Hokenshitsu no Sensei to Shabondama Chuudoku no Joshu came out at the end of 2020. My reaction back then was mostly pity. You could tell at a glance that the thing was unfinished — a common route that dragged on forever, a pile of introduced characters, and then the actual story went to the main heroine and nobody else. Everyone else might as well have been set dressing. So I figured it was a half-baked cash-in shoved out the door with whatever scraps were lying around. Then 2022 rolls in and the game gets a sequel. Hokenshitsu no Sensei to Gothic Lolita no Koui. Right. That was when it clicked — this is another one of those sold-in-volumes deals, and the company was so broke that volume two got pushed back almost two years.

Navel once ran a label called Navel Honeybell, dedicated to games with “high-concept settings” and “a touch of romance.” And the dumbest part is I’ve played all of them—Hishou Hitsuji to Manatsu no Hana, Magical Dear, the works. They all share the same traits: Wildly interesting premises, the kind that make you want to play immediately Decent moe art that gets the job done Openings with huge scope that promise exciting developments Great music, always with Nishi Akio involved Stories that fall apart from the midpoint onward and end in a trainwreck Yep, both of those games crashed and burned. The setups were so promising, and then they just handed you a wreck. Bad enough to leave you baffled, bad enough to make you question your life choices. Funny thing is, the Navel HoneyBell brand died fast. Shut down. But Navel itself survived, shoved out a robot-themed game, and then a new label called Citrus surfaced. I didn’t notice it at first, but one look at its debut title and you know who the parent company is. This time we’re looking at The School Nurse and the Bubble-Blowing Assistant (保健室のセンセーとシャボン玉中毒の助手), Citrus’s second game. The price tag made it seem short, but playing it felt incredibly long, and when I finished, what lingered was a regret I couldn’t shake. Why regret? Let me walk you through it…