Renai 0 Kilometer: A Girl's Song That's All Kinds of Messy but Still Warm

Originally, I started with Asairo, then played half of it and switched to Kimi to Boku to Eden no Ringo… And then Pockies Wili recommended Renai 0 Kilometer, so I went and downloaded it.

Honestly, I’d seen this game on Ruri Shrine a long time ago, but one look at the synopsis gave me a strong nukige vibe, so I skipped it. After playing it though, how should I put this… I’m feeling pretty conflicted.

Put simply, this game overturned my long-standing criteria for judging a story. (Spoilers ahead.)

The plot of Renai 0 Kilometer is simple and brutal: the protagonist and the girls from the neighboring house get swapped, and a harem comedy unfolds. As for the character designs, I can only say that aside from Noa, they’re basically anatomically impossible—the breasts are just too big… way too big… absurdly big. I’ve genuinely never seen a woman in real life with breasts the size of a winter melon. The minor characters, on the other hand, look perfectly normal—like Division Chief Onigawara and Himuroya. I don’t know if the developers thought “only the big-breasted ones are heroine material,” or if they were trolling big-breast fans with some elaborate malice. Either way… the designs aren’t doing it for me. But even though Noa looks the most normal, the devs gave her a ton of exaggerated expressions—especially that leering grin that’s genuinely terrifying and kills whatever mood was building. Though I gotta admit, after seeing it enough times, it kind of grows on you.

Even the voice casting is full of malice. Ai Shimizu completely abandons all dignity, and Yui Sakakibara and Kiritani Hana are cast as male characters. Even weirder, Ryouko Ono and Tae Okajima’s roles are the exact opposite of what they’re good at—Okajima, whose voice is perfect for soft girls like Kotonoha Katsura, gets cast as a tsundere who sounds just like Airi Sena, while Ono, who nails tsundere roles, plays the soft girl. At first I thought the cast list was printed backwards. Mayumi Yoshida’s foul-mouthed little sister, though, carries on the redhead tradition from Mashiroiro, so that’s mostly OK.

The presentation is just bad. First off, way too few BGM tracks. Second, the BGM cuts out and restarts every time the scene changes, and in key moments the scene changes are so frequent that you can’t even catch the rhythm—you’ve barely exchanged a few lines and the music’s already switched. This happens in a lot of games, like Hatsuyuki Sakura—super jarring. I don’t know if it’s an engine problem or a direction problem. By contrast, Sukimazakura to Uso no Machi handles its BGM perfectly—the piano piece in the final stretch plays all the way through without interruption and really elevates the story.

So the character designs aren’t great, the presentation isn’t great—where did the budget go? I can say with certainty: the backgrounds! The sky and riverside backgrounds aren’t just cool, they’re straight-up wallpaper material at full resolution! In fact, I think I’ve already seen them used as desktop wallpapers before—I just didn’t recognize which game they were from at the time.

As for the story, I can only say it has basically zero depth. It’s just everyday comedy, wall-to-wall snark and gags, endless gags, and plenty of lowbrow gags. I have to admit, the comedic chops are strong—Gintama-level. Ai Shimizu’s Noa in particular is the engine of the comedy; basically every scene she’s in gets a chuckle out of you.

Renai 0 Kilometer keeps getting ported. First there was a fandisc on PSP adding new characters voiced by Yukari Tamura and Kana Asumi, and Himuroya and Kiritani Hana’s little brother became romanceable too. Recently there’s talk of a PSV port, though no word on new characters this time. Honestly, for a game with this structure, adding a few more routes is no big deal. Especially since some characters already have route hooks left in—like the Yuzora route and Himuroya route branching off from the two twin sisters’ routes. The game even makes fun of itself about needing a fandisc to add routes, which leaves you with this speechless feeling of “they’ve already snarked at everything for you.”

By my usual standards for visual novels, Renai 0 Kilometer should have scored very low. It has no real story, average music, disjointed presentation, and terrifying facial expressions.

But… why? After finishing it, I didn’t get that “moe-pig” disgust from watching Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka?, nor that drained feeling of being moe’d out by Kyoto Animation faces while calmly thinking “this has nothing but moe.” Instead I felt… kinda… warm and fuzzy?

Almost every girl’s affection for the protagonist is maxed out, and the childhood friend is basically ready to confess. Yet somehow I keep feeling touched. This is a game with a painfully clichéd story, painfully rough production, painfully annoying music, and painfully weird character designs.

By comparison, Asairo, which I was playing at the same time, is high-class in every way, but I just couldn’t push through it… Caught between these two games, I fell into a contradiction.

Thinking about it carefully, maybe the reason is… Renai 0 Kilometer has its own style. From the very start it was positioned as a comedy romance, so it completely gave up on chasing high-class pretensions and just maxed out what it does. At the same time, the warmth of family and the noisy bustle of girls feel real.

What is girls’ talk like? I’ve seen girls chatting… and honestly… it’s no different from Renai 0 Kilometer—chattering away with no purpose, but unable to stop.

What is family like? Nobody actually says “I cherish you” or “you’re important to me” like in those high-class works. Most of the time it’s a relaxed atmosphere, horsing around, but the bond between you can’t be broken.

What is a childhood friend’s unrequited love like? It’s knowing everything but not wanting to be the first to say it, dropping hints nonstop, hoping the other person figures it out soon… while also agonizing over their denseness and vagueness, happy when they’re proactive, and annoyed when they accidentally reject you once.

Renai 0 Kilometer may look unreliable in every way, but it genuinely made me feel… it’s fun. It’s warm. You can say it has no depth, but aren’t the days we live through also plain and depthless like this?

I don’t know if there were women on the writing staff, but Renai 0 Kilometer has a unique charm in how it portrays girls as cute. After finishing it, I even felt like falling in love.

If I had to recommend either Asairo or Renai 0 Kilometer, I’d probably go with the latter. Sometimes so-called depth doesn’t necessarily mean a game is good. Whether a game is good or not—just ask your own heart whether it was moved.

Just like the lyrics of the insert song “Girl’s Song” by Chata:

まわるまわる世界の中心で // Spinning, spinning at the center of the world キミに出会えた奇跡 // The miracle of meeting you ほらみて、走り出した未来が // Look, the future that’s started running ここにあるの、Girl’s song // Is right here, this Girl’s Song

http://www.xiami.com/song/1771709672

Maybe… it’s exactly this girlish style that moved me… Renai 0 Kilometer is a girl’s song that’s all kinds of messy but still warm.

Lastly… I’ve already downloaded the PSP version. Kiritani Hana, even if you’re voicing a boy, I’ll still stan you!