Soi Kano ~Gyutto Dakishimete~ (添いカノ ～ぎゅっと抱きしめて～) Review

If you listen to a lot of erotic audio… oh wait, I mean ASMR, dummy head recording, whatever you call those drama tracks for stress relief and sleep, you’re probably familiar with the word “soine”.

Even if you don’t know Japanese, you recognize the character for “sleep,” so you can guess it means “sleeping together” recordings.

So yeah, Sizhai is truly disgusting. Can’t find a partner, so he relies on games to get him a girl; and when he does find a girl in a game, he just stands there waiting for her to throw herself at him; and even when she does, he’s picky about her; and not just picky—his criteria are absurd: too ugly, no; bad voice, no; not a virgin, no; non-human but doesn’t end up with the protagonist, no; damaged goods, no; a ghost that gets exorcised, no. Most importantly, she has to bang the protagonist quickly no matter what. And not just bang—some even demand she sleep with him. Kidney-level isn’t enough; it has to be heart-level. And heart-level isn’t enough; the service has to be perfect. So as Sizhai gets pickier, games get more complex, and the ideal moe girl is born: one who unconditionally throws herself at a total loser, sleeps with him until he dozes off, and does it all for nothing. Just think about it!

But even though otaku are tighter with their wallets than fujoshi, there are still some suckers with more money than sense, so many eroge makers deliberately cater to them, scamming otaku out of their cash. Look, here’s another game that pops up with a clear goal: draw a cute girl, then tell you—buy our game and this cute girl will sleep with you!

The game is called Soine Kano Gyutto Dakishimete, which means “close-up girlfriend, hugging you super tight.”

Buy it or not?! We’re asking you, buy it or not! With Ameda Yuki on art and Natsumi Wako as the lead heroine’s voice actress, such an insane lineup—buy it or not! Just buy it!

Buy my ass. AlphaRom cracks are so easy, everyone’s still on sukebei.nyaa.si anyway.

Of course, that’s understandable. The makers won’t open a shop on Taobao, and selling a censored version on Steam is pointless. But more “high-end Galgame players” will probably say with a straight face that they never care about whether the girl throws herself at you or whether she’s pretty—they care about “game depth,” hoping for a philosophical masterpiece like that of eroge art master Chen Xinghan or Futa self-insert. They don’t buy into moe stuff. They’d push up their black-rimmed glasses, and in a low voice ask a Zhihu-style pretentious question: “How’s the story in this game?”

That’s so annoying! What do you want? This game is made to serve otaku, what depth do you expect? Do you even know the situation?

Of course, this is still a Galgame, and even Tokyo Hot has a plot, so what’s the story here?

The protagonist is a guy who likes to find places to slack off and sleep. His sleep quality is bad, so one day he finds a greenhouse on the school rooftop—fresh air, smell of soil, perfect for sleeping. But just as he dozes off, he opens his eyes to find a cute girl lying next to him. Turns out this spot is her designated place, and he’s taking it.

So the protagonist meets this girl, Kumakura Yomei, nicknamed Kuma-chan, or “Bear.” He finds out she never goes to class, just hides in the greenhouse and sleeps every day. He’s sleepy too, so they start sleeping together. As they do, problems arise: the protagonist’s two sisters (damn, I forgot how he got two sisters) think hiding to sleep isn’t right and come to persuade him, but they get dragged in too, along with a senpai. A whole group starts hiding in the greenhouse—sleeping or chatting, whatever—just refusing to leave.

Soon the student council president is displeased. A bunch of students skipping class to sleep, boys and girls together—what nonsense is this?

Student council president Funao Shiko steps in and warns the group: “The greenhouse is for the gardening club. You’re illegally occupying it. Leave, hand over the keys, go back to class, or else.”

The protagonist is confused. He finally found a great place to hook up with a cute girl and sleep with Bear, and now he’s being kicked out? Bear isn’t happy either—no place to slack off.

The group discusses countermeasures and comes up with a result.

You say we’re illegally occupying the greenhouse? You say it’s for the gardening club? The gardening club is abolished, so if we restart it, we can keep sleeping here!

So they go all in. The protagonist applies to restart the gardening club, and after jumping through hoops, it’s approved, so they can legally occupy the greenhouse and sleep there.

But is the story over? Not yet—Bear hasn’t been fucked yet.

One day, the protagonist gives Bear a confession so cliché it’s worse than a vaudeville act. After that, he meets Bear’s sister, who turns out to be a singer (her voice actress is also a singer, actually), which explains why Bear sometimes hums—musical bloodline.

The sister tells the protagonist that her little sister is timid and prone to running away. She’s not that bad, just likes to hide, and that’s why she skips class and sleeps all the time. She asks him to help her.

He says, “Bro, you’re totally right. I’ll fix her bad habits and make her awesome.”

Then he finds a business card hidden with Bear—a music producer’s. He learns Bear has singing talent and was scouted, but she’s too scared to go. What does he do? He encourages her, and after several rounds of “internal” encouragement, Bear finally decides to debut as a musician and stops shrinking away.

Then? Then the story’s over. It’s basically a story about the protagonist hooking up with Bear under the pretext of saving a shut-in girl.

So how to evaluate this game? I can only say the story defies evaluation—cliché as hell, no ups and downs, and full of stupid as hell scenes, like Bear saying she wants to grind browser games at night and doesn’t want to have sex, and the protagonist acting like his mom died. I laughed my ass off. Also lots of scenes where the protagonist gets inexplicably depressed over trivial bullshit. I don’t even know how to rate it.

However, the title tells us this is a game about “cute girls sleeping with you.” There are plenty of sleeping scenes—how are they?

Like hell there’s any feeling. All the sleeping scenes are just one CG plus some breathing sounds. After clearing the game, there’s a soine mode, but that’s even dumber: still one girl, you poke her and she goes “hnn,” then… nothing.

I don’t know if the makers have heard Momoiro Code’s prostitute ASMR audio, but it’s not even on the same level. Way too cheap.

Also, the BGM is weird. For a game about cute girls, it uses tons of whistling, which makes me want to piss. Maybe it’s to make otaku hard?

The only savable part is probably the art, but they hired several artists with inconsistent styles. It feels like they just drew a cute girl to make you go “cute, cute” and cash in. The game claims to include a soine CD, which I was looking forward to, but after seeing the soine mode, I doubt the CD is any good.

This game follows the same formula as last year’s Your Eyeball Hit Me: sell moe girls, everything else is assembly-line cliché. But this time the main selling point is soine, which can’t be mass-produced, and the result is bad—feels worse than last year’s.

Someone on Weibo asked me to rate this game. From all my complaints, the quality is obvious. Aside from the cute girl, everything else is average at best. Out of 100, I’d give the game itself a 2, no more. The lead voice actress Natsumi Wako gets 98. Total: 100.

Yes, I give this game 100 points. Done.