In high school I heard something. In the class next door to mine, there was a girl who would have sex with people for money. “Look, that’s her.” My deskmate pointed at the back of a girl from the neighboring class and told me she was the lead of this “school secret” he’d described to me before. Honestly, I saw her face later. Not pretty, thick lips, but skinny enough, fair-skinned, ponytail, always laughing about something. My main reaction was: I could not believe she would do something like that.

I didn’t really want to play Koikari (恋×シンアイ彼女) at first, for two reasons: One, I didn’t like the premise. That kind of school romance drama looks like a sleep aid just from the description. Two, I’m not a fan of Niijima Yuu, the writer everyone keeps hyping up. I think Hatsuyuki Sakura (初雪樱) is a decent game, but this guy Niijima Yuu’s scenario writing really doesn’t impress me. Add in his work on Kisaragi Kinsei, and it pretty much confirms my judgment.

So here’s how I stumbled onto this game: I saw some foreigner streaming it on YouTube, in English, of course. I didn’t actually watch the gameplay. He’d only gotten as far as the OP, and honestly the OP is pretty damn good. It’s also pretty obvious from the OP that this is a horror game. More importantly, the Japanese lyrics told me this was probably an English-localized Japanese visual novel. Curious, I looked around for info on it and found basically nothing—some stream VODs and that’s about it. That got me curious enough to want to play it. I looked everywhere and came up empty except for Steam. So I bought it off the game’s Steam page. It’s small, a little over 700 MB, supports English and Japanese, no voice acting though. The nice surprise is that it runs on Windows / Linux / Mac. Download done, and so the journey began. I just want to say, that journey was genuinely nerve-wracking…

Why even play this game? Because I’m a seiyuu nerd, and there’s no way I could look at that cast list and not react. Ui Yuuki, Uehara Aoi, Kotori Yuka, Tohno Soyogi, Tashiro Ina… fine, Shimizu Ai. For me there’s no lineup more stacked than this, except it’s missing Kiritani Hana. As for the game itself, who the hell cares… though after finishing it I was still stunned.

Yeah, it’s a cliché, and I know I shouldn’t write it this way, but before I get to the game I want to talk about some older stuff first. After all, it’s only when you tie it to your own life that the game’s content really hits you. Let’s start with the eyes… Come to think of it, there’s a certain look in a woman’s eyes I’ve never been able to forget in my entire life. One I’d count is the look a certain classmate of mine gave me back in elementary school. I was a straight-A student in elementary school. The really obnoxious kind, too. Honestly I don’t even know why I was one — I just figured the stuff they taught in class was obviously something you were supposed to know, that running long distances in PE was obviously something you were supposed to be able to do at that speed, that speaking and giving speeches was obviously just like that. I can’t understand it, and I can’t grasp it — how hard it is for other people to do the things that come so “naturally” to me. I don’t treat anyone as an enemy, but there’s always someone willing to treat me as a challenge. After one particular final exam, a girl came bouncing up to me, looked me dead in the eye with this resolute expression, and said: “Remember what I said. Next exam, I’m taking first place. I’ll beat you.” As soon as the words left her mouth, the girl turned and ran. So come the next final exam, the girl really did take first place—and I ended up second because I got one math problem wrong. Honestly I didn’t care much about that, because soon enough, on the very next exam, I was first again. And that girl was still staring at me with that same utterly determined… maybe even slightly resentful look in her eyes. “Why does she look at me like I’m her enemy?” I couldn’t understand it. It was years later by the time I did, and the resonance of that feeling has only grown deeper and more obvious as the years have worn on…

Clear moon, sparse stars, and the autumn night already had a chill to it. An old man in a short-sleeve shirt and jeans was messing around on his phone, bored out of his mind. “Grandpa.” A little girl’s voice came out of nowhere. She’d clearly been staring at him for a while, and finally worked up the nerve to speak. “It’s so cold out tonight. Aren’t you freezing out here?” “Freezing my ass.” He was an old man, but his tone was flat-out flippant—until he looked up, saw the little girl in front of him, and realized that wasn’t how someone his age should talk. So he straightened his expression into something that was technically a smile and said, “I’m not cold~ Thanks~.” The girl didn’t seem to care how he talked. She just went on, slowly: “Grandpa, grandpa, what are you looking at?"—and started peeking at the phone in his hand. A little awkward, the old man hurriedly pocketed the phone. He didn’t want the girl seeing what was on that screen, because in his view—no, in most people’s view—what was on that screen really wasn’t something you showed other people. “Little kid~” The old man forced himself to look composed. “How about I tell you a story?” “A story? What kind of story?” She wasn’t about to refuse. If anything, she looked like she’d heard plenty of stories in her time. “What do you want to hear?” “Handsome guys, pretty girls, people falling in love…” “Tch.” The old man clicked his tongue, then immediately put the smile back on. “Ever heard the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl?” “Cow… herd… and the… weaver… what?” The girl looked completely lost. Kids these days don’t even know the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl? The old man couldn’t help but sigh internally. “Want to hear it?” “Yeah!” She was excited. “Come on, sit here.” He patted a clean spot beside him. “The story has to start from the beginning…” ……………………

《妹ぱらだいす 2》 is the sequel to 《妹ぱらだいす》—at least it’s not a spiritual successor. Why do I say that? I think we need a comparison shot. Here’s the main cast from 妹ぱらだいす 1: And here’s the main cast from 妹ぱらだいす 2: And let me be clear—the characters in the two games are not the same people… What the hell, man!!!

Imouto Paradise (妹ぱらだいす) is a pure-love game with genuinely nice art. The story is all about family and sibling bonds, following an older brother looking after his five little sisters while the parents are away on a business trip. Most visual novels these days trend toward “novelization,” but they always end up feeling kind of half-assed about it. The reason is simple: real novels don’t have this much dialogue and slice-of-life, but visual novels do. They’ve got voice acting, and without dialogue the VAs would have nothing to do. So even the well-received ones end up feeling bloated in their daily-life sections to us, and it’s only after the daily-life stuff ends that the foreshadowing actually gets explained and the plot kicks in. I’m optimistic about visual novels eventually getting better at plotting, but until that surprise arrives, plain old classical pure-love works are better. Imouto Paradise does pretty well on that front.

The world is full of color. Sure, there’s plenty of ugliness and disappointment out there, but none of it stops us from singing the praises of human goodness. Ricky Hsiao has a song called “You Are My Eyes.” It’s about a blind man who, with his lover’s support, sees the whole world through her eyes. Even if he can’t see a thing, as long as she’s by his side, the dazzling world still finds its way into his gaze. You are my eyes, leading me through the shifting seasons. You are my eyes, leading me through the crowded throngs. You are my eyes, leading me through the vast sea of books. Because you are my eyes, I see the world right here before me. The lyrics are heart-wrenching. Brings a tear to your eye… Stories like that happen all the time. Today I want to talk about another warm, heartfelt one.

Tokeijikake no Ley Line is a very confident game. Why do I say that? Because it dares to sell itself in pieces.