VN Talk: Café Enchanté - Part 6: Misyr

Misyr is the poster boy of Café Enchanté so he gets an additional two chapters to his story beyond that of the rest of the cast, and we also get the full picture of what's been happening over the entire game (which clarifies some things about Il's route, like how God was behind Amasaki Island even though it somehow involved skeleton monsters and giant bone arms). While I don't think his story is undeserving of the length needed to tell it, it also makes it incredibly obvious how much routes like Canus and Rindo's really needed an extra chapter to breathe.

We always knew there was something up about Misyr, being that he's the only cafe regular who will not stay the night. No matter what, he always went home before midnight, like he'd turn into a pumpkin if he didn't. Even during arguably critical operations, like in Il's route when the group is preparing to face a group of angels, he'd still go home, and in his own route, he refuses to participate in the guard rotation to watch over Kotone, even though she's in danger.

He makes it clear that he would really like to stay, but he can't, supposedly because he's a demon king and if he doesn't go back at night his kingdom is going to fall apart (though somehow he can stay all day at the cafe and that's fine).

His route begins to pick apart the truth of who and what Misyr really is by having the real demon king of Asmodia stage an invasion of the human world, causing everyone else to ask Misyr what's going on. Fortunately Asmodeus, though powerful, is a few brain cells short of a lobe, and when he eventually ends up in the hands of the GPM he ends up being more of an obnoxious ally than anything else. (I found him incredibly entertaining though, so if there's ever a fan disc I hope he makes an appearance.)

Because of upgraded prologues that would expand with the completion of each route, I was lured into thinking that Misyr had a split personality, with a different psyche in the same body, which could explain why he needed to leave at night. He wouldn't be himself if he stayed. This misconception was added by some artwork portraying Misyr with two-toned hair, with half of it being silver. I think it's possible two personalities in the same body was explored at some point in the development cycle, when the artwork was initially done, because it doesn't really make any sense otherwise.

Misyr, as it turns out, comes from another realm entirely, the World of End Times, called such because virtually nothing is able to survive there. Originally a human from ancient Earth, he arrived there on a dimensional ark and became the only survivor after a centuries-long warping of his body in order to adapt. In his current, undisguised form he turns everything around him to the same kind of ash that fills this realm, and he's had a lot of company over the tens of thousands of years as various other unfortunate entities ended up there through wormholes.

Eventually he was able to craft a shell around his true form so he could go out through the Gate and enter Enchante as a relatively normal appearing non-human, but the reason he has to go back every night is because there's a time limit to how long he can keep his shell up. (And this also means that the solution to his going home at night issues is simply to show up later in the day so he can stay overnight.) Because of how his shell appeared, Misyr decided to pretend to be a demon king from Asmodia, though he has some regrets about this after learning what kind of person an actual demon king is.

Though Misyr's storyline ends up being fairly epic (again, for a game that started with taking over a cafe), at the heart of it, it's about loneliness. Noah, the entity that is both body and soul of the World of End Times has not, until recently, been able to communicate with the one inhabitant who can survive inside of him. That was okay for thousands of years, since Noah could share in their mutual misery in isolation. But then fifteen years before the game starts, a small wormhole opened to Enchante and Misyr managed to meet child Kotone, who gave him a cup of coffee through the rift because he sounded thirsty.

For Misyr, this sparked his desire to return to the human world and thank the child for the soul soothing gift. For Noah, this was a betrayal, because Misyr experienced a salvation unavailable to him.

Though Noah is not directly responsible for everything that happens across all the routes, he takes advantage of the Salvation Project run by the angels in Caelm to force his influence into other worlds, threatening to turn all of them into ash, in his single-minded quest to unite with Kotone, so she can save him in the way that she saved Misyr. Obviously, things don't work that way, but Noah isn't exactly sane. He doesn't give Kotone any choice in the matter and brushes off Misyr's feelings with a sense of "You had your turn, now it's mine." It's not even out of malice; he gives Misyr back the humanity he lost as what he thought was a parting gift. Noah simply does not understand forcing someone to become a part of him doesn't mean they'll be happy about it.

And unfortunately Kotone is at her most passive on this route since her kidnapping (twice, no less) puts her out of commission for most of the story, giving us alternate narrators between Misyr and the other regulars. It doesn't help that Noah's merging with her is essentially paralyzing and erasing her physical body so she literally cannot protest anything about her treatment.

Misyr becoming human again was not a twist I saw coming, though I like it as a balance to Rindo becoming non-human in his route. And it also raises the stakes in a big way narratively as Misyr has to go into his final confrontation with Noah, a world of death, as nothing but an ordinary human with no magic to speak of.

Since this is a story about loneliness, Misyr eventually gets through to Noah, who asks to be put down so that he stops encroaching on all other worlds, so there are some bittersweet farewells as Noah finally has a friend in Misyr, just in time to die.

As for where this leaves Kotone, this is the only route where she becomes non-human herself. Having mostly merged with Noah by the time of his passing, she takes over the realm he used to embody and rebuilds it as the kind of place she would like it to to be. Misyr becomes the co-owner of Enchante (a step-up from the other guys who just get hired on as help in their endings) and Kotone sends part of herself through the Gate to tend to the cafe everyday. She's still mostly intangible, sometimes invisible, as a result of what Noah did to her, but Misyr is pretty good at finding her no matter where in the shop she might be.

All the other characters get brief epilogues that address parts of their storyline to suggest things will get better as well. God is disabled in Il's epilogue and the fallen angels aren't being hunted anymore. Bestia is no longer a world where the strong torment the weak and even if Dromi wanted to do his Vanir plan, Ignis knows about it now. Canus is going to take out Yggdrasil now that it's expended all its energy during the Noah encroachment. And Mikado's faith in finding a cure for Shizuku has been renewed now that he's seen it's possible for a non-human to become human again. (It's a little odd that that's Rindo's epilogue. Even though he's present and it's his sister, the moment is more for Mikado than him.)

Overall I liked Misyr's story. It's the strongest of all of the storylines and wrapped up everything with a bittersweet bow at the end, but that's also by design, which irritates me a bit. Yes, he has the best storyline, but it doesn't feel entirely earned given the shortcomings of the other routes.

I also was disappointed by Kotone being sidelined so much, to the point that I didn't feel she actually had a budding romance with Misyr that would have led to the ending we got. When you get down to it, Misyr's relationship with Noah is far more critical to the resolution of the story than his relationship with Kotone. Yes, he likes Kotone and says she saved him, but the climax of the story is not the romance. It's the face off between Misyr and Noah, and Kotone can't even participate because she's been rendered into a mute observer.

So even though from a plot perspective I feel like Misyr's route is solid and easily the best of all the routes in the game, I have mixed feelings about it. It's probably one of the weakest from a romance perspective, despite the extra chapters, and I can't shake the feeling that the fact it had room to indulge is because it took the love and attention that could have gone to other routes.

As a side note: If you are reading this the day this posts, I'll be heading into surgery. In fact, in just after a half hour after this goes live. While I don't know yet how much everything will cost me, if my blogging has entertained you, please consider dropping a top in my Ko-fi jar.

I have another two weeks of posts queued to go live during my recovery since I'm not sure when I'll feel up for blogging again.