#ainispoilers

PART ONE: THE TWIST

We all know The Big AINI Twist. At least, if you are reading this, I assume you do. Instead of two timelines, one featuring Ryuki in the past and one featuring Mizuki in the present, Side Ryuki and Side Mizuki are intertwined (like DNA, for some reason, which isn't even really relevant to the story's alleged themes other than its almighty biological superiority unlike those icky adopted families...actually wait, that probably is the point. oops. You And I Are Halves Of A Whole Let’s Go.) You've been going back and forth between past and present all along, playing either as Ryuki (past/present), Mizuki (present), or Mizuki Two-Only-Exists-To-Pull-Off-This-Twist (past.) Only "Jin's" body was found in halves six years apart. All other bodies were found in the past, minus Tokiko who was found in the present. There was no mystery at all. And knowing what the player does about Jin and Uru by this point, the rest can quickly and easily fall into place.

Particularly clumsy that they have to spell out the DNA thing, huh. Of course, the characters have known this all along. To sum up, the "mystery" in AINI is entirely based upon the player being told a lie right after starting the game that continues throughout the entire story. A lie that was only told to the player, not the characters. When the lie is revealed, the answer becomes obvious. As soon as you see the timeline you learn that there was in fact little to no mystery all along, the obvious answer is the real one, and the only reason you as the player didn't figure it out hours ago is because the game was lying to you (and only you - not the characters, which would, you know, actually require some real fucking writing.)

This is where the game fails. Everything in AINI happens to pull off this ridiculous and yet boring literal twist. This is why Bibi (while I can't have anything against a character who is just Mizuki Again as a person, god I loathe Bibi as a plot device and the fact that she exists) is a thing and why she is inexplicably exactly like Mizuki. This is why Ryuki, Amame, etc don't get timeskip designs. This is why Shoma doesn't age. This is why Date was shoved hastily off-screen. This is why the AI Balls have so many conveniently timed memory issues. This is why nobody experienced any significant development in six years. This is why character interactions feel clumsy and forced, such as why Shoma's feelings about his dad's death ping wildly back and forth (because sometimes it happened six years ago.) Everything in AINI - characters, pacing, gameplay, FUN - was sacrificed in the name of one big twist, and that twist isn't even good. It's boring. It retroactively ruins everything about the game. It serves zero purpose except to yell "gotcha!"

AITSF misled the player, leading you to suspect Renju, Iris, So, Date, Boss, Shoko, and Falco in turn and all at once (because, in a sense, it was all and none and each of them.) AINI, on the other hand, doesn’t mislead. It just...lies. To me, that isn't really fun or interesting. It doesn't impact the characters, it is utterly meaningless -- except for making the player think there was actually more to the plot than the obvious answer for several chapters. In the end, the real solution to the entire case was just the obvious, boring answer. Jin and Uru share body parts and Uru was Tearer. The only real reveal is that Amame killed Uru and moved Tokiko's body, but that comes far too little far too late (especially bc after a few genuinely good and heartfelt scenes with Mame, we go to the final battle scene which frankly reads worse than the Harry Potter fanfiction I was writing on the Scholastic kids’ forums at age eleven.)

Seriously though, as an aside, that final battle scene is so horrifically bad I feel like it deserves its own paragraph. Maybe multiple paragraphs. I mean, what can I say? There’s no real final boss, just nameless mooks (one has a red shirt on, wow!) It’s another boring fight scene with no fun or creativity using the AI Balls’ abilities, just “press Z to jump” Heavy Rain-ass QTEs. Using "there are only three AI Balls, and whoever doesn't have one just kinda sucks" as a plot device is stupid. Ryuki's "death" was stupid and really served no purpose at all. There’s even more of Mizuki and Date's relationship being completely discarded, and Aiba being weirdly cruel to them both. Somehow a prerecorded message is capable of predicting every single thing that happens because...reasons, I guess. Kizuna has a gun and yelled the fuck word for the screencappable moment. Wow. And I guess the mopeds can fly now?? Maybe that should have come up sooner?? Not to mention poor pacing and bad lag making the whole ordeal feel even longer. It sucks that this clusterfuck came right on the tail end of Amame's somnium, which pretty much the only story/character thing in the whole game I genuinely cared about and the best scene. But Mame was absolutely overshadowed by this trash fire (and a playable epilogue even worse than the first game’s, which I also hated ftr.)

Back to “The Twist,” I cannot describe how much I hate every choice that went into this nightmare. So many terrible, terrible decisions had to be made to make the timeline change work, and it shows. Just for starters, we have Mizuki's backstory being rewritten and flung out the window, we’ve got characters willfully acting very stupid about when things are happening and exchanging painfully awkward dialogue, and important and meaningful and emotional reactions and scenes are constantly being skipped — all in service of one twist. One twist that only matters to the player. The timelines being scrambled does not affect Mizuki or Ryuki or anyone else one iota, because they already know what order everything is happening in! They have nothing to discover, since they’ve known from the beginning, even if their dialogue is crafted to tiptoe around that fact. The entire thing is only for the player. Why does Mizuki apparently forget Date is missing after the first thirty seconds of the game and never express any care for him, Iris, etc ever again? Why are there two identical Mizukis who somehow decorated their moped identically despite completely different upbringings?? It’s all literally just so this twist can work, so that there can be two interchangeable Mizukis. Other characters have to behave identically in past and present, and other obstacles have to be safely out of the way. There is no other way for the twist to work, and none of these actively game-ruining elements serve any other purpose. The end result is that AINI is…so stupid. It doesn't feel like a story. It feels like a bunch of elements put together around a central twist. No character gets to be an actual character. They're all walking clues and nothing more, and their development is purposefully stunted so they can act the same way in past in present. It hurts Mizuki most of all, and as devotedmizukilover420, this is what makes the game unsalvageable to me. The two Mizukis might be the dumbest "clue"/element/twist of all, because the whole thing makes entirely zero sense with AITSF (or any kind of logic, really.) You're telling me that all along, Boss has been raising an adopted daughter named Mizuki who looks exactly like Mizuki and that just didn't impact AITSF at all? Mizuki was living with Boss and Saito left Hitomi tied to a bomb in Boss's house — so Mizuki 2 just...wasn't home and missed that? Didn't care that her mom went missing? Meanwhile, Boss is just keeping this secret all along bc she wanted a super secret agent who was loyal only to her or whatever? (see my thoughts below on AINI's hot anti-adoption agenda.) Yeah, sure, right. Not to mention, "AITSF/Classic Mizuki was adopted by the Okiuras" is also bullshit. Even putting aside the way it slam-dunks the message and themes of AI1 Mizuki route into the garbage. Okay, she coincidentally has Shoko's unique hair color and exact face shape, and Shoko recounts when she was a newborn and hated her stroller and wanted to be held all the time, and Renju makes a clumsy comparison between Shoko and captive animals who give birth….but the Okiuras adopted Mizuki when she was three and there's no genetic relation. Complete and utter bullshit, and character-hurting bullshit at that. But it’s a necessary twist to pull off the dual timelines because we need to be able to have an 18-y/o (identically dressed….) Mizuki running around six years ago. I wouldn’t mind this so much if it didn’t impact Mizuki’s character, and her AITSF route, so heavily, but...it does. It ruins everything. AINI just hates adoption so much that it had to wipe out the pro-adoption message from its predecessor too (I will get to all this in more detail later - there’s just so much to hate about this game!)

Gotta say though, bold move to have a clone character and have the game’s conclusion be “Yes, the two clones are exactly the same in every way, they don’t have independent identities, nothing about their lives or experiences shaped them in any way, they are literal halves of a whole with no differences between them, and they’re totally okay with that and have no negative feelings about it.” Don’t think I’ve ever seen a piece of media do that before. Because, well, it sucks. It’s silly and stupid and just awful, awful writing.

I'm sure all the Horidori Institute stuff was coined solely to pull off the timeline twist — including the two Mizukis, our Mizuki's new backstory/canon superpowers (also stupid and takes all the fun out of her cartoonish super strength - just let things be fun, AINI!), and everything with Shoma. That only adds to the way this game just feels like a singular house of cards with one sole goal, and that goal is "to lie about the timelines and then reveal it was a lie at the very end." It's not even cleverly obfuscated, you just have an incorrect timeline and then you get a correct one. The big reveal just being "Mama tells you bc she has supernatural powers now — than straight up says there's nothing supernatural about the case" doesn't help. There was no way to skillfully incorporate that so they just drop it. And then move on. Because in the end, like absolutely everything else, it doesn't matter. The final battle is pointless and has nothing to do with the rest of the game because every aspect of this game was built around a twist that has nothing to do with its characters. Even the killers were designed and created completely in service to this twist. And yet, despite all of that, no real time or effort is devoted to revealing the twist, it’s just hastily dropped and then abandoned for good. Even the writers don’t like the twist, I guess!

Now, gaze upon what I genuinely believe is the stupidest line in the entire game, and what sums up exactly why it fails.

That’s right! There’s nothing supernatural here! Nothing fun, interesting, or entertaining. Nothing characterful, nothing that adds meaning or development. It was all just a very straightforward lie. What, you expected better? You thought, after the last game harnessed a supernatural twist that developed and added to its world and characters, that this game would too? You thought in a world of exploring brains and dreams, machines that slice perfectly in half, magical suicide plagues, and bodyswapping, that there might be more to the story? You goddamn dumbass. The game knew that you would think that, and it laughs at and mocks you for it. You thought the writers put in actual effort? You thought they cared about the world they were creating? That was your idiotic mistake. How silly of you! The most straightforward, boring explanation was the correct one. Nothing supernatural here!

And that's...part one of four. I said this was long and I meant it.

PART TWO: THE CHARACTERS

Another big issue with AINI is that it has no idea if it's standalone or a sequel, and as a result, it utterly fails to be both. AITSF characters get no development in AINI, to avoid spoiling their game. But they aren't really playing any roles at all. They stick out like sore thumbs because they have no reason to be there. They get no real introduction. The new characters are shallow, sure, and they only exist to serve the Plot Twist, but they do exist and serve a purpose. Why the fuck was Hitomi even in this game for all of two scenes? This seems like it'd be really jarring for a standalone player, since they now need to keep track of like…ten potential suspects. Except they aren’t really meant to be suspects, and they actually don't matter to the game at all. So Sejima, for example, is being super suspicious, but we returning players all know he can’t be up to much of anything. How is a new player supposed to guess that? Meanwhile, even on "no-spoiler" mode, massive spoilers get dropped for AITSF. Character backstories, motivations, the connections between them — they’re either implied or stated outright. You're kinda not supposed to know a lot of this stuff going into AITSF and, well, if you play AINI first…you will. Even "Mizuki gets adopted by Date" is a spoiler and that isn't hidden at all, but that's by far one of the more minor things. This isn’t even touching on Date being in his Saito body and voice by inexplicably wearing a custom mask, which is not only bizarre but terrible, terrible character writing (though I give it a pass because it keeps DC Douglas out of this game.) The writers tried to have their cake and eat it too, and as a result they just set the whole cake on fire.

The cast feels completely flat. Tama and Ryuki fit right in with the classic crew…because they serve no purpose, play no real role, and develop in no way at all. Ryuki is always just kinda There, with nothing much to do but pine over Date, fail to solve mysteries, and act “crazy” until he gets magically cured at the end. All the new characters kinda feel like retreading old ground with tweaked personalities and designs. Kizuna is a less bombastic Iris -- she gets kidnapped a bunch and likes conspiracy theories and sings and dances. Her dad is the Morally Dubious Rich Dad Bad At Parenting With A Shifty Past...Gen is a diner owner hopelessly in love with a teenager...Bibi is literally Mizuki Again...etc. I'm not surprised the AI1 cast has pretty much nothing to do — considering this is meant to be a companion game that doesn't spoil AI1, they can't really do much with them. They can’t even be considered as murder suspects, obviously (minus Amame, who really isn’t a returning character at all.) But also it's really disappointing how shallow they all feel. Iris is like…at least 80% more manic pixie dream girl than usual. Iit's not even being offset by her tumor, or her faking, or Saito faking, so that's exhausting. Date is literally just standing around making porno mag jokes or having them made about him (and they ruined the funny part, which is Aiba repeatedly lying to him and him repeatedly falling for it. Instead he just yells PORNO MAG POWER and gets tougher which is just...so not remotely funny at all.) Mizuki feels like a passive side character in her own game. Ota and Moma still just perv on Iris and do nothing of substance, with even the better aspects of their character now cleanly wiped away to prevent having to do any actual writing. The cameos were shallow at best. Even for our alleged MCs - it felt like instead of actually having Mizuki, Date, etc, we just got pieces of cardboard with "Mizuki", "Date", etc written on them in crayon. Cheap imitations.

Meanwhile, the writers still hate women, so that's fantastic. Seriously, revealing last minute that actually Gen has a thing for Amame (an incredibly creepy and obsessive thing) while she sees him as a fucking FATHER FIGURE is absolutely disgusting, and ruined their entire route as well as Gen as a character for me. To these writers, every woman immediately becomes a sex object once they grow tits, so of course their male characters are the same way. This makes me really glad they tossed Date to the curb and he and Mizuki barely interacted, because I would be miserable if they ruined that relationship the way they ruined Falco and Iris and now Gen and Amame. Mizuki’s of age now, after all, so she’s officially a sex object! Similarly, starting off Kizuna and Lien's relationship with an age gap and stalking was a shitty call and ruins their whole storyline too, when it could have been really sweet. Lien can't mature as a person because it would spoil The Twist, and Kizuna just goes from "mostly not sad" to "sad all the time" as the entirety of her development, so that really only adds to how flat both their characters are. (Don’t get me started on her whole disability arc, which felt thrown in for brownie points at best and was terribly handled as usual.) Mizuki makes sex jokes now. which feels really creepy coming from a school-age teenager we’ve previously known as a twelve-year-old, comments on how cute and young she is a lot, and constantly whines about wanting a boyfriend. Aiba even complains about Mizuki being flat-chested?? There's maybe a little less of the perviness than there is in AITSF just bc Date isn't playable, but what there is feels very creepy. I’m not surprised they kept this aspect but damn, it still sucks.

The side ends - you know, the CHARACTER ends, where much of AITSF's best work shone - feel like they were just kinda thrown in because they're expected. They don't feel as finished as the endings in AITSF. Gen/Amame's was just all over the place (I'm not even clear on what HAPPENED in half of it, let alone why, and Uchikoshi has since said a bunch of weird lies about it being followed up on in a “third eye” on his twitter. I’m not even getting into that, but if you believe a word he says, I invite you to look into all the times he claimed Santa and Snake would make a comeback in ZTD, or how Alice’s legend from 999 would be relevant to VLR.) Kizuna/Lien just kinda randomly cuts off. Shoma/Komeji was something at least, but it was really short and premature. I don’t know if explosion really counts as an ending, but it sucked too — why would a new player care about a big rock falling on the guy who only exists to talk about porn and neglect and bicker with his daughter? Just because Ryuki's in love with him (maybe, sort of, it will never be made explicit canon)? Meanwhile, returning players know they wouldn’t kill Date off, plus he's been in his most basic boring form all game, so they have no reason to really care either. What is even the point of this ending? Kizuna is just there to become disabled so Lien can have someone to be obsessed with and sad about, and he's just there to pick locks. Mizuki losing her eye -- you know, the thing a serial killer did to her parents, including Date -- is an afterthought at best. Blah. If this is supposed to be the "annihilation" of AINI, it…really, really falls flat.

The game doesn't know if it's a sequel or not, and like I said, trying to both have and eat the cake means the cake just gets set on fire. Hitomi is here for two scenes with no significance and just bloats the cast (I am not even going to get started on how flat and lame her and Date’s relationship has become. Feeling super bad for anyone who shipped them.) Ota and Iris keep showing up just to kinda be stupid for a scene (seriously Iris is EXTREMELY dumb in this, something went really wrong with those nanomachines and they fried all her gray matter) and then they vanish again into the distance of No Purpose. Date is an insufferable ass who only cares about porn magazines, mentions them in every fucking scene, now yells "porno mag power" when he activates that power (OVER AND OVER IN ALMOST EVERY COMBAT SCENE HE'S IN) and treats Mizuki like shit. And poor, poor Mizuki gets it worst of all — she's still a snarky, kinda bratty, tough kid, but that's all she is now. All that love and devotion and determination and kindness and intelligence? Gone. If she cares too much about her loved ones or thinks about herself too much, she would be unique from Bibi and the twist would be spoiled, and heaven knows we can't have that. Aiba is the only character who feels like herself, and even she feels overly cruel to Mizuki sometimes (and Date often.) I don't know why a new player would feel any attachment to these characters, and as someone who did play and love aspects of AITSF, I just felt cheated. It would have been better to not include any of them at all than to have these crappy imitations. Meanwhile, "no AITSF spoiler mode" spoils a ton of shit. Just reveal a connection between Iris and So on "no spoiler" mode, why the fuck not? Reveal that Shoko was abusive, she and Renju both died, and Date adopted Mizuki? Mention Iris having a "condition" that is now "stable" in one throwaway line for no goddamn discernible reason??? The game does all this and more. On no spoiler mode!!!

This game unashamedly hates its characters. And thanks to that, so do I. It really is a shame. It’s the epitome of “flanderization” in one single game, but it’s for every character, over and over again.

This is easily the most-reposted screenshot I’ve seen from AINI, which...says a lot about the quality of its humor and the relevance of its returning cast IMO.

PART THREE: FUCK ADOPTION

This is the first piece of media since Once Upon A Time on ABC that presents the unique and controversial moral of "fuck adoption." All in order to make Mizuki have an older clone sister. For the Twist. The same reason we do everything around here. Mizuki’s parents can’t just be shitty parents. they must be shitty ADOPTIVE parents, because ADOPTIVE parents suck and don’t love their kids.

But don't worry guys. Because Mizuki and Bibi are clones. Therefore they are biologically related. Therefore they GENETICALLY love each other. By the end of the game, Mizuki and Bibi, despite having barely met, love each other desperately, are the most important people in one another's lives, are never seen apart from each other and treated as a singular character, and are literally Two Halves Of A Whole, Let's Go. Because, you know. They're sisters, but the GOOD kind, the BIOLOGICAL kind, the ONLY real kind.

Gag me.

I saw screenshots of Date and Mizuki doing "I'm home" / "Welcome back" after he returns and thought, well, at least I'll get thrown a few crumbs to lap off the floor. Nope. Aiba has to specifically prompt Date into saying "I'm home," saying that Mizuki wants to hear it. He begrudgingly does so, Mizuki responds...but then says she didn't want to do that anyway and they move back on to the all-important Plot. Ouch. I seriously don't know how Mizuki route came from the same team. Date and Mizuki are barely tolerating each other at best here. They actually showed a lot more affection on the AITSF B routes, which is insane since that’s the route where OTA calls Date out for being neglectful. Meanwhile, Boss uses Bibi as a special agent and keeps her very existence a secret. Kizuna's dad doesn't really seem to care about Bibi either despite having raised her for years, and prioritizes his bio daughter. And as the cherry on top...the Okiuras treated Mizuki like shit because she was adopted all along, of course! Adopted parents are evil and bad, right? And bio parents would never mistreat their bio children, right? Right. Who cares if this totally throws Mizuki's arc in AITSF out the window? Even Bibi and Kizuna's relationship is never really given focus once Bibi is revealed. Bibi only really cares about Mizuki. Her REAL sister. Because they are related and that is all that matters.

Even the villains love their biological son and will do lots of evil for him! Tokiko gives an entire speech about how much she loved her bio son even though she didn't raise him, to the point where she and her ex kidnapped a random child, groomed him into a cult, and gave his organs to her bio son. Kidnapped child meanwhile views her as his mom. On its own, I wouldn't think too much about it, but in conjunction with the Mizukis…this how adoption is treated in AINI. It is A Very Bad Thing. Adoptive parents do not love their children anymore. Both Mizukis go through two adoptive families and are treated badly or ignored by both, and this is just normal, I guess.

Also So suddenly seems to care about Iris, at least a little bit, despite his not giving a shit in AITSF. But, hey, they are biologically related....(I actually wouldn’t mind this if they like, did anything with it. But they don’t. Instead they totally destroy any depth So’s character ever had by making him a total horndog who runs around conceiving various serial killers. Wheee, the killer is the half-brother of the previous killer, and they are both the half-brothers of another character, because So can’t keep it in his pants. Seriously, what a stupid twist. Hilarious but stupid.)

The Komeji-Dois love each other and are very sweet. They are the only ones that seem to, though. Because blood. Genetics. DNA. As the only bio family with significant screentime, of course they actually love each other, right?

Also, side note, remember Ryuki's twin brother who died? He sure was significant huh :)

Part Four: Miscellany

The most baffling thing of all about how bad AINI is is its glowing reviews. Don’t get me wrong: people can like things I don’t. But the reviews I read were on so many occasions blatantly false. I saw claims that AINI has fewer or even NO dirty jokes, that it does not sexualize the 18 y/o characters, that Date and Mizuki’s relationship was explored more in-depth, that the game runs great on Switch, that the AI Vision lag was fixed, that spoilers are avoidable. All of these things are objective, and they were blatantly false. Every person I have talked to who played on Switch had lag and framerate issues even worse than the first game’s, and most of them reported at least one hard crash. AI Vision loading in high-res models is still a major issue that disrupts the game’s flow on lower-end consoles and PCs. Bibi’s mess of a Somnium just got its bugs patched a few days ago, in NOVEMBER, so you can actually play it without getting thirty game overs from touching unrelated objects. The dirty jokes are abundant and often about 18 y/o high schoolers (they even aged down Amame, which really wasn’t necessary at all - a 20 y/o and an 18 y/o can be friends, after all - just to keep her barely legal!) Date and Mizuki loathe each other. And “no spoiler mode” is, as discussed above, a fucking joke. I don’t know how this game of telephone got started or why so many big names lied in their reviews, but damn, it sure made the game even more disappointing when I realized that most of what I had read wasn’t even true. I have no idea why so many people who received review copies felt the need to lie. I have to assume they weren’t deliberate lies. But...how on earth could they have convinced themselves that this game no longer has dirty jokes? Or that there’s no lag, or bugs, or weird crashes? I get that Uchikoshi is funny and nice on Twitter, but we’re allowed to say negative things about his games!

And, on the note of Uchikoshi games, can we just say that the second time you come up with “disease that makes you kill yourself” it is less effective? Seriously, isn’t this just the same basic apocalypse plot as VLR/ZTD?? Why are we doing this again, it doesn’t work a second time!!!! aaaaaaargh

The quicktime events in this game suck so much. Just press a button to parkour. There’s no creativity, no unique use of Aiba/Tama’s abilities, no silly elaborate traps for the baddies or jokes or teamwork, just. Flip punch kick jump. Woo-hoo. The one time we do something vaguely creative it’s just exploding the damn porno vending machine and we already did that in the first game. AINI has no identity of its own.

Half To Whole is catchy but its lyrics suck. Gen/Amame BS AND Mame doesn’t get to sing. Most of the lyrics are random asides that don’t work with the characters or themes (but hey, Date, Ota, Mama, and Iris HAVE to sing about kappa catching, because it’s not like any of them got fuckall to do in the main game after all!) Mizukis whining about wanting boyfriends and singing in perfect harmony because they are not separate characters (and allegedly crying on the inside whenever they fight?? what??) Changing lyrics to make Ryuki sound straight (gay rights! Seriously why are we pretending Ryuki is gay representation??) It’s just an absolute trashfire. The only vaguely meaningful lyric is “Without you I am only half, I need to be whole” but even that one pisses me off, because it ties into the game’s ongoing weird idea that characters can only exist with one another, that they aren’t whole people alone. Especially the idea that Mizuki and Bibi are “two halves of a whole” - fuck you, they’re different people and they only just met! But no, they will never be independent people again. They don’t even get separate lines in the song outside of the first verse and otherwise harmonize everything (bless Mizuki’s VA for at least trying to give them different singing voices...). The one saving grace of an AI3 is that Bibi probably won’t get to be in it for spoiler purposes, so maybe Mizuki will get to do something without her (but probably not.)

In Conclusion (Fuck This Game)

AITSF felt like it constructed its character arcs, mystery, twists, lore, and gameplay all side by side to make one full story. AINI…only even bothered to have mystery, twists, and gameplay, and only the last one ends up working even remotely because so much was sacrificed for the mediocre twists. The big reveals of AITSF matter to the story and the characters, whereas the biggest twist in AINI has nothing to do with the game's universe and is just for the Frayer…then they do nothing with that concept anyway beyond a bonus ending. In the end, it's as flat and frankly soulless as everything else. So who cares?

My MOST hated thing about AINI is its "only biological family matters" thesis. My second most hated thing is how it takes a massive dump on every single character. And the third is how it just generally is an utter failure of a mystery with no depth whatsoever. I have always hated Bravely Second and held it up as an example of how to utterly fail a video game sequel, destroying the predecessor in the process. This game, however, is at least twice as terrible as Bravely Second. At least the aptly abbreviated BS did in fact manage to have some fun twists despite hating and flanderizing its entire cast; AINI couldn’t even pull that off. Calling it a cheap, forced cash grab the devs clearly never wanted to make still feels too generous. This game sucks.

Ryuki’s line in the explosion end is as follows:

あんなに好きだった。。。伊達さんのことを。。。裏切ったんだ

Anna ni suki datta…Date-san no koto o…Uragittanda.

I’ll break it down by each part.

Anna ni: adverb meaning “to that extent, so much, that much, etc.”  Ryuki uses this to contrast his love for Date against the fact that he betrayed him.

Suki: This is loaded, so it will take a bit more explanation.  The common three ways you’ll hear someone confess “I love you” are suki, daisuki, and ai suru/shiteru/etc.  There is a misconception in English-speaking fandom that they are translated strictly in the following ways:

Suki: I like you (platonic)

Daisuki: I like you a lot (strong platonic)

Aishiteru: I love you (romantic)

This is not accurate. It is true that aishiteru is stronger than suki or daisuki, but they all can be romantic.   Suki (or daisuki, literally just a stronger version of suki) is what you would use to describe hobbies, food, etc., but it functions fine as a romantic confession as well.  In fact, it is the most common word to use when confessing one’s love to another person.  You can use it in a platonic sense…But that is much more common when saying you like a person’s attributes, i.e. “I suki you as a person” or “I suki your personality.”  (Name) ga suki is a very common, albeit casual, way to declare romantic love.  If intended platonically, it will come off strong and off-putting to the recipient. (Name) no koto ga suki is less casual, and more overtly romantic, but I will get to the nuances later.  It should be noted that, though Ryuki is technically acknowledging his love for Date to himself, rather than confessing directly to Date, the same word conventions apply.

As a side note - aishiteru is very rarely used in real-life relationships.  It is so strong to the point that, if used, it can raise alarm bells - “Why did you use aishiteru?  Are you okay?  Am I never going to see you again?”  You hear it more often in song and anime/manga, but that’s because it comes off as more “poetic,” and has a bit more potential for interlingual wordplay.

Datta: Literally “was.”  Suki functions as a noun in Japanese, although it is a verb in English.  Ryuki is using past tense here because:

He assumes Date is dead at this point

He is relating his feelings to a past event (his betrayal)

Date-san: Mr. Date.

No koto: This phrase doesn’t really exist in English, but the literal translation is “of a thing.”  That’s not super helpful, but it’s made clearer with the context.  No koto is used to refer to a person when you want to address all of their aspects.  In a simpler sense, you can view the nuance as (name) ga suki being “I love you” and (name) no koto ga suki being “I love everything about you,” though both can be appropriately translated as “I love you.”  The no koto generally makes the phrasing more romantic.

O: No real equivalent in English, but this just indicates that there is a verb (uragitanda) about to occur to a subject (Date-san).

Uragitanda: Betrayed.

So, to summarize…The sentence, at its most literal, could be something like “The person I loved so much, Mr. Date, I betrayed.”  However, it carries more of an implication of “How could I betray the person I love so much?”

I will be frank for clarity.  This is a blatantly and explicitly romantic line.  Suki datta Date-san already sounds fairly romantic, but the anna ni and no koto push it above plausible deniability.

This might be confusing to some English-speaking fans - if it is blatantly romantic, why hasn’t the team confirmed this?  The answer comes down to cultural differences in fandom.

I just want to put a quick note here that fandoms are not monoliths, and even a single country’s fandom will be extremely varied.  However, I did talk to several people raised in Japan/living in Japan to get their take on both the line and the following trends:

In English-speaking fandoms, there is a lot of talk about representation re: LGBT characters.  If characters are presented with coding, but aren’t explicitly LGBT, some may contact the creator directly to determine if they are interpreting a character correctly.  While some creators may offer direct confirmation, some may not.  Those that don’t can come across to LGBT fans as “not wanting to go all the way with LGBT characters” and like they are denying representation.  Thus, creators are often seen as the final say; the right interpretation for a character’s sexuality or gender.

In Japanese-speaking fandoms, there is less focus on using characters as a vehicle for LGBT representation.  More importantly, there is also a distinctly different creator-fan relationship.  There is much more focus to allow text to be text, and fans to have their own interpretations.  It can be seen as stifling and disrespectful to fans to overtly confirm a character’s sexuality or gender.  So any refusal to comment on a character’s status as LGBT is less of an inherent cop-out, and more of a sign of respect to fans.