Corona Blossom Vol.2 The Truth From Beyond Review

Not long after Corona Blossom wrapped up, Vol.2 got announced. Not really a surprise — the series was billed as three volumes from the start.

The funny part is that Corona Blossom launched in Japan a month after Steam, meaning Steam got it first. Same for Vol.2: a galgame with a Japanese release slated for November, and it hits Steam ahead of schedule. Gotta hand it to them.

Vol.1 didn’t score well on ErogameScape. Most of the complaints were that the story doesn’t go anywhere, the slice-of-life is boring, splitting it into volumes is shameless, etc. And honestly? Fair. These days if your eroge doesn’t have a shrine maiden with a deep grudge, or an idol restoring a fallen nation, or a cursed katana you can bang, or a train module you can bang, who the hell cares? Standard developments are played out. A lump of metal falls from the sky, goes duang, and turns into a cat-eared girl — light novels were doing that ten years ago. All tropes, bruh.

But here’s the thing: Corona Blossom looks exactly like Frontwing’s test-the-waters cash grab aimed at overseas markets. Before Vol.1 hit Steam, they ran an Indiegogo campaign that closed at $55,030 — about ¥5,762,466. The game sells for ¥2,000 a volume in Japan, so that’s roughly 2,880 copies from Indiegogo alone, plus Steam sales, plus Japanese sales… Can’t say it’s a killing, but it’s definitely turning a profit. Unlike those ugly Japanese otaku, the Western weeaboos (weeaboo: the Western term for moe-obsessed 2D nerds) are purer and grosser about it — they’re the kind of foreigners who yell “Kawaii!” at any cute girl and “Daisuki!” the moment one says “Oniichan.” (You’ve seen those photo sets of the famous Swedish — or wherever — otaku? Yeah, like that.) So even though Vol.1’s story is clichéd and its developments are corny, the foreigners ate it up. Because compared to China, there’s barely any galgame available in the West (so go thank the fan translation groups, except the one that’s always machine-translating), so they’re genuinely grateful for anything they can play. And it’s from Frontwing, so I bet some dumb foreigner actually thought it’d have Grisaia-tier writing.

So Vol.1 shipped, the gweilos got conned into paying, and the Vol.2 crowdfunding began. Now what? How do you keep milking them? Frontwing pulled out the killer app, which was…

The 18+ uncensored patch! (Doraemon sound effect goes here)

Yeah, back in Vol.1 the gweilos were already screaming: why release a game in America but still have it bound by Japanese law? That’s not scientific! We want uncensored dicks and pussies!

So Frontwing popped up and said: As you wish! Back Vol.2 at the $15 tier and you get an 18+ mosaic-free DLC patch!

Mosaic-free. No mosaics. The weeaboos instantly exploded and the funding shot through the roof. Vol.1 hit about 150% of its goal; Vol.2 went past 300%, which is insane. Frontwing kept the momentum going with merch — keychains sold out, the ten-buck mugs sold out, the mousepads sold out… Foreigners’ buying power is terrifying.

As a bystander I just watched these weeaboos debase themselves in slack-jawed disbelief… I also can’t help suspecting that Frontwing claiming they “couldn’t do uncensored” for Vol.1 was deliberate, saved for round two.

There’s a Vol.3 too, so I figure Frontwing’s got another killer app to squeeze more money out of the gweilos. Let’s see what the third campaign rolls out.

Now, the game. It picks up right after Vol.1 — anyone who played knows the pirate LiLy (リリ) shows up at the end saying she’s taking Arne (R-NE). Each volume seems built around a character: Vol.1 was basically R-NE’s arrival, some simple bonding, and the villain LiLy showing up at the end. The pirate’s after R-NE, so Vol.2 is the pirate arc.

I don’t know how many of you have played standard Japanese galgames, but generally — barring the weird ones, the troll ones, the revenge-on-society ones — the structure is: characters introduced -> main plot teased -> OP -> slice-of-life -> conflict -> final confrontation -> ED -> epilogue. Vol.1 was the start of the slice-of-life part, so you can guess Vol.2 is the “grinding daily life” segment that has the least to do with the main plot.

Vol.2 dumps a ton of screen time on the pirate LiLy. First the redemption arc: capturing R-NE isn’t evil, her ship just ran out of fuel, and dissolving the rare metal R-NE would refuel it. Then R-NE’s backstory comes out: LiLy says R-NE looks like her sister Lala, except Lala had big tits and R-NE is flat as a board. Later, after some research, it turns out the protagonist’s watch contains a fragment of LiLy’s sister Lala. Since R-NE is a rare metal that takes on the form of whatever fragment it touches, when she first met the protagonist and touched the Lala fragment in his watch, she became Lala.

The rest is LiLy being cute. Vol.2 is basically her showcase.

At the end, Shino suddenly collapses, which brings up her past: she once had leukemia, was written off as terminal, and then miraculously recovered five years later. Shino doesn’t know why. The protagonist doesn’t either. And after being prompted, he starts feeling like he met someone who looked like R-NE in his past, but he has zero memory of her.

LiLy hears all this, thinks it over, and concludes that her sister Lala must have been on Earth. The person the protagonist met as a kid, and the reason Shino’s terminal illness was cured, are both connected to Lala. The most ridiculous part: LiLy realizes the chimney of the village bathhouse is actually made from the barrel of Lala’s space battleship…

So Lala’s ship must have crashed on Earth. Stranded Lala met the protagonist for some reason, helped him, gave him a watch, helped Shino and cured her leukemia, then vanished.

Then, just as everyone’s about to go looking for Lala, Kanate — a friend of the protagonist’s mother who’s been in town the whole time — jumps in, seizes the pirate ship and its robots, and reveals she belongs to a human research organization. They recovered Lala’s crashed ship and have been studying aliens ever since. If the space pirates have the power to cure terminal illness, they have to contribute it for humanity’s sake. And if the pirates don’t have enough fuel to cure anything, well, just dissolve R-NE…

So the protagonist’s mother’s friend is clearly the villain. Vol.2 ends with the true antagonist making her entrance.

As for how it all ends, whether R-NE is really LiLy’s sister, and where Lala actually is — that’s for Vol.3.

Here I have to point out that this game is built entirely “standing on Vol.1’s shoulders.” No new OP, no new ED, no new characters, no new backgrounds, only new CGs. Basically they had Nanakamai draw a few more pictures, had the voice actors record lines, and shipped it. Low cost. By the way, the OP and ED have Hi-Res gold-label versions, but the full versions aren’t great, especially the second half… that key change, what idiot composer came up with that.

Vol.2’s CGs are bolder than Vol.1’s. Despite shipping on Steam, it openly shows nipples — a cat alien giving the heroines a slime bath, that kind of lewd CG, just out there. Bold as hell… Though Japan’s domestic side is bold too: in the new title Hoshikoi＊Twinkle, the little sister character designed by Riko Kuwabara has her nipples showing in every single sprite… Though just nipples is only R15. The point is this game’s R18 content: same as before, patch it and you get HCGs — three in total, all uncensored… Except…

Except…

Except Nanakamai is a veteran female artist who drew Imouto Choukyou Nikki, so how is her understanding of the male dick still stuck at “Qiulin sausage” level?

The women’s anatomy is on point in the uncensored HCGs, but the men look like a hot dog. Come on, at least add some wrinkles, right? As a straight man with a commitment to detail, an unrealistic dick is simply unbearable, ahem…

The game is still bilingual Japanese/English. If you know some Japanese I’d recommend running both — you’ll pick up Japanese vocab. If you’re a Japanese-proficient weeb with weak English, run both and learn English words instead. The English translation in-game is very standard. I’ve played a fair number of English translations, and this is the first time I’ve seen ロリコン rendered so bluntly as “pedophile” — that thick academic style. I love it!

As for whether to buy it… depends on your situation. If you’ve got money to burn, the question answers itself. If you want it for the story, well, the story is what it is — 80% is slice-of-life dialogue, with only the head and tail actually advancing the plot. Chapters 4 and 5 are the only ones that really matter. And because it’s aimed overseas, the daily dialogue probably avoids a lot of deep Japanese in-jokes for fear of not knowing how to translate them, so it gets dumbed down. Nothing to be done. So whether to buy for the story is up to you.

Then there’s the support-purchase angle. If you’ve never paid for a Frontwing game and want to show support, go ahead. Or if you’ve played something by Nanakamai like Imouto Choukyou Nikki and want to throw some money her way, buy it (though I don’t know her cut, and buying her doujinshi might be faster money for her). Anyway, support the official release.

Supporting official releases helps the industry grow, after all. Look — Frontwing has put Island on the Steam schedule too (apparently the English translation is hard so it’s 2017), and the new Grisaia entry is getting a simultaneous Japanese/English release next year. With Uchida Maaya in the cast it’s probably all-ages, so it might come to Steam too. We’ll see.

Originally published at: https://steamcommunity.com/id/plumlis/recommended/531730/ Steam version has no spoilers