Generally speaking, the “cross-dressing” games enesemble puts out have painfully contrived premises. Most of them go like this: the male lead has some unavoidable reason to dress as a girl and transfer into a girls’ school, where he proceeds to whip it out and go on a rampage. Even though the protagonist is nominally a cross-dresser, the HCG in these games is genuinely lewd, and he’s the lewdest one of all despite being a guy. And the lewdest guy still fights at full power in the HCG, as if following the principle of “treat every shot like it’s your last, and don’t be afraid of going impotent” — which bumps up the usability a lot. For a while I just mentally filed these games under the nukige subcategory. But enesemble clearly shifted direction after last year’s cross-dressing title. It started caring about plot coherence, even going for crazy twists. Last year’s game felt like a Frankenstein’s monster of ideas, but willingness to change is always good. So this year enesemble brings us a new cross-dressing game: Hana wa Mijikashi, Odore yo Otome (華は短し、踊れよ乙女).