Hitotsu Tobashi Renai V (ひとつ飛ばし恋愛V) Review

Hitotsu Tobashi Renai is an old game, one of Asa Project’s earlier works.

Actually, calling it “early” is a stretch—more like early-ish. Hitotsu Tobashi Renai is built around “love one person removed,” and the Chinese patch apparently translated the title as “indirect love,” which honestly fits pretty well. That’s exactly what the game is about.

My opinion of Hitotsu Tobashi Renai wasn’t exactly high at first, because I overplayed it. It’s chaotic the whole way through—the “skipped-over characters” are either insufferably nasty or unbearably saintly, and the art style itself doesn’t look remotely serious. Compared to Renai 0 Kilometer, it feels like it goes too far. If you say it’s going the comedy route, then it insists on throwing in some “romance” on the individual routes. If you say it’s going the pure-love route, those enormous exaggerated facial expressions alone make it look like anything but pure love…

Awkward, isn’t it…

Later Hitotsu Tobashi Renai got a PSV port, and like the PSP version of Renai 0 Kilometer, it added new characters. The full title of the PSV port is Hitotsu Tobashi Renai V. Since PSV wasn’t hacked at the time, I had no idea where to even buy the game… Then the PSV got hacked, and I still had no damn clue where to find a dump, seeing as the original version wasn’t cheap… Out of stock on Amazon Japan, the porting company went bankrupt—total pain in the ass.

In the end, heaven rewards the diligent, and I finally found a used copy online… Still not cheap, mind you.

So I dug out the dust-covered PSV and got to it.

The game added routes for two characters: Kamiki Asuha and Kamiki Ikuru. And the “indirect relationship”? Both new heroines are the daughters of the protagonist’s teacher, Kamiki Machi.

First, the route for the younger daughter, Kamiki Ikuru:

This route is actually very traditional. The protagonist accidentally meets the teacher’s two daughters, and Ikuru falls for him at first sight—though it’s less absolute love at first sight and more of a mischievous thing. She starts clinging to him, while her older sister Asuha fans the flames from the sidelines, constantly creating romantic situations for her little sister and saying she supports her. Asuha in particular tells the protagonist that she absolutely loves reading romance manga, has read tons of them, and is an expert on matters of love—so with her help, he and Ikuru will definitely be happy.

What follows is pretty standard. Ikuru launches a fierce offensive, and the protagonist’s older and younger sisters can’t stop it—the older one keeps watching for laughs while the younger one gets jealous but can’t do anything about the aggressive Ikuru. Ikuru likes calling the protagonist “Onii-chan” and often acts like they’re already a couple. The older sister is happy, she’s happy, she even invites him to the school festival to watch her perform, they go on a few dates, and all that’s left is meeting the parents.

And that’s exactly where it falls apart.

Ikuru’s mother—the protagonist’s teacher—catches on to their relationship. She’s not angry (well, she has to make a show of it), but she points out a sharp problem: she doesn’t think Ikuru and the protagonist are a couple at all, just Ikuru’s clingy attachment. The most telling thing is that Ikuru keeps calling him Onii-chan instead of his name, and they don’t have any deeper intimacy… It’s more like siblings.

That leaves Ikuru mortified. She starts reexamining her relationship with the protagonist, and he starts reflecting too. Naturally, the result is that they confirm they’re in love, become a proper couple, get the teacher/mother’s approval, and then one kiss and… it’s over.

Yes, over. It’s all-ages, after all—a foot rub is already the limit. Can’t ask for more.

Second is the route for the older daughter, Kamiki Asuha—which I consider the game’s biggest highlight.

On Ikuru’s route, I mentioned that Asuha stressed to the protagonist how much she loves romance manga, that she’s read a ton, and that she knows a lot about love. At the time, the protagonist asked her a question:

“You know so much about love and read so much romance manga—don’t you ever yearn for it yourself?” Asuha froze for a moment, then immediately replied… “No, no. I’m used to reading manga, so I’m fine just watching other people’s love from a distance. I’m happy just projecting myself into it. I’ll just watch. Watching is enough.”

That line makes the protagonist pay more attention to Asuha. He notices she’s always thinking about her sister Ikuru’s love life, wanting her sister to fall in love while she watches from the sidelines. He feels an inexplicable interest in Asuha and goes looking for her at the school festival, where he finds her doing love fortune-telling.

Asuha is startled to see him, then does a reading for him anyway.

“Your love life… it’s going smoothly. You’ll meet the one chosen for you. Confess to that person, and you’ll be happy forever.”

Asuha is hinting that Ikuru is his “chosen one,” but the protagonist says the “chosen one” should be Asuha.

Asuha is unhappy and keeps rejecting him, but the protagonist invites her to walk the school festival with him.

Asuha is still deciding whether to agree when Ikuru shows up and sees them. The sister still believes the protagonist is hers and that her big sister will support her, while Asuha feels guilty toward her sister and starts running away.

So for a long stretch, Asuha is torn inside. She keeps thinking about the protagonist, about his invitation, and seeing how much Ikuru likes him, she can’t express her own feelings—she can only keep helping her sister strategize, urging her to win him over faster, even pushing her to be more forward.

“Hurry up and win him, or he’ll get away.” The sister thinks being that forward isn’t great and asks: “Is that… really okay?” Asuha takes it as her sister asking whether she likes the protagonist too, and immediately answers: “Sure, sure! Big sister has someone she likes—someone else, okay.” That classic “protesting too much” gets noticed by her sister.

What follows is pure drama. Asuha pushes the protagonist to take Ikuru to meet the parents, and when they meet the teacher, she’s still doubtful about their relationship…

“You’re a couple? Then kiss and show me?”

The protagonist can’t do it… Just as he’s about to force himself, Asuha can’t bear to watch and runs off…

The sister understands. The teacher understands. Probably the protagonist understands too.

Asuha loves the protagonist but can’t act on it—she has to give him to her little sister.

The reason is simple. When they were little, Asuha was her sister’s role model and was very popular, while Ikuru, being quirky and willful, wasn’t liked by many. She was a bit jealous of her sister and complained:

“Big sister has everything, and I have nothing. You’re so sly!”

Asuha saw her sister unhappy because of her, felt guilty, and told her:

“Okay, okay. From now on, big sister will give you everything. You’ll get priority on everything, alright?”

And that promise became a shackle that held Asuha all the way to the present… including in love.

In the end, only her sister can untie that knot. Ikuru tells Asuha she no longer needs her sister to take care of her, that Asuha can boldly pursue what she wants—the subtext being that she can have the protagonist. But Asuha is still a little embarrassed.

In the end, her relationship with the protagonist plays out in a more dramatic way. Asuha loves romance manga, so she tells him she wrote a script and asks him to act it out with her…

What they perform is just ordinary romance… and at the end, the protagonist suddenly hugs Asuha. She’s surprised but happy, and remarks: “Romance manga… doesn’t have scenes like this, does it?”

How could romance manga not have scenes like this?

The two hold each other on the rooftop against the setting sun, and the game reaches its ending.

Of the two routes added in Hitotsu Tobashi Renai V, the one I consider highest quality is the older sister Asuha’s. The younger sister Ikuru’s is just a standard throw-yourself-at-him route with not much going for it, but the older sister’s is pretty interesting and even a little moving at the end…

Asuha’s route also fits the title better—indirect love, only the one in between is her own sister rather than the teacher. That touch of love-triangle feeling even reminds me a bit of the white-haired girl in Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate.

Also, the game doesn’t just slap the new story on like a bandage—it weaves a lot of it into the common route, giving the two new characters plenty of interaction with the original cast and integrating them better. You can see a lot of thought went into the scenario arrangement.

All in all, the quality of the added routes is already very high, not to mention the voice acting for the heroines: Sakura Ayane as the older sister, Tange Sakura as the younger sister, and Kobayashi Yu as the female teacher.

Actually, this game might be the only chance to see the perverted version of “Gahaku” Kobayashi Yu and the perverted version of Ono Ryoko go head-to-head. They probably won’t collaborate again in the future, right? Is that part of this game’s value?

As for shortcomings, there are some: the old characters get very little screen time. Most of the interaction with the new characters is with the protagonist’s older and younger sisters, and the old heroines barely appear. Occasionally Ono Ryoko, the queen of facial expressions, pops up, but it feels like enough.

One more thing worth griping about: the game’s default voice quality is terrible, but you can download a 1.3 GB voice enhancement patch via PSN, after which the voices sound much more normal. Was the storage card just out of space?

As usual, a final reflection. Asuha says she’s read tons of romance manga and knows a lot about love, yet she doesn’t want to participate in it herself. Sometimes I think that’s a bit similar to the single otaku who play Galgame. You’ve played too many Galgames, seen too many romantic developments, been moved by plenty of scenarios, and snarked at plenty of absurd characters—but once the storm passes, everything’s smoke, and the happiness in the game ultimately has nothing to do with you. You’re mostly a bystander.

Watching other people’s love as a bystander is probably similar to how Asuha feels watching her sister seek happiness. But that doesn’t mean Asuha doesn’t want to fall in love herself—it’s just that when love suddenly comes, she panics and wants to run away.

A lot of otaku fantasize about how great it’d be to have a girlfriend, but when an actual chance to talk to a girl comes, they can only run the whole drama in their heads and never speak up or take that step…

Some people say the stories in Galgame are all lies—but aren’t the stories in romance manga lies too?

But even if they’re lies, being deceived forever doesn’t seem like a great idea either…