Kareni Sekai to Owaru Hana is a game I had mixed feelings about from the start — both anticipation and a bit of fear. Anticipation because the premise is intriguing, almost giving away nothing about what kind of story it’ll tell, and the art, character designs, and even the voice cast all felt really comfortable. A bit of fear because of the planner/scenario writer: Yukihito. Who is this Yukihito? You might not have heard of his other works, but there’s one you definitely know… Nekopara. English title Nekopara, and I don’t know the Chinese name, but I know its nickname: “Catgirl Porn” — it sold like crazy on Steam. He also did two nukige with Sayori, an artist from China, so when a writer like that suddenly drops a new title with what looks like a very abstract, artsy premise, how could you not suspect it might be a landmine? But after playing the trial last month, my doubts got even worse. Because the trial still explained almost nothing — what the game is trying to say, what the theme is, all still unclear… The world setting feels like a fantasy, and while that’s not uncommon in games, it’s everywhere in Japanese anime. The most recent example is Kowareta Sekai to Garasu no Hana — and the title format is suspiciously similar, which only deepened my suspicion that it might just be pretentious bullshit that ends up saying nothing at all… Of course, after playing it, those worries vanished. Or rather, I had it wrong — this isn’t some “artsy pretentious” game, it’s more like a fairy tale. Yeah, a fairy tale — the kind a mother tells her kid before bed, the “Long Long Ago,” “むかしむかし,” “once upon a time” kind… No wonder the world and scenery in this game feel so “fairy tale.”