It's all about the face

So, the first otome app that I tried and actually thought, hey, wow, this is pretty decent and I don't want to kill it with fire is Ikémen Sengoku: Romances Across Time. It's attractively done, it has some really nice voice acting (in Japanese, so I only understand a bit of it, but there's translations in English text), the art is really nice AND (so far) the main character isn't a complete milksop (yes, I realise that word generally refers to males but it still kinda works).

Anyway, you play a character that gets accidentally sent back through time due to some weird space-time oddness. A stranger you happened to be standing near (you were checking out an old monument about a long-dead samurai dude) is also sent back, though he wound up arriving 4 years before you. In that time he's acquired himself some bad-ass ninja skills. When you do arrive, you save the life of Nobunaga Oda, who historically was supposed to have died the night you arrive.

You soon learn that history has changed a lot from the bit you knew -- Sasuke (the dude that also got sent back) also happened to do some life-saving when he arrived and there's two more samurai kicking around that should have died. (Oh, look, plot point that works to get you to forgive any historical innacuracies...) He's physicist-smart and thinks he knows how to get through a wormhole in 3 month's time. The problem -- he's embedded in the enemy camp and Nobunaga thinks you're a lucky charm and takes you with him. So you've gotta hang out for 3 months and not get killed around a bunch of shmexy samurai all wrapped up in the middle of a war. Some of them trust you. Some of them don't. All of them have long, shiny swords and know how to use them. (That wasn't a euphemism, actually. Seriously. They're samurai. They have swords.)

What was that, you say? There's a plot? Why, yes, there is. And the main character isn't a total pushover and has some agenda. Woot! She stands her ground! She has ideals! Morals! Okay, and a weakness for shmexy samurai. But who doesn't?

Yeah, he's the original crazy hat samurai dude.
He invented this look.

I picked the Masamune Date route. I'm not entirely sure why, but I liked him the most in the prologue, so I just went with that. I did look up the historical figure and thankfully he wasn't horrible (did some good things, actually) other than it's a bit off-putting how many concubines and wives he had. So. Yeah, maybe I shouldn't have looked that part up when I'm supposed to be creating a story with him. And probably also should have avoided what he really looked like...though his statue isn't that bad. Paintings of him, however...let's just ignore all that. It's a game, right?

So, anyway, you settle into life in the Sengoku period as well as can be expected. It's fairly well written, though sometimes a bit contrived and clunky, but I think that's more a problem of the genre. It's a serious challenge when you've got a "choose your own adventure" style game going and have to seamlessly fit in which choices the players pick but still carry the story forward.

I'm only up to the 5th chapter (there's a total of 13, plus bonus scenes), so the jury is still out on whether or not it will continue to prove worthy. But, so far I'm enjoying it. Perhaps the best part (other than the spunky heroine and the swoonworthy voice acting) is that there's also bits of humour interjected here and there. I literally snorted out loud today at one little joke.

It's got the standard F2P hijinks (princess lessons, an avatar you have to dress up, etc.) and far too many events (I find all the extras a bit confusing, but maybe that's because I haven't finished a route yet) but it's enjoyable.

In comparison, Destined to Love, another "sent back through time" to hang out with a bunch of samurai otome app is a little bit lacking. The app is clunkier and I've noticed a number of typos (they may not bother other people, but they bug me). The art is still nice, however and the heroine, while not quite as upstanding as the one in Ikémen Sengoku, is decent. Honestly, if I weren't doing both at the same time, I probably would have thought that Destined to Love was really great.

Hello, you, with your sad eyes.

Very similar setup -- you go back through time, this time accompanied by an old college friend who is just as clueless as you as to what is going on (you can also choose to romance him, if you like). There's a mysterious love letter with a cherry blossom petal but you can't read any of it except the declaration of love at the bottom. You wind up working at a cafe as you try to figure out what to do.

Perhaps the most jarring thing is that the samurai characters tend to use anachronistic words and it keeps pulling me out of the story as they don't sound like they belong in their time period. And the words/translation themselves...it often doesn't really make sense and is very, very clunky. For instance, this description just appeared: "the bridge of his nose twitched." Er, what? How does that work exactly? The BRIDGE OF HIS NOSE twitched? And there's a serious overuse of adverbs. It makes my fingers itch to correct the writing. I've said clunky already, haven't I? Let's add awkward and ungainly and clumsy... I'm gonna stop now.

And the MC is a bit wishy-washy. Neither she nor Kyo (her friend from the future) really seem to be trying to do anything to figure out their situation. She doesn't much stand up for herself either, though not nearly as bad as that idiot girl in Wizardess Heart.

Dude. So serious.

However, I do really like the character I picked to follow. He's called Kogoru Katsura in the game. In real life, that was his name in the beginning, but he wound up becoming Kido Takayoshi, a Japanese statesman who did a lot of stuff in his life. Seriously. Dude was hugely influential in Japanese history. And was saved by the Geisha of Gion, his wife, during some failed political thing-y. Of course, all of that actually makes me more interested in his real story than in the one in the app. ANYWAY.

I'll continue on with it because I'm interested to see how it will play out. My main complaints are with the app itself anyway. I've really gotta stop looking up the real history, though. It's interesting but then it makes me feel kind of guilty. I'm sorry, Kido Matsuko! I didn't mean to steal your husband!

Yeah, that's weird.

It has made me think though...if these types of games had been invented in the US/Europe rather than in Japan, who would have been the historical players that would have appeared? It's hard to imagine. Maybe because it's easy to romanticise samurai in Western culture? I suppose there are lots of knight-y things--plenty of otome that way, but I haven't come across one yet that actually uses real historical figures. But, yeesh, I can't imagine something set in the Tudor court. I mean, King Henry VIII was really pretty gross, especially as he aged. That huge codpiece was because of syphillis. And what about the founding fathers of the US? Urk.

Yeah, what was I saying about probably not wanting to think about the actual history behind things? That's exactly why.