Hajilove -making*lovers- (ハジラブ -making*lovers-) Review

Last year SMEE put out a game with a seriously baffling title. I mean the title itself is baffling.

Hajilove -making*lovers-

See, the actual title is Hajilove—first love—while the subtitle is borrowed from another well-known SMEE work, Making Lovers. Making lovers… as in making girlfriends, I guess. Why call it baffling? Because at a glance it looks like a Making Lovers sequel when it isn’t one at all.

The reason for the naming is simple: riding the coattails. They want you to think this new title—which shares neither artist nor writer nor production team with Making Lovers—is the spiritual successor to the Making Lovers series. Buy it, and the sales go up.

So why not just make an actual Making Lovers sequel? Here’s the kicker: Hajilove -makinglovers-* is really SMEE’s first attempt at the nukige space. SMEE has always stuck to a vaguely societal “pure love” lane, mostly matchmaking games, and nobody ever expected to fap to a SMEE title. So their “practicality” push this time is shy and embarrassed—still insisting over and over that it’s “pure love,” even after hiring several nukige artists…

The reception to Hajilove turned out better than expected. A lot of old fans said they weren’t comfortable with the sudden nukige pivot, but the body doesn’t lie, and sales don’t either.

With SMEE’s successful borrowing, its sister brand HOOK naturally had to take the same step, and so we got Secret Love (Kari).

Let’s start with the name. The katakana up front is easy enough—Secret love. The (Kari) at the end usually means “tentative” or “provisional.” Per the game’s premise, it’s “Secret Love (Tentative).”

The setup: you’re an invisible nobody, and out of nowhere you receive a love letter at school. Before you can figure out who sent it, four gorgeous girls show up one after another, confessing their feelings and practically racing to get your pants off.

You can pursue any one of them, but after you do, a new choice appears—go public with the relationship or keep it secret—and the story branches accordingly.

Hook is hyping its “public or not” choice system to the heavens as usual, but anyone who’s played a visual novel knows it’s just two routes per heroine, two personal routes, dressed up. Same as the old “choose who takes the initiative” gimmick—a variant on branching options, new bottle, same wine, zero novelty. I swear, Hooksoft can take something as braindead as an option button and rebrand it as a high-end system or gameplay mechanic every single time. The man who doesn’t pivot to making PowerPoints and pitching investors on grand narratives is wasted talent.

So what we have is a moe nukige with eight personal routes, and the artist lineup is the familiar moe-nuki crew: K-ko and Mango Pudding. Never mind the latter—everyone knows K-ko, how many little-sister nukige has she done? You can practically hear that classic “right hand forbidden” OP melody already.

How does the game itself hold up? It does what it says on the tin, nothing more. Don’t expect much romance here—I mean the relationship-building kind. The “love” you see is the more intense post-couple variety, and nearly every heroine is built around a blatant sexual-fetish stereotype, all to get your dick’s needs met and your hand moving as fast as possible.

Still, credit where due: HOOK holds back too much here. It never truly lets go and embraces the nukige label—it just makes the plot more direct, throws in a few more black tights and Yakult, and skips the standard nukige loadout. No creampie countdown, no internal close-ups, no white-fluid injections, no Emotion dynamic breast physics. None of it. For an old man with erectile dysfunction like me, I’d honestly rather watch another new teacher title from Yuu Akari, but given that HOOK’s base is mostly pure-hearted virgin boys, this is probably just right for them.

Honestly, if Hook really wants to go the nukige route, it should stop worrying and spin up a new label—go all in. Right now it feels like a nice girl who’s just about to enter the trade, still putting on airs of purity even though she’s already out selling. Either it leaves you bored, or it ends up on the receiving end of being broken in and trained.

If you’re gonna go nukige, go all the way. The industry’s rough, and pure-love titles get praised but don’t sell. Love nukige wins.

Pros:

• K-ko’s moe-nuki character designs, reliably good
• More HCG than previous HOOK titles, more practical value
• Not much tedious slice-of-life romance; you get to the porn fast

Cons:

• Still a long way from a real nukige, caught between “pure love” and “nukige”

• “Secret love” is pure gimmick

• OP and ED aren’t good; missing Hook’s usual flavor