This world is full of absurdities, and it's painfully difficult to live in.
— Opening line before the title screen
Gaku Serizawa is a 22-year-old unemployed man addicted to pachinko. In between his pachinko sessions, he meets a girl named Miu Mochida, who first takes a liking to the sweets he brings. As the two grow closer, Gaku's world full of pessimism starts to change for the better.
The Saddest Smile in the World (Sekai de Ichiban Kanashii Egao) is a freeware kinetic Visual Novel by the amateur group →Quantize_, and is also their debut work. Originally released in Japan in March 2017, it has an English and Spanish localization courtesy of the Spanish translation group Shinzou Translations in September 2023.
Both the English and Spanish versions can be found here
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The Saddest Smile in the World contains the following tropes.
- Character Development: Gaku starts the story as an unemployed pachinko addict, bitter over losing his job and resorting to gambling to get by. But once he meets Miu, his life changes in more ways than one, notably finding a stable job and getting over his addiction.
- Delicate and Sickly: Miu herself. As a result of a head trauma brought about by her father hitting her with a bottle during a heated argument with her mother, she developed a rare and incurable kind of brain aneurysm where the bacteria threatens her brain, causing her to collapse a few times throughout the story.
- Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: At the start of the story, Gaku wants to find meaning in his miserable life besides playing pachinko. Having quit his job and drifting away from one of his old hobbies (playing the guitar), he wastes his life and money away gambling, until he meets Miu.
- Evolving Title Screen: Once you complete the game, the title screen changes to the one displaying Miu bearing her Wistful Smile.
- Gambling Ruins Lives: Addiction to pachinko has ruined more than one named life in this story. While Gaku has to resort to lying to his parents (they send money to him monthly) to continue feeding his addiction and is about to go down into a destructive path, two men already paid the consequences: Shige-san, the man Gaku frequently meets in the pachinko parlor they both frequent, eventually commits suicide by hanging due to being on the run from a loan shark; and Miu's father, who frequently argued with his wife over the debts the family piled up as a result of his own addiction, and was also responsible for Miu's rare kind of brain aneurysm for which there is no cure.
- Hidden Depths: Miu may be a cute and lively girl who loves sweets, right? That's until she reveals to Gaku that she has only a month to live, after she helps him turn his life around.
- Love Epiphany: Gaku realizes he has feelings for Miu, having helped him get back on his feet beforehand, despite knowing already she is not long for this world. He indeed realizes those feelings for her the day before she dies, by taking her on a date.
- Mob Debt: The reason for Shige-san's suicide. He borrowed so much from a loan shark to feed his pachinko addiction, and when the stakes didn't favor him, he hanged himself in the pachinko parlor's bathroom stall, as Gaku horribly finds out.
- Title Drop: Gaku outright drops the title at the end of his first and last date with Miu at the amusement park, as she brings out her tear-filled smile, knowing she will Face Death with Dignity.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Miu, a victim of a broken family and riddled with a terminal illness, dies at the end of the story, leaving Gaku brokenhearted but fully accepting of her inevitable fate.
- Unfulfilled Purpose Misery: Miu wanted to be a character designer, after being inspired by the cute mascots she first saw at the amusement park when she was young. She even went to a specialized school to fulfill her dreams... only for her life to get shattered as a result of her family breaking apart due to her father's pachinko addiction. Fortunately, Gaku fulfills her wish of having her design characters for a product he helps develop at the confectionery he works for.
- Utsuge: If the title doesn't clue you in, you'll be in for a sad tale rooted in the harshness of Real Life.
