Hoshi no Otome to Rikka no Shimai (星の乙女と六華の姉妹) Review

Alright, so it’s been at least ten years since I last played a game with a “crossdressing infiltration” premise.

What? You mean that “Monkeys?” thing? No, that one doesn’t count. That game is unhinged.

The company that’s been cranking out “crossdressing infiltration” titles year after year is probably ensemble, the one everyone knows. Their games give me a feeling I can’t quite put into words. The company keeps putting out visual novels at Intel-like tick-tock cadence, churning out titles that mix the “crossdressing infiltration” and “rich young lady” elements, but after all these years, they’ve left barely any impression. A lot of the time people just skip right over the brand.

The reason is simple: it’s way too samey.

The so-called “young lady” games are gorgeous art paired with a plot straight out of a gender-swapped Tiny Times—players drop their pants, fap to the story, and move on.

The “crossdressing infiltration” ones are also gorgeous art paired with a yuri Tiny Times plot—players drop their pants, fap to the story, and move on.

Over time, people just assume this brand’s games have no story. The main draw is the beautiful girls, some scenes are fappable, and you grab it for the eye candy as material. OP and ED are always Duca, the titles always have “otome” or “hanasaku” in them. And that’s how ensemble keeps surviving—lukewarm, neither dead nor alive.

But lately, they seem to have decided to change something. They’ve started improving the story and narrative, and their last release was a ninja-themed game. This time, with their “crossdressing infiltration” title, they’ve gone full transformation—and it hit me weirdly… hard.

Hoshi no Otome to Rikka no Shimai (星の乙女と六華の姉妹)

The title is cliché, the setup is cliché, but anyone who’s been following ensemble will spot the difference immediately.

“The art quality in this game has visibly dropped.”

That drop in visual quality brought about a change in the whole game. After playing it out of curiosity, I have to say this is genuinely ensemble’s most daring “crossdressing infiltration”… no, actually their boldest and strangest work in the entire lineup.

The plot is simple to describe, but not that simple.

The protagonist and his little sister are both Vtubers. Then the sister gets selected to attend some prestigious arts school for girls, and the mother orders the protagonist to go with her. Since it’s a girls’ school, he crossdresses and sneaks in under the name “Tomi.”

The sister gets in through connections, but the protagonist has to go through rounds of auditions. He makes it in the end, thankfully.

Once inside, even though he’s crossdressing, he somehow draws a ton of fangirls. And this “girls’ school” has all sorts of weird rules:

• Girls can form “sister” bonds with each other… which is really just “lovers”
• The school’s goal is to produce all kinds of idols—basically a talent school
• There are two groups in the school, something like veterans vs. newcomers, challengers vs. champions, though I never figured out why they split them
• There’s also a “council”-like organization, and a lot of its members seem to have superpowers, though I still don’t get what those powers actually do
• One of the council members is named Yaegami… no wait, “Kokonoe Sumire”—she seems to know the protagonist

Anyway, the main plot is just the protagonist crossdressing into the school, teaming up with the heroine of whichever route, giving a perfect performance on stage, and debuting as an idol. That’s it.

But here’s the wild part: each character route throws in a bunch of random elements. In the sister Arisu’s route, for example, the protagonist falls into a trap set by a snarky Kyoto-accented girl called “Ayame” during an event. She uses VR-like tricks and surveillance to manipulate the participants from behind the scenes, making them turn on each other for her amusement—it plays more like a mystery story, with some information exchanges straight out of a spy meetup. Really odd.

And the other heroines’ routes aren’t much saner. Take the game’s number-one hornball, Karen—she’s smitten from the moment she first sees the protagonist, desperate to form a “sister” bond and get close. When she later finds out he’s actually a guy, she barely hesitates before accepting it, quickly pulls down his pants, enjoys the dick, and gets hooked…

The final route, locked behind the others, belongs to Kokonoe Sumire of the council. After clearing all the other heroines, her route unlocks, and the story is pretty straightforward. Sumire knew the protagonist when they were kids. She had idol talent even then but hit a wall, and his encouragement back then kept her going and got her where she is today. Naturally, she’s full of gratitude. The even more ridiculous part is that as a kid, Sumire thought the protagonist was a girl—because he’d been crossdressing since childhood…

The ending, of course, is the two of them putting on a successful show and debuting as idols. The protagonist never takes off the women’s clothes again. And Sumire seems quite a bit older than him, which makes him basically her child bride…

Honestly, ensemble’s Hoshi no Otome to Rikka no Shimai is a total mess plot-wise, an absolute disaster. But that doesn’t stop me from finding it interesting. Maybe ensemble wanted change so badly that they crammed too many “edgy” elements into this new title, including:

• Vtubers
• Virtual reality
• Magic
• Secret organizations
• Child bride
• Blood-related little sister
• Idols
• Mystery
• Artificial intelligence
• An inhuman mastermind
• And, of course… crossdressing

But none of these elements really amount to anything. At its core, it’s still just a story about a guy getting into a school, picking up girls, and graduating. And the biggest question is whether there’s even any point in stressing that the “protagonist” is “male”—aside from the one extra appendage, he’s more feminine than anyone else (including the voice actress). Even in most characters’ after-stories, he never gives up crossdressing. We often say “if a fubuki looks like a girl, talks like a girl, walks like a girl, then she can be considered a girl.” So I think they could’ve just made the “protagonist” a “heroine” and gone full yuri. Why hang onto the “crossdressing” label?

I can feel ensemble’s determination to change—the game’s structure unfolds completely differently from their past work—but overall it still kind of fails. I played this a month ago, and thinking back now, I honestly can’t remember what the details were. All I remember is that the protagonist is his childhood friend’s “child bride.” The whole experience gave me the feeling that many setups were “cool” but meaningless, with a weird, inexplicable “trendy” vibe.

Like, when you think the slice-of-life is getting boring, it’ll suddenly throw in something completely out of left field. Whereas other crossdressing infiltration games maintain a Peace And Love tone, this one sets up a “thrill-seeker” villain. And just when you think the protagonist hates this villain’s guts, the two of them start flirting…

There are so many of these “what the hell is going on but it’s kinda cool” developments that the game ends up with a strange fantastical feel. Like watching one of those Japanese stream-of-consciousness anime—I don’t get it, but I’m deeply shaken.

Even weirder is that when you look back, almost none of those “trendy elements” are strongly tied to the plot. The story would work with or without them… and a lot of them are never explained. Like, what does that “Étoile” organization at the school even do all day? What’s the point of that little garden? Is it some otherworldly space? Some people are hoping for a fandisc to explain it… I hope so too.

In a way, being able to make a game this “Schrödinger’s cat”-level is a talent in itself.

The thing that left the deepest impression on me is that “Étoile.” I hear the word a lot when listening to music. At first I thought it was Edward, but then I realized it’s French étoile—a star shaped like a flower.

The protagonist often says he wants to become someone’s “only étoile” when confessing, and looking at the title, it somehow ties in perfectly.