Play enough visual novels and you start to notice patterns. For instance, most visual novel plots follow the same trajectory when it comes to love: the girl has feelings for the guy, keeps them bottled up, and every time she’s about to say something, the protagonist plays dumb, she stays reserved, he keeps wandering around blind, until some specific event happens, he realizes he’s actually in love with her, confesses, they date, they fuck, End. Honestly, that formula is pretty standard, and there’s nothing wrong with it. But even if salted tofu pudding is delicious, even if five-kernel mooncakes are tasty, you eat them year after year, month after month, day after day, and you’ll eventually get sick of them. So some visual novel companies started throwing in all sorts of weird shit: the girl isn’t human but a god, the girl gets tortured to death, the setting is in the future, the setting is in the past, time travel here, changing the future there~ And so on and so forth. Over time, the original meaning of “Galgame” as a shorthand for “Girl and Love Game” has become a bit of a misnomer. No wonder foreigners always call these things “visual novels.” Some stories have literally become novels, but even then, they still slap an 18+ sticker on the label, just to attract more people, forcibly stuffing in so-called “romance elements” that don’t fit, and while they’re at it, throwing in some sex scenes, hoping to lure in more players—at least those who don’t care about the story and just want to see fucking—to contribute a few more sales.

I wonder if anyone else out there likes fairy tales as much as I do. Fairy tales are, of course, stories meant for children. I’m not a kid anymore, but I still find myself drawn to that childish style of story… Ancient legends, gods in the sky, princes and princesses, forests and sunlight, and cute flat-chested skinny twintail girls you just want to scoop up into your arms… So yeah, I like fairy-tale-style stories, and visual novels too. This has nothing to do with being a lolicon, of course. Nothing at all. Really, nothing.

In high school I heard a thing: in the class next to ours, there was a girl who would have sex with people for money. “See, that’s her.” My deskmate pointed at the back of a girl from the next class and told me she was the subject of the “school secret” he’d described to me before. Honestly, I saw her face later. Not pretty, thick lips, but skinny, pale, a ponytail, always smiling. My biggest takeaway was: I can’t believe she’d do something like that.

I didn’t really want to play Koi × Shin’ai Kanojo (恋×シンアイ彼女) at first. Two reasons: Didn’t like the setup. That kind of school romance plot looks like a sleeping pill just from the description. I’m not a fan of Niijima Yuu, the writer everyone keeps hyping. Sure, I think Hatsuyuki Sakura (はつゆきさくら) is a decent game, but this guy’s scenario-writing ability really doesn’t deserve the praise. His work on Kisaragi Kinboshi pretty much confirmed my judgment.

So here’s how I found this game. I saw some foreigner streaming it on YouTube, in English of course. I didn’t even watch the game itself, just the part where the OP played. Honestly the OP is pretty good, pretty damn sick. And from the OP you can pretty much tell it’s a horror game. More importantly, the Japanese lyrics in the OP told me this was probably a Japanese Galgame that got an English localization. I got curious and looked around for info on it, but there’s basically nothing out there—just some stream videos and not much else. That got me hooked. I wanted to play it, searched everywhere and couldn’t find it, except on Steam. So I bought it on the game’s Steam page. It’s not big, a little over 700 MB, supports English and Japanese, just no voice acting. The surprise is it supports Windows / Linux / Mac, so after downloading, the journey began. I just want to say, this game’s journey really felt like a close call…

Why play this game? Because I’m a seiyuu nerd. There’s no way I could see that cast list and not react. Uiii is in it. Uehara Aoi is in it. Kotori Yuka is in it. Tohno Soyogi is in it. Miyoshida Ina is in it… okay, that’s Shimizu Ai. For me there’s no lineup more stacked than this, except that it’s missing Kiritani Hana. As for the game itself, who the hell cares… though after finishing it I was still stunned.

Yeah, it’s cliché, and I know I shouldn’t write it this way, but before I get into the game I need to talk about something from the past. You only really feel the game’s content deeply when you connect it to your own life, after all. Let’s start with a look. A gaze. The gaze of a certain girl from my elementary school days is one I’ve never been able to forget. Back then I was a top student. The especially top kind. Honestly, I don’t know why I was a top student. I just figured that the stuff they taught in class was something you were supposed to learn, that long-distance running in PE was something you were supposed to be fast at, that speaking and giving presentations was just something you did that way. I couldn’t understand — couldn’t even begin to grasp — how hard it was for everyone else to do the things that came so “naturally” to me. I never saw anyone as an enemy, but there are always people who want to see you as a challenge. After one final exam, a girl jumped out and said to me with a resolute look in her eyes: “Just you wait. Next exam, I’m taking first place. I’ll beat you.” And with that, she turned and ran off. Sure enough, at the next final exam, she took first place, and I took second because I got one math problem wrong. I didn’t really care, though, because soon after, I took first again, and that girl was still looking at me with that same resolute — almost resentful — gaze. “Why does she look at me like I’m her enemy?” I couldn’t understand it. By the time I did understand, years had passed, and that empathy has only grown deeper and more obvious with age…

The moon is bright and the stars are few; the autumn night has already begun to carry a chill. An old man in a short-sleeve shirt and jeans, idly messing with his phone. “Grandpa.” A little girl’s voice rang out. She looked like she’d been staring at the old man for a while, and had finally worked up the nerve to speak to him. “It’s so chilly tonight—aren’t you cold out here?” “Cold my ass.” Old as he was, his tone carried an unmistakable flippancy—until he looked up, saw the girl in front of him, and realized that kind of talk didn’t suit his image. So he straightened his expression and put on a smile that wasn’t exactly handsome, saying to her, “I’m not cold~ thank you~.” The little girl didn’t seem to care about how the old man talked. She just went on slowly, “Grandpa, grandpa, what are you looking at?” As she spoke, she started peeking at the phone in the old man’s hand. The old man looked a little embarrassed and hurriedly put his phone away. He didn’t want the little girl to see what was on the screen, because in his eyes—no, in most people’s eyes—what was on that phone screen really wasn’t something you’d want others to see. **“Hey there, kiddo~” The old man forced himself to stay calm. “How about I tell you a story?” “A story, huh? What kind of story?” The little girl didn’t turn it down at all—if anything, she looked like she’d heard them all. “What kind of thing do you want to hear?” **“There are handsome guys, pretty girls, and people falling in love…” “Tch.” The old man clicked his tongue, then immediately put his grin back on. “Ever heard the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl?” "……you…… pervert…… uncle?" The little girl looked completely confused. Do kids these days not even know the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl? The old man couldn’t help but sigh. “Want to hear it?” “Yeah!” The little girl was thrilled. **“Come on, come on, sit here.” The old man patted the clean spot beside him. “The story has to start from the beginning…” ……………………

Imouto Paradise! 2 (妹ぱらだいす2) is the sequel to Imouto Paradise! — at least it’s not a spiritual successor. Why do I say that? I think a comparison shot is in order. Here’s the main cast of Imouto Paradise! 1: And here’s the main cast of Imouto Paradise! 2: And I should point out that the characters in the two games are not meant to be the same people… What the hell!!!

Imouto Paradise! (妹ぱらだいす) is a pure-love game with genuinely nice art. The story centers on family and kinship — the parents are away on a business trip, so the eldest brother looks after his five younger sisters. Most visual novels these days are trending toward “novelization,” but they always end up feeling half-assed. I say that because real novels don’t have this much dialogue and slice-of-life padding — VNs do. It’s voiced media; no dialogue means no reason for the CVs to exist. The result is that even well-received VNs feel bloated in their daily-life sections, and it’s only after the routine ends that the foreshadowing actually pays off and the plot kicks in. I’m optimistic about the future of VNs experimenting with tighter storytelling, but until that surprise arrives, I’d rather they just stick to classical pure-love stuff. Imouto Paradise! does exactly that, and does it well.