Some may remember between 2018 and 2020 the announcement of Dies Irae Pantheon, a gacha game project based in the Shinza Bansho visual novel franchise masterminded by writer Masada Takashi. In case you are not familiar, the Shinza Bansho franchise is made up of Masada Takashi works such as Kajiri Kamui Kagura and Dies Irae, which are of renown within the visual novel community.
The Pantheon project was set to be the culmination of a complete cosmology, the cosmology of the throne, as well as its evolution, its history and its plot. This project was led by light, a company that had been releasing visual novels since the 2000s, in collaboration with multiple companies dedicated to creating gacha games.
The Pantheon project was conceived in 2014 by Masada and was inspired by the Great Super Robot Taisen series, a long running RPG series where different mecha universes crossover. Wanting to create a massive collaboration between all his works, he somehow wanted the Pantheon to be plot focused while having a consistent internal logic within the universe of the throne. The release was announced for 2017 but, after several delays, Pantheon was moved to 2018.
Light’s direction was terrible, with the group having to restart the development at least 3 times. Keeping the progress and all the work under wraps outside of streams on Japanese sites like Nico Nico, there were signs that, even though Dies Irae had released on Steam not too long prior, Light believed that westerners wouldn’t be interested in the project even when the promotional art featured Ren Fuji next to Marie.
After much secrecy, an Alpha build of what would be Pantheon and its gameplay was shown… in a PRIVATE stream that not many people would actually see.
Due to multiple bad choices made by light, the company soon went bankrupt and Pantheon was officially cancelled, with Masada going a whole year without publically saying anything, at least on Twitter…
On September 14th of 2019, Masada was back with a new web novel series titled Kokubyaku No Avesta (Avesta of Black and White).
Three months later he announced History of Pantheon, a book he would be releasing in December 2019 for Comiket 97.
In this book, Masada detailed his roadmap for the future and how he plans to release several novels independently on crowdfunding platforms such as Enty and Fantia where he would use the money to generate more new works with the possibility of financing Dies Irae Pantheon. The book also discusses a future novel about the Universe created by Marie and the Universe created by Nerose Satanael that would set Hajun and Mercurius as the main characters.
While Masada’s Avesta of Black and White series ended on July 23, 2021, it was quickly followed up a few days as later future announcements were made on the Youtube channel for a follow-up, Starfleet Battlefront Adytias.
The first volume of Adytias released in February 2023.
Finally, it appears as Masada has now overcome the worst of his roadblocks after the recent announcement of 2 more Avesta visual novels, the first of which will be released December of 2023 and the second planned for the end of January 2024.
Takashi Masada, with the help of his friend Gyuusuke and his online supporters, has managed to rekindle the flames of the possibility of a future Pantheon, and while it’s very likely that future Pantheon won’t be a gacha game (considering Masada is coming VERY late to the gacha boom) we may yet see Pantheon with our own eyes, hopefully under the visual novel format.
Pantheon is not just the idea for a gacha, it is the history of the Throne, it is the action of the plot and the universe of Masada. It is the current canon of the work of Masada, it is the present and the future of the series.
I want to share Masada’s journey and their struggle to get here independently with everyone and I want to ask that, if you are really interested in the works of Masada, to consider supporting him through his crowdfunding. It’s a big ask but it’s important as fans to support creators during their time of need.
I still remember the great support for the Kickstarter for Dies Irae and its translation. If we really want to see more works from Masada and see them translated, the best thing we can do is supporting his works and his crowdfunding.
Finally, I want to leave with the links to the crowdfunding sites for Avesta and Adytias, both in need of support to be made and to make “a definitive miracle”.
Thank you all for reading, this is my first article on the Kami Sama Series/Shinza Bansho and I hope to bring you all more on the news of this universe.
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