《絆きらめく恋いろは》 is a game I found pretty creative and honestly pretty damn impressive — it’s got a ton going for it: Solid soundtrack Gripping combat A story that portrays the heroine’s growth in detail, easy to relate to Art that isn’t half bad And this game wasn’t just big in Japan — it blew up in China too. I saw “Tsubaki is my wife” everywhere, and the studio struck while the iron was hot and put out a Tsubaki-only fandisc. Kept the hype going and squeezed out another round of sales while they were at it. Before I knew it, it was late 2019, and word of a sequel started going around. The sequel was called Shiraha Kirameku Koi Shirabe (白刃きらめく恋しらべ). Honestly, I wasn’t worried about it at all — the writing style had already settled into a groove, and CRYSTALiA’s parent company AMUSE CRAFT didn’t exactly look strapped for cash, so there was no doubt they’d do the sequel right… But what confused me was that not long after this game came out, Tomochiyo Kurenai (智斗紅), the planner and producer of the original Kizuna Kirameku Koi Iroha (絆きらめく恋いろは), said some weird stuff on Twitter: He said he’d already left the company back in summer, and he’s barely retweeted anything about the new game — it’s all been stuff about older titles. He also said he was only nominally attached to the new game and didn’t actually do anything on it. What is this feeling? When does a game’s producer normally react like that? Only when the game itself turned out bad, when even they think it’s garbage, and they rush to shift the blame because they’re scared of getting flamed!