Tayutama 2 -You're the only one- (タユタマ2 -you’re the only one-) Review

Last year Lump of Sugar put out two games…

And each was worse than the last. The first, Renai Relation, had a baffling system and not a single interesting thing in the plot. The second, Kodomo no Asobi, maybe had slightly better writing, but the art was absolutely terrible!

Funny thing, I looked back at the studio’s older stuff—back in 2014 and even earlier they were still doing two titles a year, and the premises were just as dumb as ever, but at least the art was decent. I played Unmei Senjou no Phi too; the system was actually pretty flashy, but for a game billed as a mystery, the story was a total joke…

So I’ve always figured Lump of Sugar pumps these out assembly-line style: someone grabs a premise, holds a meeting, rounds up a few writers (they don’t even have a fixed writing team), the artist is at least consistent with Moekibara Fumitake, the music is whatever, and the only real muscle in the company is the programming side—they’ll cobble together any weird gimmick you can think of. Keyword hunting, fruit slicing, timed hidden third options. Going by that Japanese expose on the eroge industry, Lump of Sugar probably just leans on Moekibara to push the first wave of limited-edition sales and then calls it a day. The stories aren’t really that interesting; it’s mostly carried by the voice acting, art, and programming. So honestly, I don’t play their games all that seriously (same as how I play crap from that shit-tier studio), I just skim through and move on…

This year’s Lump of Sugar feels different though. Maybe they finally got their act together, maybe it’s because it’s their tenth anniversary and they figured holding yet another press conference to announce a new title would be stupid—better to sit down and make a proper commemorative game. So they took their biggest hit from ten years ago, Tayutama -kiss on my deity-, and made a sequel using the same setting. Plenty of people probably remember Tayutama—there was an anime, called Yuu On (Tayutama), and back in the day the studio even did a crossover between the anime and Yuzusoft’s Tenshin Ranman. Pretty nuts, right? They really went all-in. So bringing back the old setting for a sequel has a bit of that Alcot-doing-Clover Day’s vibe—look back at history, look forward to the future, carry on the legacy, march steadily forward.

The sequel is called Tayutama 2 -you’re the only one-, and it continues from the first game. The first game was about the conflict between humans and Tayutai; the second takes place in a town where the heroes of the first game have established a place where humans and Tayutai can coexist peacefully.

The protagonist, Kusakabe Sora, runs into Kohaku, a Tayutai adopted daughter raised by the first game’s heroine, Izumo Mashiro. He helps her out, the girl decides he’s a good guy, and drags him home to tell her mother she’s going to marry him.

Then the protagonist can’t resist the invitation to the girl’s house (a shrine)—he doesn’t have any family of his own, after all—so he moves in. Yeah, Japanese players called this opening crap, since the whole “hero suddenly announces he’s engaged to some girl and moves into her house” setup is just so trite. But those same people bitching about this didn’t say a word about Yuzusoft’s Senren * Banka doing the exact same thing. Look at these double-standard otaku…

As for the story itself… I don’t think there’s much to say, because it’s so incredibly normal. So normal you can guess the whole thing. The protagonist starts going to school with Kohaku, meets various classmates—some Tayutai, some human, some humans connected to Tayutai. Kohaku’s wish is to promote friendly coexistence between humans and Tayutai, and getting two different races to achieve grand unity is a world-class problem. I mean, America is still resisting Muslims, ISIS is still shooting off everywhere, right? So even in the game, all they manage is one small town. Creating a “world where humans and Tayutai can coexist peacefully” isn’t that simple.

So in the late game, a villainous Tayutai shows up. He doesn’t trust humans, doesn’t want to coexist with them, breaks the town’s protective barrier, and tries to incite Tayutai and humans to hurt each other. Then the protagonist and the righteous, politically-correct, anti-racism heroine Kohaku take down this boss. The way they do it is pretty ridiculous—more speechifying plus the power of love.

So that’s the feel of the individual heroine routes—nothing special. In the end the villain is defeated, human-Tayutai coexistence is politically correct, and anyone who opposes peace gets destroyed.

But here’s the interesting part: there’s one more route in the game, the route for the first game’s heroine, Izumo Mashiro. I got a little wicked—since this is a sequel and the protagonist changed… could it be… the first game’s protagonist got cucked? Remember, in the setting, this Izumo Mashiro is already married to the first game’s protagonist, Izumo Yūri.

Getting into Izumo Mashiro’s route isn’t easy—you have to clear all the other heroines first before she unlocks…

I clicked it and was immediately disappointed… The viewpoint switches to Izumo Yūri, so it’s still the original couple. No NTR. Ugh… Not that I’m into cuckolding, but I don’t know why I was disappointed. Still, there was a bit of that feeling, you know… right…

I didn’t have any particular expectations for this route at first, but it turns out… this is actually the game’s real main story.

The perspective is different from the second game’s protagonist, Kusakabe Sora—it’s Izumo Yūri and Izumo Mashiro’s route, and this route ends up being a breath of fresh air, perfectly solving the second protagonist’s inexplicable place in the story.

What does the second protagonist even do? Goes to school every day, flirts with girls, argues with classmates, then the boss shows up and he defeats it with the power of love (and a girl does it anyway). Nothing else. Yet he still gets the girl.

The final route reveals that the second protagonist’s smooth sailing was actually built on a lot of people’s hardship. When Kohaku first set her sights on Kusakabe Sora as a husband candidate, Izumo Mashiro had already had someone dig up his entire background. All those classmates and incidents the second protagonist ran into—behind the scenes, Izumo Mashiro and her old friends were quietly helping and resolving things, which is why everything went so smoothly. As for the final boss, Izumo Mashiro had already noticed it and teamed up with Izumo Yūri to confront it. But Yūri’s route ends a little differently—it reveals the identity of the mastermind’s avatar, who turns out to be the second protagonist’s buddy classmate. It also reveals the source of the Tayutai’s spiritual energy in the town, which the boss wanted to grab to make a big splash. In the end, Izumo Mashiro casually flattens the boss, and Izumo Yūri barely even lifts a finger. These two are terrifying…

So the second protagonist and his female friends get to live so freely entirely thanks to the efforts of the people behind them… From that angle, Izumo Yūri’s route feels more like the true sequel, the game’s True End. After the boss is taken down, Izumo Yūri and Izumo Mashiro entrust the town’s peacekeeping duties to their adopted daughter and her husband (the dim-witted second protagonist, Kusakabe Sora), and the old couple goes off traveling. Years later they return to find the town utterly harmonious… and the world a better place.

Like that giant cherry tree says, peaceful coexistence between humans and Tayutai is hard, but one day it should come true. Izumo Mashiro says she’s getting old and hopes her daughter will carry on and make that wish a reality. It’s a happy ending, more or less.

So personally, I think Tayutama 2 -you’re the only one- is the best game Lump of Sugar has made in the past two years. Why? Do I even need a reason? Uplifting story, solid art, proper systems. Sure, the slice-of-life is plain boiled water, but what’s wrong with plain water? Colorless, tasteless, no nutrition, but it hydrates—way better than being force-fed shit soup. Shit soup, strictly speaking, has more calories than pure water. You want to drink it?

The story is flat, but it does manage to say something—like the peaceful coexistence between humans and Tayutai, racial conflict. Izumo Kohaku offers a more constructive view than the first heroine: humans have their way of life, Tayutai have theirs, and mutual existence should mean mutual understanding, not forcing one side to cater to the other. Only then can racial conflict be resolved. Sure, some Tayutai don’t like humans, and we can’t force them to. Respect their choice. A Tayutai who dislikes humans won’t necessarily hurt them—don’t tar them all with the same brush. As long as there’s peace, understanding, and coexistence, things work out.

Look at this little girl—her take on race policy is way more advanced than some countries’. Yeah, I’m talking about you, X., Trump, I’m talking about you.

The game doesn’t support HiDPI, but the art is gorgeous enough, and the programming carries on Lump of Sugar’s strong tradition—adds dynamic tail and animal-ear effects, plus blinking. None of this is new, but Lump of Sugar does it the most naturally. Only, if you’re playing on a tablet, CPU usage gets a bit high… The final cherry-blossom-petals-blowing effect literally made my tablet fan take off…

Both the OP and ED are great; probably a lot of people have already heard them. The lyrics are good too, so I won’t go on about them.

Despite all the praise, the game isn’t flawless. Beyond the plain water, the soundtrack is really… some of it is low. Like, low-rent electronic music low. To put it nicely… unpleasant. To put it bluntly, it’s noise. And the plain-water pacing might not be for everyone. The game is stuffed with super-long honorifics—yeah, aside from that triangle-eyed guy who talks all masculine, basically everyone speaks in honorifics. They go on forever, and reading them is exhausting. You accidentally misread who’s giving and who’s receiving, because Japanese has that bullshit grammar where passive form is used for honorifics. You also get the feeling everyone is being super polite, endlessly polite, and sometimes it’s just lifeless—doesn’t feel warm.

But honorifics can be solved with the Chinese version. This game has a Chinese version someone licensed and translated. I looked at it—man, it’s streamlined. You have to be grateful Chinese doesn’t have that many honorifics; at most you get respectful vocabulary, so it reads much smoother. Though it also feels like something’s missing…

The Chinese localization is fine—one はい got mistranslated, but otherwise good. That the localization group would get flamed is expected, but compared to the group that got flamed hardest recently, this is way better. It’s supposedly an official Chinese release, so you can look forward to it.

All in all, Tayutama 2 -you’re the only one- is a pretty good game. At least Lump of Sugar has found its niche. Apart from the story being overly watered down and some BGM being painful to listen to, there’s nothing really bad. The crowd on ErogameScape saying they can’t understand why it’s so boring is pure double standards—Yuzusoft’s Senren * Banka has an opening setup just like this, why don’t you complain about that? The real problem might be that this game feels more like a fandisc to a game from N years ago; the focus is really on the first protagonist and first heroine’s continuing story. The second protagonist and his girls are just another love story in the same world…

So some people think the second protagonist is basically useless, and I agree. But the second protagonist is the husband chosen by the second heroine, and the second heroine is the successor chosen by the first heroine. The task of maintaining racial peace just suddenly falls to Kohaku. You can’t tell them to find someone better, and you can’t recite a couple of poems either. In the end it’s a Happy End. You ask me if I support it? The story ends in a Happy End—how could I not support it?

So all in all, the game feels like it’s saying the beautiful world the first protagonist and heroine created isn’t finished yet, but there’s already a successor. Kohaku sees Kusakabe Sora and says this man will be her husband. I thought about it—maybe the game is also conveying a message about fate. That’s probably what the subtitle “you’re the only one” means.