[KeroQ] Tsui no Sora (1999) Visual Novel Review (NSFW)
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Tsui no Sora is an eroge visual novel developed by KeroQ and released back in August 27, 1999, before getting its OVA hentai adaptation three years later which wasn’t well received. The story is about a bunch of highschool students who are concerned about a rumor that the world will end at the beginning of summer break which is July 20th. Eventually, more people started to believe this, losing their minds as July 20th was coming closer. They get consumed by fear as they become more desperate, seeking whatever they can do for salvation which later on forms a cult underneath the school’s old outdoor pool. This visual novel takes on the perspective of four key characters; Yukito Minakami, Kotomi Wakatsuki, Zakuro Takashima and Takuji Mamiya. While the premise of this story contains some light-hearted and funny moments, there’s also some psychological horror and philosophical elements that are deeply connected to what chaos lies ahead for each of these characters.
"There are still a lot of things outside"
Yukito Minakami is a very philosophical student with a hobby of reading books and also being laid back on certain occasions. Kotomi Wakatsuki is the close friend of Yukito since childhood who tends to get violent whenever she’s mad and also a member of the Kendo club. Zakuro Takashima is a mysterious girl who’s close to Kotomi and committed suicide for reasons that are related to the end of the world. And finally Takuji Mamiya is a timid and estranged boy who often gets bullied by the delinquents and is greatly influenced by the idea about the world ending which he learned from Zakuro. There’s also another key character in this visual novel which is a girl named Ayana Otonashi. She’s also an estranged student, often going to the school roof to look at the sky and also greatly influenced by the world coming to an end. She’s very philosophical on different things just like Yukito and she serves as an enigma to the storyline given that she knows certain things that other normal people don’t. As you progress through the visual novel, you’ll end up learning more about these characters and what roles they play as the rumors about the world ending on July 20th spreads out across the school. Out of all of these routes, I find Takuji’s to be the most interesting as it features the most amount of character development where Takuji initially started out as a frail boy getting picked on by others, and then became someone who [spoiler alert] runs a cult and takes over the entire school. His route also contains lots of psychological horror elements where most of it involves him hallucinating on seeing these strange otherworldly creatures which seems to signify his great fear about the world ending.
Kotomi: "Huh?!"
During Yukito’s route, the story starts off as being light hearted where the characters are behaving normally as the plot introduces them on who and what they are. There were some points that are pretty funny such as Yukito flipping Kotomi’s skirt up in retaliation for waking him up too roughly. However, the plot becomes more dark and edgy as you keep learning more about the events related to the end of the world. As mentioned before, this visual novel contains psychological horror which makes the storyline very compelling, making you want to read more to find out what happens next. There’s also some violence and blood present in the story which some readers may not have the heart to face. In terms of the philosophical content presented in this visual novel, they are mostly talked about by Yukito, Takuji and Ayana. While I was somewhat immersed by it, I find them to be rather mundane and not that interesting. The dialogue for it is so complex that I ended up skipping most of these philosophical related topics. It would be interesting if the developers somehow managed to merge the psychological horror aspects with the philosophical related topics of the story, but for the most part they occur as separate instances. In my opinion, most of the philosophical related topics felt more like unnecessary fillers just like some of the dialogue from the H-scenes.
Takuji: "Listen up! To all of you consumed with fear"
Speaking of the H-scenes, they were okay. They weren’t too long and some of them were heart-warming while others were a bit uncanny. I wouldn’t consider most of them to be filler content since they do provide some background information for the key characters and dialogue related to the world ending. In comparison to the other eroges in today’s time, Tsui no Sora (1999) has very few H-scenes, which I think is a good thing. If an H-scene doesn’t contribute at all to the main story then I don’t think it's worth adding it to the visual novel to serve as a filler and waste the reader’s time.
Takuji: "Look at Kiyokawa!"
In terms of the music, they were decent but they are basically just short repetitions which seems rather lazy. As for the art, while it's not entirely the best, it was pretty good especially for the background art and character sprites. I do find the granulated textures of the walls and roads to be quite ominous. Of course the art is low in quality, but I’m not going to complain about that since I would assume the developers had very limited access to technology as they were making this visual novel. Not to mention that it's the first visual novel ever made by KeroQ. However this old low quality art style does give out a more ominous feeling that fits into the horror genre for this visual novel.
Zakuro: "I think I lost it"
Moving on to the technical features for Tsui no Sora (1999), it's very different from most of the other modern visual novels. In order to access the menu to save/load, you’d have to right click anywhere on the screen which opens a new window. However, this does not occur when you’re in the middle of making a choice within the story which makes it inconvenient in case you don’t want to miss certain dialogues or CGs throughout your progress. You also don’t have the option to quick-save and there’s no backlog feature to back trace the dialogue. On top of that you only have 8 save slots available so you’d have to be wise on when it's appropriate for you to save. In terms of saving your progress, it is a bit unorthodox. The game doesn’t save at the exact moment from where you left off, but rather at the beginning of a particular scene/chapter. Let’s say for example that one of the key characters had a long conversation with someone else and you decided to stop midway and save. When you load back in, the game just takes you all the way back to the beginning of the conversation. Because of that, you either have to skim through the dialogue to roughly find where you left off or you’d have to finish the entire conservation and enter into a new scene/chapter before you can finally give yourself a checkpoint. In my opinion, this just feels very impractical.
Where are you going: Rooftop/Classroom/School Gate/Gymnasium
In terms of the choices you make in the visual novel, most of them don’t affect the storyline. However there is one moment in Yukito’s route where Kotomi is crying at the school’s old pool and you’re given a choice on whether or not to comfort her. If you do comfort her, you’ll get Kotomi’s endings. If you don’t comfort her, you’ll get Ayana’s ending. Depending on that one choice you make, you’ll acquire one of these two endings after completing Takuji’s route.
Leave her alone/Comfort her
When you complete the visual novel, you’ll be sent to a new main menu of the game that shows an eye present on the top-left corner. Clicking on that will open up a new user interface that allows you to go back to previous chapters for all of the four main protagonists. What’s convenient is that it helps you go straight to the alternative ending you haven’t come across yet, which saves a lot of time. If for example you completed the game with Ayana’s ending, you can then go to that interface and select the button that says “Kotomi Mode,” and then click on the bottom most button that is next to the label “From then on.” That’s a lot more convenient than spending minutes on going all the way back to the in-game choices and skipping all of the dialogue you’ve already read. Unfortunately, the visual novel doesn’t have an in-game recollection list of CGs or H-scenes you’ve already come across. If you want to revisit them, relying on this end-game user interface is the best option.
End-Game Interface
While I am not a fan about the complex writing style in this visual novel that sometimes goes off on a tangent, I was still immersed by how it portrays its philosophical ideologies related to various aspects, especially when it talks about human life. Of course I also admire its psychological horror elements which I’m a huge fan of. While I’m fully aware that this visual novel already got itself a remake back in 2020, I still brought myself to go for the 1999 original because for me personally, it felt better to do so. Despite it being old, I still enjoyed it and it's nice to know that someone is bringing upon themselves to translate this wonderful game. Best of luck to them!
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