Teaka Mamire no Tenshi (手垢塗れの天使) Review

Tegokami Nurete no Tenshi (手垢塗れの天使) is probably pretty well known by now. Before release it was marketed as an eroge about a supposedly pure idol who sells her body behind the scenes via casting couch deals, so the “手垢塗れ” in the title is really an abbreviation. The full phrase is “手垢に塗れる” (teaka ni mamireru), which Japanese dictionaries define as: 多くの人に使用されて汚れる.

What does that mean… getting dirty because a lot of people have used it.

Some people in China translated the game as “The Scarred Angel,” and at first I thought wow, that’s actually got some mood to it, but looking at the actual plot, it really doesn’t fit…

Better to call it “The Soiled Angel” or “The Bus Angel”… considering the heroine does have her pitiful moments, let’s skip the latter.

Compared to the advertising tagline “pillow business,” the story feels more like fraud to me…

Because when you hear “pillow business,” most of us imagine those actresses who sleep with people to get famous might have some sadness, some pity, some reluctant resignation. Unfortunately in this game, I don’t think that exists at all.

At the start, the game establishes that the heroine, Kisaragi Reina, is an idol who signed a one-year contract with an agency, but she’s had almost no work during that year. Reina goes to her agency’s producer and complains about having no work. She’s got decent enough looks and stats, but if this keeps up, she’ll be a complete failure as an idol.

The producer is helpless: it’s the warring states period of idols now, and a no-name minor idol like you can’t get famous easily. Reina begs him to do something, so the producer asks:

“Are you willing to do anything?”

“An idol who doesn’t sell has no reason to exist.” (The Japanese original is 売れる, which literally means a product selling well; applied to an idol it can mean getting famous or having commercial value, but here reading it as “sell” carries more irony.)

After that, the producer takes Reina to a drinking party and introduces her to some mid-level industry manager. The producer gives Reina a look, she thinks about it, and accepts what he’s implying.

Next thing, Reina the idol gives her virginity to this mid-level manager. She’s a little reluctant inside, but for the sake of a smooth idol career, she sleeps with him anyway.

After selling herself, Reina actually starts getting work. Just a small event, but better than nothing. Having gotten a taste, she feels she’s found a backer, and at another drinking party she runs into the same manager again and voluntarily offers herself, hoping for more chances to be seen…

But the manager is, after all, just a mid-level manager. The jobs he gives are still small events… Reina kept thinking one backer would be enough, but she realizes at this rate she’s still way too far from making it big…

What shocks her even more is seeing another idol from the same agency, Anri, also doing pillow business… and seemingly enjoying it.

“Unlike you, she actually genuinely enjoys it (sleeping with people)…” the producer tells Reina.

Reina understands now: just sleeping with people isn’t enough… and there’s competition for “sleeping with people” too… she has to be proactive, she has to find a bigger backer.

So at a TV-related event, Reina sets her sights on a director-level guy at the station. She approaches him on her own, breathes in his ear, fondles his crotch, and asks if he’s free tonight.

The director first gives Reina some advice: “As a pure-type idol, you need to take care of your ‘health.’”

Reina gets what he means, but still insists on sleeping with the director… and they do it.

Afterward Reina starts appearing on all sorts of TV programs and gains popularity. Sometimes, to show gratitude, she’ll go sleep with that TV director every few days, and her fame keeps rising. Sometimes people recognize her on the street as an idol.

“Ah, so that’s Reina-chan, she’s so pretty~”

Reina feels smug, as if she’s really not far from being a star.

Soon Reina’s workload increases. One day the agency producer comes to her:

“There’s an audition for a TV drama, want to go?”

“Yes!”

“But you can’t act, can you?”

“I can learn, I want to go!”

At the audition, Reina is rated “nothing special,” and she notices Anri from her agency is there too. Sensitive as she is, Reina realizes Anri intends to sleep with the audition director as well.

So Reina gets this weird burst of fighting spirit, uses every trick to get her fellow agency colleague out of the way, and sleeps with the director herself.

She gets the TV drama role, exposure grows, and Reina understands: she can keep using her body to raise her fame, she can’t be tied to just one person, she needs more connections, and she can’t be too casual about who she sleeps with — she needs to choose carefully, use anyone who can help her climb. Along with this, the number of people she sleeps with grows, sometimes she rejects someone’s advances out of poor judgment and later comes crawling back to beg… and naturally her popularity keeps rising.

Soon Reina catches the eye of some big sponsor… a company boss approaches her, says he wants to get to know her, and Reina, knowing full well what he means, goes along with it, sleeps with him, and with a big corporation as her backer, things get even smoother… her career skyrockets, exposure explodes, she’s singing, acting in movies, doing meet-and-greets…

She also starts attending all kinds of high-society drinking parties.

At one such party, the company boss’s son sees Reina… says he’s always been a fan, asks his dad if he can make Reina his girlfriend.

Reina is stunned… she doesn’t dare defy the boss, since he’s her backer, but she’s currently an idol, still doing the pure image, and idols can’t be dating anyone.

“How about this,” the boss tells Reina. “You date my son, but secretly. Also… my son thinks you’re still a virgin. Please keep the fact that you’ve been deflowered to yourself, and don’t cause me any trouble.”

Reina can’t afford to offend her backer, so she agrees.

Fortunately the boss’s son is a total idiot. Reina uses her period blood to cover up the virginity lie, and the son actually believes he took her virginity, not knowing his own dad already developed her long ago.

After that Reina’s life gets busy: activities all day, sleeping with all sorts of people at night…

Then one day, invited to an event organized by the boss, the son even fucks Reina in a small room in front of his own father, asking his dad if he’s doing it well… Reina figures this event will definitely get media exposure, so she endures it…

But when she gets home, there’s no exposure, the headlines aren’t about her, and she suddenly discovers… a new idol has appeared out of nowhere. This idol is better in every way, popularity skyrocketing, and it seems like she might not be using her body either — though Reina can’t be sure, at least outwardly she’s still a “pure idol.”

The idol market is brutal. Soon Reina’s popularity is completely overshadowed by this supernova idol, information about her is everywhere instead of Reina. Then Reina discovers she’s pregnant. The agency producer asks: “Whose child is it?”

“I don’t know…” Reina really doesn’t know. Too many people have fucked her.

“Then, get ready, go back to your hometown,” the producer says coldly.

Reina actually understands: as an idol, pregnancy is basically a death sentence… the market is just that cruel.

She also can’t reach her corporate backer anymore, and the boss’s son texts her to break up.

The agency quietly posts a notice on their website at midnight announcing Reina’s retirement.

Reina was only hot for less than a year, yet lost her heat in less than two weeks… fallen from heaven to hell.

As Reina prepares to go home, she checks her email and finds one diehard fan still supporting her — a fan who’s been supporting her since before she even started sleeping with people. Looking at the supernova idol’s promotional poster, Reina gets an idea.

In the end, Reina doesn’t go back to her hometown. Instead, she marries that diehard fan, hides her pregnancy, and the fan believes the child is his. Funny thing, that diehard fan is a “regular company employee”… Reina looks at her husband and son, then at the currently popular idol star, and thinks to herself:

“It’s only just beginning.”

Then the ED plays, and during it, tabloid reports about “the idol industry forcing stars into pillow business” flash by. At the very end, a chilling scene: a child pushes a company employee carrying a briefcase onto the train tracks, and the employee is struck dead.

The game just ends there.

At first I figured Reina chose revenge — exposing her forced pillow business as a victim, trying to get a different kind of exposure — and the person pushing someone onto the tracks was more like the exposed party finding a scapegoat.

Later the game released a 1.01 patch that fleshed out the ending explanation, adding a letter from Reina’s son to his father.

“Dad, I killed someone. You may have noticed, Mom is gone.”

“Dad told me Mom used to be an idol, but then the news said Mom did those things when she was an idol… I can’t forgive it.”

“I did a DNA test and found out I’m not Dad’s son… Actually, I don’t even know whose son I am. Mom doesn’t know either.”

“Unforgivable. I can’t forgive them, I can’t forgive anyone involved in this. Even though I love Dad, I love Mom, I still can’t forgive these people.”

“So I investigated, and I’m going to kill them. One by one.”

Finally Reina’s son pulls out a diary listing Reina’s agency producer, that minor director, the company boss, and all sorts of people she slept with. Everyone killed has a cross next to their name, and the minor director’s cause of death is written as “train collision.”

Game end.

Ah… this game hits way too hard. It’s made me completely unable to watch idol interview shows now… because the depiction is too realistic. The way Reina talks during interviews in the game — pick any Japanese variety show interview, and you’ll find it’s almost identical. And parachute idols really are common in the Japanese idol industry; even in the voice acting world you often see some new female VA suddenly sweeping a whole season’s worth of lead roles. Combined with this game, it’s really hard to say whether “the agency is pushing her” or “she’s working hard finding all these directors and producers herself.” I’m sure there are absolutely actresses in the industry who “spread their legs for directors,” and not just in Japan — probably more in China. This game gave me a huge sense of déjà vu; I even feel like a lot of recently retired or suddenly popular actresses might be connected to this.

When fiction makes you think of reality, that’s the scary part of this game’s story.

The ending is a tragedy. Reina is probably dead, though whether she died at her son’s hands is hard to say, since her name isn’t crossed out in that little notebook. But one thing is clear: Reina’s tragedy is her own doing.

That’s what hit me hardest. At first I thought the heroine was forced into selling herself, but from the midpoint on, every time Reina sleeps with someone, she’s the one initiating it. Rather, she goes to great lengths to eliminate rivals and actively offers herself. And there’s competition even for that — the fellow agency idol got schemed against by Reina.

At that point Reina looked so ugly to me: stopping at nothing for fame, even hurting others, sleeping with countless people while maintaining a pure image on TV, and when meeting fans, showing disgust outwardly while secretly gloating that so many people follow her and she’s famous — hypocritical and vain.

The game has a “hidden dialogue” system where you can see Reina’s true thoughts in certain scenes. When she’s first pleasing those producers, her inner thoughts are just “So disgusting, hurry up and fuck me so I can leave.” Later, when she’s actually asking someone for a favor via sex, her thoughts become “I let you fuck me this much, you can forgive me, right? If not, maybe I should be even more proactive next time.”

In other words, from the first time Reina discovered she could solve problems with sex, she stopped treating her body as anything important.

Actually that minor TV director spelled it all out: to be a long-lasting pure idol, “health” is important. But Reina’s body was never healthy — a complete bus. She doesn’t cherish her body either, uses it whenever, lets anyone fuck her whenever, actively offers herself, actively acts as a cum dump. The fame from drinking poison to quench thirst naturally doesn’t last long.

“アイドルは、売れないと意味がないんです” (An idol who doesn’t sell has no meaning)

Reina kept using this line to motivate herself to keep falling further…

As for the ending, some people in Japan think Reina retired, married, and disappeared. But considering her last line, “ここから本気の勝負だ” (the real fight starts here), I think she’s also the one who leaked the story to the tabloids. She’s gone dark, willing to do anything for fame, so packaging herself as a victim and claiming she was forced into pillow business just to gain notoriety is entirely possible.

Actually it’s not like Reina never reflected on herself. After sleeping with someone she’d feel that while she’s famous now, she’s far from the youthful idol image she originally dreamed of. But since she’d already done it, she went all in. Reina ultimately chose to keep going down that path rather than stop.

Even though the game is a nukige, the story is surprisingly serious, and the psychological portrayal is on point. If I had to name a flaw, it’s that Reina lacks hesitation when she first gives up her virginity — she just goes along with it immediately. But it’s hard to say; maybe she really didn’t care about her body at all?

Reina is a vividly written character: stopping at nothing to be an idol, sacrificing herself, degrading herself, giving up self-respect. I don’t know how many people have read Shofu Baijie, but Baijie, even as a bus, always gives off a “going with the flow,” “forced” feeling from start to finish. Reina, on the other hand, feels like a complete slut. Even at the very end she uses her past for炒作 (hype), really digging her own grave — zero sympathy.

That’s why I think calling this game’s title, Tegokami Nurete no Tenshi, “The Scarred Angel” doesn’t fit. The heroine isn’t “scarred” — it’s her own lack of self-respect that caused everything. Honestly I don’t think she deserves to be called an “angel” at all. ビッチ (bitch) is exactly what she is. Still, “手垢塗れ” in the title is brilliant.

手垢に塗れる: 多くの人に使用されて汚れる.

So the heroine is basically like a tool, fucked by countless men, and after enough use, she gets dirty…

An angel soiled by hands, an angel dirtied by fucking… maybe that fits better.