The story in Notes takes place on Earth in the distant future. After mankind killed the planet on which it lived with pollution and warfare, all natural life died with it. Only one surviving were the humans, as they were able to use technology to artificially sustain themselves. They eventually created enhanced humans, which were able to live on the ruined planet, and A-rays, creatures created with genetic engineering by combining humans and various other extinct life forms.
A war breaks out between enhanced humans and A-rays, resulting in complete devastation of what was left of Earth, as well as the near extinction of enhanced humans. The war was interrupted by the arrival of 8 Aristoteles, who only seek to indiscriminately destroy all remaining life on the dead planet.
奈須 きのこ, Nasu Kinoko, born 28 November 1973 is a Japanese author, best known for writing the light novel The Garden of Sinners and visual novels Tsukihime and Fate/stay night, and a co-founder of Type-Moon. Renowned for a unique style of storytelling and prose, Nasu is amongst the most prominent visual novelists in Japan. He graduated from Hosei University with a major in human science.
There is no official English translation available so I used the Evospace translation. Poorly translated and sentence structure is very confusing. I suspect the most literal translation from Japanese was chosen. The story is very nonsensical and at the end I feel like nothing has become clearer or has even been partially explained. The story also suffers from the fact that it tries to establish a world and a conflict in just a few pages while also giving the impression the most interesting parts of the story are not shown.