Koinosu Icha Colaise (こいのす☆イチャコライズ) Review

When I was a kid, my father would rigorously review my homework—essays above all.

By “review” I mean I had to show him my essays first, he’d give suggestions for revision, and only once he was satisfied and I’d done enough editing could I hand it in.

Pretty unreasonable, right? A very paternalistic approach, right? But every coin has two sides—luckily my father happened to be a decent writer himself, so a lot of his feedback was actually useful.

The thing I remember most is what he said about narrative essays. Sometimes he’d flat-out call my writing “boring”—meaning it gave you no desire to keep reading. “You should give your story ups and downs, maybe even suspense, so people will want to keep going.”

“But the thing I’m writing about was just boring.” I think it was about giving up my seat to an old lady—“A Meaningful Event.”

“You can arrange the story a bit—like, you give up your seat but she flat-out refuses to sit at first, and only later explains she thinks she’s not that old yet, or something…”

“But that’s just making stuff up…”

“And giving up your seat isn’t making stuff up? Have you ever actually given up your seat?”

“…………”

I had nothing to say to that… though later on, in my own reading life, whenever I saw someone write a lengthy, sprawling story that was still incredibly dull, I’d remember what my father said…

“Stories need ups and downs, they need suspense, to pull people in…”

I don’t know if I’m any good at that now. A few days ago I accidentally opened Discord and checked my father’s Qzone—he’s still writing, and it’s way better than my blog… and my mom says his WeChat Moments posts are almost influencer-tier now. I have to admit, all that essay coaching when I was little really paid off. Though he doesn’t read my stuff anymore—if he did, he’d probably roast me for a good while.

So sometimes when I’m playing some eroge and the plot is so flat it’s explosive-boring, I think back to those words of my father. Making a story interesting is definitely a deep discipline—just like speaking in a way that makes people want to listen. Maybe it has no practical use, but it always meets some special need at special moments, and it makes you a slightly more interesting person…

I guess you could call it a life skill. It’s just that a lot of eroge scenario writers really lack this skill—like this one, Koinosu Icha Colise (こいのす☆イチャコライズ).

Honestly, I decided to play Koinosu Icha Colise because I saw its OP. I figure plenty of people have seen it too—it’s really good, and the OP itself is made with real care. The game’s premise, though, is genuinely dumb: through some mix-up, you end up living with three girls, and romance blossoms during the cohabitation.

If you had to compare, it’s kind of like early Chinese web novels—what was that popular genre called? “Days Living with a Flight Attendant”?

The game says you’re living with three girls, but you can’t actually cohabit with all three at once. At the very start you’re given a menu to pick one heroine, and that opens her standalone chapter—so the three routes are independent. After you choose, the game proceeds step by step: for various reasons you end up sharing a place with one girl, conversations happen as you interact… get to a certain point, confess, and then it’s bang bang bang bang bang bang.

Honestly, the setup has no real hook—none at all—so the plot doesn’t have any hook either. Put nicely, it’s “focused on sweet daily life.” Put bluntly, it’s “boring.”

Like my father said, a story needs suspense and a main line to pull people in. In Koinosu Icha Colise, the main line is supposed to be you living with the girl—but you’re already living together not long after the start. What’s the ultimate progress? Not stated. How far does the cohabitation need to go before the ending? Not stated. Instead you get day after day of chit-chat. It feels like being thrown into a room with a total stranger and told to “just talk”—you probably wouldn’t produce much either. That’s exactly how the game feels, and soon you get bored.

At first, interacting with the girl gives you some freshness, but as the daily grind stretches on… you start to feel bored. The game itself seems in no hurry to get you to home base, so it settles into a repetitive day-to-day life… and yes, truly day after day. I can’t say every day is identical, but there’s not much new. One thing worth noting: there are three heroines, each living with the protagonist, but each route has a different script—meaning the protagonist and heroine behave completely differently in each, practically three separate worlds sharing one premise. It feels weird. Personally, I’d suggest just playing one route; if you go through another, the protagonist will seem like he has split personalities.

Anyway, the individual routes are just too long for this kind of premise—way too long. The original concept is simple cohabitation-romance-banging, with no driving main plot; by its setup it’s more like a “doujin mini-game” in scope. But the game looks like a proper full-length work, while having no proper setting or main line. Even a clichéd romance has some ups and downs—most commonly a bit of emotional turbulence brought on by a flashback.

But this game has none of that. Just simple cohabitation, chatting, romance, banging. And between the cohabitation and the banging there’s an ocean of padding, with an obvious result: boredom.

Of course, even when you reach the banging stage, the game is still a bit shaky. I played Sachiko’s route, and Sachiko’s route’s sex scenes are downright insane. For example, at first the protagonist fantasizes about his “little sister,” only to find out she’s a total horn dog—even thirstier than he is. So the game spends a massive amount of text describing how Sachiko studies the protagonist’s dick, in excruciating detail… even the first blowjob carefully describes the sensation inside her mouth, so reading it feels like you personally are licking the protagonist’s dick. I got seriously nauseous. After several repetitions of “heroine plays with dick,” you finally get to home base, but that home-base sequence is painfully awkward… tons of repeated CGs, every sex scene basically the same, over and over, and then probably the writer decided the word count was enough and the game just ends…

Ah… so what to say about this game? Its scope is tiny, it looks like a doujin mini-game, the writing style is flat like a doujin mini-work, yet it’s forcibly stretched to be packaged as a “big title.” The cost of that stretching: it doesn’t work as a nukige, there’s not much moe to moe over, no funny daily-life skits, and few HCGs. It’s like taking cola and watering it down—not sweet, no fizz, you’d be better off drinking plain water…

Actually, for this kind of game—“simple premise,” “one route per heroine,” “just selling romance and sex”—it’s not impossible to do it well. At the very least, make the daily-life skits interesting… but this game really doesn’t. The protagonist’s inner fantasies go on forever, while the heroine’s lines are few and far between. Even the CV work is passable at best, and it can’t save the game from its immense boredom and emptiness. Oh, by the way, Sachiko’s CV is Akino Hana, though under her alias for mini-games and nukige: Aoi Haru.

Thinking about it, maybe that’s a hint: this game is essentially a mini nukige, but the art style, the premise, and the OP make it look like a “big work.” Still, I have to say the OP really is great—I even bought the CD, and listening to it after it arrived was even more stunning. Not only is the OP addictive, but the ED songs for the different heroines are terrifyingly high quality. I looked into it and found something even more interesting: the game’s music production is tied to a company called Prestar Co., Ltd. (株式会社プレスター), and the singers are all newcomers the company is pushing. The game’s OP even has a dance… though the singer, Shiode Misaki, is really… not what I imagined. Click at your own risk.

Thinking about it, for this game I can give the music a very high score—both the OP song “Koinosu☆Icha Colise” and the ED song “Growing up” are excellent. If you’re like me and want to play this game because the OP looked cute, I’d say save your time—just listen to the songs.

After all, to me this game is more like buying a music CD and getting a bottle of watered-down cola thrown in.