Ruri no Kasane ~Imouto Monogatari (ルリのかさね ～いもうと物語り) Review

Nekoneko Soft games always leave me not knowing what to say.

First off, they usually have a solid scenario, most of the time by Kataoka Tomo. I won’t deny he can tell a story, and most of it is told in an approachable, faintly sorrowful way that slowly gets you tearing up. It’s mostly positive stuff — cherish the people around you, love life and its little beauties, that kind of thing.

But the other annoying thing about Nekoneko Soft is the art. They always go to this guy Akino Takehiko, and the characters he draws… sometimes they clear the bar, and sometimes they’re genuinely ugly. I looked at his doujinshi and honestly they weren’t bad, so why does it come out so rough once it’s in a game? Some of the heroines end up with those pork-kidney faces, looking like Zhao Benshan. Painfully awkward.

So I kept going back and forth, and I did play some Nekoneko Soft games plus stuff from their sub-brands. The story side is generally fine; the art style is just a bit rough. Probably the coloring’s fault.

Anyway, Nekoneko Soft has a new game out. They actually put out a new title this year called Ramune 2, but I didn’t play it. I mean Ruri no Kasane: Imouto Monogatari, which came out last month.

Honestly I don’t get the title, especially the “kasane” part. No idea if it means “overlapping” like I think it does. Not that it matters, since the subtitle already tells you everything: imouto monogatari. A story about a little sister.

I cleared one route and looked at the others, and I’m not sure how to put it. Maybe it’s just a straightforward, slightly edgy game.

The heroine, Ruri, is the little sister. She and the protagonist are cousins.

At the start, the protagonist just goes to stay with relatives out of curiosity. Ruri is basically the shrine maiden of a shrine with hardly anyone around, and he spends his days fooling around and playing with his cousin. Her parents drop by sometimes to visit them both and hope the two of them get along…

This part of the game isn’t very interesting. You just talk to the girl over and over, and there are a ton of pointless choices — most of them jokes or red herrings, like “how do we revive the shrine,” “what should we play today,” “what’s for dinner tomorrow.” You could play it like Love Plus, I guess…

Then after a calm stretch, the game hits its explosion. One day the protagonist gets a phone call, and the message is blunt:

“Ruri’s parents, and your father, all died in a car accident.”

That’s a massive blow, but the protagonist doesn’t react all that violently, because he has to tell his cousin Ruri. How do you get a girl that young to accept that both her parents are dead? That’s the problem.

He goes up to the roof at night, stares at the stars, and keeps practicing:

“Ruri, your parents… turned into stars. They’re never coming back.”

His practicing draws Ruri’s attention anyway, and she starts pestering her cousin about what happened.

He sees her innocent face still asking when her parents are coming home, can’t hold it in, and cries. And then he says the one thing he absolutely shouldn’t:

“Ruri, your parents… are dead.”

All that practice for nothing. The cruelest version came out anyway. Ruri completely freezes up.

He resolves to stay and take care of his now-orphaned cousin Ruri. That’s where the story begins.

After that the game enters its main part, which is just the protagonist taking care of Ruri day by day. Not a lot of ups and downs; mostly the two siblings supporting each other and depending on each other.

The story is split into chapters, and different choices unlock different chapters.

There’s a lot of the protagonist playing both dad and mom — bathing Ruri, changing her clothes, that sort of thing — and the setup has Ruri as a minor. Those CGs got me asking:

“If the protagonist bangs his cousin, isn’t this game child sexual abuse?”

But I saw two endings, and nothing special happens.

It’s just “the siblings will keep depending on each other from here on.” For an 18+ game, the heroine not getting laid is a little abnormal.

Then again, thinking about it, her getting laid would be the abnormal part. She’s still a little girl.

There are other romanceable characters, including a college student and an office worker, and you can do their routes, but compared to the title they’re side content of side content.

I checked a walkthrough and apparently there is a way to get Ruri’s route, but I thought about it and decided to let time stay where it is.

Ruri no Kasane: Imouto Monogatari is basically a cinematic tragedy. A little girl suddenly loses her parents, and the brother who also lost family chooses to hold the household together. The siblings lean on each other. It should be a tearjerker. Shame it got released as an 18+ eroge, and because it’s an eroge, the political correctness that the heroine must be conquerable can’t be broken.

And she does get conquered, apparently, though I don’t know the reason. That still doesn’t ease my suspicion about what this game is actually for.

This game exists to sell “banging a loli” and “banging your little sister.” That’s the pitch.

The story itself looks normal, but there’s still a lot of nude loli CG, mostly justified as “doing laundry” or “bathing,” and everyone knows exactly who those images are for.

Japanese devs are good at skating the edge and spouting nonsense with a straight face. A while back, Steam delisted a game suspected of child sexual content, Ie no Kagi, because it sold itself on lolis and tried to pull in the loli lovers. The plot ended up looking pretty wholesome, but the criminal vibe of the art can’t be erased.

The devs even whined on Steam that their game was normal, so positive, Melonbooks stocked it, so why won’t Steam let us sell it?

Come on, you know exactly what your game is doing.

Just like Ruri no Kasane: Imouto Monogatari. The outline is normal, and a couple of endings hold the line, but the whole game still gives off one vibe:

Obviously Pedophile bait

So maybe it’s better to stop at the ending where nothing happens between the siblings.