Nameless: The One Thing You Must Recall

This game asks the hard-hitting questions, like "what would happen if your toys came to life and wanted to bang you?" Just kidding. Kind of. But seriously, Nameless was so engrossing, so funny, and yet so unbelievably creepy that I haven't been able to get it out of my head for weeks. I plan to deal with this emotional overload by writing a massive review.
 

(TL;DR ahead. Also spoilers)

Nameless, à la Toy Story, takes place in a world where sentient toys exist. Unlike Toy Story, not all playthings in this reality possess consciousness - an unspecified (but presumably small) percentage have souls. From what I can surmise, there exists a secret group of toy-makers who can imbue their creations with a "spark of humanity", which makes the toys self-aware and supplies them with a "concept" that shapes their personalities. Disturbingly, the primary motivation behind endowing toys with souls seems to be that this makes them more appealing to consumers. Even more disturbingly, these sentient playthings cannot move, act, or express themselves in any way. Paralyzed and helpless, they are completely at the mercy of their owners - usually children - who are of course unaware that their toys are thinking, feeling beings who can be hurt and traumatized just like real humans. I think the proper word to describe this is "yikes".

Understandably, one of the worst things that can happen to a sentient toy is for it to be abandoned by its owner. If an owner completely forgets about a toy's existence, right down to its very name, then the toy's soul ends up in a sort of purgatory (toygatory?) where it's left to suffer for eternity with nothing but its memories. There are only two ways out of toygatory: the toy must "give up" on its owner and die, or the owner must recall the toy's name and thus bring it back to the human world. The titular character, Nameless, is one such forgotten toy.

Which brings us to the protagonist of the story: Nameless's owner, "Anhu" (she's the player character, so her name is customizable - the default is Eri, but I re-named her Anhu because of reasons). Anhu is a high school girl with a wry sense of humor and a penchant for making this expression. She's generally a considerate person, but she's also pessimistic, insecure, and prone to self-isolating behaviors. She hides the parts of her personality that she deems 'abnormal' – particularly her favorite hobby, collecting lifelike ball-jointed dolls (if you've ever spent 5 seconds on dA's front page, you've probably seen people posting photos of BJDs). She spends a great deal of time and money taking care of her dolls, buying clothes for them, sharing pics of them online, etc. Every afternoon when she gets home from school, she writes in her diary, then sits down on her bed and tells her dolls about her day. Anhu treats her doll collection like family because she is profoundly lonely - her parents work overseas, and her beloved Grandpa recently passed away. Anhu has two close friends at school (boisterous class president Soi and stoic model Shinbi, who are amazing, funny, wonderful characters that I could gush about all day), but she avoids opening up to them because she's afraid that they'll reject her if they ever find out about her hobby.

^Anhu's doll collection. She only has 5 because they're super expensive.

What Anhu doesn't know is that all 5 of her dolls have souls, so they're actually aware of everything she does and says to them. She also doesn't know that Nameless, her forgotten toy from childhood, is stalking her from toygatory thanks to a link between his consciousness and her diary (her first diary as a child was something she vowed to share only with him, and this bound the two things together). Nameless both loves and hates Anhu - he obsesses over her and wants to be with her forever, but he also despises her for abandoning him and wants to make her suffer as much as possible. His resentment and feelings of betrayal twist his personality into something dark and hateful, until he's wholly consumed by his desire to both possess and punish Anhu.

Enter The Wizard, who was a character in Cheritz's previous visual novel, Dandelion [review here]. The Wizard is a mysterious, amoral, trickster type character who appears before the most desperate souls - those who desire something so strongly that they are willing to forget everything about themselves in order to obtain it. The Wizard grants their wishes in exchange for their memories, which he "eats" to maintain his godlike powers. When he meets Nameless, however, he is taken aback by the toy's miserable and obsessive memories and decides he doesn't want to internalize them.  Fortunately for Nameless, who still wants his wish granted, the Wizard loves playing games and screwing with people. He volunteers to work pro bono, provided that they can make the whole thing into a game.

The Wizard, who can sense the souls inside Anhu's dolls, decides to give them human bodies. No longer will they have to sit idly by on a shelf; they'll be able to interact with their owner for real, and help her or hurt her as they see fit. Nameless obviously wants to know how the hell this is going to benefit him, and the Wizard's all like "hey, I'm the goddamn wizard yo, calm your toy tits." He proceeds to BS about magic and wishes and crap, and it doesn't really make any sense, but nobody cares because it's an otome game and he's the goddamn wizard. Basically, the sitch is as follows: Anhu has to fall in love with each of her human-ified dolls, and each of her human-ified dolls has to fall in love with her. When Anhu's love interest metaphorically "gives" his heart to her, Anhu actually obtains his freaking soul (though of course, she's not aware that this is happening). Once she has collected all 5 toy souls (gotta catch 'em all? ), she will be pulled down into toygatory to face the combined love and wrath of Nameless.

Obviously there are some problems with this setup - Anhu can't have 5 boytoys (pun gloriously intended) simultaneously - so at the end of each route, after she's fallen in love with the garçon du jour, Nameless tears out the pages of her diary. This causes her to forget everything that's happened. Once Anhu's been magically lobotomized, the Wizard resets the clock, sending her back to the beginning to fall in love with the next boy in line (so basically, this is an otome game about a girl who is in fact in an otome game. The meta level is over 9000). To get this to play out in the right order, of course, Nameless and the Wizard have to interfere with more than just Anhu's memories. One of the reasons this game is so creepy is because the player's fate is entirely in the hands of a sadistic toy who has the mind of a child and access to godlike powers. He's always there, pulling the strings offscreen, and as the game progresses Anhu even starts hearing him in her head (along with his creepy theme music, which is entitled "Crucify Myself". Lovely).

Anyway, Anhu has no idea any of this is going on, so she's understandably shocked when she wakes up one morning and finds five random dudes in her kitchen. Miraculously, she manages to avoid having an aneurysm, and a few seconds later she's like..."Wait just a friggin' minute. WHY DO YOU GUYS LOOK EXACTLY LIKE MY DOLLS??". The boys are like "lol yeah, funny story. We just suddenly became human and have no idea why. But like honestly, we don't really care because being human is super awesome. By the way, want breakfast?". Wacky hijinks ensue when Anhu's legal guardian, her dead Grandpa's bff (who is also her school principal), picks that morning of all mornings to show up. Obviously, he wants to know why there are spontaneous menfolk about. Anhu pulls a bullshit explanation out of her ass, and the principal's like "lol k hun, whatever you say. Of course they're "family friends" who just moved to Korea from Africa. Have orgies for all I care. Just make sure they get their asses to school."

Several days later, thanks to a bribe and some forged documents, 4 of the boys become students at Anhu's school, while the 5th lies and charms his way into a teaching position (taking over for a music teacher who had just gone on maternity leave). Since they are in fact DOLLS, they have perfectly symmetrical faces and flawless skin, earning them the nickname "The HOT5". For awhile the game turns into a shoujo comedy as fangirls stalk the boys, Anhu internally monologues about how ridiculous her life has become, and everyone snarks a lot. Some of the scenes had me laughing so hard that my Mom screamed at me to shut up.

Of course, Nameless doesn't care about things like friendship and humor and fun; he's a life ruiner and wants to get down to la-la-love games ASAP. This is easier said than done. By its very nature, the love a toy has for its owner is unhealthy - it's compulsive, one-sided, and unbalanced. The boys have to learn how to be human before they can hope to have a relationship with Anhu. This is especially tricky for the two dolls that Anhu bought secondhand, since their previous owners left them psychologically scarred. As a result, all of the routes (but theirs in particular) walk the line between romance and horror. There are 15+ "bad endings" in this game - and when I say bad, I mean really bad - like, mental collapse, assorted felonies, and DEATH. In one particularly disturbing ending, Anhu becomes a psycho rapey abuser who tortures her love interest because hey, he's just a doll. Another bad ending features an attempted homicide, an actual homicide, and an implied sexual assault, all in one spectacularly depraved scene that left me staring at my screen thinking, "what the fuck is wrong with this game??"

*full disclosure: that hoodie is hot

Of course, the boytoys all have excellent Freudian excuses for being insane in the membrane. And, through the power of Character Development^TM, they confront their mental issues and emerge as decent people. For the 0.01% of you still reading, whaddya say we take a look?

YEONHO

Hmm. A petite, boyish love interest with fluffy hair and big eyes...he must be the game's resident shota character, right? The one who gets the innocent route with tons of adorable moments? Hahahahahahahaha NOPE. Yeonho is one of the two dolls Anhu bought used, which can only mean one thing: a trauma conga line, with two of the most disturbing endings in the game!

So yeah. Yeonho's previous owner was a nutcase who repeatedly took out her frustrations on her helpless doll, leaving him with scars all over his body. Like many abusers, she'd alternate between kindness and cruelty, calling Yeonho a "good boy" one day, then kicking him around the next. Finally, after months (or years?) of mistreating him, she grew tired of her dolly punching-bag and sold him to Anhu on the internet.

When Yeonho becomes human, he addresses Anhu as "Master" and constantly kisses up to her. While his deferential behavior might seem cute at first, it's actually indicative of how deeply he has internalized his own abuse. Yeonho believes that the mistreatment he suffered was his own fault - that if he'd just been a "good boy", his prior owner would've been kind to him. He bends over backward to please Anhu; he believes that if he expresses any negative emotion, she will punish or ditch him. Before long, his fear of abandonment causes him to fixate on her. He won't let her out of his sight for more than a few minutes, and he texts her hundreds of times a day. When she wakes up in the morning, he's there on her bed, staring at her. It gets so bad that the soundtrack starts playing psycho music when he appears on screen. Finally, Anhu's like, "This is ridiculous. We need to set some boundaries." She eventually finds out what his previous owner did to him, and she thinks "whelp. Guess that explains the crazy", and they are able to move on from there.

Throughout his route, Yeonho learns that 1) obsession is not love and 2) you shouldn't have to "earn" humane treatment. He comes to understand that you cannot depend on one person for all of your emotional fulfillment. Realizing that he needs to get a life, he makes friends with a bunch of his classmates and joins the school mystery club as a tarot card reader. Naturally, as he starts to become more of his own person, his fear of abandonment diminishes. He is finally able to trust Anhu and be honest with her about all of his feelings, both positive and negative. Anhu, meanwhile, learns just how much power an owner has over his or her toys. She wonders how many playthings are sentient, and how many have been accidentally traumatized by their masters. In the end, the two of them are able to start a healthy relationship...until Nameless rips out her memories and zaps her back to the past.

LANCE

Reset button!

Lance's peers call him the "Ice Prince", and with good reason. He's cold, uptight, and inscrutable, with a sharp wit and a sharper tongue. He alternates between contempt and indifference, though both are just shields against his feelings of worthlessness. Unlike the other dolls in Anhu's collection, Lance was mass-produced. As the company's "basic model", his creators wanted him to have universal appeal, so they avoided giving him a defined personality. Instead, they encouraged buyers to invent their own characteristics for him. As a result, Lance sees himself as generic and replaceable. He refers to himself as a "thing" and, in a moment of despair, tells Anhu that giving him a soul was the cruelest thing his creators could've done.

Lance worries that all his likes and dislikes were projected onto him by his owner. For example, after he becomes human, Anhu brings him a cup of candied lemon tea. It becomes his favorite tea. She takes him clothes shopping and picks out new outfits for him. They become his favorite outfits. Anhu thinks he'd excel at student government and encourages him to join; he signs up, becomes a disciplinarian (basically a glorified hall monitor), and excels at it. Lance is terrified that Anhu will one day realize how hollow he is and replace him with someone more interesting. Of course, she doesn't see him as replaceable at all. Lance was the first doll she bought, so he's privy to more of her secrets than anyone else. His quick-thinking makes him the most dependable of the boys (at any rate, he's who I'd go to for solutions in a crisis), and as she rightfully points out, he does have abilities and flaws that she never gave to him. His sponge-like mind soaks up information in a flash; he's super rational, can memorize anything, and is a total beast at math. He's also an obnoxious hardass prone to loud sighs and cutting retorts. She definitely didn't project that onto him

As the story progresses, Lance realizes that everyone is shaped by the people around them, and that this isn't necessarily a bad thing. As he begins to accept himself and grow more assertive, he encourages Anhu to embrace her quirks instead of hiding them away. Emboldened, Anhu finally tells her best friends about her doll hobby, and surprise surprise, they're cool with it. The only downside to Lance's character development is that, by the end of his route, he's a bit too assertive for my tastes. He frequently teases Anhu, is forceful with his affections, and dominates their interactions (he still refers to her as "owner", but it's tongue-in-cheek, since he's clearly the one in control). I'm totally OK with power play, but I find possessiveness unappealing in the extreme, so it kind of killed the vibe for me. Though I suppose I do have to give him credit for having the single sexiest line of dialogue in the entire game. His route also has the best illustrations, so hats off to the artist.

YURI

One memory wipe later, and we're back at square 1. Or is it square 3? Whatever, this guy's hilarious.

As part of the doll company's "mature line", Yuri's release concept was "Casanova musician who's irresistibly attractive to women". Because he's essentially a stereotype of a stereotype, Yuri's personality is fucking ridiculous. He only wears designer clothes, monopolizes the bathroom for hours while he primps and preens, and is addicted to pore cleansing face-masks. He flirts with Anhu from day one, calling her "My honey" and rattling off one-liners that would give Richtits from Uta no Prince-Sama a run for his money. Yuri's other hobbies include parading around the house in nothing but a towel, watching magical girl anime, and shopping like a trust fund kid on 5th Avenue. He weasels his way into a teaching position at Anhu's school, and takes great joy in turning every lesson into an elaborate sexual innuendo. At one point his description of "playing an instrument" becomes so obviously lewd that the game cuts away to a random photo of a Shetland Pony while the programming team addresses the lapse in family-friendly content.

However, Yuri also has a mysterious side. He routinely disappears at night and comes home with tons of money and swag - and one day, out of the blue, he just freaking buys a limo. Fearing that he might be involved in crime, Anhu interrogates him about his activities, but he just says crap like "well, what do you think adults do at night?? *wink*~". He lays it on so thick that for the first half of his route I was convinced that he was prostituting himself. Turns out he actually just joined a band with lots of rich groupies and underworld connections, but whatevs. Anyway, Anhu is NOT impressed by Yuri's shenanigans and facepalms practically every time he opens his mouth. He keeps trying to give her gifts that other women gave to him, and he can't fathom why this makes Anhu angry. As it turns out, Yuri doesn't understand the difference between pandering and sincerity. He accepts presents from lust-filled admirers because his creators "programmed" him to never reject female attention; he thoughtlessly gives them to Anhu because his understanding of love is so superficial. It takes Yuri a long time to realize that presents mean nothing unless the feelings behind them are sincere. Anhu doesn't start to take him seriously as a love interest (or even as a human being, really), until he shows that he understands this concept.

Things get derailed for awhile when Yuri panics over his newfound ability to form actual human attachments; meanwhile, Anhu experiences anxiety about her looks. After spending so much time with Mr. High Maintenance (he takes her to buy fancy clothes and get her hair done for Christ's sake), she starts to pick up his grooming habits. While she enjoys some aspects of self-beautification, other aspects cause her physical and emotional discomfort. She fears that she will never be as attractive as Yuri, and she misinterprets his panic-induced absenteeism as rejection. Eventually they get things sorted, Anhu realizes that you should wear whatever makes you happy, and Yuri finds a different job (cause Anhu can't date a teacher even if he is just masquerading). Of course, his behavior at home doesn't change. He continues to spout one-liners and sprawl out half naked in Anhu's bedroom just to troll the shit out of her. 

TEI

I hope you enjoyed the comic relief in the last route, because the fun 'n games are over now. It's Tei's turn at bat, and he's fucking terrifying. On the surface, Tei is the most mature, responsible, kind, and trustworthy of the boys. As the unofficial head of the household, he does all the cooking, cleaning, and laundry, which earns him the nickname "Momma Tei". He gets a job at a tea shop and becomes a favorite among the patrons, and he's mega popular with the female demographic at school. Even Anhu's loudmouth friend Soi is reduced to blushing silence in his presence. So, how is he scary again? Well...TEI BE CRAY.

Turns out Tei is the other doll that Anhu bought secondhand, which means - you guessed it - the dude's a certified headcase. Tei was a special "limited edition" doll, so only serious collectors and/or rich people could afford to buy him when he was released. His first owner was one of those hardcore, "mint in the box" type collectors who have a coronary if their valuables get a speck of dust on them. Like any toy, Tei idolized his master and wanted to make her happy, but contact between them was restricted because she didn't want him to get "dirty". Then, one day, her younger sibling got a hold of Tei and damaged him. When his owner saw that her perfect collector's item had been marred, she screamed bloody murder. Frantic, she contacted the doll company, but was told that his model had been discontinued, so no replacement parts were available. Upon learning that the damage was permanent, her hysteria gave way to disgust. She kept calling Tei "filthy" and "ruined" and recoiled every time she looked at him. Desperate to get him out of her sight, she sold him for a pittance on the internet.

Because of this, Tei believes in his heart of hearts that he is repulsive and irreparably sullied. After he becomes human, he does whatever he can to distance himself from Anhu so that he won't "contaminate" her. Hobbies, extracurriculars, jobs - anything to keep him busy - but it doesn't work, because Anhu wants to be around him. He tries dating Soi to shake her off, but Soi realizes he's not truly interested and breaks up with him. Tei even drugs Anhu's tea in the evenings so that she'll be unable to stay up and spend time with him. None of it does the trick, and after awhile, Tei's shame and self-loathing start to drive him insane. He's head over heels for Anhu, but he sees his desire for her as monstrous and obscene. With no healthy outlet for his feelings, he becomes convinced that the only way he can be with her is for him to "bring her down to his level". He has all sorts of dark fantasies about hurting and ruining her, which causes him to revile himself even more, and the cycle continues. Meanwhile, Anhu starts having mental problems of her own due to Nameless's memory tampering. Fortunately, before things can go totally south, Yuri catches on and provokes Tei into confessing the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God. Anhu's like "holy crap, dude, you've got it all wrong. I don't care what your last owner told you. You are NOT dirty, and wanting to get your mack on is not the crime of the century". This comes as such news to Tei that the poor guy breaks down crying (his voice actor did SUCH a great job with it too, omg. Actual chills). After their impromptu therapy session, his mental health improves significantly, and he ends up being a very sensitive and generous boyfriend. ...Not that I would touch the guy with a 49 1/2 foot pole. I'm still too freaked out by his numerous bad endings, which range from psychotic and violent to creepy as hell. And that's not even counting all the times he shows up out of nowhere in other characters' bad endings and proceeds to out-crazy their crazy

RED

Last but not least - my precious bby Red~! Not gonna lie, his was the first route I wanted to play (for the incredibly stupid reason that I like his hair best), but the game forces you to complete them in a certain order, so...yeah. Backstory time! Red is the only one of Anhu's dolls that she didn't actually buy. The doll company created Red with an "action hero" concept in an attempt to tap into to new markets; to gain publicity, they gave him away in an online contest (they figured the promotion would create a following for his character and bolster future sales). Unfortunately, his concept proved unpopular. Anhu was ecstatic when she won him, but the contest failed to drum up interest for his model's widespread release, so the doll company decided to abandon production. As such, Red is the only copy of his model in existence.

When Red becomes human, he seems like kind of a nutter. His creators programmed him to be a warrior from a Power Rangers type show, complete with some "hidden power" that he has yet to realize - and let's just say that this concept doesn't translate well to real life. Like Buzz Lightyear, he appears unable to separate fantasy from reality. He uses codenames when referring to the other boys (he calls Tei "commander, for instance) and addresses Anhu as "Heroine". He sounds delusional half the time, but he's such a freaking sweetheart that nobody wants to break the news to him. And, to be honest, his action hero complex doesn't really interfere with his life. His straightforward and outgoing personality earn him tons of friends at school, and he eventually joins the drama club and gets the lead role in an upcoming play. Everything seems hunky-dory on Planet Red...that is, until the cookie incident.

Since Red is blissfully unaware of how hot he is, he's also unaware that he has a couple of psycho fangirl stalkers that want to get into his pants. One of them gives him a cookie, but before he can eat it, he encounters Anhu and learns that she skipped lunch. Seeing how hungry she is, he gives her his food. His stalker is stalking him at the time (duh) and witnesses Red's actions. Furious and jealous, she and a couple of her cronies corner Anhu the next day and drag her off into an abandoned alley to beat her up. Anhu gets knocked out, but fortunately her friends Soi and Shinbi come to her rescue before the bitchsquad can cause serious damage. She tries to keep the assault a secret from Red, but he finds out and takes it pretty hard. He berates himself for not coming to her rescue, leading Anhu to ask him why he wants to be a hero so badly. Turns out, he's not as much of a cloudcuckoolander as he seems. He knows he's not really a superhero, but he clings desperately to the fiction because it's the only identity he has. He feels like he's alone in the universe, helpless and powerless, with nothing worthwhile to contribute.

Lance learns of the cookie incident and strongarms Anhu into joining the drama club with Red so that she'll always have people to walk home with after school. As he and Anhu spend more time together, she sees him performing small acts of kindness on a daily basis (comforting a lost kid, helping fellow students, putting others before himself). She tries to make him realize that there's nothing wrong with being an "everyday hero", and that it's his sweet personality that makes him special, not some stupid power. He's clearly got it bad for her and becomes a veritable black belt in the art of the cartoon crush blush. Nameless, however, is NOT HAPPY, BOB. Red and Anhu are falling in love too quickly, without nearly enough angst and drama...and Nameless is frankly sick of the whole schtick by now anyway. He needs to up the ante to keep himself interested, so he rips out key passages from her diary, leading Anhu to forget about promises she made to Red. As a result, she stands him up on a date, then does some stuff that makes Red think she likes Tei instead of him. Because his self-esteem is so low, he concludes that Tei would be a better boyfriend than him anyway, and leaves the house without saying goodbye. This fails to satiate Nameless's malevolence, and over the next week he slashes and burns Anhu's memories, turning her into a veritable Alzheimer's patient. She tries to hide her failing faculties, but her memory loss is painfully obvious to her dolls. Only half-cognizant of past events, she repeatedly asks for Red. The other boys do everything they can to find him, to no avail. Finally Nameless grows impatient and, using his ever-growing ability to manipulate Anhu's thoughts, creates a situation to reunite them. When she finally sees him again, Anhu breaks down and tearfully admits that she's lost her ability to remember things. Red apologizes profusely and promises never to run away again.

The last 3rd of Red's route is what makes him my favorite character in the game. There's almost no romance, but he's there for Anhu when she is at her most vulnerable. She wakes up every morning barely aware of who she is, yet alone who he is, but he never lets it get to him. He fills out hundreds of notecards with info about her life and helps her re-learn it all each day. She's terrified of losing her mind while she's alone, so he accompanies her everywhere like a faithful service dog. He sleeps on a chair in her room, walks her to and from school, and risks expulsion by skipping class to be nearby in case of an emergency. In the afternoons they practice their lines for the school play, even though they both know she's just going to forget them later. Red takes care of her patiently and lovingly, day in and day out, without expecting anything in return. He never stops calling her "Heroine", and that just really gets me. I almost cried while playing his route because it made me remember all the times my friends and family supported me when I was experiencing hellish health problems. When you're physically or mentally hurting, it really pays to have people you can depend on, and Red's character reminded me of that. The FEELS, man, the feels.

Anyway, in a twist I didn't see coming, turns out Red actually does have a hidden power, though neither he nor Anhu are aware of it. The more Red protects and supports her, the less control Nameless has. Anhu's diary starts re-writing itself every time Nameless rips out a page, and Anhu begins to recover her identity. It's unclear whether Red somehow acts as an anchor for Anhu's memories or if he just shields her from magical tampering. Either way, Nameless loses the ability to hurt her, and this enrages him. His anger is only temporary though - after all, he only has to wait a few more days before she gets dragged down to toygatory. Red and Anhu star in the play together, and during their big "romance" scene on stage, she ad libs and tells him how she really feels in her own words. Naturally, their planned stage kiss ends up being more of an actual kiss. The route concludes with Anhu, Red, and the other boys going to an amusement park - and, like in all the other routes, Anhu disappears in the final scene.

But this time, instead of being sent back to the past, she ends up in toygatory, where Nameless is waiting for her. And boy howdy, he looks every bit as creepy as his voice sounds.

Yeah, well, you promised to wear pants.

The Wizard takes what remains of Anhu's diary and vanishes, leaving her alone with the soul of her forgotten toy. Together, they wander through a wasteland of memories, as Nameless alternately lies to her, torments her, and demands that she remember him. At first, she can't understand what's going on. Everywhere they go, she encounters sights and sounds that remind her of Yeonho, Lance, Yuri, Tei, and Red. Nameless is pissed that she is somehow able to remember them, but not him, and he tries to distract and misdirect her. He forces her to ride a merry-go-round from their memories over and over again until she becomes sick. Finally, in a series of disjointed flashbacks, she starts to recall the teddy bear she loved as a child. She remembers the time the neighbor's dog chewed half his face off, and she realizes that the ragged, eye-patch wearing weirdo beside her is the soul of that toy. Still, she cannot remember his name - but Nameless is satisfied. He tells her to never leave him again.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, Anhu's departure to Toygatory causes all 5 alternate timelines to converge. The dudes du jour from each route suddenly encounter all the other dudes du jour, making for some awkwardness - like, "haha, guess we all made out with the same girl. Whoopsie-daisy " But, seeing as the boys are in fact dolls-turned-human, weird crap like this doesn't faze them for long. Using clues from each timeline, they start to piece together what happened. Tei in particular is able to connect the dots (to be honest, at several points in the game I wondered if Tei knew more than he was letting on. He was the only person who seemed aware of the fact that they were all being used...though maybe his insanity just gave him special insight into the larger insanity). The boys join forces to find their owner, and thanks to Red's weird ability to shield Anhu from magical danger, they find the storage room where Nameless's physical body resides. Apparently toygatory and the real world overlap in such a place, and the boys are able to cross over into the room within the room, so to speak.

There, they encounter Anhu, who is remembering more and more of her childhood with each passing moment. Nameless panics when he sees the boytoys and grabs Anhu, threatening to harm her if they come any closer. Afraid for her safety, Anhu's dolls throw fucking acid onto Nameless's physical body, melting his fabric skin and beginning the slow process of killing him (all this and more from a company whose slogan proudly reads, "Sweet Solutions for Female Gamers". Ya-huh, sure. You keep telling yourself that, ya sickos). At this point, both Nameless and Anhu have an epiphany about the nature of their relationship. Nameless realizes that, by endangering his owner and taking her away from the people she loves, he is in fact the villain in his own story. His anger dissipates into despair, and at his core he wishes for more time with Anhu to say all the things left unsaid. She, meanwhile, recalls how she stopped playing with Nameless because the neighbor's kid made fun of her for having such a "tacky bear". This makes her realize the degree to which she has allowed other people's expectations to rule her life. Anhu begs Nameless's forgiveness, explaining that her fear of rejection and ridicule led her to forget her true self, and him along with it. The apologies come too late, however, and Yeonho, Lance, Yuri, Tei, and Red pull her out of Toygatory, leaving Nameless alone once again.

After this depressing turn of events, the game goes to credits and returns you to the main screen. To get the true and final ending, you have to go to the character select menu and type in your forgotten toy's name over and over and over again (you choose it at the start of the game, which means you actually DO have to remember it). In order to proceed, the game forces you to purge all of your savegame files. Events are reset once more, and this time Anhu remembers his name before going to Toygatory. His soul emerges and is given a human body, and the poor little bugger cries his eyes out while she embraces him. They forgive each other, and Anhu promises never to abandon him again. What's so AWESOME about this is that, by sacrificing your savegame files (in effect, your memories of the game), you the player pay the cost necessary to give Nameless and Anhu one last chance. And if that's not next level player participation, then I don't know what is. Thank you, Wizard!

Awwww 

In the closing scenes, only one thing is left unclear: just how far back in time did Anhu travel in the final reset? Did she go allll the way back to the beginning, to just after the boytoys became human, before she fell in love with any of them? Or did she just go back to Red's route, before they went to the amusement park? I think the second explanation is most likely, since the last CG in the game is the same one you get when you finish Red's route, with Nameless added in. Red has his arm around Anhu, so it seems like they're the canon couple at the end. If that's true, though, then that means the other guys' timelines were erased...which is kind of sad considering how much they matured over the course of their routes. I half expected the game to ask the player to "choose" which timeline became canon, but that never panned out. Still, I can't say I'm dissatisfied with the outcome - Red's the most supportive and least (dangerously) unbalanced love interest, so he's probably the best person for Anhu.

Anyway, in case you couldn't tell from the 356789987654334567898765434567 page review, I LOVED this game and would recommend it to the ends of the earth. The characters were awesome, the jokes were hilarious, the suspense was spine-tingling, and the occasional Engrish did little to detract from the experience. The story had a lot of positive messages about love and self-acceptance, and even the problematic tropes (like the idea that you can "fix" mentally ill people with love) made sense in the context of the owner-toy relationship. The art was good, the voice-acting was top notch, and the premise was cleverly constructed enough that I was able to ignore what plot issues there were. If I hadn't won this game in a contest, I would've paid real money for it. That's how much I enjoyed playing