Imouto no Seiiki (妹のセイイキ) Review

I don’t watch porn anymore, but back in high school I watched it every day.

Watch enough and you start thinking about it—you even start arguing with other fans about what makes a good one. The standard was always whether it got you going hard enough. Maybe I’m a bit of a deviant, but while everyone else was chasing pretty actresses with huge tits and great bodies, I was hunting for specific scenarios: humiliation, getting gangbanged by a bunch of Black guys, being dumped out in the middle of nowhere for all kinds of play, getting raped in the middle of the street, etc., etc.

But over time I gradually realized I was being an idiot. The stuff I liked was way too fake—either there wasn’t enough struggling, or the acting was just completely unconvincing. Honestly it was less convincing than the rape scenes in Chinese TV dramas. Watch too much and it gets old, because it’s still just porn they filmed—if it were realistic enough it’d be a crime. After thinking it over, I figured those older-sister-takes-your-virginity plots were better. At least they aren’t that fake, right…

Thinking about how I got into porn always brings up Wu Lao’er.

Wu Lao’er was a porn connoisseur I met in high school—the type who couldn’t survive a day without watching it. He’d even stand in front of the girls in class and hold forth on physiology and hygiene, with such a serious face that you’d almost think you were the one being filthy for reading anything into it and had misjudged this pure-hearted boy. Naturally, the porn Wu Lao’er liked was the vanilla stuff, where he judged by face and tits and never by plot. But Wu Lao’er was dumb and not great with the internet. In the internet age he was still relying on Baidu to search for porn, which was way behind the times. Around 2004 you could find good stuff with keywords on ED2K, Vagga, or Poco.

Since Wu Lao’er was always asking me to find porn for him, and the price was that I could copy his homework, we had a deal. To guarantee quality for Wu Lao’er I had to check them out myself, didn’t I? So on top of the humiliation stuff I downloaded for myself, I accidentally watched a lot of vanilla stuff too.

After a while I noticed a problem: vanilla porn has way too much unnecessary crap in it. Like at the start, the actress has to make an entrance, and it drags on for nearly 10 minutes (yeah, Tokyo Hot, I’m talking about you). And the formula is way too rigid—a little room, an interview at the start where they ask the actress a bunch of pointless questions (back then I couldn’t understand it, but I guessed it was measurements, height, sexual experience; now that I can understand it, turns out it really is measurements, height, sexual experience). By the time they get down to it, it’s at least 20 minutes in. So what’s the point of those first 20 minutes? It’s porn—I’m here for the fucking. All that chatter is boring, isn’t it? Some even stick new interviews in between each sex scene—pure padding. A 2-hour porn where almost an hour is irrelevant stuff, and every DVD rip you download is over 1 GB. It’s a total waste of my precious porn-downloading time! And this is just vanilla stuff—it’s not the humiliation stuff I watch, which has no need for backstory at all. I just can’t understand it.

So I thought about this problem seriously. At first I wondered if it was because I couldn’t understand Japanese, so I was always fast-forwarding through porn. Carrying my question, I consulted Wu Lao’er, the “Prince of Yellow Films.”

“You don’t know shit!” Wu Lao’er slammed the desk in the classroom. “You only watch the part where they start fucking—you call that watching porn? That’s not porn, that’s the hidden-camera clips you find on Vagga!”

Because he was so loud, the whole class was looking at us, including plenty of girls, whispering among themselves. I cleverly turned to look out the window and put on a “none of my business, he’s not talking to me” face.

“Hey! I’m talking to you!” The idiot Wu Lao’er tugged at my clothes, and everyone’s eyes instantly snapped to me. Great, I couldn’t dodge it…

“Listen, what’s porn also called? Adult film. If it’s a film, it has to follow film conventions—opening credits, backstory, character introductions, an entrance. Sure, some porn has plot, but! Even ordinary porn, even porn with no plot, has to follow film conventions. Otherwise it’s not a properly released adult film! It’s just a little video you find on the street—the class drops, the tier drops, get it? Get it?”

Wu Lao’er was going on and on, really high on himself. Meanwhile I was getting stared at by a crowd like some pervert, and I was not high at all.

But I got the point: a video that’s just fucking is a short clip, and once you add some backstory on top of the fucking, it becomes an adult film.

Later, as I watched a wider range of films, I discovered there were also films not centered on fucking that nonetheless did contain sex scenes. Nowadays we call those “restricted films” or “Category III films.”

“Category III” or R18 restricted films have their own plots, and while they may contain a lot of fucking, it isn’t the core—more like a bonus. The plain porn I used to watch, on the other hand, was all in service of the fucking. Even if it had a bit of plot, compared to a “Category III film” it was laughable, because they’re not trying to get you to watch a story—they just want you to honestly watch the male and female leads go through all the positions.

(Of course there are exceptions—I recommend Tony Ooki’s works, they’re basically the prestige dramas of porn. Hmm…)

Simply put: one is a narrative film with fucking in it, the other is a fucking film with a plot in it… that’s about it.

Does this classification feel familiar? Yep—the same distinction exists in galgame: nukige and non-nukige.

Just like I was puzzled by the porn Wu Lao’er watched back then, I was also very puzzled by the nukige Imouto no Seiiki (妹のセイイキ).

Imouto no Seiiki is a game where the protagonist fucks his little sister. Chuunii Space labels it a nukige, and once you slap that label on it, it’s like those porn videos where fucking is the main event: the game is there for you to jerk off to, don’t bother caring about the plot. The game itself isn’t big, it’s cheap—under 2000 yen—and not long… By all logic it should cut straight to fierce combat with the sister right from the start. But I guessed wrong.

Imouto no Seiiki actually starts out all serious, doing all kinds of stuff with the sister… I mean normal stuff.

As you’d guess, the protagonist has a little sister, Yukana, and Yukana is a huge-tits… no, a huge brocon. She spends every day saying unrealistic delusions to her brother: that her brother should let her take his virginity, that her brother is a pervert who plays sister-fucking eroges every day, that her brother why won’t you fuck me yet, that her brother why won’t you let me jerk you off, etc., etc…

See, for a sister-type eroge that’s perfectly normal—I wasn’t complaining. Just say a few lines and get to the sex, right? But the plot keeps going. It turns into slice-of-life: daily life going to school with the sister, daily life shopping with the sister. The daily life has dialogue, the dialogue has new characters, and the heroine of the previous game Kanojo no Seiiki shows up, plus Yukana and the protagonist have their aimless little exchanges every day…

After reading this daily-life padding built out of utterly moronic dialogue, I could barely suppress my drowsiness long enough to complain: hey hey hey, you’re a nukige, what the hell are you dragging out all this for? Are you trying to portray the sense of transgression in the sister crossing the forbidden line with her brother? Are you trying to give us a whole route from the beginning?

Fuck your route! The sister’s affection for the protagonist is maxed out from the start! I’ve got one question for you: when does the main event start? This daily life is so boring! Yukana’s head is full of nothing but her brother’s virginity; there’s nothing else in there. Apart from muttering about wanting to bang her brother every day, the daily-life dialogue has nothing interesting at all. Sure, there’s a random passerby who spouts little jokes about “3D vs 2D,” and at that point I started hallucinating: was I underestimating this game? After all, it’s not like there are no nukige with some depth. Even in the earlier Seishoujo I found something interesting. As a siscon game, the sense of transgression in crossing that line has to be the key, right? Conquering her brother for the first time has to be difficult, right? At least in all the games I’ve played, I’ve never seen it go smoothly.

“Maybe this game really does have something unique in how it portrays sibling romance?” I couldn’t help thinking.

So the plot plods along, and eventually Yukana gets a hot-spring trip voucher from the proud ojou-sama from the previous game, and decides to go to the hot springs with her brother. Her brother doesn’t hesitate either, so they get to the hot springs, Yukana suggests bathing together, her brother agrees, and while bathing she naturally starts jerking him off…

Wait!

Just like that? No hesitation, no pain, no tears—she just jerks her brother off in the bathhouse?

After finishing, the two hug, and that night Yukana asks her brother if he wants to do it…

There’s a choice here. Agree and the game continues; refuse and the game kicks you out.

If you agree, her brother says meaningfully, “I guess I have no choice with you,” and then they start fucking… Then the game enters a brand-new chapter: five rounds a day, every position, every kind of play, every location, every time of day…

So isn’t this just a plain nukige after all! Or rather, even as a nukige it’s incompetent! What the hell was all that bullshit at the front for! I’m not a siscon, but if I were one, dying to pick up this game and jerk off—just reading that big pile of nonsense at the start would have made me go soft. I wouldn’t be able to get it up! A nukige should at least be fierce about it! Just start fucking right away! The affection’s maxed out anyway, just throw in a few lines and you’re good, right? And even if you want to add elements to a nukige, at least put some effort in. Those bland, boring, muttered conversations are tasteless and no loss to discard—do they really need to exist? It felt exactly like the porn Wu Lao’er recommended back then: no matter how pretty the actress, if you stuff a long interview at the front, who’s going to watch it?

When I was a kid I didn’t understand Japanese, so I assumed I was fast-forwarding because I couldn’t understand. Now that I understand it, I think even Japanese people would fast-forward! Who wants to watch you sigh about your preferred type, color, and sexual experience? We want to see actual sexual experience, don’t we?

So once Imouto no Seiiki enters the main event, it’s off to the races—at least 6 or 7 rounds—and then the game suddenly starts telling a story again…

The screen suddenly goes black: Yukana was neglected as a child because her parents were busy with work. She wanted to make chocolate for her family herself, but got into a car accident and flew into a river. Her parents saved her afterward, but she still had a wall between her and them. Only the protagonist, her brother, gradually reached out to her and saved her heart… That’s why she’s so dependent on her brother, and so on…

Yeah, good setup, but it’s useless—I was already sick of it… The story enters another stretch of bland padding. The protagonist gets word that their parents are coming back and hopes Yukana will forgive them. Yukana agonizes for less than 10 minutes (yeah, in the story it seems to be 10 minutes), then chooses to say she still loves her parents, and loves her brother the protagonist too.

Then another choice appears: do you want to go back to being brother and sister with Yukana, become lovers, or just keep going ambiguously like this?

If you go back to being siblings, it’s basically a breakup, and the protagonist goes back and meets the ojou-sama from the previous game. The game tells you that what happens next is another story (meaning go buy the previous game and jerk off to that).

If you choose to become lovers, you’ll actually find Yukana is unhappy: “I like you because you’re my brother. Once we become lovers we’re not brother and sister anymore, just ordinary lovers.”

That line is the biggest highlight of the whole game, in my opinion. It completely exposes the biggest pain point of sibling love—you know the pain point? A real brocon or siscon doesn’t think they just need a boyfriend/girlfriend who happens to be their brother/sister; they need someone who is both brother/sister and boyfriend/girlfriend.

So the correct choice is to pick nothing and just keep muddling along ambiguously. So the final ending is that the protagonist and Yukana don’t become lovers, and don’t become ordinary siblings either—they become siblings who’ve transcended siblinghood. More than siblings, lovers to the max, still calling each other brother and sister, and the two can still fuck in all kinds of ways. Perfect…

And then… then the game just ends! I have no idea whether this game will spawn a Onee no Seiiki (姉のセイイキ) or whatever.

Oh right, what the hell is “Seiiki” supposed to mean anyway? I really don’t want to believe it means “the sister’s sexual territory.” Some veteran please explain it to me!

Imouto no Seiiki had a bumpy road, you know. In the previous game the sister appeared, and her CV was the big-name Emi Nitta. But right before Imouto no Seiiki’s release, Emi Nitta announced she was quitting the role, citing exhaustion and poor health.

I can buy that reason—voicing eroge really is physical labor. Look at Kyouko桐谷华 going all the way to Sawa Sawa Sawa and getting visibly thinner—clear proof that voicing eroge, especially H-heavy eroge, takes a huge physical toll. Otherwise Emi Nitta wouldn’t have run, right?

But here’s the problem: Emi Nitta voiced the previous game, and her replacement was Akino Hana. It’s not that Akino Hana lacks skill—on the contrary, she’s very skilled, skilled enough to imitate Emi Nitta’s voice in Imouto no Seiiki. Really imitate it. I did hear a bit of Emi Nitta in Yukana’s voice. But that’s also where it succeeds and fails. Anyone who’s played Asteria knows Emi Nitta’s voice is slow and languid, not really suited to tsundere…

Especially when Yukana herself has tsundere traits. By common sense, a tsundere little sister should look annoyed, speak short and sharp, and often strike poses of being troubled and embarrassed by her own tsundere-ness. Actually, before I heard Yukana, just looking at the promotional art I thought the same thing. Ryōka-sensei’s Yukana looks thoroughly annoyed, paired with text like “Onii-chan, pervert, lewd,” and I really thought that’s what it’d be like.

But the moment I heard the voice in-game I dropped to my knees. I’ve never seen a tsundere who speaks all soft and slow—the tsundere comes off fake. And I’ve never seen a tsundere sneak into your room at night. Tsunderes are full of excuses and refusals—who the hell sneaks into your room at night? Even if she did, she should look annoyed, right? Whoever wrote this script, do you even know what a tsundere is?

So this failed character ruined my fantasy of escaping reality in a sister-type nukige. I was completely taken out of it from start to finish. The boring daily-life stuff at the beginning made me unable to find this sister moe at all. I thought she was a female pervert, a straight-girl cancer, a virgin fetishist—not a gentle, considerate sister who’s always clinging to her brother.

The only thing the game has going for it is probably Ryōka’s original art. I don’t want to say much about Ryōka’s art—maybe it’s just not my thing; I prefer Izumi’s. Because ever since I played Otouto no Hashi, no matter what character Ryōka-sensei draws, it all looks like this to me:

Maybe the characters are just too similar…

By the way, what made me notice this nukige? Was it because August’s games were so trash? Tenkiame, Travelling Star, Koi to Mahou to Kanrinin—their demos made me eat shit, with zero desire to play. Or was it because I thought the OP of Imouto no Seiiki was decent that I started paying attention?

Anyway, Imouto no Seiiki, as a nukige, basically didn’t meet my expectations, and in reality the game itself has no fighting power. If you like Ryōka-sensei’s original art, just download the CG pack—there aren’t many in there anyway, and it’ll save you a ton of time.

Maybe it’s because feng’s games in recent years have had no fighting power. Hoshikake was okay but nowhere near great, and the later Kanojo no Serenade was reportedly long and tedious. So they just started making these low-budget XX no Seiiki nukige. Low-budget—and now it really does look low-budget: the plot is a pile of shit, the voice acting is half-hearted, and the only thing that works is the original art…

In other words, for Imouto no Seiiki, your entire game experience can only be jerking off to Ryōka-sensei’s ero art. That’s its core. And that makes me think back to my earlier thoughts about porn: is the core of most galgames the artist’s ero art? Is the artist’s ero art to a galgame what the fucking scenes are to an adult film?

Wu Lao’er said an ordinary little sex video is very low-class, no tier at all. But if you package it with interviews and an entrance and such, it becomes a film work, escaping the shadow of “little video” and entering the world of film.

An ero picture by itself isn’t very high-class either. But if you add voice, package it with a cause-and-effect plot, add some music, an OP and ED, and a program for interaction, then that ero picture isn’t just an ero picture—it’s a PC game, a game built on a platform.

If you put in some effort—find a good artist, a good scriptwriter, a good planner, a good composer, a good singer—you can even build a reputation with this yellow game, can’t you?

Wait, so could you do the opposite too? Did feng realize that the best-selling part of their games was Ryōka-sensei’s original art, so they stripped out all unnecessary elements and put the core competitiveness right up front, letting the masses of otaku happily buy buy buy? No wonder the regular edition of Imouto no Seiiki is under 2000 yen, while the deluxe edition with a body pillow sells for 10000 yen. Everyone’s buying the art—who the hell cares how the game is.

Not bad, not bad—specialization, right? In that case, I hope feng’s next Seiiki is even more decisive. No more half-assed settings and plot—just introduce the characters and cut straight to the main event. That’d shorten the development cycle too. Maybe, like Meizu’s Huang Zhang, they could keep the topic fresh with a Onee no Seiiki, Otouto no Seiiki, Kaa-san no Seiiki, Baa-chan no Seiiki every quarter, and maybe revive the eroge market? (lol)