Summary (SPOILERS!)
Chapter One: Down the Rabbit-Hole I DTRH1 follows Minakami Yuki as she meets Takashima Zakuro on the rooftop and soon takes her in as her "maid", by Zakuro's own request. Yuki's parents are out of town and her childhood best friends, the Watatsuki sisters Kagami and Tsukasa, have been tasked with taking care of her; But upon realizing Zakuro is staying at Yuki's house, they get jealous and stay with her, too, having a sleepover. They play a form of spin-the-bottle, and your choice in this portion is crucial to moving on to the real story.
By kissing Zakuro, Yuki ends up going on a date with her in which they visit the amusement park and go into a haunted house, with paintings of the "end sky", hospitals, and areas devoid of life. Zakuro and Yuki end up dating (if i recall correctly) and eventually Zakuro and Yuki return to the end sky together, taking a train.
DTRH1 Review This was one of the cutest parts of the story; Steam only sells this chapter if I recall and it's a really cute and lighthearted yuri moege. plus the art style is flipping adorable and the yuri scenes are all really wholesome. a lot of people don't like it because it has almost no connection to the real story, but i really enjoyed it because of course i did i love yuri i love moe art styles and it's lowkey just lucky star yuri fanfiction bc tsukasa and kagami are.. literally the characters from lucky star LMFAO and there's a reason for this but i'll get into it later..
Chapter Two: DTRH2 down the rabbit hole 2 is where the story
actually begins. yuki minakami has now been thrown into a mystery regarding an underground school message board, her girlfriend takashima zakuro's suicide, and mamiya takuji, the meek boy who seems to have transformed overnight into a crazed "savior" of those in the school, and whom everyone seems to worship. it's an introduction to the plot, with not much of note really happening, since a lot of the things that occur in this chapter happen again in later chapters.
the most important part of this story comes near the end, when yuki calls the deceased zakuro's phone. zakuro has been sending text messages to everyone in the school from beyond the grave, and yuki is about to get to the source of these mysterious, "cursed" messages, when she calls the phone and hears it ring. opening her desk drawer, she finds zakuro's phone. this is undoubtedly the most terrifying part of the first chapter, in my opinion, because if i recall correctly it's followed immediately after by a terrifying and unexplainable jumpscare.
after this part, things start to ramp up. an absolutely horrific scene involving kagami occurs, one which i won't describe here, and shortly after, the chapter ends.
this chapter is one of the only chapters set in the main storyline with no alternative endings. i assume this is because there aren't many important side characters that don't have their own chapters, and because it's the reader's first introduction to the real plot of subarashiki hibi.
Chapter Three: It's My Own Invention it's my own invention is the longest chapter of the game as well as the most liked chapter. while dtrh2 has a lot of denpa elements, it's my own invention is the personification of denpa. we're put into the perspective of this guy:
who is the most insane character of the entire game, literally. mamiya takuji is a freak. he's a porn addict, the og gooner, an incel (for most of the story), and schizophrenic (or psychotic? i'm not sure what the correct term would be). he's tormented by tomosane yuuki, who he believes was put on this earth solely for the purpose of destroying him, and is obsessed with magical girl riruru chan (pictured below)
when we first meet him, we're immediately hit with his own porn addiction-induced hallucinations of zakuro. the game really doesn't hold back when it comes to takuji; he is insane, like really, really insane, and the game makes sure you know that from the beginning. we learn about his secret base beneath the school's old pool, and then, shortly after, we learn that takuji was the sole witness of zakuro's suicide. takuji takes zakuro's phone and leaves the scene, going to his secret base to watch riruru chan to get his mind off of things, but instead sees three rirurus, one as zakuro, and the other two as her friends, reenacting the scene immediately before their group suicide. however, instead of being scared or anything, takuji is overjoyed, now realizing he can see zakuro whenever he wants!
by this point it should be made clear that takuji believed himself to be dating zakuro, and was in love with her, as she was the first girl to show him any kindness, and felt that they were kindred spirits due to them both being bullied.
takuji takes it upon himself, as both zakuro's "boyfriend" and the owner of the school's underground message board (remember that?) to use zakuro's phone to send messages to all of those who tormented her during her short life. then he blacks out, and when he awakens, he sees riruru drawn all over the walls, and is now able to talk to her. this is when his psyche dramatically shifts, likely catapulted by zakuro's death– way, way later in the game, we learn that takuji's mental illnesses all stemmed from witnessing the death of his younger brother, so it makes sense that he would have a similar reaction to the death of his "first love".
upon getting a billion years worth of knowledge from riruru chan, he returns to school the next day to make his great speech about how the world is going to end on july 20th and so and so and so. it's so annoying. honestly takuji's chapter was fucking awesome in terms of horror, but takuji himself is so incredibly insufferable.
the chapter goes on and on and takuji gets more and more insane. he believes yuki, kagami, tsukasa, and tomosane to all be demons, and he believes otonashi ayana to be "riruru chan's dregs" or "dark riruru". he also does something incredibly crazy with zakuro's desk. i'm trying really hard to censor myself but this chapter is the most chalk-full of h-scenes, considering who the narrator is.
eventually, he recruits kimika tachibana to be his second-in-command as the savior, telling her to spread the word that he will save people from the end of the world. iirc, this is because kimika was a bystander to zakuro being bullied, and thus, he believed he had to repent. however, he doesn't punish any of zakuro's bullies beyond the messages he sends to them through zakuro's phone; which, mind you, is the main motive for his bullies following takuji's cult of sorts. takuji proves himself to be the "true" savior with his reliable predictions about deaths and zakuro's messages, which makes sense, considering he is the one orchestrating it all in the first place.
kimika is the brown haired girl, zakuro is the black haired girl.
he gets worse and worse, and it all culminates on one or two fateful days in which takuji exits the school to see this.
and he walks up to the roof, only to see the war between rirurus. i think. this might happen the next day, it's been a while. he either goes up to the roof and sees the rirurus or goes up to the roof and meets god.
the war
god, aka riruru's father.
eventually, takuji has a run in with tomosane, and despite nearly losing, manages to stab tomosane; following this, takuji and his believers ascend to the end sky.
IMOI Review while being the longest chapter in the game, i really like it.. it starts off pretty boring, but imoi just does denpa so well. it is
the denpa portion of subahibi; it's scary, it's so fucking confusing, it makes no sense, and it has you as delusional as takuji. half the time i couldn't tell if what was happening was real or a delusion, and the fact it happens so early in the story allows for a lot more confusion and makes the chapter that much more scary. yuki wasn't there for half of the things that happen in imoi, so it's not like you have any sort of reality check.
while i did find the heavy amount of sexual content in this chapter to be monotonous at times (and i found the teacher father-daughter incest to just be. like. so fucking disgusting and unnecessary), it was incredibly relevant to takuji's perspective and personality. he is a porn addict and an incel, so of course half of his delusions have to do with having sex with girls at his school. along with that, i found takuji's portrayal to be really relevant and accurate. he is an actual incel which is so funny but also seeing things from the perspective of a guy like takuji, especially as a woman, was really interesting. like of course he is also like. psychotic. but anyways i found it to still be a really interesting perspective that you don't often see in this sort of media besides in like, chaos head noah.
Chapter Four: Looking-Glass Insects looking glass insects is by far the hardest read in all of subahibi, and that's saying a lot considering all of what happens in imoi (its so crazy once you finish imoi you dont even get a break from the crazy shit). it follows the perspective of zakuro takashima, so of course it is a lot shorter than the other chapters due to her suicide eight days before the end sky, but nonetheless it does feel very long.
if you've ever read metamorphosis (not the story by kakfa), looking glass insects has a very similar vibe, albeit a completely different story. takashima zakuro has always percieved herself to be a worm, and thus endures the abuse she faces at the hands of her bullies, megu and satoko. she's bullied as well as isolated from the rest of her class, and believes her bullying to be because she's ugly, though in reality it's because one of her bully's boyfriends finds her attractive, so the bullies take it out on her.
she meets takuji mamiya while skipping class, particularly, she meets minakami yuki as takuji; lgi is the first chapter to reveal mamiya's dissociative identity disorder. she becomes smitten with him, however, she later meets takuji as takuji near the old pool, and finds him disgusting and pathetic, escaping his secret base as soon as possible.
her bullying and crush on yuki are the main events of zakuro's chapter; following her encounter with takuji, her bullying escalates quite a bit, with her ally kimika taking the brunt of their mutual tormenting. she has her skirt cut and is forced to dance in front of the class, kimika is forced to do things in a restaurant while being filmed as a part of megu and satoko's scheme for making money, and one day, when kimika is unable to fight off the bullies, things end up at the worst possible outcome, with zakuro being forced to do cocaine and then being raped at a karaoke bar, and then raped by the male bullies of the school.
this is her final straw, leading her to reply to an email she recieved from someone from an anonymous online forum for those who are victims of bullying. she believes that, having been raped, takuji will never love her. after all, when she met takuji near the pool, he told her he was burning his manga because the heroine wasn't a virgin. takuji was the one thing keeping her going, the one person she could be with without worrying about megu and satoko; and now, she thinks, he's gone, too.
she's driven to the point of hallucinating, seeing god at the roof of the school telling her the same things she feared; that she's dirty, and that takuji will never love her. she meets up with two girls, the same girls who emailed her, and as it turns out, they'd gone through similar experiences. they explain to her a long and complex story of how they once were angel warriors, but after beating a dark force, they were cursed to live awful lives on earth. in order to regain their powers, they must face a near-death experience.
so they do, heading to the rooftop of an apartment building. on the way there, zakuro runs into takuji; he promises to protect her and kisses her.
but, as they're about to jump off the building, the two girls come to their senses. zakuro forcefully drags them along with her, jumping off the roof.
LGI Review this is one of the most awful chapters of subahibi, not because it's badly written but because it's well written and places you in the perspective of a girl whos basically been tormented the whole time she's been in high school. as a woman, i found this chapter especially hard to get through, and i had to skip through almost all of the scenes of sexual assault. it's less scary in the way that imoi is, and more scary in a realistic sense. everything that happens to zakuro has and will happen to real people, in real life, and there are people who have to go through the same torture she's had to face.
if you have finished LGI, i'd reccomend replaying and going down the kimika route; i had to play the kimika ending after finishing lgi just so i could feel relaxed and not nauseous before going to bed. it's much more sweet, it's a incredibly good ending, and it has yuri.
