Visual Novel / even if TEMPEST

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The story follows Anastasia Lynzel, a noble’s daughter whose misfortune began at the age of 10 when the cold but beautiful Princess Evelina, the king of Hystorica’s sister, became her stepmother. After 8 years of being confined to the family estate and subjected to belittling and abuse at the hands of her stepmother, stepsister, and once-loving father, Prince Lucien, a long-forgotten childhood friend, whisks her away.

However, Anastasia is simply thrust from one hell into another: Lucien’s oldest brother Prince Conrad, her now-betrothed, soon after sets her up to take the fall for his crimes and has her falsely tried and burned at the stake as a witch.

After her death, she meets Rune, an actual witch, who strikes a deal with her. In exchange for giving her another chance at life by sending her back to a time before her death, she agrees to kill the “Witch of Ruin,” a being in her world wreaking havoc and manipulating humans into turning to bloodshed. Anastasia uses this power to turn back time and redo the last 8 years so that she can become stronger and exact revenge against those who wronged her, all while trying to avoid other tragic ends.

At Animate Girls Festival in November 2025, Voltage revealed that sins of KALEIDO is a distant sequel that takes place 1,000 years after the events of even if TEMPEST.

This visual novel contains examples of the following tropes:

• Cassandra Truth: In the common route, Lucien warns Anastasia that she's not remotely equipped to handle the country's finances and that she's being set up. Despite Lucien being the one who saved her from her household to begin with, Anastasia refuses to believe him, as Conrad has by now poisoned her against him and convinced her that Lucien is an incompetent, two-faced liar.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The main characters are all associated with a color. Anastasia is red, Crius is green, Tyril is yellow, Zenn is gray, and Lucien is blue.
• Covers Always Lie: The monster-like being on the game cover doesn't exist in the game. According to the creators, its appearance is more of a metaphor.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: Lucien and Anastasia have nothing but fondness for their respective late mothers (although a side story suggests that Anastasia's mother was a bit twisted herself), compared to their rather appalling living fathers.
• Death-Activated Superpower: Anastasia can loop back after dying. Sometimes the death is incidental, sometimes she takes her own life to trigger her powers.
• Divine Birds: The Garudas were allegedly the Goddess's favored animals.
• Domestic Abuse:
  • Anastasia’s stepmother blames her for her own mother’s death, her younger stepsister mocks her, and even her own father raises his hand against her. They all are complicit in keeping her confined to a small attic room.
  • Once Anastasia leaves the household after the common route, her stepmother turns her abuse to Anastasia's stepsister instead.
• Downer Beginning: Anastasia is under heavy abuse from her family, briefly escapes into a seemingly better situation, but ultimately gets burned at the stake. Cue the rest of the plot.
• Downer Ending: All of the "Sad Love" endings, as each route's Bad Ending, are this, but furthermore, each route before Lucien's also ends on a bitter note, thus prompting Anastasia to turn back time (and go on the next route).
• Driven to Suicide: Comes up a few times.
  • In the common route, Anastasia kills herself after Maya dies, triggering her first loop before she even learns she has the ability.
  • In Crius's route, Hugo kills himself after slaughtering the cardinals.
  • In Tyril's route, Tyril, the sole survivor of the Ishik clan, kills himself after learning that he and his family served the royal family were not in fact the descendants of the goddess Norna as they had believed. His suicide is averted in another timeline after discovering that Anastasia is a reincarnation of Norna and he pivots to serve her instead.
  • In Zenn's route, while it's one part Heroic Sacrifice to ensure Anastasia's victory, Lucien's suicide in Zenn's route is also motivated by despair after the Trauma Conga Line that was this route, made particularly clear in the DLC from his perspective.
  • In Lucien's route, Lucien kills himself in his Sad Love ending so that he won't kill anyone else as a Membrum.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Anastasia (and the guys) go through a lot to get their happy ending, particularly as even if TEMPEST'S format mean that all the routes are canon, occurring in sequential order, and you can only unlock the love interests' "good" ending after completing the game. (To say nothing of the loose conflicts that are resolved only in Dawning Connections.)
• Everyone Loves Blondes: Not because it's attractive, but blond hair is inherited from the founder of the kingdom and therefore seen as a sign of the Goddess. It's noted that the (likewise blond) king favors Lucien because he's the only of his heirs who was born with it.
• First-Episode Spoiler: Conrad, Anastasia's seemingly kind-hearted fiancé and savior, is actually a villain setting her up for his crimes.
• Golden Ending: Lucien's route serves as one, where no one dies and the Witch of Ruin is defeated, although in terms of romance, you're then free to pick whichever love interest's final ending.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The player can decide on the heroine's first name, but it's Anastasia by default.
• I Ate WHAT?!: The involved parties don't learn, as it's kept secret, but everyone else at the Carnival is horrified to learn that Sammy used Lucien's meat for a stew that he then fed to everyone else at the orphanage.
• I'm a Humanitarian: There was some Membrum brainwashing going on, but Sammy notoriously cooks Lucien into a stew, taking "you are what you eat" literally.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Depending on which you do first, Rune erases Anastasia's memories of Crius/Tyril's route and she starts the next one anew as a blank slate.
• Last of His Kind: Played straight with Tyril's status as an Ishik, subverted in Dawning Connections with the Luxflavus flower, where Anastasia assumes the one that Tyril keeps on his desk is the last of its species, after the rest were razed, but Tyril points out that it would have been pretty stupid of him to hold onto an endangered plant and not make efforts to reproduce it.
• Legacy of Service: The Ishik clan served the Neuschburn family for over a thousand years, recognizing them as the holy descendants of the goddess Norna.
• More than Mind Control: While magic is involved with turning humans into Membra, it only works via preying on the darkness in their hearts.
• Mysterious Middle Initial: The “I” in Tyril I Lister. Although it’s never explicitly stated, it can be inferred that the “I” is for “Ishik,” the name of Tyril’s clan.
• Omega Ending: Zenn's route is unlocked only after beating both Crius and Tyril's, and Lucien's is available only after all of the above.
• Once an Episode: There'll typically be at least one Carnival per route, and given that the Witch of Ruin selects the people involved for a reason, certain people are more likely to be repeats across routes than others:
  • Maya and Lucien will always be selected as a Sacrificium at some point if they're not the murder victim or Membrum, that is. Related to this, Maya and Lucien die in each route except for Lucien's (and Lucien can still die in his Sad Love ending there), even in the common route for non-Carnival reasons.
  • Likewise, Crius will always be a Sacrificium in at least one Carnival except for in his own route. That's because he's actually a Membrum there, though not the culprit.
• Only Killable at Home: Zenn is immortal, by virtue of his being from another world and thus removed from the natural laws of Anastasia’s. If he returned to his world, however, he would be wholly mortal again.
• Outside-Context Problem: Endy is a creature not tied to the Witch of Ruin. Even in the canon Q&A, he's not sure exactly what it is, although Dawning Connections explains it further.
• Point of Divergence: A few main ones, via Anastasia's Fatal Rewinds.
  • Escaping her household eight years ago is what causes the timeline to swerve away from the original one, where as a result she becomes a knight instead of ultimately getting engaged to Conrad. Seemingly inexplicably, this causes Lucien to change from being the weak-willed prince to the cold "Frigid Prince" and Conrad's primary rival for the throne. Likewise, Zenn no longer works at the palace and is instead a detective, as Lucien's own personality change means he never had the encounter that resulted in him hiring Zenn.
  • Then, there's the point in time that splits between Crius and Tyril's routes, aka Anastasia's first encounter with the Witch of Ruin where he has her pick a choice. In subsequent routes, she goes back to a different time to try and change the outcome.
• Princeling Rivalry: The firstborn Prince Conrad and thirdborn Lucien are the top two contenders to eventually succeed their father to the throne. Conrad loathes Lucien and constantly schemes to ruin his reputation.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Lucien is a firm believer in fair play, even against his corrupt family, but in Dawning Connections, what finally makes him snap and actually contemplate murder, even just for a moment, is his father drugging and trying to rape Anastasia.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Anastasia retains her memories whenever she uses the Fatal Rewind ability and goes back in time. Zenn is also revealed to retain his memories when Anastasia does this, thanks to his being from another world and not bound by the laws of Anastasia’s.
• Royally Screwed Up: To say the Neuschburns have problems is putting it lightly. Lucien is the White Sheep of the bunch, and it's telling that in Dawning Connections, all four of the other named Neuschburns get arrested by the end.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: What kicks off the plot of the game—Anastasia goes back in time to avert her death and get revenge against those who wronged her, which spirals into further conflict as she also has to figure out how to defeat the Witch of Ruin by gathering info across timelines and resetting once the losses become unacceptable.
• Tarot Motifs: The main characters are represented by the arcana out-of-universe and occasionally in-universe:
  • Anastasia is the Chariot.
  • Crius is Strength.
  • Tyril is Justice.
  • Zenn is the Hanged Man.
  • Lucien is the Sun.
  • Ish is the reversed Hierophant.
• Time Loop Fatigue: By Lucien's route, all of the loops have taken their toll on Anastasia's mind, and once the group learns what's going on, they're determined to make sure she doesn't have to loop again (especially considering she has to die for it).
• Took a Level in Badass: After being sent 8 years in the past, Anastasia drastically transforms herself. Despising her old self, she escaped confinement by begging her father to just send her away and let her join the church. Once released, she actually joins the Wings of Garuda, a historic order of knights, and becomes a force to be reckoned with.
• Trauma Button: Snakes, for Tyril. He escaped being massacred with the rest of his clan by hiding in a snake-infested pit for three days. Conrad, knowing this, sets a snake loose near Tyril, who completely freezes up in fear.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • While most of the unscrupulous things done in Zenn's route can be chalked up to necessity, there's one choice you can make that's regarded as unnecessarily cruel even in-universe: when coming up with a motive to falsely incriminate Crius for killing Conrad during the Carnival, you can drag up his Dark and Troubled Past for everyone to hear, knowing full well it isn't actually relevant. This is the one moment that genuinely stuns (and hurts) him with how far you're willing to go.
  • Half of the "wrong" choices in Lucien's route that will net you his Sad Love ending are frankly just you choosing to be a dick to him when he's being vulnerable around Anastasia.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Crius, Tyril, and Zenn are all good friends, who prefer to express this in rather interesting ways at times.