Natsuiro Koiuta (夏彩恋唄) Review

Kinda embarrassing to admit, but for someone who thinks of himself as a tough guy, my first time on a roller coaster was only 4 years ago.

My workplace organized a free trip to some place in Zhengzhou called “Fantawild,” so that’s where I rode a roller coaster for the first time in my life.

The feeling… hard to describe. All I know is it made my prostate very uncomfortable.

Anyone who’s been on a roller coaster knows the drill: slow climb up, reach the peak, then a sudden drop, loop-de-loop-de-loop, and finally it smooths out.

I hadn’t lost weight yet back then, still a standard-issue fat otaku, and on the way down I instantly felt this intense discomfort from my prostate—no idea if it was from being strapped in too tight or the near-gravitational acceleration, but basically it was a kind of ache down there that’s almost… satisfying.

That weird ache was somehow addictive, but mostly just uncomfortable. I immediately felt like I needed to take a piss.

I felt the same thing later on a small boat out at sea, the hull rising and falling with the waves, my prostate clenching and unclenching like someone was squeezing it…

Luckily, right before the gates to my new world could swing open, the boat docked.

The first thing I did after getting ashore was find a bathroom, and that’s where I experienced what they call a “pee burst” for the first time. Oh right, same reaction after the roller coaster.

So recently a game gave me that “pee burst” feeling again: Ubasutei’s Natsuiro Koiuta (夏彩恋唄).

I’ve only touched two Ubasutei games. The previous one, Hinikami clover, I picked up because I’d heard Ubasutei’s older stuff like Minamijuji Sei Renka and Koiiro Sora Moyou was pretty damn good, so I figured this must be a “big company that knows how to write stories”…

Then this year Hinikami clover straight-up shat in my face, and the kicker is that because it had good timing, it even won the January 2016 eroge award. Which, honestly, makes sense—that month there wasn’t a single other game worth naming…

So this year Ubasutei’s out with a new one, billed as “love that starts with a lie,” with a very bland title too: Natsuiro Koiuta.

Honestly, from the moment info started coming out to the trial release, I thought it looked boring. Bland setting, bland CVs, bland everything. Ubasutei didn’t seem to promote it much either—just tossed a few tweets out and left it there. I fired up the trial and…

Holy shit, the trial is like 20 minutes long. Trust me, by the time you finish the trial, you couldn’t even get through one episode of Hibike! Euphonium in the same amount of time…

So I wasn’t expecting much from this game. Considering it has Takamori Natsumi and Asami Hotori… oh wait, I mean Akino Hana, I figured I’d just check it out casually. After all, you look at the setup and you already know exactly how this story’s gonna go…

Yeah, you can guess the plot from the premise alone. It’s like bending over and knowing exactly what’s gonna come out.

The setup is that the protagonist is some branch-family kid from a big clan, and one day a young lady who’s constantly being pressured by her family into arranged marriages demands he pretend to be her boyfriend.

Yep, the rich girl asks you to be her fake boyfriend to fend off her family’s tedious matchmaking and blind dates. Basically like renting a girlfriend on Taobao to bring home for New Year’s.

Of course the romanceable characters aren’t just this one lady. There’s also the protagonist’s brocon little sister, a big-breasted childhood friend onee-san, and some big-titted girl who shows up out of nowhere claiming to be his fiancée from a childhood promise between their families…

But regardless, the main character is doing the “fake lovers” thing with this lady, and all the other heroines are basically NPCs and thin air… and the game itself plays out exactly like that.

The common route is incredibly formulaic. Like, how formulaic? You ever seen a Taiwanese school idol drama? It’s basically that kind of bickering between two people who can’t stand each other. Taiwanese dramas borrow heavily from Japan, but the bickering style in Natsuiro Koiuta is closer to the Taiwanese version. The rich girl, Tsukiyono Yuuna, is a bit cynical, a bit rebellious, sharp-tongued, kind of frank and bold. Most guys would find her personality nasty and completely lacking in refinement, and of course after she starts fake-dating the protagonist, daily bickering with him is mandatory…

And here’s the key point: the best part of the game is the bickering between Yuuna and the protagonist.

The banter includes dirty jokes, tsundere moments, nitpicking, personal attacks, but it’s genuinely fun. Also, Yuuna’s CV Takamori Natsumi does a good job, really bringing the rich girl to life…

Then you can guess the rest with your asshole: the fake lovers turn into real ones. The process isn’t complicated. First, the big-breasted fiancée who claims a childhood promise shows up and starts making moves on the protagonist, but unfortunately he’s officially dating the rich girl now. Still, this fiancée uses her sharp sixth sense to guess they might not be a real couple, and keeps pressing…

Eventually, after a series of events, the rich girl inexplicably feels jealousy and realizes she’s fallen for the protagonist without knowing it.

After that, it’s time to prepare for the confession… but wait, remember the “pee burst” I mentioned earlier?

You could say that while the story is cliché, at least the daily banter and the “rich girl realizes she might like the protagonist” parts are written decently. As a fake-love romcom in the vein of Nisekoi, it’s not bad. But when it hits the critical emotional turning point… the writer just…

Pee burst!

Yes, pee burst. The rich girl, with the speed of a thunderclap and the momentum of a broken bamboo, rapidly declares she’s in love with the protagonist, then confesses immediately.

After the confession, it’s high-frequency pounding, pounding, pounding, pounding, pounding.

Then everyone else notices the two finally look like a couple, gives their blessings, game over…

The impact of that second half hit me as hard as a roller coaster—except I didn’t feel like pissing, probably because I hadn’t drunk much water.

I really don’t get what the writer was thinking. Sure, the setting is cliché, but if they’d just finished it properly, it could’ve been fun… Or did the writer get to the confession part, feel this wave of “thank god it’s over,” put down the pen, take a deep breath, and think “finally I can write the fucking sex scenes,” then rushed the ending?

Or maybe the writer wasn’t getting paid?

Oh right, this game has another dumbass feature: it seems to want to mimic anime presentation, with an OP at the start of every episode. But the execution is so stupidly clumsy, the imitation so stiff—not like a certain magical girl show, not like a certain Aokana, just forcibly inserting an OP at the beginning of each episode. Some OPs give you a prompt that you can skip, some don’t. After watching the OP four times, I checked my save file, saw “Episode 4,” and only then did I fucking understand why I’d seen it so many times. And the game doesn’t even have an ED, just that one song. I don’t know how they had the confidence to decide to “mimic anime presentation.”

The character sprites are okay, but the CG count is pitifully low. There are enough HCGs, but the H scenes are packed way too densely and make no sense…

So how do I rate this game? I think we have to look at it holistically.

First, the production budget was clearly low. They tried to mimic anime presentation but didn’t pull it off. The story starts pee-bursting from the midpoint, and the game itself isn’t that long. No ED, barely any CGs…

Also, the first print didn’t have a standard edition, only a special edition with extras. The extras were a dirty picture, a signed card, and a DLC that’s supposed to include HCGs—but the DLC wasn’t even out yet…

So this game, selling for 9504 yen, no standard version, only this one… how do I put it… If I’d bought this game, gone home, and found this state of affairs, I’d have one word:

Scam!!!

So I can kinda understand why some Japanese players were angry and said this game is only worth 60 points…

This game could have been saved. If they’d followed a Nisekoi-style template, it could’ve been decent… As a pure-love youth romcom, I could’ve even forced myself to hype it up. But you just had to pee-burst in the second half.

Lots of games get their second half described as “thrilling as a roller coaster,” but for Natsuiro Koiuta, I can only call it a “pee burst roller coaster” kind of thrill…