Setsuna ni Kakeru Koi wa Hanabi (刹那にかける恋はなび) Review

Today I’m going to talk about a game…

First, the story takes place in Japan proper…

Then, the protagonist is a black guy…

Next, he’s also a samurai…

And he’s an orphan, taken in by a leader and serving that leader…

Yes, the game I’m talking about is…

CRYSTALiA’s new cash-grab: Setsuna ni Kakeru Koi wa Hanabi!

After getting burned by the vampire-themed RE:D Cherish!, CRYSTALiA has come crawling back to rehash old material. Just like the title suggests, this game inherits the worldview of Kizuna Kirameku Koi Iroha, which they’ve used God knows how many times. In this worldview, the game has already introduced pretty much every named “white-haired heroine” in the Suzakuin family, and this time we get the second sister: Suzakuin Nadeshiko.

Actually, anyone with eyes can see the purpose of this project: RE:D Cherish! probably didn’t make enough money exploring a new genre, so they had no choice but to go back to milking the old cow. The male protagonist this time is a dark-skinned guy. I don’t know why he’s dark-skinned, but dark he is. Man! What can I say? The protagonist comes from a martial arts family, but after his father fought a private duel and did something against martial ethics, the family was expelled from the industry, and his father went missing. The protagonist has mad skills but no outlet, and he too gets kicked out of the martial arts world.

Later, the protagonist is taken in by a female boss who offers him a place to stay and work, but the catch is he has to throw fights in an underground arena to manipulate the betting odds. With nowhere else to turn, he agrees.

So while the protagonist spends his days acting in matches under the director’s thumb, his performance catches the eye of Suzakuin Nadeshiko, who’s in the audience. She immediately sees he’s got real skill and even challenges him to a spar. Turns out they’re evenly matched. The protagonist may keep losing in matches, but that’s all an act—his true strength is formidable. It’s this spar with Nadeshiko that ignites the fire inside him. In one underground match, he gets carried away and forgets he’s supposed to lose, wins instead, and completely screws over the director’s betting book.

The boss is furious at him for disobeying orders and gives him a series of mental and physical beatings. The protagonist can’t take it anymore, quits on the spot, and runs away from the boss with his sister, seeking refuge with Suzakuin Nadeshiko.

As expected of a big family, Nadeshiko single-handedly arranges housing for the protagonist and his sister, gets them enrolled in school, and lets them continue life as students. But her main goal is to harness the protagonist’s powerful fighting ability, hoping to team up with him and do well in the international invitational tournament “Daihouen.”

So pretty quickly, the protagonist gathers his thoughts, pulls Nadeshiko into forming a team, and since they’re short on people, they grab some random person named Ei Parfait. Team assembled, they set off for the qualifiers.

Because the protagonist is OP, he naturally mows down the competition in the qualifiers. But his background gets questioned—after all, his family has a stain. Fortunately, the Suzakuin family isn’t one to mess with, and they shut people up with sheer strength. Meanwhile, his former boss sends a team to snipe him, even coming out personally, but he beats them all back one by one, not only defeating his enemies but spamming question marks while doing it. His teammate Ei Parfait also enters the tournament and defeats her older sister, Ei Ibuki. The sisters used to be on good terms, but due to changes in their family circumstances, they ended up on different paths.

After the protagonist takes down his enemies one by one, he finally meets Suzakuin Nadeshiko in the finals, and the two naturally engage in a best-of-five showdown. It’s a back-and-forth battle, even sparking the “supreme instant,” a phenomenon said to occur only when two warriors are truly evenly matched.

Of course, according to the rules, Nadeshiko wins, but in reality it’s a draw—one gets hit, the other’s weapon breaks. The story ends with the protagonist gaining freedom and clearing his family’s shame, while the heroine gets a younger boyfriend.

The plot of Setsuna ni Kakeru Koi wa Hanabi is extremely simple: the protagonist is expelled from the martial arts world due to his family, forced to fight in underground matches, living in the Underground, and later, with Suzakuin Nadeshiko’s help, regains respect in competition.

But think about it—the character “Suzakuin Nadeshiko” doesn’t necessarily have to be from the “Suzakuin” family. Any “young lady” would work without affecting the story. In other words, you could say this story has nothing to do with the Kizuna Kirameku Koi Iroha series, and even Nadeshiko’s personality clashes somewhat with the Suzakuin family…

Can I interpret this as the story being written just to piggyback on the Suzakuin white hair?

Then there’s the bigger problem: the “battles” and “direction.” The game has tons of scenes involving duels, but the fights are mind-numbingly boring—just the hero and heroine shouting skill names at each other. You don’t see any strategic back-and-forth; maybe the writer couldn’t be bothered, or just couldn’t write it. The whole thing looks like a tedious turn-based RPG: you hit me, I hit you, you cheat, I cheat, and whoever’s cheat is bigger and thicker wins. It’s just too dull. And the setting where the protagonist is max level from birth makes it worse—you don’t see him grow; he’s already insanely strong, never truly struggles in battle, and even when he loses, it’s on purpose. And even with such an overpowered hero, the game barely shows him flexing… Cheats pop up one after another, but they’re just names—no explanation of what this “awesome cheat” actually is. Playing it feels flavorless.

Anyway, for a story themed around martial artists dueling, there’s almost no joy in reading the combat. The framework is simple, but it doesn’t deliver simple, direct satisfaction, making the game more and more of a slog. It’s not that the writer can’t write—after all, the previous Suzakuin Momiji route was pretty cool, with that super cheat “predicting X steps into the future” showing real imagination. As for why this one is so half-assed, I can only guess it’s a budget issue.

All in all, Setsuna ni Kakeru Koi wa Hanabi is a simple yet awkward game. Its framework is that of a power fantasy, but it fails to deliver the power fantasy feeling. It looks like a series entry, but aside from the forced Suzakuin family characters and a certain iai girl Kuki Asahi from before, its setting has little to do with Kizuna Kirameku Koi Iroha. Or rather, the protagonist’s inexplicably dark-skinned design has more in common with the new Assassin’s Creed game.