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.

Parasol has put out another new game. Honestly I don’t expect much from Parasol anymore — their games have lost any real identity or selling point. The last one with actual buzz was Hare nochi Kitto Nanohana Biyori, a.k.a. “Haru na Hana.” That game had serious problems with its narrative logic; calling it a landmine isn’t unfair. After that Parasol felt like it never recovered. Everything since has been a minor throwaway title, made half-heartedly, with painfully generic premises and nothing that stands out. Take last time’s “swimming club” thing, or that one from the start of the year, “My Everyday Romance With My Girlfriend” or whatever — they just slap together a school setting, add a harem with every girl type imaginable, you pick whoever you want, fuck her once, and it’s over. How do I put this… it doesn’t feel like romance. It feels like hiring a prostitute. So this time Parasol is back with Sakura Hitohira Koi Moyou (桜ひとひら恋もよう). No idea how to translate the title well. A single cherry petal has the shape of love? Sakura Hitohira Koi Moyou? Whatever, you get the idea. But the premise of this new one didn’t interest me at first glance either… except I noticed there’s a nine-year-old loli elementary schooler in the game, and you can’t even get on her route. The setup is that the protagonist is going to school as usual when suddenly the school is going to be merged into another one, due to enrollment rates or bad management or whatever. He refuses to accept it and leads a bunch of classmates in protest. That’s the story. Japan’s declining birthrate is getting worse, so school mergers are a dime a dozen. This premise is just taking the old “a girls’ school gets merged in” setup and flipping it to “we refuse the merger, and it’s not a girls’ school.” What’s the difference? Same soup, different bowl… That’s what I thought at first. Then I found out the game has a lot more going on inside.