The year is 1985, and Sakura High School students Kurabe Juurou, Fuyusaka Iori, and Amiguchi Shuu are experiencing a strange phenomenon of dreaming together about Kaijuu wars in the past and future. They are also watched over by a school nurse named Morimura Chihiro, who provides an unknown type of medicine to several students of their institution. One day, Juurou accidentally discovers a folder with his file in the school infirmary, where he is introduced as Izumi Juurou. Meanwhile, Takamiya Yuki, after being blackmailed by a secret investigative unit, agrees to cooperate and report on the doings of selected students, while her friend Minami Natsuno finds a small robot introducing itself with the initial BJ, whose purpose is to find his mecha. Parallel to these events, Yakushiji Megumi cannot come to terms with losing the memories of her beloved Izumi Juurou. However, she meets a cat speaking with a human voice who promises to restore his memory in exchange for shooting selected school students with a special weapon from the far future.

Introduction

First of all, I would like to point out that I always use original voices in foreign media. It’s no different in this case – every time I’ll mention character voices, I’ll mean the original ones, not the poor English dubbing, so the first thing I did right after starting the game was to enter the options and change something that should be set by default. Although in this case you don’t have to do that, because the game itself asks the question at the start whether to use the original or, ugh – the dubbing.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim – Audiovisual design

In this case, it seems to me that the visuals (and not only) of this game should be judged more in terms of artwork than the usual terms like nice graphics. Vanillaware’s artists have shown something phenomenal here, and I think that anyone even a little bit sensitive to art will not argue with that. In fact, each scene could easily serve as a painting to hang on the wall and please the eye endlessly. The attention to detail is stunning. In addition to the brilliant portrayal of the characters’ emotions through body language and facial expressions, the animation of what goes on behind simply blows your mind. Just looking at the office buildings in the city skyline, for example, we can see not only how the city lives, but also the shadows of people moving around in the windows with the lights on – a detail that no one asked for, but everyone needed. The character designs are simply gorgeous and blend in perfectly with the rest. Everything, of course, is entirely hand-drawn. I also have to mention the light and color design, for which I simply can’t find the right words to describe just how great the work was done here. I could really talk a lot about the visual layer, but you simply have to see it for yourself. The best is to see it on a big TV screen. I can say with a clear conscience that this is one of the prettiest games I’ve ever seen and it can easily compete with the best visual novels (which, by definition, focus a lot of attention on beautiful drawings and scenery). Unfortunately, the screenshots don’t do justice to what we actually see while playing, due in part to the lack of animation.

The audio layer, of course, does not fall behind and perfectly complements what our eyes see. The voice actors are in a class of their own. In addition to stars such as Uchida Maaya, Fukuyama Jun, Hayami Saori, MAO and Ishikawa Kaito, all the rest were up to the task and breathed spirit into their characters, which was one of the key elements, because the dialogues in 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim are incredibly rich and appropriate characterization strongly influenced the reception and proper interpretation of the material. The creators knew exactly what they were doing when choosing the seiyuu. The soundtrack is impressive. The main theme kicks in at the very beginning, and when it returns at a certain stage of the game, it causes goosebumps. A lot of the music is reminiscent of the OST from the visual novel by KID, or other soundtracks by Abo Takeshi. A lot of electronic cmusic combined with orchestral sounds and ambient/psybient music.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim – Plot outline and characters

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is one of those titles where it’s really hard to write anything about the plot without getting into huge spoilers. Unfortunately, I feel that I won’t be able to convey the full genius of this title, as it contains too many things that simply can’t be conveyed in words.

We learn the stories from the perspective of thirteen mech pilots called Kihei (機兵, mechanical warriors) in the English version translated as Sentinel. The order in which we learn the story is mostly up to us. However, key elements are available after completing selected events or require a certain degree of completion of battles (I’ll write about that a little later). Events in each character’s path overlap, which makes many scenes and dialogues take on a whole new meaning when seen from another person’s perspective. The whole story takes place in parallel, so many times we’ll see conversations or actions of other characters, which we played in their paths a moment earlier. Thanks to this treatment we catch a lot of details that we didn’t notice before, while constantly receiving completely new material. In many cases, it’s so important that it literally turns upside down what we’ve taken for granted so far. In addition, the events mentioned are not limited to 1985. Vanillaware presents the plot in different timelines, called sectors. So we have 1985 (or the end of the shouwa era), 1945, 2025, and two others in the distant future. Here again – everything happens in parallel. As one of the characters states – the passage of time is a very relative concept.

I don’t know how the developers managed to accomplish this, but I found each character’s path just as interesting as any other. So much so, that I simply couldn’t drag myself away from this title. Every step of the way I learned something new and was able to look at the plot and the characters’ motives from a different perspective. Seemingly insignificant interactions between them (such as passing them in the city or in the school corridor) make you think A LOT. This is unusual in that I found myself absorbing handfuls of events and dialogues even involving characters with character types I’m not entirely fond of. Speaking of character types, the variety is enormous. We have a sweet tsundere in the guise of a rebel who is not afraid of clashes with local thugs, we have a genki girl in the school running club fascinated with paranormal phenomena, or a cheerful hime character always willing to help others and many other classics (I personally love them). You have to see it all for yourself, though, because the character direction and characterization (including the aforementioned original voices that are an integral part of the whole) are of an extremely high standard and are the foundation of this work.

The style of storytelling is also noteworthy, as the variety of genres. A mix of drama, sci-fi, romance, everyday life and mysteries. One moment we are presented with scenes from the daily lives of happy schoolgirls (such as an outing to the patisserie and enjoying sweets after school), only to see other characters shortly afterwards, their deep philosophical thoughts about existence and the direction of humanity, and then back to their schoolmates fascinated by sci-fi cinema.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim has a myriad of references to various Japanese works, both obvious and not-so-obvious as a tribute to their creators. I’m sure I missed many of them (especially those referring to classics from the 70s and 80s). So as not to make big spoilers, I’ll just list a few without going into detail about what they refer to.

• Kono Yo no Hate de Koi wo Utau Shoujo YU-NO
• Toki o Kakeru Shoujo
• Choujikuu Yousai Macross
• Tokimeki Tonight
• Tottemo Hijikata-kun

In addition to references to Japanese works, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim has quite a few references and inspirations from Western films and novels, as confirmed by the creator himself, Kamitani George.

• The War of the Worlds
• E.T.
• Shutter Island
• Total Recall
• Solaris
• The Terminator
• Wargames

While consuming the plot, apart from constant admiration, I was also accompanied by a feeling of anxiety about the ending. It’s the natural order of things – when at every possible step the creators surprise us with new plot twists, brilliant characterizations and incredibly interesting dialogues, and when the soundtrack as well as the voices of the characters come out of the speakers, one begins to wonder whether the finale will be able to carry the weight of the splendor created from the very beginning. Here again I was surprised, because not only the final scenes were the culmination of everything we have seen so far and suddenly the events presented from the perspective of thirteen people made sense, but also the ending surprised me deeply in a very positive way.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim – Gameplay

The gameplay is divided into three distinct sections called remembrance, destruction and analysis.

Remembrance

This section is the core of the whole. This is where we learn about our characters and the stories associated with them. Each character has several scenarios that we discover in turn, which is visualized on the divergence trees. Learning each character’s story, however, is partially dependent on what we’ve already seen, so sometimes there is a need to learn about events related to another character (there are almost always sections related to key events related to both or more characters). Completing a given path in a character’s divergence tree is presented as completing an episode, for which we get points to upgrade mechs (meta chips), unlock subsequent items in the glossary and the event archive (more on that in the following subsections).

This part of the game is not limited to just reading/listening to dialogue. In addition to conversations between characters, we have access to the thoughts of the character we currently play and use them to interact with other characters or the immediate environment.

Destruction

In this mode, we have the opportunity to fight Kaijuu. Individual battles unlock as the story progresses and serve as a complement to the characterization. After reading many comments, quite a few people considered this element as the weakest point of this production. Personally, I would have preferred Super Robot Taisen-style battles, but I also had a lot of fun here, even though the difficulty wasn’t very high and I easily managed to achieve rank S in all scenarios without a single loss. The key is to choose the right mechs for the situation on the frontline. In the game there are 4 types of mechs called generations numbered from the oldest. The first generations of mechs were created for melee combat, while the 3rd and 4th generation for fast movement and ranged combat. There are quite a few weapons, so we can easily adapt them to our fighting style. Each weapon has 8 levels of improvement. At one point, we are given a tool to improve the mechs themselves. Both weapons and mechs can be upgraded for the points called meta-chips, which we get for winning fights and discovering new character paths in remembrance mode. Our pilots also collect experience points. Every five levels they receive a special skill unique to them.

The battles themselves take place in semi-tour mode. What does that mean? They happen in real time, but it is stopped as soon as any of our characters runs out of time after the previous move/attack. Then we have time to think about the next move, weapon selection or use the special ability of the terminal at which we start the fight (for example, EMP pulse depriving the shields of most enemy units). The attack itself also takes place while time is stopped, so we can attack the enemy without worrying that he will destroy us before depriving him of life points.

Analysis

This mode is a glossary, in which new entries appear constantly. Many of them can be unlocked only with the help of so-called mystery points received for winning fights. Due to the fact that the lore of the depicted world is really extensive, it’s definitely worthwhile to enter it from time to time and see the new entries, as they provide a summary of the plot and additional explanations of words or pop culture references, which in the case of such a complicated plot is simply very helpful. The second part of Analysis is access to scenes we’ve already seen in remembrance. You can replay them again to remind yourself of the details of the events (due to potential spoilers, I will completely skip uploading screenshots from this part of the analysis).

Tłumaczenie 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

Overall, the translation of this game was – to my surprise – really good. And this is a rarity in Japanese games, which you can often read about in my reviews. We need more translations like this. Still, there are a few details I would like to point out. The first is an aesthetic issue, but a very annoying one. Forcing the western order of names (First Name Surname instead of Surname First Name) – the characters often used their full name (Surname First Name) when addressing each other or talking about someone else, which caused an unpleasant dissonance. I don’t know why Atlus sticks so much to the Western name order (especially in titles like this or Persona 5, where the whole thing is just dripping with Japanese culture), particularly since they use the original politeness suffixes in the translation, as well as many other original pop culture phrases or food names (for which a big plus, of course). Another issue has to do with the use of the word UFO and inconsistencies. Without going into details so as not to spoil things – there is an object in the game – in the Japanese script it is always referred to as 円盤 (enban – saucer, plate, flying saucer, disc-like object). The translator (or editor) of the English version apparently had some kind of schizophrenia, because he used the word saucer at one time and UFO at another. Unfortunately, this error is magnified by the fact that some characters used the word UFO in the original script (literally UFO) to refer to other things. A similar issue applies to the term idol (this aspect plays a fairly important part of the plot). And here again the schizophrenia – (most probably) the editor couldn’t decide whether to use the term (as God commanded) idol (if you don’t know what it means, I recommend reading it, because it has no relation to what the word means in the West) or pop star (which is quite stupid and shallow). The term idol was used in most scenes, but a few sentences featured a pop star.

But the biggest sin of Atlus’ western division was once again cramming progressive SJW propaganda into 2 scenes, or rather 2 sentences (which paradoxically allowed me to get to know this title, as the marketing was so pathetic towards this title that only the outbreak of this affair on many forums gave me the opportunity to hear about it). Unfortunately, they permanently change one character (especially if one doesn’t even know the basics of Japanese needed to understand such simple sentences), so I recommend reading the screenshots below to know for future reference that this character was absolutely not originally a non-binary character or something and is simply an alteration done by some snowflake in Atlus’ western division:

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim – Evaluation and Summary

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is one of the most outstanding Playstation exclusive titles that, unfortunately, hardly anyone talks about at all. The last work that made me so excited and fascinated by the plot to this degree was probably the Kono Yo no Hate de Koi wo Utau Shoujo YU-NO visual novel operating on relatively similar characterization and plot twists. Exactly what I was looking for! To this day, I can’t get out of my mind in awe that something so brilliant could have easily been overlooked due to the complete lack of marketing on the part of Western Atlus. Definitely my top of the line when it comes to story, characterization and world creation in the broadly defined media (so not only games). Vanillaware has created a masterpiece that everyone will experience differently thanks to a very non-linear approach to storytelling. Of course, even the ending doesn’t give us everything on a platter – quite a few aspects are left to our own interpretation. For me, other rating than 10/10 is out of the question. I bow to the creators and wish myself and others more works that at least come close in terms of story and characterization to what I saw in 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. I completed the game in about 36 hours.

PS. If you are interested in this title, absolutely do not read any guides or suggestions for the order in which to explore the story. It will definitely ruin your experience.

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