PriministAr (PriministAr -プライミニスター) Review

I got into HookSoft games pretty early — back when I was still a virgin.

I remember the one I played was called HoneyComing. I actually found it on the school FTP out of boredom, and it was one of those green install versions with no translation.

I couldn’t understand the text back then, but the game did have a manga scanlated by Sumisora! I flipped through it out of boredom. Fortunately the setup was simple enough that after reading the manga, I could roughly follow the dialogue from the tone, the character sprites, and the occasional kanji. Something about an idiot protagonist taking a class on how to pick up girls at school… all that nonsense.

I do remember there was this one girl with a chopstick stuck in her hair who was pretty cute. I liked her. Can’t remember her name now — something-gaya, I think.

Anyway, I thought the game was pretty good at first. Mostly because the art was nice and the girls were cute. I wasn’t watching much anime back then, but this game really sparked something in me — activated my inner moe pig genes, I guess. Kind of nostalgic to think about. Oh, and it was definitely the 18+ version. First time I saw a girl gobbling down mosaic censorship, it scared the shit out of me so hard my dick got hard. Took me a while to calm down.

But time flies. Nearly ten years later, that virgin who first touched a Hook game has grown up into an old virgin. Really makes you sigh — Time flies, huh. Though I don’t know why my eyes are watering as I sigh…

I didn’t really follow HookSoft after that. I honestly thought the company was dead. Later I found out SMEE and ASA Project were both under their umbrella, which surprised me — those two twisted studios didn’t seem like they’d come from the same place as Hook, which had given me that pure first-love goddess vibe. Anyway, I saw Hook again last year when the translated LovelyQuest and the new Traveling Stars -Traveling Stars- came out. I played through both. Honestly? Pretty shit. The former was okay-ish but felt like it was still running on the same HoneyComing setup from years ago, and the latter… what the fuck even was that…

But recently I read some impressions from Japanese players and discovered a Hook game from a few years back: PriministAr -プライミニスター. So I figured I’d give it a shot. Three reasons, really: one, the art looked good; two, the Japanese said one route was great and the rest were shit; and three, as an old virgin, I wanted to reminisce about the days when I was still a virgin.

I have no idea where the name PriministAr -プライミニスター comes from. It sounds cool, looks cool, but serves absolutely no purpose. The game tells you right away: you’re the harem protagonist. You’ve got your childhood friend Kanoko, your devoted kouhai Edamori Chisato, your tsundere classmate, and some cool beauty from another club. The whole world revolves around you. That’s the setup from the start — the noble protagonist refuses to join the other guys’ “Schoolgirl Swimsuits and Uniforms Forced Plan” and becomes the only male left in the culture club building, and so begins his wonderful life.

So there’s no main plot, no foreshadowing, not even a slightly complex worldview. Just: one school building, all other males kicked out, you’re the only one left. What happens next is up to you.

The common route feels really weird. The everyday conversations are low and boring. The jokes are on the level of a CCTV New Year’s Gala skit (the military kind, even). The developments have no end in sight because there’s no main plot or endpoint to begin with — they just make shit up as they go, jumping from one thing to another. You don’t know what they’re building toward, and you don’t know what the writer wants to tell you. Many of the heroines’ personalities are so one-note I could tell what they were like before they even opened their mouths. And a lot of the voice acting is just bad. Akino Hana’s Kanoko is passable, but it’s that voice type I wasn’t too fond of early on. Aoba Ringo’s sidekick girl has a rare voice but nothing else going for her. Everyone besides Edamori Chisato is second-rate. Ruruko’s personality is certainly unique, but… she’s just too mentally ill.

Some Japanese players like Ruruko because she’s the engine of the boring slice-of-life. I personally can’t stand her. Annoying, loud, low. Too many references I don’t get, and every time I see Ruruko’s face I feel like I’ve seen it somewhere before — there’s this nasty, gross, sticky vibe to it. One look and I want to punch her.

Maybe to make up for PriministAr’s stupid common route, the game has a separate BBS bulletin board system called P.I.T. You can check it anytime during the game, and you can even have it update in real time in the top right corner during conversations, showing other students chatting and discussing things. Sometimes it’s related to the protagonist’s story (like starting a harem at the school gate), sometimes it’s just random chatter. But… it serves no purpose. Who the hell refreshes that thing every day? And it’s too disconnected from the story. I don’t get the appeal of abandoning the main plot to open up a new battlefield elsewhere. Most importantly, having updates pop up in the top right corner like little ads is really fucking annoying!

Overall, PriministAr still feels like a character-driven キャラゲー — just keep picking the girl you want to see. The Japanese say the most highly rated route is Edamori Chisato’s, so I didn’t have many thoughts about the others and just went with that one. Honestly, even that route is… something.

Edamori Chisato’s route is way, way, way simpler than I expected. As a child, Chisato had bad eyes — something like color blindness. She was insecure about it and withdrawn. The protagonist didn’t discriminate against her; instead he pulled her into the handicraft club he’d founded, taught her to knit (time to sing “Knitting a Sweater”), did crafts together. And for a guy who helped her like that, Chisato fell for him… clinging to him constantly. And all of this happened before the game even starts. It’s only explained later in flashbacks. So from the very beginning of the common route, Chisato’s affection for the protagonist is already maxed out. What happens next? Do I even need to say? She confesses naturally, and they start dating.

The romance itself is pretty ordinary. But then one day, the protagonist notices Chisato can’t tell some colors apart, calls her stupid, complains about it, and Chisato confesses that she actually can’t see colors anymore. Because of her bad eyes as a child, a congenital condition, the doctor said it would only get worse — she might even go blind. Then Chisato feels like she lied to the protagonist and runs out. Then it rains, she gets hit by a car… hospital… The protagonist meets Chisato’s mother, who tells him everything about Chisato’s condition, that blindness is very likely in the future, thanks him for taking care of her daughter, and of course says that if he chooses to leave her, neither she nor her daughter would blame him.

Naturally, the protagonist stays by her side… continues caring for Chisato, and they keep dating as a normal couple. Under the night sky at the end, Chisato says in his arms: “Thank you for always treating me like a normal girl and loving me.” And then Chisato goes blind anyway.

But in the end, the protagonist still marries Chisato. The ending is relatively happy…

So this route… man, there’s stuff to complain about!

What kind of congenital color blindness leads to blindness? I looked it up and couldn’t find any related medical cases. And blindness isn’t something you just decide happens, okay? You can’t pull a Korean drama tearjerker like that. At least make it plausible, right?

Also, the route has huge disjointed gaps. The common route is all lighthearted, jumping from one thing to another, and the first half of Chisato’s personal route is like that too. But the moment the “Chisato is colorblind” thing hits, the whole route takes a sharp turn into funeral tragedy. Worst of all, the pacing dies and it feels like a forced ending and forced tears. If you look at Chisato’s route in isolation, the cause and effect connect nicely. But the game scattered all that across the common route and the first half of her route, so in the end it can’t wring out many tears.

So is Chisato’s route completely unbearable? Not at all. That’s thanks to her voice actress, Shirayuki Kaname.

Shirayuki Kaname’s performance as Chisato is just perfect. That voice is so gentle. Put another way, with Chisato’s character design standing there, you feel like that’s exactly the voice she should have — and Shirayuki Kaname produces exactly that voice. She does a great job creating a gentle, one-sidedly in love, slightly ill-fated fragile girl.

By the way, Shirayuki Kaname (real name Matsuyama Sayaka) has it rough. This game made me realize she’s actually got chops. She was apparently an honor student at voice acting school — she was even featured on the official site with “Currently appearing in games, TV anime, and more!” But it’s all eroge and ero-anime… And aside from this month’s game, the other roles Shirayuki Kaname has voiced are pretty rough. Her performances aren’t great, and the characters themselves aren’t great either. I don’t know if it’s bad delivery or bad characters. Her agency-mate Akino Hana is doing much better… Though that “Yellow Tail” agency is basically all eroge voice actors anyway…

All that said, for PriministAr, I mostly agree with the Japanese assessment. Besides Chisato, I have no interest in anyone. But Chisato’s route isn’t as good as they say either… The art is nice, the music is whatever, Chisato’s voice actress is a big plus, the story doesn’t subtract too much. Mash it all together and it’s just that: an ordinary bishoujo game.

Finally, out of boredom, I looked up an old HoneyComing playthrough that I remembered enjoying… and found… it’s just as boring as PriministAr… no, actually worse than PriministAr. I genuinely wondered, “Why did I think this game was fun back then?” Then I realized: probably because I was still a virgin back then and hadn’t seen anything yet.

Looking at Japanese impressions of Hook as a company, people say their trademarks are “pure love,” “sleep-inducing,” and “cute.” Comparing that to my experiences with HoneyComing and PriministAr, all I can really say is: “Okay, that’s so Hook.”