Miagete Goran, Yozora no Hoshi o Interstellar Focus (見上げてごらん、夜空の星を Interstellar Focus) Review

《Miagete Goran, Yozora no Hoshi o (見上げてごらん、夜空の星を)》— I’ve already forgotten what year it originally came out. Still, that game left a pretty strong impression on me.

I remember it was winter, deep winter, around December. I was curled up under the covers and blasted through the game from the prologue to the OP in one sitting. Watching the protagonist finish building the telescope and do that first stargazing session together, with that hype OP playing — man, it hit me.

The thing I remember most is the soundtrack and the staging. Most scenes are at night, mostly quiet music, all kinds of shot compositions arranged like a film. The main story is excellent too — it’s nominally about “astronomical observation,” but what it actually is is a love triangle, and the real heroine is Amanokawa Saya with her heterochromia. The game intercuts memories and the present, and lays it all out on a detailed timeline. You can tell they cared.

But… when the main game of 《Miagete Goran, Yozora no Hoshi o》 was selling well, they put out a fandisc, and that one felt like it was missing something.

First the timeline was gone. Then the cinematic music and staging were gone… and finally the stargazing was pretty much gone too.

They call it a fandisc, but none of the strengths of the main game made it over. It’s just an ordinary vehicle for HCGs. Depressing.

Fine, whatever, it’s an FD, you can’t ask for too much. But I never expected… that after all this time, 《Miagete Goran, Yozora no Hoshi o》 would get another FD.

The full title is 《Miagete Goran, Yozora no Hoshi o Interstellar Focus》. The “Interstellar Focus” part sounds like it means “starlight focus,” but with a hint from Bob I finally saw it — the words are just there to spell out “IF.”

IF meaning this game depicts “another story, what if.”

And what’s the “if”…

When faced with the love triangle between Hikari and Saya, the protagonist says…

Yes. At the very start of the game, the protagonist wakes up in a room and sees both Hikari and Saya smiling at him.

“You’re awake?” the two hotties greet him…

The protagonist proudly and happily announces that both of his girlfriends are just the best.

Wait. Two girlfriends?

At first I thought it was a joke, but unfortunately the game cuts to a flashback.

The main plot inherits the content of Saya’s route from the original. The thing about Saya giving the protagonist a love letter as a kid comes out, and the protagonist learns how Saya felt, but…

The protagonist doesn’t end up with Saya. He just figures it’s been years, that’s water under the bridge. So in the end he doesn’t pick either of them and just papers over it.

Time moves to summer, less than a year until the protagonist graduates middle school. Hikari keeps complaining to him that she’s about to graduate and still hasn’t found a boyfriend. The astronomy club the protagonist founded at school has been handed off to the underclassmen, so basically he’s in one of those lurching periods where nothing’s going anywhere.

That’s when Hikari and Saya both launch their offensives on the protagonist… emotional offensives, of course.

First Hikari forces a kiss on him, giving up her first kiss, and Saya sees it. Saya isn’t about to lose, so she starts playing every trick she’s got to pull him toward her.

Seeing both girls this invested in him, the protagonist figures he ought to say something, so he decides to announce his choice on the old abandoned train car where they used to stargaze. Both heroines show up, and he takes a deep breath and says:

“Let’s all three of us go out together!”

Then both heroines kick him, once each, and storm off furious.

What follows is the protagonist wearing them down — through flashbacks and sheer shameless persistence, he actually gets Hikari and Saya to remember the wish they made as kids:

“The three of us will be together forever.”

See, you said it yourself as a kid. The three of us together forever. So obviously we stay together as adults too. The protagonist says he just wants to fulfill that childhood wish — and the wish was made by all three of them anyway.

Anyway, after a bunch of general fuckery, Hikari and Saya both agree to date him. Which is to say, the protagonist has two girlfriends…

………………

…………

Not only does the protagonist have two girlfriends, they all move into the old house from his childhood together. Word spreads through the whole village that he’s “got two girlfriends,” and he doesn’t care — I’m in a little house out in the sticks with two girls doing 3P, I’m happy, you’re not, not my problem lol.

In the end the protagonist locks down both girls, and on the new year’s Tanabata they make a wish again. Naturally it’s a continuation of the childhood one:

“The three of us will keep being together forever.”

And that’s the end of the game.

Bottom line, this game is just a “3P route” awkwardly glued onto the ending of the original story. And for that 3P route, the game sacrifices way too much. Saya’s personality gets rewritten into a total schemer — she was originally just a bit petty — and Hikari turns into a horny little bitch who’s constantly coming onto the protagonist. By the end, the only normal ones are the side characters, especially the unmarried teacher at the convenience store…

Sometimes I wonder if this game exists purely to satisfy players’ “harem” wish. But Saya is the most popular heroine by far — Hikari is nothing, who wants a harem? Release a Saya route FD, an FD of the FD, an FD of the FD of the FD, whatever. I don’t get why they went with 3P. Also, the HCGs in this game’s 3P scenes are cleanly separated — you could cut them out with basically no pain — and the OP still has tons of English and romaji in it. You know what that means. Steam release incoming.

Simply put, 《Miagete Goran, Yozora no Hoshi o》 here is nothing but an add-on harem route sold at fandisc price, and in terms of staging, script, and overall sincerity, it doesn’t come anywhere near justifying the price. It’s what we’d call a cash-grab. And what I can’t stand most is the heroine personality changes — it reeks of 3P for the sake of 3P.

But calling it nothing more than a cash-grab built on a “harem route” doesn’t feel quite fair either, because the game does have bright spots…

First bright spot: Matayoshi Ai’s voice acting again. Even if the game were a 10 out of 100, Matayoshi Ai alone adds 80.

No wait, that’s not what I wanted to say… Actually, the game has a few small tricks in it.

In the 3P route, the astronomy club underclassmen are trying to figure out how to attract new members, and they come up with a proposal:

“Make a mobile app — an escape game — to attract new members, and use it to replace the old member handbook.”

At the end of the route they tell you the game got made… except that game actually exists.

After clearing the game, select QUIZ on the title screen and you can play it. They call it an escape game, but I’d say it’s more of a straight quiz game. It covers a lot of intro astronomy trivia, including some genuinely interesting stuff I’d never heard of. Like what Galileo excitedly shouted when he first made his observation — was it something like “this is fucking insane!”?

You have three stars. Get one wrong, lose a star. Lose them all and it’s game over. There are guides online, but I’d suggest just paying attention yourself — it’s trivia, and it’s fun.

Honestly, sometimes I think this little minigame is more interesting than the 3P route. Thanks to it, the game is at least worth a try.

《Miagete Goran, Yozora no Hoshi o Interstellar Focus》 is nothing but an “IF” from the original work, a 3P route pried out at the cost of the original characters’ personalities. As someone who loves the original version, I don’t want Pulltop to keep milking this series. The story is over. Over is over. Stop adding a dog’s tail to the thing. The characters deserve a peaceful ending, a proper finish. I hope this is the last one.

In the 3P route, the old unmarried teacher, besides serving as the representative of the FFF brigade and NEETdom and constantly shitting on the protagonist, also has one deep conversation with him. He asks her what to do when the dream he’s chasing is too far away and maybe unattainable.

“You can’t touch the stars with your hands, but light still reaches them.”

Roughly, it means there’s always some way to make your dream happen — you just haven’t found the right path yet.

At the end, facing his two girlfriends, the protagonist says he’s going to marry all three of them. That dream is obviously impossible in Japan. But he’s full of confidence and says he’ll definitely make it happen.

How!? Oh right — emigrate to Saudi Arabia, obviously.