Liber_7 Review

I do have a soft spot for LASS — probably obvious from how much I shit on it.

11eyes was probably the first game I ever really grinded through back in the day. Honestly, a great experience. The part where 劫の眼 kicks in at the end still gets me hyped, and the protagonist’s cheat abilities are pretty damn sick — it blows away all the gloom from earlier and just feels good. Also, the 1v1 between Kusakabe-senpai and Kusakabe Misao — wait, I mean the Kusa… anyway, that was written really well. At least, I’d put it up there with the best battle writing I’ve played.

And so, as you probably know, LASS fell straight into a slump after 11eyes. They put out Shoujo Shin’iki, which was way too far up its own ass, then came Mayoi no Futari, which was pretty badly written, and after that they started cranking out short nukige this year — one about getting married, one about ninja training… I figured the company was doomed, and then out of nowhere they announced Liber_7.

Liber_7 was originally supposed to come out as a follow-up to the 11eyes series, but Shoujo Shin’iki bombed so hard that LASS ran out of money, so it got delayed, and delayed, and delayed again — and only now have they finally squeezed this thing out.

The president of LASS (I think that’s who he is): the freshly married fatass Kenji Mana said, “Liber_7 shares the same worldview as 11eyes and 3days, and it will surpass them.”

Of course nobody’s buying that bragging, right? Given what LASS can actually do these days, just telling one story properly would already be an achievement…

And so Liber_7 got delayed, delayed, and delayed again. All of which was exactly what I expected, so it finally came out on the last game release day of 2016.

Honestly, by the time I got to it I wasn’t really expecting this thing to surpass 11eyes anymore — I’d already played the trial version, and some of it was pretty cringe.

So after playing the full release… it just felt even more awkward.

The game opens by introducing the protagonist, Ishidori Naoto, a good student who excels in both academics and conduct. He’s got a childhood friend, “Amatsuka Mirai,” who comes over to look after him every day, plus the older lady next door, Sendai… no wait, “Kuzuse Saya,” keeping him company, and even a flashy punk of a best friend, “Fujimi Souta,” who shows up in the morning to check on him too — his walk to school is a whole parade. But from there the plot unfolds pretty much like 3days. The story starts on July 4th; on the way to school he learns a murder has happened in the city — a member of the Hirohara family, Hirohara Moegi, has been killed. Then the next day, July 5th, the neighbor Saya goes missing too. On the third day, July 6th, a massive explosion rocks the station and terrorism is suspected. And just as the night of the third day, July 7th, rolls around, the protagonist witnesses a flashy punk girl with an electric guitar down by the river, saying she’s going to kill him…

So right as the protagonist gets fucked to death, a magic circle appears in the sky and sucks the whole city into the abyss… wait, no, into the magic circle. And the world’s done for.

Then the protagonist suddenly wakes up, back to three days ago — July 4th. The interesting part: he’s kept the memories from the previous loop…

On the second day of this playthrough, the protagonist gets an email. It’s written in full chuuni mode: this world has 7 espers (or resistors, I think — something like that, going by the kana), the email says, and it wants these 7 to fight it out and kill each other, with a final winner decided before July 7th. That winner becomes a “god-man” and gets any wish granted. And if no winner is decided before July 7th, the world is doomed.

Sounds honestly like a Holy Grail War plus fortissimo, holy shit.

After that, the protagonist starts investigating this question, and along the way he keeps resolving and uncovering a whole string of problems:

1. Every time July 7th hits midnight, the world gets sucked into a magic circle and croaks, and the protagonist gets sent back three days.
2. The protagonist finds several other ability users—Saaya, Hirohara Moegi, that punk guitarist girl Ichijou Akane, and himself among them—and through repeated looping and conquering, pulls them all into his squad.
3. His ability lets him read other people’s memories and transfer them, so every loop he reads his comrades’ memories and writes them back in the next one. That way the whole group inherits the memories.
4. Through all the looping, he keeps fixing events along the way—including the fact that Hirohara Moegi originally died in a PK with that punk guitarist girl Ichijou Akane, which he stops with his great saintly heart. There’s also the station bombing terrorist attack on the third day, done by another ability user; he just throws down with the guy and stops it. The gist of his whole stance is: “Ability users shouldn’t kill each other. We should unite and find the mastermind sending the messages that make us kill each other.”
5. One loop, the protagonist gets stabbed to death, and in the next loop he’s lost his memories—turns out if he dies himself, his memories are lost too. Luckily he remembers again later thanks to his friends.

So after about ten or so Loops, the protagonist finally pulled off a perfect opening: on day one, the punk-looking girl Ichijo Akane didn’t kill Hirohara Moemi, on day two Kusunose Saya didn’t go missing, and on day three the train station bombing never happened. Keep this up and by day four he can go hunt down the mastermind.

Turns out a shrine maiden pops out, says she’s an esper too, and picks a fight to the death with the protagonist. She’s the background character who showed up at the start of the story — the guy even went to her shrine to pray — but nobody expected her to be an esper as well.

The shrine maiden shows up and the protagonist is completely caught off guard. He can’t beat her. Then his childhood friend pops out of nowhere — Amatsuka Mirai, the one who every single day, like nothing’s wrong, just cooks for him. Mirai straight-up nullifies the shrine maiden’s power (same as Yuuka in 11eyes), and after saving him, she comes clean: she’s actually had her memories every loop. Maybe the protagonist noticed too, but she was just pretending not to know.

The protagonist asks: you have memories? Amatsuka Mirai then calmly explains — not only does she have memories, she’s got more loop memories than he does. This world has already looped over ten thousand times. A few of those times, the protagonist learned the truth too, but each time he got killed in the next loop, lost the ability to carry memories over, and forgot all over again…

Amatsuka Mirai also tries to escape these endlessly repeating three days, but ultimately gives up — figures it’s fine like this, and that just living these three days over and over with the protagonist isn’t so bad…

Amatsuka Mirai also said she’d received that email herself — the one telling the “espers” to kill each other. Except at first it said 27 espers, and later it became 7.

That’s when the protagonist starts to find it hard to accept. This world has already looped over ten thousand times—doesn’t that mean it’ll never end?

And then it gets worse — while he’s zoning out, his childhood friend Amatsuka Mirai gets taken away…

So the protagonist gives chase, and the whole group ends up in front of a research lab. Out pops the class rep, Shin Kanzaki — turns out he was the mastermind all along.

After a whole lot of trash talk, Kanzaki Makoto tells the protagonist that this world is a fake world controlled by a “quantum computer” secretly developed by a Japanese organization.

Kanzaki Makoto himself was also involved in the development of Liber_6, the sixth generation of the quantum computer Liber. A quantum computer can use brainwaves to achieve “area consensus radiation” (I can’t remember the name, so I’ll just write it that way), forcibly brainwashing and interfering with the people in a certain nearby range, making them accept the laws of the world as revised by the quantum computer. It can also grant ordinary people some special abilities to play around with. Liber_6 is currently running, and the current world is the dream of the protagonist and his companions while they’re being interfered with. However, the time in reality and the time in this dream are different—time in the dream is much faster. Although the dream has looped more than ten thousand times, in reality it’s only been about two hours.

“I’ve been looking for Amatsuka Mirai this whole time. She should be the core of this quantum computer. To find her, I didn’t hesitate to create a game where several espers kill each other, all to force her to show herself.”

Then Kanzaki Makoto points out that Amatsuka Mirai is already dead in the real world… and the current Amatsuka Mirai is the founder of this quantum computer — that is, Amatsuka Mirai’s adoptive father. To bring his daughter back, he wrote her memories and fragments into an AI, and she was reborn inside the quantum computer’s virtual world.

“Amatsuka Mirai has GM privileges. If she wanted to end this world, she could just destroy it herself.”

Then, upon learning the truth, Amatsuka Mirai loses control and goes insane. She forcibly wipes the data of several people, kicks several others offline, and in the end only the protagonist is left. Before this virtual world is destroyed, the two of them confess, kiss, and have sex. Amatsuka Mirai says that once this world ends, the protagonist will be sent back to reality, that her real-world self is already dead, that the server will never be opened again, and that the two of them will be parted forever—and the protagonist will also forget his memories inside the quantum computer server.

The protagonist says no way, and just forces his ability to read Amatsuka Mikuru’s memories, saying he’ll definitely remember her in reality, blah blah blah. Then the big magic circle shows up again, July 7th is coming, and the world is doomed all over again.

When he comes to again, the protagonist has zero memory of Amatsuka Mirai. After getting up he runs into the same friends from the dream one by one; they all feel vaguely familiar, but whatever — they end up becoming friends again anyway. Then comes Tanabata and the tanzaku wish slips, and seeing some couple’s sappy message on one of them, he suddenly remembers Amatsuka Mirai. He tries using his ability — and it actually works in the real world?

The protagonist, having regained his memories, hurried off to find the other espers and return their memories to them—only to discover that they can now use their powers in reality too. Hirohara Moegi says, oh crap, this means that quantum computer called Liber_6 was never shut down—it’s running again.

Then news came in of a terrorist attack warning. The protagonist ran to the city center and saw a figure of Amatsuka Mirai going on a rampage, killing everything in sight. And this Amatsuka Mirai had powers—seriously busted ones. The protagonist started fighting this boss called “Amatsuka Mirai,” only to find out this “Amatsuka Mirai” was actually a puppet controlled and fused by Kanzaki Makoto. Kanzaki Makoto booted up Noah II again… oh wait, no, Liber_6, and interfered with the brainwaves of the entire city, getting everyone around to accept the setting that this quantum computer could change the laws of physics. He also used Amatsuka Mirai to make himself the GM, and now he’s about to take over the world.

The finale, naturally, has the protagonist and his crew of espers trading barbs and throwing down in a big PK showdown to take out the final boss, while Hirohara Moe backs them up from the rear by launching a cyberattack on the Liber_6 computer.

Then Kanzaki Shin gets beaten down, and Amatsuka Mirai’s figure vanishes (the real person is already dead, after all—what appeared was just a phantom under interference).

The protagonist ends up choosing Tenma Mirai… except Mirai is already dead, and only exists inside the quantum computer’s virtual world. With Hirohara Moe’s help, the quantum computer gets improved and a new Liber_7 is built, and then the protagonist marries Tenma Mirai in this new virtual world and they live happily ever after…

Should I really be saying congratulations here? The protagonist married the wife inside his computer. I could do that too, you know. What’s there to congratulate about that?! (flips table

If you’ve played 5pb.’s Science Adventure series, you’ll notice this game’s plot is honestly kind of similar to one of them…

Yep, that’s the Chaos;Head one. Same deal: someone uses a supercomputer to mess with the minds of everyone around them and pull off psychic powers, same opening murder case, same pile of baffling lore and Neta plus a bonus dictionary… same partially gory CGs. Oh right, the difference is the protagonist isn’t as much of a loser.

So this game is more like it starts out borrowing 3days’ development, then later borrows Chaos;Head’s kind of development, and as for the 11eyes elements, it’s really just the pile of music and background images it borrowed in the first place.

You’re telling me this game can “surpass 3Days and 11eyes”?

I’d say it can maybe just barely surpass 3Days, but surpassing 11eyes? Nah, forget it.

Let me start with the game’s fatal flaws.

1. The direction is weak.

The game’s presentation covers the endless loops and the combat, and honestly both are terrible. During a loop all you get is a calendar page flipping over—I’d rather have the ticking clock from 3days. Sure, the nature of this loop is different from 3days: here the protagonist is simply written to be able to loop, no magic pocket watch like in 3days, so I get it. But the combat effects are an absolute disaster. Why does every character have to shout some cringe catchphrase to use a skill? In 11eyes, aside from the senpai drawing her sword, did anyone else’s skill activation drag on like that? Shiori Momono firing her rainbow beam wasn’t this long-winded either! Same scenario writer, so what the hell happened to you over these past few years? And could the combat CGs be drawn any more idiotic? What poses are those people even in? And you can attack with a guitar—can we please not? Even in Journey to the West, the guy who attacks with a pipa wasn’t this dumb. The combat isn’t just badly presented, it’s also short, and watching it made me cringe. I want to snark about it, but then I figure maybe today’s edgy kids all like this style and I, as an old man, am just out of touch.

2. The music is too… weird

The music is still handled by Sakamoto Shouichirou, but after all these years, old Sakamoto might have been composing for too many doujin FTGs and RPGs, because when he came back to a LASS series title, he kind of drifted off. On a side note, 50% of Liber_7’s game is inherited from 11eyes—you can’t just take the libertarian approach because the setting is one city, right? And quite a few background images are literally taken straight from 11eyes. I’m starting to suspect LASS discovered how convenient waifu2X is and couldn’t be bothered to draw new art. Plus, 50% of the newly added tracks have vocals… yes, vocals in a visual novel’s BGM, and not even insert songs. I’m saying this isn’t The Irregular at Magic High School, and you’re not Iwasaki Taku, Sakamoto—why do you keep doing this… A few of those endless “What do we girls made of, sugar and spice” loops got stuck in my head… All in all it’s pretty awkward. I guess you could call it a novel attempt… but it still can’t hide how awkward it feels.

3. Pacing could be better

LASS really might be doomed this time. No money, and the writers can’t crank out anything the length of 11eyes anymore. The story pace is fine at the start, but by the third loop it gets impatient, plenty of spots are just glossed over and dropped. I get that loop stories need to skip the unimportant parts and focus on the key ones, but you can’t just cut the scenes all over the place like that, can you?

Then comes the moment the truth gets laid bare, and the game’s pacing turns into a roller coaster. It dumps every bit of lore on you all at once, and the Boss doesn’t put up the slightest resistance—just stands there waiting for the protagonist to call them out. After the reveal there’s no real twist either; the best you can figure is the Boss shows up again, and the fight after that has zero suspense—talk-no-jutsu, love, and the power of friendship conquer all. Paired with that cringeworthy battle staging, I honestly don’t know what to say. During the common route I figured this game would run long, that like 11eyes everyone would take some casualties and the protagonist would save the world in the end. Instead it just suddenly ends… I guess you could call it a Happy End (?), but I can’t help thinking… does this really live up to the “surpasses 11eyes” you were selling?

4. The art style is downright weird

Ever since Shoujo Shin’iki, I honestly can’t tell if LASS swapped out their colorist. Starting from Mayoi no Futari, the coloring turned really… how do I put it, bright? Realistic? I don’t even know. Personally it looks mad awkward to me — feels like they’ve been drifting further and further from “moe.” Your company name literally still has “shoujo” in it, you know? Seeing this coloring style day after day makes me cringe. And after Shoujo Shin’iki, the male characters LASS draws have gotten wilder and wilder — at this point I half suspect they hired some BL artist to draw the protagonist. Can’t accept it. Just go back to drawing him as the ol’ bottom. And the protagonist’s best friend isn’t just “wild” anymore, he’s basically about to be full-on gay. If we’re talking chuuni battle art, Light does it way better than you. So who exactly is this shaved-head-punk art style that’s neither moe nor realistic supposed to sell to? Besides big tits, does it have any redeeming qualities? Everyone knows eroge sales live and die by the faces! These faces can only sell to veteran perverts at this point. How’s a pure, fresh player like me supposed to accept this?!

Honestly, I don’t even feel like talking about Liber_7’s story… because there’s nothing to say. The plot itself holds together, it’s just so trite, done to death in a dozen other games, and the late-game battles are basically a cut-rate Chaos;Head. The game throws around a pile of jargon trying to make you think it’s connected to 3days and 11eyes, but that’s all it is — not a single character from the earlier games shows up.

The game is packed with references — Claris, the Cultural Revolution, the foot-licking guy, post-encephalitic parkinsonism, and a whole pile of random lore, most of which has nothing to do with the main story. There are also relatives of various 3Days characters… actual relatives, like the best friend being the cousin or whatever of the 3Days heroine, same surname Fujimi. The manager of that one café from 11eyes is still around too, only he doesn’t remember anything about Yukiko either…

If there’s one thing to give the game credit for, it’s that it explains the origin of “modern magecraft” in 11eyes’s Void Boundary chapter, plus the behind-the-scenes work of Amami Shu’s grandfather, Amami Kanji.

But what’s the point? LASS themselves went and abandoned the Kyokai arc, and this modern magic setup that everyone was so high on never got used again. It’s actually pretty stylish, honestly — pulling out your phone, connecting to a server, chanting a spell, whatever. That’s fucking sick, isn’t it? Why not use it?

On the whole, Liber_7 is a middling work. Nothing stands out, the plot explanations feel a bit thin, and honestly explaining more wouldn’t have made it any more interesting. It’s a chuuni piece rooted in pseudo-scientific delusion, totally different from 11eyes’ fantasy backdrop. The art isn’t as good as 11eyes either, and there’s no universally likable character on the level of Shiori Momono. The only real draw is Sendai’s long black hair.

Still, all things considered, LASS got back to actually telling a story, and it’s better than the previous one, Mayoi no Futari. In some ways it even fleshes out 3days. It’s just still miles away from 11eyes. Sometimes I wonder if LASS writing 11eyes was just a blind cat stumbling onto a dead mouse. But honestly, the first thing LASS needs to do is go find a few artists who can actually draw moe. And the coloring they’ve got going now — I figure if they’d just grabbed some random moege artist for Liber_7’s story, it’d look better than it does now. At least I wouldn’t be cringing at that scene-kid-ass style of theirs…