Sugar*Style Koibito Ijou, Fuufu Miman (Sugar*Style 恋人以上,夫婦未満) Review

“Tomodachi ijou, koibito miman” — more than friends, less than lovers — is a pretty common phrase in Japanese, and a handy way of describing a vague sort of romantic relationship. Most people know what it means: the two of you are past being friends but haven’t quite reached lovers yet.

And of course, once you do reach “lovers,” there’s the same kind of transitional gap before you become an actual married couple, so you’d figure “more than lovers, less than married” ought to exist too.

Which is why SMEE went and used that exact name for their recent fandisc: “Sugar*Style: Koibito Ijou, Fuufu Miman.”

It fits what the fandisc actually is, honestly — most of it is afterstory, so naturally it’s all stuff that happens after they’ve become a couple.

I thought the original game was pretty mid, to be honest. Maybe I’ve played too much SMEE, maybe SMEE themselves just didn’t have it this time. The character writing barely clears the passing line, and as for building any new selling points, it’s basically a failure.

All that “living together” and “role assignment” stuff is straight up backsliding — every innovation from Making Lovers got swallowed back up, and what’s left is just SMEE’s usual banter.

In the fandisc, SMEE doesn’t even seem bothered to keep up the original’s “character setup.” It just runs each heroine through three Chapters of afterstory, conveyor-belt style, telling the story of the protagonist and each girl after they start dating, and calls it “More Than Lovers, Less Than Married.”

As “couple bits,” those three Chapters are actually pretty good, quality-wise. It also made me realize something: a lot of romance material only gets interesting once the hero and heroine are already a couple, and most visual novels can’t do that from the start — you’ve got to suffer through the dating and the confession first. Then, in most visual novels, the moment the confession lands you’re rushing into sex, and once that’s done it’s post-nut clarity and straight to the ED.

Frankly, a standard visual novel doesn’t leave much room for “couple skits,” but SMEE’s fandisc here serves up a decent amount of fun material — the girlfriend messing with you, the two of you saying things to each other you’d never get away with before — stuff that’s hard to pull off during the “winning her over” phase. That’s exactly what makes this short fandisc look better than the original.

Also, maybe to save money, this fandisc reuses a ton of backgrounds from earlier games, including other HOOKSOFT titles. Not the first time a HOOKSOFT brand has done that, and I’m used to it by now — as long as the story’s fun.

Putting out a “filler fandisc” after the full game seems to be standard SMEE/HOOKSOFT procedure at this point. I didn’t go in expecting much, and the game is indeed very short, but this fandisc nails the “more than lovers, less than married” window precisely and writes a few genuinely good couple bits. I had fun with it.

“Ugh, what ‘couple bits,’ it’s just the usual post-romance afterstory, what are you even hyping up?”

I know someone’s going to say that. I don’t really know how to explain it either. All I can say is that what SMEE’s fandisc writes really are couple bits, while other games’ fandiscs at best give you afterstory with some porn attached. Those are fundamentally different things, and why they’re different… maybe only people who’ve actually dated will get it? Probably.

I’ve said this before: SMEE’s dialogue is the closest thing to real romance in this medium. If a nerd could carry himself the way SMEE’s protagonists do, getting girls would be easy.

I still think that’s true, because I live like an SMEE protagonist every single day.

Man, it’s exhausting.