Otome Game Review: Usotsuki Shangrila

Akari has been living alone most of her life due to being an orphan. One day during a solar eclipse, she’s sucked into another world called Shangrila where it’s eternally night and no signs of daylight. The elders find out and say she’s the “Liar Moon” from the prophecy who will save Shangrila and return the daylight to them. Unfortunately nobody actually knows how to do this… except Fenrir and his brothers who know that in order to get the sun back, the Liar Moon has to sacrifice her life. And as fate would have it, Fenrir is the first person Akari runs into and becomes friendly with. Additionally, Akari also has the powers to see people’s past simply by looking at the reflection of the moon in a body of water. This leads her to discover the truth about everything in Shangrila.

Fenrir – Fenrir is the nice oniichan type who takes care of his 2 brothers and always helps out the poor people in town by being a watchdog for the crazies during a full moon. He’s on the same team as this guy named Teal but the guy betrays him by kidnapping Akari and then throwing Fenrir into a dungeon. Thanks to his brothers Fenrir is able to be rescued and brought back to his senses by Akari. Akair was also able to look into his past and felt like Fenrir is the one who called her to Shangrila after years of abuse being called the “one who brings misfortune”. Teal then comes down saying he killed Fenrir’s brothers and admits he’s just a power hungry asshole. 🤷‍♂️

Misery End: Fenrir kills Teal and then turns into an animal who can’t even speak human language anymore. He’s kept in a dungeon but Akari continues to visit him anyway. Happy End: Fenrir’s brothers aren’t dead, Loki’s booted out, Teal is arrested and the brothers are no longer called the misfortune bringers. Akari goes back to living with them and helps out the poors in town. They call her more often by her name instead of Liar Moon because she’s now treated like a citizen. In the end Fenrir’s brothers leave them alone at home so they can confess and make out. Vanish End: Teal kills Akari saying everyone will praise him for bringing the sun back to Shangrila. Unfortunately this doesn’t bring the sun back and now Fenrir’s all alone. Fenrir’s route just flew by me and I was actually pretty surprised how tame and short it was. Also I think the worst part about this route is since Teal is a bad guy, he’s suddenly this good guy in all the other routes which makes this entire route feel even more pointless and inconsistent.

Jorm – Jorm is the middle brother and always appears as the genki type, but obviously those can never be trusted in a Rejet game. Jorm by mythology is one of Loki’s children and also a giant snake by the name of Midgardsormr. He hates liars due to being tired of dealing with them most of his life. In the past Jorm would have to steal and pickpocket to survive in the slums. They both find that they have the thing in common where as children they’d pretend to smile or laugh to act like everything was fine. He also hates the rich and even poisons one of them. The reason is cause back in the day one of them handed out bread to kids that poisoned and killed all of them… including Jorm’s friend Alan.

Jorm overhears how the rich nobles planned all this and spread rumors of a disease spreading in the slums. Jorm then found out who the noble that did it and that’s who he killed. He then tells her that he wants to take revenge on Shangrila cause it’s so shitty by taking away their “last hope”aka Akari. He doesn’t kill her though, he just says he’s gonna say she’s gone and will keep her in his hideout and bring her food and stuff. So now Akari’s in his uguu abandoned shack of love until further notice… until he tells her that well actually he wants her to die after all. 🤨 But no worries Akari he romantically said he’ll die with you! 😂😘 Akari tells him to just kill her but when he tries to strangle her he starts crying and let’s go… realizing he’s doing to her what the world did to him.. and that this won’t change anything.

He then starts bawling that he wants someone to save him, that he’s guilty of killing his friend and Akari says she will forgive his sins and save him. He says he’ll give up his plans for revenge and let Akari go. But instead now he gets arrested for his crime and no one is gonna obviously listen to Akari or the truth about how he took revenge on someone who poisoned all the slum kids. Instead though, Ende decides to help out because Akari sees an image of the poison creator and Ende has a good idea who it might be. During the trial a bunch of people run in raging about how the nobles poisoned people thanks to Hel, Fenrir and Teal spreading the truth. (Ironically how Teal is suddenly a good guy in this route lol.) Happy End: Ende shows up with the guy who made the poison as proof and Jorm is cleared after some community service. He then confesses his love to Akari and obviously the feeling’s mutual so they ichaicha by their usual spot at the lake (and then he bites her ear wtf lol). Oh and as usual, the light is not brought back to Shangrila. Misery End: Jorm commits suicide by drowning himself in the lake. Vanish End: Jorm gets stoned in public and dies quietly in the woods in Akari’s lap as she strangles him per his request. (;´Д`)

Hel – Hel is the youngest of the 3 brothers and the goddess of death per mythology. A lot of the nobles really like him and constantly want him doing stuff for them. He agrees to be Akari’s guardian to try to get away from them but he’s so nasty to her like “oh not like I WANTED to do this”…but yea obviously the TSUN just waiting to be melted into DERE! 😂 Hel’s route also reveals the siblings’ real parents including his mother Sonya  she father Ruka. He eventually starts to slowly open up to Akari but then Professor Olsen, the guy responsible for making the poison that killed a bunch of people in Jorm’s route, comes into the picture. It’s revealed that Hel has a special kind of body where he doesn’t bleed as much as others and heals very quickly as well as feeling nearly no pain.And he continuously keeps coming back to be the subject of Olsen’s experiments so he can “feel pain”.

When Akari gets worried about him, he explains that he intentionally does this because he just doesn’t feel pain ever since he was a child. So as it turns out Olsen had attacked Sonya and did experiments on her which is why Hel was born with such a weird body. Misery End: Once Hel finds out, he gets pissed off goes to Akari demanding she tell him the truth she saw in the past imagery. Hel then gets pissed off at Olsen, goes to his lab, and stabs him with a scalpel and throws his flesh eating bacteria down his throat m9(^Д^)プギャー. Olsen screams in pain and dies almost immediately, and even though Akari overhears about his death she doesn’t ask Hel anything about it.

Happy End: Akari doesn’t want Hel to be Olsen’s labrat anymore so she offers to sacrifice herself to be his experiment subject. He basically just forces her to view his past with Sonya over and over until Hel shows up and Olsen runs away. Just then Akari sees a flashback where a dying Sonya asks Bilrest, a family friend (who is Ende in disguise) who found her, to save her unborn child Hel and be the  stepfather of her and Ruka’s children. Akari wakes up and Hel has gone off to become a taxidermy figure in a museum. He runs into Olsen telling him he’ll be his lab rat again but only if he promises to leave Akari and his brothers alone. This was his plan to kill Olsen but Olsen predicted everything and paralyzes his body once again. Hel’s feelings for Akari overpower the paralysis and he gets up and knocks Olsen out cold 😂 before passing out himself.

Just then Akari, Fenrir and Jorm find them and Hel manages to get up and tell them he isn’t dead or become taxidermied 😂. After this Olsen is arrested, Akari agrees to help use her powers to see the past to prevent a bad future and the royals agree to treat the brothers better. Akari talks to Bilrest and finds out that Hel’s dad is Ruka and not Olsen as he originally was worried. Hel and Akari live happily ever after. Vanish End: Hel gets annoyed with Akari hiding the truth from him and hands her over to Shangrila council. A flashback also reveals that Ruka died because Olsen revealed to the villagers that Ruka was married to the one who brings misfortune. The villagers then got pissed and killed him. 🙄 The end of the game reveals that Sonya was actually the previous UsoTsuki and Ende had transferred it into Akari after her death. This is also the reason Sonya had to be locked up in the basement house all the time – as having her leave the house would cause chaos due to the double moons. (More on this in Ende’s route.)

Hati – Hati is a shy moe boi who blushes around Akari and is Ende’s younger brother. Or rather, he’s Ende’s adopted brother and he was an orphan kinda like Akari, until Ende adopted him. He seems to be liked by dogs a lot and has a pet dog. Hati has no memories of his past, Ende won’t tell him anything and asks Akari not to look into his past. Akari wants to know what’s going on after Ende and Hati get into a fight so she looks – but only sees them getting along really well with each other as kids. So then the revelation hits during a full moon when Hati begins to turn into a werewolf and attacks Akari. Snowtora and Ende manage to save her and knock him out since all of this took place at home when everyone was there. Ende then comes into her room telling her all about the Norse mythology that this game has managed to keep irrelevant till now lol. According to mythology Mundilfari named his kids Sol and Mani (which means sun  & moon) and pissed off the gods so they took his kids away. The kids were then forced to carry the roles of the Sun & Moon in the land of gods. They also decided this wasn’t enough punishment so they assigned 2 wolves, Skoll and Hati to chase after each of them.

Skoll would chase the sun while Hati would chase the moon, in hopes of devouring them. Eventually one day Skoll reached the sun kid and ate the sun – and made it darkness for all time, just like with Shangrila. And eventually this caused the infamous Ragnarok which then ended up killing all the stupid gods anyway lol. So turns out Hati is a rebirth of the wolf Hati and Ende had originally found him looking like a wolf. So Ende figured if he erases his previous life’s memories, he could have Hati live as a normal human being which is why Hati’s been living without any memories all this time. Unfortunately his natural moon chasing instinct could not be suppressed and Akari was the trigger. He also delivers the bad news that Hati’s feelings for Akari aren’t love but probably his attraction to the moon…and she shouldn’t let her feelings sway her. After this despite Akari willing to accept Hati as he is, Hati just assumes he will just attack her and gets terrified to be near her. The next night Ende’s house is invaded by a bunch of angry villagers who are hunting for some Hati. Snowtora and Ende hold them back while Hati and Akari escape. As they run out and run into a badly injured Ende, Loki shows up announcing he’s the one who started the war in the first place.

He pulls out his gun and shoots poor Ende and Hati gets so angry he turns back into a wolf and begins attacking Loki’s gang. Eventually he kills them all including Loki himself m9(^Д^)プギャー. When Hati turns back into a human he starts crying, ashamed of what he did (even though tbh this saved the good guys so whatever lol.) They take care of Ende’s wounds and then Ende explains to Hati why he hid the truth from him and Hati finally understands and thanks him. Later that night Hati confesses his feelings of love for Akari and kisses her on the house rooftop. Unfortunately while they’re all ichaichaing, the guys Hati killed – apparently had 2 survivors who go run to their boss to tell everything that happened. Moments later the boss, who is some creepy yandere shota runs into the house and sets it on fire.

Ende tells Akari and Hati to run, but they end up coming back anyway. Snowtora and Akari watch the flames from outside while Hati runs inside. Hati comes out in wolf form with an unconscious Ende on his back supposedly having defeated the shota boss. After this since Ende’s house burns down everyone moves back into Glast Heim. Snowtora recovered but Ende continues to lay in a coma. In the epilogue, Hati asks Akari to marry him. Also he tells her in order not to lose himself to his wolfness all he has to do is not hold himself back with affection and feelings for Akari. Misery End: Hati and Akari run away to the outskirts of Shangrila where it’s nothing but ice and snow. They end up living in some wooden cabin and somehow manage to bang and have 2 kids… until all 4 of them freeze to death. 🤨 Vanish End:  Hati is captured by Evil shota boss and chained down by all his lackeys. Akari goes to live with Fenrir and Co while they look for Hati… until the night of the full moon she hears him howl. Akari runs outside and Hati is too out of it to realize it’s her and ends up attacking and killing her. After this the sunlight returns to Shangrila and the evil shota kills Ende.

Ende – Ende’s route introduces evil shota from the last route as Tetra, though at first he’s just a random kid who’s blind in his right eye. Akari also sees a past flashback of herself and Ende together as children. He told her to never leave her room for her safety. In the present time Akari finds her old room and suddenly the memories come flooding back. When little Akari escaped and saw the outside world, Ende caught her and sent her to earth while erasing her memories. This is the connection to the little girl that Fenrir knew and thought that she died – rather than left Shangrila. When she confronts Ende he refuses to tell her anything and says he will take care of everything himself. Apparently Ende had created a false moon to be up at all times so the sun would never have a chance to come out. He did this to stop the violence happening in the world but instead the lack of sun caused ice to start forming around Shangrila which would eventually swallow up all of it. So the only way to solve this was to hide the real moon inside a human baby while leaving the false moon up at all times. This baby would be known as the one who brings misfortune for hundreds of years, and was the biggest lie of Shangrila.

This is why Sonya was killed previously as she was the former UsoTsuki (aka the one who hides the real moon) and then Ende transferred the moon into baby Akari immediately after. Snowtora tells Akari that she was hired to be Akari’s friend and watcher to make sure Akari never left. After Hati’s wolf awakens he attacks Akari but Ende saves her – nearly killing Hati until Akari asks him to stop. The 4 of them go into an underground hideout where Ende says someone intentionally awakened Hati’s wolf. That someone is the shota god Tetra who did this so he could use Hati to find the real moon for him. Ende then also admits he is a god and he only looked young then because he changed his appearance. He tells her about him constantly hiding moons inside babies and when they die he’d move it to a new one… and now it was Akari that was his next victim lol. The reason he also had to hide the moon thing was to hide himself from Tetra. Apparently the two of them have been at war for many years and Ende’s been killed by him many times. The sun gives Tetra powers so when the moon is out he can’t over power Ende so for Ende and endless night is the safest. Since he wont tell her anything Akari uses her powers to look into the past.

She finds out Ende’s real name is Loki and Tetra’s real name is Hodur. He claimed that Loki isn’t a real god and continued to kill him every time he was reborn. Every time he would create a new world and have kids who he would name Fenrir, Jorm and Hel but every time he got killed the world would perish too. The reason he became a half god is cause he made a contract with Hodur’s father Odin and this is also why he keeps being reborn. According to mythology Loki tricked Hodur into killing his twin brother Baldr as well. In the past Heimdall also killed Loki’s children as punishment for trying to go where the other gods were. In order to never have his children killed again he was forced to do tricks on others which is when he tricker Hodur into killing Baldr (which was the starting chain for Ragnarok). So after this Loki wanted to take revenge and there was the Ragnarok battle where he fought Heimdall but it ended up in complete destruction.

When Akari asks him what his true wish is, Ende says all he ever wanted was to live in peace with his loved ones and that he’s terribly lonely. After the 4 of them escape to the church where Ende sent Akari to earth, Ende then confesses his love for her. Happy End: With the help of Fenrir and co. they defeat Hodur aka Tetra and Ende tells him that it was Heimdall’s fault that Baldr died. Tetra realizes that nobody ever liked him and his anger was directed at the wrong person this whole time. Tetra and Ende agree to end their thousand year war and let things go. In the end Ende falls asleep for a while and then Odin visits Akari but hides himself asking her to just hear him out. He thanks her for getting his son to end his cycle of revenge and as a token of appreciation he brings the sun back to Shangrila. Just then Ende wakes up and looks into Akari’s eyes and the moon from them is gone. Shangrila becomes peaceful and Fenrir, Jorm and Hel come over Ende’s house for dinner they promised before the battle. At the end of the night Akari tells Ende she will spend the rest of her life together with him in Shangrila.

Misery End: Tetra kidnaps Akari forcing Ende to search for her for years. When he finds her she’s utterly brainwashed and then Tetra gets Akari to torture him until he breaks. Vanish End: Tetra kills Ende as usual and Shangrila collapses. Ende is reborn all alone again and breaks down into tears because his world has been destroyed again. But seriously why the hell didn’t Loki just tell Hodur that it was all Heimdall’s fault in the first place… then maybe he wouldn’t have had to die like 40 times 🤷‍♂️. Also ffs Odin why didn’t you handle your own god damn son to stop wreaking havoc on random humans?? 🤔 How did 1 human Mary Sue magically convince ya’ll to cut it out. 🙄 The liar moon epilogue also reveals Loki lying to Hodur that he killed Baldr for shits and giggles…like yea no wonder you’ve pissed him off forever?? Also apparently the other Loki in the game, was just some rando with a similar name…idk what the point of having him be named that was though lol, maybe Ende created him to move attention away from himself. Additionally I double checked a bunch of sources and couldn’t find anything about Loki being a “half god” like this game implies so that’s probably just another one of Rejet’s fanfictions.

 

Never let Jorm into the kitchen

Well this was certainly a lot more tame than I had expected from Rejet. After MoshiKami I expected the same level of gross but actually other than a few bad ends, the game was mostly fine.  The bad ends weren’t even the level of bad that they usually have in their games so honestly the entire thing felt watered down for their usual stuff. They ALMOST went their usual direction in Hel’s route which had me terrified for a bit – but they quickly took a Uturn back into the safe zone lol. Along with watering down the content they also watered down the features they would have in a lot of their previous games – CG touch and dummy head voices. This game had neither which was kind of a disappointment. The Mini Story omake was also completely unvoiced and the CGs from it weren’t even in the gallery so you had to save as you go.

Story wise, uh well I guess MoshiKami was Japanese mythology so they decided to move on to Norse Mythology for this game. Unfortunately like with KamiAso, they didn’t follow the mythology 100% just to advance the plot and involve the heroine. The romance felt like it took a backseat aside from Jorm and Hati’s routes. I feel like the plot overwhelmed all the other routes, and especially Fenrir. It was almost unusual as to how the heroine quickly fell in love with the guys. I think each route spanned for about a month before the ending so that didn’t help things either. The order I played the game in was almost like “Least important to most important” and honestly the entire game canonically rotates around Ende…so by the time you finish the game it feels like none of the other routes even matter. It also makes you think like “if she doesn’t end up with Ende doesn’t that technically make all the other endings an auto-bad end” ??

I kept expecting something good to happen with Snowtora or some kind of secret revelation but alas, I was only disappointed.

So yea it kinda left a weird impression on me of “well it was pretty decent I guess….but also I’m probably going to forget about this game in a couple months anyway.” The game is also very short too – I played at snail speed but if I had sat down and grinded it out I’d probably be done in about 3-4 days. Anyway if you’re looking for Rejet’s usual bullshit you won’t find it here but if you want a fairly decent story then maybe check the game out. It’s honestly nothing that special to me, and if anything it’s almost a disappointment because it leaves me feeling like something was lacking. I can’t quite pinpoint what it is, but in a way it feels like a nail in the coffin for Rejet’s game development.

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4 thoughts on “Otome Game Review: Usotsuki Shangrila”

  1. wow I was thinking of the terrible stuff that could happen in this game after MoshiKami because IT’S REJET. I read in amazon that the game is fairly short so I guess it’s right?

  2. yea honestly I was expecting something extremely crazy but yea no…nothing special at all lol. but honestly I think it’s good, MoshiKami was just way too much lol

  3. Wow. I am… surprise? I mean, it’s a Rejet’s game! I kinda … I always expect the worst of this company e.e You can say that Rejet’s games traumatized me. I even jumped to your final thoughts for fear LOL But I think I’ll read the details of the routes now!
    I do not think this game will be at the top of my list, but it can be a good time when things are slow.
    I love your reviews! You helped me save money ❤

    Good luck with the next game on your list!

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