Einstein yori Ai o Komete APOLLOCRISIS (アインシュタインより愛を込めて APOLLOCRISIS) Review

I still have a lot of affection for Niijima Yuu, because the game he wrote, Hatsuyuki Sakura, was the first one that made me go “whoa, a galgame can actually do this?” Up until then, every Gal I’d played was the same old clichéd school romance: talk to a girl every day, confess when the time comes, then fuck and roll credits. The fact that Niijima Yuu went and pulled off something genuinely unusual left me with a really good impression of him.

After that, Niijima Yuu put out a whole string of new works — Majo Renai Nikki (魔女恋爱日记) and whatever that Shinai Kanojo thing was. A lot of the reception has been pretty hostile toward him, but I still think the guy’s got real talent; the galgame audience just doesn’t get him. Sometimes I think he should be writing novels instead of stooping to make galgame.

Then I heard Niijima Yuu went off to hang out with that hack Maeda Jun, and the two of them started jerking each other off in public, which somehow spat out Summer Pockets. After that, Niijima Yuu got tangled up with the Makura guys again, heading off to work on Sakura no Koro…

Right when I was about to forget all about Niijima Yuu, I noticed this month’s releases include something called アインシュタインより愛を込めて APOLLOCRISIS…

That was when I remembered — oh right, that absolutely dogshit “Einstein” had a DLC sequel. I vaguely recall it was billed as free but was actually paid, the kind of thing where you buy merch and the game comes with it.

Because that Einstein was so goddamn stupid that I’d basically erased every trace of it from my brain, not wanting it to ruin my good impression of Niijima Yuu — but the release of this DLC dragged me right back to reality. Judging by what Majo Renai Nikki pulled before, Niijima Yuu should use this DLC to fill in the gaps of the original, and maybe even rescue that absolutely braindead plot development.

So with that expectation in mind, I went ahead and played this DLC they call Appen disk anyway. And honestly? I came away satisfied. Though admittedly, the satisfying part wasn’t the story itself.

Let me start with the story structure of this so-called “Appen Disk”…

First off, I’d forgotten how the original game ended — I just remember it feeling like a botched ending, cutting off out of nowhere. But surprisingly, this new entry picks up right after the original: the protagonist turns down the alien’s demand to remake Earth, beats the Last Boss (who is another version of himself), and goes back to where he came from to keep living his life — while his maybe-girlfriend Arimura Romi vanishes.

The game lays it out right at the start: the leader of that so-called “Comet Organization,” Miko (巫女), decides to head out and find the protagonist, claiming she’s got some mission and plan for him.

So our protagonist returns to his everyday life, and two girls show up in front of him: Romi and Miko. They even look a lot alike… except Romi seems a bit more normal, while Miko comes off as haughty and deeply calculating. Right then the game officially lays it out: Romi and the protagonist are lovers. A hard slap in the face to my earlier plot analysis.

And then the game hits its best part: the “Science Special Investigation Club” and their banter.

I don’t really know why either—apparently it was Romi’s idea. To deal with the problem of Miko suddenly showing up, the “Science Special Investigation Club” had to get active again, so everyone got rounded up once more and the daily routine resumed, like a sitcom playing out every single day.

Also, a “special agent” from a comet organization that looks a hell of a lot like the “MC stone” shows up, and during the daily downtime between activities she answers a few of the player’s burning questions. Once those questions are done at their once-a-day pace, the game gets to the point…

So what’s this “main story” actually about? The protagonist gets dragged into a war for no reason. The alien lifeform Σ from outer space, after the protagonist refused to terraform Earth, sets its sights on the protagonist’s uncle (I think it was his uncle? I honestly forgot the original too). The uncle then declares, in the most badass way possible, that he’s going to become the god of the new world. After that, Miko starts leading the agents of Comet Organization to fight this new-world god and the space forces backing Σ. Romi also shows up to join the fight, and the protagonist joins in too. After a whole bunch of chaotic fighting, Σ gets driven back, and Romi, having cheated too much during the battle, takes severe damage to herself and vanishes.

Oh right, the game actually fleshes out Romi and Miko’s backstory: both of them are robots, and they gained self-awareness through a Telepathy-like esper power. Romi and Miko are actually two personalities of “Himura Akane” — and “Himura Akane” is the daughter of that “uncle” who wants to become the god of the new world…

Anyway, the back half of this story is packed with monologues and exposition, and the relationships in the middle are a total mess. All you really need to grasp is that there was never any Romi or Miko — both of them are just personality projections of the comatose “Himura Akane.” And whether it’s Romi or Miko, once the machinery breaks down, or even from overloading their powers, they’ll vanish. They were never human to begin with, just hollow souls.

The game’s ending, naturally, is that Himura Akane wakes up again, and the protagonist meets her too, and tries dating her—only to find that Himura Akane isn’t the Arimura Romi he liked. Arimura Romi was just one of Himura Akane’s personalities, not Akane herself. To wait for Arimura Romi, the protagonist throws himself into research, and eventually pulls off some kind of high-tech breakthrough (he claims to have seen the truth of the universe), bringing Arimura Romi back to life, giving her a physical body, making her a real person—and the lovers are finally united.

In the end, the game sums up this theme like this:

“This is a story about a mechanical girl and a boy who thinks he’s a genius.”

But I can only say that the second half of this game is at best a band-aid slapped on a wound. Niijima Yuu busted his ass just to barely paper over the原作 that was already full of holes and call it self-consistent. And the back half is packed with battle scenes, except the game has no budget — it’s as shabby as it gets. The battle CGs are all recycled from the previous game; most of the time it’s just one sprite swaying back and forth while two people supposedly start fighting. Some battles don’t even happen — it’s just endless jawing at each other. For the final Last Boss fight, no less, I literally fell asleep watching it.

Maybe because the earlier story was so dumb, Niijima Yuu spent the finale frantically dumping lore on us — piles of inner monologue, flashback sequences, and brand-new characters who pop up just to take the fall. But as I said before, the game does at least straighten out the big-picture plot: why the uncle killed the protagonist’s father, why that “shrine maiden” is so smart, why the heroine the protagonist met as a kid was named “Himura Akane” but the one he meets later is “Arimura Romi” — it basically explains all of it. Of course, the deliberate shit-eating twists from the original are still unforgivable. I mean, nobody told you at the start that this would turn into an alien war, right? Everyone thought it was gonna be a literary drama.

本作虽然弄了很多选项，但其实还是一本道，没有任何意义。中途的角色选项只是让你早一天和晚一天看剧情的区别而已，早晚你都是要点完的，游戏让你感觉有参与度，其实你什么都没有。

That said, this game still has plenty of good points, and Niijima Yuu is getting smoother and smoother at writing “romance gags.” This ties into what I said earlier about the essence of the game being the “Science Special Investigation Club” sections — Niijima Yuu now seems especially good at writing stories between a pushy, aggressive “natural airhead” male lead and a meek, soft-spoken heroine on the receiving end. The guy is always so socially clueless, the girl is always snarking at him, and that contrast reliably produces a lot of humor.

How do I put this… it’s like watching Wang Baoqiang and Xu Zheng pair up in “Lost in Thailand” — that contrast moe thing, plenty of laughs.

If you don’t get the comparison, just read a bunch of BL novels — lots of those airheaded top characters have the bottom completely wrapped around their finger. That’s roughly the idea.

All I can say is that the slice-of-life parts with the “Science Special Investigation Unit” are probably the real heart of this game. As for all that messy “save the Earth” and “god of the new world” crap later on — to hell with it. It’s a total mess, and honestly I’d rather go watch the Raiden Shogun storyline.

Sure, since this is the main story of the game, I do want to say a few things about the “fight against alien forces” premise that Niijima Yuu wrote. I can only say this story really doesn’t feel like “Niijima Yuu” at all — it feels especially like “Maeda Jun.” From what I remember, most of the stories Niijima Yuu writes don’t have particularly grand worldviews; they tend to focus on romance between a man and a woman and on “one person saving another.” All that stuff about “opening the door to a new world,” “the truth of the world,” “becoming the god of the universe” — that’s exactly the kind of bullshit Maeda Jun pulls every day. I don’t know if Niijima Yuu got stupid after collaborating with Maeda Jun on Summer Pockets or what, but how did a romance gag writer and a romantic scenario writer focused on relationship topics turn into such a brain-dead idiot who gets all self-moved and pretends to be sad all the time?

Hopefully in Sakura no Koku (サクラの刻), Niijima Yuu will take a few pointers from futa-jigaku. Sure, he’s pretty unhinged too, but I can stomach him way more than Niijima Yuu.

Keep at it, Niijima-kun. Stay the hell away from that dumbass Maeda Jun — quit the whole self-pitying, weepy-angsty shtick every damn day.