Azasumi -Azatokute Sumi ni Okenai Kanojo- (あざスミ -あざとくてスミに置けない彼女-) Review

A female teacher I know once said something:

“In a romance it looks like the man is chasing the woman, but the initiative is always on the woman’s side. All she has to do is pick from a menu of things the man does.”

I think her version is incomplete, though. There’s a precondition: the woman has to be good-looking. If you look like Shonan’s walking dick, no man is coming over to hand you a menu.

You can also read that line the other way. In a normal man-chases-woman romance, it looks like the guy grinds it out with persistence and wins his goddess, but really the woman was just giving him chances, one after another.

Think about it. If she genuinely has zero interest in you, she won’t give you a single chance to make contact, and she won’t listen to a word you say. You think you’re conquering her. Really you’re just being allowed to conquer her.

I played a game recently that drove this home. A 海豹社 and SMEE collaboration called あざスミ -あざとくてスミに置けない彼女-.

First thing’s clear: the title is basically slapped together. It’s a 海豹社 and SMEE joint, so they just jammed both company names in there. Azara-whatever, Sumi-whatever. Just assume it’s a plain old “win over a soft girl” game and move on.

I saw the Japanese reception was shockingly good, and even though it’s only 450 MB I figured the story must be an absolute riot. So I downloaded it and played. Then it booted, and none of that was true.

What actually happens is weirdly flat. The guy meets the girl at school, the two keep running into each other by total coincidence, she chats with him all easygoing, and they drift closer for no clear reason. Then the obligatory date, at the end of which he confesses, and after the confession one thing leads to another and they bang. And after the banging…

The game is over.

Over!

That’s it. That’s the story. Looks formulaic as hell and boring on top. So why the praise?

Then I noticed the “heroine’s perspective” option on the title screen. Clicked it, and the game cracked wide open.

Now the POV flips from the guy to the girl, and you find out that all those “chance encounters” on his side were her lying in wait. Every incidental brush of bodies and every tiny wardrobe slip he thought she didn’t notice was inside her calculations.

And those “accidental moments alone together in the classroom”? Yeah, she paid off the third wheel sitting next to him to clear out.

The date happened because she steered it there. The confession caught her a little off guard, but things had gone that far, so it was the natural move.

He thinks he invited her home and they banged. She had prepared for that shit in advance!

Once you see it, she hooked him completely.

Bigger highlight: the heroine-side writing is wall-to-wall snark and a total blast to read. Never boring for a second.

That’s when I got why it’s a 海豹社 and SMEE collab. My guess: 海豹社 wrote the guy’s side, SMEE wrote the girl’s side.

Looking at the same romance from another angle really does change everything. Or, as noted Twitter poet Ms. Wang put it:

“From the side, a ridge; from the peak, a summit. Near or far, high or low, never the same view. I can’t see the girl’s true face because I’m inside this mountain.”