Last October in Beijing, when Fengniu Jushi Zhu Niubi treated me to guanchang at the Dongsi Minfang restaurant, he asked me a question: “Your blog’s pretty badass these days, huh?” “Badass my ass. There’s exactly one badass thing about my blog.” “Where?” “Open Google, search for the keyword ‘妹ぱらだいす2’, and see who’s first.” “Search for what? Ichimoto… what?” “It’s Japanese!” So I guided Zhu Niubi through searching “妹ぱらだいす2”, and after seeing the first result, even Zhu Niubi couldn’t help but marvel: “Badass, badass, badass. Truly badass.” “Right? That’s the one badass thing about my blog, though I don’t know how to explain it.”

Imouto Paradise! 2 (妹ぱらだいす2) is the sequel to Imouto Paradise! — at least it’s not a spiritual successor. Why do I say that? I think a comparison shot is in order. Here’s the main cast of Imouto Paradise! 1: And here’s the main cast of Imouto Paradise! 2: And I should point out that the characters in the two games are not meant to be the same people… What the hell!!!

Imouto Paradise! (妹ぱらだいす) is a pure-love game with genuinely nice art. The story centers on family and kinship — the parents are away on a business trip, so the eldest brother looks after his five younger sisters. Most visual novels these days are trending toward “novelization,” but they always end up feeling half-assed. I say that because real novels don’t have this much dialogue and slice-of-life padding — VNs do. It’s voiced media; no dialogue means no reason for the CVs to exist. The result is that even well-received VNs feel bloated in their daily-life sections, and it’s only after the routine ends that the foreshadowing actually pays off and the plot kicks in. I’m optimistic about the future of VNs experimenting with tighter storytelling, but until that surprise arrives, I’d rather they just stick to classical pure-love stuff. Imouto Paradise! does exactly that, and does it well.