Irotoridori No Sekai – The Colorful World Review

Irotoridori No Sekai – The Colorful World Review – Beyond The Other Rainbow

Sunday, May 5, 2024

Genre – Romance, Fantasy, Mystery Play Time – 35 hours Developer – FAVORITE Steam VNDB

Coming To Know Love

Everyone has a wish they want fulfilled before they die, this can be anything from unrequited love to becoming rich to seeing the world. However, the world is a harsh place and many of these wishes go unanswered as people pass from the moral coil. It is the value of these wishes that forms the core of Irotoridori No Sekai’s themes and how they intertwine with the idea of learning to love is key to their lasting appeal. There is a delicate balance struck between the procession of the story and the journey of its characters. This is a game concerned with the dramatic emotions of its characters. The other worlds are brought in to provide additional stakes or push home a key narrative beat. The issue of this approach appears when the title cannot properly pay off the tension it has built up and resorts to deus ex machina in order to get it out of the corner it has written itself into. Do these inconsistencies undermine the core message of the game? Let’s set the basement clock and find out.

Answering Your Wishes – Narrative and Themes

Other worlds are by far Irotoridori No Sekai’s most immediately distinct element and how they play into the narrative build up burns them into the player’s mind. Each one is a representation of the vastly different wishes of humanity and how the circumstances surrounding them can dramatically alter what they desire. Sometimes these places are never shown but is it quite clear what effect their unique environments have had on the characters from them. These in turn reflect the heroines who are associated with these worlds and allow a view of their actions or wishes through the unique factors which shaped them. Having the ability to lean into fantastical elements provides room for the exploration of the individual heroines in varied fashions to keep things feeling fresh. At the same time most of the actual otherworldly events happened before the game even begans so the game can play with them without losing the grounded setting it has established as a place where the characters can be themselves. Take Toumine Tsukasa’s route, it invokes certain elements from her original world in order to sell the danger while being firmly planted in the town and its community where the people she works with are a large part of her life. Striking this balance is key to holding the player in suspense without losing sight of the reason they are invested in the character’s journey in the first place.

Even what might seem normal always has some otherworldly connection

Hanging over the entire game are the duel mysteries of the recurring dream and the ghostly Shinku. These act as a constant throughout each route and do a good job of making the title feel like it is a cohesive experience which is building towards a greater ending. Their intimate relation to the protagonist, Kanoue Yuuma, means they have an impactful screen presence where they shape how he sees the world and people around him and by extension the key heroines. Such an approach gives the small bread crumbs of truth a greater sense of importance while not taking the limelight away from the stars of each route. It also helps that the pay off from all of the build up is and exceptionally strong final route where the themes and ideas the game has being presenting are tied up in a nice bow. The characters are provided a similar resolution within this revelation as each one has a victory lap where we get to see the traits we fell in love with on full display. Altogether this route is excellent to the point at which it is worth playing the entire title just to experience it which is a testament to how effective the mysteries are at capturing and holding interest.

Oh boy, I cannot wait for your extensive flashback...

When it comes to how this story is presented to the player there are noticeable cracks in its implementation. Chief among these is the game’s tendency to have the characters explain their past through narrated flashbacks using Yuuma’s magical powers rather than through organic reveals or by being placed in the character’s shoes. It leads to extended dry sequences where the character in question tells the protagonist the feelings and events of the past in a way which lacks impact and instead comes across as if they are talking about someone else. If this was done sparingly it would not be an issue, but the flashbacks occur in every route and sometimes multiple times in a route which massively disrupts the flow of the narrative. Being told about events is a quick way for the player to lose interest, especially in a game so focused around the emotions of its characters where it would make more sense to keep the player in the current tide of feelings rather than taking a sudden turn into telling them about the past. On some level Irotoridori No Sekai realises this is an issue as it has intermissions in the middle of these flashbacks where the characters in the present briefly stop the telling their story and share a few words. This is a clear indication of the developers' concern that the player might become bored with their narrative. Flashbacks are not inherently a bad thing as there is an example of how to do one properly within the game’s final route where the player gets to experience the events of the past first hand rather than simply being told them. It is strange then that the Irotoridori No Sekai choses to deliberately damage itself with every other instance of flashbacks.

Kana is someone with the a greater weight hanging over them which never has a proper pay off

Introducing various other worlds and their supernatural elements requires a narrative to properly commit to them or risk them feeling token and out of place. It is this dilemma which Irotoridori No Sekai spends its entire play time wrestling with and there are often points where it uses ideas only to hand wave them away or focus on the wrong element of the conflict. Over the course of the many routes this issue manifests in different forms. Kana and Tsukasa’s routes introduce serious threats originating from these worlds only to immediately resolved them in the next scene making them feel like a cheap thrill with no substance to them. Mio’s route chooses the wrong part of its otherworldly element since it is afraid of presenting Mio in a slightly negative light, even if it is only by proximity. The ideas present in Kyou’s route feel like an odd choice since there is no reason they could not have just been from our world and this foreign presentation just comes across as strange and distracting. Only the final route really sticks the landing due to it being based around concepts which have been built up over the whole game and so properly established beforehand. None of these weaknesses last for long enough to undermine the entire route but they do draw the player out of what is otherwise an emotional and intimate ride.

Girls Falling From Lighthouses – Characters

A colourful cast is something the game always presents front and centre. Each one has a strong and easy to identify personality, from Kana’s constant flirting to Tsukasa’s innocent energy, which helps sell them and make them empathetic. Their wishes are worn on their sleeves, but these desires are never what they first appear, there simple nature is picked away at throughout their routes until a complete picture of them comes out. Doing this gives these characters a sense that they are layered and complex beyond their initially presented personalities and works to keep the player on the edge of their seats as they can never be sure they truly know a character. Backing this up is the interactions between the heroines and Yuuma with each heroine having their own memorable dynamics with him. This is extremely important given how much emphasis the game places of these individual pairings and isolating them from the world around them. Without their strong and varied banter the sections solely dedicated to them might prove dull, but instead they are some of the most vivid scenes in the entire game.

Ah yes as normal people do

By far the strangest choice when it comes to the characters is how they do not really interact with each other or share a group dynamic. They might appear on screen together but they will often talk solely to Yuuma and not really engage with the other people present. The few scenes where characters are allowed to form their own bonds are undermined as they are either completely forgotten about, as in the case of Mio and Kana’s rivalry, or simply used as a plot device to motive one of the characters, as in Kyou’s route with her friendship with Tsukasa. Absent from these is any sense of an organically growing dynamics and it instead feels like they exist purely to serve whatever narrative needs Yuuma has without any proper regard for other characters. The result is the dorm feeling somewhat mechanical in nature where the characters are pieces in a plot rather than a warm place where friends live together. It is fortunate that outside of Kyou’s route the game tries to not emphasises the characters’ relationships and so mostly avoids this making this a large issue through focusing in on their main pairings to compensate.

Shattered Moon – Visual, Audio and Technical

As you would expect from a game so focused around other worlds, there is a distinctive visual style in play which is backed up by a keen understanding of how to use colour to invoke emotions. The everyday lives of the cast are shown through the standard images of mundanity the player expects from a romance visual novel which are used here as a clever baseline to contrast with the more fantastical angle. Once the characters step through basement doorway the art style takes a noticeable shift into a more abstract and emotive presentation where clear objects give way to vague shapes. It is clear what kind of place each is without having to spend a single word on its background lore and this works well given their role as conduits for characters and narratives rather than as fleshed out spaces. Even the normal world is not without its own eye catching imagery, the shattered moon hanging over the town is a constant reminder that even this world is not quite like our own. Colours not only play a role in creating distinctive feeling worlds, but also using the emotions associated with colour to empower the key dramatic moments. Deep oranges and blues are contrasted with blacks and reds to keep the player in a sense of suspense as they are buffeted by the roller-coaster of each heroines’ route.

Powerful colours define many scenes

Conclusion

Capturing the complicated emotions caught up in wishes and love is what Irotoridori No Sekai is about and through them showcasing just what a colourful world we have within ourselves. It leverages its other worlds as a core driver for the plot and this allows it to more freely explore its themes, even if it can stumble at time while doing so. The strong uses of distinctive art styles and colours for these worlds and key moments also plays into the game’s ability to invoke emotion. An overarching mystery keeps the player hooked through the various routes and offers a great pay off for the ideas which the title has being presenting. Add to this the distinctive characters and excellent dynamics with the protagonist and the result is a well rounded experience that uses the romance visual novel as a means to express greater ideas of the value of wishes and desires.

Verdict -

An emotional examination of what it means to wish for something seen through characters who know what it is to have that snatched away. It is only held back by some strange choices in narrative presentation and character interactions.