FLIP*FLOP ~INNOCENCE OVERCLOCK~ (FLIP＊FLOP 〜INNOCENCE OVERCLOCK〜) Review

Not gonna lie, my X account and 茉宮祈芹 mutually follow each other.

I think I followed her back when she wasn’t that well known, sent her a greeting message, and got a reply. Occasionally she’ll like some lewd art I retweet, and I’ve written a paid piece hyping her up too.

I used to think the stuff she draws was too explicit, but then I figured, as a freelance illustrator, drawing it a bit more H for sales is pretty understandable.

When I reviewed Ninja Girl and the Mysterious Army of Urban Legend Monsters! Hunt of the Headless Horseman, I said that 茉宮祈芹 is an illustrator who can raise the quality of an entire visual novel single-handedly. One reason is that her drawing and coloring style leans toward flat, digital-game visuals, which means the character art in any visual novel she works on stays consistent — no awkward art shift from a different colorist stepping in. No matter which other artists she’s paired with, her characters always stand out. And even when she isn’t drawing characters with heavy exposure, she still nails the heroine’s cuteness.

So here’s a new game: FLIP＊FLOP 〜INNOCENCE OVERCLOCK〜, put out by a DMM Game shadow brand, with 茉宮祈芹 on art, Houmori Kei on planning and scenario, and Kitakoji Yuki voicing the lead heroine. With a lineup like that, there’s no reason not to give it a shot.

The protagonist arrives in a future city steeped in “virtual reality,” where you have to summon a “VR assistant” to help you out. Everyone else summons little animals and stuff, but our protagonist summons a big-titted girl named Io, who calls herself a Queen.

So the protagonist starts living a shameless life with this virtual big-titted girl, and then they lose control and end up screwing. Sure, a real person banging a VR character is pretty weird, but it’s precisely because the protagonist had sex with his “virtual assistant” that Io’s status as Queen is jeopardized, and the city’s system falls into chaos.

In the end everyone naturally pulls together and saves the day. And Io, blessing in disguise, gets a real body and lives even more happily with the protagonist.

Honestly the story is meaningless. What I want to say is that this game’s usability is really high. It has no emotion, sure, but just Houmori Kei’s H-scene writing, paired with Kitakoji Yuki’s distinctive voice and 茉宮祈芹’s lethal CG work, is already enough to be worth the price.

Normally when I play games I skip the HCGs and just read the story, but with this one it was the opposite — I skipped all the normal dialogue and only looked at the HCGs, and even just that was enough for me to enjoy the game.

Obviously this game is being sold in volumes, and there are a few more characters waiting to be conquered later. But aside from the virgin Shark-Shark, I don’t think “Kohanamin” and “Ishihara Mai” will have the same lethal impact as Kitakoji Yuki.

Oh right, this game also supports Nvidia’s supersampling tech, which improves the visuals, and there are a ton of animation effects when the characters transform — so the production side clearly put in effort. The lack of Emotion is a shame, though.