Idol Mahou Shoujo Chiruchiru Michiru (アイドル魔法少女ちるちるみちる 前篇/后篇) Review

Idol Mahou Shoujo Chiruchiru Michiru (アイドル魔法少女ちるちるみちる) is a spin-off of The Fruit of Grisaia and The Labyrinth / Eden of Grisaia. The name says it all — it’s just a magical girl moe-fest set in the same world with the same characters.

If you still don’t get it, think of it like the relationship between Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya and the main Fate stuff.

Online reception for this one isn’t great. The complaints mostly fall into a few camps:

1. The plot is too cliché, the sense of déjà vu is overwhelming, and you can’t fuck anyone.
2. The game is too short, it’s split into two parts, and you can’t fuck anyone.
3. There are too many repeated OP and ED sequences — obvious cost-cutting — and you can’t fuck anyone.
4. It’s sold in two parts, it’s too expensive, and you can’t fuck anyone.
5. You can’t fuck anyone.

So let me clarify: this game is good. It’s fun. If you want to fuck, please turn right to Professor Dave’s fap channel.

The plot is shockingly similar to Prisma Illya. Ah… maybe the writer did that on purpose. Michiru is one magical girl, Kazuki Kazami is the other, and each of them gets a mascot animal. They sign contracts, fight the Seven Deadly Sins monsters, and are told that once they collect all the sin monsters’ coins their wishes will be granted.

Kazuki’s wish, naturally, is for Yuji Kazami’s illness to be cured. Michiru doesn’t really have a wish.

It’s nonsense magical girl plotting, but the ending gets weirdly serious out of nowhere, and there’s even a bit of genuine emotion in it.

And then comes the thing you expected all along: as a magical girl work with two magical girl leads, the core is yuri. In a Grisaia trilogy spin-off, no less. Yeah, I can see why this is all-ages.

The game structures its story like an anime. Each chapter is an episode — OP at the start, ED at the end, next-episode preview, previous-episode recap. You can skip them, but watching the whole thing like I did isn’t bad either, since the game itself isn’t that long.

And this anime presentation isn’t just a gimmick like Hoshi Ori — it’s a real anime structure. The whole game has twelve episodes (thirteen, actually, but one in the middle is only two minutes), and every episode is packed. I honestly wonder if this script would actually hold up if it were made into a real anime. Or rather — was this script originally written for an anime?

There’s not much to say about the overall plot. It goes full comedy, letting Michiru’s moe act and everyone’s snark and shamelessness run wild. Back when I wrote about The Fruit of Grisaia I said this thing’s common route was so long and so full of snark that it could be cut out and made into its own game. Well, Idol Mahou Shoujo Chiruchiru Michiru did exactly that, and it completely ditches the Grisaia series’ dark tone for pure comedy and snark. Seeing characters with such dark backstories become genuinely happy girls in this parallel world is, honestly, a pleasure.

The thing that really gets you is the male lead? (Probably.) Yuji Kazami’s personality change. In Chiruchiru Michiru, Yuji never went through his dark past and was doted on by his sister — and the result is… he turned into a little brat.

How much of a brat? A huge one. His sister spends ages getting him a healing potion, and the little shit just pours it on the ground saying it tastes too bad to drink… Kazuki gets so mad she soaks it up with a sponge, wrings it out, and force-feeds it to him.

Ah, overall the plot is genuinely fun. As a comedy it delivers. Most of the people saying it’s bad or whatever are probably just feeling a bit ripped off — reused backgrounds and CGs, reused sprites, those scribbled SD CGs. More likely they expected the story to be dark and found it entertaining instead…

Or most likely of all, they thought they could fuck and found out they couldn’t…

So what if you can’t fuck? There’s plenty of fucking in Fruit, Labyrinth, and Eden. Watching a fun comedy and having a laugh is healthier than jerking off in your free time, isn’t it?

Last thing: I hope the devs push to get Idol Mahou Shoujo Chiruchiru Michiru animated. It’s just too perfect for an anime adaptation. I bet it wouldn’t lose to Prisma Illya…