ものべの – Prologue

Prologue is finiiished, should I say as expected from Lose or what? It’s not like I have anything against flat chests or lolicons but having a heroine who is both mentally and physically a child is a bit questionable. To add onto that, shes also the protagonists little sister. So it’s incest and lolicon, wonderful. In any case let’s go into a rough summary. I’ll state this now since it’s the first time but, all summaries are to be taken with a grain of salt. For one, it’s perfectly possible for me to miss some details without realizing (sometimes it’s intentional in order to suppress the length however) and I don’t trust my storytelling ability enough to transmit the slice of life and romance parts of a story. I sincerely believe those sort of things are better if you experienced it for yourself, even if I tell you how peaceful the atmosphere is, until you try it yourself you probably won’t concretely understand what I’m referring to. Also as usual, everything stated is purely subjective, even if the story is a masterpiece I won’t necessarily enjoy it for the simple reason that it doesn’t fall into my tastes. Similar logic goes when choosing your favorite food.

With the disclaimers done, let’s go into bantering about the story now.

The story begins with our protagonist, Tooru, visiting their hometown Monobeno. While he intended to return to his hometown every year, his dear little sister, Natsuha… refused to go. Like such, he hasn’t visited his hometown for a while. This year was different however, as he received a letter from his childhood friend Alice talking about Sumi feeling down because Tooru hasn’t been visiting and that Sumi hasn’t been leaving the house much. With much effort from Tooru, he manages to convince Natsuha to come.

Their hometown Monobeno is located quite far out in the countryside, surrounded by mountains and forests, it’s a fairly peaceful and small town. At the very least, small enough so that there’s only one bus every day and the only passengers at that time was Tooru and Natsuha. After getting off the bus, they were welcomed by Alice, Sumi and a Karakasa, Hishaku. Upon meeting them, it was quickly obvious that the letter was just a bait to make Tooru come home.

From left to right: Alice, Sumi, Hishaku(Umbrella), Natsuha.

Since the last time Natsuha was at Monobeno was when she was still very small, her memory of the place is faint. But she still manages to recall who Alice and Sumi are, as well as barely who Hishaku is. We’ll lightly throw aside the fact that Alice and Sumi are blatantly fighting over Tooru and move on with the story.

After talking for a bit, they walked over to the small town. As mentioned, Monobeno is a small town so there’s very few selection of shops to choose from. For the most part, you’ll only find one store of every kind. In order to arrive at their home, they would need to walk for another one and an half hours. But thankfully, Alice’s father said he’ll pick them up after he gets off work. It should be in about an hour so during that time, they can go shopping for daily necessities. During this time it’s revealed that Alice’s father is a doctor and the only one in the town on top of that. He’s also the person Tooru strives to become, which is why he left the town to enter a university at Tokyo. It’s also revealed to Natsuha that Sumi is, unsurprisingly, a youkai as well. Unfortunately I’ve never even heard of that kind of youkai so I can’t say much regarding it but it’s fairly comparable to a Zashiki-warashi. In both cases, they bring fortune to the homes they reside in. Sumi herself got mad when compared to a Zashiki-warashi though. While shopping Tooru was asked if he greeted Himemiya yet, he answered that he would once things settle down.

With shopping done, they go home after meeting up with Alice’s father.

I know he’s supposed to be a nice guy but, why is it that I can’t feel at ease when seeing his smile. I don’t know if it’s intentional but he looks like a criminal dammit

It’s revealed that their homes are fairly deep in the mountains and that besides the Alice’s and Tooru/Natsuha’s house, the other houses are a decent distance away. They were invited to dinner at Alice’s home and during it, various explanations were given.

This part is a little bothersome to write about but put simply, besides the various youkai that lives in the mountains, “gods” exist. Not the kind that you read about in Buddhism or Christianity but still, various gods exist. And you could say that most of the town, including Tooru, follows the teachings of these gods. If you do something to offend the gods, disasters or “bad luck” will happen. You may find yourself unable to find something you need and so on. Following that, we arrive  at the name Himemiya. Put simply shes a shrine maiden of the Himemiya-ryuu(?) which is shrouded in mystery. Himemiya can talk to the gods and for obvious reasons, serves as an important figure in the town as she can communicate with the gods to understand why the gods are mad. By following those teachings, they live peacefully in the mountains. There’s various points in the story that sets examples for the actions of these “gods”.  Well it’s frankly bothersome to be too detailed here even though it’s technically quite important but, as a result of the teachings Tooru doesn’t eat “four legged things”, including the roast beef that was served at the dinner. Thankfully what came to save the day at that point was Mekkai.

Mekkai came with a present as well as a message from Himemiya inviting them over to the shrine as she’ll be there for most of the day tomorrow. There’s also the matter that Tooru would like to visit his parents graves and like such, the schedule for the next day was more or less decided. After dinner they returned home and Tooru called his professor saying that he’s at his hometown at the moment and will probably return in about two weeks. With that, a long day with various events came to an end.

The next day, as scheduled, they visited Himemiya and the grave of their parents. There was talk of things like the festival happening a few days later and some foreshadowing regarding the deaths of Tooru’s parents.

And well at this point I don’t recall much events that are particularly special. Usual fun slice of life time passed along with the calm atmosphere of the story. Oh, there’s the introduction of Touko I suppose.

With a fairly slow personality, she’s a youkai like Sumi and Hishaku. She’s apparently an “ushioni” which basically translates as “cow demon”. Which is… fairly fitting considering her breast size, yup. She lives in the mountains and took a liking for Tooru’s family after she was helped by Tooru’s ancestors. However according to the god(?) she isn’t permitted to enter peoples houses. After hearing that Tooru and Natsuha came back, she decided to visit them.

Skipping through the story now, we now arrive at the day of a festival. All of the girls take their time in preparing their kimonos and such and they set out. The festival is a very big event in the town as some people from outside come to see it as well. Not only are there the usual food stalls, there’s also something similar to a flea market where everyone takes out things they no longer need and sells them.

The most notable event at the festival is a dance performed for the gods to express gratitude for helping them pass another year. Tooru and the others decide to go watch it.

While it was spectacular and all, before the dance ended a certain thing happened. Natsuha suddenly began to react strangely and was seemingly… scared of the dance.

With much fuss over Natsuha, they decided to leave the festival early and call Alice’s father. At the clinic, he inspected Natsuha and concluded it was probably just fatigue from traveling as there’s no symptoms of particular interest. It would be best to let Natsuha rest for now. Like such, they take Natsuha home and she wakes up the next morning as if nothing happened.

Later that morning they were invited by Alice to go swimming as Alice’s father won some tickets at the festival. While Tooru was hestitant on going because of Natsuha’s condition, she seemed pretty normal and more importantly, the person herself wanted to go. According to Hishaku it looks like there’s going to be heavy rain tomorrow as well so in the end Tooru gave in and decided to go.

Much fun was had and by the request of Natsuha, they go take a look at the small waterfall not so far from where they were swimming. Not long after arriving at the waterfall however, Natsuha showed similar signs as yesterday.

Natsuha showed fear and attempts by Tooru to calm her down failed. She tried to run away but ended up losing balance and tripping into the water. Upon being saved by Tooru, Natsuha was no longer conscious and thus Tooru feared that Natsuha may have hit her head on the rocks. Chaos ensued again and they wind up at the clinic again. After inspections, Alice’s father tells Tooru that she has no injuries on her head, just some minor abrasions on her knee. However at this point of time her symptoms are indeed strange. As far as Tooru knows, she shouldn’t have any trauma or so for waterfalls and there’s no real link between the waterfall and the dance from last night. It was recommended that she stays overnight at the clinic but Natsuha refused to. In the end they had no choice but to convince her to sleep over at Alice’s home for a night.

With Tooru still worried about Natsuha, he decides to try to get some sleep. In the end sleeping was difficult though. As Tooru resolved to go see Natsuha if he can’t fall asleep by 5am, suddenly a noise came from the backdoor of the kitchen. Tooru rushed there to find a drenched Natsuha.

See something amiss here? No? Get your eyes checked then.

And… yeah, Tooru was greeted by a Natsuha who… wasn’t quite Natsuha. More chaos ensued but thankfully Sumi arrived at the scene and helped sort things out. Another notable point is probably that her lower body began bleeding for the first time and… yeah, things were a mess. In addition possibly because of the heavy rain, Alice’s father hasn’t came home yet so they had no choice but to deal with things themselves for now. They put Natsuha to bed for time being.

However by next morning when Tooru woke up, as if it were all just a dream, Natsuha’s body returned to normal.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the blood from her lower body still existed proving that it wasn’t a dream but in any case. It’s also revealed that Natsuha has no memories of what happened yesterday. Natsuha had doubts when she found that her dairy for yesterday was blank. Tooru decided that it would be best not to remind Natsuha of what happened yesterday and managed to trick her by saying that she was sleeping for the whole day due to fatigue.

Eventually they decided to take her for another inspection for time being. The news came along from Alice’s mother that there was apparently a minor landslide with some injuries, which is why Alice’s father couldn’t get back last night. They decided to go to his clinic now while Sumi and Hishaku chose not to follow because they want to investigate some things as well regarding Natsuha’s symptoms.

They did some inspections on Natsuha but yet again, her body was more or less completely normal. Needless to say though, it’s more or less unheard of for a body to suddenly age and then revert overnight. Tooru began contemplating his options, including leaving from the town early to let Natsuha go through inspections over at Tokyo. Alice’s father also points out that because of the heavy rain from yesterday, the place is prone to landslides making it somewhat dangerous to stay in as well. To add onto things, at worst, if the one and only road in/out of the town is blocked by landslides, they won’t be able to return. Just as they were contemplating what to do however, someone rushed into the clinic shouting about an emergency.

Yes, take a guess, the road got blocked by a massive landslide and they are now searching if there were any victims. Tooru went to help as well. It was late at night by the time Tooru returned, thankfully no victims came out but it was a truly massive landslide and isn’t something you can excavate within a day or two. As a result they are inevitably stuck in the town for a while more.

The next day they began discussing what they should do now as well as the results of the examination of what Sumi came up with. Apparently by the legend, there is a certain “curse” by the gods that happens if you do bad things. You will be turned into an old man by the curse and that seems to fit the case of Natsuha aging fairly well. But it was unheard of for them to revert back. Not to mention it’s also questionable why a good child like Natsuha would get punished. On the other hand Tooru has heard of a disease of similar symptoms but not quite the same. It’s concluded that both of them has a possibility and it’s worth investigating into both. It was at that point that a scream came from Natsuha’s room. Natsuha became an adult again and thus marks the end of the prologue.

Let’s briefly talk about my impressions at the end of it all I guess.

For one, Tooru is a pedophile. For another, Tooru is a pedophile. I said this at the start as well but, we’re looking at both lolicon and incest. That’s still fine but, Tooru shows some blatant signs of being conscious of Natsuha so yeah. Aside from that though, the story carried a very peaceful and soothing atmosphere up until events with Natsuha. The art quality is top notch as well with many pictures to represent what’s going on, good soundtrack and animated blinking, mouth moving when talking and such. Wouldn’t surprise me if a considerable amount of money was spent on this game but thanks to that, it makes the story fairly pleasant to read through.

Despite finishing the prologue, I’m not quite certain what to expect from this story. By the looks of it it’s shaping up to become a mystery, which is interesting in its own way. I guess the ultimate goal is to cure Natsuha of whatever problem she has, routes are locked to Alice/Sumi at the start, I guess once I finish these two routes I can go into Natsuha route. We’ll just have to wait and see I suppose.

Going into routes now, first up is likely Sumi unless I change my mind at the last second.