Midare Setsugetsuka Hakanaku Chiru Sasameyuki (乱れ雪月華 ～儚く散る細雪～) Review

As a proud LASS hater, I’ve played almost every game this company (aka “Rass” — short for “shit company”) has put out, except for the early Nanako series. I’m talking 3Days, 11eyes, Shoujo Shinki, Mayoeru Futari, plus their fandiscs and all the different versions and whatnot.

Honestly, ever since Shoujo Shinki took a massive dump and turned a great setting into an utterly self-indulgent landmine, I’ve been thinking: when the hell is this shit company gonna go under?

So I waited and waited, until Mayoeru Futari was announced, then delay after delay after delay. And what did I get? The game wasn’t the landmine I expected — just dumb and bland as tap water, with art that was straight-up weak. Every girl’s tits bigger than the last, each with a more seductive look in her eyes, moaning louder and louder during H scenes. I was overjoyed… practically trembling with glee, dripping wet with excitement.

Not because big tits do it for me, but because I finally saw it: this shit company is done for.

Generally, eroge companies start out making pure porn, then gradually shift to lovey-dovey stuff, and finally, when the money runs dry, they crank out nukige to boost sales and recover. Check out Chuuni-sha’s Kyonyuu Mura for reference — that’s the gist of it. Rass’s Mayoeru Futari itself had a bit of that “recovery” vibe, and the later fandisc, touting “H 300%,” just screamed desperate cash grab. I was laughing my ass off seeing Rass forced to draw big tits to stay afloat, and even then the sales weren’t great…

At this rate, they’re definitely dead, right?

But no.

This summer, Rass suddenly announced a subsidiary: Lass Lunatic. If “Lass” originally meant “girl” in Old English, “Lunatic” is just “crazy.” In short, Rass went insane.

Crazy Rass opened a new label and released a game called Midare Setsugekka Hakanaku Chiru Sasameyuki. The setting reuses the same world as Shoujo Shinki, but it seems to be a training-focused nukige. Normally I avoid nukige, but this world gave me a bit of hope. With the mindset of “why won’t Rass just die already,” I played it.

Yep, same world as Shoujo Shinki — even the damn location is the same. The Kusakabe family has two brothers competing to be the next head, so they have a showdown using ninjutsu and other mystical arts (whatever). Ninjutsu training requires raising a female ninja — one for each brother. Through various trials with the kunoichi as sparring partners, they improve together, fight together, and after becoming head, they bang the kunoichi to produce heirs and inherit the position.

The protagonist, the younger Kusakabe brother, hates this rule, but hating it doesn’t help. Every day he’s still screwing his own kunoichi nonstop. Then at night he accidentally screws his brother’s kunoichi too. Eventually, the brother catches him (or so it seems), and after that the brother turns savage (no shit, his head’s green). The trials between kunoichis go beyond just sex — stuffing vibrators in before school, tentacle SM, masked public masturbation, full-on pillar training, and so on…

So at the end, the brother challenges the protagonist. They agree to hold back, but the brother goes nuts and tries to kill him with his kunoichi. In the end, the brother and his kunoichi die, the protagonist’s kunoichi gets her womb wrecked (I think), and the protagonist is left with a half-broken kunoichi as the new head, visiting his brother’s grave.

The end.

How to put this… At first, Rass president Kengi Mana said this game “is a nukige, but it has story; to serve players better, you don’t need to clear the story to unlock all CGs.” That gave me some hope for the plot. Turns out it’s a nukige through and through, and less atmospheric than Shoujo Katsudou. Basically, screw every 5 minutes, train every 10 minutes — can’t stop. More importantly, the game has zero fap value…

Why not? Well, for me, this game does nothing.

First off, it saved way too much money. The setting reuses the same city as Shoujo Shinki, Kamine — not for story reasons, but to save budget…

As you can see…

Classroom…

Street…

Hallway…

Old man…

And that’s just a fraction…

To put it bluntly, except maybe the dojo, every background is recycled. Shoujo Shinki didn’t have a classroom, so they took it from Mayoeru Futari. There’s even a window background lifted from 11eyes.

Beyond backgrounds, the music, sound effects, battle SFX, menu SFX — all ripped straight from Shoujo Shinki without any changes.

Even some of the H CGs look like Shoujo Shinki’s — just swapping heads and tweaking a bit.

What’s worse, the artist doesn’t seem suited for big breasts, but forced to draw them for nukige purposes, the two heroines look totally out of proportion. Meanwhile, a minor loli character looks way better, but her only role is getting a strap-on and mind-controlled.

All backgrounds recycled, all music recycled, most CGs traced over old ones — so what’s left? Just a few unknown nukige-voice actresses moaning? The game has lots of H CGs, and to boost fap value they added slurping and squelching SFX. On Twitter, Kengi Mana boasted about how much effort he put in, but whenever I think of him tweeting his body fat percentage — a fatass — I picture a fat guy with soapy hands simulating sex sounds into a microphone. Just thinking about it makes me unable to accept it, let alone get hard.

Anyway, Rass’s new sister-label nukige doesn’t seem to be doing well. Reviews are meh, and it’s genuinely mediocre. Plus, it doesn’t support touch controls on tablets or scaling at high resolutions. I played with a Surface stylus. Even if the game got me hard, I couldn’t jack off with one hand on the tablet and the stylus in the other. Good thing I had no reaction — otherwise it’d be literal ninja training.

On the left, Sugar Pot: no scaling support. On the right, Rass: no scaling AND no touch support.

So this game being made gives me a bit of schadenfreude. Rass’s quality has been declining for years; they’ll probably die here.

Or rather, they’ll die soon. I heard their artist ran off again… probably just Kengi Mana left.

So, has Rass gone bankrupt today?

Nope!

That fatass Kengi Mana just announced on Twitter the next main-label pure-love non-nukige title, Liber 7, along with a bunch of info. It was originally supposed to come right after 11eyes but got shelved for some reason. Now Rass finally remembered it.

The setting is out: the protagonist already has superpowers and discovers he can rewind time by 3 days. Oh, this isn’t 3Days — just sharing the same universe as 3Days and 11eyes.

They got a new artist too — no more uniform big tits and Fantasy Westward Journey-looking male designs. Feels like the whole company might be coming back to life.

So Rass won’t die just yet. Whether they die next time depends on Liber 7.

I’ll play it with a critical and schadenfreude-filled attitude.

Oh, speaking of artists, I remember Lass’s main artist for 3Days and 11eyes: Hagiwara Otozu.

While everyone’s raving about those heroines, she’s job hunting…

Pathetic.