A Tale of Two Tsui no Soras | 終ノ空 and Remake review

• 5 October 2025
• visual novels,
• review,
• tsui no sora,
• subahibi,
• scaji

What is good storytelling, anyway? Ask a hundred people, and you'll receive a hundred answers. And it's fun, or at least I find it fun, to toy with each of these opinions; taking cover behind the unassailable vagaries of prose and pacing; dipping a toe into arguments of character development, narrative themes and tone; frolicking with metacommentary and subversion; before finishing with the classic, smug, impenetrable "I'll know it when I see it".

These all sound correct to me. I don't intend to call myself the be-all and end-all of writing prowess. Don't put that burden on me.

But if I had to offer an answer, I would say that good storytelling is all about communication. A writer opens their notepad with something to say, and they use the medium of fiction to tell it. Sometimes what they want to convey is something very simple——‘This girl is cute.’ ‘This monster is scary.’ ‘Politics is hard.’ ‘I really really like gay women’——but that's not an issue, because good storytelling isn't about how complicated your idea is. It's about how successful you are in making your audience resonate with that idea.

The teller stands in a place apart from the listener, and they coax them to follow. They offer promises of riches. Follow in my footsteps, lend me your ears and I'll show you something wonderful and worth your while. And the good storyteller does this better than all the rest. The audience walks away, if not satisfied, then altered from when they came into the room. They see the author's vision crystal-clear in their mind's eye.

If we view storytelling as an attempt at communication, then SCA-Ji's infamous trio——Tsui no Sora, Subarashiki Hibi, and the Tsui no Sora remake——may be some of the worst attempts at communication I've ever seen.

Tsui no Sora | 終の空

Tsui no Sora is an eroge visual novel directed by SCA-Ji released in 1999. In the 90s, the eroge industry saw an unprecedented level of freedom and experimentation. There was an ennui spreading throughout anime and otaku culture, driven by the lost decade and a lack of faith in Japan's future, and consumers were hungry for more subversive twists on themes that had already saturated the medium. Into this space came Leaf's Shizuku (雫) in 1996, which pioneered a new genre which would come to be called Denpa (電波; Radio Waves) games.

A Denpa game is characterized primarily by an underlying sense of dread and wrongness to the world the characters reside in. These stories take a typically psychologically safe premise——a school, a group of friends——and depict a breakdown of this safety as characters go mad, fall into cycles of mania and depression, and begin to doubt the natural laws that define the world around them, both societal and physical.

It's a form of horror quite Lovecraftian in a sense, where instead of an individual supernatural monster or villain most foul, the perpetrator is an ineffable concept or metaphysical existence lurking in the shadows of the characters themselves, seeping through their own psyche. I would call these games just shy of a form of metafiction, casting doubt on the escapism that most visual novels up to that point had provided otaku, and they left a deep impression on the medium in the process.

Tsui no Sora itself was a reactionary work to ONE ~Kagayaku Kisetsu e~ by Tactics, which featured the well-known writer from Key, Jun Maeda. ONE is a story that fits quite well into the otaku fantasy of an ideal, fantastical world, where two characters have the chance to be joined forevermore in eternal happiness.

This vision of eternity rubbed SCA-Ji the wrong way. To him, eternity was a horrifying concept, an idyllic mental cage from which no human being could ever escape. No matter how peaceful and blissful the time spent there might be, eternity was simply too great and vast a distance for the mind to grasp, and would break the feeble human mind, becoming the cause of its inevitable downfall.

And so we get Tsui no Sora. Our story starts laughably cliché——our sleepy main character, Yukito, is woken up by his shallow moeblob of a childhood friend to go to school. But when they arrive, they find themselves snared in a conspiracy. Their classmate has committed suicide, and the people around them whisper that the end of the world is nigh. The two of them are forced to decide how to operate as those around them slowly succumb to madness, assaulted by strange visions and inexplicable happenings.

The title explains itself really——rendered as EndSky in English, it's the name of the horrific, inevitable, apocalyptic sky revealed to the characters in the hours before the end times. We see the last 10 or so days before the end of the world from a number of different character perspectives, and from them we, the readers, try to piece together the truth. What happened in those final days?

One thing I love about Tsui no Sora is its unreplicated sense of style, which oozes from the visual direction and text. Upon starting the story you're immediately confronted with the EndSky. A black eye lurks behind the artwork, peeking through when the screen transitions. As you proceed, it opens, staring at you in accusation, chiding you for your foolish bravado. The heavenly borders around the game window supply a sense of unreality that marries with the themes of the work beautifully. The textbox only allows for two lines of text, barely sufficient for conveying much more than the simplest of concepts, which lends the many rambling monologues in the story a feverish, disjointed quality that defines most of the VN.

Tsui no Sora is most famous in the English community for its quite notorious remake in Subarashiki Hibi. But in practice most of what I would consider the appeal of this storyline is present here in the original work. Zakuro's suicide, Takuji's fall into madness, Yukito (Yuki in SubaHibi)'s attempt to escape and claw back his everyday life——each of these are at their simplest and most raw here, but thanks to this the story evokes honesty in a way that the later versions failed to capture.

SCA-Ji was grappling with his own existential demons as he wrote this, and much of the dialogue comes across as his own internal arguments put to paper (or screen). The prose is overly simplistic and amateurish, and the characters are paper-thin, but the pacing and theming is electric, and some scenes are downright inspired. The dialogue between Ayana and Takuji may as well be the entire point of the VN in a single conversation, and bringing the reader to that position in the space of a 7 to 8-hour VN is a feat to be praised in my opinion.

Another part that I really enjoyed is how averse the story is to answering the truth behind what happened. Was some Lovecraftian horror afoot, goading people to their deaths? Who is Ayana? While Subarashiki Hibi and the Tsui no Sora remake offer concrete solutions to these questions, the original work is remarkably open to interpretation. This works in its favor. With Takuji especially, I love how you can analyze his experience from multiple different angles, from fantastical interpretations to metafictional lenses. Very Umineko-coded.

I don't want to overly glaze the story as being some hidden masterpiece, as its age brings with it an abundance of problems. The worst of which is Kotomi, Yukito's childhood friend, who suffers deeply from the general malaise of moe character writing from the time period. She barely functions as a character from the perspective of others, but the chapter set from her perspective is notably unflattering. Her internal monologue is so childish and undeveloped, and her entire existence revolves around her tsundere attachment to Yukito.

The character writing in general is a critical weakness, frankly. I can't imagine Yukito or Takuji, with their philosophical ramblings and aloof attitudes, as being real people on any level. Plot-wise, the madness which spreads throughout the class doesn't make much sense either, and the narrative does its utmost to gloss over the specifics. Only the core theme matters, and all else is but a diversion on the way there.

Despite these issues, though, Tsui no Sora is the most successful out of the three swings at this premise that SCA-Ji has made, to the point where I wish he never tried again. It's definitely the least pretentious of the three——his citation obsession is limited to one character, whose perspective references Kant's Critique of Pure Reason's first antinomy along with, funnily enough, the Wittgenstein movie. Unlike the wankery that his later stuff would engage in, these references are relevant in the moment but also down-to-earth, with characters freely admitting when they don't fully grasp the material. They talk primarily to the emotional reaction that it gave them, and while I can still see SCA-Ji's pen seeping from every word, it comes off less as an attempt to look smart and more as a genuine question the writer is putting to himself.

The sex scenes, while not great or necessary by any means, are mercifully brief and easily ignored. Like most eroge from the 90s, their presence is more important than the scenes themselves, really, and the lack of voice acting means that KeroQ doesn't focus on them beyond just showing the CG and a dispassionate description of what occurred. Later versions of this story bloat these scenes horrifically, and there they begin to detract immensely from the narrative at play, but here I find it easy enough to look the other way.

Ultimately, I think the original Tsui no Sora is the only version of this story that comes across as communication, and I appreciate it for that if nothing else.

(On a side note, I do want to shout out the fan group "Mon Panache!", who put together this remaster in an entirely new engine. The dedication is remarkable, and it's thanks to their efforts I was even able to read it. If for whatever reason you do feel the inclination to read this VN, I highly recommend their rerelease. After supporting KeroQ however possible, of course.)

Subarashiki Hibi | 素晴らしき日々

Unlike the other two, I don't intend to critique this here. It's been more than a decade since I read it, for one, and the prospect of a revisit gives me no small amount of agita. But it's important for the context of the Tsui no Sora review, so let me touch on it for just a moment.

Subarashiki Hibi, a.k.a Subarashiki Hibi ~Furenzoku Sonzai~ (素晴らしき日々～不連続存在～, Wonderful Everyday ~Discontinuous Existence~)... or rather, SubaHibi to use its Christian name. It's a very notorious visual novel among the English community, mainly serving as the ultimate wedge the community desperately doesn't need. It would be easy to frame the conflict here as one of censorship or puritanism or otaku brainrot, but I'm of the view that these debates fail to capture the essence of the matter; instead proxy wars fueled by a poor translation, conflicts in irony levels, and the classic internet game of social media Telephone. [1]

Instead of the fervor around the VN, let's focus on the work itself. Released in 2011, around the period I would consider the death throes of the eroge industry, SubaHibi is a remake of sorts of Tsui no Sora, making sweeping changes to the structure, characters and core message of the narrative.

Yukito is a girl now——a very endearing girl at that with her frilly gothic dresses, and penchant for smoking on the roof while getting her philosophy yap on——and Kotomi is now two people, a pair of twins who serve as a groanworthy Lucky Star reference. Many scenes are reworked, expanded and——crucially——reordered, with an entire third act added to the mix, offering three more perspectives to act as the narrative's new denouement. We have voice acting now. The art is redone, and is gorgeous. We go from a 7 hour injection of plot to an impressive 50 hour epic.

And in all honesty, it kind of blows.

SCA-Ji's attempt to revisit Tsui no Sora was driven by two destructive impulses. The first is an attempt to answer the question his 1999 self posed with the original work. How can our limited existences possibly draw any meaning from our uneventful day-to-day idyll?

The second is a strong, almost feverish literary ambition that now infests every corner of the story, sinking its pincers into every scene, piece of prose and character motive. SCA-Ji wants SubaHibi to mean something so badly he floods the dialogue with numerous obtuse references to philosophy, art, mathematics and poetry. The characters almost can't help themselves as they spend unironic hours worth of reading simply parroting lines wholesale from other works, often in barely relevant contexts. The characters praise each other for their references, trying to one-up with some obscure trivia of their own.

To call this bloat is an understatement. But beyond simply diluting the original, these changes also serve to confuse and run contrary to the characters. The focus the original had with Ayana and Yukito is lost here as now they ramble about many, many topics of little relevance to the end of the world. Characters like Takuji, whose lack of education lent itself well to his delusions and conspiratorial nature, are now ridiculously bookish, and it makes for the unflattering interpretation that this story actually believes the nonsense it's spouting.

Particularly bad, though, is that last third, which contorts the narrative into a happy ending to support its thesis. The 'Wonderful Everyday'——living in the moment instead of concerning yourself with the end of your existence——is jammed into the plot by shunting aside the original apocalyptic downfall the characters faced. To achieve this, the story invokes a very silly, very illogical, and very clichéd plot twist to claw back the themes from Lovecraftian horror into normalcy. If the pretentiousness of the core story or the intense sexual violence doesn't get you, this part surely kills the entire plot.

I read SubaHibi first, which to my understanding is the common experience. At the time, while I wasn't a huge fan by any means, I appreciated many of the more artistic scenes, some of which left quite an impact on me. Especially Takuji's unhinged decline, or Zakuro's entire arc stood out a lot to me as having a strong, tragic emotional core, and some of the introduced characters like Kimika are a legitimate improvement on the cardboard cutouts present in the original.

But as time has marched on, SubaHibi has only reflected worse and worse on SCA-Ji, and it's Tsui no Sora that comes off as the seminal work. Tsui no Sora has the better pacing and the stronger focus. The themes are clear but striking. It's unique without borrowing twists and quotes from other, more cerebral works.

Also, critically, reading Tsui no Sora this year has made me realize just how much of the dialogue and writing in SubaHibi that stuck with me was simply a copy-and-paste job. Meanwhile, the additions generally fall flat, going in one ear and out the next. It makes me a little frustrated, to say the least. There's no desire here to communicate what SCA-Ji was thinking to the audience. It's all a one-man show.

At least this is the end of the affair——I can glibly declare 'Tsui no Sora better; there!' and the matter is settled with flair. Let's give a prayer that SCA-Ji would never dare have another work to share, creating even more discourse despair.

Tsui no Sora Remake | 終の空 Remake

I like to think that I'm not the only person who felt that SubaHibi was a poor man's replacement for Tsui no Sora. At the very least it's clear some fans may have been... if not disgruntled, then perhaps put off by the notion that their classic 1999 VN now had an 'Answers Arc', not to mention one that alters the theme so drastically. I feel like SCA-Ji may have sympathized with this reaction. When you step back to look at them, these are different works, with different themes and core appeal.

Thus was born the Tsui no Sora Remake, a 2020 visual novel released alongside the 10th anniversary edition of SubaHibi. But despite being a bundled-in piece of supposed side content, it's far from a lazy rehash or a new coat of paint over the original work. No, this is an entirely new work of fiction revisiting the classic (?) and retooling it in a very different fashion from SubaHibi proper, expanding the script quite extensively.

That's right, we have two Tsui no Soras to review today. For clarity's sake, the version I read is actually the 2025 edition, which includes some more 'content' relating to Ayana, much to my chagrin.

Remake is, nominally, quite similar to the original visual novel. Unlike SubaHibi, the denouement is relatively unchanged, and we follow the same path starting from Yukito's pseudo-intellectual 'grounded' perspective, before chasing the events through several other characters' eyes, finally ending with Takuji and his usual clown show of theatrics. We have a new perspective here in the form of Yasuko, whose role in the story is expanded greatly over the original and SubaHibi. She goes from being a two-bit side character to one of the highlights of the novel, and was one of the main reasons I found myself enjoying this revisit to the story.

The upgraded character depth injected into Remake is genuinely worthy of praise; SCA-Ji's growth as a writer——last seen in Sakura no Uta——is present in full force. The viewpoint characters are notably more 'lived-in' and grounded than their previous bare-bones incarnations, and we're given more in-depth backstories, motives and honest emotion and dialogue that was sorely lacking before.

The female characters are a standout here, and have a proper bite to their inner voices that brings them to life; Kotomi, for one, now reads as a new woman compared to the paper-thin 90s moe childhood friend caricature from before, and the conflict she has with Yasuko is given proper center-stage attention.

Beyond the characters, though, another major change is the narrative's approach towards its metaphysical horror elements. While the original was intentionally ambiguous and left much up to reader interpretation, and SubaHibi made it expressly clear to the point of absurdity that all things were just a metaphor, Remake instead wipes the slate clean. Magic is real and paranormal events are, in fact, afoot.

At first I was taken aback by this. Wasn't one of the main reasons I enjoyed the original the depth of interpretation it had to offer? But I found myself rolling with it. It's silly, but a fun direction to take things, in a cheesy teenage pop-horror kind of way.

Unfortunately, this does raise some new conflicts elsewhere in the story, and my feeling is that more, not less, should have been changed to make the VN fully consistent with this new vibe. Zakuro's plotline especially now goes from tragic to simply edgy; the lack of alterations here on a character-depth level makes it stand out like a sore thumb. In retrospect, it should probably have been removed or retooled into flashbacks.

Similarly, many of the more serious philosophical ramblings between Ayana and Yukito now clash severely with the new bulk of the story. If anything, I wish the VN skipped past these to lean into the thick of the absurdity shown later with gusto. It's incredibly difficult to glean any message from these now when most of the story is so unabashedly silly, and it would be better off wholeheartedly wielding that silliness for its own devices.

While the UI generally is a step back——I miss my creepy otherworldly eye buddy——I do think the art direction is kind of cooking. Many of the CGs and character redesigns are a winner for me, which is a rare feat among the generally terrible crop of Visual Novel remakes. The music is for the most part unchanged, but some of the new ending tracks are genuine bangers. Not many complaints there.

I'm of conflicted thoughts regarding the sex scenes. There's one in particular related to Yasuko that is honest-to-god fantastically written, plot-relevant and more than justifies its inclusion. The others, while indulgent, porny, and not particularly necessary, are usually more tasteful than the original except for Zakuro's, which are downright atrocious and a huge step back. Lastly, Ayana has a new one added that is frankly absurd, goes on for way, way too long, and made me doubt the sanity of anybody involved in the production. But perhaps that's the point.

Ultimately while I'm not really sure why Remake exists, I can't deny the enjoyment I had reading it. If SubaHibi is SCA-Ji trying (and failing) to transform Tsui no Sora into a piece of literature, then Remake is more upfront in its ambitions——aiming for a more appropriate, dumb-fun kind of edgy. It's also not too long, and many of the more philosophical additions it offers are well-justified, which is a welcome change from SubaHibi's obnoxious yapping.

But to me it still sits in the shadow of the original work. The gulf of 20+ years is not one easily crossed, and while it makes some strides forward, it does so at the expense of the context and messaging which made Tsui no Sora special for the time.

My final conclusion reading it was that I would rather have seen SCA-Ji take these new characters and make a fresh, new story in which they could breathe, free of the chains of pseudo-philosophy that bind this franchise.

Numinöse

Do I recommend these visual novels? No. Certainly not.

These stories, for all of their notoriety, all have three Achilles' heels——they're pretentious, they're offensive, and they're nonsensical. As someone generally unaffected by extreme content in visual novels, heel 1 and 3 are especially killer. It's hard to be enraptured by SCA-Ji's philosophy filibuster when the fundamentals of the story he's working with don't make sense.

Of the three, Tsui no Sora has the most justification for existing. The pretentiousness is there, but it brings with it a laser focus on its theme. It's offensive, but not more so than any other 90s visual novel, really. It's somewhat nonsensical, but this ends up being an advantage for the message the story has to tell.

SubaHibi, as mentioned above, is kind of a waste of time. The heel of pretentiousness is on full throttle, and it jams that foot in its mouth so hard there's very little room left to listen to what SCA-Ji has to say.

Remake is fun in spots, but also wastes many of its more entertaining ideas. Here, the nonsense heel kicks in, and while I enjoy the trainwreck immensely, I fail to see how any of the ideas being communicated work on any level. [2]

So no, I don't think any of them are particularly good fiction. But they are interesting fiction. Rather than a swing and a miss, they're like watching a golfer who can't help but hit the ball into the water on every stroke. The morbid curiosity gets the better of you.

What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that SCA-Ji is the guy in the ads that gets you to download the game to prove you can do better. I'm glad to have danced with his fairy tales, but I'm more glad that they're over.

Until he announces another remake in 2030, of course.