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7'scarlet(*) is a mystery m/f romance game written by Tomio Kanazawa, the producer of the Twin-Peaks-esque Deadly Premonition, for Otomate, makers of Hakuoki, Psychdelica of the Black Butterfly etc. The protagonist is investigating the disappearance of her brother in a small country town. It reminds me a little of Higurashi, with the whole Small Japanese Country Town With Dark Secrets And Lots of Cicadas thing. But fluffier/less violent, with cute boys to kiss instead of cute girls with knives.
(*)Note: I just watched the Steam trailer and it's a bit spoilery
The game has some typical Otomate hallmarks but is also it's own thing, with lots of mystery tropes. So far I'm moderately enjoying it despite some silly plot elements. The PC port has some bugs and tends to crash a bit, so far it's not too bad as long as I save frequently.
I want to get my thoughts on the mystery in order before I move onto the next tier of love interests. Right now I've just played the good endings for the two love interests you can access at the start:
Hino Kagutsuchi: Childhood bff. Cute friends to lovers.
Isora Amari: A cheerfully flirty younger guy. Relatively fluffy yandere/obsessive.
Both guys are TOTALLY DEVOTED from the start, and super protective, I'm wondering if there'll be more variation with the others.
No real content notes for this post asides from some general discussion of consent issues in otome. The routes have some violence, and according to a spoiler I saw one of the later routes has a common trigger, which I will go into in my next post. There's vaguely described animal harm on the Isora route.
The localisation uses Western style name order so I'll stick with that. There's a surprising number of animated/video CGs and even backgrounds, the art overall is pretty good. The voice acting is good, the writing is middling, and I turned off the music within minutes.
So! The first scene is a woman running through forest trying to escape a dude who sounds a lot like Miki Shin'ichirou, aka Hijikata from Hakuoki. And oh look, he's voicing one of the love interests!
The main character, Ichiko Hanamaki, is a Nice College Girl (major not even vaguely implied) who spaces out a lot. She's nice enough but a bit generically Otome Heroine: sweet, kind, passive, self-sacrificing, oblivious, innocent, anxious. She gains a little more personality in the individual routes to match the relevant guy, and feels more like a deliberate blank slate than bad writing. I'm just not really into blank slates.
Ichiko's brother vanished in the little country town of Okunezato a year ago. Her childhood best friend, Hino, is part of the online Okunezato Supernatural Club investigating strange goings on in the town, and invites her to come with him to the club's first in-person meeting in the town during the summer.
The town is shaped like a crescent moon, nestled between the mountains and a wide river, with only a single entrance on either end. It's very quiet, with lots of old buildings. There's also a panda mascot called the Okune Panda that someone designed and then recently a guy in a costume just started showing up one day. Noone knows who it is but just lets this guy in a fursuit wander around promoting the town lol.
The town turns out to be under the thumb of the Murakumo family, who run the overbearing Vigilance Committee. The heir, Yuzuki Murakumo, runs the town's only hotel. He fired almost all the staff recently, saying they were 'inefficient', leaving only the chef Isari, maid Yua, and concierge Yuki. So Ichiko and Hino are invited to pay their way by working as staff.
The club meets and discovers the administrator, who runs the website and organised the meetup, hasn't shown up. So Yuki takes over as the most sensible and competent person present, despite being all of like...13.
So! Let's talk characters.
Love Interests:
Hino Kagutsuchi, 20: Went to the same schools and college as Ichiko since they were little. Has a crush on her visible from space, and is a bit belligerently Nice Guyish about her being so oblivious, yet refuses to ever make his feelings clear. Protective and a bit jealous, but otherwise pretty good natured in a boyish jock way. Wants to be Manly and gets blushily defensive about weakness/feelings, but also adores cute things.
Isora Amari, 17: Highschooler who is training to be a chef but never expected to be the only member of the kitchen staff left and thus in charge of all the food, but has enjoyed rising to the challenge. He's flirty, friendly, and charming but a little bit of a manipulative troll. Voiced by the boyish sounding Tetsuya Kakihara who played Victor in Code Realise and Karasuba in Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly.
Toa Kushinada, 20: Shy, awkward, clumsy nerd who loves cats. Voiced by Morikubo Showtaro, who played Okita in Haukoki, but sounding much more boyish and shy.
Sosuke Tatehira, 24: Kuudere/coldly logical glasses-wearing medical student.
Yuzuki Murakumo, 26: Incredibly grumpy and rude heir to the Murakumo family and hotel owner. I have seen very slight signs of him caring about other people's wellbeing under all the coldness but he's a mean boss and his main redeeming feature so far is that Miki Shin'ichirou has a sexy voice.
Sosuke, Isora, Hino, Ichiko, Yuzuki, Toa:
...WAIT GODDAMNIT I CLICKED THE WIKI WITHOUT THINKING AND GOT A BIG SPOILER. Which I had considered as a possibility but damnit. I just wanted to double check the ages ;_; I'll go into the spoiler next post since I've already pretty much finished this post without knowing.
Other characters:
Yuki Hirasaka, 13ish: Serious, sensible, perfectionist middle school boy who wants to make everything around him run smoothly.
Yua Susano, 20ish: Cheerful, mildly snarky maid at the hotel who immediately befriends Ichiko since she doesn't know many other girls her age. Wryly grumpy about all the boys liking Ichiko more than her. Mildly femslashy but it's not that sort of game.
Yasuhisa 'Yasu' Kukuri, 27ish: Cheerful dumbass local cop. The son of the police chief, still managed to get demoted to keeping an eye on this tiny village through incompetence. Childhood friends with Yuzuki who he refers to as "Yuzu-chan" much to his annoyance. Apparently "Yasu is the culprit" is a cliche in Japan like "the butler did it".
Kagura Tsukuyomi, 25ish: A smooth-talking nature photographer who keeps taking photos of Ichiko and saying he couldn't help it, he's an artist and she is just so ~beautiful.
Chikage Karasuma, 40ish: Coldly unfriendly and suspicious guest at the hotel.
Yuribaited by otome once again ;_;
I like that Ichiko is an adult, and the love interests are all around her age. 17 is a nice age for a younger love interest, enough of a gap to feel significant but not so young it feels skeevy.
So! The club gets started by discussing one of the seven mysteries of Okunezato: The Violacia, or corpse flower. It brings back the dead as soulless revenants who keep their temporary bodies alive through CONSTANT MURDER. Legend says people tried to destroy them all, but sometimes they bloom in the local mountains in summer.
Ichiko spaces out, feeling like she's heard that word before. IS SHE A REVENANT?? :D Her spacing out definitely feels Significant. In general she's spacey and emotionally sensitive and can't remember anything before middle school, and Hino's very protective of her about it.
The other mysteries I can remember: foxfire that bodes...something I forget. And Forbidden Areas where if you step foot in them you are never heard from again. The Vigilance committee has cordoned off the mountains as "unsafe" for this reason.
Yuki: Did you know it is traditional for people to invite the person they love to the summer festival?
Ichiko: I thought you said the goal of the festival was to repel the soulless murdering revenants
Yuki: It was originally, but people will use any excuse to turn a holiday into something romantic. Look at Valentines Day and Christmas.
yep this sure is a murder mystery otome.
Isora route:
So I was prepared for him to be a rapey little brother type yandere, since I have learned to recognise the signs, but he was overall more of a rapey older brother type yandere in terms of being calmly protective/nurturing in a very controlling and manipulative way. And he was only mildly dubconny, and lacked both the "How can I sully this innocent little girl with my dirty thoughts" older brother type self hatred and the "How can I make her see me as a man" younger guy self hatred. Mainly his youth comes up when Ichiko thinks he's being endearingly boyish. It was a nice twist on the usual tropes, even if I think his yandereness wasn't as smoothly integrated with his earlier behaviour as it could have been.
He was initially pretending not to be from the town despite knowing way too much about it, I was all "Are you an ageless trickster animal spirit, Isora" but no. He's just hiding his backstory because his family was screwed over by the Murakumos. His mother ran a restaurant next to the hot springs that went out of business when the Vigilance Committee shut down the springs for bringing in too many outsider tourists. Now the few outsiders have to stay in the only remaining hotel, run by the Murakumo heir. And when Isora's mother went to work there she got fired, leaving Isora to be the breadwinner.
On their first date Isora comes up with an excuse to pull Ichiko close and is all false innocence about it, and she thinks "He is clearly being manipulative, but he's also really sweet and charming so I don't mind. Still, I can't let him totally get away with it" and then she acts all false innocence about what he's trying to hint and changes the subject to mess with him. There weren't any other times she was that passive aggressive but I felt like she made a deliberate choice to be innocent and passive and let him control her going forward, which made the later stuff less squicky. Also she is subtly just...SUPER into everything sexually.
And they otherwise have cute moments chatting and bonding. Isora loves making her fancy desserts and she is happy to praise him for it and support his ambitions of becoming a chef (Ichiko has no ambitions of her own of course)
Ichiko has an aversion to strawberries for reasons she can't remember, and Isora mutters that it must be "because of that day". At some point we see her flashback to her in the town being offered food which makes her start choking. My working theory was that when she was like 10 and Isora was like 7 he fed her some strawberries and she choked to death and died, only to be brought back to life as a revenant who is being kept alive by blood sacrifices (by her brother?) and he's been fixated on her ever since.
And then...DEAD BODIES!! Of people we don't know, who "died in falling accidents" on the mountain and behind the local shrine to a snake god. HMM. Circumstantial evidence points towards Isora attempting to murder Hino.
Yuki goes missing!! I was very worried he or Yua were going to get fridged. Yua definitely has something secret going on in her life which is stressing her out.
Ichiko wanders out at night by herself when she specifically promised Isora AND Hino that she wouldn't...and gets stabbed by a mysterious figure. And dies! THE END
...so I played through the route again with a walkthrough.
This time Isora saves her and we reach the "locked in a windowless room 'to heal and be safe' by the guy you suspect may have injured your leg in the first place, who has been muttering about how if it was your hands which were injured he'd get to feed you all your meals" part of the route. He's very caring and only a little gaslighting and dubconny, kissing her injured leg like a petitioner worshipping a goddess.
Ichiko considers that he may have set this all up, or at the very least is lying about having told everyone else that she's with him (and honestly there's no good reason for him not to let them exchange letters even if he suspects everyone else of being the murderer). There is the choice "Ask him about it" and "Blindly trust him".
So of course the correct decision is...Blindly trust him!
She also doesn't take the chance to escape when it comes. And then the RANDOM MASKED SERIAL KILLER who was actually the one to injure her shows up! Of course!
He's wearing a loose black robe and a cat mask, and his voice has been disguised. I'm going to call him Catface because I suspect there may be more than one serial killer in the end. He says weird Serial Killer Things about how when he saw her he knew he had to kill someone so beautiful. Also he framed Isora, and has knocked him out for now, and will fake his suicide later.
But Isora wakes up and BEATS THE SERIAL KILLER TO DEATH WITH HIS BARE HANDS (which Ichiko mainly seems bothered by because Isora is hurt).
He tells Ichiko that they met when he was 5 and she was 8, visiting the town with her parents. She was really nice about his cooking, but got food poisoning from a strawberry tart and went to hospital. But when she came back she still wanted to eat his food, and he fell in love. She says she loves him too, and they share a badly drawn kiss.
Later he says he's been thinking about it and realised keeping her locked up like that was probably stressful for her and he's sorry for being selfish. Who needs boundaries when your boyfriend is so empathetic?
Ichiko: That's ok, as long as you're only selfish that way with me.
Isora: ...you don't mind that I might lock you up again?
Ichiko: As long as you still cook me delicious meals ^_^
Isora: And that if you try to leave me, I might not let you go?
Ichiko: Don't! Make me stay!
So I guess she's happy with her yandere and that's what matters. I was expecting major character deaths but everyone is fine, even Yuki, who was temporarily kidnapped by the Murakumos so they could berate him for not shutting down the supernatural club that brings in outsiders and makes the town look bad. Sure.
THE END
I liked that, overall, even if the writing felt slightly lacking, and I was hoping for a more interesting villain than a generic serial killer. Hopefully there's more to it than that.
There was supposed to be a concert involving a pop idol called A-TO, but it got cancelled because of all the murder. At around this point I realised that Toa is A-TO...ok I only JUST got the name thing, my logic was that it had to be someone in the cast and Toa would be both the funniest and the most logical since he's an outsider with no other apparent occupation.
Hino route:
I liked this more than I expected! Once Ichiko started preferring him over other guys his belligerence vanished and it was just a cute friends to lovers dynamic, they have a lot of very cute scenes enjoying each other's company while Ichiko thinks "when did he...get so hot...". He is very fixated on replacing her older brother, but what's childhood friends to lovers without a little incestuousness.
I was expecting Hino to be kinda dubconny but he's not, the story keeps throwing him and Ichiko into sexy situations (she wanders into the men's bath and sees him naked! They fall on top of each other!) and they both blushingly try to hide how into each other they are and then he pulls away.
And Isora is much less skeezy/possessive because he hasn't realised Ichiko is the girl from his childhood. On the Isora path he and Hino were constantly butting heads.
Isora being overcome with child-like joy every time he encounters cute things is pretty adorable. At one point he squees about a local delivery company called Tsuchinoko Express, whose vans he desperately wants to touch. I was curious so looked up the Tsuchinoko and they're Japanese mythological creatures: fat little snakes with the ability to speak and a propensity for lying who like getting drunk. Which does sound pretty cute. But also the image results showed me a bunch of cute little fat Australian native lizards, some which have been photoshopped to look like snakes, and I am delighted think that people overseas think our local lizards are Japanese mythological creatures.
It's not clear how oblivious Ichiko is to Hino's intensely obvious interest. She certainly ACTS
oblivious, but when she overhears him telling a cat he likes her she doesn't seem at all surprised, I think she was maybe just waiting for him to say something explicitly and "act innocently oblivious" is just...her idea of flirting back.
Not sure how I feel about the gender stuff in this game.
Ichiko, thinking: My older brother would have won this shooting game for me.
Ichiko: I'm going to try this shooting game, like I'm filling my brother's shoes.
Hino: Mmm. Well, don't be too heartbroken if you fail :P
Kagura: You can't let a woman handle a gun, even a toy! I'll shoot it for you, Ichiko <3
Ichiko: Oh, no thank you, I can do it.
Hino: ...he's right, a man should get a girl the things she wants. And I want to be as good as your brother.
Ichiko: Ok! :D
Hino: *has traumatic flashback to some time when a dude told Hino to shoot him or he'd kill a girl??* *faints*
Ichiko: Oh no! *Takes care of him and they are both into it*
She thinks Kagura is weirdly reminiscent of her brother despite their differences in appearance in personality, but Hino doesn't see it.
Kinda feel like writing fic about Ichiko and Sua just because I can see it being like...a real challenge to Ichiko to deal with a relationship where she can't just Play The Girl.
Early on Ichiko sees scary looking eyes staring at her from the bushes. On a replay, I noticed the ares are brown. The first person I noticed who fits this is the boss, Yuzuki, but I just realised the cop Yasu does too! I BET HE'S THE SERIAL KILLER. Part of one of the ruling families who was demoted for somehow upsetting his previous employers, and only keeps his job due to nepotism? They would TOTALLY hush up him being a serial killer. And while he's always good natured he has a skeezy selfishness to him, and has the same simple immaturity as the serial killer. (EDIT: Wait he was alive on the Isora path after the serial killer got beaten to death, maybe not)
I'd certainly prefer that to one of the LIs being such a boring serial killer. Hino also has brown eyes but just no.
The Murakumo family is still definitely up to something. They apparently covered up Ichiko's brother's disappearance 'because it made the town look bad'.
Yuki is a strange character. Hyper-competent serious minded middle schoolers aren't uncommon in anime and manga, but not usually as the ONLY such character in a story about adults, with all the adults finding it strange but letting him run things because he's so good at it. Like Yuzuki lets him basically run the hotel??
Part of me wonders if he's actually an adult in a human body in some way. He seems to have a bit of a crush on Ichiko but is happy to just encourage her to date whatever nice boy she's set her cap at, which would make sense for both a sensible 13 year old knows she's too old for him, and a like...hundred year old spirit who sees her as too young.
Ichiko loses track of Hino and checks out the shrine he said he'd visit. Instead she finds The Perpetually Grumpy And Mysterious Mr Karasuma who is clearly being set up as a potential villain but I think he's a red herring and has mostly good motives, like he's investigating the disappearance of someone he knew.
Karasuma asks what she'd do if a dead body comes back to life, and leaves. She smells a familiar, calming, sweet scent of flowers and then despite herself falls asleep. She's reliving the memory of being in a dilapidated shrine, I think the same place Hino was flashing back to? She sees her brother...and wakes to a worried Hino holding her collapsed body. He says there's no scent of flowers here at all.
Ooooh, is she smelling CORPSE FLOWERS?? (But not like...corpse flowers) Nice. I really hope she's a revenant that would be cool.
She says she feels like the abandoned shrine and flowers have something to do with her brother, even though she thinks they're just a dream. But she can't remember her past. Hino says he'll protect her, the way he couldn't 'back in the haunted house back in elementary school', and is a little glad she can't remember what he's talking about.
Kagura has been stabbed. He says he didn't see who it was but smelled something sweet. He asks Ichiko what she thinks is going on, which she finds a bit stressful, and Hino is protective.
Kagura: You're like a knight in shining armour. But what good is a knight without a sword? Or in your case, gun :)
Hino: D:
Kagura: Sorry. I just sensed some trauma in you at the festival.
...that is some villainous poking at trauma you have no good way of knowing about, Kagura! And...his eyes...are brown!!! I was just thinking about how he's a moderately cute guy who's shown interest in Ichiko but isn't a LI.
Ok him being such a sexist skeeve is ok if he's actually a creepy serial killer. Ooh and maybe he's trying to frame Isora again here, since he smells sweet from all the baking.
Yuzuki closes the hotel to keep the town safe from all these outsiders (with the implication that he thinks one of the guests is the killer) but when Isora complains about his wages says he'll be paid for the rest of the summer. I wonder if Yuzuki knows about Isora's mum and is trying to make up for it in a grumpy way.
Hino and Ichiko have a very sweet romantic moment that ends with him holding her close and saying he knows he can't replace her brother but he wants to. Dude those are not..brotherly...feelings...
Something about how he said it makes me wonder if the brother was dangerous in some way. Ichiko has described him as protective but standoffish and hard to understand, watching her from a distance when she was around others. We have yet to find out the brother's name.
THE OKUNE PANDA IS BEING SHADY AROUND THE MOUNTAINS AT NIGHT
It jumps when it sees them and I have decided it's Yuzuki trying to liven up the town because that would be adorable.
Ichiko asks Hino to finally tell what happened when they were 10.
She was shy around everyone but her brother, and Hino was jealous and decided to impress her by taking her to an old house everyone said was haunted so she'd have to rely on him. But there was a serial killer in there (sure) who grabbed Ichiko and laughingly said if Hino was a real man he'd stop crying and shoot him. But Hino was too scared and dropped the gun. Ichiko's brother came and took the gun and shot the serial killer. Afterwards, Ichiko had nightmares and repressed the memory, but the brother was the same as ever. He coldly told Hino "People like that will always be drawn to her. If you don't plan on protecting her, you should leave her alone."
Ichiko: People like...serial killers? D:
Yeah, good question Ichiko wtf.
Hino breaks down and apologises for always being so weak, but she hugs him and thanks him for always being by her side. Aw. They're about to kiss when HINO IS SHOT BY A MYSTERIOUS FIGURE!!
In hospital Kagura says he'll take care of Hino during his recovery when Ichiko has to go back to Tokyo HMM then gives her a letter he found on the door HMMMM
Its a note saying to come to the Mysterious Forbidden Tunnel or HER BROTHER WILL DIE
HmmmMmmmm
An overgrown path leads to the old shrine from her memories. She can smell flowers in the air.
She finds her brother's old jacket. And then the serial killer Catface appears. He gloats confusingly about 'the real reason he stays by your side' and then is knocked down...by Karasuma! He looks horribly beaten up and is quickly knocked down by Catface.
The villain says 'the photographer' was annoying and he's framed 'the heir', so the police will stop investigating. Huh, there go my two top suspects! Then he says he'll answer three questions before killing her.
Ichiko: What is your goal?
Catface: To find and kill you. As for my reason...you can't understand it as you are now. Maybe if we had more time.
Ichiko: Then why did you hurt the others?
Catface: To get you alone, and because Karasuma was annoying, following me around and investigating the Murukama family. But they're boring, I'm not interested in men.
Hmmmm and what about Kagura
Ichiko: >:(
Catface: Ah, I love how you're not reacting emotionally! I hate emotional people. Do you need time to think about your final question?
Ichiko: No. Is my brother still alive?
Catface: Ahahahaha. Do you really not know? Your brother died a loooong time ago :)
OH MAN. Is HE the revenant, taking the burden on to save her or something? Has there been an imposter brother?? Also I'm wondering if there's something magical about Ichiko that makes people immediately either want to protect her or kill her etc, rather than it just being because she's the protagonist. Though the other dudes seem to just like her a regular amount.
And of course before Catface can kill her a woozy, injured Hino shows up and punches him! Catface gloats about him being a useless knight and throws a gun at Ichiko's feet, goading her into killing him or getting Hino to do it with a lot of guff about Manhood etc.
Ichiko doesn't want Hino to have to kill, but he makes an impassioned speech about wanting to protect her so she gives him the gun. He shakes, but pulls the trigger...to no effect. It's empty.
Catface gloats about how he's going to kill Ichiko now...only for Karasuma to pull him down with him over the cliff! The last thing Karasuma says is "I will erase this world" and then "Tsuzuru".
Hino collapses, blood pouring from his re-opened wound. Horrified, Ichiko tries to bind it.
Hino: Ichiko...did I...protect you? Was I able...to fight...without running away? Am I a guy...your brother...would approve of now?
Ichiko: You're not a coward. You've always been by my side. I'm the coward, I always forget the things that are inconvenient.
A little while later we see Ichiko at her brother's grave, telling him to watch over her as she moves on with her life. Hino tells her he's loved her since he first met her, on a summer day he can't remember the details of except for her. He kisses her and she is super into it and realises she's loved him from that day too (sorry everyone else lol)
And then he pulls away from the kiss with a shout because he saw the Tsuchinoko Express van lol. He says it's an omen that they'll be happy together forever, and she agrees.
Post-credit scene (There was one after the Isora route too which I've forgotten) where Ichiko feels a treasure box within her open of of memories that don't feel like hers, of her and Hino playing in this town as children.
As I write this post I'm nearing the end of the Toa path and that's been pretty enjoyable too.
7'scarlet(*) is a mystery m/f romance game written by Tomio Kanazawa, the producer of the Twin-Peaks-esque Deadly Premonition, for Otomate, makers of Hakuoki, Psychdelica of the Black Butterfly etc. The protagonist is investigating the disappearance of her brother in a small country town. It reminds me a little of Higurashi, with the whole Small Japanese Country Town With Dark Secrets And Lots of Cicadas thing. But fluffier/less violent, with cute boys to kiss instead of cute girls with knives.
(*)Note: I just watched the Steam trailer and it's a bit spoilery
The game has some typical Otomate hallmarks but is also it's own thing, with lots of mystery tropes. So far I'm moderately enjoying it despite some silly plot elements. The PC port has some bugs and tends to crash a bit, so far it's not too bad as long as I save frequently.
I want to get my thoughts on the mystery in order before I move onto the next tier of love interests. Right now I've just played the good endings for the two love interests you can access at the start:
Hino Kagutsuchi: Childhood bff. Cute friends to lovers.
Isora Amari: A cheerfully flirty younger guy. Relatively fluffy yandere/obsessive.
Both guys are TOTALLY DEVOTED from the start, and super protective, I'm wondering if there'll be more variation with the others.
No real content notes for this post asides from some general discussion of consent issues in otome. The routes have some violence, and according to a spoiler I saw one of the later routes has a common trigger, which I will go into in my next post. There's vaguely described animal harm on the Isora route.
The localisation uses Western style name order so I'll stick with that. There's a surprising number of animated/video CGs and even backgrounds, the art overall is pretty good. The voice acting is good, the writing is middling, and I turned off the music within minutes.
So! The first scene is a woman running through forest trying to escape a dude who sounds a lot like Miki Shin'ichirou, aka Hijikata from Hakuoki. And oh look, he's voicing one of the love interests!
The main character, Ichiko Hanamaki, is a Nice College Girl (major not even vaguely implied) who spaces out a lot. She's nice enough but a bit generically Otome Heroine: sweet, kind, passive, self-sacrificing, oblivious, innocent, anxious. She gains a little more personality in the individual routes to match the relevant guy, and feels more like a deliberate blank slate than bad writing. I'm just not really into blank slates.
Ichiko's brother vanished in the little country town of Okunezato a year ago. Her childhood best friend, Hino, is part of the online Okunezato Supernatural Club investigating strange goings on in the town, and invites her to come with him to the club's first in-person meeting in the town during the summer.
The town is shaped like a crescent moon, nestled between the mountains and a wide river, with only a single entrance on either end. It's very quiet, with lots of old buildings. There's also a panda mascot called the Okune Panda that someone designed and then recently a guy in a costume just started showing up one day. Noone knows who it is but just lets this guy in a fursuit wander around promoting the town lol.
The town turns out to be under the thumb of the Murakumo family, who run the overbearing Vigilance Committee. The heir, Yuzuki Murakumo, runs the town's only hotel. He fired almost all the staff recently, saying they were 'inefficient', leaving only the chef Isari, maid Yua, and concierge Yuki. So Ichiko and Hino are invited to pay their way by working as staff.
The club meets and discovers the administrator, who runs the website and organised the meetup, hasn't shown up. So Yuki takes over as the most sensible and competent person present, despite being all of like...13.
So! Let's talk characters.
Love Interests:
Hino Kagutsuchi, 20: Went to the same schools and college as Ichiko since they were little. Has a crush on her visible from space, and is a bit belligerently Nice Guyish about her being so oblivious, yet refuses to ever make his feelings clear. Protective and a bit jealous, but otherwise pretty good natured in a boyish jock way. Wants to be Manly and gets blushily defensive about weakness/feelings, but also adores cute things.
Isora Amari, 17: Highschooler who is training to be a chef but never expected to be the only member of the kitchen staff left and thus in charge of all the food, but has enjoyed rising to the challenge. He's flirty, friendly, and charming but a little bit of a manipulative troll. Voiced by the boyish sounding Tetsuya Kakihara who played Victor in Code Realise and Karasuba in Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly.
Toa Kushinada, 20: Shy, awkward, clumsy nerd who loves cats. Voiced by Morikubo Showtaro, who played Okita in Haukoki, but sounding much more boyish and shy.
Sosuke Tatehira, 24: Kuudere/coldly logical glasses-wearing medical student.
Yuzuki Murakumo, 26: Incredibly grumpy and rude heir to the Murakumo family and hotel owner. I have seen very slight signs of him caring about other people's wellbeing under all the coldness but he's a mean boss and his main redeeming feature so far is that Miki Shin'ichirou has a sexy voice.
Sosuke, Isora, Hino, Ichiko, Yuzuki, Toa:
...WAIT GODDAMNIT I CLICKED THE WIKI WITHOUT THINKING AND GOT A BIG SPOILER. Which I had considered as a possibility but damnit. I just wanted to double check the ages ;_; I'll go into the spoiler next post since I've already pretty much finished this post without knowing.
Other characters:
Yuki Hirasaka, 13ish: Serious, sensible, perfectionist middle school boy who wants to make everything around him run smoothly.
Yua Susano, 20ish: Cheerful, mildly snarky maid at the hotel who immediately befriends Ichiko since she doesn't know many other girls her age. Wryly grumpy about all the boys liking Ichiko more than her. Mildly femslashy but it's not that sort of game.
Yasuhisa 'Yasu' Kukuri, 27ish: Cheerful dumbass local cop. The son of the police chief, still managed to get demoted to keeping an eye on this tiny village through incompetence. Childhood friends with Yuzuki who he refers to as "Yuzu-chan" much to his annoyance. Apparently "Yasu is the culprit" is a cliche in Japan like "the butler did it".
Kagura Tsukuyomi, 25ish: A smooth-talking nature photographer who keeps taking photos of Ichiko and saying he couldn't help it, he's an artist and she is just so ~beautiful.
Chikage Karasuma, 40ish: Coldly unfriendly and suspicious guest at the hotel.
Yuribaited by otome once again ;_;
I like that Ichiko is an adult, and the love interests are all around her age. 17 is a nice age for a younger love interest, enough of a gap to feel significant but not so young it feels skeevy.
So! The club gets started by discussing one of the seven mysteries of Okunezato: The Violacia, or corpse flower. It brings back the dead as soulless revenants who keep their temporary bodies alive through CONSTANT MURDER. Legend says people tried to destroy them all, but sometimes they bloom in the local mountains in summer.
Ichiko spaces out, feeling like she's heard that word before. IS SHE A REVENANT?? :D Her spacing out definitely feels Significant. In general she's spacey and emotionally sensitive and can't remember anything before middle school, and Hino's very protective of her about it.
The other mysteries I can remember: foxfire that bodes...something I forget. And Forbidden Areas where if you step foot in them you are never heard from again. The Vigilance committee has cordoned off the mountains as "unsafe" for this reason.
Yuki: Did you know it is traditional for people to invite the person they love to the summer festival?
Ichiko: I thought you said the goal of the festival was to repel the soulless murdering revenants
Yuki: It was originally, but people will use any excuse to turn a holiday into something romantic. Look at Valentines Day and Christmas.
yep this sure is a murder mystery otome.
Isora route:
So I was prepared for him to be a rapey little brother type yandere, since I have learned to recognise the signs, but he was overall more of a rapey older brother type yandere in terms of being calmly protective/nurturing in a very controlling and manipulative way. And he was only mildly dubconny, and lacked both the "How can I sully this innocent little girl with my dirty thoughts" older brother type self hatred and the "How can I make her see me as a man" younger guy self hatred. Mainly his youth comes up when Ichiko thinks he's being endearingly boyish. It was a nice twist on the usual tropes, even if I think his yandereness wasn't as smoothly integrated with his earlier behaviour as it could have been.
He was initially pretending not to be from the town despite knowing way too much about it, I was all "Are you an ageless trickster animal spirit, Isora" but no. He's just hiding his backstory because his family was screwed over by the Murakumos. His mother ran a restaurant next to the hot springs that went out of business when the Vigilance Committee shut down the springs for bringing in too many outsider tourists. Now the few outsiders have to stay in the only remaining hotel, run by the Murakumo heir. And when Isora's mother went to work there she got fired, leaving Isora to be the breadwinner.
On their first date Isora comes up with an excuse to pull Ichiko close and is all false innocence about it, and she thinks "He is clearly being manipulative, but he's also really sweet and charming so I don't mind. Still, I can't let him totally get away with it" and then she acts all false innocence about what he's trying to hint and changes the subject to mess with him. There weren't any other times she was that passive aggressive but I felt like she made a deliberate choice to be innocent and passive and let him control her going forward, which made the later stuff less squicky. Also she is subtly just...SUPER into everything sexually.
And they otherwise have cute moments chatting and bonding. Isora loves making her fancy desserts and she is happy to praise him for it and support his ambitions of becoming a chef (Ichiko has no ambitions of her own of course)
Ichiko has an aversion to strawberries for reasons she can't remember, and Isora mutters that it must be "because of that day". At some point we see her flashback to her in the town being offered food which makes her start choking. My working theory was that when she was like 10 and Isora was like 7 he fed her some strawberries and she choked to death and died, only to be brought back to life as a revenant who is being kept alive by blood sacrifices (by her brother?) and he's been fixated on her ever since.
And then...DEAD BODIES!! Of people we don't know, who "died in falling accidents" on the mountain and behind the local shrine to a snake god. HMM. Circumstantial evidence points towards Isora attempting to murder Hino.
Yuki goes missing!! I was very worried he or Yua were going to get fridged. Yua definitely has something secret going on in her life which is stressing her out.
Ichiko wanders out at night by herself when she specifically promised Isora AND Hino that she wouldn't...and gets stabbed by a mysterious figure. And dies! THE END
...so I played through the route again with a walkthrough.
This time Isora saves her and we reach the "locked in a windowless room 'to heal and be safe' by the guy you suspect may have injured your leg in the first place, who has been muttering about how if it was your hands which were injured he'd get to feed you all your meals" part of the route. He's very caring and only a little gaslighting and dubconny, kissing her injured leg like a petitioner worshipping a goddess.
Ichiko considers that he may have set this all up, or at the very least is lying about having told everyone else that she's with him (and honestly there's no good reason for him not to let them exchange letters even if he suspects everyone else of being the murderer). There is the choice "Ask him about it" and "Blindly trust him".
So of course the correct decision is...Blindly trust him!
She also doesn't take the chance to escape when it comes. And then the RANDOM MASKED SERIAL KILLER who was actually the one to injure her shows up! Of course!
He's wearing a loose black robe and a cat mask, and his voice has been disguised. I'm going to call him Catface because I suspect there may be more than one serial killer in the end. He says weird Serial Killer Things about how when he saw her he knew he had to kill someone so beautiful. Also he framed Isora, and has knocked him out for now, and will fake his suicide later.
But Isora wakes up and BEATS THE SERIAL KILLER TO DEATH WITH HIS BARE HANDS (which Ichiko mainly seems bothered by because Isora is hurt).
He tells Ichiko that they met when he was 5 and she was 8, visiting the town with her parents. She was really nice about his cooking, but got food poisoning from a strawberry tart and went to hospital. But when she came back she still wanted to eat his food, and he fell in love. She says she loves him too, and they share a badly drawn kiss.
Later he says he's been thinking about it and realised keeping her locked up like that was probably stressful for her and he's sorry for being selfish. Who needs boundaries when your boyfriend is so empathetic?
Ichiko: That's ok, as long as you're only selfish that way with me.
Isora: ...you don't mind that I might lock you up again?
Ichiko: As long as you still cook me delicious meals ^_^
Isora: And that if you try to leave me, I might not let you go?
Ichiko: Don't! Make me stay!
So I guess she's happy with her yandere and that's what matters. I was expecting major character deaths but everyone is fine, even Yuki, who was temporarily kidnapped by the Murakumos so they could berate him for not shutting down the supernatural club that brings in outsiders and makes the town look bad. Sure.
THE END
I liked that, overall, even if the writing felt slightly lacking, and I was hoping for a more interesting villain than a generic serial killer. Hopefully there's more to it than that.
There was supposed to be a concert involving a pop idol called A-TO, but it got cancelled because of all the murder. At around this point I realised that Toa is A-TO...ok I only JUST got the name thing, my logic was that it had to be someone in the cast and Toa would be both the funniest and the most logical since he's an outsider with no other apparent occupation.
Hino route:
I liked this more than I expected! Once Ichiko started preferring him over other guys his belligerence vanished and it was just a cute friends to lovers dynamic, they have a lot of very cute scenes enjoying each other's company while Ichiko thinks "when did he...get so hot...". He is very fixated on replacing her older brother, but what's childhood friends to lovers without a little incestuousness.
I was expecting Hino to be kinda dubconny but he's not, the story keeps throwing him and Ichiko into sexy situations (she wanders into the men's bath and sees him naked! They fall on top of each other!) and they both blushingly try to hide how into each other they are and then he pulls away.
And Isora is much less skeezy/possessive because he hasn't realised Ichiko is the girl from his childhood. On the Isora path he and Hino were constantly butting heads.
Isora being overcome with child-like joy every time he encounters cute things is pretty adorable. At one point he squees about a local delivery company called Tsuchinoko Express, whose vans he desperately wants to touch. I was curious so looked up the Tsuchinoko and they're Japanese mythological creatures: fat little snakes with the ability to speak and a propensity for lying who like getting drunk. Which does sound pretty cute. But also the image results showed me a bunch of cute little fat Australian native lizards, some which have been photoshopped to look like snakes, and I am delighted think that people overseas think our local lizards are Japanese mythological creatures.
It's not clear how oblivious Ichiko is to Hino's intensely obvious interest. She certainly ACTS
oblivious, but when she overhears him telling a cat he likes her she doesn't seem at all surprised, I think she was maybe just waiting for him to say something explicitly and "act innocently oblivious" is just...her idea of flirting back.
Not sure how I feel about the gender stuff in this game.
Ichiko, thinking: My older brother would have won this shooting game for me.
Ichiko: I'm going to try this shooting game, like I'm filling my brother's shoes.
Hino: Mmm. Well, don't be too heartbroken if you fail :P
Kagura: You can't let a woman handle a gun, even a toy! I'll shoot it for you, Ichiko <3
Ichiko: Oh, no thank you, I can do it.
Hino: ...he's right, a man should get a girl the things she wants. And I want to be as good as your brother.
Ichiko: Ok! :D
Hino: *has traumatic flashback to some time when a dude told Hino to shoot him or he'd kill a girl??* *faints*
Ichiko: Oh no! *Takes care of him and they are both into it*
She thinks Kagura is weirdly reminiscent of her brother despite their differences in appearance in personality, but Hino doesn't see it.
Kinda feel like writing fic about Ichiko and Sua just because I can see it being like...a real challenge to Ichiko to deal with a relationship where she can't just Play The Girl.
Early on Ichiko sees scary looking eyes staring at her from the bushes. On a replay, I noticed the ares are brown. The first person I noticed who fits this is the boss, Yuzuki, but I just realised the cop Yasu does too! I BET HE'S THE SERIAL KILLER. Part of one of the ruling families who was demoted for somehow upsetting his previous employers, and only keeps his job due to nepotism? They would TOTALLY hush up him being a serial killer. And while he's always good natured he has a skeezy selfishness to him, and has the same simple immaturity as the serial killer. (EDIT: Wait he was alive on the Isora path after the serial killer got beaten to death, maybe not)
I'd certainly prefer that to one of the LIs being such a boring serial killer. Hino also has brown eyes but just no.
The Murakumo family is still definitely up to something. They apparently covered up Ichiko's brother's disappearance 'because it made the town look bad'.
Yuki is a strange character. Hyper-competent serious minded middle schoolers aren't uncommon in anime and manga, but not usually as the ONLY such character in a story about adults, with all the adults finding it strange but letting him run things because he's so good at it. Like Yuzuki lets him basically run the hotel??
Part of me wonders if he's actually an adult in a human body in some way. He seems to have a bit of a crush on Ichiko but is happy to just encourage her to date whatever nice boy she's set her cap at, which would make sense for both a sensible 13 year old knows she's too old for him, and a like...hundred year old spirit who sees her as too young.
Ichiko loses track of Hino and checks out the shrine he said he'd visit. Instead she finds The Perpetually Grumpy And Mysterious Mr Karasuma who is clearly being set up as a potential villain but I think he's a red herring and has mostly good motives, like he's investigating the disappearance of someone he knew.
Karasuma asks what she'd do if a dead body comes back to life, and leaves. She smells a familiar, calming, sweet scent of flowers and then despite herself falls asleep. She's reliving the memory of being in a dilapidated shrine, I think the same place Hino was flashing back to? She sees her brother...and wakes to a worried Hino holding her collapsed body. He says there's no scent of flowers here at all.
Ooooh, is she smelling CORPSE FLOWERS?? (But not like...corpse flowers) Nice. I really hope she's a revenant that would be cool.
She says she feels like the abandoned shrine and flowers have something to do with her brother, even though she thinks they're just a dream. But she can't remember her past. Hino says he'll protect her, the way he couldn't 'back in the haunted house back in elementary school', and is a little glad she can't remember what he's talking about.
Kagura has been stabbed. He says he didn't see who it was but smelled something sweet. He asks Ichiko what she thinks is going on, which she finds a bit stressful, and Hino is protective.
Kagura: You're like a knight in shining armour. But what good is a knight without a sword? Or in your case, gun :)
Hino: D:
Kagura: Sorry. I just sensed some trauma in you at the festival.
...that is some villainous poking at trauma you have no good way of knowing about, Kagura! And...his eyes...are brown!!! I was just thinking about how he's a moderately cute guy who's shown interest in Ichiko but isn't a LI.
Ok him being such a sexist skeeve is ok if he's actually a creepy serial killer. Ooh and maybe he's trying to frame Isora again here, since he smells sweet from all the baking.
Yuzuki closes the hotel to keep the town safe from all these outsiders (with the implication that he thinks one of the guests is the killer) but when Isora complains about his wages says he'll be paid for the rest of the summer. I wonder if Yuzuki knows about Isora's mum and is trying to make up for it in a grumpy way.
Hino and Ichiko have a very sweet romantic moment that ends with him holding her close and saying he knows he can't replace her brother but he wants to. Dude those are not..brotherly...feelings...
Something about how he said it makes me wonder if the brother was dangerous in some way. Ichiko has described him as protective but standoffish and hard to understand, watching her from a distance when she was around others. We have yet to find out the brother's name.
THE OKUNE PANDA IS BEING SHADY AROUND THE MOUNTAINS AT NIGHT
It jumps when it sees them and I have decided it's Yuzuki trying to liven up the town because that would be adorable.
Ichiko asks Hino to finally tell what happened when they were 10.
She was shy around everyone but her brother, and Hino was jealous and decided to impress her by taking her to an old house everyone said was haunted so she'd have to rely on him. But there was a serial killer in there (sure) who grabbed Ichiko and laughingly said if Hino was a real man he'd stop crying and shoot him. But Hino was too scared and dropped the gun. Ichiko's brother came and took the gun and shot the serial killer. Afterwards, Ichiko had nightmares and repressed the memory, but the brother was the same as ever. He coldly told Hino "People like that will always be drawn to her. If you don't plan on protecting her, you should leave her alone."
Ichiko: People like...serial killers? D:
Yeah, good question Ichiko wtf.
Hino breaks down and apologises for always being so weak, but she hugs him and thanks him for always being by her side. Aw. They're about to kiss when HINO IS SHOT BY A MYSTERIOUS FIGURE!!
In hospital Kagura says he'll take care of Hino during his recovery when Ichiko has to go back to Tokyo HMM then gives her a letter he found on the door HMMMM
Its a note saying to come to the Mysterious Forbidden Tunnel or HER BROTHER WILL DIE
HmmmMmmmm
An overgrown path leads to the old shrine from her memories. She can smell flowers in the air.
She finds her brother's old jacket. And then the serial killer Catface appears. He gloats confusingly about 'the real reason he stays by your side' and then is knocked down...by Karasuma! He looks horribly beaten up and is quickly knocked down by Catface.
The villain says 'the photographer' was annoying and he's framed 'the heir', so the police will stop investigating. Huh, there go my two top suspects! Then he says he'll answer three questions before killing her.
Ichiko: What is your goal?
Catface: To find and kill you. As for my reason...you can't understand it as you are now. Maybe if we had more time.
Ichiko: Then why did you hurt the others?
Catface: To get you alone, and because Karasuma was annoying, following me around and investigating the Murukama family. But they're boring, I'm not interested in men.
Hmmmm and what about Kagura
Ichiko: >:(
Catface: Ah, I love how you're not reacting emotionally! I hate emotional people. Do you need time to think about your final question?
Ichiko: No. Is my brother still alive?
Catface: Ahahahaha. Do you really not know? Your brother died a loooong time ago :)
OH MAN. Is HE the revenant, taking the burden on to save her or something? Has there been an imposter brother?? Also I'm wondering if there's something magical about Ichiko that makes people immediately either want to protect her or kill her etc, rather than it just being because she's the protagonist. Though the other dudes seem to just like her a regular amount.
And of course before Catface can kill her a woozy, injured Hino shows up and punches him! Catface gloats about him being a useless knight and throws a gun at Ichiko's feet, goading her into killing him or getting Hino to do it with a lot of guff about Manhood etc.
Ichiko doesn't want Hino to have to kill, but he makes an impassioned speech about wanting to protect her so she gives him the gun. He shakes, but pulls the trigger...to no effect. It's empty.
Catface gloats about how he's going to kill Ichiko now...only for Karasuma to pull him down with him over the cliff! The last thing Karasuma says is "I will erase this world" and then "Tsuzuru".
Hino collapses, blood pouring from his re-opened wound. Horrified, Ichiko tries to bind it.
Hino: Ichiko...did I...protect you? Was I able...to fight...without running away? Am I a guy...your brother...would approve of now?
Ichiko: You're not a coward. You've always been by my side. I'm the coward, I always forget the things that are inconvenient.
A little while later we see Ichiko at her brother's grave, telling him to watch over her as she moves on with her life. Hino tells her he's loved her since he first met her, on a summer day he can't remember the details of except for her. He kisses her and she is super into it and realises she's loved him from that day too (sorry everyone else lol)
And then he pulls away from the kiss with a shout because he saw the Tsuchinoko Express van lol. He says it's an omen that they'll be happy together forever, and she agrees.
Post-credit scene (There was one after the Isora route too which I've forgotten) where Ichiko feels a treasure box within her open of of memories that don't feel like hers, of her and Hino playing in this town as children.
As I write this post I'm nearing the end of the Toa path and that's been pretty enjoyable too.
