Back when I played World of Warcraft, I’d always run into these “casual guilds.” They didn’t have any strict raid schedule. Anyone could join, and the guild leader would help out the newbies a bit, and the atmosphere was relaxed. Every now and then they’d run a raid, but most of the time there were no rules at all — just people screwing around. A lot of the hardcore players wanted the kind of guild with a rigid hierarchy and harsh rules that could push into better raids for better gear. They had nothing but contempt for the “casual guild” type. Most of them couldn’t wrap their heads around what the point of such a lazy, ambitionless guild even was. But the members of those casual guilds didn’t care. They just quietly lived their lives. I’ve had my own hardcore phase too. I used to not get casual guilds either — until I got old, until I no longer had the time to dump into a game as a hardcore gamer, and I joined a casual guild, because no other guild would take me. Once I was in, I understood. The guild looked like it was just “a tag for people who don’t have a guild,” but it wasn’t that simple. The core of a guild like that is almost always the leader. The leader is very likely a middle-aged guy — good-tempered, easygoing, doesn’t get angry. Because the guild takes all comers, the leader is constantly playing peacemaker. Members might rub each other the wrong way, but most of them have no complaints about the leader. Plenty of members leave when they find a new guild, and the leader wishes them well. Some people complain that the guild has no events, can’t down bosses, can’t get gear, and all the leader can do is apologize and say he’s useless. For a casual guild like this, lose the leader and it’s done for in a heartbeat. But these leaders have a hell of a lot of willpower, and they always manage to keep the guild alive. Once I was chatting with a guild leader and asked him out of curiosity: “Why do you pour so much energy into keeping a guild like this running?” “A game is like society,” he answered. “There are always people out there who don’t belong anywhere, who have no home. They need something like a family to take them in, to give them a harbor that feels like home.” I still think about that line a lot. It makes a lot of sense. Whether our parents are around or not, we always feel lonely — that loneliness of “nobody is here with me” — so we need something like a “family” to let us escape and rest for a while, a harbor for the heart. That’s why you see people trying to do this in real life too — adopting orphans and whatnot. In fiction there are even more of these characters: the ones who take in lost children, the “hopeless good guy” setup, that’s everywhere. Like this game, Ouchi ni Kaeru made ga Mashimaro desu (お家に帰るまでがましまろです).

For something like Galgame, I’ve seen plenty of people claim they’re all about the story and don’t care about the art style. Yet 99% of the time, their avatars in ACG circles are still cute girls. This isn’t surprising, really — everyone appreciates a pretty face. And for something like Galgame, which in the mouths of Sendai aunties sits not far from Adult Video, judging by looks is about as normal as it gets. In other words, for a Galgame trying to boost sales and expand its reach, the first thing you need is good-looking characters. It’s rare to see a game with ugly-as-hell character art still sell like hotcakes — maybe Gakuen Handsome (学園ハンサム) counts as the exception? So if a game’s characters aren’t drawn well, you can basically declare it dead on arrival. Unless the character has some long history and a massive fanbase behind her—but even then, you’re only fooling the diehard fans, and only a fraction of them at that. You won’t reach the “silent majority” of users, and what good is that? Definitely not gonna work. So the first time I laid eyes on Kanojo to Ore no Renai Nichijou (彼女と俺の恋愛日常), I was dead sure this thing had to be trash.

One big reason I play visual novels is that I want to see all kinds of stories. Light novels and anime rarely give you a strict narrative—mostly they hand you a premise and an opening, then it’s expand, expand, expand. You’re just getting into it and suddenly you’ve caught up with the latest release, so you’re stuck waiting week by week while the author drags it out until the heat death of the universe. By the time you finally get an ending, it’s either an open-ended nothingburger or a total trainwreck that leaves a bad taste. I went through that with two manga and decided never again. Most visual novels at least have a clear main storyline. Even if the first half is all tea parties and slice-of-life, there’s a necessary main arc and climax that drives the ending. That’s why a lot of moe-focused games I’ve played eventually throw in some plot development—no matter how well it’s written, at least they make a token effort, tell you the story is over, and give you a Happy Ending. Well… Yukikoi Melt (ゆきこいめると) is a complete outlier. The whole game has basically no obvious main plot—it’s a pure slice-of-life work, so slice-of-life that there’s nothing but slice-of-life. How pure are we talking? Have you seen GJ-bu? Have you seen Non Non Biyori? Have you seen Yuru Yuri? Beyond a premise and a setting, do any of them have a main storyline? No, right!? That’s exactly the style of Yukikoi Melt. If I had to describe it, I’d call it “four-panel manga” style.