Sorakoi (ソラコイ) Review

Back in school I liked to show off when writing essays. I always wanted to pull off something big — start off plain as hell, then hit the reader with a sudden turn at the end. A surprise, you know?

Problem was, the teachers never gave me the chance. The prompts were always stuff like “A Meaningful Day,” “A Meaningful Event,” “The Wall Clock at Home.” All of them had to be wholesome and uplifting. I couldn’t write about how I helped an old lady cross the street and then, once we got to the other side, she flashed a lecherous grin, dropped her pants, and revealed a giant cock — turns out she was an old man all along. Nor could I write about the wall clock at home and then, at the very end, twist it around and reveal the clock was actually a vibrator. Then one day, on an exam, they gave us a topic essay: “How to Express the Hypocrisy Between People.”

I was thrilled. I started plotting out the perfect essay — a seemingly upstanding gentleman who, right at the end, gets unmasked as a scheming, vicious little shit — when I hit a problem:

The answer sheet was running out of space!

I had less than half a page of grid paper left, and the plot was just about to kick off…

There was no extra space on the exam, either. After weighing my options, I started compressing the ending. Compress, compress, compress, until it was down to a couple of lines and a hasty wrap-up. The final essay read like total nonsense: this straight-laced guy suddenly turns into an absolute bastard, and the only explanation between the two is a single sentence…

The teacher looked at me with a mocking expression and consoled me by saying that next time I shouldn’t go off on my own and write this kind of boring garbage — stick to argumentative essays, those are more reliable.

Her wording was very tactful and encouraging, but that look in her eyes was clearly the look you give someone who just failed spectacularly at showing off.

Of course, years later I don’t need to worry about page limits when I write. But I never imagined I’d get to experience that same look and attitude from my old teacher again.

Sora Koi is a new game from a new studio, Chelseasoft. And the biggest selling point when it was announced wasn’t anything else — it was the character designs.

The Miyasaka Miyu sisters’ art has gotten pretty popular lately. Their style is very young-looking, and they’ve been drawing Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka? stuff recently, which naturally pulled in a lot of new fans. Of course, the Miyasaka sisters have been doing eroge original art for ages, so Sora Koi is just them doing what they’ve always done.

I played it partly for the Miyasaka sisters’ art, and partly because the premise seemed kind of interesting.

The setup: the protagonist has a childhood friend named Hikari, and one day a girl who looks almost exactly like Hikari suddenly appears before him. Her name is Sora, and she also claims to be his childhood friend. So the protagonist ends up inexplicably caught between two nearly identical girls, both insisting they’re his childhood friend, and the story goes from there.

That hook is actually kind of interesting. The art gives off a moege vibe, but there’s at least a hint of a real plot in there. So I went ahead and started the game — and oh boy, was that a mistake. I couldn’t take it. Not because of anything else, but because the story just… is so… boring.

Honestly, I’ve read plenty of games with nothing but plain slice-of-life. But this was the first time I’d seen plain slice-of-life that was also this nauseating. Every single day’s story is just the two childhood friends, Hikari and Sora, dragging the protagonist into a catfight.

“Come on, go on a date with me!” “No! Go out with me!” “I’m the childhood friend!” “No! I am!”

Honestly, most of the game’s slice-of-life scenes go exactly like this the moment those two show up. And there aren’t many scenes without them, so all you see in the common route is two nearly identical girls bickering. Bickering until the heavens fall, bickering until the seas dry up. And as for who this girl Sora who suddenly appeared actually is — who’s the protagonist’s real childhood friend, Sora or Hikari — are those mysteries ever explained?

Nope!

So around the middle of the game, the plot finally bothers to show up: the protagonist and his harem are going to shoot a romance film, which will be screened at the school festival, and so the filming begins. During filming, of course, the two childhood friends are still going at it, now dignified with the label “showdown.” I really wish Japanese people would learn the word “catfight” already so I’d stop laughing at this. The story stays boring, the mystery stays ignored… oh wait, no, the story has actually started dropping what look like foreshadowing bits. The protagonist keeps feeling inexplicably exhausted and randomly passing out.

Oh, I forgot to mention — the protagonist also says he’s earned the right to study abroad and will leave after the school festival. Both childhood friends are all broken up about it.

So the story keeps going: the protagonist is still tired and falling asleep, the childhood friends are still bickering, and finally the school festival arrives. Since the game is called Sora Koi, I picked Sora’s route. Getting into a route is brainless, the confession happens, the sex happens, and it’s about time for the ending. The whole “Sora is a childhood friend who fell out of the sky” thing — I’d nearly forgotten it — when the game suddenly slams in a flashback…

The flashback: the protagonist is dying. Hikari is holding his hand at his sickbed, saying that the promise they made — to shoot a romance film for the school festival, for the protagonist to study abroad and come back and be a couple — none of it can happen now.

Then the flashback ends, violently, and we cut to the protagonist’s film being screened at the school festival. Once it finishes, the game abruptly rolls the ED. Honestly, by this point I had no idea what was going on. What was that supposed to mean?

Then after the ED, the game has one last scene: Hikari stands in front of the now-stopped projector, monologuing that this is the greatest film, made by her beloved protagonist, but that her feelings can no longer reach him.

The end…

Bruh. Do you know how I felt at that moment? I sat there stunned for ages before it finally hit me what the story was. The protagonist was dead the whole time. Before he died, he’d promised Hikari he’d study abroad and come back, promised they’d make a film — but none of it happened. Hikari alone helped him finish all of it, and got the film shown at the school festival.

So the Hikari and Sora in the game from the very beginning are all just characters in a film written by the protagonist. It’s not reality at all. The protagonist died ages ago. The whole game is a movie, that’s it. Hikari and Sora only exist inside that movie.

And I finally realized why none of the characters in the game have surnames and all the names are in katakana — because it’s not reality, just a film. “Hikari,” “Sora,” that kind of name is enough. No need for surnames.

Looking at it as a whole, this game should be pretty good. Hiding such a huge twist up front, and then delivering a big surprise at the end. But why did the ending leave me not surprised in a good way — just stunned and nothing else?

How do I put this. It’s like you’ve been chasing a girl for ages and she’s been lukewarm the whole time, and just when you’re about to give up she calls you out of nowhere and wants to get a hotel room, and when you pull down her panties there’s a huge cock in there, and that cock also shoves into your mouth and comes in your face…

No, that’s a bad metaphor. Forget it.

So this nonsensical game is just like that bullshit essay I wrote back then: good idea, good framework, but… the pacing is just abysmal. And the game says nothing for the longest time, the slice-of-life is rock bottom, and then in the last two minutes it rushes the reveal — what the hell is that about…

Still, I did learn a few things from this game. For instance, the world’s first vampire film is from 1922 and has a lot of legendary lore around it. Though that seems to have nothing to do with the game’s actual plot, right…

What made me spit blood even more is that the people of Japan actually rate this game pretty well, all saying they were moved to tears…

Well, I wasn’t moved. I felt like someone came on my face. Put simply: too few CGs, garbage music, story that puts you to sleep, and a final “twist” that makes no sense… ah… that’s it. I’m going to go find a towel to wipe my face and get ready for the new year…