Rewrite - Terra Arc Discussion

Key Discussion
#54

Yup, fate. I wanted to talk about this before, but I tend to forget. XD I found that concept to be an extremely important plot point in the entire series, and I only realized it when I reread a part of Moon recently. Fate is a property of Aurora that serves as its memories that it can come back to whenever it wanted.

This was best explained during the mini-Theory that the Occult Club played around in Moon. The horseshoe crab thing that Shizuru came up with caused the collapse of one world, but in the next world they simulated, the mini-Theory just naturally brought a more sustainable species of that horseshoe crab without anyone commanding it to be.

Basically, Aurora can naturally carry memories of the world, and this concept is the basis of creating the Mistletoe familiar and also how the Holy Women passes memories after death. I think this is also why Chibimoth and Kotori’s parents gained memories of their past selves.

This property of Aurora also gravitates people to whom they have heavily interacted in the past worlds. That may as well explain why Kotarou encountered a young Midou and his friends in the war-torn country, and also why the five heroines just flocked together after the war and became Touka’s children, and why they incidentally summoned Kotarou who has become a familiar.

I think this should explain why Kotarou and Kagari gravitated together so strongly that they meet each other in every single world.

Edit: I should have mentioned that this is how Kagari’s Beacon (aka the flaming choices) works. And also Terra ending with the Occult Club meeting the Girl on the Moon. XD

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#55

Wow, this offers a super in-depth explanation as to why Kotarou could appear on the Moon. It clears up a lot of what I just thought of as “convenient” too, making it sound more like it was destiny, which is always cool.

Though it still doesn’t explain if they were simulations or not…

I realized another contradiction with them being simulations. In the end of Moon, Sakuya is able to come to the Moon because he combined the power of himself in all the other worlds. This is proven when he turns into his Sakuya Overpowered form. Yet how could Sakuya combine all his other selves if all his other selves were simulations which did not exist? Not to mention, my numbered theory above about the first history wouldn’t work because of this either, unless that first history just so happened to be the Chihaya route, as Sakuya’s Overpowered Form wouldn’t have existed otherwise.

#56

Your thinking of
Routes = Simulations
Simulations = Not Real
is flawed.

The routes are “simulations,” but they’re also real.

4 Likes
#57

The theorem is made by Aurora, and Aurora can carry memories/personalities.
In the simulations, you have real people simulated, with souls, personalities, etc. These incarnations are recorded.
It’s how Kotarou was able to summon the Okaken in Moon, and Sakuya also having the power to manipulate Aurora, manifested himself on the Moon. And while Sakuya sacrificed his own existence in the Moon route, he still existed within the Aurora.

Likewise, it’s implied that it isn’t just one Kashima Sakura that is summoning familiars, but a Kashima Sakura that contains all the Kashima Sakuras from all simulations. Hence why she’s able to summon an overwhelming amount of Familiars that not even the entire Okaken together can stop.

Regardless, I love Rewrite for being so deep that you have have these talks :stuck_out_tongue:

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#58

I like how you described the nature of aurora, but I need to correct a few things. Sakuya practically sacrificed his fate in Moon, and because of that he can no longer exist in the Terra timeline. Sacrificing his fate meant that he is no longer recorded in the aurora. (Probably why he momentarily appeared in Kotarou’s mind before his last rewriting is because Kotarou had memories of him in Moon, but I heard that was retconned in Rewrite+ so yeah.)

In the case of Sakura, those familiars only came from her in a branch world, and Kotarou explicitly stated that (at least in the anime).

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#59

I see. Fascinating, it’s a shame they retconned it. The way I understood it he sacrificed his existence/fate as a human, as a person. I.E he would only exist as Aurora.

And yeah that is true, still begs the question how Sakura managed to get so many familiars sent over here.

#60

You will keep wondering about that because it’s literally never touched upon ever. She simply became depressed enough that she transcended humanity.

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#61

Ascension by depression, so edgy xD

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#62

Between you, BlackHayate02, and Aspirety, you guys wrap up the final holes in the simulation argument, yep. Sakura, Sakuya, Kotarou’s appearance, two Kagaris have all been accounted for by now, making the simulation argument completely possible.

Seems like it really does become a grab bag of just picking one of the three theories you outlined earlier. All of them have proof in the visual novel, either straightforward or implied, it’s just that some of the theories are simpler or more plausible. It’s not that any of the theories are wrong, it’s that we don’t know which one is the “correct” or “cannon” one.

And yeah, I agree about Rewrite’s depth. The other Key works are all pretty straight forward. Even their endings that can be baffling are mostly explained by “dat’s the power of love for ya,” yet in Rewrite it’s about a bajillion times more complicated than that. I really like Rewrite for it.

Also, it’s sad that the Sakuya scene at the end of Terra was changed. I don’t know the changes, and while I was confused as to how Sakuya could talk to Kotarou at the time (you cleared it up nicely), I really liked the scene as one last bro to bro moment between Sakuya and Kotarou, showing that they’d transcended being rivals and moved on to being friends.

2 Likes
#63

Oh thanks! I just wanted to be extra careful.
I’ll leave off spoiler tags in the future here, then.

#64

This is essentially the reason Terra stuck in my mind for longer than most of Rewrite, and the more I think about it the more I like what it is. Doesn’t mean it’s particularly fun to read like, say, Lucia route, but I really, really appreciate what Terra represents.

The world is on the brink of destruction. Saving it is no easy task. In fact, the only way is to take Kotarou, who as we’ve seen can have many different potential happy futures, and force him upon a path that takes everything from him and leaves him with nothing - to top it all off he even has the obligation of killing the one being he’s doing all of this for, and he is not allowed to refuse. Because ultimately, even if Moon Kagari is sympathetic towards what he has to go for, the happiness of a single person - and probably many other people’s just as well - is something she’s willing to sacrifice if it means saving the world.

That’s also why I loved that one scene in the 16th episode (timestamp 10:50) of the anime so much: Just before Kagari cocoons up, she tears up. She knows that she is literally writing all of his happy futures out of existence if she walks this path, but she still has to do it. It was a devastating scene for me, now that I understand all the implications.

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#65

I also like the message that even when a person sacrifices so much, s/he can still be able to pursue happiness later on. Kotarou may have lost just about everything when he was still alive, but he may still be able to find happiness later, though as a familiar, with the heroines. However, that happiness can only be guaranteed in an ideal world, and Terra is much about what it takes to create that ideal world, which, as has been said, is no easy task.

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#66

Is there only one Possibility for saving the Earth ?

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#67

Technically there are a few others that can save Earth, but Terra is the only one that saves life itself and spreads it across the universe. (Not counting Oppai, which also saves life)

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#68

At an overall it was a really good route with the introduction of some new characters as well as explaining the back story of some characters such as Midou. It also managed to give a clearer idea about some minor details like the Gaian internal conflict ( Kashima Sakura and Suzaki ) as well as the importance and role Esaka has as a member of Guardian. In the ending scene, I got an impression that the girls were repaying Koutarou with their life energy since he used up his life energy to rewrite the fate of the characters as well as the world. Finally, I felt the route explained Koutarou’s serious side better as well. ( The one where he didn’t suffer a brain damage by being attacked by Kagari )

#69

The next target of my crusade against all the perceived plot-holes in Rewrite is the big one.
In the Moon route:

problem1
problem1.png812×302 110 KB

yet in the Terra route:
problem2
This is probably the biggest and most obvious (alleged) plot-hole in the entire story, and also the only one I’ve heard of that I myself felt was a genuine plot-hole the first time I read it.

I know that it this scene was removed in Rewrite+ because it apparently didn’t make any sense, and I don’t know that Romeo Tanaka himself had to say about it, but I don’t think it should have been removed, because there is an in-narrative explanation for it that I find to be beautifully subtle and perfectly foreshadowed, and I honestly think of myself as a bit of an idiot for not getting it immediately on the first read-through.

The answer is this thing:

proof2
proof2.png952×688 91.2 KB

As far as I can tell, there are three points in the Terra route where this thing affects him in a truly substantial way. Obviously it’s the flame guiding him through all his decisions, but I’m talking about three times that simply would never have gone down the same way if it wasn’t there.

The first time is this:

proof5
proof5.png960×540 749 KB

The second and most obvious time, the very reason for it’s existence is of course this:

proof6
proof6.png960×540 489 KB

And the third time is Kotarou’s conversation with “Sakuya”. It’s no coincidence that Kotarou finds this in his soul while he’s talking to “Sakuya.” That was implanted in him by a Kotarou who had memories of Sakuya and a connection with him as successor and predecessor. The proof can be found in Chihaya’s route, with this scene, when he’s pondering rewriting himself to fight Krivory Rog:

proof4
proof4.png922×544 367 KB

It’s almost exactly the same situation. In that scene it’s his own voice he hears, but due to the foreign object in his soul in the Terra route, which contains the sentiment of a Kotarou who has a connection with Sakuya, he hears Sakuya embodying his instincts as a rewriter rather than his own voice. Of course it’s not really Sakuya, he doesn’t even exist, but:
proof1
These two lines in the Moon route have more significance than they first appear. Even though “this” Kotarou dies (or is destroyed or however you want to put it), he had already left something of himself behind, and that something still contained memories of Sakuya. Kotarou did remember Sakuya, just like he said he would.

3 Likes
#70

I very much enjoyed Terra, and reading through all the posts here leaves me with a bit of regret that I can’t offer anything much by the way of new or interesting analysis to what has already been written. I think it would take me another playthrough to really take it all in ( bring on Steam’s Rewrite+ release!). I had a lack of understanding about why nearly all the ‘choices’ weren’t actually choices but that was answered on Discord. It was interesting to see familiar characters through a different perspective and a bit heartbreaking at times as Kotarou makes hard choices and “betrayals” leaving him ever more isolated in his task to clear the route to his goal.

It did feel like a suitably “bittersweet” ending, no simple RPG style; kill the bosses, take the loot, save the world, get mighty rewards, elope with dream woman ending here, and on to the next great adventure. Perhaps that was at least partly the point of the RPG feel to this VN, that the real world isn’t a game with fixed rules or hard and fast right vs wrong. Real world problems are not black and white with solutions where nobody gets hurt. Saving the world begs the question whose world? And might mean losing yourself in the process.

I’ve only played about VNs but this is definitely in my Top 10.

1 Like
#71

Since I read Rewrite a long time, I have to ask: Was Esaka’s power ever revealed ? The only thing I remember is that’s he was embarrassed of it?

#72

I Really enjoyed reading it, it really bring a new side of the game showing that sometimes sacrifices are need to be done to achieve someting, and sometimes in that process a person can lose either himself or the people around him, but ultimately find happiness in the goals that you persue and find amazing people on the path. In a way the bittersweet ending really suits the arc, making the ending more memorable and something that the reader can never forget.

5 Likes
#73

i wish esaka never fight kotarou :sob:

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