Visual Novel / Wonderful Everyday

“Live Happily! That's all.”

Wonderful Everyday, known in Japan as Subarashiki Hibi: Furenzoku Sonzai (Japanese: 素晴らしき日々 ～不連続存在～, "Wonderful Everyday: Discontinuous Existence") and sometimes abbreviated on the internet as "SubaHibi", is a Japanese adult visual novel developed and published by Kero Q. It's a remake of Tsui No Sora, a visual novel released on 1997. It was released on March 26, 2010 for Microsoft Windows. It was released in English in August of 2017. It is widely regarded to be a great, if strange, Visual Novel.

Subarashiki Hibi contains six stories, the titles of which are taken from chapters in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Most of the stories take place in the fictional Suginomiya neighborhood of Tokyo and recount the month of July 2012 from different perspectives.

Many of the tropes in this work count as spoilers, ESPECIALLY if you haven't finished reading the first chapter. Proceed with caution.

Tropes:

• Adaptation Expansion: Big time. For reference, the original Tsui no Sora is estimated to take less than 10 hours to fully read through. Subarashiki Hibi takes about 50.
• A God Am I: Takuji Mamiya proclaims himself to be a 'Savior' and starts a cult in the school to prepare for the 'End Sky'.
• Alice Allusion: An Indirect version. All the chapter names come from Lewis Carroll's works. Several passages and poems are also quoted word-for-word in the openings of some of the chapters.
• Ambiguous Situation: What is really going on at the school? Who is Takuji? Will the world really end on the 20th? Made more confusing by showing conflicting events through the eyes of a series of Unreliable Narrators.
• Anyone Can Die: Yes it does. By the end of the game, the only main character that are still alive are Tomosane Mamiya and Hasaki.
• Apocalypse Cult:
  • Takuji's followers are willing to do whatever he says to be "saved" before the appearance of the 'End Sky'.
  • Takuji and Hasaki's mother was a part of one of these when they were growing up.
• Art Shift: Some sequences are illustrated with a disturbingly childish styling.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: The one CG cut from the English release was for this reason. The scene in question is kept largely intact through the text and was very short anyway.
• Black Speech: In It's My Own Invention Takuji and the magical girl Riruru have a... conversation(?) that gets more deranged as it progresses. Eventually instead of voiced lines the player just hears assorted noises and static sounds represented by symbols, giving this sort of impression.
• Brother–Sister Incest:
  • In Jabberwocky I depending on a choice made earlier in the chapter, Tomosane and Hasaki can have sex on the bar's rooftop before he confronts Takuji.
  • In the Wonderful Everyday ending Kimura even teases Tomosane Mamiya about his relationship with his sister, implying it continued after the events of the game.
• The Bully: Several of the minor characters, notably Shiroyama (who leads his own group of cronies), Megu, and Satako.
• But Thou Must!:
  • Down the Rabbit Hole II has the largest number of choices but they are all meaningless, at most changing the order in which Yuki visits places at school. The chapter only has a single ending.
  • One of the 'choices' in It's My Own Invention is forced onto the player in this way. The entire screen fills up with the words Suppress the source of the Black Surge, forcing the player to click on it. This hammers in Takuji's mental state at the time to the player.
• Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality: Early on in It's My Own Invention, rejecting or accepting Takuji's erotic delusions determines which path you're put on for the chapter. For added emphasis you're repeatedly given the choice to accept or reject the delusions during the scene in question and continuing to accept it leads you onto the main path for the chapter.
  Takuji: There's no way that was a delusion! If I had such a realistic delusion like that, I wouldn't... I wouldn't even be able to tell the difference between reality and my delusions!
• Chuunibyou: Takuji is stated several times to be an Otaku and something of a loner. His 'fantasies' and hobbies further confirm this.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Zakuro seems to be like this at first. In her chapter most of the nonsense she's babbling about makes sense to her.
• Crotch-Grab Sex Check: Takuji has an Erotic Dream about a hermaphrodite Ayana and gets upset when he snaps back to reality. He grasps her crotch to check if there's anything there, earning a punch in the face.
• Cult: Takuji starts one in preparation for the 'End Sky', as more and more of his predictions come true his following grows.
• Darker and Edgier: Incredibly, the entire game is this once you get past the first chapter.
• Dead All Along: Yuki and Takuji died several years before the events of the story, the current ones being split personalities created by Tomosane Mamiya.
• Decomposite Character: Kotomi Wakatsuki, the Childhood Friend and Love Interest of Tsui no Sora, is split into twins Kagami and Tsukasa. As well as Hasaki.
• Defiled Forever: Takuji tells Zakuro he's burning a manga because the heroine isn't a virgin, invoking this trope. Later, Zakuro herself gets extremely anxious over this while being raped, worrying that Takuji won't love her if she's been defiled by other men. The idea that she could get a 'new' body if reborn as an angel plays a big part in her agreeing to do the Spiral Matai.
• Demoted to Extra: The Yokoyama siblings Kiyoshi and Yasuko were prominent supporting characters in Tsui no Sora, with Kiyoshi being Takuji's first follower and Yasuko being a major follower as well and the one who served as Takuji's second-in-command. Both of these roles are given to Kimika, and the two end up very minor characters with only a few lines each.
• Dissonant Serenity: Shows up quite a few times. Takuji and Kimika falling to their deaths is treated very calmly and even happily as they accept their situation and hit the ground.
• Double Standard: Rape, Female on Female: Averted. The sexual harassment and abuse Megu and Satako inflict on Zakuro and Kimika is shown to be horrifically traumatizing.
• Erotic Dream: Some of the 'daydream' scenes early on in It's My Own Invention wind up like this.
• Expy: Most of the characters are recycled from Tsui no Sora:
  • Yuki Minakami, Tomosane Yuuki and Tomosane Mamiya are based on Yukito Minakami, the aloof protagonist with an adoring childhood friend.
  • The Wakatsuki sisters and Hasaki Mamiya are based on Kotomi Wakatsuki, the protagonist's childhood friend. Kagami is also subjected to the same rape torture scene as Kotomi.
  • Takuji Mamiya is pretty much the same, a bullied kid who becomes the leader of a cult. The part about him being a split personality based on a sociopathic dead child is a new addition.
  • Zakuro Takashima is pretty much the same. The part about her falling in love with Tomosane Mamiya and unbeknownst to her, his personalities is a new addition.
  • Kimika Tachibana is based on Kiyoshi Yokoyama and Kimika Ishihara. Just like Kiyoshi, she becomes Takuji's first follower. Like Ishihara, Kimika is very loyal towards her best friend, to the point of comitting suicide for her.
• Fan Disservice: The game has quite a few sex scenes, but a fair amount of them involve rape, harassment, bullying, torture, or happen during hallucinations turning plenty of them into this.
• Foreshadowing: Loads towards the two biggest twists in the game, that Yuki, Takuji and Tomosane Yuuki are three personalities inhabiting the same body and that Kagami and Tsukasa are actually just a projection on Hasaki and her stuffed rabbit:
  • Despite supposedly being a notorious delinquent, Tomosane Yuuki is never mentioned over the course of Down the Rabbit Hole. Because, from the perspective of everyone aside from Takuji, he's the notorious delinquent. Same goes for the suspicious absence of Hasaki in It's My Own Invention, as well as the lack of references to the twins from other characters aside from Yuki and Takuji.
  • Early into Down The Rabbit Hole II, Kagami talks about how she mistook Yuki for a boy when they were young. As it turns out, Yuki is a boy, or more precisely the Split Personality of one.
  • When Hasaki is introduced, she makes a bizarre joke where she multiple times gives Blatant Lies regarding her relationship with her brother. As shown outright later on, she's deliberately lying to gauge which personality she's talking to.
  • Yuki's sudden, abrupt Freak Out when investigating the fingerprints in her house, which is strangely never referenced in subsequent scenes. Jabberwocky reveals that Yuki and Takuji's minds have built themselves to reject anything that would contradict their mental perception of the world, meaning the bizarre blackouts were just their minds going into shutdown.
  • Takuji mentions that Shiroyama and his friends stopped tormenting him after Tomosane Yuuki asserted control over them. This is because Takuji and Tomosane as the same person.
  • Partway into It's My Own Invention, Yasuko references another Takuji going around asking questions. This sounds like nonsense, befitting the tone of the story at that point, but the description she gives is basically what Yuki was doing in the previous arc.
  • An eagle-eyed reader may notice that, throughout all of Down the Rabbit Hole II, Kagami is never shown without Tsukasa, a major hint that she's just a mental projection on a rabbit doll Hasaki carries around.
  • At one point in It's My Own Invention, Takuji mentally sees the twins merging into a singular person.
  • The fact that Tsukasa and Hasaki have the same hair dec.
  • Zakuro has crushes on Yuki, Tomosane Yuuki and Takuji. Except that they're all the same person and Zakuro is in love with Tomosane Mamiya. She isn't aware of his multiple personalities and just thinks he's acting out of character.
  • When Takuji orders Kagami raped and tortured to death, his followers act noticeably confused by the order, which seems strange given the horrible things they're otherwise willing to commit without question. Their confusion is actually because he's ordering they do such a thing to a stuffed toy.
  • By the end of Down the Rabbit Hole II Kagami literally becomes a rabbit doll, and the neighbors in the house that was supposed to be the Wakatsuki household turn out to be a completely different family, so by the time of the rape scene you can kinda guess what really happens.
  • In It's My Own Invention after being thoroughly raped Kagami offers to just hand-wash her at about 30 degrees to make her as good as new. Takuji freaks out and responds with "This time I'll really break this fucking rabbit!"
• Gainax Ending: In the End Sky II ending, Yuki and Ayana have a fourth-wall breaking dialogue about the events of the visual novel. Notably, Ayana gives a number of conjectures but refuses to give a single answer about what really happened. Then, Yuki walks through a door similar to the events in the first chapter and the title screen changes to the one seen at the start of the game.
• Genius Book Club: During Looking-Glass Insects Takuji is seen reading a wide variety of literature, notably the play Cyrano De Bergac (both in Japanese and in the original French) as well as Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant.
  • Takuji mentions that he doesn't understand French fluently and is mostly just picking up a few phrases here and there with the help of a dictionary, but he still wanted to try his hand at understanding it.
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Hasaki takes her stuffed rabbit doll everywhere with her. It's because her brother made it by hand and she holds onto it to recall a time when things were better.
• Gratuitous Rape: Some of the 'Delusion' scenes in It's My Own Invention can be this for viewers, especially since they don't do much aside from highlight how Takuji has lost touch with reality, and/or titillate the player. The Reveal that a good many of the H-scenes didn't happen takes away some of the punch.
• Hate Sink: Each and every single one of the bullies, male and female alike. Every one of them is cruel in their own way, with little to no redeeming qualities.
• Humble Goal: Arguably part of the point of the idea behind the "wonderful everyday" that the characters strive for is to appreciate living a peaceful, ordinary life. And after some of the things the characters go through, it isn't hard to imagine that just normality is something worth striving for in their case.
• Intrepid Reporter: Kimura, a minor character who appears in later chapters, tries to be this while reporting on the events surrounding Kita high.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Tomosane Mamiya had this with the real Yuki. He was a child while she was a teenager at best. However, after her death, she retained her appearance while Tomosane/Takuji grew up.
• Lean and Mean: Tomosane and Takuji are noticeably skinny, but still manage to be stronger than most all the other characters. This is somewhat justified as both characters had extensive martial arts training as children.
• Loners Are Freaks: Both Takuji and Zakuro are seen as loners by the school, and both of them are bullied harshly.
• Mad Oracle: Those who believe him take Takuji to be this.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Yuki could be interpreted as such. Played with, in that the version of Yuki isn't the real one, but rather Tomosane Mamiya's idealized construction of her who exists entirely for his benefit.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: A recurring question is where the tie between reality and fiction, and if anything supernatural is even happening, or if it's just the head of the protagonists. While the majority of the "supernatural" occurrences are more or less revealed to be fake by the end, whether Yuki and Takuji were really the ghosts of the real people or just split personalities modeled on them is never revealed, and nothing remotely hints on what Ayana even is.
• Mind Screw: Bizarre symbolism, obscure literary references, Unreliable Narrators, graphic erotica, nonsensical conversations, and philosophical musings all come together to create this trope quite nicely.
• Multi-Gendered Split Personalities: In Jabberwocky it is revealed that Yuki Minakami is one of Tomosane Mamiya's personalities and is supposedly the sort of person he always wanted to become.
• Multiple Endings: Both for the visual novel as a whole, and for individual chapters.
  • The three major endings to the game are Wonderful Everyday, Hill of Sunflowers, and EndSky II.
  • Notable branches include Kimika's endings to both It's My Own Invention and Looking-Glass Insects.
  • The Kagami/Tsukasa endings to Down The Rabbit-Hole I are much more brief and only differ by a few scenes.
• Multiple Route Mystery: Each chapter shows a little piece of what's really going on.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: Most everyone in the school interprets Zakuro's death and the 'accidents' that follow as her cursing her bullies for tormenting her. This isn't actually what's going on.
• Non-Indicative First Episode: "Down The Rabbit Hole I" is VERY different from the rest of the game. Afterward things get progressively Darker and Edgier.
• Once More, with Clarity: The Which Dreamed It is full of this. For example, Takuji orders Kagami to be raped and tortured to death, much to the confusion of his followers. When it's over, a tearful Yuki carries her back home. When we see what actually happened from Hasaki's perspective, Tomosane Mamiya ordered people to rape her stuffed rabbit only for him to return to his senses and carry the toy back home.
  • Arguably the entire game. Every time Yuki, Takuji or Tomosane Yuuki appeared, everyone else just saw Tomosane Mamiya acting out of character.
• Parental Incest: A very...weird take on it. It's actually the adult-aged 'child' in this case who rapes the parent at the behest of a deranged cult leader.
• Parrot Exposition: It is extremely common for characters to rephrase and repeat statements as questions in the narrative of this VN.
• Rape as Drama: Near the end of Looking Glass Insects Zakuro is drugged and gang-raped by Shiroyama and his friends. She grows to hate herself and tries to block out the idea of the experience until it is too much to handle.
  • In It's My Own Invention Takuji is sexually assaulted by his bullies but it's not brought up during the chapter after the scene and doesn't seem to affect him very deeply at first. Jabberwocky reveals that the trauma from this experience is what lead him to create Tomosane Yuuki The Destroyer.
• Rape by Proxy: Takuji tells the teacher, Asumi Kiyokawa, that in order to become one of his followers she must have sex with her own Father. In a game full of disturbing sex scenes it manages to stand out.
  • The worst part is Takuji doesn't care about the mental and emotional trauma this caused, and tells the students to use her as a toilet after her ordeal.
• Rape Leads to Insanity: In the case of one of the characters, committing rape made her decide to run around the town naked and laughing like a lunatic. To be entirely fair, it wasn't her idea.
• "Ray of Hope" Ending: The "Wonderful Everyday" and "Hill of Sunflowers" endings are surprisingly hopeful despite all that happened. Tomosane Mamiya and Hasaki get to live out mostly normal lives in both of these endings, and "Hill of Sunflowers" even brings back Yuki, in some sense.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Kagami is the Red Oni to her twin sister Tsukasa's Blue Oni.
• Sanity Slippage: Several characters, but Zakuro after her gang rape and Takuji after Zakuro's suicide stand out, in part because it's witnessed first-hand.
• Shameful Strip: One of the ways the school bullies harass their victims in a few chapters.
• Shout-Out: All over the place throughout the visual novel.
  • "The brain is wider than the sky..."
  • "’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe..."
  • "I know them know, my ancient enemies― Falsehood! . . . There! There! Prejudice― Compromise― Cowardice―"
  • "The subject does not belong to the world, but it is a limit of the world."
  • A pair of purple-haired twins named Kagami and Tsukasa, wonder why that sounds familiar... This is actually plot-relevant.
  • "Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good; for one of two things, either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another."
  • At one point Takuji burns a manga and claims it was because the heroine wasn't a virgin, calling to mind the outrage around Kannagi: Crazy Shrine Maidens.
  • References to the works of H.P. Lovecraft appear, including name drops of Nyarlathotep and Yog-Sothoth, as well as "Teke-li-li!"
• Slipping a Mickey: Happens to Zakuro. She is forcefully drugged by her bullies and raped during her chapter.
• Split-Personality Team: In Jabberwocky the scenes with Tomosane and Yuki have shades of this as one takes over when the other has more relevant skills.
• Strip Poker: In the first chapter Yuki, Kagami, Tsukasa, and Zakuro play a game where the loser had to obey the winner. It wound up like this eventually, with Yuki being the only one left with clothes.
• Teens Are Monsters: Some of the bullying in the story is...extreme to say the least.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: In It's My Own Invention the player will see many of Takuji's delusions.
  • Some examples include drawings on the wall speaking to him, believing he had the ability to 'purify' a concoction full of drugs, and several strange CGs in the gallery that flashed in front of him during his breakdowns.
• Tomato Surprise: Despite what you're made to think, the houses which Yuki and Takuji live in are actually the same building, since the two are actually the same person. Cleverly, the game hides this by only showing one side of the building until The Reveal.
• Trauma Conga Line: Looking Glass Insects is this for Zakuro from the halfway point onward.
• Uncanny Valley Girl: Otonashi Ayana, who appears to each of the protagonists in their respective chapters.
• Unreliable Narrator: Takuji, Yuki and Tomosane Yuuki are Tomosane Mamiya's split personalities. While he switches between them, everyone else will only see him acting out of character.
• Wham Episode: Looking-Glass Insects changes virtually the entire direction of the story. Particualy crucial is the reveal that Yuki, Kagami, Tsukasa and Tomosane Yuuki don't actually exist, with the twins just being a mental projection on Hasaki, and Yuki, Takuji and Tomosane Yuuki being of Takuji, whose real name is Tomosane Mamiya.