Sakurairo, Mau Koro ni (さくらいろ、舞うころに) Review

I’d nearly forgotten that I used to run around in the student council back in college. My whole student council stint was so boring I barely remember it.

The org I joined was called the “Office.” I had no idea what it did then, and looking back it was probably something like a school office or faculty office — handling paperwork, doing publicity and the like. So it turns out I was already being forced to write stuff back then. A long, proud tradition.

I don’t think I did much in the “Office,” either — just pulled together some notices and announcements, wrote some notices and announcements. Most of the time I hid in the student council room playing games, messing with my phone, messing with a computer. Actually I only got into the student council because the president picked me. The president was a girl, reasonably good-looking, friendly. I have no idea why she picked me or what I was supposed to do once I was in, and frankly I never saw what anyone else in the council did, either. In my head the “student council” was a purely nominal body with zero real power, no funding, and nothing to show for itself besides printing the occasional poster.

Oh, right — the student council did organize an evening party once. I remember the president telling me she wanted to put on an evening party with real feeling. She was really into folk and rock. I think the two are kind of worlds apart, but my impression of her was always that she was that artsy type of girl. She also said that instead of a conventional evening party, a bonfire gathering would be better — more down-to-earth, more popular with the students.

Naturally all her ideas got shot down in the end. The school took the whole thing over and turned it into exactly the kind of party she hated. You could read the displeasure all over her face. The so-called “student-council-organized evening party” still had the student council’s name on it, but it had nothing to do with us anymore.

“Nothing to be done. Sometimes that’s just how things are.”

After the party ended, the president sighed and said that. There were no streetlights on the way out of the auditorium, the moonlight was too dim to make out her face behind the long hair, and I got the vague sense it was a helpless, wry smile.

I thought back to the bonfire gathering she’d originally wanted, and I was a little surprised at how many wild ideas she had and how stubbornly she held onto certain things.

“You really do like that sappy romantic kind of stuff, huh?”

“Every girl likes that kind of stuff. I’m an ordinary girl too, you know.”

Her answer came out a bit stiff, not like her usual strict self.

She’d been well known around school back then, too — plenty of confessions and love letters, all turned down with a smile. People gossiped that she was being kept by someone, or had a rich boyfriend on the side.

But from the look in her eyes in that moment, I could tell those rumors were all fake.

Years later I ran into her again in Zhengzhou. She’s managing a winery now, doing good business, still single, still clinging to that “obsession with little romances” the way she always did. Maybe that’s why she’s still unmarried. I hope she finds happiness soon.

Anyway, today I’m not talking about that student council president. I could go on and on about her, but you wouldn’t want to read it, so I won’t. What I want to say is that after all that student council grind in college, I’ve always been dismissive of the whole “student council throws a party” thing.

The student council couldn’t put together anything worth a damn — no power, everything controlled by the school, and at the end of the day they’re the ones left holding the bag. That’s how it works in real life. In the world of visual novels, though, maybe things are different.

Sakurairo, Mau Koro ni (さくらいろ、舞うころに) is a 2019 game from Pulltop. I’d been keeping an eye on it from the start, since Pulltop is Ms. Wang’s favorite. But the month it came out my PC died, so I had to skip it. The weird thing is, afterwards the game just vanished — nobody said a word about it, no CG or character ever got popular, and when the Japanese crowd did their year-end eroge roundups, this one didn’t even get a name-drop. Which struck me as odd. It’s a Pulltop game, surely it can’t be that bad.

Then I played it, and instantly understood why the game has all the presence of a fart in a hurricane. It’s genuinely terrible.

But I want to be clear: this game isn’t “terrible” purely because the story is bad. It’s terrible on several other levels too.

Sakurairo, Mau Koro ni tells a very conventional story. Graduation season is coming up, and Minami Mizuki, a member of the student council, decides to throw the graduating class “a graduation ceremony they’ll never forget.” She forms a “Graduation Ceremony Executive Committee,” takes the title of chair, and starts working herself to the bone for this grand vision.

As the committee takes shape, Chair Minami starts recruiting, and recruits plenty of members. What they do every day is meet, meet, and meet some more, discussing how exactly to pull off this “graduation ceremony.”

But no matter how much they meet, they can’t figure out how to make a graduation ceremony memorable. Then the old principal suddenly announces he’s getting on in years and is going to retire.

The old principal had looked after Minami before — even the creation of the Graduation Ceremony Executive Committee only got off the ground with his approval — so she’s deeply attached to him. Then she slaps her forehead and decides to turn the “graduation ceremony” into a graduation ceremony for the old principal.

“This way the graduation ceremony will definitely be unforgettable, because I feel like it’ll be unforgettable, so everyone must feel the same as me!”

So in the end, what started as “a graduation ceremony everyone will never forget” became “a graduation ceremony the principal alone will never forget.” Nearly every act is a tribute to the soon-to-retire principal. He’s moved to tears, and Chair Minami is blissfully moved to tears too.

Of course the game never shows any other student’s point of view, so I don’t know if they were moved to tears as well. If I’d been one of them, my face would’ve been one giant WTF.

I wonder if the chair forgot: this is a ceremony for the graduates, not a ceremony for you.

Honestly, though, the story overall isn’t a big problem. It reminds me of what the student council president said back in college:

“Nothing to be done. Sometimes that’s just how things are.”

Set aside the alleged “bond” between Chair Minami and the principal and run through the whole plot — there’s nothing abnormal about it.

The student council spearheads a graduation ceremony, ends up turning it into a tribute to the school’s higher-ups, the higher-ups are moved, and the student council gets praised.

See? Now it feels familiar. This kind of thing happens all the time in this world. Nobody actually cares what the graduates think — the graduation ceremony that genuinely belongs to the graduates is the private parties and dinners afterwards.

What I’m getting at is that this game feels “terrible” to me for reasons other than the plot:

1. The music is arguably plagiarized, and the BGM is deafening

The OP is the game’s title track, but it sounded familiar the whole way through, and eventually it hit me: there’s a song called Nexus by CLARIS, and it’s just way too similar — the effects and the beat are identical. I don’t know if this counts as plagiarism, but I think it does.

Also the BGM isn’t even good — heavy on the synth. And it’s loud as hell, so you can barely hear what the characters are saying. You have to drop the BGM volume to around 10% before the experience is tolerable. Which makes you wonder: did the producer even play this thing during development?

2. The common route is bloated and pointless

Pulltop games love meetings. I already noticed this in the FD for Miagete Goran. The reason Pulltop’s hit Miagete Goran sold well was the cinematic soundtrack and presentation, not those dumbass astronomy observation meetings. Those meetings were genuinely boring, genuinely stupid, and everyone at them earnestly states their opinions like it’s a real meeting. I get that the writer wanted the “graduation ceremony discussions” to feel realistic, but come on — real meetings are boring as hell! We already suffer through enough meetings at work; who the hell wants to come home and keep meeting?! And like I said about the story earlier, the chair holds meetings for an entire common route and then suddenly out of nowhere decides to make the graduation ceremony a tribute to the soon-to-retire principal. So what was the point of all that discussion? Was it just a waste of time?

And I have to say, this game’s meetings are really………………. long. I doubt anyone could sit through them.

3. The protagonist has zero presence

Outside of his self-introduction at the start, the protagonist does basically nothing the entire game. He’s set up as a “rich, handsome guy who studied abroad,” and apparently he even got locked up overseas at some point? Very hip-hop. But beyond that he never does anything, not even a little.

Every day it’s meetings, with Chair Minami monologuing while the people around her chime in and the protagonist narrates. Rinse and repeat, day after day. His little sister, on the other hand, is extremely assertive — she tells everyone to “Fuck” off — but as the most interesting speaker in the game, she spends all her time telling other people to fuck off while never getting fucked herself. Very realistic, honestly.

The protagonist isn’t completely invisible — he does pipe up in some scenes. But honestly he’d be better off not talking. The moment he opens his mouth he comes off as a spineless idiot. The Japanese already roasted him for that, so I can’t be bothered.

All in all, this game has no real hook in the story, an excruciatingly boring common route, and some quality flaws on top of that. Even with a whole roster of artists brought in and rows of side characters added, most of them you can’t even remember the names of — completely pointless. The title itself is dead serious, no landmines, no shit sandwich. But somehow playing it just feels like “swallowing shit.” At least when you step on a landmine you can come out and curse up a storm and feel better. With this game I can’t even work up a curse. It’s like a slow-acting poison that gradually starves my heart until I die, and I don’t even get any last words.

The only route that feels halfway normal is the bonus “female teacher route.” I’m not really into female teachers, but the Splatoon-loving teacher voiced by Mai Ishihara this time around is basically the game’s safety net. Without her, the game would have literally zero highlights.

I have to hand it to Pulltop. Their parent company Willplus isn’t small, and they churn out plenty of games every year like an assembly line, yet somehow they can’t produce a few normal ones. I saw that Pulltop’s lead writer jumped ship to Frontwing, so I suspect the future of Pulltop games is pretty dire.

Oh, one more thing to complain about: this game’s title should be changed. Forget the clichéd Sakurairo, Mau Koro ni — just call it The Chair’s Whim (委員長の一存) and ride the coattails of a certain popular series; it’d probably sell more. Oh, right — I remember 委員長 in Japanese means class rep, which isn’t quite right, but whatever, don’t sweat the details. Nobody Japanese reads my blog anyway. Complaining comes first.