While the juicy macro-scale alternate history stuff is painfully neglected, the more intimate story it exist to facilitate kicks in quickly. Sticking such conservative story into such liberal alternate history lesson can feel like a bit of a waste. This only really comes into play once or twice in the story, with the artwork not taking much advantage of it either. With the focus solely on the narrow relationship between a few characters ? and the technicalities of Japanese sword fighting ? it might as well not have bothered updating its entirely world to present day times. It by and large exist to explain why traditional Japanese culture is prevalent, and why the main characters can utilize swordplay. It has quite an interesting alternate history setting, but does very little with it. Hanachirasu is on the whole a very traditional story of revenge and the all consuming rivalry between two swordsmen, which have a few quirks to go along with its narrative, but no surprises to speak of (.save an alternate ending with little connection to anything else). Countless lives are thrown aside for this one final clash of swords. As both he and his enemy entangle themselves with the warring factions of the city to reach their goal, cataclysmic destruction is left in their wake.

In this archaic reservation where time has been turned back, a ruthless master swordsman, on the run from his past, prepares for the fight of a lifetime he knows will eventually come to him. Subsequently the remainder of the country, particularly Tokyo, experience a vast nationalistic surge under the leadership of the militaristic Ishima Kaigen, which include the renaissance of traditional weaponry such as the Katana, while firearms are banished from the city, whose endless internal conflicts are thus settled through swordplay. Leading to Japan being defeated through conventional means, being partially occupied by the two cold war super powers.

It takes place an alternate historical timeline where nuclear weaponry was never developed during World War II.

Hanachirasu is a 2005 Japanese visual novel by developer Nitro+, which received an English fan translation in 2010, and is currently scheduled for a 2015 commercial US release.

Visual novel reviews