It’s been years since I played Love, Election and Chocolate (恋愛と選挙とチョコレート). I actually got into it through the anime — the anime itself is okay, nothing great, nothing terrible. What’s worth mentioning is that while the anime was airing, it went all out to advertise a certain game, and that game was Ima Sugu Oniichan ni Imouto da tte Iitai (いますぐお兄ちゃんに妹だっていいたい — “I Want to Tell My Brother I’m His Little Sister Right Now”). I’d had my eye on this one for a long time. Back when I couldn’t read Japanese at all, and then when I could read a little, all I knew was: it’s all-ages, the voice cast is stacked, the music is good, and the art is… decent. So when I got around to it before playing Ao no Kanata no Four Rhythm, I thought… “might as well clear this one first, at least it’s got Ai-chan.” Honestly, I didn’t finish it. I cleared the main sister route and Ai’s Mao route, and the rest I just couldn’t push through… Not for any other reason — the story is just too… flat… The plot can be summed up in one sentence: the protagonist’s mother dies, his father remarries, and he falls in love with his stepsister, who’s been pretending to be a boy. And the whole game reeks of what I’d call “all-ages galgame inferiority complex.” Everyone knows 18+ is where the money is in the galgame market. Plenty of companies have tried all-ages and died horribly; at best most of them release the 18+ version first and then port to consoles for an all-ages cash grab. So as a game trying to move units in the 18+ field while being all-ages, Ima Sugu Oniichan ni Imouto da tte Iitai had to show its sincerity some other way. In a nutshell: if you can’t fuck, you’d better bring something that can compete with fucking.