Nekotsuku, Sakura. (ねこツク、さくら。) Review

I often regret some of my past articles.

The main reason isn’t anything else—it’s that when I was younger I went on huge rants, trashing a lot of games I thought were terrible at the time. First and foremost among them: Lump of Sugar.

I still remember that Unmei Senjou de Suika wo Kiru—I called its plot retarded. And Rensou Kankei—I said its system was dumb as shit.

And yet, faced with Lump of Sugar’s new game Nekotsuku, Sakura. (ねこツク、さくら。)…

I couldn’t help but shed tears. I deeply realized I was wrong.

I never thought I’d actually miss those “garbage games” Lump of Sugar used to make. They had flaws, sure, but compared to the current output they were way better. These days I feel a thick… blandness.

The premise of Nekotsuku, Sakura. is simple and baffling. In some Japanese city there’s a school with two ancient cat gods—Aki and Tsuki, one black cat, one white. They watch over the school’s peace, even the whole town’s safety. Thanks to them, a shopping district sprang up nearby and everyone lives happily.

Of course those two aren’t the focus. The game tells you right away that our heroine, Hodaka Fumino, gets possessed by one of the cat gods, Aki, on her first day of school. Her black hair turns white, and she sprouts cat ears and a tail. Fumino is distressed, but Aki is having a great time and refuses to leave. Then the other cat god, Tsuki, shows up, apologizes for her sister, and explains that cat gods have limited power and can only operate within the school. So… Fumino, now possessed by Aki, can’t leave campus for the time being.

To help Fumino—who is seriously sexy in those black tights—our protagonist goes to his childhood friend Kuji Renka. Her grandmother (or maybe great-grandmother?) is the school principal, so he asks her to pull some strings. They get Fumino a room inside the school so she can stay there while possessed by Aki. The other cat god, Tsuki, moves in too. And a junior student, Uwabu Yayoi, who’s obsessed with the supernatural, shows up wanting to study this “divine possession.” Thus a harem environment is built inside the school.

The common route begins, and then it ends just as inexplicably. The principal calls in the two cat gods and tells them: “Thanks to your protection, the school and townspeople are happy enough. They can take care of themselves now—we no longer need you to stay at school all the time.” So the cat gods try leaving the school, succeed, and are no longer bound to campus. Fumino is freed, the common route ends, and boom—straight into “pick your heroine” mode. They just list the characters and you click one.

There are four heroines, but the individual routes are extremely perfunctory and obviously formulaic. Basically: a special event sparks mutual affection, then a confession, then flirting, then a sudden forced “crisis event,” the crisis gets resolved, roll ED.

Uwabu Yayoi

A junior who loves the supernatural and can rattle off ghost stories. She invites the protagonist to her house to look at various shady websites, which creates some ambiguity between them. Then she says she wants spiritual power—to see the cat gods and ghosts like he can. By the way, everyone in the game except Yayoi has some spiritual power. The one person most interested in the occult has zero.

Yayoi proposes a hypothesis: she heard spiritual power can be transferred through sex. So she asks the protagonist to have sex with her.

The protagonist says you have to date first, be a couple… Even though that’s horseshit, Yayoi believes it and agrees to become his girlfriend. And so they get together.

Later, Yayoi invites him over again and drugs and rapes him. After that they bang more and more, but her spiritual power is still zero. Eventually she finds a mysterious “Pyramid Power” in her house and somehow gains spiritual power from it (so what was the point of sleeping with the protagonist? Superstition kills, man!). With the power she can see the cat gods, but her body is so frail that any random ghost can possess her—she becomes a ghost bus. The cat gods say her power must be removed to keep her safe, but Yayoi refuses. She finally got it—why give it up!

In the end, to protect his girlfriend, the protagonist gathers a bunch of exorcism items and decides that on the night of the full moon he’ll round up every ghost in town and wipe them out, so Yayoi won’t be possessed by wandering spirits anymore.

Of course Yayoi stops this stupid decision. She understands and gives up her power for her own safety. She chooses an ordinary life, builds a happy little family with the protagonist, and becomes a “professor” researching the occult—folklore or something, I guess.

Tsuki

Tsuki is one of the cat gods, but unlike her sister she has a physical body and can be seen by normal people. The protagonist’s route to her is incredibly dumb—you just force a few flags and she’s conquered. Then endless sex, then the very clichéd plot where a god and a mortal doing it too much causes problems, including instability of the god’s existence. Naturally the power of love overcomes everything, Tsuki survives the ordeal, and they start a happy life. As for what actually happened, honestly I forgot. I racked my brain and couldn’t remember what this route was about… Maybe I fell asleep too many times in the middle.

Kuji Renka

Renka is a horny girl who likes the protagonist from the start and is basically his simp. One day the protagonist fractures his right hand helping an old lady up the stairs. Renka sees her chance and shouts:

“Onii-san, I forbid you from using your right hand!”

She takes him to her house, and even though it’s just a fracture she treats it like terminal cancer. During their cohabitation they fall in love. What really amazed me is that after sleeping in the same bed for so long, they do nothing! Makes me wonder if more than his right hand was fractured.

Fortunately, in the end the protagonist confesses successfully. He even does a kabedon—though I wonder if wall-slamming a paper sliding door would knock the house down.

After they become a couple, Renka faces her own issues. Her grandmother (or great-grandmother?) the principal falls ill and leaves for a while, so she takes over managing the school—and finds it a total mess. She can’t even face the ghosts in the school…

(Holy shit, now being a principal means you have to moonlight as a ghostbuster?!)

Of course, with the help of the two cat gods, Renka eventually learns to handle it and takes over the school. Congrats, congrats. I have to believe a rumor is true: most schools are built on mass graves.

Hodaka Fumino

The romance with Fumino is probably the most orthodox. In this route our protagonist becomes a “pickup artist master,” smooth-talking better than the protagonist in SMEE games, and wins her heart.

But when Fumino tries to fall for him, she notices a problem: she’s possessed by Aki, and Aki absolutely adores the protagonist.

So Fumino falls silent: “Is it me who likes him, or is it because Aki is possessing me—she likes him, so I like him?”

Eventually, after Aki’s bullshit melodrama, Fumino confesses to the protagonist. And to prove she’s an “objective independent third party,” Aki can leave her body during the confession so Fumino can express her own feelings.

In the end the protagonist scores double—one dick gets him a girl and a female cat god.

Not long after, Aki finds her possession ability weakening, maybe due to sex and love stuff. She can’t stay in Fumino as much and frequently separates.

Think about it—what started the story? Fumino being forcibly possessed by Aki, right? Now she can separate—isn’t that a huge blessing? A parasite can finally fuck off! Should be celebrated!

But our Fumino is a total masochist and late-stage Stockholm syndrome patient. She says she’s used to being possessed, that she can’t get used to life without Aki, that she can’t leave her.

Finally, in a melodramatic “love is great” stage play, Aki stays forever. Fumino keeps her white hair and has the protagonist’s child—also white-haired. I wonder if that counts as being cuckolded.

And the story ends.

Evaluation and Impressions

How do I summarize this game’s main plot?

Roughly: a girl gets forcibly possessed by a cat god at school, can’t escape, eventually has no choice, and because of long-term possession actually starts to enjoy it and becomes dependent. They develop feelings. It’s a lot like those “locked-room breeding” works that were a fad in Japan—exactly what Stockholm syndrome looks like.

But setting aside this supposedly unimportant main plot, I don’t even know what the game wants to say.

It’s basically four love stories, and not very good ones. Except for the slightly interesting occult route with Yayoi, the rest is plain boiled water. I kept nodding off while reading, nodding off, so much that I have no impression of the plot left.

I don’t know what Lump of Sugar has been through these years. Seems like since Tayutama 2 the company found a new direction. Key producer “Mizutsuki Saotori” rising in power made their games full of formulas and templates. Maybe artist Moekibara Fumitake is good at drawing kemonomimi, so every time they just bullshit a reason for the heroines to grow animal ears and outsource the rest of the script. The whole game reeks of assembly line—they didn’t even bother animating the ED, just used the game engine. I think the biggest costs were the artist and voice acting; the script was definitely where they saved.

I’ve always said assembly-line products are what I hate most, just like I hate this game. Even as an assembly line, it’s not as good as the master of assembly lines: Yuzusoft.

I can even guess Lump of Sugar’s next game: bullshit another setting, give the heroine animal ears, and wing the rest. I really miss the old Lump of Sugar—at least they weren’t trapped in “kemonomimi,” and many of their system designs had originality. Now all that’s left is a formulaic template.

Nekotsuku, Sakura. is a beautiful name. First part: cat possession. Second part: cherry blossoms blooming.

I saw the cat possession. What about the cherry blossoms? The game barely mentions them. Even if it’s in the title and on the CG, why not say one more line about it? Maybe one more line would require extra plot writing and higher script costs—save where you can, forget it.