CUBE released a game called Kamisama no You na Kimi e back in 2020. It’s about a protagonist who’s a top-tier hacker and the AI robot he ends up with. That game had solid art and decent sales, but the story left a lot to be desired. The most ridiculous part is that the protagonist is supposedly a “hacker” yet has zero hacker instincts—he just lets an AI-powered internet-connected robot from a tech giant live with him, not caring at all about privacy. Also, a lot of the routes feel like they just cut off abruptly. The main heroine, Tsukuyomi, doesn’t get main-heroine treatment; the detective billed as “the reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes” relies on a brain chip and turns into an idiot; and the female hacker avenging her brother just keeps raging impotently the whole time. The premise is good, but the whole game feels like it’s missing something. Later came news that the game was being ported to Switch and PS4, and it was even getting a new heroine. That caught me off guard. Sure, the whole “port it all-ages and add a new heroine” playbook has been around since roughly a decade ago, but lately it’s practically unthinkable. The industry’s already circling the drain, after all. CUBE going ahead and bucking the trend like this pretty much proves they’ve got real confidence in the supervisor’s art. I looked at the added character content too, and it didn’t seem like a big deal — probably just a story about some random side character. Later word got around that the port also changed some of the original story, which was honestly expected. The original has that “raping a mentally disabled girl” politically incorrect bit, so tweaking it makes sense. What I actually cared about was how to get my hands on this “all-ages version” with the new heroine added. I originally wanted to grab a Switch cartridge, then found out it goes for over 6000 yen and never drops in price. As a broke-ass, I stared at it for a while and gave up. But when I saw the new heroine was voiced by a CV who’s a regular in eroge, I had a feeling: someday I’ll definitely get to play this one for free. And wouldn’t you know it, the heavens rewarded my patience — just as I predicted, CUBE did the exact same thing they pulled with Your Diary back in the day: a reverse port. They put out Kamisama no You na Kimi e Extended Edition, and it doesn’t just bundle in the new heroine’s story, it also gives her HCG scenes (one look at the CV and you already know what’s up). So I wasted no time hunting down the game to check out the added content. And hoo boy, the results were eye-opening — this game is nowhere near as simple as I expected. If anything, compared to the version that came out two years ago, this so-called “expanded edition” feels more like the actual proper release.

I remember a few years back, before Google+ shut down, some helpful guy online told me the thing he hated most was when a character in certain anime/game works says one specific line — the moment that line comes out, he instinctively writes the whole thing off as garbage. “Humans, huh~ they’re just that kind of creature” 其实一开始我不能理解这种想法，直到我后来玩的 Galgame 越来越多，接触的所谓“神作”越来越多，我也就开始越来越明白，这样开口闭口都是“人間とは……”的角色…… I fucking hate this! What I hate isn’t the line this character says, it’s the tone he says it in—all high and mighty, like he’s above it all. He’s still a “human” himself, yet he’s always judging humans from God’s-eye view. You could call it self-mockery, but that air of superiority doesn’t look like it. What annoys me even more is that everything he does fits the mold of the “complainer who never offers a solution” type. For example, this kind of character always rants like a lunatic about how ugly humans are, how selfish humans are, how goddamn stupid humans are—and then goes right on doing ugly, selfish, goddamn stupid things himself, while never once advocating truth, goodness, or beauty. It looks more like he’s making excuses for his own stupid behavior than actually criticizing anything.

When Red: Cherish was announced I wasn’t exactly hyped. My first reaction was “what the hell is this?” The legendary “cyberpunk” premise welded onto “running a restaurant day to day” — that reeks of a planning meeting where nobody had any ideas left and somebody just blurted out the first thing that came to mind. Still, I was glad the studio managed to put out something new at all. I’d been convinced they were going to milk the white-haired Tsubaki from the previous game until the lights went out, so credit where it’s due for stepping out of the comfort zone. I played the trial, and it was surprisingly good. Bought the full version too — and then the smile slowly slid off my face. How do I put this. It’s not that the game is bad. It’s that it’s way too different from what I expected.

Like most teenage boys, at the age when “sex” hits hardest, I opened the door to “sex.” The trigger was a little ad I saw on the street, telling the story of a dick pill. It went like this: a “mistress” gets abandoned, then runs into a homeless guy on the street. He’s asleep, but still standing tall, so to speak. So the “mistress,” thirsty as hell, sits right down on him in broad daylight, and the wording that follows—I can’t decide if it’s absurd or inspired. Stuff like “jade stalk slides into jade gate,” “flower branch trembling,淫水 overflowing”—anyway, the ad ends by telling you this homeless guy is so godlike because he took their brand of dick pills. Even as an ad it’s total nonsense and makes no sense. For one, how does a homeless guy afford a box of fake dick pills at 98 RMB? And no woman on the street is gonna get bored and sit on a beggar. Do you people not own vibrators? Later, my more absurd education on “sex” came from a series of jokes called Professor Huang Xialiu. I found them in a pile of old newspapers—no idea which street rag printed them. A lot of the jokes were ridiculous, but sometimes they carried real satire of the era, including some absurdity from the Cultural Revolution. You can still find some traces of “Huang Xialiu” online, though supposedly anyone who’s seen this stuff is already 50.

I know who Matsuyama Takeshi is, because I read his novel Kimi Shinitamou Ryuuseigun. I’m still not sure whether that series is actually finished—it stopped at volume five, and I got stuck on volume three. The official line is that it’s complete. The plot of that novel is pretty simple: the protagonist’s childhood friend dies, and he spends the entire book getting over it. One idea from that novel stood out to me as genuinely novel: the heroine isn’t actually a “Earthling” in the usual sense—she’s a “space-born,” born in space to a mother who gave birth to her up there. That’s the bit that stuck with me the most. Honestly, I think that novel should have ended after volume one. The whole first volume is already overflowing with inspirational chicken soup, and the protagonist does manage to move past the heroine’s death. But then—surprise—the story pulls a sudden twist and reveals there might be a way to save her. And that’s where I checked out. If I had to guess, the rest of the story involves the protagonist using some supernatural ability (time travel, space hopping, whatever) to bring the heroine back… Lame. So lame.

When Sonora first launched, I remember they were trying to do something closer to mainstream young-people vibes—the first game’s gacha whale theme, the second’s anime idol theme, that sort of thing. Those are the topics young people love and that are trendy right now. As a visual novel company, creating a new brand to pull in new users with that kind of move is completely normal. Then the third game came along and the direction was already off—suddenly we’re talking about running an eroge shop, which is a super hardcore topic. And by this fourth game, they’ve completely let loose, heading straight into a field that eroge players know all too well but young people couldn’t care less about: eroge development. Uchi wa Mou, Enki Dekinai (We Can’t Delay Any Longer) The title itself reflects part of the current state of eroge development companies—thanks to COVID, staffing shortages, funding shortages, the declining industry taking another hit, development content getting delayed over and over, constant pushbacks. It’s basically the norm. I could already imagine the game’s theme before it came out. Going by Sonora’s previous eroge shop game, it’d be all jokes about the daily work of an eroge production company, with cameos from the previous game’s shop and maybe some idol characters. There might be some tense work descriptions, but problems get resolved quickly, and it all ends in a happy ending… And so this game… is pretty much exactly what I imagined.

Back at the start of 2021, while I was playing visual novels, I couldn’t help but sigh: “Everything coming out early this year is so mid. Guess only the big second-half releases can save this year’s reputation.” So I waited for the second half, and at last the legendary “big release” showed up: Sakuhin Kanojo no Ren’ai Koushiki (創作彼女の恋愛公式) When this one was announced it was stacked with buffs: the artist behind “G-Senjou,” Nii Shuu’s go-to producer, a Campus scenario writer who supposedly understands love better than anyone and who’d kept Light alive for a whole year off a pile of small titles, plus the best support resources Akabesoft2 had to offer. Everything about it made this game the closer that had to finish the year off. Then the trial version dropped. Honestly, the trial had its affected and janky bits, but overall I thought it had real merit. The big one: the secondary heroine, Kiriha, genuinely stood out. Earlier in the year I’d been snarking that she was a painter who’d also done debug work on the game, and then in the second half she turns around and becomes a heroine who spends the whole route PUA-ing the protagonist, and she’s the one who brings the story’s highlight moments. So I was looking forward to release. End of the year came, the full version arrived. When I saw the walkthrough mention a story lock, something felt off. Add the OP title they revealed later, “Kiseki nante, iranai” (“I don’t need miracles”), and I had a bad feeling. “Don’t tell me this game is about to pull some shit again.” Unfortunately, my hunch was right. Again.

Alright, so it’s been at least ten years since I last played a game with a “crossdressing infiltration” premise. What? You mean that “Monkeys?” thing? No, that one doesn’t count. That game is unhinged. The company that’s been cranking out “crossdressing infiltration” titles year after year is probably ensemble, the one everyone knows. Their games give me a feeling I can’t quite put into words. The company keeps putting out visual novels at Intel-like tick-tock cadence, churning out titles that mix the “crossdressing infiltration” and “rich young lady” elements, but after all these years, they’ve left barely any impression. A lot of the time people just skip right over the brand. The reason is simple: it’s way too samey. The so-called “young lady” games are gorgeous art paired with a plot straight out of a gender-swapped Tiny Times—players drop their pants, fap to the story, and move on. The “crossdressing infiltration” ones are also gorgeous art paired with a yuri Tiny Times plot—players drop their pants, fap to the story, and move on. Over time, people just assume this brand’s games have no story. The main draw is the beautiful girls, some scenes are fappable, and you grab it for the eye candy as material. OP and ED are always Duca, the titles always have “otome” or “hanasaku” in them. And that’s how ensemble keeps surviving—lukewarm, neither dead nor alive. But lately, they seem to have decided to change something. They’ve started improving the story and narrative, and their last release was a ninja-themed game. This time, with their “crossdressing infiltration” title, they’ve gone full transformation—and it hit me weirdly… hard. Hoshi no Otome to Rikka no Shimai (星の乙女と六華の姉妹) The title is cliché, the setup is cliché, but anyone who’s been following ensemble will spot the difference immediately. “The art quality in this game has visibly dropped.” That drop in visual quality brought about a change in the whole game. After playing it out of curiosity, I have to say this is genuinely ensemble’s most daring “crossdressing infiltration”… no, actually their boldest and strangest work in the entire lineup. The plot is simple to describe, but not that simple.

So here’s the thing: I didn’t even want to play this game. I’ve given up on Hook. The way they develop their scenarios like some high-cohesion, low-coupling assembly line pisses me off just looking at it, and paired with that eternal 720p max resolution, my blood pressure went straight through the roof… But I heard there was a “landmine,” so I dove in. You know how it is. I really love playing “landmines.” No idea if that counts as a symptom of being a total M. And here’s the awkward part: I’d barely finished the game when I got a commission request. So yeah, I already busted my ass writing a not-exactly-short commercial piece on this game, and now being asked to talk about it again is exhausting. Plus there’s honestly not that much to discuss story-wise. If I had to say something, let’s talk about the game’s “concept” and where it crashes and burns.

Honestly, at first I figured HARUKAZE was dead as a studio, that they’d gone full-time into all-ages TokyoToon stuff. Didn’t expect them to come back from the dead with a brand-new title. The game’s called “Monkeys!¡,” and that double inverted exclamation mark at the end is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Combined with the premise, it gave me the feeling they were about to do a crossdressing bit. I haven’t touched many crossdressing VNs. Most of them follow the same playbook, and the ones that actually do something interesting with it are rare. The one that stuck with me was Maria†Holic from back in the day, and even that didn’t have much to do with crossdressing, really. I’ve always appreciated HARUKAZE’s talent for shitposting, so I was looking forward to this one bringing something new. After playing it, though, all I can say is this game brought plenty of “surprises”—and even more disappointment.