Kanojo to Ore no Renai Nichijou (彼女と俺の恋愛日常) Review

For something like Galgame, I’ve seen plenty of people claim they’re all about the story and don’t care about the art style. Yet 99% of the time, their avatars in ACG circles are still cute girls.

This isn’t surprising, really — everyone appreciates a pretty face. And for something like Galgame, which in the mouths of Sendai aunties sits not far from Adult Video, judging by looks is about as normal as it gets.

In other words, for a Galgame trying to boost sales and expand its reach, the first thing you need is good-looking characters. It’s rare to see a game with ugly-as-hell character art still sell like hotcakes — maybe Gakuen Handsome (学園ハンサム) counts as the exception?

So if a game’s characters aren’t drawn well, you can basically declare it dead on arrival. Unless the character has some long history and a massive fanbase behind her—but even then, you’re only fooling the diehard fans, and only a fraction of them at that. You won’t reach the “silent majority” of users, and what good is that? Definitely not gonna work.

So the first time I laid eyes on Kanojo to Ore no Renai Nichijou (彼女と俺の恋愛日常), I was dead sure this thing had to be trash.

1. A title so clichéd it hurts. Kanojo to Ore no Renai Nichijou (彼女と俺の恋愛日常) — I first figured it meant “my and her lovey-dovey everyday life,” then I saw the English title and it turned out to be “my girlfriend and I’s lovey-dovey everyday life.” And 恋愛日常 isn’t even read as “renai nichijou” — it’s written 恋愛日常 but pronounced “Lovely Day.” Oh my god, this title is dumb as hell. It’s on the level of a grade-schooler’s essay titled “A Meaningful Thing That Happened.” Zero sincerity. You can tell what’s in the game just from the title. Did they just give up trying to come up with anything and slap the project’s placeholder name on it?

2. The character designs are ugly as hell. Kanojo to Ore no Ren’ai Nichijou (彼女と俺の恋愛日常) has two artists, Chikotamu and Narumi Yuu, and the funny thing is those two also worked together on Hatsukoi Sankai Me (初恋サンカイメ)3 and on Love Rec4. Honestly, neither of them draws badly in general, but in this game… what the hell are those two characters Narumi Yuu drew? Like, what even is that? Even Magical☆Dears (マジカル☆ディアーズ)5, the game Narumi Yuu did the art for solo, wasn’t this bad. And the ugliest one, the girl with the pancake face, is actually set as an idol in the game. Holy shit. Sure, in Japan you can throw a brick in Akihabara and hit three idols, but even so, idols aren’t supposed to look like that. How is she uglier than Fukada Mei? What is going on?

3. The premise is so clichéd it’s practically dripping. Since Kanojo to Ore no Renai Nichijou has a title that blunt, what’s the story like? You could probably guess most of it before the game even came out. The protagonist is an art student, does art stuff, painting and whatnot, and then out of nowhere he’s told that if he doesn’t get selected in the next competition he’ll lose his honor-student status. So he decides to find a character to pour his love into and make a winning piece—out… of… it…?

Wait, what? Hold on, is that actually what the story’s about? I stared at the Story section on the official site for ages and yeah, turns out it really is.

But why is this different from what I played? Did I get a fake copy of the game?

The actual game has none of this drama the protagonist stirs up, okay! So the guy needs to make a figure for a competition, and since he’s a virgin who doesn’t know much about girls’ body types, he goes to his little sister and asks her to show him her panties. Along the way he runs into all the girls at school—there’s the foreign exchange student Kongou Alice, his childhood friend Mashiro Yuka, the ugly-as-hell school idol Akamine Shizuka, and his own sister Aoi Haruka. Right, the protagonist says his name is Aoi Shou—I almost thought his sister was named Aoi Sora.

The game’s story doesn’t have the male lead tied up in knots over life choices at all! It’s literally just the guy going to school every day and hitting on girls, and every single girl is already at MAX affection for him. That big-faced girl even strips naked and crawls into your futon to freak you out — all that crap about needing to produce something good for the competition is total bullshit, or else it’s buried inside some individual route. The real common route is just the male lead picking up girls. Honestly, the first half of the common route is still pretty fun, and the core engine making it fun is this person right here:

Kurokawa Moe, the protagonist’s senpai and club president, a fujoshi through and through. She’s constantly dropping sharp snark and self-deprecating jokes—honestly, she’s the only fun part of this whole thing.

And she even seems to be the first character to go at the protagonist with her feet, but despite all that, she’s not a romanceable route.

Yeah, an NPC — not a romanceable one. Getting a black-tights footjob out of her is already more than you deserve; the boner index on that alone just broke 9.8.

And then, once the interesting part of the common route is over, the game is basically done for. Late at night the protagonist thinks about which girl he wants to get close to, and whoever you pick gets their route. I picked Kongou Alice — I just thought she was drawn as cute as Sendai-oba-san from Hatsukoi Sankaimen’s loli, not because she’s a little girl, and not because of her tiny body either, none of that has anything to do with it, please don’t get the wrong idea.

Kongou Alice’s route is just as simple, though. She’s a foreign exchange student who’s terrible at archery—every day she shoots, messes up, and goes “Shit.” The protagonist decides to help her out, and one thing leads to another until they’re together. In the end, with help from the school’s Japanese archery club, Kongou Alice regains her confidence, stops worrying about how people look at her and the pressure around her, and succeeds.

And that’s it—all of it, just gone. Though I guess the déjà vu lingers. Kongou Alice keeps going on about “ahh, Japan is so amazing, Japanese kyūdō is so great, way better than my country’s, Japan No.1”—oh god… I always figured it was only a certain mainland political party and its little patriot brigade who crank out “anti-Japanese war dramas” or trot out some foreigner to say how much they love Chinese culture and how China is No.1, all to puff up their own country. Turns out Japan has the same hobby, huh. Combined with all the various “anti-American war dramas” Japan’s made and those stale plots where “a Japanese high schooler saves the world,” guess this really isn’t just a mainland China problem—everyone just loves tooting their own horn.

Kanojo to Ore no Renai Nichijou (彼女と俺の恋愛日常) doesn’t have any story locks, and honestly it doesn’t need them. There’s barely any story to lock, and the slice-of-life bits only come in a few flavors. Personally I think it’s completely devoid of highlights, but it’s not exactly boring either—some parts are actually quite a bit better than that Kimi no Me Tamago ga Butsukatta thing from a while back, story-wise I mean. Art-wise it gets absolutely crushed, of course…

Put simply, this game isn’t that bad, but there’s no real reason to play it either. Sure, 鳴海ゆう’s art is dogshit, but ちこたむ’s still there. Still, the whole thing feels phoned in no matter how you look at it — super half-assed production. Did Parasol just completely give up after Dogblood Haruna Hana? I mean, last year’s swim club one felt exactly the same.

But with the quick reveal of Parasol’s new game, hopefully I’m overthinking it — this one looks like it could be pretty damn good.