I’ve been interested in SINce Memories: Off the Starry Sky ever since I first heard about it getting translated. As a spinoff of one of the longest-running series of visual novels around, Memories Off, I’d been curious to check one of these out, given the series is rather obscure in the West. Now in 2024, publisher PQube has finally brought us an official English translation of one of these for the first time.
Memories Off
To offer a brief history lesson, the Memories Off series originally began via now-defunct developer KID, probably most known in the West as the team behind Ever17, one of the first relatively high-profile visual novels ever officially localized to English. Memories Off began in the late ‘90s as a series of all-ages romance visual novels back when those were becoming more popular in Japan. The series was later acquired by the company now known as Mages, which has kept it going ever since. SINce Memories: Off the Starry Sky is listed as one of the series’ many spinoffs, but it is the first title to be officially localized to English.
The obvious question then becomes, “Do I need to know anything about the previous games to understand this one?” After playing it and doing some extra research, honestly not really. The setting of the game (Sumisora) is a recurring location throughout several installments, and there is one side character (Shin) who shows up frequently in various games, but the events of SINce Memories are self-contained and you’re fine to go without playing any of the previous ones. There are some minor references to characters or locations of older Memories Off titles, but these are inconsequential to the main story and only come up in passing once in a while.
Memories Off titles tend to be more related in terms of general tone or themes in how they handle romantic drama rather than via direct narrative continuation. So while SINce Memories is attached to an existing series, there’s no real barrier to entry and you are fine coming into it blind.
Picking Up the Pieces
SINce Memories: Off the Starry Sky focuses on the story of protagonist Junya Mizumoto, a college student who works as a handyman (and occasional gofer) for his family business in the town of Sumisora. A year prior, he was involved in a tragic car accident while riding with his older brother Takaya on a job that took the elder Mizumoto brother’s life. The memories of that day still linger and burden Junya with survivor’s guilt. His brother was a mature and reliable figure who Junya idolized, and his absence now leaves Junya with a noticeable hole in his life.
He takes on a project to renovate an old house of his childhood friend Chihaya, the daughter of an esteemed and wealthy politician. While taking on this job, he comes across a young girl named Azusa, who appears to have been especially close to Takaya and who lashes out at Junya, saying he can never take Takaya’s place.
Several of the routes in SINce Memories are about Junya trying to find his own place in the world, growing as a person, and uncovering a series of missing details and memories relating to the passing of his brother as well as those of several people in his life. The first few chapters of the story are structured as a common route, introducing many characters as well as beginning the plot threads that form into each character’s routes.
The common route itself is…admittedly a slow burn, to put it nicely. SINce Memories: Off the Starry Sky introduces a few of its hooks relatively early, but it doesn’t go into a lot of details or do much to establish further intrigue for quite some time. The common route can often feel rather mundane to get through, and that’s before really getting into the meat of any given character’s arc. There’s not a lot of time spent on the development or personality of the cast in what ends up being a fairly lengthy intro. Although you’re presented with choices, there isn’t a ton yet to make any of them super compelling.
There are five total routes corresponding to five main heroines, each with a normal end and a best end, along with a handful of bad ends tied to specific choices in certain routes. There are fourteen endings in total. It’s worth mentioning that this is one of those visual novels where a lot of decisions affect your ability to get the best endings (which meant I had to save and load frequently to try to get all of them).
Though you can go through the routes in any order, I’ll be discussing each route here in the order I would most recommend going through.
Chunyu
Early on, Junya meets a Chinese exchange student at university named Chunyu Huang in a purposefully fairly dramatic first meeting. The two become quick friends, and she asks him to help with a job to recover a family treasure that she believes to be somewhere in Sumisora.
Chunyu is a fairly direct person who contrasts the somewhat reserved Junya pretty considerably from the outset. She wears her emotions on her sleeve and is full of vim and moxie. Personally, I found her to be the most immediately likable character, as she has one of the more vibrant personalities of the game’s main cast.
Her route, however, isn’t especially interesting, particularly when it comes to the heroine herself. Her forthcoming personality sometimes places her at odds with those around her as she isn’t hesitant to tell people what she believes to be the truth even if it might hurt their feelings, but this rarely manifests in extended drama or much character development for her. She’s an enjoyable enough character on her own, but I don’t think her story itself is particularly compelling. Given the way SINce Memories groups its characters together, a fair bit of the story of Chunyu’s route intersects with some of the plot elements of the next heroine I’ll be talking about as well, making her feel a bit less in focus in her own route than other characters in theirs.
I felt her route works a bit better with what it does with Junya, given much of the route involves trying to get him to stop feeling bad for himself. Honestly, as someone who has been through similar difficulty in processing personal loss, there were some parts of this route I connected with Junya on a fair bit. There are some neat themes here about not stretching oneself too thin or trying to fix everything himself. Ultimately this route was okay as a result, but not particularly memorable, and it lacks a strong crux to get behind despite Chunyu herself being enjoyable.
Yuriko
Yuriko Oyama is the last heroine introduced in the common route. Prior to Junya meeting her, she was an idol who took a leave of absence to return to her home of Sumisora for a while. As a child, she was helped out by Takaya and encouraged to become a singer, which made his passing weigh heavy on her heart given how much his words meant to her growing up. Due to various circumstances, she’s unsure of if and how she wants to make a comeback, something which gets further complicated when she’s asked to be an emergency fill-in for a local festival.
Her route begins in earnest after getting a fair amount into what initially feels like Chunyu’s route, and the three of them are together fairly often throughout both of their respective routes. The three have a bit of an interesting dynamic with each other, though this isn’t focused on too heavily in either route. As this route deviation officially happens somewhat late, Yuriko’s route has generally less development than most of the others. Much of her route involves struggling to deal with impasses in life and to some extent having to deal with competition inherent to life, especially in her industry. She’s also a bit of an airhead, which can be endearing and does cause some of the conflicts in her story.
Similarly to Chunyu’s route, there’s a fair bit of development here for Junya as well, as he tries to get his way out of his brother’s shadow and become his own person (this is something he does in a few routes but I think it’s most on display here in terms of personal growth). This is both for himself and for Yuriko whom he’s supporting throughout this route. In doing so, he has to come to terms with some peculiar emotions, including some jealousy relating to his brother which I wasn’t expecting but found interesting enough.
Yuriko’s route is generally on the sweeter side, and I overall liked it decently enough, as it has a solid ending as well. It’s one of the less important or pronounced ones in the context of the overall story, however.
Hinata
From childhood, Junya’s two closest friends were Chihaya Hojo, the daughter of a wealthy family of politicians, and her personal retainer Hinata Ise (whose father serves Chihaya’s father). Although she looks to Chihaya as something of a princess, Hinata also bears resentment over a feeling that Chihaya has become unable to do anything for herself, something she believes Junya has contributed to significantly. The three often make for an interesting dynamic, but there’s a lot of drama in the routes focused on them, some of which feels rather manufactured.
A decent amount of her route involves attempts at independence from her rather toady-like father while trying to sort through her relationship with her two closest friends whom she has some complicated feelings regarding. In particular, she struggles both with making decisions for herself (despite her issues with Chihaya having this problem as well) but also knowing when to rely on others. There’s also a plotline involving an external threat which further drives many of her issues as well as those of her friends in this route.
Unfortunately, Hinata’s route was my least favorite of the bunch. A lot of it operates on the sort of rash decision-making I found more frustrating than compelling. The drama in this route is some of the most intense in the game, but it doesn’t feel very well-earned. While some aspects of Hinata’s character worked for me, many of the decisions made in this route made me tilt my head and the eventual climax had payoff that felt almost cheap compared to other routes.
Chihaya
These final two routes I found worked best when saved for last given they contain the largest amount of spoilers.
Chihaya’s route is generally about what you’d expect from reading thus far. She’s a rich girl set up with an impending arranged marriage who has been friends with Junya for a long time (and clearly has considered him something like a prince in life) and has issues with independence given her background. She wants to convert an old family house she considers to have sentimental value into something (which ends up being a cafe) to keep it from being torn down by her father.
Her route is among the more basic of the bunch regarding its drama. It has a lot of pretty predictable developments given her character archetype, both for her and for Junya. Despite the two having some interesting similarities that get discussed in writing, it’s very much in the mould of “rich person + commoner” stories. It takes a long time to really get into anything interesting. Chihaya’s route has a few good parts and I think it has its share of solid payoff near its end. However, it’s not without some frustrating aspects leading into its climax, particularly regarding its antagonists. Outside of some mysteries shared with the next route, it’s otherwise pretty forgettable.
Azusa
Azusa Satomi grew up idolizing Takaya during his time working at an orphanage where she stayed. Near the beginning of the common route, she runs into Junya while he’s working on a job and for an unknown reason yells at him that “he cannot replace Takaya”. This understandably cuts deep for an already emotionally wounded Junya. On her route, he comes to learn more of the connection she had with Takaya and tries to build up some sort of connection with her of his own.
A lot of details pertaining to Azusa are pretty spoiler-heavy, so I won’t get too into those here. The stories around her, particularly in her route, are among the most plot-heavy of the bunch. Alas, Azusa is the coldest of the main five heroines from the outset and takes a while to really start to break past her shell. Even then, I don’t think the payoff is all too great in terms of her character. She has some good scenes with Junya over its course, but these are relatively few and far between. It’s not helped by how much is kept vague about her even for the game’s fairly lengthy common route, making her a hard character to get attached to. Her story felt a bit more event-driven, but characterization took a backseat somewhat as a result.
There are also some writing decisions regarding the antagonists of her route that I found rather questionable and ultimately weak, failing to add much in a meaningful or beneficial way to the story.
Light Pollution
There are genuine moments where SINce Memories: Off the Starry Sky feels like it has some interesting things to say. At times, it’s remarkably mature in how it handles the problems of young adults trying to figure out their lives and move forward after something has noticeably shaken several of them up.
Unfortunately, the highs don’t quite make up for the lulls. There are moments of interesting nuance and thought-provoking development, but these are scattered between rather long series of mundane sequences mixed with predictable and generally not-all-that-interesting drama. I also felt there was just not enough compelling characterization. There are some sweet parts and occasional amusing bits of levity throughout, but not enough to really carry me through to when things started to drag. I like its characters at times, but was unsatisfied with the end result of several routes. Many narrative developments are rather stock or even border on cliché, featuring neither neat twists on old ideas nor truly sticking the landing to overcome its predictability. When it did try things like twists and shake-ups, few of them felt like they truly elevated its characters or plot (even being detrimental or heavy-handed at times).
Presentation
SINce Memories: Off the Starry Sky is a well-presented visual novel visually and sound-wise. Backgrounds and CGs are generally nice. I find its character portraits to be a touch too glossy and occasionally stiff in their expressions, but the character designs are solid for what they are. Portraits animate well in action, faces change mid-sentence to reflect a change in tone, and characters also have both front and back portraits. The game is fully voiced, with even Junya having voiced lines in flashback scenes or the occasional scenes that shift to another character’s perspective.
Most of the music is handled by Takeshi Abo, who has done most of the games in the Memories Off series since it began. Some of his most famous works you might be familiar with are those of the Science Adventure series (Steins;Gate, Chaos;Head, Anonymous;Code) for reference. There’s a rather distinct character to the tunes of the OST which remind me a lot of visual novels of the 2000’s with instrument and plugin choices made. Many of SINce Memories’s musical themes stand out as rather dramatic and distinct. There’s also a variety of unique credits songs as well, which are nice. The music didn’t blow me away, but it did a good job with what it was aiming to do and conveying the mood of many of its scenes, even if it wasn’t especially subtle at times.
Finally, let’s talk about the script. On the one hand, I think the localization offers an English script that reads and flows naturally without feeling stiff or uncanny most of the time. On the other, there are an awful lot of typos and missing punctuation marks. Oftentimes a single conversation will have several typos throughout, ranging from the easy-to-miss to sometimes just plain goofy. There were also a few peculiarities with what was chosen to be localized and what was kept Japanese; honorifics are left in the script as are terms like “otaku” and “gap moe”, while others like “okonomiyaki” and “tsundere” are written as “savory pancake” and “hot-and-cold” respectively (which aren’t inaccurate but come off as odd to me). Probably the worst script issue was that several exchanges that happen via in-universe text messages had multiple messages that were cut off before finishing. Most of my issues are relatively minor in terms of my ability to really read the story, but they were frequent enough to become enough of a problem, and I do think the script could have used another editing pass for the sake of cleanup.
Verdict
Given how long the series has been going, I had higher hopes for SINce Memories: Off the Starry Sky than I felt was able to deliver on for the series’s English-language debut. It hits a few of the right notes but doesn’t quite put them together enough to truly strike a chord. It’s well-presented, but presentation alone doesn’t carry it, and the script errors don’t do it any favors either. The cast of characters have their moments, but they’re scattered between lengthy sections of ultimately both predictable and often forgettable story routes that at times feel like inorganic drama was put in for the sake of it. The end result is a fairly cookie-cutter and by-the-books romance visual novel that doesn’t truly shine in any particular area.
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If you are looking for another visual novel, you may enjoy our review of Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon-.
Thank you to PQube for providing a PC review code for SINce Memories: Off the Starry Sky.
Been playing games since my papa gave me an NES controller in the early 90’s. I play games of almost all genres, but especially focus role-playing, action, and puzzle-platform games. Also an enjoyer of many niche things ranging from speedrunning to obscure music from all over the world.
