You wake up from a cold sleep upside-down in a tree. Watch out—It's the future. In a world destroyed by ineffable monsters with no hearts, but an iron will; in a society warped and shaped by the constant threat of ruin; the dragon is already dead: Help what's left of humanity learn how to live in this post-apocalyptic fantasy visual novel.
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Kunado Chronicles is a visual novel developed by Purplesoft. If the name Purplesoft sounds familiar it's because we have other translated visual novels by them such as Hapymaher, Chrono Clock, Amatsutsumi, and the upcoming Aoi Tori. Kunado Chronicles has a kinda unique setting and genres. It's technically a post-apocalyptic setting 1000 years in the future compared to typical modern Japan settings, but instead of being the typical sci-fi style, this setting is actually more technologically regressed. The main setting takes place in a city called Kanto (not to be confused with Pokemon RBY's world) and is clearly based on an older version of IRL Japan. It felt like Purple soft's version of Senren Banka, just with a lot more plot. The main protagonist starts off waking up with having no memories of his name or who he was outside some general memories of what his life was like back in modern Japan.
A lot of the beginning of the game is having you the reader basically self-insert to get to learn this new world at the same time as the protgaonist. There's a lot to take in about the setting but here are some basics. The post-apolcapytic world is basically because machines were taken over by what they called the Tekki, which makes this machines sentient and tend to prioritize attacking the closet human. While they aren’t too frequent after the defeat of the Kurokami, they are still a danger to 95% of the population. The main city, Kanto, is ruled by what's called the Eight Swords, each with a number ranking, the lower the number the higher you are on the hierarchy. If you can beat the Number 1 Sword, you take their place as the ruler of Kanto. The total population of Kanto is just under 800 people, and everyone not in the Eight Swords is required to wear Fox Masks at all times, with little to no concepts of individuality, family, economy, or other social stuff you’d expect in the modern times. There’s some people who have supernatural powers called the “Powered”, and generally partners are chosen based on what powers they have, if any. Finally, Gender roles are also reversed where females actually prefer to be praised for strength over beauty, females are more shameless about getting naked with males getting more embarrassed, and females are expected to take the lead in relationships romantically and sexually.
One of the main goals of the story is to defeat the Tekki threat. Natually this means one of the main genres is action, as some of the characters have supernatural powers or general combat prowess to fight the Tekki. There is some degree of mystery and worldbuilding, finding out a lot of what the world is like and how the Tekki and Kurokami affected the current time. You also get to learn and even influence the societal culture of Kanto and see how all the little things they do compare to our IRL modern society. But if I had to pick one genre for Kunado Chronicles, it’d be a charage. I found the routes tend to focus more on the character development and drama the main characters went through, and the action scenes at times felt secondary to the overall narrative. That said as someone who considered charage to be one of my personal visual novel genres I quite liked this aspect.
Kunado Chronicles actually has a fairly uncommon ladder route structure very similar to another Purplesoft visual novel in Amatsutsumi. Basically there's a true route, and you have to read the main story of the other 2 main heroine routes first to get there. Along the way you can choose to romance the non-true heroine but won't reach the true route on that read through. but I personally like ladder routes and true route structures so this appealed to me, hopefully it does to you too.
Now I'll go quickly over the main characters. Shin was a decent enough protagonist, fairly likable and proactive though he had some cringe perverted moments early on in common route. Haruhime was a fun main heroine though I thought her romance and character could have been developed a bit more. Akane and Aoi are OK, they make the action scenes fun and have fine enough development but I thought they were a bit too simple-minded. Yuri was excellent. She was a tsundere with wholesome personal development, with easily my favorite main and romance route. On a personal level, this visual novel was worth reading for Yuri alone, she's now one of my favorite visual novel characters. It's saying a lot since I'm usually not a fan of tsunderes. There's some other likable side characters, wish they got routes but their roles in the story works well enough.
I've mostly talked about things I liked about Kunado but now I want to talk about some of the flaws I had. The setting has supernatural elements so I was willing to suspend my disbelief most of the time, but there were some plot twists that I thought were a little too out there, especially in one of the side routes. The main characters’ physicality also made it kind of weird to take in how relationships worked out. There’s a few characters that get their name mentioned and seemed like they’d be important but they never showed on screen which personally disappointed me. While the pacing of the story is mostly fine, there are some points in the story that are a bit slow, usually with setting exposition especially in common route and the beginning of some routes. The true route kind of has the opposite issue where things move a little too quickly, almost like the writer was kinda rushing to get to the climax. Finally, there’s one H-scene that happens before any of the routes happen. I'm all for Visual Novel sex scenes but this particular one felt super out of place, even if you figure out the context later on. Outside of that thankfully the overall sexual content is surprisingly low, compared to previous Purplesoft VNs. Though I guess that can be a plus or minus depending on your point of view.
In conclusion, Kunado Chronicles is a solid story with an interesting world and characters. It had an interesting blend of genres, with action, mystery, comedy, romance, worldbuilding, but mostly on character development and drama. You can tell the amount of effort made to cover all the details of its unique setting, down to minor lines about societal gender roles being reversed compared to what we in modern society are used to. I do have criticisms that keep me from totally loving it like certain plot twists and the pacing at certain parts. It's far from the best story visual novel or even the best Purplesoft visual novel. In fact, I personally still prefer Amatsutsumi for its psychological drama focus, and would recommend reading it first to get used to Kotodama as well as some cool references in Kunado. Regardless, Kunado Chronicles is definitely still a fun time.
A lot of the beginning of the game is having you the reader basically self-insert to get to learn this new world at the same time as the protgaonist. There's a lot to take in about the setting but here are some basics. The post-apolcapytic world is basically because machines were taken over by what they called the Tekki, which makes this machines sentient and tend to prioritize attacking the closet human. While they aren’t too frequent after the defeat of the Kurokami, they are still a danger to 95% of the population. The main city, Kanto, is ruled by what's called the Eight Swords, each with a number ranking, the lower the number the higher you are on the hierarchy. If you can beat the Number 1 Sword, you take their place as the ruler of Kanto. The total population of Kanto is just under 800 people, and everyone not in the Eight Swords is required to wear Fox Masks at all times, with little to no concepts of individuality, family, economy, or other social stuff you’d expect in the modern times. There’s some people who have supernatural powers called the “Powered”, and generally partners are chosen based on what powers they have, if any. Finally, Gender roles are also reversed where females actually prefer to be praised for strength over beauty, females are more shameless about getting naked with males getting more embarrassed, and females are expected to take the lead in relationships romantically and sexually.
One of the main goals of the story is to defeat the Tekki threat. Natually this means one of the main genres is action, as some of the characters have supernatural powers or general combat prowess to fight the Tekki. There is some degree of mystery and worldbuilding, finding out a lot of what the world is like and how the Tekki and Kurokami affected the current time. You also get to learn and even influence the societal culture of Kanto and see how all the little things they do compare to our IRL modern society. But if I had to pick one genre for Kunado Chronicles, it’d be a charage. I found the routes tend to focus more on the character development and drama the main characters went through, and the action scenes at times felt secondary to the overall narrative. That said as someone who considered charage to be one of my personal visual novel genres I quite liked this aspect.
Kunado Chronicles actually has a fairly uncommon ladder route structure very similar to another Purplesoft visual novel in Amatsutsumi. Basically there's a true route, and you have to read the main story of the other 2 main heroine routes first to get there. Along the way you can choose to romance the non-true heroine but won't reach the true route on that read through. but I personally like ladder routes and true route structures so this appealed to me, hopefully it does to you too.
Now I'll go quickly over the main characters. Shin was a decent enough protagonist, fairly likable and proactive though he had some cringe perverted moments early on in common route. Haruhime was a fun main heroine though I thought her romance and character could have been developed a bit more. Akane and Aoi are OK, they make the action scenes fun and have fine enough development but I thought they were a bit too simple-minded. Yuri was excellent. She was a tsundere with wholesome personal development, with easily my favorite main and romance route. On a personal level, this visual novel was worth reading for Yuri alone, she's now one of my favorite visual novel characters. It's saying a lot since I'm usually not a fan of tsunderes. There's some other likable side characters, wish they got routes but their roles in the story works well enough.
I've mostly talked about things I liked about Kunado but now I want to talk about some of the flaws I had. The setting has supernatural elements so I was willing to suspend my disbelief most of the time, but there were some plot twists that I thought were a little too out there, especially in one of the side routes. The main characters’ physicality also made it kind of weird to take in how relationships worked out. There’s a few characters that get their name mentioned and seemed like they’d be important but they never showed on screen which personally disappointed me. While the pacing of the story is mostly fine, there are some points in the story that are a bit slow, usually with setting exposition especially in common route and the beginning of some routes. The true route kind of has the opposite issue where things move a little too quickly, almost like the writer was kinda rushing to get to the climax. Finally, there’s one H-scene that happens before any of the routes happen. I'm all for Visual Novel sex scenes but this particular one felt super out of place, even if you figure out the context later on. Outside of that thankfully the overall sexual content is surprisingly low, compared to previous Purplesoft VNs. Though I guess that can be a plus or minus depending on your point of view.
In conclusion, Kunado Chronicles is a solid story with an interesting world and characters. It had an interesting blend of genres, with action, mystery, comedy, romance, worldbuilding, but mostly on character development and drama. You can tell the amount of effort made to cover all the details of its unique setting, down to minor lines about societal gender roles being reversed compared to what we in modern society are used to. I do have criticisms that keep me from totally loving it like certain plot twists and the pacing at certain parts. It's far from the best story visual novel or even the best Purplesoft visual novel. In fact, I personally still prefer Amatsutsumi for its psychological drama focus, and would recommend reading it first to get used to Kotodama as well as some cool references in Kunado. Regardless, Kunado Chronicles is definitely still a fun time.