Once upon a time, in a topsy-turvy world...
Don't worry. No matter what happens, I won't let go. You're not alone...I'll always be with you.
Wandering through a dark and empty void, a nameless heroine meets a blond-haired boy who calls himself Alice. They've forgotten what this place is, how they've come to it, and even who they are. Maybe they're trapped in a dream—it's hard to agree on much, thanks to Alice's prickly temper, but the heroine resolves to find a way out for them both. And so when they come upon an enormous mirror in the darkness, they jump right through it into a whole new world...
...the Looking-Glass World, to be exact, full of gender-swapped fairytale characters both familiar and strange. Here the heroine lives a normal life as one Yurika Arisu, encountering each of these men in their turn. There's the arrogant heir Cinderella, the straight-laced Red Riding Hood, the ever-carefree Kaguya, the honor student Gretel, the delicate Snow White...and the enigmatic Wizard, who's a thorn in everyone's side. What are their stories? How will they end? And whatever became of Alice, the boy in the darkness? No matter the answer, one thing is certain: this princess is determined to save every last prince.
TAISHO x ALICEnote is a Japanese PC Visual Novel developed by Primula and released episodically in 2015-2016, with publisher Prototype porting the compiled episodes to PlayStation Vita and Nintendo Switch. In English the game had a bit of a rocky history; the first localization attempt by E2 Gaming was an infamous typo-ridden Translation Train Wreck. Luckily, JAST later announced a completely-redone translation that has since been brought to Steam and Switch.
A fandisc, TAISHO x ALICE: HEADS&TAILS, was released in 2017 and received an English translation from JAST in 2022. It includes romantic after-stories for the marquee princes, as well as side-story events focused on supporting characters Huntsman and Woolfe.
Due to the nature of the story, beware of spoilers below.
TAISHO x ALICE and HEADS&TAILS provide examples of:
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- Accidental Pervert: Several times male characters walk in on Yurika while she's changing. She usually doesn't overreact, and sometimes even gets disappointed that they aren't more interested.
- Adults Are Useless: The few characters older than their mid-twenties are generally unaware of the main cast's problems and incapable of helping, though not always for lack of effort.
- Age Lift: Yurika is 17 and Gretel is 15 in the original Japanese script. This became 19 and 18 in the English translation, and similarly all references to middle/high school were changed to university.
- Alice Allusion: Through The Looking Glass specifically. The entire game's aesthetic, many of its motifs (chess, mirrors, cats), a few direct quotations, and of course Alice himself are all taken from the novel.
- All Just a Dream: In the prologue Alice and Yurika debate whether the blank void they're in is this. The Looking-Glass World also gives off this impression right from the name. No one's quite sure which one's the dream, if any, and who's doing the dreaming. The answer: everything, and everyone.
- Alternate Identity Amnesia: None of Alistair's personalities, including the main one, have any memory of what happens to the body when they're not in control. That's why their perception of the same events and people can differ so drastically.
- Alternate Universe: Each jump into the mirror leads Yurika to a different version of the Looking-Glass World where she pursues a different guy. Familiar faces appear each time, but with different roles and relationships to fit the fairytale theme.
- Anachronic Order: The routes don't necessarily take place in the same order they are presented to the player. In particular, Wizard's route must be played last out of all non-epilogue routes but chronologically occurs before them, as shown in the fandisk.
- Anachronism Stew: The Looking-Glass World has some modern-day elements like slang and pop-culture references, but also a mishmash of architecture and clothing from the Taisho era and European fairytales.
- Anonymous Public Phone Call: At one point Red calls Ryoushi from a pay phone to warn him that Yurika is in danger. Since Red usually avoids Ryoushi, it's a sign of the desperate situation.
- Arranged Marriage: Cinderella's route starts off with Yurika's and Cinderella's parents considering betrothing them, though the two have never met. Turns into Perfectly Arranged Marriage before long.
- Art Shift: The characters' childhood flashbacks lack the usual VN sprites and are presented via simplistic flat-tinted stills, like a storybook.
- Attempted Rape: In Gretel's route, a group of delinquents kidnaps Yurika, planning to gang-rape her in the woods. She narrowly escapes. The would-be perpetrators aren't so lucky.
- Author Avatar: A weird In-Universe example with Yurika, who creates the "Yurikas" inside Alistair's head as idealized aspects of herself. Ryoushi even calls it "fanfiction".
- Beautiful Dreamer: No less than three times in the fandisc, with Cinderella, Red, and Woolfe all finding Yurika absolutely adorable.
- Bedmate Reveal: Alistair wakes up one night and finds Yurika in his bed. He doesn't take it well.
- Blue with Shock: The fandisc adds new sprites for Yurika and Woolfe in this vein. Perfect for comic moments.
- Brother–Sister Incest: Gretel's route. Although it's quickly revealed that he and Yurika are Not Blood Siblings, much of the story deals with his struggle to come to terms with their relationship.
- Bodyguard Crush: While Red Riding Hood is initially irritated by Yurika's attempts at flirting while he's tasked with protecting her, he quickly grows fond of her and falls for her.
- Caretaker Reversal: In Kaguya's afterstory Yurika gets sick and he looks after her, in a reversal of their situation in the main story.
- Caught in the Rain: In Snow White's afterstory, he and Yurika are stuck in an abandoned mansion during a downpour.
- Cerebus Syndrome: Episode I has a mostly light-hearted tone without any major stakes, almost to the point of Bait-and-Switch. While the irreverent comedy never goes away, the rest of the story massively ramps up the drama and Content Warnings.
- Character Narrator: The game is largely narrated by Yurika in First-Person Perspective, with occasional Switching P.O.V. to the focus character of the route.
- Chastity Couple: Yurika relationship with Cinderella and Red is this, to her chagrin in the fandisc.
- Childhood Friends: Woolfe and Red, as well as Yurika and Alice/Alistair.
- Christmas Episode: The fandisc features a heartwarming one seen from both Woolfe's and Ryoushi's perspectives.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: When Switching P.O.V. from Yurika to one of the male characters, the screen border changes color appropriately.
- Damsel in Distress:
- Yurika is threatened by the Big Bad Wolf in Red's route, and Red takes on the task of protecting her. She orchestrated the whole scheme and was never in any real danger.
- Happens again in Gretel's route when she's attacked by delinquents. This time it's dead serious, and Red really does save her.
- Childhood Friend Romance: The whole story is kicked off by one of these.
- Dance of Romance: Yurika and Cinderella share one in his route.
- Deal with the Devil: Yurika makes one with the Wizard in Cinderella's route in order to reunite with him after he vanishes.
- Delayed Narrator Introduction: Yurika narrates the bulk of the game, of course, but the second-person segments are a question mark. Turns out it's Yurika for everything...the real Yurika.
- Detective Drama: Wizard's route is a play on this genre, with Wizard being the Private Detective investigating a Big, Screwed-Up Family menaced by threatening letters. On a meta level, the route also serves to raise and answer bigger questions about the overarching story.
- Developers' Desired Date: While all routes are equally canon, it's hard to miss Alice's prominent position in all the marketing graphics, him being the first guy you meet, his cameos in every chapter, and the fact that he gets the concluding episode entirely to himself.
- Did They or Didn't They?: It's never made entirely clear if Yurika and the Wizard had sex, as the leadup is never shown directly and multiple characters give contradictory opinions on the event.
- Diet Episode: Gretel's afterstory has him going on a strict diet and exercise regime, complete with Micro Dieting and Meat-O-Vision, after discovering that he's gained a tiny amount of weight from his snacking habits.
- Disappeared Dad: Fathers are in extremely short supply here, with only Yurika's and Cinderella's putting in an actual appearance. Justified, since Alistair's father walked out on his family before the other personalities manifested.
- Distressed Dude: It's to be expected, with the tagline of "saving your prince". Indeed, the whole story is caused by Alistair getting stranded inside his subconscious, with Yurika coming to his rescue.
- Don't Go in the Woods: Both Red and Snow White are told not to leave their house as children by their mothers.
- Downer Ending: The final bad end of the game, which is even named "Downer Ending" in the scene selection. If the real Yurika fails to understand Alistair's personalities (i.e. if the player picks all the wrong choices in the epilogue), the Yurika she created in Alice's chapter blames her for his misfortunes and convinces her to kill herself as "karmic punishment". Personality!Yurika then disposes of the Wizard and wipes Alistair's memory of Real!Yurika so he'll never suffer again.
- Dream Land: The Looking-Glass World plays off this trope, though the extent to which it actually is a dream is unclear for most of the story.
- Drugs Are Bad: Zigzagged. Gretel's anti-anxiety medication was properly prescribed to him and does work well in small doses, but he abuses it and has to learn to wean himself off before he can get better.
- Dysfunction Junction: Everyone in this game comes pre-equipped with a sad backstory and a laundry list of issues. Understanding and curing them is Yurika's goal...although as the story quickly shows, she has plenty of dysfunctions herself.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Yurika goes through hell and high water to get each boy their happy ending. This is her explicit goal in each route, and eventually it's revealed that getting every happy ending is the only way to put an end to the dream.
- Engagement Challenge: As in the original fairytale, Kaguya challenges the women interested in him to provide material proof of their love. In his case, it's especially necessary in order to jog his memory of them.
- Everything's Better with Rainbows: Plus Cue the Sun. The dark world turns into a green field with a prominent rainbow once Alistair recovers his sense of self.
- Evolving Credits: Each episode features a different arrangement of the opening theme and new artwork from the episode to highlight the central characters.
- Fantasy Sequence: Woolfe's fandisc route shows he has an incredible penchant for these, usually involving him and Yurika getting up to R-rated hijinks. Sadly for him, the inevitable Bait-and-Switch Fantasy Twist kicks in and imaginary-Yurika soundly rejects him.
- Forced Bath: In the fandisc Yurika forces bath-hating Red to get in the tub, with predictable (i.e. hilarious) results.
- Forgotten First Meeting: Alistair pretends to have forgotten his first meeting with Yurika because he can't bear to disappoint her with how different he's become. He eventually gives up the memory for good as a sign that he's moving forward.
- Fountain of Youth: In Alice's afterstory, Yurika turns into her child self as a way to get him to show his real feelings for her.
- Fractured Fairy Tale: The characters' storylines are a twist on their titular fairytales, though the exact nature of the twist doesn't become apparent until late into each route.
- Cinderella is a rich man who lives with his two brothers and has a fondness for glass crafts. His wealth is a facade that evaporates When the Clock Strikes Twelve, but he reunites with Yurika at a ball.
- Little Red Riding Hood is a cop tasked with protecting Yurika from The Big Bad Wolf. He's the wolf. He impersonated Woolfe as a child when Woolfe's grandmother was ill and resents Yurika's brother, the Huntsman who saved them, for putting him in that situation.
- Kaguya has multiple girls chasing him, but his heart belongs to Yurika, with whom he exchanges frequent letters. When he talks about "going to the moon," he means suicide. Yurika stops him by attempting the same, thus giving up her "immortality."
- Gretel is a Sweet Tooth who traps his sister Yurika in a house in the woods. The witch who led them there is Yurika herself, and the sweets are benzos meant to help Gretel get over his codependency.
- Snow White is a sheltered rich boy living with his mother whose only friend is the Huntsman. He fell into a coma after eating his dead mother's last decaying apple pie and has been consciously dreaming up this scenario ever since.
- Friendless Background: The guys all lack friendships outside their family, leading Yurika to become their Only Friend.
- From New York to Nowhere: Many of the characters don't hail from the small town where the game is set and like to complain about the lack of amenities or how boring it is compared to the nearby city.
- From Roommates to Romance: To no one's surprise, Yurika and Alistair's cohabitation eventually leads to this.
- Fun with Homophones: The Japanese script is full of wordplay with homophonic kanji.
- The game's Pun-Based Title uses one taishou for Japan's Taisho era (大æ£) and the other to mean "mirror image" (対称).
- Ryoushi (椋士) works as a ryoushi, or Huntsman (猟師). Another pun is later revealed: he's actually a doctor (療師)note .
- A point is made of the link between two kinds of jishin: self-confidence (自信) and sense of self (自身).
- Glass Slipper: Naturally, this comes up in Cinderella's route. He leaves one behind as a sign he doesn't want to part from her, and eventually gives her the pair when he proposes.
- A Glitch in the Matrix: The disappearing townspeople and abruptly rotting pies are early signs that things are very wrong in Snow White's Looking-Glass World.
- Guide Dang It!: Kaguya's route features over a dozen bad ends and is infamously difficult to clear without a guide. Similarly, it's not obvious that hitting Snow White's bad ends is mandatory to unlock Wizard's route.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Yurika certainly gives off this impression and even exploits it at times, but definitely isn't pure and innocent. Similarly, several people remark that Alice's crabbiness ruins his angelic good looks. Played straight, however, with Alistair, who's genuinely as sweet and mild-mannered as he appears.
- Harem Genre: The premise of Wizard's route is that all the other guys are betrothed to Yurika and staying at her house, hoping she'll choose to marry one of them. She likes them all, but since it's Wizard's route, things don't go their way.
- How We Got Here: Gretel's route opens with Yurika finding that he's kidnapped her. The rest of the route is interspersed with lengthy flashbacks that explain how things devolved to this point.
- Incest Subtext: Yurika and Ryoushi's sibling relationship is frequently teased as something more, to the point of her going on a date with him and even sleeping in his bed during the fandisc, but in the end nothing comes of it explicitly.
- Innocent Innuendo: Deployed by Yurika and Woolfe often and gleefully.
- Introductory Opening Credits: The opening of each episode features a named headshot of each character, even those who barely appear in that episode.
- In Vino Veritas: In Cinderella's afterstory, it isn't until Yurika accidentally gets drunk that she reveals her insecurities about their relationship.
- Jealous Romantic Witness:
- Woolfe can't help but be heartbroken after witnessing Yurika and Alistair's reunion.
- Wizard is in the same boat, worse in his case since he has to see all their interactions from inside Alistair's body.
- Journey to the Center of the Mind: The entire game is revealed to be this, as Yurika sends parts of herself into Alistair's mind hoping to wake him from his coma.
- Kishōtenketsu: The four episodes of the game follow this structure to a T.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Yurika and Alice are both suffering from memory loss in the introduction to each route, and Kaguya has it as well in his route.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Characters often comment on the fairytale-esque narrative they're in or on Visual Novel tropes in general. Woolfe, being a perv who plays galge, is a frequent offender.
- Leitmotif: The Wizard gets "Let's Pretend", a whimsical harpsichord track. Usually heralds an incoming bad ending.
- Loan Shark: A loanshark gang plays an important role in Cinderella's route. Yurika proves her mettle by confronting the leader alone.
- Love at First Sight: Often.
- Kaguya asks Yurika to go out with him the moment he lays eyes on her, and she accepts.
- Woolfe does the same. Unfortunately, he's not so lucky.
- Yurika falls head over heels for Snow White when he happens to pass by her in the woods.
- Love Makes You Crazy: A major theme of the story is the lengths to which people can, will, or should go for those they love the most.
- Love Martyr: Woolfe, Wizard, and Yurika put up with a lot of misfortune and ill-treatment at the hands of their beloved, but they never give up.
- Love Triangle: Generally absent, as Yurika always makes a beeline for her chosen man and ignores all other contenders. The exception is in one ending to Woolfe's fandisc route, where he decides not to give up on his crush and enters a (friendly) rivalry with Alistair for her heart.
- Loving a Shadow: Alistair fears that Yurika is in love with who he pretended to be as a child (that is, the brash and confident Alice) rather than his true self. After meeting her and Alice in his dreams, he realizes the girl he knows does love him as he is.
- The Man in the Mirror Talks Back: This is how Alistair perceives his interactions with Alice in the real world.
- Marry for Love: In Cinderella's route, when Cinderella turns Yurika down due to his poverty, Yurika says she doesn't care about money and just wants him.
- Maybe Ever After: While Yurika and Alistair obviously have feelings for each other and know it, the fandisc shows that they haven't made it official.
- Memento MacGuffin: Yurika's blue hair ribbons, one of which Alistair took when they first met. Both of them treasure the ribbons as a memory of their friendship, but eventually relinquish them. Alice and his Yurika keep them instead.
- Mental World: The dark void from the prologue evidently isn't anything that could exist in reality: it has no apparent borders, and no features other than the mirrors leading to the Looking-Glass World and the mud tendrils that swallow people up. Yurika and Alice speculate about whose dream it could belong to. It represents Alistair's psyche and his lack of selfhood. Once Yurika has helped Alistair regain his own sense of self, the void turns into a bright and idyllic landscape.
- The Mentally Disturbed: While the characters' issues are taken very seriously in their own routes, they're mined for comedy in others (where, due to the Alternate Universe conceit, they simply may not be as dire). Kaguya's clinginess and Gretel's Yandere-ness are prime examples.
- Multiple Narrative Modes: Most of the game is in First-Person Perspective, but the prologue scenes with Alice instead use Second-Person Narration and we see the main characters' childhood flashbacks in third-person.
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- Never the Selves Shall Meet: In the fandisc Cat!Yurika and Alice!Yurika both take pains to disguise themselves in the various dream worlds to prevent running into the "main" Yurikas of those world, though it's never specified what would happen if they did meet.
- Netorare: Name-dropped in the fandisc when Woolfe comically imagines himself as the cuckold in an NTR fantasy with Yurika and Wizard, only to find that they're just petting Wizard's cat. In other words, neko-torare. And even in the fantasy, he isn't actually Yurika's boyfriend anyway.
- No Antagonist: The conflict of each route is largely internal and emotional, and this goes for the overarching story as well, under all the layers of metaphor.
- Once an Episode: Every route starts with Yurika and Alice meeting in the darkness and jumping through a crystal mirror.
- Once More, with Clarity: Entire scenes are occasionally repeated but from a different perspective or with new context. This continues in the fandisc, by which point some scenes have been shown as often as four times.
- Parental Neglect: Yurika and Ryoushi's parents are rarely around due to their busy jobs as Hunters, though they're generous with their finances. On the occasions when they are around, they're well-meaning but oblivious. While this does provide a convenient explanation for the antics in the main story, their absence has left both children to struggle emotionally in different ways.
- Pimped-Out Dress: Yurika's standard outfit is a giant, frilly lolita-style dress. In the fandisc it's pointed out how expensive and out-of-place it is in a normal town. Her wardrobe is more down-to-earth in reality. Alistair just happened to see the dress in a magazine once and imagined she would look good in it. Her Looking-Glass World self is based on that impression.
- Prefers the Illusion: The ultimate conclusion of the dreams. The personalities decide to stay inside their dream worlds where they can live freely with the versions of Yurika they love, rather than having to fight for control of Alistair's body and relationships in reality.
- Questionable Consent: The encounter between Yurika and the Wizard, while debatable as to how far they actually went, manages to be dubiously consensual on multiple levels. On one, Yurika is explicitly conditioning the Wizard to be her obedient servant through their relationship and using him to fulfill her physical needs; on the other, Wizard is hijacking Alistair's body for this, which Alistair very much takes as a violation.
- Rage Against the Reflection: Alistair destroys a mirror in a panicked fit after questioning his identity and which version of "him" Yurika truly loves.
- Rescue Romance: Parodied with Yurika and Snow White's first meeting, where he nonchalantly untangles her hair from a tree branch and somehow wins her undying love.
- Riddle Me This: Snow White is fond of riddles and poses one to both Ryoushi and Yurika as a condition for giving them information."Something anyone may possess. But the moment you obtain it, it ceases to exist.Anyone can have one. But when you open your eyes, it will vanish without a trace."The answer: a dream
- Seinfeldian Conversation: Alice's penchant for pointless bickering lends itself to plenty of these, from the nature of dreams to celebrity baby names to his favorite obscure sea creatures.
- Shout-Out: Many. In one memorable example, during one of Alice's rants about Gender-Blender Names, the examples he gives in the Japanese script are all taken from the cast of Free!.
- Sick Episode: Yurika gets a fever in Kaguya's afterstory and has to take a sick day, with chaos ensuing (off-screen) as the other cafe employees cover for her.
- Significant Name Shift: When the main character of a route starts off calling Yurika by something different ("Miss Arisu" for Red, "Sister" for Gretel, "Ally-Sue/Arisu-chan" for Woolfe), the eventual switch to her first name highlights their growing closeness. The same goes for Alistair, who usually calls her "Arisu" but makes the switch after he finally wakes up.
- Social Services Does Not Exist: Averted. Social services are mentioned a few times, usually as a threat. Unfortunately, they seem entirely ineffective and play little role in the story.
- Split-Personality Makeover: Alistair's personalities manifest as different speech styles and facial expressions that reflect how they see themselves in the Looking-Glass World.
- Split-Personality Merge: Alistair and his psychiatrists were originally hoping his treatment would eventually lead to this. It's ultimately averted; the personalities talk it out and amicably agree to stay in his subconscious.
- Talking to Themself: Alistair tearfully confronts his personalities in the mirror after believing one of them had sex with Yurika. Then he gets to converse with them much more literally inside his dream.
- There Are No Therapists: Given the serious traumas many of the characters display, there's a noticeable lack of mental health support in the Looking-Glass World. Subverted starting in Gretel's route, where it's revealed that what the game calls "Hunters" are actually doctors and Ryoushi/Huntsman is in fact Gretel's psychiatrist. He plays the same role for Alistair in the real world and is undoubtedly a major support pillar for him.
- Those Two Guys: Gretel and Snow White play this role in Cinderella's route, being his quirky but relatively drama-free brothers who comment on his ongoing situation with Yurika.
- Together in Death: Yurika and Kaguya in his last bad ending.
- A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: Red's backstory largely comes down to this. Woolfe stays out late and messes around on the water, Ryoushi pulls up the wrong kid in a rush, and finally Red himself runs off instead of clearing things up and then is too ashamed to ever show himself to them again.
- Uptown Girl: Yurika falls in love with Cinderella but feels embarrassingly poor next to his extravagant wealth, despite being pretty well-off herself. The dynamic is reversed once it's revealed Cinderella is broke.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: The Wizard has this ability, along with the cat who accompanies him.
- Wham Episode: Episode III, Snow White and Wizard's routes, reveal several major truths about the story.
- What Does She See in Him?: Other characters will frequently question Yurika's attraction to whichever guy she's currently chasing, who's inevitably odd at the very least, if not a total wreck.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Yurika gets called out several times for going too far in her efforts to save her man, jeopardizing her own future and potentially making things worse for people around her. Her attempted suicide in Kaguya's route and school property destruction in Gretel's route both earn her a major dressing-down from Ryoushi. In the end, though, she gets what she wants.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The unnamed small resort town where the game is set doesn't have any location more specific than "Japan, two hours from a city".
- Your Mind Makes It Real: The characters' journeys to self-actualization are All Just a Dream, but they impact reality as well. Alistair really does come to terms with his personalities, and he really does lose his memory of Alice.
For 'happy summer days' gone by
and vanish'd summer glory...
It shall not touch with breath of bale
the pleasance of our fairy-tale.
