Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch (also known by its Japanese name Ihanashi no Majo) is a visual novel created by Fragaria. What initially drew me to it was its art style, which had a somewhat distinct look to it. A couple of years after its initial Japanese release, we can now experience the tale of Toyotoki Island in English courtesy of localizer Aksys Games.
Arriving on Toyotoki Island
Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch is straightforward as far as visual novels go. None of the choices affect the story; rather than leading to alternate routes and endings, choices typically just provide supplementary information like background details or folklore. The story is very much rooted in a “small town island vibe”, with plenty of rural Ryukyuan aesthetic.
It starts off with our young protagonist, Hikaru Nishime, being sent away from Tokyo by his aunt to live with his grandfather on Toyotoki Island, a fictional island in the Okinawa prefecture (part of the Ryukyu islands which lie south of Japan’s main four islands). He finds out that his grandfather fled the country months prior and that he’s essentially been dumped off by his family, abandoning him to fend for himself on a rural island where many of the small town’s residents already seem somewhat hostile to outsiders.
On his first night on the island, while trying to find a place to sleep for the night, he meets a mysterious girl named Lilun in the fields. Although she speaks perfect Japanese, she’s very clearly not from Japan, and she warns him not to stay around her. However, given he has nowhere to go, she reluctantly offers to help him through the evening. The day after, with little to lose at this point, Hikaru decides to break into his now-abandoned grandfather’s house and set it up as his own residence. Partly out of gratitude and compassion, he offers Lilun a place to stay with him there, given it beats sleeping outside in fields full of venomous snakes.
After a few days of their arrangement, a sudden emergency causes Lilun to reveal one of her secrets: she’s a witch from a faraway land who came to Toyotoki for a specific purpose. Even her ability to communicate in Japanese is due to magic, and she demonstrates a markedly different outlook and understanding of the world due to her different background. While the two are remarkably different, they also have a remarkable amount in common given their circumstances, which ends up creating one of the main dynamics of the narrative. The story kicks off by providing the reader with several threads to go off of and questions to answer pretty quickly.
…And Now For Something Different
Alas, Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch has a rather bizarre structure following the prologue. The story begins fine enough by introducing its main two characters as well as several threads of intrigue to catch the reader’s attention (e.g. the budding relationship between Hikaru and Lilun, the latter’s peculiar way of life, and understanding of society, the mysteries behind witches and Toyotoki Island itself). However, the first couple of chapters after the prologue veer in a different direction. Many of the more mysterious and intriguing aspects of the narrative are only occasionally touched upon for a while, and our main two characters play more of a supportive role in the story of other characters rather than being the heavy focus. Ultimately it leaves the overall plot of this visual novel somewhat backloaded.
After Hikaru and Lilun set up at his grandfather’s abandoned house, the two quickly need to find income, and the rural island setting makes this difficult due to limited available opportunities. Hikaru offers around to do odd jobs, eventually being offered one by a girl about his age named Akari whom he met on his first day on the island. Because she’s the daughter of a fairly powerful figure on the island, she makes him a nice offer with solid pay for not much work…at least at first. Initially, the job consists of mundane tasks like walking her (admittedly very eccentric) dog, but it develops into something with more at stake than the offer began with.
Some parts of this first chapter following the prologue are just kind of odd. By this point, there hasn’t been all that much focus on either of our main characters, yet much of the development is left to the background as Akari’s story takes center. There are some honestly jarring moments too. Attempts at adding levity lead to some very silly scenes like Akari’s dog requiring strange and lewd commands to respond during a walk, or even a rap battle between Akari and her similarly flat-chested rival (yes this detail is relevant) Kiriko, which just feels almost like a rather bizarre non-sequitur. I don’t mind eccentric or goofy, and I have a pretty high tolerance for tonal dissonance, but I found this more perplexing than amusing.
That’s not to say the chapter is bad. Much of this chapter involves Hikaru and Lilun helping Akari with an opportunity of a lifetime that she would not be able to have otherwise, and we at least get to learn a bit more about them along the way. A number of details about the island are established through this chapter, and there’s some setup that goes beyond just expanding on island lore, and it introduces several important characters. There are some solid emotional and relatable bits here and there, and even a couple of scenes that actually earned a legitimate chuckle. Ultimately though, this first arc is probably the weakest in Tales from Toyotoki, and feels like the “getting it out of the way” part before it hits its stride.
Grown Up
Tales from Toyotoki’s second chapter is rather similar in its structure to the first, but frankly, I think it’s an overall significantly better one. We get introduced to another significant supporting character named Tsumugi, who is described as a gorgeous adult woman who nonetheless seems to be constantly fumbling through life. Hikaru befriends her after she helps him through a bit of a rough patch, and he tries to help her out with her life issues.
While again, this further deviates from the primary “plot” of Tales from Toyotoki that I was expecting from the direction the prologue leads into by going into the story of a new character, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the character story here. I found many scenes in this chapter remarkably relatable and compelling. Despite being the only adult of the main nucleus of the cast, Tsumugi is presented with a lot of vulnerability, and the emotional climax of her story was one of my favorite moments of the entire visual novel.
The Back Half
The rest of the story finally addresses the more mysterious aspects that have been foreshadowed thus far. The back half is still a bit slow to actually begin tackling the central conflict, but I don’t think the build-up is in vain. An early scene of the next chapter is a group hangout with most of the core members of the cast, and despite how motley a crew they really are, they honestly make for an enjoyable bunch with their group dynamic as you start to see how they come to care for one another. As the story ascends through the rising action of its main conflict, a lot of the build-up bears fruit.
This part of the story is where we get a lot of character backstories, primary plot developments, plot twists, and the stuff you’d likely expect in a story about an island of mystery and a witch at the center of it all. For obvious reasons, this is spoiler territory, so I won’t get into much detail here. There are a few minor low points here and there, but I think they do a good job of emphasizing the feeling it’s trying to convey as circumstances begin to get more serious.
This is also the part where a lot of the budding romance develops more properly. There are a handful of hiccups with the romantic aspects of the narrative (including one rather annoying contrivance that feels more like it gets in the way of things instead of being a compelling narrative device), but otherwise, I genuinely came to like the dynamics between Hikaru and Lilun as they develop in interesting ways here.
A lot happens in the back half and I was worried I was going to find it unsatisfactory, but I think the majority of what Fragaria did here worked well. For how backloaded the plot is, I didn’t really feel like much was dragged out or lacking in impact as a result.
Characters and Style
At its core, Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch is about a group of characters who largely originate from various and difficult circumstances that come together, and the connections from that group drive a good chunk of the story and get them through their hardships. In fact, while Hikaru is the main protagonist, the story regularly shifts away from him to other characters are we see the story from their eyes and perspective, which further expands its scope beyond solely his perspective.
Hikaru himself is generally solid for who he is as a protagonist. He is meant to be somewhat of an audience stand-in in some regards, but he’s still plenty his own character with his own journey. He can occasionally come off as dense, but he has a fair amount more self-awareness and perceptiveness towards those around him than many of this archetype. His backstory informs a lot about his character, but he does become more willing to take action throughout the story and try to make up for his weaknesses and insecurities. He has more of an everyman appeal that might be a bit typical for a coming-of-age type of story, but I think he shows enough development that I find him a better protagonist than I expected despite some minorly annoying aspects.
I also quite came to like Lilun over the course of the story. While she can seem like the standard “aloof girl with an extensive backstory” at first, she works well within the story and has plenty of interesting traits and developments. She comes off as more subdued in her aloofness rather than simply being a tsundere, partly due to her origin and her upbringing far removed from Japanese culture. She seems more resigned to expecting and accepting bad things rather than being openly fearful or emotionally reactive. I found the way she develops and opens up rather enjoyable and you get to see her perspective quite a bit over time as she tries to come to terms with her past, her purpose, and her developing relationship with Hikaru. The dynamic between these two leads to a lot of neat and endearing moments ranging from the obvious to more subtle, and even some incredibly sweet and heartwarming.
There are plenty of other endearing parts of the story as well. The core nucleus of the cast makes for an ensemble that is generally better than the sum of its parts, and each supporting cast member has at least one good scene of their own. There are also lots of little details and scenes that give characters bits of life. For example, there’s an amusing scene where Lilun cooks dinner and everyone remarks that the food is colored unusually vibrantly, which she thought was a normal part of cooking due to where she grew up. I’m kind of a sucker for little details, and there was plenty here to give that little extra sense of who these characters are.
While the story has its dramatic beats that range from rough to compelling, I found a lot of the more mundane areas of the writing to be surprisingly well handled. For example, one section in the second chapter written from Hikaru’s perspective about his first day at a new job felt so on-point as a genuinely lived experience that I wouldn’t be surprised if the writer was channeling something that actually happened to them. While I had a couple of minor grievances with the script here and there (e.g. Tsumugi is constantly referred to by how large her chest is in a way by multiple characters early on in her story), I quite liked how most other things were handled. I also rarely felt like the story ran into pacing problems, usually taking as long as it needed to keep things moving without ever feeling like much was rushed. A couple of parts could drag, but even those I felt were done with at least some amount of purpose.
Supplementary Content
While the main story is fairly dense for what it is, one pleasant surprise in Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch is that the Extras menu packs a lot of supplementary content. Plenty of extra bits of details of the lore and history of the island and characters that didn’t quite fit into the main story are in this section. It’s not necessary to enjoy the overall story, but it’s a nice bit of surplus to have if you want it. There are also a couple of little bits of after story in the “Append” section as well.
There’s also an art gallery section here (containing both CGs and concept art), but also notes from the illustrator. In fact, there are notes and comments from a lot of people who worked on this project, including the illustrator, the director, and the voice actors. I enjoy getting to look behind the scenes of the creation and production of media, and I like the presence of plenty of nice little tidbits here for people like me who like to peer behind the curtain. Thankfully, it’s all translated.
Presentation
As I mentioned at the start, what initially drew me to Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch was its art style. Specifically, it has a style that looks noticeably like a doujin/hobbyist work, which I mean in the nicest way possible. The character designs and CGs drawn by illustrator Muji have a uniquely simple and cartoonish charm that stands out. As well, outside of a handful of CGs, most of the backgrounds are photographs with filters, which reminded me a lot of one of my favorite visual novels (that being Higurashi: When They Cry). The doujin soft production value gave it an endearing quality to me despite it maybe not looking as sleek or grand as other visual novels.
Every major character is fully voiced, outside of Hikaru (as is pretty common for VN protagonists). It can be a little jarring when the minor characters without portraits don’t have voiced lines during conversations, or when perspective shifts to another character and we see Hikaru’s portrait without an accompanying voice, but this is only a minor issue at best. I also think the voice cast did very well with their roles, which is especially remarkable given most of them don’t have many prior voice acting credits to their name (as far as I could find anyway).
Outside of the ending credits theme, I believe all of the music in Tales from Toyotoki is either licensed or royalty-free. It was pretty well utilized and fit the respective scenes as needed, with the only issue being some tracks that weren’t made to loop. While I’m partial to original soundtracks that use music for more specific storytelling devices (e.g. leitmotif), this soundtrack is ultimately fine.
I don’t really have any complaints with the translation offhand. Most things I could tell lined up with what I heard from the Japanese voice acting, and typos were pretty rare. A fair amount of the story has roots in Japanese and Okinawan folklore in addition to its own fictional concepts, yet I never felt like I got lost in all the unfamiliar Japanese names being thrown at me in the script. A couple of bits of wordplay here and there were altered to make it work for English readers, but I generally appreciated what they went for. It’s worth noting that honorifics are also not kept in the English text.
Verdict
Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch wasn’t entirely what I expected going into it, but I came away satisfied. While it takes a while to hit its stride and has some odd parts here and there that don’t always click, I think it does a good job of handling several of its core themes and delivering emotional payoff. What matters most to me in a story is if there is something that I was able to get attached to and resonate with, and I absolutely found that here. The story is largely well-paced with a cast of characters I grew to care about, and it features several scenes I found to be surprisingly emotionally gripping.
It might not be the most original story, but what it lacks in novelty, it largely makes up for how well-executed much of it is once the ball gets rolling. If a small-town story with personal struggle and bits of magic, fantasy, folklore, romance, growing up, and occasional silliness sounds like something you might even at all enjoy, I can definitely recommend this tale.
TALES FROM TOYOTOKI: ARRIVAL OF THE WITCH IS RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for another visual novel, you may enjoy MAMIYA – A Shared Illusion of the World’s End. We have also covered a wide variety of visual novels both original to English and localized from Japanese, which you can check out here.
Many thanks go to Reef Entertainment for a Nintendo Switch review code for Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch.
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.
