Approximate length: 18.6 hours, according to vndb.
Where is it found?: It's currently not in active distribution, and thus is only practically available on the high seas for the moment; but a new release is scheduled to hit the market in Japan on July 20th this year as part of the Subarashiki Hibi 15th Anniversary Edition. The unofficial English translation patch can be found via vndb, here.
Elevator pitch of what it's about: The rise and fall of a death cult in an initially-ordinary Japanese high school, as viewed through a series of successive viewpoints, each closer than the last to the center of events.
Content warnings: Rape (including underage), murder, suicide, abuse, incest, drugs, psychosis, and probably lots more I'm failing to enumerate off the top of my head. The story is, in general, pretty dense with conventionally-upsetting things happening, especially towards its later parts.
What do you love about it?: One of the major characters, Yokoyama Yasuko, is a delightful mess of a person whose scenes were a consistent highlight of the story for me and who kept growing on me more the more I thought about her even long after reading. I am, in general, a fan of terrible women, and also of characters pathologically dedicated to other people's well-being, and she hit both of those criteria for me at once in a very impactful fashion. (Also it has other positive characteristics—pretty art and music, other characters who are enjoyable-even-if-less-intensely-so, et cetera—but Yasuko is pretty solidly the part of the story who I most love, as opposed to more-mildly enjoying.)
Semi-spoilery elaboration (click to expand) She's manipulative, amoral, and generally ruthlessly dedicated to doing whatever she needs to do and hurting whoever she needs to hurt—herself included—in order to protect herself and (more importantly to her) her rare few loved ones. She's selfish, but boundedly—willing to put, not just other people, but also herself through a whole lot of unpleasantness for the sake of the people she cares about—and she's selfless, but also boundedly: when pushed far enough, she will do some things for herself even at the cost of producing a less-than-ideal outcome for those same loved ones she's poured so much into helping. She runs so many layers of social facade with everyone that she has trouble being honest even with herself, sometimes, and tends to view herself as the villain even during those moments when she's being relatively benevolent. She is, overall, a complicated and beautiful mess of a character in a great variety of ways. What kind of themes would you request for it?: Yasuko learning about some sort of potential threat to her interests—it could take the form of organized crime, or law enforcement, or a more substantially out-of-context problem like the possible-oncoming-apocalypse situation she gets swept up by in canon—and trying to stake it out for purposes of figuring out how to dismantle it and/or ride it out minimally-damagingly. We get some of that in canon, and it's delightful there; I expect it to be similarly delightful in fanfic.
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終ノ空 remake | Tsui no Sora Remake (Visual Novel)
Date: 2025-04-14 05:26 pm (UTC)Media: Visual novel
Approximate length: 18.6 hours, according to vndb.
Where is it found?: It's currently not in active distribution, and thus is only practically available on the high seas for the moment; but a new release is scheduled to hit the market in Japan on July 20th this year as part of the Subarashiki Hibi 15th Anniversary Edition. The unofficial English translation patch can be found via vndb, here.
Elevator pitch of what it's about: The rise and fall of a death cult in an initially-ordinary Japanese high school, as viewed through a series of successive viewpoints, each closer than the last to the center of events.
Content warnings: Rape (including underage), murder, suicide, abuse, incest, drugs, psychosis, and probably lots more I'm failing to enumerate off the top of my head. The story is, in general, pretty dense with conventionally-upsetting things happening, especially towards its later parts.
What do you love about it?: One of the major characters, Yokoyama Yasuko, is a delightful mess of a person whose scenes were a consistent highlight of the story for me and who kept growing on me more the more I thought about her even long after reading. I am, in general, a fan of terrible women, and also of characters pathologically dedicated to other people's well-being, and she hit both of those criteria for me at once in a very impactful fashion. (Also it has other positive characteristics—pretty art and music, other characters who are enjoyable-even-if-less-intensely-so, et cetera—but Yasuko is pretty solidly the part of the story who I most love, as opposed to more-mildly enjoying.)
Semi-spoilery elaboration (click to expand)
She's manipulative, amoral, and generally ruthlessly dedicated to doing whatever she needs to do and hurting whoever she needs to hurt—herself included—in order to protect herself and (more importantly to her) her rare few loved ones. She's selfish, but boundedly—willing to put, not just other people, but also herself through a whole lot of unpleasantness for the sake of the people she cares about—and she's selfless, but also boundedly: when pushed far enough, she will do some things for herself even at the cost of producing a less-than-ideal outcome for those same loved ones she's poured so much into helping. She runs so many layers of social facade with everyone that she has trouble being honest even with herself, sometimes, and tends to view herself as the villain even during those moments when she's being relatively benevolent. She is, overall, a complicated and beautiful mess of a character in a great variety of ways.
What kind of themes would you request for it?: Yasuko learning about some sort of potential threat to her interests—it could take the form of organized crime, or law enforcement, or a more substantially out-of-context problem like the possible-oncoming-apocalypse situation she gets swept up by in canon—and trying to stake it out for purposes of figuring out how to dismantle it and/or ride it out minimally-damagingly. We get some of that in canon, and it's delightful there; I expect it to be similarly delightful in fanfic.