#Kiriku Inga

[demi-pixellated]

Z District Heartthrob

[suzuran777]

Dystopia no Ou review + summary

I finally finished playing PIL/SLASH's new BL visual novel! I'm happy they released the digital version, you can buy it here! This review will mostly be spoiler free, so don’t worry if you still want to play this game. 

This story takes place in a futuristic world, which is governed by a vast network of AI. The poor and the rich deeply divided, almost never crossing each other’s paths. In this world, the entertainment industry is saturated and culture is almost completely weeded out. Music barely survived and only exists in the form of occasional live concerts. Our protagonist Kiriku Inga grew up in the rich ‘A district’ runs away from home to follow his dreams to become the most famous rock star.

Kiriku lives together with his parents in the rich A district, where he lives a completely carefree life without any hardships. His parents are famous engineers who created the AI that governs this futuristic world, Yggdrasil, named after the sacred world tree often mentioned in Norse mythology (This name suddenly starts making a lot more sense after playing the final route)

Even though Kiriku lives a comfortable life, he decides to leave the A district with the help of his childhood friend Hanza, who lives on the other side of a fence that separates the A and Z districts. Kiriku’s idol is the legendary rockstar ‘Mere’ and he dreams to become an even bigger star than him.

Upon arriving in the Z district, Kiriku meets several different characters. One of them is Murasaki Anji, the lead singer of the band Colchicum, and Tobari Rikyou, a medical doctor and director of the Tobari hospital. He also reunites with Kachou Suimei, a mechanical engineer who works for Kiriku’s parents, who demands Kiriku returns to the A district.

Kiriku decides to join Hanza’s band Teiji Taisha. The band has two other members as well, the guitarist Amagoi and drummer Kumori, who’s also an office worker (Teiji Taisha literally translates to ‘’Leave the office on time’’, probably an intentional joke because one of them is an office worker).

After this the game splits into four different routes: Hanza, Anji, Suimei and Rikyou. I recommend everyone to play them in this order, because the first two routes focus on the rock band aspect of the story, while the other two routes focus on the secrets of this futuristic world.

I think this route was really sweet? The bad end was pretty dark but that’s what we can expect from PIL/SLASH. Overall I quite liked this route and Hanza is a good character!

Kuwagata Hanza

This route focuses on Kiriku’s childhood friend, Hanza, and their band activities together. You quickly learn that Kiriku’s actually... not the best at playing the guitar. As a kid he was a very talented pianist, but the other band members have to teach him how to play the guitar. It was really funny to see everyone’s reaction to him playing the guitar, Kiriku is often too confident and thinks he’s the best at everything, while everyone else is questioning what the hell he’s doing (lol). Although it is a childhood friend route, it does not only focus on this aspect of their relationship, you also learn a lot about the struggles every individual band member deals with. At some point in the story Kiriku finds out some of the things Hanza has been hiding from him and it is interesting to see their character development.

In general, I think Anji’s route is not the most serious one, but both Anji and Kiriku are hilarious characters who have a great dynamic together. Kyuuyouzawa Lychee’s humor really shined through in this route. I think after finishing the game this is one of my favorite pairings because all of their scenes together are super funny.

Murasaki Anji

The vocalist of the popular band Colchicum, who seems to know Kiriku… but Kiriku doesn’t remember him. Although he is not impressed by Kiriku’s guitar skills, he really wants Kiriku to join his band as a pianist. Kiriku however, does not have any plans of leaving Hanza’s band and keeps rejecting Anji’s offers (lol!). I really expected him to join Anji’s band at some point, but he never did. The route focuses on the music industry of the Z district and it has some pretty interesting plot twists I did not expect to see in this route.

Even though I wasn’t sure what to think of Suimei at first, the plot was really interesting and it kept me interested throughout the entirety of the route. It was hard to close the game because I really wanted to see what was going to happen next, a lot of action in this route! The route did raise some questions, but they were answered in the final route.

Kachou Suimei

One of the other characters Kiriku was already familiar with before he ran away from home. Even though Suimei works for Kiriku’s parents and is very close to them, he never interacted much with Kiriku. He’s worried about Kiriku’s parents, which is why he often travels to the Z district to tell Kiriku to return home. I expected this route to follow a similar pattern as the first two, however, it quickly became clear that this was not going to happen. This route is a lot more dark than the first two (pretty light hearted) routes. I finally got reminded that I was playing a PIL/SLASH game...! Pretty early on in the route I was surprised by how dark the story suddenly got.

I am not sure if the good ending is exactly what I wanted, but some of the extra content PIL/SLASH released does add some interesting details to the story. I think this route is not really a ‘’True Route’’ like some other VNs, but it’s probably locked so players don’t accidentally spoil themselves, considering this route focuses a lot on the plot of the world in which this story takes place.

Tobari Rikyou

The director of the Tobari hospital, located in the Z district. He is kind and nice to everyone.........right? You can only play this route after finishing the other three. This is probably the most '’controversial’’ route and something that is more expected from PIL/SLASH. I suspected they would finally reveal some big secrets in this route and I was right! The plot of this route is pretty dark. Even though I could sometimes predict what kind of character Rikyou would be, I still think it was interesting to learn more about him. The first half of the route is a bit hard to play through because a lot of stuff happens, but after that I was really interested in the story and I wanted to know what this man was up to, lol!

Another thing I really liked was this game’s OST, composed by Sentive who also created the music for several other BL visual novels (Lucky Dog 1, Paradise, CAGE). Also the CG art is also gorgeous! The artist is Tateishi Ryou who also did the art for Omertà ~Chinmoku no Okite~ and Omertà: Code Tycoon. I did not even recognize their art new style because it looks completely different these days! Apparently the character sprite art was done by another artist, credited as ‘’Thugran’’. 

Final thoughts

I wasn't sure what to expect at first, I know PIL/SLASH games are not everyone's cup of tea. However, playing Dystopia no Ou was definitely a fun experience! Be aware that the game’s currently only available in Japanese and that it has not been translated.

The game is not super long, I think it took me about 30-35 hours to finish it. In the end I think every route had something interesting and there was not a single character I wasn’t interested in. Kiriku is an amazing protag because he’s hilarious, I think the writers did an amazing job creating this character. He’s probably one of my favorite BL visual novel protagonists. I can definitely recommend this game if you’re a fan of BL visual novels!