Takuya informing Eriko that her strange outfit is fashionable is all it took for her to start dressing this way. Eriko, real name Eichli:kkwadrouu, bahaves so oddly because she secretly comes from a different universe, traveling to Sakaimachi on a mission from some sort of interdimensional police department to eliminate Ryuuzouji. Her bosses may be something like the Concord crosswhen from human reality in “The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World.”
The ADMS segment’s story routes coalesce around a single big bad, Eriko’s nemesis: an alien monster that, stranded in Takuya’s universe, murders Koudai’s colleague Ryuuzouji and takes his place. This devil’s name is written as “****,” apparently to suggest some impossible Lovecraftian pronunciation. There is voice acting, though, in which his name is something like “Reijizouzi.” My references to “Ryuuzouji” refer to this demon, the only Ryuuzouji the player meets.
With his physical strength, pistol (shocking in Japan), intellectual cunning, and body-stealing Niarb power, Ryuuozuji makes for a terrifying and intimidating villain, his presence accountable for most of the deliberate horror elements of the story, as opposed to the horror that Kanno wants the player to fall in love with their daughter. This alien is introduced not as a criminal mastermind but as a demon or animal in rumors about a “curse” and a wild beast that has been killing people. Ryuuzouji’s only motive is to gain free movement through different universes. To do this he aims to obtain the Reflector, in pursuit of which he also hires three goons, Kaori, Toyotomi, and Houjou, to gather info about the Reflector and Ayumi’s employer Geo Technics that, under the guise of carrying out a survey for beachfront construction, is attempting to excavate the Hypersense Stone that comes from Dela Grante, the same alien world as Takuya’s dimension-hopping device.
Ryuuzouji’s acts, including forcing Mitsuki to murder his mother, Ume, who has been feigning dementia to cryptically beg Takuya for help, are chilling. Ryuuzouji’s house, bereft of furniture and with a tapestry of the Dela Grante slave watchtower killing terrified onlookers, feels eerily inhuman. Finding the real Ryuuzouji’s deformed skeleton cemented in the wall of the storehouse after reading his agonized journal entries is a moment salient in my recollection since, many hours into my playthrough, after I had been dealing with Toyotomi, Kaori, and Houjou, it so altered my perception of the situation: no longer a matter of academic or corporate espionage, the stakes changed to involve mind-controlling alien monsters torturing people to death with psychic powers. (Stakes limited by the lack of consequences to any actions, as described above.)
Infuriatingly, Takuya never quite puts together that Ryuuzouji is behind all the trouble in his life, including Koudai’s disappearance. Somehow Ryuuzouji holding him up at gunpoint in the Prologue is insufficient to rile Takuya’s suspicions. Watching Takuya tango with such a menacing villain enrages. To the bitter end, Takuya is never up to the task. He still trusts Ryuuzouji in the Epilogue, as I explain below in “The Worst Ending of All Time.” Luck and Eriko are all that keeps the world’s most useless man alive.
Ryuuzouji’s minion Toyotomi, a foppish, backstabbing, cowardly, murderous rapist, may succeed in being the most loathsome worm in the cast, even though it is true he never has sex with his daughter. Toyotomi’s criminality may hit closer to home. A crooked and sexually abusive businessman is all too common, unlike psychic alien demons. The main antagonist of the Ayumi route, Toyotomi’s scheme to steal Hypersense Stone from Geo Technics involves forming an abusive relationship with his official boss Ayumi, illegally forcing laborers to work at night in dangerous conditions that kill multiple people (as Takuya witnesses firsthand on the Mio route), and hiring gangsters to attack Ayumi so that he can “rescue” her.
Another summary of the Ayumi route would be Toyotomi cucking Takuya over and over by having sex with his mom—only Takuya can have sex with his mom! In the happy Ayumi route ending, Takuya, after being slapped by Ayumi for interrupting Toyotomi while he is raping her, proves his accusations against this evil man via receiving a photo from Kaori through time travel. Takuya then intervenes in time to prevent Ayumi from slitting her wrists. Kaori meanwhile beating Toyotomi (possibly to death) with a pipe proves a great catharsis.
Along with the sadistic torturer “Porky” who runs the slave camp in the Epilogue, Ryuuzouji and Toyotomi are the only truly “evil” characters. Houjou, the main antagonist on the Kanna route, is a fairly grounded depiction of a PI. Though far from sympathetic, Houjou is more sleazebag than fiend. His own truly evil deed, killing Kanna (at least in the bad ending), occurs only when Ryuuzouji completely seizes control of his mind.
Kaori leads a double life as a popular reporter and criminal fixer, gathering intel on the various strange happenings in Sakaimachi. She might share information with Takuya but only to serve her own ends. Mirroring her two personas, Kaori’s main outfit is ludicrous, the purple pantsuit she wears in newscasts unbuttoned into a crop top out of which her bare breasts hang freely (!). As a seductive agent of Ryuuzouji, she commands one’s attention, not least because one of her introductory scenes in Meiunji Park has her breasts dangling and her rear in Takuya’s face.
In comparison to Mio, Kanna, Mitsuki, and especially Ayumi, Kaori’s proactive ruthlessness, up to and including double-crossing the fearsome Ryuuzouji, is a welcome contrast to most of the other women’s more submissive femininity. Kaori also has a fat ass. Contributing to the complexity of Kaori’s role is that, on the Ayumi route, she is essential to helping Takuya by giving him dirt on Toyotomi. Yet on her own route she swindles him out of sex and, if the player lets her, the Hypersense Stone required to resuscitate Kanna. How Kaori avoids Ryuuzouji’s psychic brainwashing Niarb powers I am unsure. I would attribute this resilience to her psychological strength or something, since Eriko implies Niarb involves lulling the victim into a suggestive state, but Ryuuzouji also fails to brainwash Takuya on the Mitsuki route—perhaps Takuya does not have enough of a brain. A cunning, sarcastic liar with zero sappiness and a hell of a lot more competence and confidence than anyone else besides Eriko and Ryuuzouji, Kaori seems to belong in a different genre than most of the cast.
