Shoujo Activity (少女アクティビティ) Review

Let me start with a true story. It’s kinda long.

I knew a girl once—well, she’s not a girl now, but at least when I knew her she still was.

Let’s call her Meng. I already wrote about her in some earlier post, but only up to the part where she was boy-crazy in college, found her first love, and got dumped by him in the cruelest way. After that she turned into someone who’d spread her legs for basically anyone. I skipped the rest of that process.

Honestly the rest of it wasn’t anything special. The way she told me, she became extremely casual about sex after her first relationship.

“Why? Weren’t you really into romance?”

“I don’t know. It just felt like I’d lost the right to chase pure love, so whatever, do whatever, none of it matters anymore.”

There was more in what she said, and I basically got it.

After that she started cycling through boyfriends with zero restraint. She was above average-looking at the time—and at a third-tier college, that made her pretty hot property. I used to see her posting lovey-dovey stuff on the campus social network constantly, to the point of obsession. The way she talked about relationships got more and more open. Sometimes I felt like she’d changed into something… how should I put it? A woman of the night?

Back then I was a fat loser otaku who stayed up all night on the internet every night. One big upside of that: lonely, empty girls would message you at 3 a.m. when they were bored. Meng was one of them.

“I think I want to get married as soon as possible,” she said to me one day in senior year.

“Okay, then get married. To your boyfriend.”

“But I don’t like him.”

“You don’t like him and you’re still dating him?”

“How do I put this… Right now I think men are just ridiculous.”

“I’m a man too…”

“I don’t count you as a man.”

“…………”

“Men are hilarious. They see you’ve got some looks and they start circling you, saying what you want to hear, doing what you want them to do. Sometimes I give them a little taste on purpose, and they come crawling up like puppies…”

“…………”

“The feeling is exactly like keeping a pet, hahahahahaha.”

I could picture that broken laugh of hers.

“So, yeah, I gradually started liking that feeling. What’s it called? Queen energy?”

“So you play with those little boys?”

“How can you say that? Aren’t they enjoying it too?”

“…………”

“Still, I haven’t met a guy I like yet. If I do… I’ll marry him. No matter the circumstances, I’ll marry him.”

After that she went quiet for a while. Later I heard she’d finally gotten a boyfriend, the kind she liked, except he came from a poor family. I saw her complaining on social media about her parents opposing the relationship.

Then one day she called me. The content was simple: how do you get an abortion, is there any way to get an abortion.

After I asked, I learned the whole story.

Her parents were dead set against her being with that poor kid, so they broke up—though they still saw each other.

Meanwhile she started going to matchmaking meetings. During those, she kept up her queen act… meaning she played with the little boys, and of course the playing involved the things you’re imagining.

So this queen found herself in a love triangle between her original lover and various matchmaking candidates. One day, after sleeping with the poor kid, she found messages on his phone from other women. Furious, she left without a word, went outside, contacted a guy she’d just met, and did it again.

Result: pregnant, with no idea whose kid it was, so she had to get rid of it.

I obviously couldn’t help with that. In the end she told her parents, got the abortion, and after that her parents stopped fighting it and agreed she could date the poor kid. But a crack had already formed between her and him, and she kept flying around shamelessly like a butterfly.

Later she got a job at a bank. Probably a high proportion of women study finance—I know plenty of classmates and friends who ended up at banks.

When she first started she needed to hit her sales targets, so she asked me to come open an account. While I was there we grabbed a meal, and she asked me for a favor.

“What favor?”

“Go to the pharmacy next door and buy a pregnancy test…”

After asking, I learned she was fooling around again, with various new men.

“Ahh, it’s fine.” During the meal she couldn’t wait to go to the bathroom and check the result. She came out looking relieved. “Thanks!”

“So… is this really okay, going on like this?” I finally asked.

“Okay? What else can I do? What do you think I can do?” She got serious too.

“Didn’t you say you wanted to settle down and get married properly?”

“Tell me, do you think I’m still a good girl now?”

I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t help thinking of that most sarcastic line on the internet: “I smoke, I drink, I sleep around, but I’m a good girl.” Except that line didn’t exist back then. By her behavior she wasn’t a good girl—honestly, she was nothing like a good girl, more like a bitch—but somehow I really couldn’t think of her that way.

“Can’t say it, huh? I know that feeling too. I think about my own stuff all the time.”

“Ever since things blew up with him, I haven’t been able to find a suitable man again. My parents keep pushing one matchmaking meeting after another. I want to get married soon too, but when I see those ridiculous men, those men who leer at you, I just feel like they’re a bunch of idiots.”

“Though sometimes it’s pretty fun to tease those idiots. Using an idiot to feel good isn’t so bad, and besides, I don’t have the capital to act pure anymore anyway.”

She downed her cola in one go.

“But after all these years, I’ve seen it clearly. Men are all things that think with their dicks. Let them fuck you and they’re docile as can be. Don’t let them and they get angry and say you’re no good. Some of them finish, wipe their hands, and act disgusted that you’re dirty.”

“Is it okay to say this in front of me? I’m a man too, you know.”

“I told you I don’t count you as a man.”

After that she sank into depression, getting crazier and more promiscuous, though she was still all business at work.

“Women are very good at putting on a front,” she told me.

Later she was diagnosed with mild depression and delusional symptoms, and came to the hospital for some simple treatment.

“I think… I’ve started going crazy, haha.”

Talking to her when she was mentally unstable was a little terrifying, because she’d always speak in double meanings with a slightly teasing or yandere tone. There was a flirtatious air to it, but you always felt there might be a knife behind her back. I don’t know how many people she’d slept with, but I always felt she wasn’t supposed to be like this.

“I like the sound of men panting, especially that sigh they can’t hold back when you move your body, hahahahaha.”

Sometimes I thought if this kept up she’d become a complete psycho, but there was nothing I could do. Most of our contact was over Discord or other social media anyway, so it wasn’t convenient for me to help her.

But then the sun shone again. One day she said the poor kid had come back, finally willing to get back together with her. Then things moved incredibly fast—within a month, she married the guy.

Her current life shows no trace of her past. She’s more like an ordinary young wife, living a stable life every day, raising her daughter.

But the difference is, she’s started asking me questions from the position of “someone who’s been through it.”

“I’m a year younger than you and I’m already married. My daughter’s almost two. How are you still single? Didn’t you succeed at losing weight?”

“Ah… well, lots of reasons.” Honestly I didn’t know why either. “It just feels like the people I meet aren’t quite right. There’ll be conflicts down the line. Or they don’t think much of me.”

…………

“Do you think I’m still a good woman now?”

At least by the definition of woman, she’s good now.

“Actually, I have some female friends around me,” she started. “They’re rational about relationships too, but plenty of them aren’t married, haven’t even dated. They just live in their own ideal world, pointing at the girls and boys stuck in emotional whirlpools, calling them stupid, while they themselves have never entered that territory.”

I think I understood what she meant.

“My past relationships… were a total mess, you know that.”

“But even so, I jumped in. So… yeah, it was stupid and ridiculous and I got hurt, but in the end I still got a good result.”

“Sure, you could say I just got lucky. But if you just watch from the other shore, you’ll never get in.”

True. Like Meng said, emotion is a whirlpool. Once you enter, you lose yourself, you do all kinds of crazy things, things you’d never imagine. But precisely because of that, you get to take part in it, gain the experience, learn the lessons.

So when I see news about lovesick teenage boys and girls doing crazy things, I always think of this person named Meng. Some people say the world’s gone too crazy, morals are collapsing, men and women are shameless—but who really knows if that’s true.

All this rambling just because I played a nukige. The heroine in this nukige has nothing to do with the girl in my story—though you can’t say it’s completely unrelated either. But I kept thinking of her while playing.

As I said before, just like the difference between porn and softcore, there are many kinds of games with sexual content. Some mix H into the story, some mix story into the H. Nukige are the latter.

Thanks to that trait, the stories in nukige aren’t long. Most are just a simple premise, since the bulk of the space goes to H. But sometimes, precisely because the depiction of carnal desire between men and women is so direct, the not-so-long story in a nukige gives you a sense of realism.

The difference between art and porn is sometimes just a tiny little bit.

Shoujo Activity (少女アクティビティ) is a game that hovers right on the edge of nukige territory.

The story is very simple, but the arrangement is interesting. At the very start, the heroine Ayaka says the shocking line to the protagonist: “I want to have sex.” Then it’s nonstop banging. The protagonist is just a delinquent punk, but Ayaka clings to him for no reason, demanding carnal pleasure, even threatening him.

As for their relationship, Ayaka thinks they’re just fuckbuddies. She doesn’t think they’re dating. Even so, they keep doing all kinds of lovey-dovey things.

Later, while they’re doing it in the classroom, the second heroine Hitomi sees them. Ayaka isn’t flustered; she’s totally in control and pulls Hitomi right in for a threesome. Then another intense round of banging as a transition. But one day, Ayaka warns the protagonist to stay away from Hitomi.

And Hitomi starts seducing the protagonist in a very literary way, including writing things like “Ja tvoi sluga” (I’m Your Slave) to beg for sex.

Meanwhile, the protagonist’s music teacher also warns him to stay away from Ayaka. Ayaka is also wary of that music teacher.

The reason isn’t spelled out. It’s all roughly the same factor: “Stay away from him. He’s dangerous.”

After that the plot has the protagonist bouncing between Hitomi and Ayaka. You can choose which heroine to end up with (though the way you choose is… something). The proper ending is probably choosing Ayaka. Soon after, the music teacher gives one final warning, and the next day a humiliating poster of Ayaka’s older sister Mika appears in the classroom.

Ayaka is shocked by the words calling Mika a bitch who spreads her legs for any man. It breaks her, and she wants to jump off the roof.

Then comes the flashback explaining who Mika is. Mika is Ayaka’s older sister, and the person the protagonist once loved.

The protagonist liked Mika but never confessed. Later Mika said she had a boyfriend, and he was older. The protagonist asked why, and Mika said:

“Can’t help it. Because I like him.”

“Then… what if I confessed?” The protagonist took a long time to say it.

“Can’t help it. Because I still like him.”

So the protagonist gave up on Mika and spent more time with Ayaka, though he only saw her as a little sister. Sometimes Ayaka didn’t think of it that way.

Then one day the protagonist got a distress call from Mika. He went to the suburbs and found her being gang-raped by a group of men. After he rescued her, she was dazed. Eventually she invited him to the rooftop, said her last words, and jumped to her death.

“Thank you. It would’ve been nice if I’d chosen you back then.”

Only Ayaka knows the details of why Mika killed herself. She knows her sister was set up by her so-called boyfriend, and she guesses that boyfriend was the music teacher—but she has no proof.

Later the protagonist sees the music teacher blowing up at Hitomi. After secretly meeting with Hitomi, he learns that Hitomi was sent by the teacher to monitor Ayaka.

So the picture becomes clear. Mika’s so-called boyfriend was the music teacher. The music teacher sold Mika out, let a group of men gang-rape her, and the devastated Mika chose suicide. The younger sister who knew the truth lacked evidence to accuse the music teacher—after all, when she first arrived at the scene, the teacher was nowhere to be seen. And the music teacher, worried Ayaka might do something harmful to him, sent Hitomi to monitor her…

Later the protagonist investigates and finds the diary Mika left behind. The diary records her relationship with the music teacher, and most importantly… it contains photos and crucial evidence.

With the evidence, the protagonist and Ayaka confront the music teacher. He finally confesses his crimes:

“Because, you see, I loved Mika so deeply. I loved her so much I wanted to see her violated by others.”

So the teacher had that kind of fetish. Faced with the final evidence, the protagonist tells the teacher Mika’s last words before she died. Despite the hatred, there was a certain helplessness to it. After hearing it, the teacher breaks down. The protagonist doesn’t linger—just turns and leaves.

Soon after, news comes that the teacher committed suicide. The game ends.

I have to say, the story arrangement is interesting, but the way it’s told is far too………………………………………………..loose and casual.

I get it—it’s a nukige. The game gives most of its text to H scenes and doesn’t focus much on the story itself. But actually this is a good story. If someone wrote it seriously, it could completely escape the nukige category and become a normal work, even a slightly literary one that makes you think.

The part about Mika’s past didn’t really hit me, but Ayaka as a character is intriguing.

Ayaka’s dialogue and manner of speaking are full of irrationality. Why suddenly have sex with a man? Why suddenly want to ride a motorcycle? Why suddenly want to eat? Why suddenly want to go to the protagonist’s house? I know it’s a nukige, but in these little details I saw something different. Ayaka’s every move has a slight sense of being deliberately calculated or of self-indulgence. You could call it the game accidentally hitting the mark, or you could call it deliberate.

That feeling is exactly like the girl named Meng after her mental breakdown. Or rather, identical. Speaking slowly, with an aggressive edge, smiling at you—it gives you a strange unease. Sexy and dangerous, debauched and above it all. That’s about it.

So a nukige that actually makes you feel something has to have a bit of realism. Shoujo Activity does. Games with nothing but big-breasted mother-daughter orgies can’t give you that feeling.

What stimulates humans about porn is mostly fantasy, but that fantasy needs to be “one step closer” to reality, not further away. It needs to make you feel like the girl in the story is right beside you, like some girl you met today might be exactly like that. Only then does the stimulation close in and excite you. If it’s always pulled off into some absurd nonsense, nobody wants to watch people banging on Mars every day. By comparison, the neighborhood-wife type is much easier to fire up your imagination. Otherwise, that Uniqlo video wouldn’t have gotten so many people chasing it despite being so short.

Shoujo Activity’s art fits the game’s positioning perfectly: light and shadow in the dark, and the artist is very good at depicting women’s body curves. I have to say, the girls in Shoujo Activity are some of the closest to real women’s proportions I’ve seen, and the high school uniforms plus the teasing dialogue in the story are a bonus.

The music deserves praise. There’s not much melody—only an OP and an ED—but the BGM plays an indispensable role. Every BGM track is full of rhythm, and that rhythm brings a huge sense of stimulation and unease. That’s different from most visual novels, even most nukige. The strong drums and electronic sounds easily give a sense of decadence, and that feeling of drifting in debauchery without knowing where you are.

No matter how I look at it, Shoujo Activity put a lot of thought into its production. Unfortunately, it chose to be a nukige rather than a pure story-driven work. If they’d just written that story seriously, the impact would’ve been far greater. But they didn’t. A shame.

Ayaka’s appearance, her way of speaking, and even the CV’s portrayal are mature enough. She’s real. She’s realistic, just like that person named “Meng” I keep thinking of. Ayaka is someone who, after being hugely impacted by her sister’s love life, becomes dazed and chooses to indulge herself. She uses her advantages to get what she wants instead of waiting for men to chase her like other girls. She takes the initiative, and with her erratic behavior she’s unpredictable but also a little alluring.

Too bad the character writing succeeded but the story wasn’t told properly… or rather, it was deliberately not told properly.

Actually, if this game had strengthened Ayaka’s psychological state, focused on her sister’s death and the impact of that love affair on her, and shown the gradual release of her heart after she mustered the courage to seduce the protagonist, it could have been a real contender. I don’t know if it was a budget issue or if they thought the game should serve masturbation, but they put most of the space into Ayaka, Hitomi, and the protagonist banging, jealous threesomes, and general fooling around. The usability is high, but it lowers the class. Honestly they could have kept all that practical content and expanded the story itself. But they didn’t. A shame, and nothing but a shame.

Judged purely as a story, the game is childish and ridiculous. But for me—maybe because I’ve heard of people like “Ayaka” actually existing in real life—I saw something different through this game.

“Every girl is born an angel. Once she gets hurt for the first time and gives up on the dream of being an angel, she falls and becomes an ordinary person, or even a bitch.” The last time I talked to Meng, that’s how she described her past. “But that way you get what you want faster. Of course, I hadn’t become a bitch yet, so I think I’m fine.”

At the end of that conversation, she asked me a question.

“Back when I used to message you at 3 a.m…. when I was hurt, why didn’t you take advantage of it?”

That question put me in a tough spot.

“You said you didn’t count me as a man.”

“That’s not a reason. You should understand now.”

“Maybe I really just didn’t like you.”

“Haha, are you still dreaming of meeting an angel?”

“Probably…”

Shoujo Activity—literally, girl activity—feels more like acknowledging what all those girls do when they fall into the emotional whirlpool, sink deeper and deeper, can’t pull themselves out, and start to fall. For them it’s probably more like a helpless struggle.