The original Natsuiro no Kowaremono (hereafter referred to as NatsuKowa) typically ends with a sense of permanent rupture. The “broken thing” is often a person—a girl whose psyche has been irreversibly altered—or the trust between protagonist and heroine. After Link refuses the easy reset button of magical realism. Instead, it forces the player to sit in the humidity of a new summer, where the air smells the same but the shadows have shifted.
In After Link, the setting is no longer the site of innocence; it is a crime scene. Every cicada chirp, every sunbeam through the classroom window, carries the weight of what happened before. The game excels at what literary theorist Svetlana Boym calls “reflective nostalgia”—not a desire to return to the past, but a lingering, painful awareness of its distance. The protagonist walks through familiar routes, but they feel like museum exhibits of his former self.
Given the legal gray area, here is a practical guide for those determined to play After Link.
Most sequels commit the sin of "undoing" tragedy. After Link does not resurrect dead characters or erase the original game’s pain. Instead, it allows the broken characters to learn to live with the cracks. The game is less about fixing the past and more about changing how you carry it. natsuiro no kowaremono after link
| Field | Details | |-------|---------| | Title | Natsuiro no Kowaremono After Link | | Developer | Atelier Sakura (Team.NTR) | | Release Date | May 28, 2021 | | Platform | Windows PC | | Genre | Adult Visual Novel / NTR (Netorare) | | Original Game | Natsuiro no Kowaremono (2019) |
After Link is a direct sequel and fan disc that continues the story of the original Natsuiro no Kowaremono, a title widely recognized in the NTR genre for its psychological intensity and bleak, realistic portrayal of relationship decay.
In the landscape of visual novels and doujin-adjacent storytelling, few titles evoke the specific melancholy of “irretrievable loss” quite like the Natsuiro no Kowaremono series. Its follow-up, After Link, is not merely a sequel or a fan-disk epilogue; it is a meta-narrative meditation on the very act of remembering a broken summer. Where the original game (implied by its title, “Summer-Colored Broken Thing”) focused on the shattering of innocence and relationships, After Link dares to ask a more painful question: What does it mean to live with the scattered pieces? The original Natsuiro no Kowaremono (hereafter referred to
This essay argues that After Link functions as an architectural blueprint for trauma reconstruction. It moves beyond the initial catharsis of tragedy into the grey, unglamorous work of “linking” fragmented moments into a livable future. The title itself is a double-edged promise: “After” signifies the post-traumatic expanse, while “Link” suggests connection, save data, causality, and the fragile chains of human promises.
Before dissecting the "After Link," we must understand the weight of its predecessor. Natsuiro no Kowaremono (roughly translating to Summer-Colored Broken Things) is a kinetic novel that explores themes of memory, trauma, and the irreversibility of loss. The story typically follows a protagonist returning to a rural seaside town, only to confront a fractured childhood friendship and a supernatural element tied to a summer festival.
The "Broken" in the title is literal. The original game is infamous for its "Koware" (Broken) routes, where relationships crumble under the weight of secrets, and the "pure" summer memory is permanently tainted. In the landscape of visual novels and doujin-adjacent
The original ending left players on a bittersweet note—salvation came at the cost of forgetting, or victory came with an unhealable scar.
Every player who finished the original asked, "What if I had just told her the truth?" After Link answers that question honestly, showing that even the "fixed" timeline has a cost. One memorable route forces the protagonist to become the "Kowaremono" himself to save the heroine—a beautiful, tragic role reversal.
Released as a fan-requested expansion (and later an official standalone update), Natsuiro no Kowaremono After Link serves one primary purpose: to fix the breaking.
The term "Link" in the title is dual-layered. First, it refers to the linking of timelines—allowing players to connect the disparate, broken routes of the original game into a cohesive "True Ending" timeline. Second, it refers to the re-linking of relationships between the protagonist and the heroines that were severed in the original climax.