Visual Novel / Lucy ~The Eternity She Wished For~

If there was a robot that could laugh, cry and smile...does it have a soul?

In the near future, androids have become the norm. Emotionless husks of metal have become a part of human society, much to the dismay of the boy. The robot he found at the dump site, though...this one was different. It laughed, it cried, it smiled, it dreamt, just like a human...

Taking place in mid-21st century Korea, Lucy ~The Eternity She Wished For~ is about a high school boy and an android called Lucy. You play as the boy, who faces decisions and moral dilemmas in this near-future world. Through his experience, the audience looks at the role of advancing technology and its effects upon human society. The visual novel raises important questions like what exactly makes us human and what it means to love.

The original version of Lucy ~The Eternity She Wished For~ received high praise in its native South Korea following its original release in 2010. This prompted a successful Kickstarter project which funded a remake of the visual novel, including its localization to English and Japanese with an added Japanese voice acting feature. The game is currently available on Steam.

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This game provides examples of:

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Korean government believes androids like Lucy have the potential to grow beyond their programming and pose a threat to humans, which is why they strongly regulate the number and type of androids allowed. They eventually order the destruction of androids, which ultimately causes Lucy to recover her memories during the Golden Ending.
• Ambiguous Situation: It's never revealed whether Lucy set herself on fire out of depression or the protagonist's father set her on fire.
• Arc Number: Oct 12th. It's the day the protagonist discovers Lucy and the day the rebuilt Lucy recovers her memories in the Golden Ending. The number "1012" is also the default icon for unlocked achievements.
• Arc Words: Twice, both times referencing the game's title. Near the end of the game, the protagonist and Lucy have a conversation about what eternity means for a human and a robot. The protagonist explains to Lucy that "eternity" for him will be as long as he is alive and she lives in his memories; when Lucy is destroyed, she says that she is happy and will be with him as long as he remembers her for eternity. After she is rebuilt by the protagonist 15 years after the original ending, they are finally able to live "the eternity she wished for" like they always intended: together.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: At one point, the protagonist mutters, "Even the game is working against me."
• Chekhov's Gun: Upon revisiting the junkyard, Lucy comments that she'll always remember the place as where she met the protagonist for the first time. In the Golden Ending, revisiting the junkyard is what finally causes a rebuilt Lucy to regain her memories.
  • The robotics flyer that the protagonist gets roughly halfway through the game and has the option to throw away or keep turns out to be one of the deciding factors in whether the protagonist dedicates their life to robotics to revive Lucy, unlocking the Golden Ending. The achievement for keeping the flyer is even called "Butterfly Effect", in a roundabout reference to this trope.
• Do Androids Dream?: The central premise of the game, even if Lucy herself says she can't have literal dreams in one of the Doctor segments.
• Downer Ending: The game ends with Lucy being destroyed. However...
  • Twist Ending: After the credits roll, and a "New Game" is started, the Golden Ending will play, which reveals that you are in fact the Doctor that has been appearing in the interludes throughout the game and have been trying to restore Lucy's original memories.
• Education Mama: Your father.
• Epilogue Letter: Lucy's initial creator is revealed to be a "Dr. Baek", who left Lucy in a prominent place in the junkyard in the hopes someone would find her.
• Everyone Has Standards: Though he's extremely disdainful of robots, your father is visibly shocked and unsure when he's given the suggestion to destroy Lucy to "fix" his son's issues. However, further goading gets him past this.
• Evil Luddite: The protagonist's father is the biggest anti-robot advocate in the series, even more than the protagonist themselves at the start, and is written as a Hate Sink with no redeeming qualities.
• Evolving Title Screen: The title changes from "The Eternity She Wished For" to "The Eternity She Wished For And..." after the first playthrough of the game, then finally changes to "The Eternity She Wished For And...What I Wish For" upon completion of the Golden Ending.
• Hate Sink: The protagonist's father, who has approximately zero redeeming qualities and is an incessant Jerkass to Lucy and his own son.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Defied. The player eventually gets the chance to enter their name when Lucy asks them for it, but the protagonist immediately overrides it in favor of snarkily telling Lucy that his name is "Mr. Handsome", and when Lucy calls him out for lying he just tells her to call him Master instead.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: The protagonist comes to this conclusion after Lucy is destroyed.
• Interface Screw: Upon unlocking the Golden Ending, the "New Game" option at the title screen becomes garbled, and clicking on it changes the title screen further.
• Irony: In the "Reunion" epilogue (which takes place about 25 years after the original ending), the protagonist's father has come to rely on an android for day-to-day life.
  • Jerkass Realization: The letter from the protagonist announcing that he is cutting all ties with his father and the visit of the rebuilt Lucy causes him to reflect on his past and share some regrets about the relationship he had with his son.
• Job-Stealing Robot: One of the reasons 2050 society shuns robots but remains dependent on them.
• Missing Mom: Suffice to say, it wasn't just the son that was being neglected.
• Moment Killer: After taking care of the protagonist when he's sick, he winds up giving her a hug for staying with him throughout the day. She then advises that "To ensure safe sexual practice, Lucy wanted to let master know that an age verification is required before any further physical intimacy is allowed..."
• Parental Neglect: The protagonist and his father have a strained relationship, to say the least. To elaborate, even in the Golden Ending's epilogue, his father legitimately has no idea what types of food his son likes, while his android did.
• Passive-Aggressive Kombat: The epilogue reveals that the protagonist gifted his aging father a top-of-the-line PIM caretaker robot, and even kept sending upgraded models years down the line, which seems like a generous gift on the surface if one didn't know how much said father hates robots, or that Lucy herself was the first PIM-model robot.
• Piggyback Cute: When you first take Lucy to (and from) the repair shop.
• Sequencing Deception: The interludes that appear throughout the game with the Doctor and Lucy are portrayed as flashbacks when they are in fact flash forwards. The "Doctor" is none other than you, the protagonist, attempting to restore Lucy's memories 15 years after the end of the original ending.
  • Technically, the bulk of the game could be considered a flashback.
• Silent Protagonist: Lucy is the only voiced character in the game.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Remember the sunglasses-wearing man who shows up in Repairman's shop about halfway through the story and never reappears again? He is one of Dr. Baek's assistants as mentioned in the doctor's Epilogue Letter, and you must take the flyer from him in order to get the Golden Ending.
  • Repairman himself fits this role, as he is involved in both scenes that determine whether or not you get the Golden Ending.
• Spit Take
  You: H-how is it?
  Lucy: It tastes just like Master...
  All the water I've been holding in my mouth comes squirting out.
• Theseus' Ship Paradox: Discussed when Lucy ponders the fact that, over time, repairs and part replacement would mean that there'd eventually be nothing left of her original body, and even her memories can be erased, overwritten or copied. In the Golden Ending, the protagonist ends up spending 15 years rebuilding Lucy from scratch after her destruction, and ultimately ends up properly reviving her, memories and all.
• Three Laws-Compliant: Lucy's adherence to Law #2 causes her to violate Law #3, leading to her destruction.
• Title Drop: Near the end of the game, when Lucy is terminally damaged, and during the Golden Ending.
• 20 Minutes into the Future: The game is set in the year 2050, but with the exception of Lucy (and other off-screen androids that have become the norm in society), most of the game looks like it takes place in the present day.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: You and Gears.
• We Can Rebuild Him: The game ends with Lucy destroyed beyond repair, with even her memory chips being fried. In the Golden Ending, the protagonist spends 15 years feverishly studying robots to rebuild Lucy from scratch, and eventually succeeds, with her even regaining her lost memories.
• When You Coming Home, Dad?: You share this type of relationship with your father, who's an outright workaholic and, arguably, part of why you become so attached to Lucy.
  • In the Golden Ending epilogue, he expresses mild regret for not averting this trope, musing that "I just thought boys like him would do fine growing up on their own..."