Rewrite - Akane Route

Similar to some well-known visual novels featuring the time-loop/multi-verse theme, Rewrite made use of the formula above to illustrate a world tree with not too-shabby complexity, thus opening up a myriad of opportunities for experimentations and the likes, one of which is without a doubt the infamous Akane route.

This post won’t touch upon the other routes or the end-game material much because I’d probably have more negative things to say about them. But I digress, just this one time I’m willing to overlook all of that transgression and instead shift my gaze onto Akane’s story because the overall design for her character from the common route to her dedicated route to her dynamic with the protagonist had seamlessly given way to intriguing topics and the underlying themes that won over my attention and even caught me off guard in the most random way ever.

For starters, her route went all in right off the bat with “raw” material like political struggle, coming-of-age progress, no BS convos that just get straight to the point without hiding anything, and lastly they had no qualms with out-of-place topics like extreme cultic, erasing mankind or killing off people like it’s Tuesday, and even character corruption (a bit), all of which are not something I’d normally expect from Key of all studio out there.

I’m aware that a few LOT of them are red flags like the whole genocide advocate and how icy the heroine in question can be, but in their defense, all of them more or less were justified by the context Rewrite world-building, so I’m not really bothered by that much. On top of that, it’s exactly because Akane was so cold that her endgame paid off very well.

I mean can you really blame her when literally visions worth several hundred years of human life full of traumatizing content were compressed into the mind of a fragile human being? If anything it’s stunning that Akane didn’t go full zombie mode like her predecessor did and even managed to hold on tight to her tiniest ray of hope for a comeback. This shit is basically equivalent to “Path” from AOT (wut memory this even from? xd), reading steiner from Steins;Gate or Quantum Causality from Muv-luv bla bla you get the idea, just too much for a girl who can only enjoy FPS games like Akane to absorb xd

One thing to remember is that Akane was initially portrayed as a loner (befitting her hobby of playing fps games) and always drew a clear line between her and her peers, completely treating them like “NPCs” and ready to drop them out of her game at any given second. However, that changed in her own route as she went out of character for once to entrust her fate into the hand of someone who at first is strange but in time transformed into her escapism as she was constantly being put under pressure and had her sanity ripped apart due to the holy woman influence. It was more or less a domino effect, from the thought of “it’s no harm keeping him around” to “Oh shit I need him to get me outta here” as the story reached the finish line.

In other words, Akane route is pretty deceptively sophisticated with the premise of breaking off one’s shell and changing yourself by just shifting your view to a slightly different angle. The recurring pattern in the common route is Akane not giving a fuck about anything or anyone and doing things her own way. Contrary to her easygoing manner that is always present in the club room, it looked more like Akane had been living in another dimension of her own. This leans on the idea that she had already given up on her future after inheriting the will of the Holy Woman which engulfs the host with nothing but negative and twisted envisage of a hopeless and inevitable reckoning upon mankind.

From her perspective, nothing she could do would change anything, they were already at the “point of no return” as she quoted, hence might as well do whatever she wanted before the hours lay upon her.

That all changed as her route began, with Akane slowing down her pace and taking a glance at her surroundings in another light, thus triggering a positive chain reaction as her journey continued. To me, this is a clear reflection of our daily life, that is to change the world you must first change yourself (a direct answer to her questionnaire from the common route).

While it is true that Akane was dead-set on fulfilling her role as the holy woman by hastening the destruction of the planet, a tiny part inside her asked for the opposite, which is why she even took in Kotaro in the first place because she was hoping he could drag her out of this hell hole or at least “releasing” her from this miserable fate. Thanks to that slight bit of contradiction between her subconscious and the Gaia influence, the finale of her stage was laced with immense hype and I could not stop cheering for Akane for some reason even though the outcome was blindly obvious

At the risk of repeating myself, to me what makes a quality character is how consistent and firm they are in their belief, regardless of the consequences they’d stay unwavering and remain true to themselves against all odds, and the same can be said for Akane too. Their ideology can be wrong, twisted, misplaced, or deranged, but so long as they fully demonstrate their conviction without fail then I just can’t say no to that, especially since it’s in a fictional work it doesn’t hurt to go wild sometimes xd

All said and done, while I have given plenty of praise for this particular fragment of Rewrite, there were still some lingering matters that left much to desire such as some good ol’ fashioned bad ending choices:

1. Killing Akane as a way to end her suffering. The reason why it’s not an atonement for her sins is simply because that’s not something that’d align with Kotaro character as he decided to stick with her despite knowing the dark path they’d be heading. However, I think it’s not that far-fetched to provide an extra scenario where Kotaro, or you as the reader xd, can no longer bear watching her in any more pain, similar to putting down a patient beyond saving (if that’s legal in some countries).

2. A more extreme ending would be you choosing to sink with Akane to the darkest pit of Tartarus. Meaning, from the start to the very end of the story you’ll be her right-hand, support her ideology, and commit all sorts of atrocities to ensure the success of Gaia’s plan which is aiding the Key (another pun??) in the process of purging the Earth of humanity (aye yo this sounds just like a certain mecha anime in the 90s mmmmm). Basically kinda like in the anime adaptation (ss1) but instead of opposing Akane you’ll be standing by her side and slowly fade away together and stuff, would be cool.

Apart from that, I think it’s kinda weird that Akane got off very lightly despite what she did, I mean fucking hell sure she didn’t do it with her own hand but the fact is that she gave the order for her subordinates to carry out the plan and almost created real OG “Thanos snap” saved for maybe 10% of humanity in the utopia whatever. And what did they do to her? An exile. Like wow, can you even call that punishment when we all know she has communication issues and dislikes the crowd, so to be able to get far away from the mass with her lover to a secluded, unknown destination sounds a lot more to me like winning a lottery for a luxury honeymoon trip rofl.

But that’s alright, those were not a big deal (good fanservice even) but what pissed me off most was this WAY OVER THE TOP frame in the 2nd OP was complete bait and has no actual meaning whatsoever. WHY EVEN GO OUT OF YOUR WAY TO MAKE THIS TEASER AND GIVE NOTHING EVEN THE SLIGHTEST BIT IN THE END ANYWAY. Seriously, how cool would it be if there was a scene or CG like that in the actual story???? And they had no budget to make sprites for side characters like Suzuki or Sakura who showed up quite a lot in the late-game but had the audacity to troll us with that awesome frame??? Just what the fuck Key.

Aww well whatever, I honestly am not sure how I really feel about Rewrite as a whole, but you can bet your ass that I enjoyed the hell out of Akane route, it was so refreshing to see Key being out of character for once and almost nailing everything. Lastly, I think while Akane didn’t possess any fancy CG like the other heroines, the final scene with her and Kotaro walking with that title drop (A Journey of a Thousand Miles) was just simply kino.