Oshi no Love yori Koi no Love (推しのラブより恋のラブ) Review

A week ago, that well-known Linux kernel developer Mawei-kun gifted me this game.

Oshi no Love yori Koi no Love (推しのラブより恋のラブ).

Honestly I wanted Tryment, that reheated cash-grab, but Mawei-kun sent me this instead and hoped I’d walk through the gates of yuri.

The game isn’t long, and after finishing it I fell into deep thought.

Because this game made me think back on a lot of things…

A lot of memories I’d almost forgotten…

I remember it was when I was in elementary school. I was surfing the web on a freshly registered Discord account, looking for GGMMs to chat with.

A guy called Cappuccino added me as a friend, and I found we really hit it off. We talked about everything — life, school, the future, hobbies, all sorts of stuff.

Then one day, Cappuccino told me he had something “nice” to show me.

He sent a picture. I opened it and was stunned.

Dear God! What kind of image was this? Two muscular men, connected end to end, each devouring the other’s sausage.

“Well? Wanna try it?”

Staring at that message on Discord, I panicked and didn’t know what to say.

“Yes or no! Hurry up!”

Cappuccino seemed a little impatient, and I still hadn’t recovered from the shock of the image. Bear in mind I was only in sixth grade. After five minutes of deep deliberation, I closed the picture with trembling hands and blocked Cappuccino.

That was probably the first porn I’d ever encountered in my life. I hadn’t even seen a woman’s body at that point.

Time passed. I went through middle school, high school, and eventually university. Naturally I went through what most people go through. I wouldn’t say I’ve seen countless videos, but at least I’m half a licensed driver by now. Back in college smartphones weren’t popular yet — we were all reading e-books on MP3/MP4 players or Pocket PC and Palm OS handhelds. I read a lot of web novels during that period.

One web novel left a deep impression on me: The Tragic College Life. It was actually pretty fun — two brothers sabotaging each other, one tsundere little brother and one handsome, slightly airheaded big brother. By today’s standards, at least on the level of a Galgame “tsukkomi baka-ge.”

But soon I noticed something was off. Why did the story always unfold between these two brothers? There were plenty of beautiful girls at school — why could none of them ever enter the world between these two brothers?

And why did the big brother start sleeping naked with the little brother?

Why did the big brother suddenly pull out lube?

Why didn’t the little brother resist?

Why… oh, why did it just go in like that?

Oh my God, why didn’t the little brother call the police the next day? Why did he keep acting prickly on the outside while staying with his brother?

By the end of the novel I still hadn’t figured out these brothers’ sexual orientation, because they never seemed to say whether they liked men or women. The two of them just inexplicably accepted each other, leaving me totally baffled.

Aside from that baffling relationship, the comedy parts of the novel were pretty good.

The next time I talked about this web novel, I’d already been working for two years. I’d fallen for a girl at the same company.

I’m a fat otaku, but that girl was actually willing to talk to me. I felt like I was in love.

The girl shared her secret with me. She said she was a fujoshi. At first I thought she was just an otaku girl who liked looking at the handsome guys in Hakuoki, but it turned out she was far from that simple — she liked BL.

I knew what BL was, so to make conversation with her I brought up The Tragic College Life.

The girl laughed:

“You read such tame, sweet stuff.”

Actually I didn’t think that novel was tame at all. Even if it was, it was tame water mixed with lube.

She told me that while she also read those “tame sweet” stories, she preferred the more “hardcore” ones — like using a handsome guy’s (beep————) to insert into another handsome guy’s (beep————), and then the two of them start (beep————), mutually (beep————), and even pull out (beep————) to (beep————) the other’s (beep————).

“Like… eating a sausage?”

Listening to her get more and more excited, I thought blankly of that Cappuccino from my childhood and blurted that out.

The girl gave me a naive smile:

“Didn’t expect you to be a closet case — you actually get it!”

I’m not! I’m really not! I swear I’m not! I can even admit that telling you all this is because I’m after your body!

I don’t know why, but after that the girl talked to me more and more. She started sending me all sorts of novels, and the stuff in them was truly very (beep————). I even went on a few dates with her, but I always felt something was weird between us. Weird like…

She didn’t see me as a man at all.

A year later, on the girl’s birthday, I worked up the courage to confess. She was surprised at first, then gave me a meaningful smile:

“Actually I’ve always thought you were a closet case. You should like boys, not girls. I think you might even be a bottom.”

My eyes went wide.

“So… I can’t accept your confession. I think you’re a really nice guy. Sorry.”

I’d heard of the “nice-guy card,” but mine was more exciting than that — call it the “gay nice-guy card.” And I’m a bottom? How do I look like a bottom?

In a fit of anger I deleted that girl’s WeChat, and we haven’t been in touch since.

Later when I told my bros about this, they consoled me:

“I know, I know — ’to get the girl, act gay first.’ You just acted too well and overdid it.”

“I’m not fucking gay!”

I howled at the sky and downed my cup of fat-otaku happy juice in one gulp.

After that I hung around a lot of SNS — Google+, Twitter, Weibo — and I noticed “being gay” had become a joke word. People would casually slap a “gay” hat on you, and the moment you didn’t want to take it off, real “gay” guys would show up asking if you wanted to (beep————) and (beep————).

I’m not gay. I’m straight. Straight like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

And so today, playing Oshi no Love yori Koi no Love — Chinese title 一生推不如一生恋 — I once again thought back on those past events: that girl, that Cappuccino, and The Tragic College Life.

Honestly, this game’s plot is highly similar to The Tragic College Life. Two heroines who by any measure aren’t lesbians — one tsundere-ish, playing hard to get, one airheaded but forceful top — end up together. The Steam version is very much a “tame sweet story,” but if you’re willing to spend an extra 500 yen on the patch, you can see all sorts of (beep————) (beep————) (beep————) scenes.

How is the game? I’d say pretty average. The story is light but not especially interesting — most of the daily-life content stays in the contrast between the “tsundere bottom” and the “natural top,” and it gets tiresome after a while. Fortunately the game isn’t long, so it’s fine to breeze through for some light fun.

The game doesn’t explore why the heroine, an otaku girl, gets inexplicably turned gay, nor does it explain why the other yuri girl chose the yuri path. It’s just Girl meets Girl from the start, and a Happy Ending at the end.

Personally I don’t think the yuri is the selling point here — the art style, the price, and the day-one Simplified Chinese support are. After all, people don’t have that many options, do they?

Still, I have to thank this game for reminding me of my past — those laughable, tearful days when people mistook me for a gay guy.

When we were young

You loved to chat and I loved to laugh

Wind in the woods, birds singing

Before we knew it, we’d turned gay

Originally from Steam https://steamcommunity.com/id/plumlis/recommended/1233270/