Developer : PQube
Release date : August 31, 2018
Synopsis :
Punch Line is a visual novel adventure video game developed by 5pb., based on the anime television series of the same name. It was published for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita by 5pb. in Japan in 2016, and is planned to be published by PQube in North America and Europe in 2018. A Microsoft Windows version was planned for release on August 31, 2018, for Europe and September 25, 2018, for North America, but was later delayed to 2019.
The player controls Yuuta Iridatsu, a ghost who seeks to return to his body, and solves puzzles while haunting a house and using poltergeist abilities such as possession.
The game was written by Kotaro Uchikoshi and scored by Tetsuya Komuro, with character designs by Shōta Iwasaki, all three of whom previously worked on the Punch Line anime, and was directed by Takumi Nakazawa and produced by Kazuhiro Ichikawa.
Owing to its origins as an anime adaptation, the game is structured akin to an interactive anime, and intersplices scenes from the anime show into its narrative.
On December 21, Yuta Iridatsu’s spirit is forced out of his body while he is unconscious on the riverbank. A ghost cat called Chiranosuke explains to him another spirit forced him out of his body, and is now occupying it. In order to get his body back he needs to find a book called the “Nandara Gandara”. However, Yuta cannot see panties twice in a row. If he does, for some reason, an asteroid hits the Earth. Yuta begins seeking the Nandara Gandara around Korai House, the building where he is temporarily living alongside four females, while his sister, Akina Iridatsu, is in America.
Over the course of the next few days, it is revealed to both Yuta and the fellow residents that Mikatan Narugino is the super heroine Strange Juice and that Meika Daihatsu, who acts as Strange Juice’s navigator called “Pumpkin Chair”, is a robot who was created by Dr. Tenga for the purposes of bringing together a team called “Justice Punch”. Yuta also learns about the Qmay Group, a religious cult who claim that the world governments are collaborating to hide the impending collision of an asteroid called VR-1″. The Korai House residents have an encounter with a masked man (who they dub the “Turtle Man”) who wants to capture Muhi, a pet bear cub owned by Ito Hikiotani. During the encounter Muhi is saved by a strange consumed hero calling himself Kenji Miyazawa. Muhi also displays regenerative abilities. Over the following days Yuta unravels the mystery surrounding the deaths of Ito’s classmates. It is revealed that Turtle Man is the culprit, and that Turtle Man’s identity is Chihaya Tomoda, one of Ito’s teachers who had wanted revenge on the girls who were bullying Ito at school. Although he had also been working the spirit of Qmay Tsubouchi, the leader of the Qmay Group who died a month earlier, and had been possessing his body.
On New Year’s Eve, Meika informs the other residents that Yuta is a biological female who view and presents himself as male. This is why she is allowing him to stay in a female lodging. Kenji Miyazawa, who is revealed to be Yuta’s physical body, informs the spirit Yuta that VR-1 will soon collide with Earth. He gives his spirit the Nandara Gandara, which has one word in it, “U-Turn”. Yuta realises that this is an instruction to travel back to December 21. With his spirit power level and his will to save his friends, Yuta possesses his own body on the riverbank on December 21, thereby forcing the spirit out of his past self’s body. Chiranosuke informs him that this loop has been occurring for billions of iterations, but every single time, the Yuta on this side of the loop failed to prevent VR-1 from hitting the Earth, and thus had to pass the buck to the “next iteration” in the form of the Nandara Gandara. However, Chiranosuke comes from one “happy and peaceful future” where an iteration of Yuta succeeds. Yuta realises that this is the reason why an asteroid would hit the Earth if he became “too excited” as a spirit, as the excitement overloaded his physical body that his spirit was attached to, causing him to die, and preventing him from stopping VR-1.
It is revealed to the player that as a child Yuta used to be a test subject at a Qmay Group run lab called Uber Labs called Pine, alongside his two female friends, Chiyoko, and Guriko. The lab looked into the ability of “uberfication”, in which the body pushes itself past human limits, but at the cost of weakening the body. After this escape from the lab, a freak lighting strike during a car accident had caused the spirits of the children to get swapped around: Guriko went into Pine’s body, Pine went into Chiyoko’s body, and Chiyoko went into Guriko’s body. Pine had been found, inside Chiyoko’s body, by the Iridatsu family, and was adopted as “Yu Iridatsu”. He eventually began to live his life presenting himself as boy called “Yuta”; those in the know, like his sister, assumed he had gender dysphoria and was transexual. Meanwhile, Chiyoko had been raised by the researcher who had helped them escape, but was later raised by Meika. She was raised by Meika as Mikatan Narugino and Meika trained her into becoming the hero, Strange Juice.
Yuta alters history to prevent Tomoda from killing Ito’s classmates. From Tomoda he learns that the Qmay Group’s goal is to create a new perfect world where “Ws”, people with the ability to “uberfy” eternally, are the only people left. For this, they need Muhi’s regenerative abilities. Muhi had been the result of Qmay experimentation, but Rabura’s brother, Rando, who had once been a member of Qmay, betrayed them, and gave the bear to Rabura’s cousin, Ito. Yuta and Mikatan learn that they are Pine and Chiyoko, respectively, and that Teraoka Ryuuto, a member of the Qmay Group, is Guriko. Guriko had been disguising himself as Gliese, Rabura’s boyfriend, and posing as a US government personal. She has been taking control of Qmay from the inside, partly out of revenge, and partly because she has since taken Qmay’s teachings to heart. Unlike Pine and Chiyoko, Guriko had been recaptured after her escape, and endured years of isolated pain and suffering as Uber Labs’ only test subject. It is revealed that the official word was right and VR-1 was never going to hit Earth. However, by manipulating the superhuman hacking skills of Meika, Guriko and her followers have hacked into the servers of the Air Force Space Command and are going to utilise the explosions of nuclear missiles in space to sent VR-1 on course to hit Earth.
By December 31, all the Korai House residents have become aware of most of the events that have occurred. They form the fated team “Justice Punch”, and launch “Operation Peacemaker”. Meika attempts to hack into government servers worldwide to launch ICBMs and SCBMs at VR-1 at just the right time, in an attempt to obliterate it before its impact. Meanwhile, everyone else holds off the onslaught of the authorities and the Qmay Group who are attempting to stop her. Although they succeed at obliterating VR-1, Chiyoko uberfies and begins to die; her years of uberfying while fighting crime as Strange Juice has strained her body to its limits. To save Chiyoko, Guriko and Pine willingly swap their spirits back to their original bodies, causing Guriko to die as “Mikatan”.
Several months later, the discarded spirit of Yuta from the current iteration of the loop informs the gang that he is going to go back in time to Rabura’s childhood to possess her to write down the plans for the future, and send them to Dr. Tenga. He will then go back to December 21, possess his own body, and continue the loop. Into the “happy and peaceful future”, Chiyoko and Pine continue to fight crime as Strange Juice and Kenji. Meanwhile, Ito informs Meika and Rabura that she is now looking after a pet cat called Chiranosuke. In a post-game epilogue scene, the spirit of Chiranosuke is seen leaving Yuta’s sister Akina, who Chiranosuke had been possessing to help guide Yuta onto the right track.
Source : Wikipedia
