Also tired because I'm working on Seven's route, that poor damaged silly boy. I wound up doing it over the weekend a bit because I thought I'd just earn some extra hearts, but then I successfully wound up on his route at day 5 and thought, hey, why not, I'll just keep going instead of starting over. I have actually been looking forward to this one as I like his sense of humour and randomness. Like me! But I think he's going to break me because I know he's got the saddest bits to come...(well, besides Another Story, which I don't think I'm ever going to do).
Anyway.
The description said (sic):
Since starting high school, you have seen your childhood friend who has become quiet and plain. However, you haven't spoken to him in a few month...
One day, you and he, by chance, were elected as entrants of a beauty contest.
"It's going to be fine! Trust me!"
You decided to do some special training with him to win the contest!
What will he confess to you when he's changed――?
And the reviews were all, oh, so cute! Etc. I thought, naively, that based on your choices, you'd wind up with 4 different Nao 's (the boy character). You know, like the prince-ly one, the confident one, the sweet one...I dunno. I dunno what I was thinking. I just thought it was supposed to be cute. Maybe he'd wind up with different outfits or something.
And I started it and I thought, oh, yeah, the art is really quite nice. It's very, very clicky but it goes pretty fast and I like that the premise is all about encouraging him to be his better self and have confidence, not just on "changing" him because, yo, girl, that never works.
But the decision points are very, very random so choosing is basically a crap shoot. Then...the first ending I wound up with (after choosing "comfort him" ffs) was the Arrogant Ending where he basically turns into a total douchebag dyed-blonde flirt machine "god's gift to women" dude. Not what I was expecting. So I thought I'd give it another go. It was just different from what I expected, but, hey, maybe it was meant to be more serious than I thought...so I go back and the first decision point where you pick either "let him choose his own outfit" to "choose for him"...you choose for him...and...you dress this poor kid up as a girl. What the what? I don't have a problem with cross dressing. My problem was that you're supposed to be helping this kid out who you know has serious self confidence issues and he's going to be up in front of the entire school...and you're dressing him up as a GIRL? When he's shown no tendencies towards that? So basically, half the endings go off of him dressing himself in kind of "wild" cool clothes and the other half off of you dressing him up as a pretty girl? I bailed on that end half way through and then looked up a walkthrough. It just felt so wrong to me, like one of the worst things you could do for a kid who has no confidence and is bullied.
So, yeah...spoiler alert...if you follow the two paths where you dress him as a girl, one he winds up as "Princess Nao" and the other he winds up as even more of a social outcast with a bit of an abusive twist and winds up pushing the MC to the ground and is all Yo, I'm a guy after all. The fuck. Seriously.
Just reading through that left a bad taste in my mouth. I did wind up playing through the ONE freaking good end though where he gets his confidence and they win the contest and he confesses his love. It was sweet.
Anyway...the art was nice, both the chibi versions and the regular images. It was fast. It just wasn't what I expected. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it and it's a good thing I don't bother giving ratings, as I have no idea what I'd say for this one. Welp, this blog is only for me anyway. But I personally would have enjoyed it more if it had been the light game I'd originally thought it was OR if 3/4 of the endings weren't kind of horrible.
I did also download (before I realised what was going on with the endings) another game by the same company called In Search of Haru.
It's got a similar style of gameplay -- lots of clicking -- though this one you have to wait a bit longer in-between. Same 4 possible endings. Same very random decision points where what you choose really makes no difference plot-wise other than what they decided (so there's no trying to guide your choices). In this one, it's once again a thing with a childhood friend. In this case, you were fat when you were little (okay, I'm a little FFS about that, but, eh okay) and you had one friend who was a boy that you haven't seen since then that encouraged you. Now you've gotten thin and pretty (okay, yeah, kinda UGH on this) and you're back. Can you find him again?
I'm kind of glad I was ahead in the other game with Nao before I got to the end of my first route on this one because...here she is, hanging out with this guy who seems really nice and takes good care of her and is always sticking up for her...and I'm, like, wow, hey for once I actually wound up on a good end first thing...then, last scene...he confesses his love to her and is all ooooh, you're the best, I'm gonna take such good care of you. She's all, yay, omg, I love you too, and then he does an IMMEDIATE 180 and boom she's in a super abusive controlling relationship where she's not allowed to talk to other people, especially guys. Unhappily ever after. Uh, yeah. That was way outta left field. They called it the Dark End. No shit.
It makes me feel like the people who write these games are really sad and need relationship counselling. Again, there's only one end that's really good (she finds Haru and yay). In the worst (well, I kinda think that Dark End is really the worst) Bad End, she's found out by her peers that she used to be fat and gets depressed and bullied again even though she's not actually fat anymore and the three boys actually still try to be friends. The Normal End is okay at least. She doesn't find Haru but she does sort of find a friend in one of the boys who saves her from a groper on a train (why, incidentally, is this such a thing in Japanese anime/manga/games -- are there really that many gropers??).
So...in a way, at least the endings on this one sort of made more sense than in Jimi-Kare. Like, you could kinda see it coming. A little. Art again was nice, of that washed out variety.
But I was left more frustrated than not. I'm still trying to figure out why. I suppose it's me. It could definitely be me. It could also be that I'm not the target age for these things and while I am (very) young at heart, I don't have the patience for abusive controlling relationship shit that I would have had when I was younger. Like take Twilight. Dude, you're basically a pedophile old vampire stalker creeper who happens to glitter. That shit is not romantic. That's, like, restraining order time.
If anything, I was mostly kind of sad for the MC in In Search of Haru. She was very sweet but basically if any guy paid any attention to her at all, she was ready to jump off a building for him. She was that desperate for affection. And I get that. I do. I cringe at my teen years. Between being dirt poor and my father dying and abusive stepfather figures and horrible self esteem (thinking I was fat when I weighed 85 fricking pounds soaking wet), yeah, I get it. I do. Maybe that's why the bad endings for things like this unsettle me. I'm looking for more happy than not and things that don't legitimise abuse and make it seem "normal" which, okay, it is normal, but it's utter crap that it's normal. Can't we make a new normal? Why are we always retreading old ground?
Yeah, yeah, I know why. Still.
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