VN Talk: Code:Realize ~Wintertide Miracles~ - Part 3: Lupin

This week, we move on to Lupin's route for Code:Realize ~Wintertide Miracles~, covering both his Christmas story and his Special Epilogue.

As an important note, my commentary on Lupin's Special Epilogue will also include Cantarella side story spoilers. While I always warn that my commentary on new games contain spoilers while the game is less than a year old, it's possible someone might be willing to view Lupin spoilers, but not Cantarella ones, so just in case...! You've been warned.

Afternate Story: First Christmas

I found I enjoyed Lupin's Christmas story a lot more than I thought I would due to the healthy dose of humor involved. Like Victor, Lupin failed to confess his true feelings to Cardia before she returned to Wales with her brother, Finis, and ever since he's been feeling a little down in the dumps. But being a gentleman thief, this has a greater consequence as his daring thefts have gotten sloppy and he's nearly caught due to his constant mooning over Cardia.

His friends recognize something is wrong with him as well, as he's getting pretty listless in his civilian life. Eventually Lupin has to acknowledge that he's gotten really bad when Sholmès of all people points out that he's not being his usual self.

For anyone disappointed in how smooth Lupin is in his previous romantic appearances, his Christmas story is nice because he is so plainly out of sorts and unable to hide it. He tries writing to Cardia to arrange a visit, but his letter writing is crap and his first attempt ends up being a phantom thief-style calling card. I actually thought it was pretty good and completely in character! She would understand! Another attempt of his is so spicy he can picture Cardia's embarrassment and his resulting secondhand embarrassment is so strong he chastises himself for writing such an awful confession.

When he finally sends a letter and he doesn't get a response from her, his anxiety goes through the roof and he begins to wonder if she could possibly have met another man in Wales. While he acknowledges that he could tolerate her falling in love with another member of their crew (and it's plain from Saint-German's ~Future Blessings~ route that Lupin does stuff down his feelings if she gets involved with someone else in their group), he can't tolerate the idea of her falling in love with some random guy off the street.

Since sulking isn't befitting a gentleman thief such as himself, Lupin decides the best thing is to just drop in her, even if it's unannounced, and then he start behaving more or less like his dashing self again, showing up as Santa Claus (complete with Sisi as a reindeer) and disabling the defenses to Cardia's house, much to Finis's chagrin.

And this eventually results in Cardia and Finis traveling back to London with Lupin to spend Christmas with their friends. He keeps trying to find a moment to confess his feelings to her, but the timing sucks and he keeps getting interrupted, to the point that he throws his hands up and runs away from the party with her so they can have some private time. (When his third time's the charm attempt to confess is still interrupted, you have to feel a little sorry for the guy.)

Then he finally confesses, they kiss, and I like that there is some discussion on what to do in the future if they have a long term relationship. Since Cardia is living with Finis and they have no other family, she wants to take his situation into consideration, so it would not be straightforward for her to pack up and move back to London. Lupin says that there's also option of him moving to Wales with them, which I like, though I don't know how Finis would feel about that.

For the most part I enjoyed this route because of all the different ways Lupin was getting frustrated, both before and after reuniting with Cardia, but there is one element of the route that didn't quite work for me.

There were two components to the communication problem between Lupin and Cardia. The first was that Lupin wasn't receiving Cardia's answers, which is what we know from the first half of the story told from his point of view. Once we get her POV, we learn that she hasn't been getting any letters as well. So for a month, both of them have been completely without word from each other or, in Cardia's case, anyone from London.

Once Lupin arrives in Wales, we learn the reason his letters never got to Cardia, and it's a good comedic scenario, making use of Impey as everyone's favorite butt-monkey. It's completely in character for Impey to be sending Cardia a mountain of love letters that Finis would eventually get tired of delivering (since it's his job to get the mail) and for Lupin's letters to accidentally get mixed in. That's an easy enough explanation, and worth a chuckle.

What doesn't make sense, is the reverse scenario, where Cardia's mail doesn't get to Lupin. Even though she never wrote a reply to his letters, she still wrote regardless because everyone at Saint-Germain's mansion is one of her friends, and people stopped replying.

It turns out that Saint-Germain, Impey, and Victor were withholding mail on their end to drive Lupin and Cardia crazy enough to act on their romance. And while that certainly did the job for Lupin, it feels rather mean to do the same for Cardia, who is not as cognizant of her own emotions. It's clear that Cardia's letters were group letters and not intentionally directed to any particular person, so not answering her, especially with the upcoming holiday season, feels rather jerkish, even though it works out in the end.

Special Epilogue

Lupin's Special Epilogue turned out to be a fair bit of fun, especially compared to his lackluster ~Future Blessings~ one. Taking place three years after ~Guardian of Rebirth~, Cardia is curious about Lupin's parents and what they were like, so he takes her to France as a belated honeymoon.

Since Lupin's an orphan, the one he considers his father is his mentor, Theophraste, who we finally were introduced to by name in the Cantarella side story. Of course, Theophraste is also dead, so part of their honeymoon turns out to be a visit to his grave, but Lupin pays his respects, letting his mentor know that he stopped Code:Realize and that he rescued Cardia.

From conversation with Lupin, Cardia learns that there were children Theophraste couldn't save before leaving Twilight and makes the connection between what he learned on the job and her dead clones, which ties in nicely with what we learn about him in the Cantarella side story.

To be honest, I was hoping a bit for a Cantarella and Miles cameo since they went to France at the end of her side story, and they were such great characters that I wish there was something else that acknowledged their existence (rather than more Gordon family cameos).

But Lupin's route does have a fun diversion in that Inspector Ganimard (from the original Lupin stories) gets a cameo appearance where he shows up at the gravesite with a bunch of police to try to catch Lupin. He's described as a French version of Leonhart. I'm not sure if that matches the man from the original novels, but it's nice to see a nod to the literary Lupin's thorn in the side.

Though nothing of consequence happens in the Special Epilogue, it was a good send off to have Cardia and Lupin up to thiefy shenanigans in France.