Shunki Gentei Poco a Poco! (春季限定ポコ・ア・ポコ!) Review

I was feeling down a while back, so I figured I’d play something to lift my mood. That’s when I came across the OP for “Haru Shiki Gentei Poco a Poco!” on YouTube — or more accurately, the OP sounded way too damn familiar, because it was on a music collection CD from some Angle Note thing I bought. I’d listened to it a ton of times without ever knowing it was this game’s OP.

The OP is depressingly sad. You can tell the protagonist’s important person died and he can’t move past it. But then I looked up reviews and everyone was going on and on about what a fun, cheerful game it is.

Whatever. I needed some comedy anyway, and once I saw the little sister’s CV, I was sold.

So how was it…

Is this game as sad as the OP, or as fun as the online reviews say?

Turns out neither one’s wrong.

The game starts off fast. The protagonist’s father is a great artist, and he was forced to learn cello from childhood and got really good at it. Then his father vanished, leaving him to scrape by with his non-blood-related little sister. Meanwhile, a piano prodigy he met at school named Haruka suddenly died. He liked Haruka, but never confessed, and after that he gave up the cello and stayed stuck in her shadow. Haruka’s twin sister Natsumi actually likes him too, but she knows he can’t get over her sister, so intentionally or not she tries to imitate Haruka, getting close to her piano level, hoping he’ll notice her. At the same time, she keeps coaxing and pushing him to pick his music career back up.

In the end, what forces him to decide to play cello again isn’t any of Natsumi’s persuasion — it’s that he got into school on a cello scholarship with tuition waived. If he stops playing, the school revokes his special-student status and the tuition waiver goes with it. He’s broke to begin with, and he has a little sister to take care of. Tuition would be the end of him. So he has no choice but to compromise with the school: perform in a quartet with the music club at the graduation recital, and if it goes well, he keeps the scholarship and the waiver.

The rest of the story you can figure out with your ass. In Natsumi’s route, he stumbles across something Haruka left behind — a piano piece meant for him — and at the end hears a message from her. She tells him she actually wouldn’t have accepted his confession, and… she thinks his playing isn’t all that great, but he has a lot of room to improve, so she wants him to pull himself together, practice every day, not give up, blah blah blah. In the end, once he’s been dumped, he feels relieved, comes out of the shadow, and accepts Natsumi’s confession. (Kind of has a “if I can’t have the older sister, I’ll settle for the younger one” vibe.)

Put even more simply: it’s a story about a guy who falls into despair because the person he loved died, and eventually climbs out of it.

Short synopsis, but touching, right? Yeah, that’s the kind of story it is — at least it matches the OP’s content…

But the actual game is nothing like that!

The main plot is actually really short — a few scenes and it’s told. But the daily-life scenes are long! You could say the daily stuff makes up 80% of the game’s volume. I’m not saying the daily scenes are bad — I’m praising them!

Why? Because they’re not boring! Nothing but gags! Nothing but comedy! Great presentation! Standout CVs!

I have to single out the little sister voiced by Kiritani Hana, Nonomiya Ai. She’s a freaking plot bulldozer — without her, this game loses 70% of its fun. She embodies the very definition of “mid-lane carry, setting the pace, carrying the whole team.” The voice acting is spot-on, the lines are hilarious, and she brings to life a lively, cute, innocent, hopelessly brocon little sister to the fullest. I felt like I ran out of adjectives, because anything I say sounds pale. Just go play the game. Also, I personally think Nonomiya Ai’s route is the longest — the early buildup, the middle part where she bends… no, turns her brother into a siscon, and the later part where the real sister shows up and the father gets redeemed are all tight and well-paced.

Her performance is so bright that sometimes I feel the game gets instantly boring the moment it stops being slice-of-life and starts telling a story straight — I’d rather watch the little sister’s comedy faces…

But thinking about it again, yeah, that’s about right.

Overall, Haru Shiki Gentei Poco a Poco! isn’t a particularly great visual novel. For one, the content strays way off from the theme — “Poco a Poco!” is what Haruka says to the protagonist, meaning “take it slow.” “Haru Shiki Gentei” is the limited-time recital he’s doing. The story should have stuck tight to that theme and followed the OP’s tempo. But who the hell would’ve guessed the story itself would turn into a comedy? This isn’t an Asa Project game…

Because the comedic parts take up so much of the game, there’s basically nothing to see in the main line — no foreshadowing, no setup. Suddenly the protagonist confesses, suddenly they’re going at it, suddenly they’re banging without warning, then the ED, and the EDs are all identical with no variation. Cheap. Sometimes I feel like this game slapped on some random setting, told a rushed main story, and filled the rest with gags…

Sometimes I think this game is a bit like last year’s Koi x Shin Ai Kanojo — the selling point doesn’t match what’s actually in it. Except Shinsakai Yuu got dragged out and told to take responsibility, while this one’s planner, Seo Jun, nobody’s come after him.

By the way, I keep getting this sense of déjà vu — this game reminds me of another one I played before, called Aete Musi Suru Kimi to no Mirai Relay broadcast. Except Haru Shiki Gentei Poco a Poco! came earlier. I also feel like these two games are almost identical in pacing, story, and structure — the CVs are similar too, with only slight changes. I compared the two, and the planner for both is Seo Jun alone, so chronologically, Aete Musi Suru Kimi to no Mirai feels like a rerun and imitation of Haru Shiki Gentei. Same pattern, done again. And it’s true — Aete Musi Suru Kimi to no Mirai is about some Relaxation Club, and the protagonist can see the future, but it’s basically useless. The setting is just a setting, and most of it’s gags…

It’s like the teacher tells you to write a Chinese essay with a big theme, reflections on life, and you hand in a comedy routine. Maybe the teacher reads it and thinks, “Ah, this student is talented, that routine was great.” But in the end, a routine can’t be a “essay.”

Fortunately, eroge don’t have that kind of restriction — as long as they please the player, that’s enough. So Aete Musi Suru Kimi to no Mirai and Haru Shiki Gentei Poco a Poco! are miles away from their themes, but nobody says anything. Only Shinsakai Yuu gets the short end of the stick — Koi x Shin Ai Kanojo just had the audacity to add an after-story, and he got strung up and flogged again.

To be objective about this game: the art’s average, the music left no impression, the daily scenes are fun but the main story is clichéd, and a lot of things that should’ve been explained aren’t. Feels like the story was just tossed together. If I scored it as a project, the quality score wouldn’t be high.

To borrow the high-handed, pretentious way the dumb kids on Chuuni Space (Chuuni Space) rate Nora to Oujo to Noraneko Heart: “This game is utterly tasteless, has no depth, and the story is boring.”

Yeah, viewed as a story, it really is boring. でも好き。そして、ぼくがシスコンになる。

One more thing: it’s a shame the senpai isn’t a route. Rita’s voice acting is great — why’d she have to give up voice work and go into that dead-end music singing career? (lol)