Japanese works love to bring up “four-leaf clovers” all the time. Most of the time it’s the hero and heroine finding one in the grass—the kind that supposedly symbolizes “luck.”
One use of that trope would’ve been plenty, but unfortunately it’s everywhere now, played out to death. It goes back to games like Clover Hearts in 2003, and from then until now the four-leaf clover legend just keeps multiplying. Sometimes I honestly wonder if Japan is covered in the damn things. Four-leaf clovers are supposed to mean luck because they’re rare, so why can the protagonist and heroine always, without fail, stumble onto one?
I wrote a post complaining about this a long time ago too: if four-leaf clovers stand for luck, then what does the ordinary three-leaf clover stand for? Does that mean three-leaf clovers are unlucky compared to four-leaf ones?
Of course, a three-leaf clover isn’t unlucky. But if you actually use three-leaf and four-leaf clovers as a metaphor for people, the happiness a four-leaf clover gets really isn’t something everyone has. For me, I read it as “the three-leaf clover stands for the ordinary and the mediocre.”
Last year More launched a sub-brand, DOLCE, and put out its first game, “カサブランカの蕾” — that is, “The Buds of Casablanca.” I rated that one pretty highly, because it gave me a lot to chew on: its take on desire and true love is “realist,” and the ending, paired with an old song redone as something new, really shines.
DOLCE put out a new one again this year. Given how More has a habit of spinning up brands for no real reason, this label’s whole deal seems to be cranking out the same type of game over and over. The new one’s called Shamrock no Hanakotoba — “the language of flowers, shamrock edition,” basically. My guess is it follows the same route as Casablanca no Tsubomi before it: grounded, leaning dark. At least that’s what I figured when I stumbled onto one of the promo CGs — a big ol’ 3P shot staring me in the face…
Before I got into this game, I didn’t even know there was a word “Shamrock” that specifically means “clover” — I’d always thought it was just Clover. Naturally I also looked up the language of flowers for clover, and after reading up on it, I get why everyone says the four-leaf one stands for luck.
The language of the shamrock: one leaf stands for prayer, one leaf stands for hope, one leaf stands for love, and the last leaf stands for happiness.
If you can find a four-leaf clover, you will find happiness.
And of course, if you didn’t find that fourth leaf… you have everything, except happiness.
Yes, this game is the story of four girls who had everything except happiness.
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