Pulltop probably got paid off by some local government somewhere, because they’ve started pumping out a whole series of “tourism promo” games. The story is light, sweet, and most importantly, all-ages… Last year they had Sora to Umi ga, Fureau Kanata, and this year they went and made a sequel called Ano Hi no Tabibito, Fureau Mirai. As expected, it shares the same world, the same staff, and even the same characters. Before release, this game had zero presence. I just remember Pulltop putting out a statement one day saying something like “Due to the pandemic, Ano Hi no Tabibito, Fureau Mirai has been delayed.” Everyone was dumbfounded when they saw that. Not because of the delay itself, but because of something else: Since when was Pulltop releasing this game? We didn’t even know it existed! And when they announced the delay, the game didn’t even have a proper website yet. Later on, the scenario writer plugged it while doing promo for ATRI, otherwise literally nobody would’ve cared. Anyway, the game did come out. The previous title’s “Ogasawara Islands diving” story was actually pretty good, so how does this new one hold up?

When I first watched Your Name., I saw the heroine frustrated with her mountain village, wanting to go to the big city, wanting to explore a new world. Honestly this kind of thing isn’t exactly fresh for us. We always see it in Japanese film and TV: the protagonist stuck in the countryside, sighing about how they hate this town, hate the sticks, want to go to Tokyo, want the big city. But I figure a lot of people might not get that feeling: “The countryside’s great, what’s so good about the big city? The countryside’s way more free.” Well, you don’t know what you’re missing till you’ve tasted it. Maybe people who grew up in big cities can’t understand the longing for excitement that exists in small towns. Most of the people talking about going back to the countryside are just sick of the noise of the city. And a lot of them have no idea what the countryside is actually like. Drop them out there, let them walk into town and fail to find a single Heytea, and no amount of bike-riding with their ass chafing will fill that void inside. I remember going to the countryside once when I was little. My family’s from a poor county in Kaifeng, Henan — well, not exactly my hometown, my grandma’s side. How poor was it? I remember when we got there, the relatives served us their best meal: a pot of mian gedda soup with a few beaten eggs in it. That was the top standard. And those eggs only existed because the old hen had graciously laid them that day — otherwise there wouldn’t even be eggs. The villagers there didn’t even have coops. Just a laying nest. At night the roosters and hens would fly up into the trees to sleep. Yeah, I only realized chickens were birds too after I personally watched a big rooster fly up to the treetops. They’ve got wings. It’s just that city thinking makes us forget. As novel as the countryside was, I got bored of it fast. Even with flying chickens, it was just too dull. Too monotonous — not just the food, but the people, the things to do, the scenery. Lots of people say the mountain valley views are so beautiful. But watch them every day and you’d get sick of them too. Tell someone they have to look at that for the rest of their life and never go back to the city, and they’d probably break. So maybe now you can understand the mindset of people in the countryside who want to go to the big city. Even with internet and delivery out there now, the exciting world is still better. And what if that “countryside” is on an island?