A while back on a forum I saw someone loudly declare that every visual novel’s core has to be porn — softcore, hardcore, hidden, whatever flavor of titillation — and that if a game loses the core of making the player jack off, the whole medium is doomed. Rare for me, I couldn’t really take a side. Honestly, what I play visual novels for isn’t the format itself; it’s the Japanese flavor of story that leans a little into fantasy and thrill. Anime doesn’t have the runtime to tell a story properly, and manga and light novels mostly get strangled by endless serialization that drags things out. Only a visual novel, with one route and one ending, can more or less scratch that itch — because when a route reaches its end, the story actually ends, instead of dragging on like a bottomless pit the way serialized manga and light novels do. As for porn, I’ve always figured it doesn’t conflict with plot. When the H-scene comes up you can sell as much meat as you want; when it doesn’t, you can still just tell your story straight. If the H and the plot are inseparable, then at best it’s a nukige, made for a specific audience with specific needs. So in visual novels you get a few different ways of structuring the plot: some play the borderline game hard, some straight-faced hand you a softcore setup, and some rare ones honestly keep H and story separate. Which brings us to… 《アストラエアの白き永遠》 might be one of those.