Tokyo Necro Common Route - One surprise after another! Mitsumi! Iria!

Tokyo Necro is a visual novel developed by NITRO PLUS, released in 2016, and is probably the one with the most advanced special effects that I've ever seen them release. Unfortunately, it's also the last "main" visual novel they've released since then, confirming the downward trend of visual novels all around the world.

The story focuses on Kibanohara Ethica and Nagaoka Souun, two young contract killers who work to exterminate necromancers and their undead minions. During one mission, Souun gets involved in a fierce battle and finds a beautiful girl in a box who has been kidnapped for unknown reasons.

She only remembers her own name, Hougyou Ilia, and nothing else about why she is targeted by necromancers. At this point, your image is probably of a fantasy world, but nope, it's a futuristic science fiction story that mixes guns, magic, and high-tech technology into something that sometimes looks a bit silly.

Necromancers in this world are able to resurrect individuals in two forms: low-activity zombies (the ones we already know about) and high-activity ones that are completely indistinguishable from normal humans. The high-activity ones only function for a certain amount of time before regressing. I'm guessing the top villain, Milgram, is searching for something related to that, but why Iria is needed remains a question...

The series alternates between action, intimate scenes, especially with Ethica going around swooping up various other girls like her, and tech babble explaining the various concepts of the world. The world is dark, very dark, with the population just surviving in the frozen hellscape of Tokyo while warring factions murder openly in the streets.

Aside from the beautiful Ethica and the very standard protagonist Souun, we have plenty of other characters appearing as either heroines or antagonists. I say either of the characters, but up to the end of the common route, the only one getting laid is Ethica, but I'm assuming Souun will eventually get his time too.

So far, my favorite heroine is definitely the beautiful and deredere Mitsumi, but Con Su is a close second because of her eccentric personality and beautiful eyes. I'm not a huge fan of Iria because of her personality, but you really can't run away from her considering her prominence in the main story.

I only played the common route and I'm going to start Iria's route next, but I took a look at the walkthrough and I know that there are four routes (Iria, Mitsumi, Con Su, and Kiriri), plus a TRUE route that unlocks only after all four are completed. That's an interesting part because it usually implies the last one is the only "canon" one.

The level of violence in the visual novel is quite high even for the genre, but thankfully there's a slider in the starter application to tone down some elements that may disturb people. I'm definitely activating that as I'm weak to these things, but the story is good enough that I simply don't want to skip the experience of reading it.

Now I'm going to go back to play the first two routes and then come back here with more thoughts. So far, the game has been piling up so many questions, and I hope we finally get answers once the specific routes begin. That should lead the way toward the true ending.