April 22 
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Well, I’ve finally done it: I finished VLR today! 
Like for real this time, alternate endings and all 
And hm I have many questions, but that’s what Zero Time Dilemma’s for huh?
Reading-wise though… things got a little weird at the end but honestly I think that was more to do with the content itself being confusing than anything with language; it’s reassuring when the characters are also like “what?” But stats: I finished VLR in just over 80 hours which is pretty wild actually. 999 took me around 100 and it’s supposedly shorter so yay improvement!! Thinking about how I’ve properly finished two full games in Japanese now is wild too, I never would’ve imagined that even like a few months ago feels pretty good!
obligatory VLR thoughts
Wow there was so much I found out so many things and yet I feel like I have more questions than ever, as is the spike chunsoft way.
My crackpot theory track record!! Incredible The main thing I’ve learned from Zero Escape is truly no theories are crackpot, anything can happen. But this: it sure was 淳平 huh! No wonder he knew so many things! I’m amazed he kept his cool about the whole 茜 thing as much as he did, though. Honestly the main doubts I had with him being 淳平 were that and the way he talked, but he’s just an old man lmao. I can definitely buy it being him though, like the スコッチ stuff really sounds like something he’d say
But シグマ… yeah I was definitely suspicious when they kept showing him like shoulders down and never any face ever but I wasn’t quite sure what direction we were going with it, and um it was us the whole time? We did this?? Well maybe not us but like… a different us? God Zero Escape It’s very good at making you go from “wow ゼロ is so evil and awful” to like “wait is… is ゼロ not actually the bad guy?” and those are complicated answers certainly but man. There’s so much lmao
And then the like “alternate ending” happened and I’m more confused than ever, there’s so much temporal nonsense that I’d be struggling to keep track of in English so it was an absolute trip ファイ was even more weird and cryptic than usual, 茜 is always like that, and I really don’t know whose consciousness was actually in カイル at that point. Like… シグマ is occupied, I suppose it could be 茜 or ファイ, but like… ahhhhh maybe I’ll find out in the next game or maybe I never will! I wouldn’t be shocked either way lmao
Another thing I’m very curious about: what happened to ニルス and サンタ huh? I suppose 八代 as well but like she doesn’t have a literal sibling here that just never brought her up. ニルス came up a bit in 四葉 and アルス backstory organization stuff but um a lot of time has passed since then, so like… did he just get left behind? And same with サンタ, last we knew he was on the run with 茜 but clearly some stuff happened, so… idk. It doesn’t feel like there can be any happy answers here really but we heard about everyone else to some extent so 
Now it’s just a matter of time until I attempt the challenge of Zero Time Dilemma; probably a matter of like hours but hey exciting times!