It was only a matter of time before this announcement was made, but Aniplex is getting into the visual novel business with the formation of Aniplex.exe.
On February 24th, a press release went out revealing that Aniplex has put up placeholder pages for two visual novels on Steam, which will be released at an unspecified date later this year. The first game is titled ATRI – My Dear Moments and is being developed by Frontwing and Makuram. The second game is titled Adabana Odd Tales and is being developed by Liar-Soft. Neither game has been released anywhere in the world as of this writing.
ATRI -My Dear Moments features Konna Asta as the lead scenario writer and Yow as director, both of whom have been working in the visual novel industry since the ’00s. The Aniplex.exe game also stars Hikaru Akao as the female lead, Atori. VNDB describes the story as follows:
In the near future, a sudden and unexplained sea rise has left much of human civilization underwater.
Ikaruga Natsuki, a boy who lost his mother and his leg in an accident some years earlier, returns disillusioned from a harsh life in the big city to find his old countryside home half-swallowed by the sea.
Left without a family, all he has to his name is the ship and submarine left to him by his oceanologist grandmother, and her debts.
His only hope to restore the dreams for the future that he has lost is to take up an opportunity presented to him by the suspicious debt collector Catherine. They set sail to search the sunken ruins of his grandmother’s laboratory in order to find a treasure rumor says she left there.
But what they find is not riches or jewels; it is a strange girl lying asleep in a coffin at the bottom of the sea.
Atri.
Atri is a robot, but her appearance and her wealth of emotions would fool anyone into think she’s a living, breathing human being. In gratitude for being salvaged, she makes a declaration to Natsuki.
“I want to fulfill my master’s final order. Until I do, I’ll be your leg!”
In a little town slowly being enveloped by the ocean, an unforgettable summer is about to begin for this boy and this mysterious robot girl…
The second game announced by Aniplex.exe is Adabana Odd Tales, which features scenarios written by Umihara Nozomu and two main characters; Kurofude (voiced by Katou Wataru) and Shirohime (voiced by Minami Saki). VNDB describes the story of this game as:
A girl finds herself in a dark and unfamiliar forest when a monster appears out of nowhere and attacks. A mysterious boy, wielding a brush as if it were a sword, appears just in time to cut down the monster.
He calls himself Kurofude, and he addresses the girl in a familiar tone as Shirohime. Yet she does not recognize him or the name he calls her. She has lost all of her memories.
According to Kurofude, they are in the land of Adabana, a realm of illustrated books. Their tales are like dreams; no matter how deeply one immerses oneself in them, once one wakes up, they are gone. Thus the name Adabana—a name given to flowers that will never bear fruit. Their duty is to travel through story realms and look for signs of distortions in the tales.
Shirohime, a girl with seemingly all the agency of a doll, accepts this explanation and opens a book handed to her. The title: Hanasaka Jiisan. As she opens the dilapidated illustrated book with its pages riddled with worm-eaten holes, the pages glow brightly and whisk the girl and boy away to a fairy tale realm…
Stay tuned for more details regarding Aniplex.exe when these games will be released!
