Spiritual power flows from the very ground in Fukano. While most can’t see it, it’s a place where spirits are easily found for those with the ability. Tamayura Mirai by developer Azurite follows Mutsuki, a sorcerer and the one who keeps the peace between the spiritual residents of this rural town.
The Sorcerer of Fukano
Mutsuki is still studying sorcery, though he’s a regular student outside of that. Unlike many visual novels, Tamayura Mirai rarely lingers on school life, instead focusing more on the duties of a sorcerer and the stories of each heroine.
It does a brilliant job of introducing us to these duties by having Mutsuki be approached for help by the local spirits. The common route has him solving ‘cases’ such as finding out why a werewolf is hiding in the local school, or getting involved in a conflict between the local water and mountain spirits. Each individual case has more to it than I expected, with history to uncover and occasional unexpected twists.
These early cases are used to work in a lot of worldbuilding too, which is used well to set up later plot points. This is something that Tamayura Mirai does particularly well, along with sneaking in little hints for future events, that I often only realized in retrospect.
Tamayura Mirai is a moege, but it feels like the plot takes center stage over slice-of-life romance. There’s very much a focus on lore and a build-up to reveals here. That’s not to say the heroines don’t have time focused on them, but most of the fifteen-hour playtime did seem to be spent on moving the story along, over the more casual moments with the heroines.
Yukina – The Plot Route
Yukina and her close friend Makina are new to town. After a rather unfortunate first meeting, events end up tying them to one of Mutsuki’s cases. Both can see spirits and have had problems all their life due to it. Even in the common route, Yukina seems very much like the main heroine of Tamayura Mirai due to her involvement and the amount of screen time she gets in comparison to the other heroines.
Her route isn’t just a romance between her and Mutsuki, but is more about the relationship between Yukina and Makina and their history. Along with this, it shows some of the history of how Mutsuki became a sorcerer. There are many secrets to reveal and quite a lot of twists in this plot-filled route. It kept me hooked until the end, and I felt like it wrapped up nicely for the most part.
In terms of personality, Yukina is a classic tsundere and puts on a haughty air at times. Her relationship with Makina and her difficult past are key parts of her character and why she can come off as harsh at times. Actually justifying her behavior this way made her character a lot more interesting.
Hanako – Spirit of the Stalls
As the ‘weird girl’, Hanako is the character I thought I’d like the most but ended up as last on my list. In the common route, it never feels like Mutsuki has any interest in Hanako. She plays a role in giving him information about the conflicts between the local spirits but doesn’t have many other appearances and there’s not much relationship development. It does have some plot outside of the romance, but it’s quite minor.
At one point, Hanako suddenly starts talking about love and wants Mutsuki to teach her about it. In a way, this makes sense as she’s not human and doesn’t really understand them in many ways. It felt like it came out of nowhere though, and she can then become forceful. Hanako even ‘kabedons’ Mutsuki at one point.
There are certainly cute moments in this route though. Hanako is awkwardly trying to get her feelings across, using things seen in dramas since she has no experience with humans. She’s quite an amusing character at times, coming off as serious at times, but occasionally doing off-the-wall things like stealing the Principal’s streaming service access. Amusingly, she’s willing to share Mutsuki in every route but her own.
Midari – The Sweetest Succubus
Midari (also known as Miranda Lust) is a succubus, but a rather innocent one which is a key part of her story. She’s been assisting Mutsuki in his work as a sorcerer for some time and takes care of him, almost like a loving housewife would. She states early on that she owes him her life.
Her route isn’t much for the plot, and I did feel like a major point had a somewhat ‘cheap’ resolution, but it has some great romance. It explores her relationship with her family and an inner conflict about breaking an important taboo. This leads up to an emotional and romantic climax. I had to laugh at the epilogue that followed it though.
Midari is so clearly in love with Mutsuki that I felt bad not choosing her. She gives the impression of being extremely gentle, well-mannered, and soft-spoken.
Shiro – The Little Big Sister
Shiro used to take care of Mutsuki when he was young and still often treats him like a child – she calls herself his honorary big sister, though they’re not blood-related. In turn, Mutsuki often teases her about her height. Shiro could be referred to as a ‘shortstack’, being tiny in all but one area.
Her route could be considered as the true ending, both being the only one to wrap everything up, having some of the most important plot points of the overarching story, and being locked away. It builds on the reveals from Yukina’s route and comes to a rather emotional ending. It’s certainly romantic but more notably it makes great use of drama. It was a great ending to Tamayura Mirai, even if Shiro herself wasn’t my favorite heroine.
Shiro does sometimes feel a little simple-minded and gets jealous occasionally, but she’s always supportive of Mutsuki. She has a rather unique way of speaking, that fits the rural setting.
Structure
Tamayura Mirai uses a standard structure of a common route with multiple choices, that lead to the heroine routes. As mentioned, Shiro’s route is locked. You can find our guide to these here.
Adult Content and Removed Routes
If you are playing the Steam version of Tamayura Mirai, quite a lot of content will not be accessible without the free 18+ patch. For example, almost all choices in the common route and several scenes are missing. More notably, only the common, Yukina, and Midari routes are included. Considering the importance of the Shiro route particularly, I’d highly advise playing with the full adult version from Johren or the Steam version with the patch.
In terms of adult content, it’s all relatively vanilla. Aside from one route, they’re not particularly related to the story of Tamayura Mirai and are only really used to show relationship development. As always with Shiravune, mosaic censorship is retained.
It does suffer from what’s a personal annoyance of mine repeatedly; the first kiss leading immediately to adult scenes. In most cases, it concentrates the adult scenes by having them follow soon after each other after the first.
All characters but Shiro have unlockable extra scenes accessed through the menu. Shiro does have more scenes in-route, and in the end, all characters have five scenes each.
As a note, there appears to be an issue with the moan track that occurs if Ctrl-skipping even a small amount of an adult scene. It starts playing quietly and sounds like someone in the next room is getting busy too.
Editing and Localization
Tamayura Mirai has some minor typos, missing articles, and a lack of plurals in some cases. For the most part, it is to a fairly high standard, but some still exist. On launch, there were more issues including some untranslated names, but these have since been fixed.
As always, I can’t comment much on translation accuracy, but it reads well in English.
Graphics and Sound
Tamayura Mirai makes use of techniques such as slow background zoom and panning. Characters have some limited animation, with symbols like music notes and question marks appearing around them and perhaps a slight bounce at the start of a line. Unlike some bigger titles, expressions don’t change other than as a line changes.
While there isn’t much animation, it does have 80 regular CGs and 12 SD CGs not including variations, which is quite a lot for a short title.
The 30 BGMs have a good variety to fit slice-of-life, dramatic, and action scenes well. The voice actors give good performances too, with Shiro’s standing out for her way of speaking. Yukina’s certainly fits the tsundere trope too.
Verdict
With an engaging plot that kept me hooked as it slowly revealed more and more, Tamayura Mirai is worth the read. There’s less of a focus on the moments spent together here than most moege, but it’s an interesting adventure that leads to romance.
TAMAYURA MIRAI IS RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for another more plot-heavy visual novel, you may enjoy Kunado Chronicles.
Many thanks go to Shiravune for a PC review code for this title.
A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.
