Love365: Our Private Homeroom, Ryota
May. 23rd, 2020 11:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrThis is free on the Love365 app until the 26th. It's one of their better written romances with a relatively un-awful LI, but I only unambiguously rec it to people into teacher/student romance. I personally found it a mixture of shippy and squicky since that's not really my jam.
What I found interesting was that it felt intensely localised for a US audience in a way none of the other Love3265 games I've played have been. It's still unambiguously set in Japan, but with a Feisty protagonist and sometimes jarring US cultural references (I just don't believe a modern Japanese teen would make a Disney's Pocahontas joke).
The basic story structure was pure Voltage otome, the changes were all very shallow. Based on my experience with other Love365 games, it felt like they literally just took every scene where the protagonist is passively scared and made her angry and prone to violent threats. She still gets rescued by the hero, and her overall behaviour is still sweet and self sacrificing, so her feistiness felt pretty pasted in, but I still enjoyed it. Especially since the love interest remained a Japanese masculine ideal, and was more polite and sensible than your average Western romantic male lead.
Of course...he's still her TEACHER. The thing that made me decide to try the game despite my teacher/student squick was the premise: she ends up temporarily homeless, so he takes her in, but they can't let anyone know in case they Misunderstand. I am a sucker for forced cohabitation forbidden romance mutual pining, and that is what I got! He spends most of the path doing his best to be a Good Sensible Grownup Guardian Who Would Never, totally in denial about how close they're becoming. And I found the way they slowly let go of their Student and Teacher roles at home and get to know each other as just people fairly effective.
Buuut the game also kinks on teacher/student aspects I am very much not into, and glossed over the consent issues way too much for my tastes. Like they go on about it being Forbidden but don't really go into the consent pitfalls that are the REASON it's forbidden, and thus didn't convince me that this couple will somehow avoid those pitfalls. Which is admittedly a problem I have with a lot of Forbidden romances.
I poked at the sequel story and it looks like once he does decide to date her they just...keep dating while he remains her homeroom teacher? And it's this whole Sexy Secret? Which...nope nope nope squick.
Also, there was a stalker plotline which was handled uncomfortably, even if I did enjoy it giving MC a chance to be violently threatening.
On the plus side, the heroine has a MALE FRIEND who shows no signs of being interested in her?? I mean maybe he does on a different path but I liked his role in this one.
But my final and most damning criticism: The love interest is a maths teacher, and really enjoys helping kids learn to stop hating the subject and get the grades they need to follow their dreams (mostly by telling them they just need to work harder, because this is a Japanese game)...but as far as I can tell he doesn't actually like maths all that much. For a moment I was all excited to have a maths nerd LI who wasn't the usual cold 'logical' jerk or socially maladjusted loser...but he was a fake maths nerd boy >:(
(Also I tried a bunch of other free games since the last one I reviewed, but they were all DIRE)
What I found interesting was that it felt intensely localised for a US audience in a way none of the other Love3265 games I've played have been. It's still unambiguously set in Japan, but with a Feisty protagonist and sometimes jarring US cultural references (I just don't believe a modern Japanese teen would make a Disney's Pocahontas joke).
The basic story structure was pure Voltage otome, the changes were all very shallow. Based on my experience with other Love365 games, it felt like they literally just took every scene where the protagonist is passively scared and made her angry and prone to violent threats. She still gets rescued by the hero, and her overall behaviour is still sweet and self sacrificing, so her feistiness felt pretty pasted in, but I still enjoyed it. Especially since the love interest remained a Japanese masculine ideal, and was more polite and sensible than your average Western romantic male lead.
Of course...he's still her TEACHER. The thing that made me decide to try the game despite my teacher/student squick was the premise: she ends up temporarily homeless, so he takes her in, but they can't let anyone know in case they Misunderstand. I am a sucker for forced cohabitation forbidden romance mutual pining, and that is what I got! He spends most of the path doing his best to be a Good Sensible Grownup Guardian Who Would Never, totally in denial about how close they're becoming. And I found the way they slowly let go of their Student and Teacher roles at home and get to know each other as just people fairly effective.
Buuut the game also kinks on teacher/student aspects I am very much not into, and glossed over the consent issues way too much for my tastes. Like they go on about it being Forbidden but don't really go into the consent pitfalls that are the REASON it's forbidden, and thus didn't convince me that this couple will somehow avoid those pitfalls. Which is admittedly a problem I have with a lot of Forbidden romances.
I poked at the sequel story and it looks like once he does decide to date her they just...keep dating while he remains her homeroom teacher? And it's this whole Sexy Secret? Which...nope nope nope squick.
Also, there was a stalker plotline which was handled uncomfortably, even if I did enjoy it giving MC a chance to be violently threatening.
On the plus side, the heroine has a MALE FRIEND who shows no signs of being interested in her?? I mean maybe he does on a different path but I liked his role in this one.
But my final and most damning criticism: The love interest is a maths teacher, and really enjoys helping kids learn to stop hating the subject and get the grades they need to follow their dreams (mostly by telling them they just need to work harder, because this is a Japanese game)...but as far as I can tell he doesn't actually like maths all that much. For a moment I was all excited to have a maths nerd LI who wasn't the usual cold 'logical' jerk or socially maladjusted loser...but he was a fake maths nerd boy >:(
(Also I tried a bunch of other free games since the last one I reviewed, but they were all DIRE)
