I don't know what to say about this one. for spoiler reasons, obviously, and for "don't post about your mental health on the internet" reasons, in mostly equal measure. this is your warning for both of those.
it's an interesting story in the moment-to-moment, hardly dragging its feet for its short runtime, lacing its interpersonal conflicts in between amateur murders and the less-amateur detective in charge of solving and, thus, reversing the deaths. ran ibuki is a protagonist with a history that you're only permitted to learn about in snippets before the finale, and the other characters play off her and set her off in compelling ways.
a (negative) steam review that I saw mentioned that the game feels like hopping into a sequel with how much it presumes you know about ibuki, her mental health, and her situation, but frankly, not knowing anything outside of the perspective you're given until the end is key to the tone in this scenario. ibuki's schizophrenia is brought up primarily in her in-game profile and, aside from a couple of, as the TL calls them, tantrums early on, it's not touched on until much later in the game.
in any case, the theme of this game is dependence. codependency, even, were you to be so inclined as to read it as such. it made me ponder the eternal question of when needing specific people in your life to function as a social animal becomes a disorder. I struggle, nowadays, to see a future without the people I love by my side. not that I don't think I could manage, but I don't know that I'd have survived this long without said people keeping my head above water over the years. I wouldn't have taken my life in so... vibrant a fashion as one of the characters in the chrono jotter, but I would have deteriorated without them, no doubt, and the thought that I'm relying on others too much bothers me sometimes.
the character in question was probably the one I related to most. a string of lucky chances kept me from being alone long enough to start sinking into the nihilism at the root of my depression. even when I had a terrible fucking time because of friends I'd later regret, I only skimmed the muddy depths of that pool that threatened to drown me. if I forgot I was a social animal, I would've forgotten how to exist at all.
ibuki, as what feels like a coping mechanism for the worst of her paranoia, has decided that it is irrevocably correct for her to live for someone else's sake. at some point, I thought I would prefer it if I could just give the rest of my life to someone else, to prop them up and save me the trouble of existing, but that feeling doesn't cross my mind except in the darkest of bad brain days now. I guess my attitude now is comparable to ibuki's in that I will keep living for others' sake. nowadays, I'm hoping to help raise the average lifespan for trans women and be an annoying shitposter to all my loved ones until I'm too old to post.
anyway, it's crazy how I played this not two weeks after 1000xRESIST and it turns out this one is also about disappointing your mom. no I won't give any context. play the damn thing yourself.