Astraea no Shiroki Towa Finale -Shiroki Hoshi no Yume- (アストラエアの白き永遠 Finale -白き星の夢-) Review

Waiting, waiting, and at last Spring Festival arrived — and with it, the long-awaited release of the Astraea no Shiroki Towa FD!

Astraea no Shiroki Towa was probably one of the first untranslated games I ever played, and it left a hell of an impression on me. Three things stood out above all:

The music! The effects! And Nitta Emi!

Then Yoshizumi Hina retired, which left any follow-up to Astraea no Shiroki Towa stuck in limbo forever. But FAVORITE isn’t about to pass up a chance to milk a sequel, so pretty soon we got an FD for Astraea no Shiroki Towa with a recast VA — namely Astraea no Shiroki Towa Finale -Shiroki Hoshi no Yume-.

Strictly speaking, Astraea no Shiroki Towa Finale -Shiroki Hoshi no Yume- is just an FD, and honestly I found the very idea of an FD for this game kind of baffling, since the original had pretty much wrapped up everything it needed to wrap up. There was only one heroine left unrouteable: Hakuo Shiraha, the one who created Yukiyuki. So the FD’s big selling point — and its anointed sequel route — is Hakuo’s route.

And just like with Irotoridori no Hikari, Hakuo’s route is forced on the first playthrough. So yeah, it’s properly anointed.

Though this anointed route is, uh… definitely on the long side.

Long as it is, it does at least clear up a lot of things. It starts with Hakuo’s background: the previous game established that she was the first person with powers, and that she established communication with the World Tree that came from outer space. To fill her own loneliness, Hakuo created Yukiyuki, and because Yukiyuki understood Hakuo’s loneliness, she made the snow over Tsukinosaki fall without end. It also explains that Hakuo’s father died not long after she was born, and that her mother, an alien researcher, devoted herself to xenobiology — where she met another man at the lab, the protagonist’s father. Hakuo’s mother remarried that man and gave birth to the protagonist, and that male researcher died when Hakuo’s powers went out of control. Which lays out exactly how Hakuo and the protagonist are related, where that whole same-mother-different-father thing comes from, plus Yukiyuki’s birth and some of the early story between Yukiyuki and Hakuo.

Of course, this route isn’t all flashbacks — there’s Hakuo’s main story too. Basically, after Hakuo meets the protagonist, Yukiyuki decides she’s just in the way here and vanishes. The protagonist then starts searching for the lost Yukiyuki together with Hakuo, and since the search requires using Hakuo’s powers, the two of them move in together (what the hell kind of excuse is that). So apart from a small chunk of flashbacks and the main plot, most of this route is about the protagonist and Hakuo living together. And it’s worth mentioning that Hakuo was about six years old when the protagonist wasn’t even born yet, which means… Hakuo is at least six years older than the protagonist. And yet in-game you can’t call her old — she’ll hit you for it.

Which is understandable, I guess, since it’s a Fan Disk, and showing off the couple being lovey-dovey is normal. It’s just that Hakuo… how did I not notice in the main game that she’s this passive-aggressive? She’s always in a wheelchair and she talks sharp, so she comes off like a total young mistress, with the other heroines around her as her handmaidens. Some people probably find that a moe point. I can’t say I saw all that much to like about Hakuo, but just watching the protagonist snark at her the whole time was plenty entertaining.

The game progresses with the protagonist and Hakuo sharing a bed every night, dreaming together, and in those morning dreams chasing after “snowflake crystals” — each crystal is a memory, and once enough memories are collected, Yukiyuki gets found.

The final stretch is the protagonist and Hakuo finally finding the vanished Yukiyuki. Yukiyuki wants to take the powers away, so that it stops snowing over Tsukinosaki and there are no more espers — but if she does that, Yukiyuki herself disappears.

The ending, obviously, is a best-of-both-worlds deal: the protagonist and Hakuo accept Yukiyuki’s powers, everyone else in Tsukinosaki accepts them too, Yukiyuki doesn’t disappear, and she lives together with Hakuo and the protagonist. She does wander off now and then, but she always comes back…

So I guess you could call it a Happy End? Honestly, this whole game is just the story of the protagonist living with his older sister, isn’t it? Most of the content is exactly that. This game is nothing but “A Year and a Half Living With My Half-Sister at Least Six Years Older Than Me,” isn’t it?

After you finish Hakuo’s main route, the other characters’ chapters unlock — but they’re all just little After Story bits, no real plot, just short skits. I’d originally spotted that Tachibana Hazuki had a route and clicked on it all excited, and then after finishing it you tell me she’s a goddamn magical girl… and you can’t fuck her. What the fuck. I completely lost it. This is fraud! What the hell was I waiting for the FD for? To get closer to little Tachibana Hazuki, and this is the thanks I get? Where do I even start complaining???

Overall, Astraea no Shiroki Towa Finale -Shiroki Hoshi no Yume- is at least worthy of the FD label, and it does give the original plot some closure — even if the closure is a few lines and most of it is just stalling for time…

It’s just that for the Astraea no Shiroki Towa series as a whole, the presentation and music are simply too strong — strong enough to paper over plenty of its own shortcomings. Overall it lives up to its name and quality, it’s just that the two recast VAs sound kind of off. Yukiyuki sounds like a late-stage asthma patient, and Hakuo doesn’t have much going for her either. Which makes me miss Nitta Emi-sensei all over again…

Continuing from yesterday, another 0.5 seconds of heartache for Nitta Emi-sensei…

One more thing… I get the feeling this series won’t be continuing, and won’t get an FD-of-an-FD like Irotoridori did. After all, the title literally says “Finale.” So all I can do is look forward to FAVORITE’s next game.