Yeah, Rewrite isn’t really horror. It does have monsters, searching for ghosts and the school’s seven secrets and even an apocalypse or two, but it’s not horror. It’s a comedy that slips into shounen action with a strong environmentalism message.

But before I talk about Key’s attempt at hiring a bunch of famous writers to make something good instead of using their own, I should talk about that + in the title, and how silly they append that to the English version.

Rewrite+ is suppose to be the updated versions of Rewrite, Key’s 6th main project. It had 3 things that made it different then the standard release. The first one, and the only one they kept, is the ending was changed to be happier. Not more satisfying, and honestly I didn’t consider the original true ending sad, but just happier. Kinda like they did with Tomoya After where they gutted the point of the story for a happy ending.

The other change to Rewrite itself was a small number of cgs were altered to be more lewd. These were reverted for the Steam release in fear of the game not being releasable with these lewder cgs. I get the logic, but no off site patch or anything. The final change is likely taking the longest time to release because they have to censor the hell out of it to get it on Steam. I of course mean Harvest Festa, Rewrite’s fandisc. Which came packaged with Rewrite+ in Japan, as they were only sold together at first.

I don’t know much about Harvest Festa, other then it’s not a a sequel only fandisc. Not a surprise really, considering the MC becomes a tree in one route. It has an RPG mode and definitely is lewder then the original game. So the delay was likely a combination of translation priority for fandiscs being low, and having to censor the art.

Anyway, that’s not really what I wanted to talk about. Don’t really care to talk about the read itself at length either though I will at least give my general opinions on it. Really I played a Key thing to talk about the real horror in Key’s stuff, their h scenes.

Timing is key to events. When something happens can be the difference to a good laugh or an eye roll, a tear rolling down your cheek versus a yawn. When something happens the events before and after can be just as important. The reason behind something significant can also be incredibly important to a reader.

Key, when it comes to porn, seems to want to create the most what the hell situations. While they aren’t going into sexual slavery or BDSM, they do veer close to assault and treat sex as a result of emotional heights of anger and sadness rather then the standard happiness and pleasure you would normally associate with a first time. Now I can’t talk about Air or Kud Wafer, haven’t played those, but Kanon and Little Busters have no idea where porn should be placed.

Spoilers ahead, since porn almost always happens at the height of drama instead of a precursor to it like most moege and nakige nowadays. So Mai’s first time in Kanon? Friend just got put into a hospital, Mai believes it’s 100% her fault and she wants deep pain so she has her then boyfriend go rough on her. He just does. Makoto’s is super weird in that by the time romance happens in her route, she’s barely still human and by the time he sleeps with her, her mind is 95% fox. An example from Little Busters Ecstasy for variety, Komari’s sex scene happens when she thinks the main character is her brother, during an amnesiac period she repeats everytime she sees either blood or death. Don’t even get me started with the twins who’s sister tries to seduce the main character by dressing up during the others route.

Basically, Key sucks at understanding timing, though honestly the rest of the industry isn’t exactly amazing at it either. It isn’t rare for a scene to happen just because in a spot that is really dumb, like in school or in a bed next to another person. Those are for fetish reasons usually, so at least they make some meta sense for why they are there, but Key seems to just throw porn in at the emotional height of their stories. Problem is, the emotional height for nakige is sadness and depression which really isn’t great for that whole horny fun thing you would usually want. Then there’s the song they threw in Little Busters h scenes that is just terrible. Want to hear a background singer chant Ecstasy while listening to moans?

Anyway, that’s my talk on Key being terrible at porn. Honestly I wanted to do this while writing about Little Busters, but that game has a single lewd cg at best and just wasn’t worth doing for this site.

Save for Rewrite+

Oh yeah, my opinions on Rewrite? Half of it is good. The friend minigame search stuff is weird and kind of pointless. One route is way to rip off of Fate Stay Night UBW route, but it’s still the second best route. Lacks in lewd, patch or not. It’s very not Key like as a story so I don’t even think about it when considering Key’s best work. Still, it’s a good read just not something I’d recommend to a Clannad or Little Busters fan. More like Tokyo Babel or Fate fan.