Kujirakami no TearStilla (鯨神のティアスティラ) Review

At first I had zero intention of playing Kujira-gami no TearStilla (鯨神のティアスティラ), because the premise sounded dull. Even using my shoulder blades to think, I could tell it was just a heroine with a whale skin slapped on. But then one day, while my nuts were aching (idle), I listened to the game’s OST, and both EDs—Kamisama Itsuka Kono Omoi and Ruriiro—were absurdly good.

Then at some other moment of aching boredom at night, a time when I Can’t help myself touching my body, I dragged the game down and started playing.

Conclusion first: this game is pretty good on every front except the story…

As the title Kujira-gami no TearStilla (Whale God’s TearStilla) says, this is a story about fucking a whale god… ah, no, about a whale god. The story is even simpler than I imagined: the protagonist and his little sister somehow end up on a small island, meet a whale god there. The whale god was originally the island’s guardian deity, but has lost her power and can only wander around the island. Eventually the protagonist and a bunch of friends help the whale god regain her power.

Routeable characters: the protagonist’s new classmate, his stepsister, his step-sister (older), and a whale loli named Riru. The branching is also absurdly simple: stepsister and step-sister are bundled together, classmate and whale are bundled together, and after clearing all the characters you can enter the final True End.

The True End is a continuation of the protagonist’s whale route. In the whale route, when the protagonist first meets the whale god, she casually appoints him as her divine messenger and asks him to help her regain her power. The reason the whale god lost her power is that the islanders worshipped and flattered her too much, drawing a line between human and god, creating a class divide between god and people, gradually growing distant—so the power was lost. During the search for power, the protagonist ends up paired with the whale. After a human and a god copulate, the god’s power shrinks even more, and in the end the whale god loses her power and separates from the protagonist. The True End begins with a brief time rewind, back to just before the protagonist and the whale god fully part. Then it merges the main plots from the other heroines’ routes—like the sister discovering a new water development resource, the step-sister discovering a cave next to the whale god’s shrine, the classmate agreeing to become the shrine maiden for the whale god, and so on. Finally, the sister uses the new water resource to discover there’s more to the cave below, finds the whale god’s true shrine god-stone at the very bottom of the cave, and the classmate acts as shrine maiden to help the whale god regain her power.

Okay, I tried really hard to stretch out this game’s main plot, but unfortunately it’s just that short and boring. What’s a shame is that aside from the boring story, the game does everything else quite well. The visuals are fairly gorgeous—you get face-acting, you get SD CGs, the female characters’ voice acting is excellent. Worth noting is Riru the whale’s VA, who completely captures a little girl’s milky, spoiled manner. The music: not many BGM tracks leave an impression, but the EDs and OP are great.

Everything’s fine, the damn problem is the scenario. The daily-life descriptions are just too boring, and the romance development feels completely slapdash—no foreshadowing, no twists, just suddenly the two are kissing. In the step-sister route, she rejects the protagonist one day, he’s not even miserable for half an hour, and the next day it’s daisuki. I don’t even want to talk about Riru’s route. The early development is almost exactly the same as Shiiba’s route in Sanoba Witch; I checked and the scenario writer is the same person, so I guess it was a recycled draft. The later direction goes completely off the rails—suddenly Riru is walled off, suddenly she loses her power. In the classmate’s big-tits route, Riru clearly regains her power through the ritual, but here it doesn’t work. Totally contradictory, clearly forced just so that True End could have something to happen.

Even so, I don’t think there’s much to bash or criticize about this game’s story. It feels like grading an elementary schooler’s essay—a sense of “he tried really hard to write it, but his level is just this.” After all, in the setting and story development I never felt that element I hate most, “trying to be clever.” It’s just plain water and messy pacing. If they’d hired a more mature scenario writer as the main force, this game obviously shouldn’t have turned out this bad.

That said, even setting the story aside, this game has a highlight: Riru the whale. Although her setting is a whale god guarding the island, the developers were so afraid of making you feel like you’re fucking a fish that they repeatedly emphasize in-game that Riru is the Nth generation whale god, already a being completely close to human. So in Riru I can’t see any trace of a whale except her hair color—maybe the tail on her head looks a bit whale-like, but there’s only one CG where you can see it.

What does that mean? It means on the surface you’re pushing a whale, but what actually gets you excited is just a loli named Riru who’s called a whale god.

Loli! Loli, I say, a little girl! Combined with Riru’s milky voice and slightly tsundere behavior, it’s just fantastic! In that instant I felt possessed by a lolicon. I don’t know whether I got feelings for the whale or developed an interest in little girls, but it changed my plan to quickly clear the step-sister route and delete the game—I stuck it out and cleared every route.

I did reflect on whether I’m a lolicon, and the answer is no. Nor do I have any moe points for non-human species. As for why I got excited over Riru, sore wa nazo desu.

Whatever. At least in this game, the whale loli is just fantastic.

“Whales Are Great”

Whoosh, the sea breeze blows, stirring the surging tide,
A little whale in a short skirt meets you by the shrine.
Stepsister, sister, and married women, I'm tired of fucking them all,
Next I want to fuck a whale～

I'm not a pervert, I skip the H in eroge,
Why do I want to fuck a whale? Because the whale is a loli.
Some people like to flex, acting tough on pure fantasy,
They'd even lick black tights wrapped in shit～heyha～

Stop flexing, stop flexing, stop flexing stop flexing, stop flexing～
Big-titted older women, flat-chested blood-related sisters, fucking only humans has worn out my soul, my companions are tired too～
No more wavering, no more wavering, whale or loli, whatever it is, bring it on～
Flat-chested black long straight, milky-voiced moe girl, whales are super great!