Shiraha Kirameku Koi Shirabe (白刃きらめく恋しらべ) Review

《絆きらめく恋いろは》 is a game I found pretty creative and honestly pretty damn impressive — it’s got a ton going for it:

• Solid soundtrack
• Gripping combat
• A story that portrays the heroine’s growth in detail, easy to relate to
• Art that isn’t half bad

And this game wasn’t just big in Japan — it blew up in China too. I saw “Tsubaki is my wife” everywhere, and the studio struck while the iron was hot and put out a Tsubaki-only fandisc. Kept the hype going and squeezed out another round of sales while they were at it.

Before I knew it, it was late 2019, and word of a sequel started going around. The sequel was called Shiraha Kirameku Koi Shirabe (白刃きらめく恋しらべ). Honestly, I wasn’t worried about it at all — the writing style had already settled into a groove, and CRYSTALiA’s parent company AMUSE CRAFT didn’t exactly look strapped for cash, so there was no doubt they’d do the sequel right…

But what confused me was that not long after this game came out, Tomochiyo Kurenai (智斗紅), the planner and producer of the original Kizuna Kirameku Koi Iroha (絆きらめく恋いろは), said some weird stuff on Twitter:

He said he’d already left the company back in summer, and he’s barely retweeted anything about the new game — it’s all been stuff about older titles. He also said he was only nominally attached to the new game and didn’t actually do anything on it.

What is this feeling? When does a game’s producer normally react like that?

Only when the game itself turned out bad, when even they think it’s garbage, and they rush to shift the blame because they’re scared of getting flamed!

By the time I realized this, it was already too late—I was literally halfway through the game… and the cheapness of it hit me hard.

And that cheap feel isn’t just about the combat being scarce and stiff — the BGM is just as crude. But the thing I absolutely could not stand was the story, which is boring as all hell.

So what story does Shiraha Kirameku Koi Shirabe actually tell?

The story takes place a few years after Kizuna Kirameku Koi Iroha. The protagonist and the two heroines are agents belonging to the “shadow division,” and every day they just search for and eliminate the “ghosts” wandering around campus. That’s it.

Their work is also incredibly boring — go to school during the day, fight monsters at night… and that’s when they run into the proper main heroine, Fuurin Marika. So what’s Marika’s deal? She’s from a branch family of the Suzakuin clan, and since she’s got a youkai parasite in her blood too, the protagonist eventually figures out, mid-monster-fighting, that Marika’s been swallowed up by the spectral power inside her. So he’s forced to fight her, beats her… and then the story just ends.

The game has three heroines you can pursue, but they all feel completely interchangeable. The main plot is always the same: school by day, monster-hunting by night — fight, fight, fight, all the way to the final “Marika” boss, then it’s straight to END, leaving me sitting there listening to that godawful unskippable ED, staring blankly at the screen.

I find it really hard to believe this game is a sequel to Kizuna Kirameku Koi Iroha. Call it a fan work and I’d still say it’s too embarrassing to show anyone.

The story in this game is genuinely boring — so boring that I’m sitting here racking my brain and still can’t remember what I even read while playing. It left basically zero impression. The voice acting is pretty mediocre too: Ayumi Sarah, whom I can’t stand; Mai Ishihara, who’ll take any role if the check clears; and Misono Mei, who’s genuinely skilled but keeps winding up in garbage games.

Honestly, Misono Mei is pretty much the guaranteed saving grace of this game — her character at least has a bit of life to her, while everyone else reads like a robot reciting lines. Even so, Misono Mei still can’t bring her full power to bear, and she can’t carry this game.

Why though?

Because the scenario writer is a fucking idiot!

I don’t know if Misono Mei was internally roasting the writer while recording, seeing the dialogue stuffed with nothing but “I want to protect her, I don’t want to protect her” — but I sure as hell couldn’t take it anymore… The vocabulary is so barren it makes her sound like a broken record.

That’s when I thought back to the attitude that developer had on Twitter at the very start, and it all clicked…

Maybe CRYSTALiA won’t be putting out anything new from here on. The producer bailed, and whoever picked up the pieces can’t make anything decent — they’ll just shovel out some garbage sequel, cash in on the IP one last time, and then AMUSE CRAFT can spin up a new label and carry on. Not that they’re short on labels already.