For a lot of people whose entire knowledge of Japan stops at the Second Sino-Japanese War and at the level of Aoi Sora and Matsushima Kaede, the impression they have of the country is basically this: “perverted,” “off-the-wall,” “all kinds of fetishes,” “twisted,” and so on and so forth. It’s not hard to see why. At least in mainland China, the Japanese social news you come across is nothing but some foot fetishist sipping a Coke while licking a stranger’s feet for 30 minutes, some ear-cleaning massage parlor, all sorts of weird services, those utterly pointless but deeply disgusting otaku fleshlight things, people who eat a girl’s shit, people who drink her holy water, and on and on… By any reasonable standard Japan should be a country with very strict moral restraints, but that’s exactly why people cut loose harder when they do… Then again, is anywhere else any less twisted? I flipped through mainland social news and there’s no shortage of twisted stories. I know a girl I went to middle school with — she posted on social media that she ran into a purebred “foot fetishist” on the streets of Zhengzhou, who politely asked to photograph her feet specifically… and to kiss them… and she said yes. Hard to say whether that’s real “twisted” or “perverted,” but my point is that these people who clash so hard with social norms exist everywhere in the world. Japan just likes to drag them out under the spotlight. “Otaku” and “ACG” culture have seemed stuck in the swamp of “pornography” from the very start. Most of the content is about sex, even though most of the people consuming it have never had any… so the impression they give others isn’t great either. Which is why when a classmate introduced me to someone, they’d add helpfully, “Don’t worry about him, he’s a 2D person, he’s not interested in you.” and I’d sit there dying inside. Thanks to the bigger imagination that ACG culture spawned, Japan has a fun hobby: “moe-fication” and “girl-ification.” Can’t find a girl? Just turn the stuff around you into girls. Trains become girls — when you ride the train, it’s like you’ve entered the girl’s body. Pens become girls — when you grip the pen, it’s like you’re stroking the girl’s slender fingers… Cola becomes a girl — when you squeeze the bottle, it’s like you’re caressing black tights. Pocari Sweat becomes a girl — when you… okay, never mind. So whether it’s Anime, Comic, or Game (though the term ACG probably wasn’t coined by the Japanese — they say マンガ, not Comic), there’s always a game where some object gets turned into a girl and becomes the protagonist. Especially in visual novels. I’ve seen an alpaca turned into a girl, a whale turned into a girl, a robot turned into a girl, a camcorder turned into a girl, a train turned into a girl, a cursed sword turned into a girl, not to mention all the non-human ghosts and gods… and animals and whatever else. So at this point, if you told me there’s a game where a girl is a smartphone turned human, I wouldn’t even be surprised. Honestly, it feels less like surprise and more like “well, obviously.” I stroke my phone for half an hour every day. Was I subconsciously treating it as a girl all along?

Asa Project, a company that used to be pretty damn good. They’re under Hook, I think. They made a name for themselves with Renai 0 Kilometer, then kept the style going with ひとつ飛ばし恋愛 and later Purumai Wars… and then this year they put out Suki to Suki de Sankaku Renai. Before I get into the new one, let’s walk through how Asa Project’s games have evolved…

No idea what those Japanese eroge developers were smoking this year, but most of this year’s new releases felt like… a huge step backwards compared to before. From Hinakami Clover at the start of the year, through all the weird stuff in between — Sakura no Mori † Dreamers with its strong opening and weak follow-through, Kimi to Yume Mitsu which was so baffling it made me sick, even the well-received Maitetsu had that self-indulgent political show dragging it down, and Saga Planets’ new game had a creative final ending but couldn’t hide how boring the common route was. August I can’t even be bothered to talk about anymore. The more I think about it, the worse it gets. Every so often I genuinely want to see if those double-standard Japanese would dare to review-bomb this game below 80. Broadly speaking, the story-driven games have all clearly regressed. Not a single one gave me that from-start-to-finish high like smoking weed. I had to go back to older games to numb myself. Every time I play a new story-focused release it just feels like getting shit smeared all over my face.

Honestly, I didn’t want to play this game at first. The trial version had been out for ages and I kept skipping it, and I had my reasons. First, the OP just doesn’t grab you. I’ve been burned by OPs before—more than once—so that’s probably a weak spot in how I pick games. Second, the premise is way too light-novel. A princess from the underworld comes to the surface to destroy the world or whatever—how many times have we seen that? A heroine drops out of another world and runs into the protagonist? A dime a dozen. Third, the art style. It’s just too… sultry. I really didn’t like the character designs. Every girl looks like a sexually frustrated female rapist. Maybe I’m better off as a simple moe pig—cute art appeals to me more. So for these pretty dumb reasons I kept ignoring the game. But the game kept making moves—announcing an anime, running ads, going on sale. I started to wonder what kind of backing this studio had. Eventually I couldn’t take the flood of Twitter bombardment anymore and thought, fine, I’ll check out the trial… And then I fell down the rabbit hole. How to put it—the game is way, way, way, way better than I expected. Honestly, it’s a solid gem.

Playing games, the most important thing is to have fun. You can’t force every new game to be a masterpiece. Finishing a game and feeling like you ate shit—that’s the dev team flexing, and nobody wants that to happen. So hey, I’ve got a title here that’s guaranteed to put you in a good mood when you’re done. Wanna take a look? Puramai Wars (プラマイウォーズ) is the new game from Asa Project. The studio’s trademark—I mentioned it over here—is messing around plus face gags. It looks chaotic on the surface, but it gives you this happy vibe. I figure plenty of you have played Renai 0 Kilometer and know the deal: surface-level chaos, but the story has a bit of substance, and amid all the noise you can still feel each girl’s full feminine charm. So the dev team probably figured that formula was popular and went full copy-paste, putting out a brand-new game with basically the same setup: this one, Puramai Wars. As for what the name means, I have no idea. “Puramai” should be Japanese, “wars” is war, and the main premise is a showdown between two families sharing a house. One side is the protagonist’s “good behavior” family; the other is the “bad behavior” family. The official site’s description is literally “the story begins with a war between the well-behaved family and the ill-behaved family.” I need to clarify something here: this so-called “war” basically doesn’t exist in the game… It’s mostly pretty harmonious. If we’re grading this like a school essay, it’s off-topic.