Visual Novel / Café Stella and the Reapers' Butterflies

Kousei Takamine is a college student living his carefree life. He resides in an apartment managed by the father of his Childhood Friend Nozomi Sumizome, and basically lives a normal life.

...until a car accident struck him.

He wakes up the next morning to find out he's living the previous day, and thus is wary of the same accident occurring. However, he sees a mysterious cat that glares at him and encounters a beautiful girl with a scythe.

The girl's name is Kanna, and she is a Grim Reaper.

Kanna and her companion, Mikado, were sent by God to find butterflies. The butterflies contain soul remnants of humans and only appear when someone has an ounce of regret in their life. Kanna wants to find these butterflies so people can pass on without any regrets.

Even though Kousei appeared to have avoided death the second time, he has not escaped his fate yet and must help the death goddess with her work. And that's by opening a café.

Café Stella and the Reapers' Butterflies is a 2019 H-Game Visual Novel by Yuzusoft. The English version was released in March 25th, 2022.

This visual novel contains the examples of:

• Absurdly High-Stakes Game: During a takoyaki party, Natsume secretly inserts some spicy fillings into the takoyakis she makes, hoping that Kousei ends up eating some at random. Unfortunately, Natsume ate all of the spicy ones, resulting in a Fire-Breathing Diner. Kousei escaped unharmed, on the other hand.
• Accidental Pervert: Quite a few instances of Kousei being one:
  • When Nozomi wakes Kousei up at the beginning of the visual novel, the latter is able to see the former's panties. Upon traveling back to the morning of the day of the accident, Kousei sees the panties again and this time points that out to Nozomi, who gets embarrassed.
    • Later in the Common Route, Kousei accidentally gropes Nozomi's breasts while catching her from a fall.
  • After Kousei is temporarily knocked out by Kanna and carried to the café's break room, he regains consciousness and sees a half-dressed Natsume in her underwear. The latter isn't all too pleased with the encounter and demands the former to forget what he saw.
  • While Kanna makes a cup of coffee for Kousei, she tries to open a can of coffee beans, but ends up scattering them all over. Some of the beans went under her waitstaff uniform, leading Kousei to believe there is something wrong with Kanna's chest. She disputes this and reveals that the beans ended up on her chest. Unfortunately, the rest of the girls stumble across this incident and become misled regarding the relationship between Kousei and Kanna.
  • Kousei ends up seeing Mei's bra while she focuses on applying some whipping cream onto a cake. After the former points this out, the latter becomes embarrassed, and squeezes the piping bag too much, ruining the cake decoration in the process.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The flow chart makes another return to Café Stella after being previously used in Senren * Banka and Riddle Joker. This feature allows the player to see what choices are selected for a route.
• Artistic License – Religion: While the God that Kanna and Mikado work for is indicated to be the Judeo-Christian God, the way He behaves is much more akin to a very powerful Taoist or Shinto god rather than the Judeo-Christian one. Particularly notable is the emphasis on maintaining a divine order and making sure that souls go where they should. Also, God uses cats as His eyes on Earth, something that an omniscient deity wouldn't need. In Nozomi's route, God tries and fails to kill Kousei three different times, the first two by arranging accidents and the third by causing a heart attack, but His failure to kill Kousei doesn't jive with the omnipotent power of the Judeo-Christian God.
• Art Shift: Humorous events depict the characters in Super-Deformed style, as expected for a Yuzusoft title.
• Association Fallacy: Nozomi assumes that doughnuts have 0 calories because they are shaped like a zero, and zero refers to a calorie-free food. This logic is unfortunately (and hilariously) incorrect, since in a 4-Koma short video, the doughnuts that Nozomi consumes weigh in at 400 calories each. As a result, she ends up gaining body weight by consuming too many sweets like doughnuts.
• Bland-Name Product: The people in this universe use either an iota-Phone or a Notroid. The social media platforms they use include Instogram, Facehook, and Nwitter. Various other websites exist, such as Koogle, Yapoo, Mamazon, dBay, and Memcari.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: As with Riddle Joker, Café Stella also includes a spoken disclaimer in Japanese upon starting the game. By default, one of the 5 heroines will voice this to the audience at random.
  • Even when the visual novel is stated to be for Japan sales only, it is possible that this spoken disclaimer was left as-is in the English localization of the game.
• Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: The plot centers around Kanna and Mikado gathering blue butterflies, which are soul remnants, and releasing them at night. That way, the souls can be guided towards a new life.
• The Cameo: Several cameos of characters in past Yuzusoft works appear, including, but not limited to:
  • Wakana and Touko from Sabbat of the Witch walking around the city.
  • Nanami and Chisaki from Riddle Joker inside the café during normal business hours.
  • Ayase and Kotori, also from Riddle Joker, inside the university's cafeteria.
• Childhood Friends: Kousei and Nozomi have been childhood friends in life, with the former living in an apartment owned by the latter's father. They can become a couple if they get together, as seen in Nozomi's route.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: While attempting to grab more plates from the shelf, Nozomi falls down, but not before Kousei catches her. This happened because she forgot to wear a bra (as a result of her haste relating to oversleeping the night before), and didn't want to stretch her body as much as a result.
• Disappeared Dad: A non-fatal version. Kousei's father Kazufumi is rarely around his son due to his career as an artist. However they're both on good terms with each other.
• Divine Date: Kousei can date Kanna, the Grim Reaper herself.
• Earn Your Bad Ending: If you refuse Kanna's offer to work at the café, Kousei dies for real.
• Emotionless Girl: This is seen in Natsume, as she struggles to express her emotions, resulting in having No Social Skills at first. Other people view her as the cool, calm type though, leading to the "Solitary Sniper" nickname given to her within the university.
• Event Flag: Every choice made affects the overall outcome, as per the norm of visual novels. Each route has a set of choices required to advance.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Kazufumi tells Kousei of his own personal Parental Neglect: His family are either doctors or politicians, but he wanted to be a painter. His parents assumed it was a waste of time, since they believed being an artist won't amount to anything, and he rebelled against his parents for it. After a biking accident, they cut him off completely, and since he still wanted to be an artist, he began to paint until he met Asumi, Kousei's mother.
• Foreshadowing: Early on in the common route, Kanna invites Natsume to listen in on her explanation of Kousei's soul and how he caused a time loop to save his life, with Kanna mentioning offhandedly that it might have something to do with Natsume herself. It isn't until Natsume's route that it is revealed that she was killed in the same car accident that killed Kousei at the start if the story, and was saved by him restarting the day - but ever since then she lost part of her own soul due to her own lack of will to live.
• Former Teen Rebel: To Kousei's surprise, his parents were this. He also discovered Nozomi's father used to be one.
• God Is Evil: Or Ambiguously Evil at best. God really has it out for people with powerful souls that could change their fate, and so tried to kill those in a Final Destination fashion.
• Happily Married: Both Kanna's and Nozomi's routes end with Kousei being married to them, with Kanna's route ending with the two of them having a daughter named Miyu, and Nozomi's route ending with Kousei taking over the family shrine alongside her.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In-Universe. Natsume's route reveals she was the main casualty in the same traffic accident that also killed Kousei. And this is after we are introduced to her when we first meet her in the story. She even tells Kousei about this later on.
• Insecure Love Interest: Plenty with a few of the heroines.
  • Kanna takes her role as a Grim Reaper very seriously, and so doesn't have time for romance, since it's her job to help butterflies reincarnate. Once Kousei tells her how he truly feels about her, she reciprocates. She remains insecure afterwards, however, because as a Grim Reaper she would eventually reincarnate once her soul fully healed due to appreciating life, which meant that she couldn't be with Kousei for more than a short time.
  • Natsume's general opinion of herself is that she doesn't think she deserves happiness, a thought process that leads to her shooting down Kousei's Love Confession. This turns out to be a bad thing, since Kanna and Mikado have a fragment of her soul which will weaken if her will to live is not strong enough.
• Insufferable Genius: Hiroto's older sister Suzune is a cooking genius, to almost a Gordon Ramsey levels. Just not as harsh or foul-mouthed as him.
• Interrupted Intimacy: This is present in Kanna's route, where both Kousei and Kanna are in the middle of their private time with each other in the morning. Nozomi barges into Kousei's apartment and sees the commotion; she tries to downplay the couple "having a breakfast of bananas and milk" before freaking out entirely. She eventually apologizes for the intrusion.
• Look Both Ways: This is how Kousei dies the first time. A car accident in which a car swerves into him. In Natsume's route, she was the main victim of the accident.
• Love Epiphany: Like previous Yuzusoft titles, Kousei or one of the heroines will fall for each other in their respective routes.
• Love Interest: Café Stella features 5 heroines: Kanna, Natsume, Nozomi, and Mei as part of the main cast, and Suzune as part of a subroute.
• Miko: Nozomi is one herself, as she is a shrine maiden at a local shrine, but she didn't like the idea at first. However, she eventually embraces being a shrine maiden in her route when she learns that she was the reincarnation of a daughter, whose mother became a complete human soul in the form of a red butterfly fluttering about and sought to reunite with her long-lost daughter.
• Missing Mom: Kousei's mother died when he was at a young age by illness.
• Pair the Spares: Kousei pairs a girl in the hospital named Somei with his best friend Hiroto. They both surprisingly get along very well.
• Press X to Die: The game's second choice involves Kousei either accepting Kanna's offer to work at the cafe and thus mitigate the problems caused by his soul, or refuse. Choosing the latter will result in Kosei's near-immediate death by heart attack.
• Reincarnation: Another topic explored in the visual novel, as seen in the following:
  • During Kanna's route, Kousei learns that he had been reincarnated several times. Before realizing this, he experienced memories of past lives of others, not knowing that they were his previous lives.
  • Kanna herself becomes reincarnated, initially after fulfilling her duties as the Grim Reaper, but then fully becomes a human being due to Kousei's desire to see her once more.
  • Nozomi, in her route, is the reincarnation of Lady Akaiwa's daughter.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Mikado and Kanna's memories are unaffected by Kousei's Time Master powers. In the latter's route, she is fully aware that Kousei wants to see her again when he accidentally went back in time to the point where the café hasn't reached its boon and him being unconscious in the backroom.
• Secret Identity: Kanna is a Grim Reaper, while Mikado is a Cat Sidhe. Both are tasked by God to gather butterflies and guide them in the right direction. In the Common Route, Kousei and Natsume are the only other people to know their true identities, due to the circumstances surrounding them. Nozomi and Mei eventually learn this fact in their respective routes.
• Shared Universe: While Yuzusoft games has an ambiguous stance on whether if all of their games are connected with their cameos, this is the first time a previous game, Senren * Banka, is directly referenced.
• Shout-Out: The game has some unusual number of shout outs to various media which included video games in the English translation.
• Singer-Songwriter: Kousei used to write songs in his childhood days. Nowadays, he regrets composing those songs, and it doesn't help the fact that Nozomi remembers much of the lyrics, singing them to herself sometimes.
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: Kousei's parents when they were younger had a bad case of Belligerent Sexual Tension until they decided to get married.
• Soul Eater: Mei's left eye has a power called the Insect-Devouring Eye (also known as the Bug-Catching Eye) that lets her power "eat" the butterflies, unaware that it's a person's soul it contains. As she sees the so-called "wisps" with her left eye, she covers it with some of her hair in order to not see them.
  • They can technically be released by its user, but eventually disappear over time if they are not released. It is for this reason that it became notoriously known as the Insect-Devouring Eye.
• Sweet Tooth:
  • Nozomi is an obvious example. She loves consuming desserts, but worries that she will gain weight by eating too much sweets.
  • Natsume also has a sweet tooth, going as far as adding 8 sticks of sugar and 2 cups of coffee creamer to her black coffee. She also does not like bitter food like green bell peppers.
• Temporal Paradox: Kousei is a walking example for traveling back in time, though this is involuntary. He does this once after reversing his own death, and in Kanna's route when he's too depressed to see her again, and the butterflies sends him back before the café opens, where he meets Kanna in that time period.
• Troll: Kanna likes to mess with Kousei with sexual remarks.
• Tsundere: Natsume can be considered a classic tsundere to some extent. Even though her isolation and loneliness played a key role in her initially cold personality, she eventually warms up to everyone around her as the café becomes a success, especially to Kousei in her route.
• Unlockable Content: In order to unlock Suzune's route as well as the After Story portion, one must complete at least one other main route. By completing the game, the CG image gallery, the music galley, and the sprite gallery all become unlocked too.
• Your Tradition Is Not Mine: Nozomi's father used to be a teen rebel who didn't want to a be a Shinto Priest. However, he relented as he grew older. Likewise, Nozomi has similar feelings since she didn't want to be a Miko.