I HAVE ZENO

the translation doc has been taken down, unfortunately! Someone reposted it to ao3 without permission, and when asked to take it down by the translator, they orphaned the fic and it took months to get it properly removed. Because of this, the translator took down the doc until he finishes the official translation! As of his last update, it should come out somewhere between May and June at the latest.

So basically, currently there’s not an easily available way to play daily life in English, but there should be soon!

You can find it here! If the link doesnt automatically scroll you to it, its the short story called “8月 1日2日3日4日+α/ZENO 水族館”

its an april fools joke! It wasn’t a real game

IIRC off the top of my head, after good true end E! technically though, it takes place after good true end E from the original ZENO, so there may be small differences between the two. I haven’t played the original myself, so I can’t provide specifics

Mostly to avoid confusion and spoilers! Depending on where you are in the game, you might not know about the nameswap yet, so to be clear about which character you’re speaking about, its popular to call them kuro (black) and aka (red) respectively.

its also popular on the non-english side of the fandom, so that probably played a part in it as well

It’s in japanese, but here is the ending guide to colorless kaina! The endings are broken up into three categories– The first don’t have any special conditions–they trigger when requirements are met automatically (ie, low sanity, choosing to abandon kaina, etc)

The second group branches on the last day based on your affection with Kaina given that specific conditions aren’t met. I’ll go over these conditions when discussing the next group of endings since they require them.

Kaina has two affection meters– “Ai (愛)” and “Koi (恋)”, and it’s fairly easy to raise the option you want, as it’s based on the order of dialogue options presented to you. The first choice raises the “Ai” stat, while the third raises the “Koi” stat. The center option will lower both of them. On the final day and on saturday/sunday events with Kaina, all choices are 5x as effective,

From there, it’s just a matter of going through the point requirements for each ending.

The third grouping of endings requires a specific set of conditions to be met, so I’m going to include them here below.

First, it requires completing the Mio event

• The first step automatically occurs as your affection with Kaina increases–You’ll know when it happens
• After that, you’ll receive the option to go see Kaina in the morning (カイナに会いに行く)
• From there, keep selecting the investigate about Kaina option (カイナについて調べる)
• You’ll know you’ve completed the event when Mio says that he won’t speak to you anymore (これで僕から君に言う事は最後だから。

Second, your sanity must be 50 or less on the final day

Third, you must have received a knife from Kaina during an event that only occurs on Saturday or Sunday mornings after your affection with him increases. You should have the option to go with him to a “special place”

For endings 11-15, you must select these answers when talking to Mio: Answer “Yes” (はい) to his first and second questions, and “No” (いいえ) to his third. From there, similar to the branches without meeting these conditions, they branch based on your affection with Kaina as of the final day.

Ending 16 will trigger if you answer Mio’s questions in any other way than that specific order, regardless of your affection with Kaina.

You can just download Google translate on your phone and use the camera to translate it and it should work! Outside of that, you can always wait for the official English translation to be done, since it’s in its final stages now

GOING TO DIE WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM . OAUUUUUUGHGHGH

The small moments of tenderness despite everything get to me so bad… it’s the never talking about it but still reaching out and showing they care…

What’s really interesting about ZENO is we actually don’t get very much of Aki’s perspective in general outside of a few short stories and ZENO NOVEL! ZENO Remake is at it’s core Tsugino’s story, with Ushirono part being added to make sure that Fuyu had a satisfying ending too… You see more about how Tsugino and Fuyu feel about Aki than how he feels about them, and I feel like it contributes a lot to how people tend to water down his character in the fandom (though that’s an entirely separate rant haha)

Aki would absolutely let Fuyu kill him if he tried to, in my opinion. He would see it as a kind of penance he deserves to pay for what he did to Natsu… Which is exactly why Fuyu ultimately doesn’t give him that satisfaction, no matter how much he wants to. Aki has to live in order to truly atone, he isn’t allowed to take the easy way out. He’s the kind of character that thinks so little of himself that he’s willing to sacrifice himself over and over and over for those he cares about– you see it in the base game, you see it in Daily Life, and you see it in ZENO NOVEL.

If you want to see more of Aki’s thought process and perspective, ZENO NOVEL is the april fools game centered around him, and the aquarium short story with tsugino pretty clearly shows how he feels about him.

There are a few places you can see this! First off, there are a ton of lines in basegame ZENO about Fuyu wanting to kill Aki for what he did to Natsu–ranging from when Fuyu’s ZENO is active to when he’s a lot calmer in Ushirono Part. It’s fairly present throughout most of Fuyu’s interactions during the game!

Even in the sidegames, Fuyu’s wish for vengeance is still very much present. In ZENO 4.1, the main indicator for if Fuyu has ZENO or not is in the way he talks about Aki and wanting to kill him.

There are more tweets than these about Fuyu’s thoughts on killing Aki, but I’m just going to share the couple that I have immedaitely on hand–You can always go keyword searching through mazu’s twitter for more :)

(The MTL here is a bit finicky, but basically they’re saying that since Fuyu killing Aki himself would be salvation for him, Fuyu is hesitant to do it himself)