tl;dr

• Finally, an Aoi event with actual interactions.
• Being somewhat based on I Wish, it shares both its strengths...and flaws.
• The event boss should've been just Cry/Kurai. I guess they needed an excuse to make giant Croche for le April Fools funny.
• Is it Cry or Kurai? There are arguments for both sides.

• Most of the lore dump about alternate servers and whatnot already happened in I Wish. The event just pointed out, "look, it's similar here!".
• With that context under your belt, all there is to understand in this event are the interactions between characters.

The Story Itself

Finally, finally, an event where Aoi actually interacts with others instead of huddling in the corner! I know that's the point of her entire character, but still.

After dealing with Roborima and Nakayoshi X, Aoi and Kurai finally have a chance to talk. Of course, one of the questions is, just WHO is Kurai, exactly? Kurai lied at first, telling her that she's Aoi's descendant. Aoi thought it was cool that her granddaughter came to visit, until the implication hits her. The existence of Kurai means that Aoi actually carried out her biological purpose of reproducing! She gets flustered as she wonders with whom did she tie the knot with.

During their showdown with Roborima and Nakayoshi X, Nakayoshi X's mental assault is super effective against Aoi. Very stereotypical, but I like how Kurai encourages Aoi here. Believe in yourself! Be positive! Etc.

I think the purpose of that is to soften Kurai's "betrayal" in the story when she powers up the Gedon to test Aoi even further. Kurai actually encouraging tells that she actually wants to train up Aoi for the future. And not because she wanted to raze down Aoi's world as a way to cope with the fact that hers was razed down.

In the end, Kurai felt genuine guilt when she thought she caused a bunch of casualties and killed Croche. Until it was revealed the bystanders were revealed to be safely evacuated by the Gio Teogonia crew and Croche returned with her Aerial body. This further supports that Kurai really just wanted to train Aoi.

Hmm...I think I said less than I wanted to in this section. I really did enjoy their interactions, but for some reason, it doesn't hit as hard as Hiyori/Aira and Rei/Shinatsu. Probably because Aoi's other events muddled my opinion on her. And probably because this event is treated as only semi-serious. And also probably because we don't really "fight" Kurai, she was just using Gedon. Sure, Aira and Shinatsu technically didn't want to fight us, but that's why it felt so personal. I really felt the urgency of "we gotta save them!" there. Because one, the two would've razed the world down because they are the apex of strength of their respective worlds. And two, they really are just Hiyori and Rei and experienced different circumstances. What happened to Yui in this world happened to them in their worlds. That made the fight feel much more personal.

Still, I hope they don't abandon this plotline. One, because it's cool. I do think creating foils for existing character to highlight their traits is a "cheap" way to do character development, but I usually don't care if the presentation is cool enough. Aira, Shinatsu and Kurai all check this box. And second, because this plotline is still extremely underdeveloped. More on that in the Flaws section of this page.

Her biggest contribution here is when she was unaffected by Nakayoshi X's mental assault. Her being unaffected really drives in the fact that she's a robot. If by this point you're still not convinced that she's a robot, despite having been shown her being blown up and being revived because her memory unit is a separate thing, I don't know what will.

It's kinda a lonely feeling, isn't it? She's cheerful simply because she was programmed to be cheerful. She likes you because she simply was programmed to like everyone. She comes to you for charging simply because she wouldn't function otherwise (there's also still Lyrael). That's one of the disadvantages of having a robot gf, it doesn't feel earned. Well, for me, I wouldn't mind a robot gf, because I have no redeeming qualities that would attract any actual girls, lol. Maybe it's why I like Kokkoro so much...

Er, moving on. Starting to sound like an incel there. Eventually, Nakayoshi X realizes its plan is not working and switches target to Aoi. Aoi succumbs to to the mental assault. Kurai, as mentioned before, and Croche try to snap her out. Croche goes for a different approach in trying to cheer Aoi up. She takes what Nakayoshi X said and tries to spin in in a positive way. She says that it's fine to be alone because how else would you have the time for your own hobbies? And when Nakayoshi said something about the lines of "all she does is wait for the opportunity to tell others about her hobbies", Croche says it's simply trying to encourage Aoi to finally go out to meet people and talk about her hobbies.

It works, and Aoi collects herself. Croche says Nakayoshi X is simply trying to encourage her, although its choice of words...isn't the best.

Of course, you could also interpret this as Croche simply trying to encourage Aoi because she wouldn't be able to function without her pilot.

After defeating Gedon, its core started to self-destruct, and using her giant body, Croche flew up with it to divert the explosion. Croche was thought to be lost, but as mentioned before, she managed to get away with her Aerial body. One thing to note that now she has...normal arms! It is specified to be weaker than her usual arms, but now she can hug people without pulverizing every single bones in their body. I remember mentioning this in my Character Thoughts sheet that she might be secretly fucked up because she couldn't hug people. I see now that my worry was unfounded.

As Kurai departs for her own world, it is revealed that Misato and Hatsune are completely different people in her world. Kurai refers to Misato as Instructor, and explains that she's no longer a preschool teacher and instead teaches stuff about battle strategy and survival skills. Kurai mentions that she's also extremely strict to the point of drilling Kurai until she puked blood. She's still grateful for that, though. She wouldn't have survived for as long as she did if it weren't for her.

Shocked by the revelation, Aoi asks about Hatsune. Same thing. She's apparently a lieutenant and is Misato's second-in-command. Kurai leaves as Aoi demanded more answer.

Wow, isn't that super cool? Imagine the motherly Misato taking a different approach in child rearing...and there lies the problem, you have to IMAGINE. Why? Because it is NOT SHOWN. I know there is merit in leaving things to the audience's imagination when it comes to writing, but what we're reading is a VISUAL novel.

This also happened in I Wish. In the Another Wish section, several characters are told to be different in Aira's and Shinatsu's world those characters are...

• Rin: Also known as the Legendary Acorn Ranger, but somehow made a name for herself in the underworld in Shinatsu's world.
• Yukari: Known as the "Demonic Treasurer" in Aira's world. Super strict, doesn't drink.
• Ninon: Known as the "Master of Haikus" in Shinatsu's world. Travels the world for inspiration. Influential.
• Anna: The same person, but is a painter instead of a writer in Shinatsu's world. (lol)
• Shinobu: Extremely abusive to Skulldad in Aira's world. To the point Aira begged Shinobu not to "split him in half" when he flirted with her.

With the exception of Anna, all of them share the same pattern: take one of their traits, and crank it up to eleven. It's too bad we were only TOLD that these people are different.

Still, I hope that we get too see these alternate worlds one day. Maybe since the story is shifting to focus on the IRL parts, maybe they can take a detour to give these different individuals robot bodies so they can see the real world? Dunno how the logistics would work, but robot bodies isn't a novel concept in this game thanks to Sora.

When a character's name contains らりるれろ, a debate usually springs up because people can't agree if it's supposed to be R or L. Happened with クリア、happened with アイラ. And while there wasn't a debate as heated as the previous two, I still saw some discussion where one rendered is as Cry and another rendered is as Kurai. Guess Aoi isn't as popular, huh?

The argument for Kurai is the fact that it's an actual Japanese word, 暗い. It means dark, and is closer to meaning to literal darkness. Like a dark room. Another word for dark is 闇, now this one leans into the more metaphorical meaning. You wouldn't use 暗い when talking about "the power of darkness", you would use 闇 for that. The phrase 闇の力 is shat out like a hundred of times in the Magical Noires event, if you want an actual example.

Also, 闇 is the kanji the game uses for the dark element. It straight up translates to well, dark, and NOT shadow. I'm talking to you, Dragturds. You can thank 8-4 for all the weird localization that game had. And one more thing, there's a kanji for shadow specifically, it's 影.

The argument for Cry is the fact that it's an actual English word. You know what Cry means, right? It's what I did when I had to spark PAoi and rolled ACroche on roll 180. Ahaha...

So, which one is more likely to be the actual romanization? We won't know for sure until クライ makes another event appearance and sings the ED, since the name of the characters are usually properly translated in the album. We learnt from the albums that ライラエル is indeed Lyrael and クリア is Clear. One thing the albums got wrong is that they still rendered クルル as Kururu and not Cleuru. We know that it's actually Cleuru from the merchs and the fact that she took the spot for the letter C when they did the Princess Connect joke in Battle Stadium

As for my own opinion, Kurai is the cooler one, but Cry is most likely what they'd actually go for. Because the latter is an actual English word. They probably went with Clear and not Quria for the same reason, even though the latter would've made more sense because Clear was referred to as TYPE-Q when she was still Eris' terminal.

Difficulty

I Wish started out hard because of all the loredump in the beginning, got gradually easier as Aira and Shinatsu start taking the spotlight. Here, assuming you've read I Wish already, it's just easy from the get go because all the loredump are done already.

You know, when people start bringing up the connection between this event and I Wish, I thought it was something you had to figure out on your own. Turns out the game just straight up shows CGs from I Wish to show the connection.

100% (1050/1050) comprehension. If I got 95% on I wish, it'd have been concerning if I got anything lower here. I also understood all of the Whys and Whats of Croche (なぜなにクローチェ) section thanks to Yomininja.

I know this event was supposed to have many references, but the Evangelion one was the only one I understood...