waterscroll

This was some of the best writing I've seen in the game, but it's hard to summarize because not a lot happens.

Kenshin and his army don't arrive because Ieyasu's army holds them off. So all that's left is the inevitable slow defeat, as they sacrifice more and more people to try to save a smaller and smaller remnant. In the end Shingen sacrifices even himself to save MC and his child. Through it all we get Shingen's memories of his own father, whom he had to depose for the sake of the clan. Shingen's father was a good person, kind and nurturing, but was a weak leader. In deposing him Shingen had to destroy the side of himself that could be weak and vulnerable, the side of himself that was like his father and the side of himself that needed his father. It was only in his few moments with MC that he could be that side of himself again.

At the end we see Nobunaga killing Shingen, word for word as it is in Nobunaga's act 2 but from Shingen's perspective. Nobunaga is a cruel, cold upstart. He is in no way as good a leader as Shingen, he's selfish and arrogant and doesn't think about or listen to other people's needs. The only thing he has that Shingen doesn't have is guns.

I am reminded again how much I appreciate SLBP's take on history. The winners don't win because they're better, they win because they win and there's no greater moral to it. There's no sense of anything mitigating the tragedy here. Shingen, for all his flaws, is a better leader than Nobunaga, and he becomes an even better leader over the course of the route. But history doesn't care because that's not how history works.

In his last moments Shingen asks Yukimura to care for MC and to help raise his child. It's so different from how Nobunaga relates to MC as a symbol of his ambition, someone he needs to possess like the country. Shingen, in his last moments, is thinking about what MC needs and how even with him gone she can have a good life. At the very end we see the strength it takes for her to go on living, but she does.

The reincarnation epilogue was one of the simplest I've seen, but beautifully written. MC and Shingen find each other because they both have matching birthmarks corresponding to the bites they gave each other. And now there's no war, so there's nothing else he needs to be than himself and nothing else he needs to do but love MC and be her partner and the father of their children.

This was a beautiful story. I'm glad to have read this route, for all its ups and downs.

Next up: Kenshin, since that seems to be the obvious one to do next.