LogFAQs > #972090776

Destruction
First up today I do some fighting, and clear the rest of Area 1. I'm still curious what the deal is with this final battle, the characters have surely gone through all their stories before getting here but there's a lot of stuff they still don't know in the pre-battle cutscenes.

There's some actual plot around the battles today, starting with baby Chihiro showing up and shifting 1.2 million people from Sector 4 to Sector 3, 2025. Later Okino says Gouto ran the numbers on the kaiju that were 'produced', that doesn't sound like terminology that'd be used for aliens! This all seems reasonably computer-adjacent for the time being. There's one new kaiju that the experts don't know about, but Natsuno says it was 'in the data for interstellar development', another sign that these things were created by humans I think. Finally, after the last wave of area 1 we meet a new face, Miyuki Inaba. I imagine this idol will be the voice that was speaking to Amiguchi in his prologue, but for now she talks about fixing the mainframe and Universal Control processing her commands.

These are all fun lore tidbits but alone they're not enough to build conclusions from, and as we're not allowed to start Area 2 it's time to head back to the main story.

Renya Gouto
Unlike the rest, Gouto's story doesn't begin with him blissfully ignorant of what's going on. Despite literally playing as him, he somehow manages to be as cryptic as ever and I don't really learn much about who he is. An early scene features the 4 most secretive characters in the game- Gouto, Morimura, Ida, and Okino- in a future lab talking about future stuff. It's as if we're peeking behind the curtain at a lategame scene we somehow acquired access to early on, but without necessary context the amount of new info we can learn is limited.

We discover that by 2105 all 1.2 billion factories on Earth are automated, producing kaiju by themselves. Well, that's where they come from then. More distressingly, we see some 2188 reports describing people downloading their memories onto others through 'innerlocitors', effectively stealing their minds. Wow, that's fucked up. And unfortunately adds another layer of doubt as to the level of sincerity of literally anyone in this game.

My hope of learning more about Miura's story does slightly come to pass, as we get a more detailed explanation for child Chihiro: Ms Morimura herself was inspired by the future reports and downloads her memories into a clone in an attempt to make herself 'compatible' again. This term comes up a lot here, compatibility with the sentinels/mainframe/whatever must be pretty important. But the experiment doesn't work so Morimura seals her memories away and tosses the infant to WWII Japan to live her own life. How... thoughtful? You could've picked a less distressing time for her to grow up in, Chihiro! The 'true' Chihiro is now in this kid's body after Gouto woke her up, and someone else has taken over the adult form to try and is trying to destroy her project somehow. '426' is a suspect here, I'm noting that number down for whenever it comes up again.

Lastly, Renya enters a UFO (!) and watches some more logs, this time of Chihiro describing Operation Aegis again and talking about the sentinels being infected and something about Sector 0. The only thing noteworthy to Gouto in that log is apparently her mention of a 'he' that she wants to save. And then there's another log revealing that in the future Renya becomes an executive figure at Shikishima and orders the assassination of Morimura. You know what? Sure, I'll roll with it. There's too many unknown variables for me to know what to make of all this.

How do I know less about Gouto than I did before I started his story? Dude is secrets all the way down. I laugh out loud seeing that he's now locked off until we reach 80% with all(?) 12 of the other characters. Of course!

Yuki Takamiya
We follow up that mess with the comparatively straightforward story of a teenage Yuki being recruited into a shady organisation to spy on Sakura High. Ryoko is also here, I always forget she exists. Yuki quite understandably doesn't give a damn about any of the greater shenanigans going on, instead only caring about her childhood friend that she still has strong feelings towards. A girl named Erika Aiba bizarrely inserts herself as Yuki's sidekick against Yuki's will, and then we get to interviewing students. This section isn't great gameplaywise, there's a lot of meandering back and forth and initially it's unclear why we're doing this as I assume Natsuno is at this point away in 1945. But in a way it's refreshing to be in a lower stakes scenario where it's easy to understand what is actually happening.

After a lot of bouncing around, sweet innocent Miwako (please don't let anything bad happen to her, game) helps us realise there are two Tomis running around, and some dusty girl who blew up a toilet or something. I leave it here for today but will continue on Yuki's storyline next time, I can't really judge it yet as I don't know what the hook will be. I like Yuki as a character though, it's nice to have an abrasive personality pushing against the pretensions of some of the others.

Current progress:
Keitaro Miura- 75%
Juro Kurabe- 55%
Natsuno Minami- 37%
Ei Sekigahara- 28%
Yuki Takamiya- 28%
Iori Fuyusaka- prologue done
Takatoshi Hijiyama- prologue done
Megumi Yakushiji- prologue done
Shu Amiguchi- prologue done
Renya Gouto- prologue done
Tomi Kisaragi- prologue available