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[SPOILER] Can someone explain Cro's route in Chrono Clock?


voidpointer

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So as the title states, this is full of SPOILERS. So if you care about that, stop now.

I posted about this in another Chrono Clock discussion thread but it's not getting any attention. A lot of people give positive feedback about Cro's route, and honestly I found her personality very heartwarming, but the ending (climax) of her route confused the sh*t out of me. Maybe I'm overanalyzing it, but the seemingly unexplained events really took away from what would have otherwise been a perfect route in the game. My questions are below, I'm hoping someone can help me out.

  1. When the train is about to crash, Cro all of a sudden "changes" back to Chronos (the actual goddess). At this point, are they 1 being are separate beings? If separate, where is Cro physically during this time? Is she frozen in time on the train?
  2. The protagonist had it in his head that he was going to save Cro by trading her for himself to Chonos (the goddess). However, while it seemed Chronos agreed to the terms, she "switched modes" and let Cro talk (I guess this is a bit like multiple personality disorder?). At this point is is revealed that instead, Cro somehow decided to die instead of letting Chronos take the protagonist with her. This is where I REALLY got confused. Why the sudden change of events? Why did the goddess pretend to accept his terms when she apparently already made an agreement with Cro to "kill" her instead? Why did Cro really disappear? Did she die? Can a goddess die? This situation completely ruined her route for me, I'm hoping someone picked up on some subtle explanations that I missed.
  3. Also once she disappears, he's still "frozen in time" on the train, about to crash. How was his life spared? They never showed what happened after that. He was supposed to die because the monorail derailed, after all.
  4. And lastly but most disappointing of all, Cro actually just randomly appears in human form again post-credits. Sure, great happy ending, but was lazily done. The protagonist even admits questions he has but glosses over them like "meh, the answers don't matter, Cro is here now". I'd ask how she came back, but I think the writers made it clear that they will not answer those questions. Also there was no sense of elapsed time between when Cro "died" and when she "reincarnated" (i.e. appeared again post-credits).

Either horrible story telling in Cro's route or I missed some fundamental information.

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Granted I am only three and a half routes into the visual novel so I can't comment on Cro's route directly, but I feel that you are simply reading too much into it. Chrono Clock seems to be the equivalent to pringles, with some quirky characters and fragments of interesting ideas to serve as a tasty snack..... but quickly forgotten and you don't really gain any higher intellectual nourishment from it. Titles like these primarily survive on the heroines ability to pluck at your moe heart strings with the story being a second priority. Nearly every route that I have read so far had some monumental potholes and missed opportunities, but after I got a feel for the title I didn't build too much ill will towards the visual novel. Is the visual novel shit at storytelling, undoubtedly, but like when snacking on pringles I can't deny that I am currently having fun in the moment.

 

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9 minutes ago, Soulless Watcher said:

Granted I am only three and a half routes into the visual novel so I can't comment on Cro's route directly, but I feel that you are simply reading too much into it. Chrono Clock seems to be the equivalent to pringles, with some quirky characters and fragments of interesting ideas to serve as a tasty snack..... but quickly forgotten and you don't really gain any higher intellectual nourishment from it. Titles like these primarily survive on the heroines ability to pluck at your moe heart strings with the story being a second priority. Nearly every route that I have read so far had some monumental potholes and missed opportunities, but after I got a feel for the title I didn't build too much ill will towards the visual novel. Is the visual novel shit at storytelling, undoubtedly, but like when snacking on pringles I can't deny that I am currently having fun in the moment.

 

Well I do feel a bit bad that her route is spoiled for you now, but maybe you didn't care too much? lol.

I'll wait until you actually play it; maybe your answer will change. While I agree normally, I do feel this VN has a degree of seriousness to it, and was so enjoyable that it took a surprisingly high rank in my list of favorite VNs. I honestly wasn't expecting the emotional stabbing this VN does.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 25/03/2017 at 10:49 PM, voidpointer said:

So as the title states, this is full of SPOILERS. So if you care about that, stop now.

I posted about this in another Chrono Clock discussion thread but it's not getting any attention. A lot of people give positive feedback about Cro's route, and honestly I found her personality very heartwarming, but the ending (climax) of her route confused the sh*t out of me. Maybe I'm overanalyzing it, but the seemingly unexplained events really took away from what would have otherwise been a perfect route in the game. My questions are below, I'm hoping someone can help me out.

  1. When the train is about to crash, Cro all of a sudden "changes" back to Chronos (the actual goddess). At this point, are they 1 being are separate beings? If separate, where is Cro physically during this time? Is she frozen in time on the train?
  2. The protagonist had it in his head that he was going to save Cro by trading her for himself to Chonos (the goddess). However, while it seemed Chronos agreed to the terms, she "switched modes" and let Cro talk (I guess this is a bit like multiple personality disorder?). At this point is is revealed that instead, Cro somehow decided to die instead of letting Chronos take the protagonist with her. This is where I REALLY got confused. Why the sudden change of events? Why did the goddess pretend to accept his terms when she apparently already made an agreement with Cro to "kill" her instead? Why did Cro really disappear? Did she die? Can a goddess die? This situation completely ruined her route for me, I'm hoping someone picked up on some subtle explanations that I missed.
  3. Also once she disappears, he's still "frozen in time" on the train, about to crash. How was his life spared? They never showed what happened after that. He was supposed to die because the monorail derailed, after all.
  4. And lastly but most disappointing of all, Cro actually just randomly appears in human form again post-credits. Sure, great happy ending, but was lazily done. The protagonist even admits questions he has but glosses over them like "meh, the answers don't matter, Cro is here now". I'd ask how she came back, but I think the writers made it clear that they will not answer those questions. Also there was no sense of elapsed time between when Cro "died" and when she "reincarnated" (i.e. appeared again post-credits).

Either horrible story telling in Cro's route or I missed some fundamental information.

There is a lot of mistake in this, I guess you didn't really understand what happened, so I'll explain as best as I can

I agree that this situation confused me, I read it several time, but well...

1- Why are you saying the train is about to crash lol? Rei is in a space where time stopped and only him and chronos can move, but in this spacetime with chronos, his body was "moving" , but not the train anymore, that's why his body crashed the first time but not the second since he remembered it and prevented it. The second time, the train was even slowing since it was close to the station. Next, when you see Chronos, she "absorbed" Cro, taking "back" her body. So Cro is not pshysically in the train, but inside Chronos.

2- Again you're wrong. Understand that the difference between Chronos and Cro is that Cro lives in the real world while Chronos lives in this thing you call the "frozen time". The MC wanted to see Chronos because he wanted to get the "happy ending" with Cro, but he misunderstood something important: He thought that he was the target of Chronos, but in fact Chronos is trapped inside the month you see in the Cro route. Because each time she kills the MC, the time go back again and again, because while absorbed by Chronos, Cro still lives inside her, and use her power to turn back time, and Chronos can't do anything about that. This fact means 2 things important: First as she said, Chronos refuses to be separated from Cro no matter what, because those emotions of her are importants for Chronos, because Chronos lives alone in the "frozen time". Second, as I said, this even happened a lot of time, this is actually the trap where Chronos can't escape. Chronos is the only one remembering anything and each time Chronos absorbs Cro, part of her personality stay within her. Meaning that the personnality of Cro, her emotions, her knowledges, her love for Rei... get stronger each time this happen. The MC just undertsood all that only the second time he talked to Chronos, that's why he asked to trade himself, so that Chronos won't feel lonely, and let Cro free. After that, Chronos doesn't switch mode, she fuses with Cro, you have both personnality instead of just Chronos, because it was more convenient for her for the last part: Maybe you don't remember, but Cro talked a lot about death with Rei during their last date, like she wasn't affraid of death anymore. So Chronos and Cro chose to "die" and stop the "traptime" instead of bringing MC with her in the "frozen world", because they didn't want him to give up the real world.

3- I answered this in 1

4- I dunno, there is a lot of things we don't know about the gods and their power in this VN, but I guess Chronos gave up on her Godess statut, and became a human living, and she probably needed time to do that. 

Did I answer your questions?

Edited by Kirashi
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Your explanation helps but still some unanswered pieces:

1. I remember now that the train was slowing down to the station and then time froze, you reminded me of this. But why did it slow down normally the second time but crash the first time? At least, the first time seemed like a crash... they weren't real specific about it (or maybe I'm just forgetting details). Your answer to #1 earlier still confuses me. What actually happened with the train? I thought it crashed or derailed at the beginning of Cro's route, and Chronos froze time just before he would have died in that crash. How did "his body crash" as you put it?

2. I didn't get that there was a time loop from when I read it. There was nothing that indicated this to me. If I recall anything, I think the protagonist asked himself at one point how many times they have been in this situation, but that seemed like speculation on his part. There was nothing fundamental about the conversations with Chronos that gave me any indication that she was "trapped" in a time loop. The only "trapped" that was discussed was how Chronos was stuck in a timeless world (the world where the goddess lives I guess, or at least how she perceives the world)

Specifically for #2, how did you come to the conclusion that there was a time loop? As far as the story goes, they only met twice.

Edited by voidpointer
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On 4/8/2017 at 4:49 PM, voidpointer said:

Specifically for #2, how did you come to the conclusion that there was a time loop? As far as the story goes, they only met twice.

It's explicitly stated.

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The ending made sense to me up until the point Cro "died", I didn't get why that happened either since it sounded like Chronos had agreed to let the protagonist live with her in frozen time forever.

Edited by Heliostorm
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I do remember that part. To me that just sounded like the protagonist making a pointless observation. After all, there was never any further mention of that afterwards. Cro also never confirmed the reason she decides to die or accept the protagonists terms. I guess we are supposed to just deduce that. 

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ok I went back and read the beginning of Cro's route and the ending again. I think I get it now.

I was mistaken about a train crash, originally that's what I thought happened, but the train just came to a stop because Chronos stopped time. The inertia isn't even the thing that killed him. Honestly they don't really explain *how* he would have died, because he never did, because each loop, Cro would reset time. That still doesn't explain why they ever got the idea that Cro would kill him before he figured out he was in a time loop. Maybe instinct?

Near the end of the route, the same events happen, the only difference is he was able to brace for the inertia, but the train stopped the same way, etc. At this point Cro explains that when the 2 of them join together, Cro uses her power to reset time, creating a loop. That's when the MC realizes the issue: Cro isn't after him, but she's trying to escape the time loop.

He also realizes that each time a loop happens, the watch goes back a little less than 5 minutes each time, because the time he spends "frozen in time" the clock still ticks, eventually catching up to the real time. I guess this means at some point the watch would lose its powers.

I think originally this was confusing and I missed a lot of subtle details because, well... it's subtle. But also there's a lot happening in a short amount of time, when most of the story up to that point has been pretty slice of life. From the point Cro's personality changes, things are still unclear, mostly the reason she chose to die instead of giving the MC the ultimatum of dying or leaving Cro alone.

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