A Promise Under the Blue Sky

I downloaded Aozora Shoujo Kyouyaku-dan in January 2012… no, wait, it was June 2011… and then I just left it sitting there forever. More accurately, something about the game kept me from ever getting interested in it. Maybe it was too old? Maybe the character designs didn’t appeal? Or maybe the name just wasn’t cool enough?

So it was nearly a year later that I finally opened the game and started my own run through the world of galge.

You could say this is the most ancient-feeling game out there… though “ancient” isn’t the right word. “Orthodox” is more like it. Your typical old-school proper galge is probably exactly this: a protagonist who can toss out a snarky line or two, living under one roof with a bunch of girls of various personalities… then picking one and getting with her or whatever. Fine, it’s a standard harem setup, and more than a little clichéd.

I’ve played a few clichéd ones, sure, but what got to me most about Aozora Shoujo Kyouyaku-dan was the cast. Let’s see… aside from Hami Umi, there wasn’t a single one I cared about. The raspy-voiced tsundere sports girl, the shut-in loli who looks like she’d be horny, the two-faced airhead rich girl, the dopey female teacher, the even more two-faced senpai… none of them did it for me.

Maybe it’s just me, but I only like Hami Umi, so… I pretty much skipped every other route and only did the Umi route. More precisely, I finished her route on PSP, then grabbed a 100%-save file for the PC version and just watched the True End.

The Umi route’s story is simple enough. Childhood friends, the usual “she’s been head-over-heels for the protagonist since day one, but for some reason she won’t cross that line” setup. Seriously, when is some galge going to come out where the heroine hates the protagonist from start to finish, to the point they’re sworn enemies? …Well, if it did, you wouldn’t be able to get with her, so never mind. The gap between Umi and the protagonist is really a problem between their fathers. His dad cuckolded hers, and both of them end up living in shame, too scared of the gossip to let themselves fall in love. In the end, after Umi and the protagonist do their thing, they somehow win everyone’s approval… and get married. The part I want to complain about: how does something that huge get resolved just because the heroine gives a speech at the school festival? At least have the protagonist argue down the whole crowd or something so it can be hype, right?

Here’s what I actually want to talk about: the PSP version getting neutered. The PSP release is all-ages, so no H-scenes, and because the devs didn’t give a damn, they just hacked out the H-scenes wholesale. That guts a ton of plot, and the story stops being coherent. The protagonist hugs Umi, the camera cuts away, and then, like a Chinese TV drama, it suddenly says, “I understand what you said to me.” What the hell did Umi say to him? Director, you cut away before I even saw it.

The route choices are simple: pick who to talk to. Basically you don’t need a guide. Pick the girl you like, and whenever an option with her portrait pops up, choose her every time, and you’ll end up on her route. Though you might occasionally get someone else’s route in between. I picked Umi, but a few times when she wasn’t an option I picked Shizuka, and got various scenes of the protagonist getting with Shizuka, which was pretty confusing…

The game wants you to clear all the heroine routes to unlock the True End. Fine, really it’s just that stretch of time the other routes skip over. Graduating from school, leaving the dorm you’ve lived in, everyone about to go their separate ways, making a promise under the blue sky to come back and meet again someday… That’s finally where the title starts to make sense. I’d gone in thinking the “promise” was something the protagonist and one of the heroines made as kids. Honestly, this so-called True End doesn’t work very well… except for the song at the end. By then you’ve already gone past this period in every other route, so the player already knows “everyone comes back, everyone ends up doing such-and-such.” Then the game rewinds to the graduation promise, and it feels… out of place. It’d be better to make this part of the common route into a general ending, leave things hanging, and then cut to the after-stories of each heroine route, where everyone meets up again. That would probably land better.

The music’s good. I’ve releases it after all. I even used the choice-screen BGM as my ringtone for a while.

All in all, aside from the character designs, which I personally don’t much like (Umi aside), the game is pretty by the book. The writing’s a little weak, and the route structure is a bit badly arranged. Though maybe that’s just because I only did Umi’s route. Also, I saw in the CGs that there’s a route for Akane, but… I really have no interest in that motormouth… though I get the gist of why she’s a hidden heroine. Of course, I don’t think it changes the orthodox story much.

Speaking of my own college graduation, I just quietly left the dorm and the campus… my roommates didn’t say anything particularly sad, and there was certainly no “let’s meet again in X years” promise with anyone… Maybe that’s part of why this game didn’t hit me that hard.

Promises really are the kind of thing that sounds romantic and then, when it comes time to keep them… you need the right person. Someday maybe I’ll make a promise with someone under the blue sky too, and put everything into keeping it.