“The world is big, but everyone is equal. Picking up girls isn’t the exclusive right of rich, handsome guys. Even a total loser with nothing can have the right to pick up girls.” “There are two ways to pick up girls. One is to win her favor, fight for the position of boyfriend, and finally round the bases.” “The other… is to become a girl-hunting hunter. Or, to put it simply, a girl hunter.”

As a proud LASS hater, I’ve played almost every game this company (aka “Rass” — short for “shit company”) has put out, except for the early Nanako series. I’m talking 3Days, 11eyes, Shoujo Shinki, Mayoeru Futari, plus their fandiscs and all the different versions and whatnot. Honestly, ever since Shoujo Shinki took a massive dump and turned a great setting into an utterly self-indulgent landmine, I’ve been thinking: when the hell is this shit company gonna go under? So I waited and waited, until Mayoeru Futari was announced, then delay after delay after delay. And what did I get? The game wasn’t the landmine I expected — just dumb and bland as tap water, with art that was straight-up weak. Every girl’s tits bigger than the last, each with a more seductive look in her eyes, moaning louder and louder during H scenes. I was overjoyed… practically trembling with glee, dripping wet with excitement. Not because big tits do it for me, but because I finally saw it: this shit company is done for.

In high school I heard a thing: in the class next to ours, there was a girl who would have sex with people for money. “See, that’s her.” My deskmate pointed at the back of a girl from the next class and told me she was the subject of the “school secret” he’d described to me before. Honestly, I saw her face later. Not pretty, thick lips, but skinny, pale, a ponytail, always smiling. My biggest takeaway was: I can’t believe she’d do something like that.

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.

Let me start with a true story. It’s kinda long.

What is a nukige? Put simply, nuki = fap. A nukige exists entirely for you to jerk off to. Sure, story-driven 18+ visual novels at least have that thin fig leaf of “I’m here for the plot,” but a nukige is there to stimulate your junk directly, no pretense, no bullshit. Sei ○ Onna ○○ Ikusei Gakuen is exactly that. As the title suggests, the goal is to drag the girls at this school down into a bunch of living sex toys.

Every adult who’s never been in a relationship has, more or less, gone through a phase of wallowing in “2D delusions.” Don’t rush to deny it. Either you’ve dated someone, or you won’t admit it. Otherwise… why would a life winner like you be reading my blog? I had that phase too. Back then I thought way too highly of myself, carrying a bit of detachment and aloofness, full of imagination about the world. Seeing other people in relationships always made my chest tighten: why can even that kind of person get a partner? Why do those couples always look kind of dopey? There are so many girls in this world—how come none of them notice me? Maybe my “her” just hasn’t shown up yet? I once firmly believed: I should have a childhood friend who’s been by my side since we were kids and messages me first every day; in school, I’d always run into one or two girls in my club who blush when they talk; or maybe, by some chance, I’d learn a mysterious girl’s unspeakable secret and we’d forge a bond that belongs only to us… Just like girls get hooked on Qiong Yao novels and teen romance, the harem works guys consume build us a dreamlike ideal world too. “Why doesn’t this stuff ever happen to me? Why aren’t there girls like that around me?” As they say, people grow by gradually coming to understand themselves. When one day you look in the mirror and think, “Who even is this, who’d want to get close to you,” you probably get why the so-called “protagonist halo” never once favored you. Growing up teaches you that without enough resources and charm, no miracle’s going to drop out of the sky. Those old dreams, looking back, feel more like the real world’s little contrast-and-mockery routine aimed at you. Fiction is fiction; no matter how pretty something unrealistic is, it can’t stand in reality. The more you sink into it, the bigger the gap and the more exhausted you get. I eventually climbed out. But there are always people still soaking in the rose-colored dream, unwilling to wake up. Real-life frustration needs some fantasy to cushion it—and the brief thrill those dreams give might just be the start of another kind of addiction. So today’s subject is exactly this kind of fantasy-projection work—