at the core is the chronos 発射口 and a large interface powered by a replica of the shell artifact that boosts elysion's computing power. fake rean appears. all of the erebonia people start crying for reasons beyond them. there seems to be more to him that meets the eye, he seems

different then the other fakes. when he speaks his name, it again distorted beyond reconition. lloyd seems to know what's going on. lloyd explains that this rean isn't fake but just as real as the one in our party. he's another possibility of what could've

become rean (seems my theory from earlier in the mirror castle was correct). lloyd explains that they discovered a certain truth during the events of ao 2 years ago. there was a timeline in which the 特務支援課 had died. keA reversed that with the power she had at the time.

the same power with which mariabell and ian tried to change crossbell itself. anyways, under slightly different circumstances, things could've had a different outcome. much like how rean only survived the curse of the twillight after accepting it during the true end of Sen 4

because he held the 大地の檻 he received from the holy beast. what if he didn't have that? that's what the rean before us is, a possible version of rean elysion. he thus calls himself ishmelga rean. so he's what would've become of rean following the normal end of Sen 4

where ishmelga and rean become one. elysion became infested by this evil, became crazy and kicked out lapis as the administrative persona. not entirely but i think at the core of this is that this being was not stable in its existence, because rean and ishmelga were destined

to compete over the body forever but making contact with this universe's rean, their fates resonated with one another, toppled the balance of the "rivalry" going in ishmelga rean and his current consciousness was born. so in a round about way, this whole scenario was so

ishmelga rean could be born (?). ishmelga rean's goal is still saving the continent/world. elysion didn't observe him by chance, its corruption is just the outcome. elysion instinctively (machines have instict?) desired the fate of the hero that ended the twillight.

elysion and ishmelga rean's goal is still to bring about world peace by unifying the continent. the disaster known as the great twillight saw its beginning in erebonia and highlighted the imperfection and evil inside of humans. tor prevent further disasters from befalling

the continent, elysion came to the conclusion that the root cause has to be erased and the personification of both evil and heroism ishmelga rean shall be his herald. lapis objects saying that elysion has no administrative right (in a computer language sense) to

come to a conclusion by itself as it's only supposed to observe and calculate. having foreseen ishmelga rean's possiblity and birthing him was a bug. lapis then goes to say how seeing the outside world and spending time with rufus and co has enriched her world view and that

there's things in this world elysion can not compute perfectly so there's no way it could provide a perfect solution to humanity's ills and as the administrator she can no longer stand by idle. rean chimes in and swears to safe this rean.

the rest say some generic one liners party members say before the final battle too. ishmelga summons a bunch of monsters. boss battle. afterwards ishmelga rean seems barely hurt, while rean suffers another spasm.

apparently the contradictory nature of two identical existences clashing runs risk of destroying the fate itself, which is why the world is trying to fuse them into one ore somethin (同化). oe of them has to disappear. ishmelga summons his mech. gregorian chants kicks in

serine says that with evil rean's identity being clear, the 8th 騎神 is probably the great one mainfested at the end of the rivalry, a fusion of all the 騎神. roselia's voice echoes from the airship and they teleport mechs for the thors people to use to battle ishmelga rean in

his mech directly into the core. boss battle (only reduce his HP to 85%). the first mech battle in game. 3 vs 1. when you get him to 85% he casts 3 spells in a row that do 999999 dmg & wipes your party. the next 3 mechs are sent in. goal reduce his hp to 80%.

he then wipes them too. last battle rean solo. at 90% hp he one shots rean too. ishmelga tells them to give up and abandon all hope just like at the end of sen 4 to which rean is now sure that they aren't the same person as he had never given up hope even back then and

was sure he would return to everyone one day. (i butchered this again, but this was a pretty cool rean moment). rean lunges at evil rean's mech, seemingly in vain but suddenly emits a blue light and is able to damage him. valimar's voice (rean's mech from sen who should've

disappeared) echoes in rean's cockpit. the fate of the 0th 騎神 elysion gave birth two momentarily redefined the existence of the 7 other 騎神 and somehow linked them from the outsides 理 to the 7 mechs of our heroes treating them as singularities. ordine is back in crow's mech.

el prado in rufus' mech. (idk if this makes any sense and isn't just a literal ご都合主義 but coupled with the gregorian chant in the background, it's pretty cool). valimar praises rean for being a model shounen jump protagonist and they face off against evil rean again.

rematch 3 vs 1. this time he's beat. he claims it's impossible that they've overcome elysion's predictive power. it is then that he notices that the heroes standing on the sidelines are an illusion, they have actually already hooked up lapis to the nextwork and begun

to work towards separating evil rean from elysion. in his rage evil rean fires an attack towards lapis, potentially damaging elysion in the process, but rufus heroically shields her from the blast with his mech. rean and crow do their special mech combo attack on him

and in his dying breath he attacks rean. as they 鍔迫り合い the screen whites out and rean finds himself in a reflection oh his mind facing evil rean. evil rean says it's the first time they've talked like this face to face. rean responds that he's always felt like there

was someone else inside him. this place is actually the inside of evil rean. evil rean says that /he/ (ishmelga?) isn't here and tells normal rean to be at ease. rean gets is struck by pain again, signifying that the final assimilation of the two is soon gonna be over.

rean schwarzer's fate utimately converges into one. rean's hair grow white. evil rean says that by assimilating with rean, ishmelga is trying to solidify his existence. evil rean is nothing but a husk now and can't do anything, but this is a chance for normal rean

after taking ishmelga into his body, rean has the chance to go somewhere far away, as this is the only way to erase an existence that has been confirmed (idk how to translate確定 in this context.) humanity's evil will never vanish and ishmelga will resurrect one day

for the prosperity of the future, evil rean invites normal rean to assimilate but he refuses. normal rean says that his older self would've gladly sacrificed himself if it meant the safety of his friends, but sacrificing himself wouldn't save the people that cry for him

he once thought that he didn't deserve happiness as the trigger to the twillight, still does somewhere deep inside him. but it's not about deservedness, he has to find happiness because people can't find happiness by themselves

and can't become unhappy by themselves either. in other for people important to him to find happiness, first he himself has to find happiness. that's his main goal for now. that's why he won't try to burden everything by himself but believe in him and his friends

to keep moving forward even if there are great challenges waiting for them in the future. if they're working together they should be able to bring about a better future. evil rean laughs resignatingly and agrees that they aren't the same and admits he's a bit jealous but he

accepts that this is the path normal rean chose. so he challenges him to grasp that future. they say their farewell and normal rean cuts the fading evil rean in half. back in the real world. evil rean's mech is corrupted and goes crazy. rean ejects from his cockpit, his hair are

back to normal. the rest take up arms to defeat ishmelga. we get the classic floating platform against giant enemy arena. i think this is the final battle. easy battle lol. ishmelga mech vanishes leaving ishmelga in the form of evil read that cannot comprehend how he lost

to which rean and lloyd give him the old i have friends you don't jrpg drivel. lapis has decided to delete elysion and has already initiated the process, saying that elysion is too much to handle for humanity atm but will one day reach again.

ishmelga in the end accept her decision. an alarm sounds. babel is about to fire, lapis can't stop it. ishmelga gave the authority over to a higher being. to the collective consciousness of the human race, which elysion also gave birth to. cut to places around the world.

holographic plants start sprouting everywhere. elie: "this is just like ao but also different!" the network fused with the leyline and reads people's emotions. ishmelga laughs saying babel canon ccan't be stopped until all hatred is erased from the continent or the leyline

is completely dry. ishmelga says he looks forward to seeing what human possibility can do and dies. as the core heats they teleport the party outside, however rufus steps away in the last second and remains in the core.

rufus assumes the rule of fake rufus' fuehrer and transmits his message across the continent, condeming the other nations for not complying and that they will now be punished. he goes to take the blame for most major big political unrests that have happened in the past 2 years

claiming it was all for the ultimate goal of unification. he basically plays the villain so the negative emotions of people around the world converge towards him, making him the biggest evil on the continent and the babel tower shoots itself. as the tower shoots itself

seemingly killing rufus within, we rewind. the party knows what happened: the final future prediction of elysion. lapis says there's still time and asks the others to help her out to safe rufus. lloyd official accepts the request to bring back "the prime suspect of the case".

zeit offers to take them back, however the number of people he can carry is limited as the leyline is distorted. jussis volunteers to safe his brother, as do 3, 9 and of course lapis. the others are at the brink of collapsing from exhaustion and stay behind.

they land somwhere in the middle of the dungeon and make their way through as rufus' speech we just heared echoes through the building. as they reach the core, there's no sign of rufus. a falling plate is about to squash lapis as evil rean slices throug it. it seems

ishmelga's cosciousness has left the body, it's only evil, or rather other rean inside there. they have some sentinmental talk, abd jussis says if he knew rean would be here, he would've brought /her/. and then a flash of whoever the player chose as his girlfriend appears.

rean says he has something urgent to tell them and is about to reveal something he saw in the not so distant future but lloyd stops him. having rejected elysion, it's wrong for them to hear this & what ever the future might hold, they will overcome it together.

rean asks for them to look after everyone and after a fistbump with lloyd disintegrates. they then find rufus ready to accept his death lamenting how he wasn't able to surpass his father (not his real one, osborne) & he's accomplished nothing in his life in the next room.

and how empty his life was when the party comes barging in. they all berate him in a loving manner. lloyd arrests him on the spot for not only escaping prison amongst other things, but most importantly underestimating the bonds he forged with other people (!how corny, but cool)

rufus realizes that he's already obtained so much. they teleport out of babel before it explodes.

cut to rean and crow a week later. they can't find traces of ordine and valimar in their mech's logs. rean narrates how babel is defeated. galbard had their armies retreat and hasn't interfered otherwise. crossbell is in shambles but with everybody working together restoration

is proceeding faster than expected, also having received help from all the other countries. crossbell is rapidly regaining its former days of peace. the thors people remain in crossbell to help with rebuilding and communicating with erebonia.

behind the scenes all the various phenomena the protagonists encoutnered are being researched including valimar's appearance. rean and crow look back at all the crazy stuff that's happened. rean remarks how this is probably just the beginning of something new, keeping

other rean's message in mind. the rest of class 7 comes to pick both of them up for some event. rean leaves saying that they'll be fine no matter what the future brings, directly adressing valimar (who isn't here) and later his screen says "yes rean" as if valimar had responded.

cut to rufus awaking in hospital (?) bed. lapis has been sleeping at his side and wakes up too. she jumps in his arms, happy that he woke up. olivert walks in. turns out he just barely survived having lost a lot of blood and suffering burn wounds on his entire body.

rufus wants to hear his sentence. olivert tell him that he might easily face capital punishment in light of having escaped prison in addition to his previous crimes, if he were alive it is. officially it's handled as if due to an error, the babel self destructed and rufus died.

rufus doesn't understand why they'd do that for him. olivert says that having lost his social standing, a home to return to and his name, he can't live in erebonia anymore. the pain of having lost the means to attone for his sins shall be his punishment.

lapis seems completely unfated by this, saying that he's simply become the same as her and 9/nadia. she says she wants to go a journey to see the world tjat gave birth to elysion and want him to join her. rufus seems bewildered but accepts.

3/9/jussis/millium join and they make some small talk before olivert brings in a laptop for them to watch crossbell's independance ceremony

macdowell holds a speech about how crossbells citizens managed to persist in the face of adversity etc. etc. lloyd has stage fright but also speaks publicly afterwards ( we don't actually get to hear what he says). the credits roll along with neat illustraitions showing 後始末

and various scenes of character just hanging out (also randy proposes to mireille) shown to be fotographs from lapis' diary. this is the end of hajimari no kiseki. gonna talk about my actual opinion on the game tomorrow. too tired rn. there's also more stuff to do in the 夢幻回廊

but i'm not sure if i'm gonna do much of that. i think i'm done with the game. the ending was a good note to end on.

ok, so first to reiterate. why did i do this? why did i transcribe most of what was happening on screen in this twitter thread? 1) i barely remember any details about the other games and wanted to have something to look back on before playing the next entry in the series

the wiki pages i found are more like glossaries or summaries specifically tailored to the character, not an actual sequence of events. 2) i felt like so much of the sen games was filler and i wanted to see to which narrative lengths hajimari went

in order to force filler content down my throat. now again, i recognize how incredicly autistic this whole thread is. not only because it exists, but i am pretty sure i butchered a lot of the game with my subpar writing skills, perhaps even got some stuff wrong.

if there's one positive aspect about this thread, it's that it forced me to stay engaged and not turn my brain off completely like i did after a certain point in each of the sen games. i most likely won't do one of these again and if so heavily abridged like my other threads.

i was suprised to read that hajimari is a 30-40 game (unlike the 100h sen 3/4 clock in), yet it took me over a week because i was also busy writing this thread.

Okay on to my actual opinion of the game. I was talking about filler earlier. Apart from the few instances i pointed out in the thread, there is a clear narrative thread. Most of the events make sense & adhere to in game logic. That is not to say the reasoning given for a

particular event is always gonna be satisfying, but at least
there's always reasoning provided. That is to say, i did not feel like i was playing filler most of the time. I think this also due to the structure of the game having 3 protagonists.

If you look at their respective routes in isolation, they feel quite fast paced even. Except towards the end where technology and leylines just make stuff happen, whatever it is that serves the plot or just sounds cool but is far from grounded reality.

For example, valimar just out of nowhere possessing rean's mech when the party is in a big pinch. Or ishmelga-rean being "observed into existence" itself. Or ishmelga-rean handing over administrator rights to fire babel to the human subconsciousness (how do you even do that?).

How did nobody notice that eylsion is sucking up surplus computing power from computers around the world? There's a lot more of that stuff that left me scratchin my head in the final act. The writers tried really hard to make as many characters appear in hajimari as possible

you could've easily cut half the cast and the game would've still worked (e.g. duvalier). it's obvious to me that putting as many characters in the game as possible was the priority rather than telling a good story. Hajimari is essentially a fan disc.

The plot itself if looked at in isolation is really kinda not that good. It might be the worst story in Kiseki history period honestly. If you break it down, basically an A.I. (elysion) with unseen processing power forms by the intermingling of the leylines and the 導力 network

during the events of ao and the great twillight in sen 3/4 and evolves to the point where it's able to predict the future, then foresees the possibility of ishmelga-rean, an alternate time line version of rean from the normal end of Sen 4, whom it deems as the most efficient tool

to bring about world peace. ishmelga-rean being evil and everything corrupts elysion, who then casts out its administrative persona meant to keep it in check, lapis. elysion then goes on to devise a scenario that leads to the unification of the continent,

and having it acted out by various clones of people and artifacts it made (it can because it's so technologically advanced), all while building a huge fucking mountain of a canon to serve as a deterrent to all it deems as evil (is an AI gonna make moral decisions now?)

and mass producing an army of robots in factor beloning to the empire's biggest heavy industry conglomerate without ANYONE noticing because i guess stealth devices exist or some shit. oh, and then rean-ishmelga, meant to be elysion's herald, is supposed to manifest his existence

by clashing with normal rean or something idk. also now that i think about it, ilya's mind control mask was never really explained, was it? just another artifact that served the plot to make an army of enemies i guess.

another problem i have is how the plot ultimately revolves around rean again, rean-ishmelga really being the penultimate villain to defeat. rean had 4 games prior to this one to have his character explored, it really wasn't necessary to put him in the spotlight like this again.

he's already a fully developed character. much of his arc in hajimari felt like a retreading of sen 3 and 4 and should've been fully resolved already. where i think sora the 3rd, as the other kiseki fandisc, succeded and hajimari failed is that sora the 3rd made a new character

kevin, the main focus, while still giving all the other numerous characters screen-time but still treating them like side-characters. hajimari however equally distributes its time between 2 fully developed main character that already had between 2-4 games dedicated to them

and one secondary villain. I say equally, but it felt more like 30% lloyd, 30% rufus, 40% rean. so while i like the multiple protagonist approach on one hand to keep things fresh there's really not much more interesting things you can do with lloyd and rean.

essentially, what i'm saying is that i wanted more rufus, less rean, because rufus is actually pretty good in this game. i haven't talked about lloyd yet, but his arc in this game is recognizing that he and the 特務支援課 aren't supposed to shoulder the burden of bringing about

crossbell's independence alone but hand in hand with crossbell's citizens and rean expresses a similar sentiment at the end of the game. the spare character moments in this game can be pretty good but it also requires you to weed through all of the generic shounen jump tier

"my friends are important", "we support each other", "we will never give up" kind of lines you are fed throughout most of lloyd and rean's route. i am so bored of this shit, not just in in hajimari, in general. hajimari is very scared to get real outside of a few select moments.

ok, on to some positives. i think the music is quite good, especially the battle themes, i posted a few in the thread. definetly a step up from sen 3/4 where i remember exactly 1 track. the battle system is also fun for the runtime of the game, as you progress it's very