Majo Koi Nikki (魔女こいにっき) left a hell of an impression on me last year, for two reasons: the story itself, and the way it’s told. The structure is pretty intricate. First, there’s a timeline spanning hundreds of years inside the game. Then there’s a story-within-a-story setup—and the kicker is that the whole centuries-long timeline is itself a story inside a story. In reality, all those tales are just phantoms. The ending made me want to curse someone out. The protagonist goes through hell to achieve a genuinely moving HAPPY END, and then the TRUE END drops a few lines telling you it was all fake, all just a story, and the real protagonist is trapped forever in the witch’s curse with no escape. A lot of people promptly turned on the scenario writer Shinima Yuu, calling him a bastard who’s out to screw players over again, blah blah blah… Then, not long after the game’s release, a PSV port was announced: Majo Koi Nikki Dragon×Caravan. Along with the port came news of two new scenarios—one upgrading a heroine to a romanceable route, and a new chapter called “The Passionate Prince and the Little Dragon” (灼熱の王子と小さな竜). I didn’t pay much attention at first, because for most PSV ports the extra content is irrelevant cash-grab filler. Upgrading a heroine? Seen it a million times—they just cobble together some story to force a route. So I ignored it. Until I saw a Japanese player’s review on ErogameScape that changed my mind. This person said the new PSV chapter wasn’t just random fluff—it was a completion of the original story. The Passionate Prince and the Black Dragon chapter apparently depicts what happens after the original ending, reaching the true conclusion. That was both expected and surprising. Expected, because Majo Koi Nikki’s story clearly wasn’t finished—the protagonist was still trapped in the diary, so of course there had to be more. Surprising, because they actually finished the story in the PSV version. So I started figuring out how to get my hands on it. First I waited for a crack, but unlike the PSV version of Shepherd’s Library, nobody dumped it. So I had to camp out on Surugaya for a used copy. Eventually I snagged one in good condition for a relatively cheap price. Not bad. Back home, I dug out my long-neglected PSV, inserted the game card, hit the power button, and the game started again.

I don’t know how other people chase that “immersion” feeling when they read a story. Let me just say what I think. Most of the time, when I come across a story, I notice some plot point that mirrors something that happened to me. Maybe the ending lines up with a stretch of my own life, maybe it only shares the same beginning but not the same end, maybe some character reminds me of a friend or an acquaintance, maybe the protagonist is a lot like me, and so on. Whenever I hit a story like that, I start thinking about my own stuff. Sometimes I even feel a bit of regret or wistfulness because the story went differently than reality did. That’s it. Yeah, that’s all. I’ve never imagined myself as the protagonist. I’ve never imagined the girls the protagonist meets as my girlfriend. I might think a character is cute, but that’s it. Anyone who knows me has probably noticed: I’ve never called a game girl “waifu,” I’ve never said “XXX is mai waifu” or anything like that. I like a character because I like her story, her personality, the things she says. As for looks… come on, Japanese art styles are all basically the same handful of templates, and one artist’s characters all look mass-produced. Everyone looks the same. So personality and story carry way more weight. One principle I hold: characters become full through their stories. And that’s not just true in fiction. In real life too, someone who’s been through a lot, who has a complicated past, naturally has a certain charm in how they talk and carry themselves. Hell, anyone can pull out some old war stories to impress people. Look at me, a washed-up old fuck, still bringing up the past to show off. So I rarely look at standalone artist illustrations. On Twitter I might like an artist’s style, glance at it, share it, sigh about how cute or pretty it is, but I don’t save it. Sometimes I’ll use one as an avatar, but I switch it out pretty quickly—it feels kind of rude, somehow. Right—without a story to prop them up, an empty character means nothing. Someone just standing there, and you don’t know their personality, their voice, their mannerisms—you know basically nothing about them. Saying you like them is almost empty talk. I don’t collect character art, but after playing this many games, I do have a collection of sorts. Mostly game music. Same style as before: the game songs I listen to are almost always from games I’ve actually played through. Especially OSTs—when I hear a track, I remember the story and the characters in it. If I happen to hear a good song from some game, I’ll listen for a while and then pick up the game, wanting to see what story is behind that song. So one day I heard “永遠の魔法使い.” I got curious. What kind of story produces a person who’s a jack-of-all-trades (八面玲瓏), who even with magic can’t grant a single wish and almost gives up…? So I played “魔女こいにっき” (Majo Koi Nikki).