Not gonna lie, my X account and 茉宮祈芹 mutually follow each other. I think I followed her back when she wasn’t that well known, sent her a greeting message, and got a reply. Occasionally she’ll like some lewd art I retweet, and I’ve written a paid piece hyping her up too. I used to think the stuff she draws was too explicit, but then I figured, as a freelance illustrator, drawing it a bit more H for sales is pretty understandable. When I reviewed Ninja Girl and the Mysterious Army of Urban Legend Monsters! Hunt of the Headless Horseman, I said that 茉宮祈芹 is an illustrator who can raise the quality of an entire visual novel single-handedly. One reason is that her drawing and coloring style leans toward flat, digital-game visuals, which means the character art in any visual novel she works on stays consistent — no awkward art shift from a different colorist stepping in. No matter which other artists she’s paired with, her characters always stand out. And even when she isn’t drawing characters with heavy exposure, she still nails the heroine’s cuteness. So here’s a new game: FLIP＊FLOP 〜INNOCENCE OVERCLOCK〜, put out by a DMM Game shadow brand, with 茉宮祈芹 on art, Houmori Kei on planning and scenario, and Kitakoji Yuki voicing the lead heroine. With a lineup like that, there’s no reason not to give it a shot.

The eroge market has been shrinking hard these past few years. Plenty of studios can’t be bothered making “story games” anymore and have all pivoted to short, punchy fanservice nukige, dressed up as “the pursuit of sweet romance.” In reality it’s just low-cost nukige to recoup money. Everyone knows these games have no substance — you’re here for the CGs — and the devs know it too, so they stuff more CGs in. And since a budget title needs more than one volume, they draw a bunch of heroines up front and sell them off in pieces. Small margin, high volume. Why not? Today’s subject is Itchokusen (Shojo→) Kanojo to Koi Shitai, from COSMOS, a small label under Windmill. If you ask me, the game has exactly two highlights. One is the artist Tsukimoto Jin — the art is genuinely good, and the heroine is genuinely beautiful. The other is the original concept by Houmori Kei. Because Houmori Kei may be an old pervert, but he’s decent at writing “sweet romance” stuff. His old light novel Ore mo Omae mo Choro Suginai ka was pretty good: the male lead desperately wants a girlfriend but is kind of flippant, confesses to anyone he sees, and then by some mix-up ends up confessing to our heroine, who — get this — earnestly and seriously accepts. And so the two begin a relationship where they put the cart before the horse…