Sometimes I stop and wonder how long it’s been since I last played a landmine game. Maybe I’ve just gotten more sensitive lately. One look at a game’s setup and I can tell if it’s shit, so I haven’t stepped on one since the second half of last year… But there’s one thing I can’t resist: the art style. If the art hits my tastes just right, I’ll overlook the landmine parts and be willing to forgive a whole lot more. And it’s not just me. According to a poll I ran on some dumbass social media site, over half the people said “a work with good-looking characters but a boring story” beats “a work with a great story but characters you can’t stand to look at.” It’s a shallow world, I guess. And I love Sesena Yau’s art that much. Even though one of her previous games was mind-numbingly dull, this time I fired up her new one without hesitation—even though I vaguely remembered seeing someone on Weibo tear it apart with a long screenshot post calling it garbage. The game is Natsuiro Ramune. And just like I said at the start, it’s a landmine. Sesena Yau drew another landmine.

I figure everyone’s got a dream, but it keeps shifting with age and circumstances. The very first one we ever had—aside from those endless dumbass questions teachers ask, “what do you wanna be when you grow up”—was probably always school-related, deep down. A buddy of mine, Crab Boss, his dream was to open an internet cafe right across from the school. “I’ll open a net cafe right across from school, rig it with the sickest machines, run the sickest membership perks, pull in the sickest kids, and piss off every last one of those dumbass teachers.” Crab Boss really loved hanging out at net cafes back then. Hmm… sometimes he’d drag me along too. Another friend, Tao-san, his dream was to bang every woman on earth.