Terra Route

“	In this dark world, you were the only thing that ever seemed truly bright to me.	”
–Kotarou Tennouji, describing Kagari

Terra Route, stylized as TERRA and also written as テラ (Tera), is the final route of the visual novel Rewrite, which unlocks after Moon is finished. The route focuses on the protagonist Kotarou Tennouji's struggle to belong, while shedding some light to Kagari's nature and giving an answer to what the good memory she is looking for.

The scenario is written by Romeo Tanaka, and the ending song used is CANOE. The anime adaptation uses Last Desire and Instincts as opening and ending theme, respectively.

Synopsis

The first half of the story serves as a prequel to common route, before deviating from the events that lead to it. This was the the solution found by Kagari in the Moon to keep the Earth from dying.

Prequel to Common Route

Kotarou lived with his parents, whom he had been distant to. He would go with them, out of obligation, to listen to Martel's lectures. There, he would meet a young Akane Senri and her caretaker. He would also meet a young Kotori Kanbe, who disliked him due to seeing him pick a fight to protect a young boy who was being bullied in the streets.

At night, he would search for UMAs at Kazamatsuri. At one time, he went into the forest, where he met the Bayern Knights after encountering a large UMA that he cannot possibly defeat. Kotarou became friends with the leader, Sougen Esaka, who would later recruit him to join Guardian.

Kotori was also once brought to attend to Martel's meeting, but was managed to convince her parents not to. In exchange, she was to take care of a dog named Pero, who had experienced abuse from his previous owner.

So Kotarou decided to run away from his home to join Guardian. During the superhuman training, he was paired with Arata Imamiya, Touka Nishikujou, and Nagai, as they were the people who had the lowest scores in the exam training. At first, Kotarou had very little confidence in himself, but it gradually began to grow as he connected with with his other teammates. They all became members by the end, except Nagai, who quit due to her low self-confidence and subsequent loss of powers.

Their first assignment involved them stationed near an alley inside Kazamatsuri, but Arata and Touka became impatient and headed for the forest instead. Kotarou, concerned, followed them as well. In the forest he witnessed Mikuni, another Guardian, meeting his demise in a fight against the Earth Dragon.

Kotarou fled from the scene, only to find Akane, who was stuck at the top of a tree. He managed to get her down while being attacked by a hound familiar, but as he tried to escape her, he came across a newborn Key. Just as he was about to attack her, she defended herself with her ribbons, which inflicted on him serious injuries.

Kotori found him and healed his injuries using her newly-obtained druid powers and a piece of the Key's ribbons, turning him into a half-familair. Due to a head injury, he slipped into coma, though aging very slowly.

He woke up years after, having vague memories of the events in the forest. Later on, some people entered his room, and after some questioning, they injected him substances that caused his mind to melt away.

The next scene, he is shown leading a normal life, graduating from middle school, and getting to (illegally) enroll to Kazamatsuri Academy. He then started to look for a fun school life.

Prelude to Terra arc

Instead of attacking the Key, he chose to let her go, and went off. When he got back to Guardian, he hid from them his discovery in the forest.

As Kotarou wanted to learn to use guns, and also wanted to leave Japan, Esaka assigned him to a private security company operating in a foreign country. There, he first experienced killing someone. Kotarou befriended Luis, and got to know local children during their free time. Among them is a girl who wanted to be a computer programmer, Jasmine, whom he and Luis arranged to have a computer gifted to the school she was at.

In an infiltration to a drug manufacturing facility, Kotarou and Luis discovered that the children were actually summoners who took up the job due to poverty. Luis, having stormed the room with Kotarou where the children hid, had killed a number of them and injured others. Only five survived, with two of them gravely injured.

The other three, which includes Jasmine, hid in the lockers. In the anime adaptation, it was her, Midou, Tenma and Tenjin. The captain came over to their location, and killed off the two gravely wounded children which were not hidden. This angered Kotarou, and was reprimanded. Luis held him back from lashing out. This event became the root of Kotarou's hatred towards Guardian.

The two found out from Jasmine that the place was going to be bombed, so they escape. Somewhere along, Luis decided to shoot the incoming missiles with his power - to shoot with a spear in great distances. He requested Kotarou to escape the kids on his own, but being aware of the suicidal nature of Luis' plan, he dissuaded him. But Luis figured that it was already too late.

Before proceeding with the plan, Luis narrated how he ended up in Guardian - he accidentally hit a friend to his death during a small fight. A guiding light tells him to agree with the plan, and so they proceed. Kotarou was successful in escaping the children, while Luis, after shooting two missiles, was engulfed in flames, smiling.

Along the way, Kotarou rewrote himself, where he realized that his power eats away from his lifespan to gain power. He arrives in a nearby farm, where the children were able to stay for a while.

Kotarou then returns to camp, where he was treated as a lone survivor of his team. He gave the three children some money and moved them to a safe town. There, the children accepted young summoners, whom Kotarou escaped, to their group and at one point even a superhuman. The group became bigger, and started to invest on the money they received from him. Meanwhile, he grew more distant from Guardian.

Terra arc

After a few months, Esaka called him back to Japan. Esaka had noticed that he has changed.

In the daisy hill, he found the Key, Kagari, who asked him to find good memories that would keep the Earth from being engulfed by Salvation. He complied, and while initially having no idea how to find the "good memories" she wanted, the two concluded that ending a major war, which Kotarou figured to be the conflict between Gaia and Guardian, will solve the problem.

Trivia

• According to the interview in Rewrite Perfect Visual Book, Tanaka wrote Earth's Kagari as a "dummy heroine" in this route.