Areas ~Sora ni Utsusu Kimi to no Sekai~ (Areas ～空に映すキミとのセカイ～) Review

I’ve always liked the girls that soft girls draw. Miyasaka Miyu (宮坂みゆ) is a soft girl, so I really like the girls she draws. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that logic.

Only a girl knows what expressions and poses a real girl would actually have. Only a girl drawing girls can really capture their essence. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying that.

So half a year ago, Izayoi no Fortuna (十六夜のフォルトゥーナ) already had me completely floored by Miyasaka Miyu’s art. Those soft, delicate girls hit my strike zone dead-on. You have to understand, I love small, slender girls the most—I just want to hold them and squish them……

So, hand on heart, I played Areas ～空に映すキミとのセカイ～ purely for the art. I’d already seen the reviews on Chuuni Space saying “good opening,” “the ending makes no sense,” and that it barely scraped a passing grade. But who cares? What kind of shit haven’t I eaten by now? However bad your story is, how bad can it really get? Can you do all-in insta-love? Can you do split personalities? Can you do forced harem? Can you do forced flexing? Can you do knockoff light novel? Can you do reincarnated saint? Can you do TowerDefense? Can you do Guo Jingming imitation? Can you do total meltdown? Or can you trick me into screwing boys?

No way! I figured I’d already played through every possible way to eat shit — there’s no reason I’d find a brand-new way to eat shit!

Shennong tastes a hundred shits, and I no longer fear death.

Game Start！

The game opens with a surprisingly blockbuster vibe — the future world is running out of resources, and the protagonist, a wanderer, tries to steal state secrets, only to get caught in the act.

The great protagonist, in order to protect his stepsister, doesn’t hesitate to cooperate with the rulers, willing to become a research subject for the country’s new project.

So what kind of research is this, anyway? The scientists lead the protagonist to the entrance of a small, dark passage and tell him:

“The other side is another world. Your job is just to survive there, nothing special. And when the time comes, report back to me on what’s happening in that world. That’s all.”

Then the protagonist arrives in a different world called Areas. This world is cut off from humanity’s original world and exists as a separate entity. He settles in fast, starts attending school, and there he meets all sorts of girls: an engineer girl, a twintailed tsundere, a long-haired senpai, and a soft, squishy little loli…

Every day… every single day, I’m all lovey-dovey with all sorts of girls…

Hang on!

Roughly halfway through the game, I finally noticed an important problem:

“What the hell was that opening supposed to be? Isn’t this just a super, super, super generic school romance game?”

What the hell is an isekai?

What the hell is Areas?

Wasn’t there supposed to be some dark conspiracy?

Isn’t the protagonist the one being studied?

What’s the protagonist even here for? Picking up girls?

Where do I apply for this kind of gig where they ship you off to another world to pick up girls?

With all those questions in mind, I cleared one of the girls’ routes… and it was plain. So plain I almost dozed off. Just normal chatting, then romance, then boom, sex, the two of them facing the future hand in hand… and that’s it.

What about the black curtain? Nope. What about an introduction to Areas? Nope…

Surely I must’ve picked the wrong girl’s route… This time I went with the engineer girl…

The route is still plain. So plain I wanna doze off. Still normal chat, still romance, still fucking, still the two of them facing the future hand in hand… and that’s it.

What the hell? So I started fast-forwarding through the heroine routes, hoping the story would make even a tiny bit of progress…

But here’s the thing? I’m almost done clearing all the girls, and there’s still nothing…

就在我认为这个游戏仅仅是一个套了一个开头 SF 展开的壳子的时候，游戏在最后一个妹子攻略完毕后切入了 True End。

OHHHHHHHHHH, it’s finally here!!!

Turns out this hard-won True End is simple. Like, explode-into-pieces simple.

Basically, the original world’s resources were almost depleted, so humanity wanted to invade this Areas — or at least exploit its resources. This is the move our protagonist opposes, and the same female scientist who sent him here in the beginning comes over to question him all serious-like.

“What do you figure matters more — going back to Japan, or staying stuck here and never getting home?”

The protagonist thought for a moment and said, “The bonds I’ve forged here matter most!”

Isn’t the fucking harem you’ve got going on here way more important than that?

Then comes the protagonist’s one act of rebellion against the original world. It’s an extremely lowbrow resistance — he shows up with a few of his harem girls to make some noise, and the other side just gives up…

And then, together with his own little sister, he lived on forever in this world called Areas…

What the hell is this game?????

So in the end this game is really just “an extremely ordinary romance game where you build a harem on a small island,” isn’t it? Even as slice-of-life romance it has nothing going for it, the story put me to sleep, and it’s got a strong early-2000s pure-love game flavor—but this is a 2009 game, bruh. Otaku aren’t the kind who’ll get off just because you toss a bunch of girls at them anymore; they’ve evolved into twisted otaku who go leave comments on someone’s blog to hurt the blogger and share it all over social media pointing at them going UCCU, mutually destroying each other. You can’t keep running that playbook, seriously…

But thinking about it more carefully, there really doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with this game. The story is a bit boring, sure, but it’s not long either—you can breeze through it without much thought. Everything else is passable: the soft girls drawn by Miyasaka Miyu are as soft as ever, the heroine voiced by Nanjo Yoshino still sounds great, and Fripside’s soundtrack is as gentle and flowing as always. At worst, it puts you to sleep, but at least it doesn’t force-feed you shit and give you nightmares. For innocent young lads who find themselves bored, it’s not a bad way to pass the time. I honestly don’t get why so many people rate it so low.

Maybe most people just felt cheated by the prologue. Thinking it over, it wasn’t really a scam… I mean, didn’t the True End wrap it up nicely? Even if the payoff was kindergarten-level (lol).