I can’t remember who Parasol’s parent company is, I just always got the feeling they’re half-dead. By “half-dead” I mean they keep making games that feel out of step with the times, the kind you look at and think “no way this sells,” and the wildest part is they make them and still don’t go under. Still, every now and then Parasol puts out something normal—though those games always make me suspect the writer’s brain is wired wrong. Take their most famous one, Haru na Hana. But I do think Parasol genuinely wants to make good games, and Sakura Hitohira Koi Moyou from two years back was actually pretty solid. It even introduced this surprisingly ahead-of-its-time concept, basically an “internet addiction boot camp” school. Shame is, a lot of Japanese players didn’t get it—they kept saying “no way a school like that exists, where they lock kids up and force total obedience to the principal, that’s so fake.” Apparently the game got an official Simplified Chinese release, so maybe Chinese players would understand it better. Not that I’ve looked into how they actually felt about it. If they can make something like Sakura Hitohira Koi Moyou, that proves Parasol’s got some skill. So naturally, strike while the iron’s hot—make something even better, reinvent yourself, achieve self-actualization, all that. So I waited, and in 2019 Parasol dropped a game called Koarashi Spiritchu. At first glance it looked pretty hype. Then I saw the premise and immediately spat out my drink.