Hanamaki Ichigo is currently leading a normal life at university. One day, her childhood friend Kagutsuchi Hino asks her if she’d like to go on a trip to Okunezato, the town that her brother disappeared in a year ago, to look for clues on his whereabouts. They decide to head off to the “Okunezato Occult Club” meetup at the town, where they meet a bunch of after people to talk about the mysteries of the town. Little did she know that there was more going on in the village that she thought, and how she was related to all of this.
When Hino & Ichiko arrive at the town’s only hotel, the Furinkan, they meet up with all the Occult Club members, who are Amari Isora, Kushinada Toa, Tatehira Sosuke & Susano Yua. They also meet a pretty sharp shota middle schooler named Hirasaka Yuki, who helps out at the hotel very often. With no sign of the creator of the Okunezato website, they start their talk anyway. Yuki offers to let Hino & Ichiko stay longer at the hotel in exchange for working part time there for half a day daily, which allows them to do more around the town to find clues. While the Occult Club gathering is going on, there’s also news of the popular idol A-TO (pronounced Eight so I’ll be going with that) is planning on having a live concert in the countryside town, which confuses many as no idol would want to come to the countryside for a live. Throughout Ichiko’s stay in the town, she meets the stoic owner of the Furinkan, Murakumo Yuzuki, a cherry but useless policeman of the town Kukuri Yasuhisa, a photographer named Tsukuyomi Kagura, and a disgruntled novelist named Karasuma Chikage.
The main plot of the game focuses around the legend that lies in Okunezato, where there apparently lies a bunch of purple flowers called Shiseisou. These flowers are said to have the ability to revive the dead. These revived dead however, have to kill other with life to continue surviving in the world as a walking corpse. They’re called “shisha” which technically means dead people so I’ll call them the undead to make things easier. The undead seem to be like humans, but they continue to crave for human life so that they can continue on living. The Okunezato Occult Club all gather together to hear the different legends that lie in the village, and this is the main one. A few other legends include the ghost fire in the mountains, or the strange Okune Panda mascot walking around town in the night, and no one knows who’s inside the mascot. This will all end up linking together in the separate routes, so we’re going into spoiler territory. As you read further down more spoilers will be expected and mentioned so do be careful if you’re reading! Read only the final thoughts for spoiler-free content!
-last barrier for spoilers, if you dont want to be spoilt scroll down to final thoughts-
Kagutsuchi Hino (CV: Shimazaki Nobunaga)
Hino is Ichiko’s childhood friend who has been with her since they’re in elementary school, all the way to university. (or so the game tells you at first, you’ll find out more in the final route) He’s the one who came up with the idea for Ichiko to head to Okunezato to find clues about her brother, and follows her everywhere to look for information, loyally protecting her. He’s secretly in love with the cute mascot character the Okune Panda, secret trying to buy its merchandise without letting Ichiko know. Hino practically knows everything about Ichiko, mainly regarding about how she dislikes strawberries, and is bad with water so he has to hold onto her whenever they jump into a water body. Hino’s very desperate to protect Ichiko mainly because of an incident which happened in the past, causing him to be triggered when he tries to use the toy guns to get a prize for Ichiko at the festival. The trauma causes him to faint, and Ichiko has to go ask Kagura to get Sosuke for help. Hino soon goes back to normal when he wakes up, and over the next few days they hang out together to find clues about Ichiko’s brother. They also work at the Furinkan together to get a few more stays at the hotel, where Hino royally falls on Ichiko while they’re cleaning the bath and Ichiko starts getting dokidoki over him. ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ Ichiko starts to realise how much she loves him though after she gets worried and runs out of the hotel to go find Hino upon hearing about a dead body being found near the Okune Shrine. Hion often goes on morning runs to the shrine, and Ichiko doesn’t find anyone there, and mysteriously passes out in the shrine due to the smell of an unknown flower she doesn’t remember. Hino finds here there and shakes her awake, and Ichiko starts crying because Hino is safe and for some reason, she feels she remembers the shrine somehow. Hino soon takes her back to the hotel to relax for the rest of the day, and decides to tell Ichiko about the incident which gave him his trauma. Hino takes her to the riverside and tells her about the incident which happened when they were in middle school. Hino wanted to impress Ichiko and be like her brother, so one day he took her to this abandoned shack where it was said to be a haunted house. Unfortunately instead of meeting a ghost and protecting her they run into a serial killer who grabs Ichiko threatening to kill her. The serial killer then throws his gun to Hino telling him to shoot, but he couldn’t. Ichiko’s brother swooped in to finish off the guy, and Ichiko passed out from the trauma. She then seems to have lost her memory of the incident from the trauma, and her brother had told Hino to stay away from her if he wasn’t going to protect her.
Hino then swore to protect her from now on, and seems to have made an agreement with Ichiko’s brother about it. Just as Hino was about to confess his love for her, someone across the river shoots Hino in the leg causing mass panic. Hino’s taken to the local hospital where thankfully, he’s safe. Yuzuki then kicks everyone out of the hotel including Ichiko telling them to pack their bags and go the next day because the town’s too dangerous for them to stay. Kagura, who was also a victim of the serial killer and got stabbed , offers to take Hino back to the city once he recovered. Ichiko then receives a letter telling her to go to the shrine beyond the blocked off tunnel, which leads into the woods, with no one or they’ll kill her brother. Ichiko decides that it’s her to do something for Hino and runs off into the woods, finding an abandoned shrine with her brothers clothes in it. Right as this happens the serial killer shows up complaining how long it took to get rid of all the people around her so that he could make her alone. He then tells her it’s her time to die, when Hino jumps in with an injured leg saying he’ll protect her. Happy End: The killer throws a gun at them telling them to shoot him if her dares, so Hino takes it and with all his resolve, shoots at the guy. However, the gun isn’t loaded with any bullets so it doesn’t do anything, leaving the killer laughing at them for being that stupid. He’s about to end both their lives when Karasuma flies in and lunges himself at the guy, saying some sort of spell causing the both of them to disappear. Yuki and Sosuke soon rushes in to tend to Hino, and he’s taken back to the hospital. After some time, the killer and Karasuma both disappear, but Hino has recovered. They make a grave for Ichiko’s brother and pay their respects to him, and Hino confesses his love to Ichiko so they kiss by the riverside. (❁´▽`❁)*✲ Normal End: After realising the gun has no bullets, Hino lunges himself at the killer to protect Ichiko, and disappears afterwards, causing everyone to assume he’s dead, and Ichiko upset. I generally feel bad for Hino because he as the opening route really didn’t get any main plot despite him being involved a lot in Ichigo’s life, and they just leave it as “we’ll be back next time to find more”. There’s really so much content but he doesn’t get involved in much of it, but at least he was still pretty cute.
Amari Isora (CV: Kakihara Tetsuya)
Isora is the chef at the hotel cafe: the Furin cafe. He’s actually younger than Ichiko & is in high school, currently working at the cafe as a part time job. Isora gets pretty much full control on running the cafe and cooking for the place, making pretty tasty dishes too. He’s very on to Ichiko after meeting her, and is always very nice to her. At the festival, he reveals that he’s actually from this town, and he just went away to a high school outside the town so that he can learn to be a professional patisser in the future. He offers to help her look around town for clues about her brother since he’s familiar with the townspeople since he was young, so he takes time off when the cafe is closed to hang out with her. Isora’s personality starts to show when Ichiko takes a whole day to hang out with Hino for clues, and comes back to the cafe for something to eat. Isora slaps a strawberry tart on the table despite knowing that Ichiko dislikes strawberries and whispers (really creepily) telling Hino to eat it. Since Hino can’t finish it he decides to give it to the cat which comes by the hotel every day. Unfortunately the next morning, the same cat is found to ben poisoned and killed, and somehow Hino’s also in the hospital over stomach problems. Ichiko worries that Isora might have done something, but chooses to believe he wouldn’t do much since no one blames him anyway. As cases of people falling off the mountains continue to happen, Isora joins Ichiko in her search for clues while Hino is busy dying in his room over his stomach. He soon reveals that he really has a deep hatred for the Murakumo family. His family used to run a restaurant in town, which had a lot of business. This is because Okunezato used to be a town popular for its onsens, but after they started getting everyone to close their onsens, the town had lesser tourists, which meant lesser customers for them too. This is also the reason why the town has a old town area which is pretty secluded, as most of the people who used to live there moved out.
After his dad died, the restaurant eventually closed as there was no one coming to eat there anyway. His raised him on her own, and eventually found another job as the chef at the Furin Cafe. He doesn’t like the fact that the Murakumo family is controlling everything the people does, and his plan is to become a great chef so he can take of his mother. The reason why he’s working at the cafe this summer, is because his mom got sick so he’s taking her place right now. After Yuki gets mysteriously kidnapped by a certain black car, Isora tells Ichiko to immediately return to the Furinkan after doing grocery shopping for him. However Ichiko is probably too nice to the point that upon seeing the same black car which took Yuki, she chases after it to the old town area, and ends up getting attacked by someone from the back. The attacker injures her legs, but thankfully Isora arrives to save her. Ichiko passes out and soon wakes up to see herself in a room with one door, no windows, and only pipes. Isora explains that it’s his bunk of love, I mean a storeroom which he uses as a emergency bunker. The room comes with a bathroom and kitchen so Ichiko has nothing to worry about. Isora properly takes care of Ichiko by bringing food to her and helping her to get a change of clothes since she can’t really move from the bed due to her leg injuries. Ichiko thinks nothing of this first until Isora keeps her inside there to the point she loses track of time. Soon after, Ichiko starts to consider the possibility that Isora might have been the killer and is after her, thus trapping her inside the room. This is because when Isora rescued her, he mentioned that there weren’t many customers at the cafe so he came after her. However, Ichiko noticed that he was busy that night, which increases her suspicions so when she asks him about it his yandere side shows up for a moment. He soon starts staying over in the room with her and starts making remarks like “if only the injury were on your hands so I could feed you”. Life continues on when one day Isora leaves the door open giving Ichiko a chance to escape but she stays anyway since she trusts the boy but the serial killer with the cat mask shows up to murder her. He then babbles on about how Ichiko probably got bamboozled by him since he was planning on framing Isora for everything he did, like poison the cat, when Isora shows up to stab the guy.
The killer stabs Isora back but the yandere strength is overpowering so he manages to stab the killer multiple times that Ichiko has to yell at him to stop telling him not to stain his hands used for cooking. (i really dont remember what she said exactly but the cooking hands was a point) Happy end: Isora then reveals how his dream of being a patisserie came to life. When he was young, he started baking stuff to try out his cooking skills but no one wanted to eat it, except for this one girl who offered to try everything he made. However, he accidentally gave the girl food poisoning from his strawberry tart because he used rotten strawberries. Because of the incident, he decided to be the best baker. The girl was Ichiko, and he’s been in love when her since she was a loli. This is also the reason why Ichiko hates strawberries. They kiss but they ain’t got time to ichaicha because the bunker is on fire thanks to the candles toppling over, so Ichiko drags a fainting Isora out. Isora is then rushed to the town’s hospital, while Ichiko returns to the hotel. She soon find out that Isora was telling the truth about keeping her safe but he didn’t tell anyone of the location just in case someone was the killer. Isora soon recovers from his injury, and finds out that he will be able to cook again since his hand is recovering smoothly. He apologises for locking her up inside the bunker and for his yandere tendencies, and kisses her saying he’ll make her a strawberry tart soon to help her get over her strawberry trauma. Normal End: Isora is badly hurt from protecting her from the serial killer, and doesn’t wake up on the day that Hino & Ichiko leave the town. The both of them visit him in the hospital where Hino thanks him for protecting Ichiko. Ichiko also does so, and tells him that she’s returning to the city. Isora was very innocent and I liked him, but after the whole ordeal of being in his bunk of love my general distaste of yanderes came over me and I like him less. While he was pretty minor over his actions, it felt like the writers were trying not to go to far for people to hate him. I mean he did explain his actions in the end, so I guess I’m cool with it.
Tatehira Sosuke (CV: Sawashiro Chiharu)
Sousuke is the university student who’s here at the town for vacation, and unsurprisingly, is also from this town because the entire harem is from Okunezato. At this point after playing Toa’s route (which will be talked about later because he’s pretty special in terms of his route) I wasn’t surprised anymore if he was from the town. He moved out when he went to university after witnessing something happening in the town when he was younger, and comes back during the vacation to check up on the town. However, Sousuke stays at the hotel as he wants to be there undetected. It so happens during the festival, the dead body the cops found belongs to his dad so he has to deal with his funeral. Nevertheless, he continues to help Ichigo go around town to find clues about her brother, and also dodge the shady guard force who work for the Murakumo family in charge of the town. They continue to hang out together such as going to the riverside cafe together, and doing some shopping and soon get close. Sousuke then opens up to Ichiko about his past and why he chose to leave the town. Turns out, when he was younger, he realised his dad was during shady shit going out at night so he followed him one day. He then saw his dad drag a guy out from a small restaurant and into the mountains. Upon reaching the mountains though his dad says that he was going to “exterminate” the guy, and all his heard after that was the dude screaming till it was silent. He got pretty freaked and ran, but ended up getting lost and was found by his dad. After the incident he never mentioned it to his dad, but he never understood why his dad could go off killing people without and feel okay about it, since he was a kind man after all. Sousuke does mention that he may have met Ichiko’s brother once as well, as he went back to the mountains, which is forbidden to the townspeople, in order to find out more. He discovered a field of purple flowers in a cave and suddenly saw a dude, but back then he was so scared the guy was gonna kill him so he ran off. He feels that the guy he met might have been Ichiko’s brother, but is unsure.
Sousuke is also trying to understand the truth behind the town so he ends up staking out the various murders that happen to find clue. The next day turns out another person was killed so he decides to enter the mountains and go check it out, and Ichiko decides to follow behind him despite him asking her to stay behind. Anyway, she ends up getting lost anyway but fortunately finds Sousuke, though the murderer is literally hot on their heels at that point. They end up running into the shady guard force, which literally are bunch of dudes running around in ninja wear, so I’m gonna call them the Ninja guard. At first, Sousuke and Ichiko hide from them, but once they mention Sousuke’s father, he comes out asks to know more. The guards notice him to be the son of their lost partner, so they tell both him and Ichiko to go to the Murakumo family home later that night if they want to find out the truth. They meet with the current leader of the Murakumo family, which is Yuzuki’s dad, Kyouji. He tells them that the ninja guards are the ones protecting this town from the true threat, at technically Yasuhisa is just there for show. The ninja guard’s job is to bury the undead, as during the end-July rainy season, they show up the most. Kyouji explains how the undead are dangerous as they go out to kill people to stay alive, so they must be gotten rid of before they do any harm to the people. It’s been particularly bad as they had 3 victims this year, one of which is Sousuke’s dad, who is part of the ninja guard and has been going round town since Sousuke was young to bury these undead. Kyouji then tells Sousuke that he can join the ninja squad to kill the undead who killed his dad, and get his revenge. When Ichiko asks about her brother, Kyouji gives her a notebook with the name “Hanate” on it, claiming to have found it in the mountains and was probably killed by an undead previously as they never found his body. He also asks Ichiko if she wants to join as well, as revenge for her brother. He also warns Ichiko that she may be attacked soon, although not telling her why. Sousuke asks him to give them some time to think about it, so they return back to the Furinkan. Sousuke’s relieved that he finally managed to confirm his suspicions all this while regarding his father. However, when they get back, Ichiko gets attacked by the killer. Thankfully, the clock rang and the killer gets a shock allowing her to run. Ichiko runs back to her room. Sousuke hears her screaming and she opens the door for him and she jumps into his arms being horrified at what happened. All the guys decide to leave her in Sousuke’s hands and ask details the next day since she’s pretty shaken up.
Sousuke stays with Ichiko in her room and calms her down, asking her to explain everything. Ichiko explains that she was attacked, and this leads to Sousuke piecing that all the doors in the hotel were locked, which means that the culprit was someone in the hotel. Sousuke decides that she should get some rest but Ichiko doesn’t want him to leave the room so he stays with her longer and cuddles her in bed, and we get a sweet love confession from him here. ೭੧(❛▿❛✿)੭೨ They then decide that they join the ninja guard to stop the killer from killing more people. The next day, Sousuke gathers everyone at the hotel, excluding Toa because he checked out the day before, literally have a long debate on who’s the killer as Ichiko was attacked in a closed environment. Sousuke gets everyone to prove that they are not the killer, and this segment was so long I started to have dangan ronpa war flashbacks. After a whole lump of discussion, Tsukuyomi fucks himself up because he mentioned the clock that struck 12 in the cafe, a piece of information no one knew of. After sloppily trying to defend himself, he gives in and admits the killer, showing his crazy side. Thankfully Yasu was at the scene and called the ninja guard to apprehend him, but the guy wrangles himself free and throws himself at Ichiko. Sousuke jumps in between them and gets stabbed in the arm, and the guards finally grab Tsukuyomi and drag him out. Sousuke is sent to the hospital. Happy End: Sousuke recovers as the stab wasn’t deep, and tells Ichiko that it might not have bene Tsukuyomi who killed his father. He reveals when he was younger, he met a girl who looked like Ichiko in the mountains. He then shows her the field of purple flowers and they kiss. ヾ(*´∀｀*)ﾉ Normal End: Sousuke recovers, and the two exchange contact information before the leaving the town, saying that they should meet again in the city for another date. (｡´∀｀)ﾉ Sousuke ended up being very uptight to me, and I didn’t really have any good memories of it except the sweet moments because of the whole segment at the end which was hard to go through when I was playing it at night and falling asleep. D: His route felt very “sherlock holmes”, as in where they were investigating and end up with a discussion to find the culprit, which I believe is the reason for his route. I still enjoyed it as a piece of the story, as there are still things they haven’t revealed.
Murakumo Yuzuki (CV: Shinichiro Miki)
Yuzuki is the cold owner of the Furinkan, who most people dislike since he just keeps barking orders to the rest of the staff and is only nice to Yuki. The dude is supposed to be the heir to the Murakumo family, but for some reason is on bad terms with his father. This is because he was made to be the leader of the ninja squad going around banishing undead, and on the first day of the job he let an undead go, so he ended up getting booted as leader of the ninja squad. Ichiko first runs into him by accident in the hotel when he goes into his office to clean it, not sure whether to do so or not, and ends up heading into the back room where his room is. He runs into Yuzuki doing some Ikebana, where Yuzuki makes her sit down and watch him do so since she’s so interested in it. He then talks about how his grandmother was pretty strict when she taught him Ikebana, that’s why he’s so skilled right now. After letting her see what he’s doing he kicks her out and tells her to never come back to this area again and get back to work. Ichiko also spots him on the job when he’s working with the ninja guards, where he tells her get out of the old town area and to not tell anyone about seeing him there that night. On the night of the festival, Ichiko decides not to go with anyone and runs into Yuki. Yuki gives Ichiko some porridge to bring to Yuzuki’s office, before running off in a hurry. She brings it to his office and realises he isn’t there, and ends up heading to his room again finding him dying in bed with a fever. He tells her to gtfo but Yuzuki can’t leave him alone so she nurses him back to health. (ﾉ `･∀･)ﾉﾞ He eventually gets better and tells her to not tell anyone of him in his weakened state. A few days later Ichiko decides to walk through the town alone when she runs into Yuzuki on the job, and he tells her to immediately go back to the hotel, as the old town area isn’t safe at the moment, warning her not to tell anyone about the people in the black clothes.
Ichiko continues to visit Yuzuki’s room to check on him, but ends up running into Karasuma who was looking through Yuzuki’s personal documents. He then takes this chance to knock Ichiko out with sleeping gas and takes her to an abandoned shack in the mountains to use her as hostage against Yuzuki since he seems to be attached to her. When Ichiko wakes up, Karasuma isn’t there but Yuzuki soon comes to her rescue, but Karasuma returns and beats the shit out of him. Karasuma then reveals that his wife Tsuzuri, was killed by Yuzuki and what the ninja guard are doing and killing innocent people. Yuzuki then reveals what happened that night. That night, when Yuzuki met Tsuzuri, she had already realised that she’s dead since she can only see red, but she doesn’t want to kill people. She begged Yuzuki to let her make one last phone call to her husband before she left, and she would then peacefully leave. Yuzuki felt bad for her so he gave her change to make the phone call: to congratulate Karasuma for releasing his first novel, and to tell him that she loved life with him and to move on with his life. (´；д；`) From the phone call, we also find out that Tsuzuri had already died from an illness a year ago. Unfortunately, while making the phone call, one of the ninja guards called Yuzuki’s name and they had to cut the call, and Tsuzuri had accidentally made it slip that she was in Okunezato. This is why Karasume came running over to Okunezato and researching more. Yuzuki tried to protect her from the rest of the ninjas and she said that he could kill her since she’s done what she wanted to do, but eventually the rest of the ninjas got to them and she was exterminated. Because of this, Kyouji was very pissed with Yuzuki so he booted him off from the leader and demoted him to just running the inn. Karasume continues to rage about how they killed her and Yuzuki yells back at him that his wife literally held back her urges to kill people to make that one phone call for him to move on with his life without her. After hearing this, he lets Yuzuki go and disappears. Yuzuki takes Ichiko back to the inn, and says that the undead need to accept their death, if not they’ll continue to spawn continuously every year. Instead of immediately getting rid of them, they should try to grant their wishes (unless they’re a crazy psychopath like Tsukuyomi) so that they’ll leave to the afterlife in peace.
Yuzuki also ends up admitting that he has slight feelings for her, since he actually came to save her. Ψ(ﾟ∀ﾟ)Ψ Yuzuki agrees to help Ichiko in her search to find her brother, so he takes her to Yasuhisa and forces him to spill the beans about what happened a year ago. An outsider actually came by a year ago so the ninja guard and Yasu had their tabs on him because he felt like he knew the place well. The ninja guards stalked him and when he reached the purple flower field, he suddenly disappeared and only his diary was left. Sousuke’s father is found dead, and Yuzuki runs off to deal with the situation, and tells Ichiko that his father wants to see her that night. She heads to the Murakumo family home where Kyouji warns her that she might be targeted by the undead. When Yuzuki shows up the old man starts barking at Yuzuki about him being a useless son so Ichiko yells back at him saying that Yuzuki cares about the dead and wants them to be sent back instead of just exterminating that. She then drags Yuzuki out of the house and Yuzuki’s very surprised by her actions, which makes him more in love with Ichiko. ໒( ” ¤ ‿ ¤ ” )७ They head back to the hotel together, and this is where we find out the mysterious Okune Panda mascot is actually Yasu wearing the fucking suit to do patrols around the town at night, without getting suspicious. The Eight concert goes as planned but on the day of the event, Ichiko decides to stay behind at the hotel as she isn’t in the mood for a concert. However, to make shit happen Tsukuyomi walks in and shows Ichiko his pictures, saying that her eyes are red in the photographs, which means that she’s a rare albino. He then tells her that she’s been watched by the ninja gang since she came to the town, cuz if he kills her he can get eternal life! Of course he attacks Ichiko but she’s saved by Yuzuki and a mysterious ninja guard member, who ties him up. They drag him into the mountains to exterminate him since he’s pretty much a psychopath who wants to kill people and has no good intentions for coming back.
The mysterious ninja guard turns out to be Sousuke, but thanks to his shitty tying skills Tsukuyomi wriggles free and tries to attack Ichiko again since she was brought along for her protection. Before he can get to Ichiko though, Yuzuki jumps in between them and takes a stab for her. Tsukuyomi is about to kill Ichiko, but Karasuma jumps in to kick the guy away, throws salt at him and sets him on fire to send him off. Sousuke rushes to get his medical supplies to tend to Yuzuki. Karasume says that he did that in order to thank Yuzuki for letting Tsuzuri make a call to him before she left. Ichiko continues to talk to Yuzuki to keep him alive while waiting for Sousuke to come back. Yuzuki ends up confessing his love for Ichiko & they kiss, but he soon passes out, along with Ichiko who has a fever. Happy End: Ichiko eventually wakes up in the hospital a few days later finding out the concert was cancelled, and that Yuzuki is safe. Upon hearing that he’s awake, she immediately runs to his room where he tricks her into thinking that he lost his memories. Ichiko hugs him anyay and says that she found out that her brother is dead, and has accepted it. Yuzuki offers to fill the hole in her heart by being with her forever. (◡‿◡✿) Yuzuki then says that if he died he would regret it because he wouldn’t be able to kiss her. (≖ᴗ≖๑) They then kiss one more time. Normal End: Yuzuki dies from the stab, and the incident was taken to be an accident in the town to hide the truth about the undead. All the guests at the hotel pack up to leave, but Ichiko decides to stay a while longer to mourn Yuzuki’s death. Ichiko definitely showed way more spunk in this route which make me like her a lot more since she was being a damsel in distress most of the time, but if she was this headstrong they could have fleshed in out more in the other routes!! Yuzuki reminded me a lot of Hijikata from hakuouki because they probably made MikiShin do his voice just like hijikata which made this tsun even more enjoyable to me. Overall this route was very cute but the fact that even Yuzuki was out of the undead flower shit made me feel really bad for him, because at the end of the true end, Yasuhisa receives a call from the Murakumo house regarding one more “red flower” they have to deal with. This actually leads on to the route I will talk about next, Toa. But yes, Yuzuki has done some hard living and needs the love.
Kushinada Toa (CV: Morikubo Showtaro)
If you haven’t realised that Toa is A-TO/Eight yet from the idol song sung by showchan in the PVs and his look, I’d be kind of disappointed, but yes, he’s Eight, the idol who wants to hold a live concert in the countryside out of the blue. Ichiko first runs into him buried by a bunch of cats, which he actually loves. Toa dresses very messily, and wears glasses when he’s Toa, so no one picks up on the fact that he’s actually the popular idol. He’s also very timid overall, so no one ever picks up on it. He loves cats and is a cat magnet so he gets to feed cats all the time, like the perfect cat man he is. ◟(๑•͈ᴗ•͈)◞ He is also, another person who knew Ichiko before all of this happened and met her when they were younger, so he knows his way around the town as well so he agrees to help her find her brother. He tells her the story of the origin of the Okune Panda. Okunazato used to be a popular hot spring town, until there was a case of someone dying while bathing in the hot spring probably because it was too hot for him. Because of that, a lot of the hot springs shut down as people stopped coming to the town. A boy tried to save the town by drawing the Okune Panda as the mascot of the town, but in the end, he couldn’t bring back the tourists to the town and it became as obscure as it is now. The Panda got popular recently thanks to it being posted on the internet, and it turns out the original artist is Toa and the story is about him and his family. Toa really hates the Murakumo family for closing down their inn as his grandparents who raised him weren’t able to survive well after their business shut down. The Murakumo family completely controlled the town since the only hotel left in the town is the Furinkan, which is controlled by them too, so her brother might have checked into the hotel too. Ichiko eventually finds out about his Eight persona when she runs into him twice in the hotel, once in the bath and once in the cafe with his hair tied up and his glasses off. It becomes a secret between them and he ends up admitting more about himself to her. Toa was living in the town until he was 14, as his sister sent his pictures to an agency so he got scouted to be an idol. While he was here, he was actually teased for being timid, and shared his experience of him being forced into swimming a relay when he couldn’t even swim, so getting out of the town was a good thing for him, but he realises that he now misses it.
He likes to sing, so being an idol was fine to him, but he’s nervous so he actually doesn’t wear glasses despite being myopic when performing so that he doesn’t see the audience and get nervous. After the idol group he was in disbanded, he decide to hold his first solo live at his middle school, in the town that “doesn’t remember him”. A few days later Toa’s manage who he nicknames Gamaki (cuz i can’t remember her real name) rushes in yapping that he can’t have his concert cuz the town’s too dangerous with the recent murder incidents. Toa really wants this concert because it’s his only chance to do so before his schedule gets packed with recordings and a live tour. Ichiko tries to help, but Toa just tells her to stay by his side because he loves her. Meanwhile, his manager Gamaki tells Ichiko to stay away from him because she thinks that Toa’s playing Ichiko and he’s only flirting with her like how he does with other girls. This leads to Ichiko avoiding him for a while after being told that she was a distraction to Toa. This leads to him getting into a fight with Gamaki regarding Ichiko, and he disappears for an entire day and has the staff all desperately looking for him. Ichiko heads to the forbidden tunnel that leads to the mountains and finds him there, since he did mention that he liked going there to hide when he was younger, and eventually finds him. He then apologises to Ichiko for his manager telling her to get away from him because he did have a scandal with another creepy idol girl who stalked him to his apartment, and it made the news. However, none of that tabloid shit was true because he has a childhood crush and he doesn’t have eyes for anyone else. When Ichiko asks him if he truly loves her, he say he fell in love with her because she was the only one kind to him when he’s in his dishevelled Toa mode.
They hug but shit doesn’t go well because the black clothed ninja guard runs in and pins him down to the ground saying that he’s an undead. They throw his shirt off and say that they might have gotten the wrong person because he doesn’t have any “purple marks” on his back. They soon back off when Sousuke shows up, and Sousuke tells them to quickly head back to the Furinkan asap. Toa apologises to his manager for causing all of them trouble, and tells her not to be mean to Ichiko anymore since he really likes her. However, after all the trouble that’s happened, Gamaki decides to cancel the concert because it’s far too dangerous to hold it right now. The same night though, Ichiko receives a letter from Toa asking her to meet him at the place where they saw the fireworks together, but it turns out to be the killer who lured her there to kill her. Before the killer can get a stab a her Toa runs in and punches the guy but gets himself hurt in the process, before Yasuhisa and the rest of the ninja guard shows up to apprehend the killer. The killer turns out to be Tsukuyomi, who yells when accused of all 3 murders that he’s only interested in killing women, and didn’t kill Sousuke’s dad. The ninja guards drag him off, and Yasu quickly drives them back so that they can tend to his light wounds, not before asking for his autograph lmao. Toa is alright since it was only a scratch, but Gamaki tells Ichiko to take care of him the next day as she needs to help the staff pack up at the middle school. Happy End: Toa takes Ichiko to the Okune shrine where he shows her his marble, which Ichiko has an exact match of. He says that the shrine is the place where he met his first and only love, Ichiko. He then tells her that he met her when she found him singing behind the shrine, and she praised him for his singing. They also hid behind the shrine together when he was hiding from the bullies, so he gave her one of his marbles as a lucky charm, and they actually both made a wish to it to see their parents. They kiss, and they eventually split ways when leaving the town, where he kisses Ichiko one more time. The route ends off with Ichiko receiving a letter from Toa. The ending was really random but in actual fact, his story has a continuation: his true route.
Toa True Route
The True Route picks off on the night right after Tsukuyomi is arrested by the ninja guard, and Yuki gathers the entire gang to talk about the fact that Sousuke’s dad was not murdered by the crazy dude. Yuki eventually reveals that he was the one who set up the site and gathered everyone at the hotel for this event, since he wanted to improve the tourism at the town as well. They figure that there might be another undead hanging around in the hotel to kill Ichiko, so Yasuhisa’s also there to listen in to arrest anyone. Yuzuki eventually shows up to reveal the way to kill an undead, with fire. He then tosses a lighter around telling everyone if they have to guts to prove that they aren’t an undead they can quickly put the lighter on themselves. The other way to figure out who’s an undead is by the purple marks on their back: these marks show when an undead has killed someone to survive, and the number of marks tells the number of people they have killed. After a whole lot of arguments throughout the entire gang, Yua starts getting extremely aggressive and finally admits to being the undead in the room, saying that she killed Sousuke’s father since he was stalking her. However Yuzuki asks Yua if she was an undead, what would be her reason to come back to the living, and they all realise that she seems to be covering up for someone instead. Yuzuki then friggin stabs himself trying to confront her because the undead react to seeing blood, but she doesn’t react to this. Instead, Toa screams in shock and reveals himself to be the true undead. Yua starts freaking out and apologising for not being able to cover for him, and Toa explains that he has no intentions to kill anyone: he wants to disappear eventually. He then admits to being Eight. Toa explains that he got into an accident on the way to the town because he pulled an all nighter and ended up driving off the bridge after falling asleep at the wheel and crashing into the river below, so his dead body is probably still there.
Toa eventually woke up in the purple flower field with a thirst to kill, but he has been successfully holding back on doing so. He showed up in his dishevelled look probably because that’s what he feels comfortable in, and eventually went to the Furinkan to meet up with everyone. The only person he could tell all of this to, was his older sister, Yua. Yua’s actually Toa’s fraternal twin separated by birth because the town had some old fashioned tradition thing where twins had to be separated, so Toa was left in the town while Yua was sent to her maternal grandparents in the city where they were raised as completely different people unrelated to each other. However, their parents would allow them to meet in secret every few months. After their parents died, the meetings stopped but they exchanged contacts so they would talk to each other often and give advice to each other. So Yua was the first person Toa consulted when he turned into an undead, and she immediately believed him and tried to help him. She offered to get herself killed for him, but Toa didn’t want to be himself and said that he just wanted to hold one concert, and then he would go off. Toa says that he’s been doing fine because for some reason, when he hugs Ichiko is calms his killer cravings down and he’s able to stay around longer. Yua admits to pushing Sousuke’s father off the cliff, it was because he was stalking Ichiko & Toa while they were going around the festival as the ninja guard suspects that he might be an undead. After finding that out, Yua who didn’t want Toa to get hurt, pushed Sousuke’s father off the cliff in mad panic. She now feels extremely terrible doing so after finding out that he was Sousuke’s father. Sousuke then confirms his suspicions of his dad being a ninja guard, saying that he did see him banish an undead before when he was younger, as he saw his father drag a guy out of a restaurant. The guy dragged out of the restaurant was actually Isora’s father, where Isora thought the night that his father came back was a dream, but it was actually real. His father came back to see them and apologise before being dragged off by the ninja guard.
After all the realisations are made, the group decides that they have to change the town together, because it’s way too old-fashioned and stuck up about the rules. The group decides to help Toa fulfil his final wish, which is to hold his first and last solo concert at the middle school. The group starts making plans to make the concert a success while dodging the ninja squad, and the concert goes through with Toa barely surviving on hugging Ichiko and having her by his side all the time. There’s barely any staff too because the agency withdrew all the staff as they’re against having the concert in such a dangerous place, but Toa’s manager and some leftover staff stay to help anyway, and the concert is a full house. However, Yasuhisa is an ass and fucking betrays them right at the last moment, threatening to turn Toa in to the ninja squad cuz he’s a fucking pussy who’s scared of the undead. Yua runs in, mad angry at Yasu for betraying them, and tries to get him off Toa. In the process, Yua ends up getting stabbed, and Yasu runs off like the fucking pussy he is. She then tells Toa to finish his concert, in which he does and goes out to sing 2 songs while Ichiko watches. After singing the songs, he disappears in a flurry of purple flower petals saying goodbye to Ichiko and thanking her for loving him, and it cuts off there. (；△；) If you return to the happy end after clearing the true route, the contents of the letter will have Toa tell Ichiko that he’s an undead and by the time she reads this he would have left and his body is probably still missing at the river he crashed into. ;w; Well I’m a little upset as to how they cut off the True route at the end, so we don’t know what happens to Yua but in the end it was still a great finisher for the story because I cried a lot. ;w; Toa is such a good boy but I certainly felt his route would turn into some idol otome drama about being passionate about his music and all, but since he’s an idol after all I’d let it slide. It still felt seriously weird though since the game is a mystery/suspense but he’s a good boy anyway. His extended route gave me all sorts of feels once I finished it so definitely a good true route. On a side note, morikubo’s kiss noises are way too erotic for this Cero B game my god.
Hanate (CV: Midorikawa Hikaru)
Hanate is Ichiko’s brother, but not exactly a blood-related brother like how we all think he is. His route is the last one to be unlocked, but its very short and has the most amount of spoilers as he concludes the final overall plot and closes almost all plotholes made throughout the process of finishing the other routes. Unfortunately they seemed to had no time to develop any romance on him so he ended up being a whole text dump with no romance at all since they needed him to finish the overall plot. Hanate has been stuck in the Murakumo family dungeon over a year since the ninja guard arrested him for being suspicious, but can’t seem to put their finger on what he is. He doesn’t want Ichiko to come to the town, and upon hearing her showing up as the ninja guard calls her the “albino”, he gets himself out of jail. He leaves a short letter/clue thing for Ichiko at the hotel which leads her to go to the forbidden tunnel to find him. Upon going into the mountains though she gets attacked by Tsukuyomi but oniichan comes to the rescue and saves her!! They then hide out in an abandoned shack where Ichiko’s relieved to see him. Hanate then tells her that he has a lot to say to her regarding his disappearance, and since she’s come all the way here to find him, he has to reveal to her the truth. This starts the 4 hours of text wall and content dump on my head that I’ll try to summarise to the best of my ability. Hanate’s been around since a few centuries ago because he is an undead, and unknowingly killed an albino which caused him to have eternal life and have no more cravings to murder people. His life is technically one with the flowers right now so after living so long, he decided to investigate the flowers and watch how the undead survive the ninja guard. Every year when the flowers bloom, some red ones will show up to tell the number of people who are gonna be revived during that season. The undead will not be able to see any colour except for the flowers, and red. Hanate ended up investigating the town continuously, and was never suspicious because when he goes and returns, the town would have no memory of him if he stays a way for a while. Technically the people who live there will have their memories edited to not have him in, so he can head in and out of the town.
Eitherway, about 12 years ago he saw a woman being revived so for his investigations he decided to pose as a delivery boy and go around town stalking that undead to see what she was going to do. After finding out the woman bought a kitchen knife, he continued tailing the woman until he found her ready to murder an albino who would give her eternal life near the shrine. Of course, that albino is Ichiko! He usually wouldn’t care cuz he’s just there to observe them, but for some reason Ichiko’s presence gives him a pang of affection to protect her!!! So he immediately ran in and posed as his delivery boy to send her home immediately. Because of this Ichiko now knows him as Hanate as he made up his name on the spot so he became Hanate oniichan, the delivery boy who goes around town. So yeah, the ninja guard caught on to Ichiko being targeted by all the undeads so they gave the the albino nickname, since all the undeads are attracted to he red in her eyes. Hanate continued monitoring Ichiko while approaching her to play with her while making sure no undeads were after his ass. The reason why Ichiko was in the town during this period of her life was because her parents left her with her relatives during the summer vacation, and she wanted to see her parents. Hino is revealed to have been Ichiko’s childhood friend who was from Okunezato as well. This was how she met her man harem, and it’s even revealed that Ichiko did bump into high schooler Yuzuki when she was 8. Tsukuyomi during that time was a crazy weird pedo who was already after her ass, and even pushed her into the river and almost killed her. Hanate had to save her from the river, which explains Ichiko’s fear of swimming was because of the trauma from that incident. After the incident, Hanate realised that the town was far too dangerous for her with crazy undeads coming after her ass 24/7, so he immediately took her out of town and wiped all her memories of it since he could do so, and so that she would never come over again. He also put himself as her brother in order to protect her. This is how Ichiko forgot all her meetings with Isora, Toa and Sousuke because oniichan wiped it all to protect her from this town. However Hino ended up moving to the city from Okunezato, so when he saw her again she didn’t remember him. Hanate eventually edited both their memories so that they became childhood friends since elementary school.
Eitherway nothing happens for 10 years as he lives peacefully with Ichiko as her brother when he felt that something’s up with the flowers, so he decided to go and check them out again. Before leaving though, he made Hino promise to protect Ichiko. So Hanate went back to Okunezato and since he hasn’t been there in a while nobody remembers him. He figured he go check up on the flowers and quickly return back to Ichiko because the longer he stays away from her, her memories will slowly be sapped and she might forget about him. However because he hasn’t been cautious for 10 years he ended up getting arrested by the ninja guards and ended up being tortured by them for answers. They tried to see if he was an undead through the purple marks on his back, but he has none because once an undead kills an albino, they don’t have any marks. So he’s been sitting in jail for a year until he heard that Ichiko came back to the town. Ichiko’s in disbelief over the true story but he tells her that he hasn’t aged in the years he’s been with her, and even her memories of him are slowly getting cloudy. Ichiko doesn’t really care about him having eternal life though because she really loves him so Hanate gets her to rest in his arms for hours. ❀.(*´◡`*)❀. This allows her to regain all her memories of him. They also spot Yua and Toa in the mountains, which Hanate points out that Toa is trying to find his resting place. Eitherway, Tsukuyomi is after her ass again so she needs to be careful of him, and they can’t go back home either because he’d chase her ass all the way there as well since he actually enjoys being an undead. Hanate ends up waking up Ichiko in the middle of the night because he realises Tsukuyomi is hot on their heels. They end up getting chased through the mountains and end up getting trapped at the flower field with Tsukuyomi. Tsukuyomi babbles on about how Hanate should just hand Ichiko together so they can be undead bros but Hanate ain’t having any of that shit with the psychopath. Hanate says that Ichiko will continue to be targetted by the undead forever, and the only way to keep Ichiko is completely safe forever, the flowers should be wiped from existence. He then decides to burn the flowers down, which causes Tsukuyomi to flip shit and attack Hanate.
Hanate tells Ichiko to take the matches on the ground to end the flowers, but Ichiko starts crying since she can’t do it because erasing the flowers means erasing Hanate’s existence. Tsukuyomi is about to attack the both of them when Hino runs right at the last moment, lights the match and throws it at the flowers. Thanks to the fire, Kagura first disappears while all the flowers start burning down. Hanate says that once all the flowers have burnt down, he will disappear too since his existence is one with the flowers. Hino then waits outside to leave the 2 of the them alone. Hanate tells Ichiko not to worry since once he disappears all her memories of him will disappear too, and they kiss. He disappears in rain of petals, and all memories of him are erased. When Ichiko opens her eyes again she sees Hino shaking her since she’s spacing out, saying that the police are here to help them. They then both realise she’s crying but they don’t know why. (๑ १д१) In the epilogue, Ichiko returns to her normal life back in the city, but she’s living alone since her parents are overseas. When she’s about to leave her house for school, she hears a voice tell her “いってらしゃい”, the japanese equivalent of have a nice day, and the game shows a purple flower growing in the garden. This is where I broke down into tears at how sad this entire route was. While Hanate’s route had the giant emotional blow at the end, he really got the short end of the stick because there wasn’t much romance development between him and Ichiko. It ended up surviving on the fact that their romance comes from being siblings for 10 years. It would have been still good though, if we got more details regarding the time they spent together, it would have added on to the romance. In the end, I still cried a massive river over his route at the ending, and being highly emotional person I am, I started crying recalling it while writing it out. ;w;
Overall Spoiler Thoughts
I actually didn’t know that Toa was the undead among the main cast, even after his route, and I actually got a massive shock when he turned out to be the one in the true route. I’m not exactly the best at predicting mystery, so it ended up being a shock to me at least. Thinking about it now, there were pretty much quite a few signs showing that he was the one but I didn’t catch on. I don’t really have a best boy, but if I were to pick one it would be Hanate or Hino. I honestly felt that poor Hino was being played most of the entire route because despite being childhood friend he doesn’t get much with Ichiko unless you’re in his route. He got his memories fucked up thanks to the undead after Ichiko and and I honestly just feel bad for him. Hanate’s route felt like a giant mess of last minute work for him trying to fill up the gaps because they didn’t have time to write a full route for him, but I still liked it in the end so I’m okay with it. Yuki’s sudden revelation to be the site owner was a bit out of the blue, but I liked the fact that the writers tried to make sure there were no unanswered questions regarding the plot, since most of the mysteries happening in the town are actually answer, even the Okune Panda one which turned out to be Yasuhisa running around in the costume.
-end spoiler barrier-
~Final Thoughts~
A few words for 7’sCarlet. Not enough romance. I understand the game was meant to be more of a mystery than romance, but for one meant to be an otome game there really isn’t a lot of romance in the story. The main plot is always ongoing and they didn’t really have much time to develop the romance between the characters. Mystery wise, I believe it’s still a pretty good one. It was predictable at times, but still good enough to be entertained by. The game overall was too short and it was over so soon I was shocked by it. The characters were all lovable, but they could have spent a bit more time developing all the love interests and some side characters. The idol element in the felt a bit out of place with the overall plot, but I think it was still decently done because the game didn’t suddenly fly into idol otome territory. The writers did well concluding the story because overall I don’t feel that there were any plotholes which I have questions about. (Side note: if you’re worried Midorin’s doing a shady/gross oniichan, he definitely isn’t bad in this game!) I’m glad that this game was chosen to be one of the games to be localised by Aksys, and it’s really worth a play although it’s really short for an otome game. I’d recommend people to play this one, mainly for the main plot. If you’re looking for more romance, I wouldn’t recommend this one because it really doesn’t have enough to make you feel satisfied. I really had a good time with this one as I finished the game in record time in ages, I haven’t finished one so fast. The review was only delayed because played it at the end of last vacation and didn’t have time to write out the full review until now, I’m really sorry about that ^^; If the localisation turns out to be decent, I might play it again just to experience the whole thing again for all the feels.
未来へ向こう 