remember Kotori giving me some of these, she must be nearby!” or anything that suited the situation, we get a “loot obtained!” sound and Kotarou being happy for having found some loot. Like, seriously, that didn’t fit the situation at all and killed a lot of the tension built up in a second.
There’s also how the Romance never resolved. We get the idea that Kotori likes Kotarou, but it’s still not clear if it’s just like a friend or something more. That never get explained and the epilogue doesn’t throw in much light into the matter since Kotori never visits Kotarou in the hospital.
We also have no clue about what happened to Inoue. Why didn’t she die? Who saved her? This, however, seems like something that might be answered in Akane’s route.
So I’ve been quite critic towards this route, but I still liked it and thought that it did a fair amount of things properly. I loved how they implied that sometimes you can’t do anything about situations and all the possible options you can choose from will lead to failure. This is actually quite interesting: there’s another KEY VN that almost accomplishes this and fucks it up at the last moment, whether you like it or not. In fact, it gives the complete opposite message in my opinion. Anyway, this time around Kotori has to choose whether to abandon the Key to live a normal life, possibly losing Kotarou in the process; commit suicide by letting the familiars kill her without opposing any resistance, hence ending her suffering; or to fight until the end in a war that she knows that she can’t possibly win even though she got really close, but just by chance.
She never took a true decision up until the end, when she decided to kill the Key. Up to that point, it was Kotarou who has driving her into fighting until the last moment to give Kotori’s live a meaning. However, in the end, she decided that she didn’t even know if protecting the Key was the correct thing, so she decided to kill her. However, even at this point, she wasn’t sure of her decision because Kotarou would die. So she decides that no outcome is good and thinks that telling everything to fuck off is the best solution, so she wants to die with Kotarou. In spite of this, in the eleventh hour, Kotarou convinces her to let his fate be decided by a conglomerate of luck, Kotori’s will power, his own will power and humankind’s medical abilities. It turns out to be a success, but the Key died, so after all something was lost. Even if Kotori didn’t want to protect it in the first place, she devoted her life to that (more or less) and failed to accomplish her only objective.
Kotori’s route is extreme when it comes down to decision-making and psychological matters, and this is something I utterly loved. Mainly because without this, the drama would’ve felt cheap.
Another thing the route does very well is showing how life sometimes throws you in the middle of some conflicts from which you are not going to get out without loosing something. And the worst thing of all is that in some of these conflicts you don’t even care about what everyone’s fighting for, yet, you get involved with them not to accomplish an objective, but to end them without you losing the most trivial and precious things in your life.
One could argue that I’m talking about Kotarou, who got himself in the middle of that war for the Key and the only thing he wanted was to get out of there and live a normal life with Kotori. However, I’m more interested in how Kotori got herself involved. She became a druid just because she was in shock and couldn’t accept her parents’ death, so she revived them and was given the worst possible of the things: knowledge about 80% of the situation and the ability to control only a 1% of it. She soon realized that her parents weren’t able to be revived so she had effectively traded nothing for a life of loneliness and despair. She knew that she’d lose all that was valuable for her at some point due to that conflict so Kotori decided that she couldn’t lose anything if she didn’t have it in the first place, so she became distant from everyone. If you think about it, it’s somehow like Madoka Magica (spoilers about Madoka Magica) A normal girl is given the choice to have powers and a wish and use them to save someone, but in exchange she has to fight endlessly knowing that nothing good can come out of it . However, I’m not entirely sure about why Kotori hadn’t broken her promise with the Mistletoe before. Did she fear that the druids or something else would come for her? Would she have automatically lost her powers? Or was it just because she was afraid of Kotarou dying after she saved him?
Another thing very well developed was the mystery that unfolded just after the 13th of November, with everyone’s disappearance and, later on, with Inoue’s diary. Even though crushed at times with badly distributed comedic reliefs, the tension built up and the way answers were being given in a very slow but steady manner kept me gripped reading for way too long.
So overall, this first run was a kinda decent introduction to the whole situation with the Key, Gaia, and Guardian. I still have that painful feeling of having lost a golden opportunity by having read this route first instead of learning from the situation from the route of a character that I don’t like as much, but what’s done can’t be undone. I hope to see better-focused routes from now on and at least now I know more or less what I have to keep my eyes open for.
9 Likes
(Rewrite spoilers approaching, especially about Kotori’s route)
Personally, I wasn’t very satisfied with the route for a various reasons :
- Sudden change of pace in plot - I felt that the pace of the plot was not very consistent in this route. For example, in the beginning of the route, there is a slightly slow advancement in the plot with Koutarou and Kotori as the only remaining members of the Occult club. Then, from the point where Koutarou finds Kotori after she goes missing, the plot suddenly starts advancing at a very fast pace (Kotori suddenly stops rejecting Koutarou, Gaia and Guardian start appearing out of nowhere, Kotori’s parents turned out to be familiars, Chibimoth dies, Kagari starts singing, Kagari dies) All that has been mentioned in the bracket happened way too quickly.
- Lack of development in romance
- Vague/weak ending - I felt that the ending wasn’t very clear and that it didn’t exactly reach a solid conclusion. Yes, both Koutarou and Kotori lived so all’s well that ends well but I felt that it wasn’t a good idea to solve the problem by having Shizuru shoot Kagari. What I was looking for was a conclusion that was reached by the efforts of Koutarou and Kotori.
- Not clear transition between the route which is unlocked upon completion
Overall, I would rate it a 6/10
*Before I complete, I would like to say that the route had interesting points of development as well. I have just stated the negatives in order to go with my stance.
I think Kotori’s route was thought off as an introduction. The writer spent most of the route bringing up questions and dropping some hints, instead of working on a consistent plotline. The feeling of inconclusiveness, the mysterious tone, the different position Kotori was in, as opposed to the other heroines(very slight spoiler of the other routes), all point to that imo.
They should’ve enforced her route as first, though. I, for example, missed a sizeable portion of the experience, as I did Lucia–>Chihaya–>Akane–>Kotori. Maybe that’s why it felt like the weakest heroine route to me, unfortunately. Nevetheless, it is still way above your standard charage route, obviously.
Well It’s been a while since I’ve posted here and I don’t really feel like doing the whole ‘crackpot theory’ thing right now sooooooooo I just wanted to show a little appreciation for the little things. Like Kotori’s smol booty. 
I really enjoyed this route as an introduction to the world, showing us that there are things grander than the day-to-day life we have only perceived thus far through Kotarou’s eyes. I particularly want to shoutout a certain bit of visual and auditory juxtapositon, toward the end of the route (in my own words):
“Black dogs stalking through the golden fields of heaven, the mechanical sound of a chainsaw no mortal could use with their bare hands, and the haunting piano melody of an ancient civilisation”
It was hella lit.
I may be a monster but I was particularly intrigued by Kotori’s attempts to deny her connections to the people around her, who care about her. All because of some randomass berries in the middle of the forest who told her she was the Chosen One. I guess when you follow a practice for so long it becomes difficult to see anything else beyond this narrow field of vision.
Finally, i want to shoutout mah boi Yoshino. The true hero of this route, who saves the day without even getting a name for it. I really really really hope we get to see Yoshino take on Kotarou with equal levels of power, that would be my favourite thing in the whole wide world <3
8 Likes
I really love Kotori. She’s is definitely my favorite heroine of Rewrite for two major reasons. She’s such a well written character that strikes every chord I have in terms of storytelling. The way we get to know her is through common, where we meet the fun, silly Kotori. She acts aloof at times, and Kotarou plays her off as being a terrible liar. All common tropes that are played entirely straight.
This is all, of course, a lie. Kotori’s route quickly deconstructs all we know about her, leaving this entirely new character before us to mold into the great character she really is. Kotori feels very much like a Nasu character, and by that I mean her words and emotions are independent of her actual actions and true feelings. She is a very subtly written character. Kotori is on the same tier of depth and nuance alongside Akiha from Tsukihime and Saber from Fate/Stay Night, both written (and written well) by Kinoko Nasu, which is where I got the term from. Things like why she rejects Kotarou both romantically and when he wants to help after finding the truth accentuate how much she really cares about him without spoon feeding it to the reader. Things like believing that familiars don’t retain their memories so she won’t have to accept that she wasted ten years of her life avoiding others. Show, don’t tell; this is what I love about Nasu, and partly why I love Kotori. This is all brought to a head when she breaks down crying into his back, where this facade finally cracks and it feels so powerful because the reader already knows this side of her was ready to burst out. She cares very much about the people she loves, and is thus forced to become a cold person because she cannot handle any more loss.
This brings me to the other side of the coin, where I expouse on why I really love Kotori. She is without a doubt a tragic heroine, plagued by a life of loss and misfortune, and is forced to isolate herself. Does she make excuses? No. Does she push responsibility onto another? No. Kotori is constantly agonized by the choices she made, and feels incredible guilt over breaking the laws life to satisfy her justified selfishness. Despite all of this, however, she continues down the path she chose, because it is hers and she’s the only one who can. She believes she is actively sacrificing herself for the good of the world, and stays resolute in her path. She is a total aversion of my biggest pet peeve, which is when a story wants me to sympathize with a character simply because bad things happened to them. I find that incredibly disrespectful and an insult to myself as a reader. It is not what happens to a character, it’s what that character does in spite of what’s happened to them. That is true strength. That is a good character to me. Kotori exemplifies mastery of this characterization, and that is why I love her so much. Here is where I applaud Romeo Tanaka.
Kotori is the shining star of Rewrite’s heroines, and does this by shining dimly. She is not the endless sky, but is instead the deep ocean. She is one of my favorite examples of a subtle character, and does so many things right. She is a hero.
6 Likes
I think the thing that really sells me on Kotori in terms of how… personal my attachment was to her and Kotarou at the end of the story is the scale. This route focuses on an individual’s attempts struggling against a cascade of events that threaten their own life, all of which are barely comprehensible which (Lucia and Shizuru route spoilers) In Shizuru the entire world gets turned into trees? maybe? And then in Lucia’s she goes off like a freakin atomic bomb, killing thousands. Not to mention the fact that all 4 other heroines seem to have a thorough knowledge of the way the organisations operate quite frankly I really really enjoy the self-restraint shown here by the writer. This route is super focused on this life-or-death battle without mincing words or pulling punches. I really felt at the end that Kotarou might die, and that would SUCK. A LOT. Which isn’t really the reaction I’ve had to either of the other routes.
I feel this so much. She is arguably the… least important heroine in regards to the conflict between Guardian and Gaia, she goes almost completely unnoticed by the world around her and equally is ignorant of what dangers lurk outside her protective barriers and plant familiars embrace. Her tale will never be sung, no one will know of her sacrifice, and yet, she hangs in there. (even if the giving of her moral duty by a shrub is still dubious at best I mean seriously, she must’ve really been in an awful place to think a shrub is a good place to swear a life-debt.)
I’m very curious to see what role she might have in other routes, particularly Akane’s. I imagine without Kotarou’s help someone has to break through her barrier to deal with the Key, and I am very curious to see Kotarou’s interaction when he’s on the other side of the anti-material rifle. See you in the next post folks! I’ll be tackling Chihaya next!
7 Likes
Commenting here after only having read the common route and Kotori’s.
Kotori very easily leaps into my top 10 Key Heroines, the character art is gorgeous (those deep emerald eyes, braids and the flower hair ornaments); but the killer is the tremendous VA from Chiwa Saito who seems to live and breathe the character in every line she speaks through all the nuances of bad dorky puns to gratuitous English to her breakdown towards the end of the route. Plus I can empathise with her being (clearly a much better) gardener.
Reading through all the comments there’s not much I can add of any interest, I enjoyed the route even though one-third of it was pretty much exposition - it was necessary I expect but still presented in an engaging way. Kotori seems a bit lightweight in the common route but once we learn of the role she has had to take on and the burden she has to carry while trying to appear like a normal girl, her role in Kotarou’s past and taking the decision that he begs for we see her real strength and resolve. In addition the route helps to turn Inoue from a slightly antagonistic character to one we can empathise with.
And then we have the darkness of the story itself; the leaf dragon, the war and the resulting carnage with Chibimoth’s savage death all culminating in Shizuru’s surprise intervention, and Kotori apparently abandoning Kotarou while he’s in a critical condition at the end. And meanwhile Kotori is surprisingly unfeeling ( they’re only familiars).
Following on from Kotori appearing to have a rather light-hearted role in common, the route feels very unconventional for a Key heroine and doesn’t pull any punches. It feels a little too unevenly paced for a perfect rating, the rather open ending also suggests that it may need to be seen in context with the whole story rather than just by itself.
2 Likes
This is a post that’s going to be very hard for me to write both on a purely visceral level and in that I don’t know what exactly or how much I want to say. During my history as a Kaza member I’ve alluded many times to my particular relationship to this route, I’ve but never gone into the specifics. Here it is.
This route fucked me up.
The first time I opened up Rewrite was on the fourth of September, 2016. I went into it super biased against it. The only two Visual Novels I had read before then were Katawa Shoujo and If My Heart Had Wings, in that order. I still had something of a prejudice against VNs as just dating sims or porn games, and I thought I had just lucked out with the cream of the crop for my first two, and I thought there was no fucking way I would get so lucky a third time. Nothing has ever won me over so thoroughly and quickly. The only other instance that’s even kind of analogous is Da Capo 2, but even there it didn’t win me over quite as much and I wasn’t as biased against it to begin with. Of course, it’s fairly obvious that Rewrite must have won me over, since I’ve made no great secret that it’s my favourite fictional story of all time, across mediums. By a lot. September Fourth was a Sunday, and it was fairly late when I started reading. I didn’t sleep that night. I was still in high school at the time, and so I had to stop for about eight hours, but when I got home, I kept reading until about 4 the next morning. I got three hours of sleep that night, and the same the next day. I’ve always been a slow reader, and I was still new to VNs at the time, plus the soundtrack just left me breathless and I would periodically stop just to listen to it, and for various reasons like that, even though I did nothing but read Rewrite during that time, it took me the time period I just described to just finish Kotori’s route.
I can’t even really explain why, but Kotori’s route just tore me to pieces inside. Yeah, it’s a tragic route, but I feel it’s disproportionate to that just how much it fucked me up. I’m scared of rereading it. It’s not even my least favourite route, but I’ve reread every other route at least twice, but Kotori’s not once. And I mean it when I say I’m scared to reread it. That is the reason I’ve never done so. I’ve always said that Kotori’s route made me cry, but that’s actually not true. I was too… dumbfounded, too shocked by the deep utter heartbreak this route caused me to cry. Nothing has ever left me so speechless.
I feel like it shouldn’t have had even as much impact on me as, say, After Story or Refrain did, both of which I’ve reread a bunch of times, and both of which actually did make me cry, but nothing has ever hit me nearly as hard as Kotori’s route.
And like I said, I can’t even identify the reason. Maybe I’m not remembering accurately and it actually is tragic enough to warrant that. Maybe it’s because I had never read anything even remotely close to the same level of quality of the writing and tragedy of the story and I wasn’t ready for it. Hell, maybe it’s because at the time I was chronically low on sleep. No. That would be doing it a disservice. I remember that time vividly, as you can probably tell by my elaborate description of what was going on, and I know I was lucid every step of the way. I do have something of a theory. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a very apathetic person. I can’t bring myself to care about much, and I’m not someone who feels strong emotions often. I’m an argumentative son of a bitch, yeah, but that’s just something that’s been part of my personality since forever and it’s not really reflective of my true thoughts and feelings. I haven’t always been this way, only since my self-proclaimed epiphany in late April of 2016. You’ll notice this was a scant four months before I first read Rewrite. I think that maybe the layer of emotional sediment that was settling over my more impassioned self was just hardening when I read Rewrite, beginning with Kotori’s route, and it threw me through real emotional turmoil as a result. I’m actually pretty bad at psychoanalysing myself, so who knows if that’s true.
Ultimately, this route is a real demon of mine. It’s not my favourite route, nor my least favourite. I can’t even pin down the reason why it terrifies me so much.
This route scares me.
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I’m pretty sure I’ve had a similar experience. And I think it’s that sort of experience that makes Key such a big draw to people in general.
Take my first Key anime: Kanon. The first time I watched it I was so affected by Makoto’s route, simply because it was the first anime I’ve seen that made me feel so strongly for a character. In hindsight, Makoto’s route wasn’t all that good, but it still hooked on to me.
And the first full VN I read: CLANNAD. After reading that for the first time, I legitimately felt empty; depressed, even.
I won’t be surprised if Kotori’s route made you feel that way at the time. There really aren’t that many stories that can pierce through ones emotions such strongly. And even if Kotori’s route isn’t all that grand compared to others, it still has that catharsis that one would expect from any decent Key story. And it really makes you wonder how you can magically feel so strongly for these characters.
And that’s why I love Key’s works so much 
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Catharsis is the thing that Kotori’s route never had for me. In hindsight, chasing off the wolves is the finale; however–while reading–I expected a conclusion, not an abrupt stop. (Hence why I jumped on Harvest Festa the second I learned that machine translators were a thing.) Rewrite has a rule about routes not being allowed a (too) happy ending, so Kotori’s route simply doesn’t give you an ending at all. Instead, they sold it to you in a separate box 1 year later.
It was one of the best routes I’d ever read, even from Key works.
The end is abrupt, and it takes its sweet time to start as well. But the despair I felt in the middle, especially during the final night…!!! I swear I rarely had such a hard time reading something. Kôtarou and Kotori stand absolutely no chance at all, they know that, you (as a reader) know that, yet the batte still happens and man, what a HUGE series of loss. First they lose Kotori’s Life source, then they lose their army of creatures, then they lose Chibimoth, then they realize they’re in the enemy’s trap, then they lose Kotori’s parents, … It’s a non-stop series of loss until that very end where Kôtarou is about to faint and Kotori desperately tries to bring him to the city.
I also loved the relatively short length. Rewrite, overall, is way too long for what it’s worth. I did like it a lot, but I think it could have been a masterpiece had they tried to make it more concise. Kotori’s route, however, is not that long to read, so it was easier for me to swallow.
The end is way too abrupt though. It deserved much, much better than that. I guess we can count Harvest Festa as the “real epilogue”, but still…
Anyway, in my opinion it’s the best route in this game (except maybe Moon and Terra).
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