Otome Game Review: Kaeru Batake De Tsukamaete

Happy New Year! Following last year’s tradition I bring you an otome game review as the first post of 2011! The story is about a girl named Sagano Fuu who is in the broadcasting club. They decide they’re out of stuff to talk about so they go out looking for the 7 wonders of the world. They stumble upon some frog shrine and being the typical stupid teenagers they break a stone disk inside of it. The frog god curses them and they all turn into frogs. 😯 Suddenly a 3 tailed cat spirit named Touya, shows up and makes them a deal: he will return them into human form but only if they repent by cleaning/taking care of the shrine and the eco system. So from here on Fuu and her dumb male counterparts are forced to stay at the dorm together and take care of the eco system for a month in order to not turn into KeroKoi. What happens when you put 4 guys into a dorm with a girl? Should be pretty obvious 😆 Skip to my final thoughts to avoid spoilers~! Also I apologize in advance if the review sounds wonky because I started this game the day I got my wisdom tooth taken out so I’ve been on meds the entire time I was playing it ｴﾍﾍ(●´▽｀●)ゞ

Hamura Mukuto – Nicknamed as “HamuO” by Ren he’s the token tsunderella. He’s also a rich bocchama so because of that he’s kind of a spoiled brat. His parents raised him to be this “model son” who will obviously take over the rich family business so he had trouble making friends at a young age. Because of this he developed a negative attitude and personality and while he’s “good looking” a lot of girls think that his personality is just a “shame” 😆 There are some cute events between him and Fuu because while he’s easily stuttered, Fuu is pretty calm the entire time which actually makes them a really cute pairing (*´ω｀*). He walks in on her taking her pants off to shower but she thinks nothing of it while he turns as red as a tomato XD. Some of her friends suggest that she should be “sexy” to “get to know someone better” which she tests out on Mukuto and again makes him go (〃ﾉﾉ). His family starts to demand that he come home and stop living in the dorm but he refuses. Fuu suggests that he make up with his family even if he doesn’t like them. They also randomly get chased by a ..chocolate man ?_?

Anyway one day Kazuhi goes from girl to dude, (it was a trap after all!) and demands that Fuu “awaken” her inner youkai spirit. Turns out both Kazuhi and Fuu (and sensei) are all frog youkai. Sadly because Fuu has been in human form so long, she has forgotten about all her frog youkai business. It becomes a battle between Kazuhi and Mukuto over Fuu. Kazuhi rages and uses his powers to drown Mukuto but Fuu jumps into the water to save him. She gives him some mouth to mouth while she’s down there and then sensei comes and with the other frogs saves the both of them. Touya says they must make a wish and use those marbles he gave them to turn them into humans, but then they will forget the time they spent together in this dorm. Everyone makes a wish to be friends with everyone again – except Mukuto who wishes to be lovers with Fuu. A year passes and I guess everyone’s back to normal while Mukuto brings Fuu over to his house to I guess introduce her to his family for “future preparations” (oゝω･o). While Sugiyama generally annoyed me at first, once I got past the annoying mini games it was all really sweet so I actually did like his character in the end XD.

Kuga Masaomi – Kuga has a fear of women but I felt his voice over by Kishio was some kind of a miscast. His fear of women is because he’s the youngest child and all his older siblings are females so he was often teased by them, forced to dress up as a girl etc lol. I always imagine Kishio in this cute and feisty character role, not some weak frail pansy 😕 He also loves dem nekochans but cats always hiss at him and bite him if he tries to get close to them. He’s also into anime and mmo games because he has a lot of otaku friends. He’s into electronics as well so he gets really pumped about cell phones. Sounds like my dream guy but his “I’m scared of everything until I cry” persona was a complete turn off! He’s in the eco club with Fuu and during the “final showdown” with Kazuhi he basically “talks” his way out. Uses some Kuga-logic and convinces Kazuhi not to drown all their friends (who were turned into frogs) and go train to be the next Nushi-sama. Afterwards he gives Fuu a hairpin present he couldn’t give to her earlier and then confesses his feelings. She’s so manly though she’s like “please take my lips away” looll. When it’s time to make the wishes, Touya lets Kuga and Fuu keep their damas because they will continue to clean up the riverbank and support the froggies. In the epilogue Fuu finally gets a cell phone and they exchange numbers. Meh the entire route just felt so bland to me in comparison to Mukuto’s which is a shame because I really like Kishio Daisuke, oh well.

Hirose Yuuki – I thought Hirose was pretty boring at first and when I tried to do his route first I ended up with the frog bad end 😕 Second run though after doing the 2 guys above allowed me to use some items and skip mini games which made it fly by a lot quicker. While at first he seems like a pretty plain goody two shoes guy who doesn’t want to get into trouble – there’s more to him than meets the eye. While he puts up that image in front of everyone, in front of Fuu you can tell he starts to be his true self. The reason being as he says is when he looks into her eyes he just cannot lie to her. Sadly his honest self is pretty bad. He openly tells her that he doesn’t see her as a female, and never will and he doesn’t give a shit about anyone unless they have some kind of merit to him. He even tells her she can try her best to make him fall for her if she wants. He loves teasing her which actually irritates Fuu for once, despite her not having much emotions most of the time. Hirose also has extremely bad luck. Because of this, he always tries to take any kind of blame on himself so that the bad luck goes on to him and not others. Can’t blame the guy for being so pissy most of the time!

One day he says he wants to “test” something so he calls Fuu to the roof and asks her to “make him happy”. She’s confused at first and suggests she hug him. He says that’s not what he means so she’s like “okay fine then why don’t YOU make me happy”. Hirose then hugs her and suddenly they both hear a window break. Well as Hirose’s experiment proves true, when he is happy, bad luck falls upon others. One day a fight breaks out in the classroom and Hirose first tries to break it up by calming the 2 guys down but they start bitching at how he’s just a goody two shoes. Hirose snaps and gives them the look of death until Odajima sensei finally runs in to break up the fight. Hirose then explains to Fuu that when he’s with her, he feels happy and that will just bring bad luck upon others (like how all the room mates suddenly get a cold) so he tells her to stay away from him. Next day Kazuhi tricks Fuu and takes her to the frog shrine where she strangles her saying that she’s in the way of them turning Hirose into a youkai since he has such strong powers. Fuu comes home in the rain where Hirose is waiting for her. While she’s drying herself off she admits that she may have fallen in love with him. He admits the same as well and right as they’re about to kiss the other guys all cockblock them 😆

Anyway Hirose later agrees to do as Kazuhi says because he feels that if he just causes misfortune to everyone it’s best that he just disappear. Fuu and Odajima come to save him and convince him otherwise. While Odajima jumps into the water to fight with Kazuhi (both in their young bishie forms xD) Fuu grabs the “disc” from Hirose and says she will not let him disappear. He tries to pry it off her and tells her he’s surprised she has so much strength for a girl. Fuu has a　(‘∇’) ドキッ moment and loses her strength and they both trip followed by Hirose falling on top of her. He tries babbling on about how he doesn’t want anyone else to be unfortunate because of him and Fuu tells him she loves him. She realizes there’s only one way to stop a emo-dude and she pulls herself up over his neck and kisses him. Suddenly both Odajima and Kazuhi come out in their frog forms and Kazuhi rages that Fuu has “defiled” Hirose – and he can no longer be used in the ceremony 😆 However because Fuu touched that disk it brought the ecosystem back to normal and all the plants and frogs all came back. Afterwards Fuu and Hirose walk back to the dorm together and he kisses her saying he can’t be without her after all. In the epilogue it basically rains hard everytime Hirose’s heart beats from the things Fuu says to him (*ﾉ∀ﾉ)ｲﾔﾝ Also it turns out that the pencil Hirose “treasured” was given to him by Fuu during the high school entrance exams and he kept it ever since…so yea he’s liked her for a while. Is Hirose then possibly the OTP of the game?? 😆 So cute roflmao. I guess Hirose’s route is so good that it made the horrible mini games actually worth playing.

Maibara Misaki – I’m a bit torn regarding Misaki sensei. First of all I don’t think he should have had a route simply because he feels like that happy fruity sensei who’s there for comic relief. Then when his route finally comes it feels like some kind of BL love quarrel between him, Togami, Kazuhi and Odajima. It’s like who needs Fuu there – oh wait yes he took care of her when she was turned into a frog and she suddenly fell in love with him. What makes no sense is that she fell in love with him but his feelings for her felt more like “care” rather than “love” so I guess the sudden ending of “wait until you grow up and then I’ll take you” was kinda….unexpected? I kept thinking I was headed towards a bad end when everyone turned into frogs again and Kazuhi was raging followed by some giant Frogzilla walking around town 😯 The story regarding Misaki becoming a teacher for Togami’s sake and Togami becoming a crow youkai and disappearing from everyone’s memories touched me a little. I almost cried when Misaki sensei forgot about everything in the park right when Fuu kissed him. That of course was all thrown down the shitter when Takuyo pulled the “Oh I can see the past through my dreams” bullcrap sigh. So like I said – part of it was touching, but the rest kinda just made me roll my eyes. I think I woulda preferred a route for Chigira senpai instead of this (´ε｀；).

Togami Akimori – Togami’s route felt sort of a cop-out because I was pretty much spoiled by it in Misaki’s route. On the other hand I would have probably felt the same way had I played Togami’s first. There was a lot of overlapping so I was able to finish this route quickly. This is a good thing though because if I had to hear Togami laugh like an idiot for another minute longer I thought my head was going to explode. He’s got that nekketsu manly man personality which I really dislike. I don’t mind loud funny characters (like Ken in himehibi) but loud, muscly dumb characters I definitely dislike. He’s basically half human half karas tengu (crow youkai) and he became one in order to help protect the eco system and because he figured his parents didn’t give a damn about him anyway. In order to get more “power” he literally sucks out the dama out of Fuu by kissing her. She’s in so much pain at the time though she barely even considers that a kiss (´･ω･`；) Anyway as usual Kazuhi throws a bitchfit and they fight and Togami saves her and Odajima convincens Kazuhi to stop being a human hating whiny bitch the end. In the epilogue everyone made wishes to better themselves (Mukuto be less tsun, Kuga be more assertive etc.) and then Togami asked Fuu to marry him. She told him she needs to take care of the eco system and he says that he’ll marry her and be by her side helping her as well. Meh all I think about regarding Togami is his annoying HA~~~HAHA~ laugh and his annoying mushroom game :;:;:;:;ガ―｛´_｀゜|||｝─ン;:;:;:;

Norizuki Ren – Ren is definitely best saved for last as he feels more of the hero of this game than Hirose did 😆 The story also feels like it nicely concludes itself with Ren’s ending. Anyway despite having the whole shota image, Ren is actually older than most of the gang here, being 2nd year he’s 16 while everyone else is 15 so he’s often referred to as Norizuki senpai. He’s the captain of the broadcasting club and is the one who recruited Fuu to join it. He actually recruited her because he saw her approaching the room one day not sure whether or not to join and he fell in love at first sight (*´ω｀*). Ren also loves cats, and unlike Kuga, the nukos love him as well. He’s often found playing with strays who hang around the frog shrine at the school. He gives everyone nicknames like HAMUO for Mukuto and Jimi-kun for Hirose. He calls Fuu “Suga-chan” since her last name is Sugano. When Ren first tells Fuu that he likes her, her immediate response is “I don’t dislike you but I don’t know if I like you.” I was like aww come on why bring this crap out now! She told him that if he can’t think of a reason that he likes her, that means he needs to rethink whether he likes her or not. Poor Ren then has to tell her he likes her about 10 more times and even surprise kiss her for her to get the freaking picture lol.

Finally he asks her to go out with him and she agrees on the condition that she wants to “get to know him better”. Of course the time they spend dating is really adorkable and it was so cute I thought I was going to die |萌|･´∀`･)ﾊｧﾊｧ 萌えぇぇ↑ . So then as usual Kazuhi brings his stupid trapass in and demands that Ren give Fuu up because supposedly Fuu is the Nushi-sama. The reason as explained in the other routes – Fuu has the power to help things grow/purify ?? (not sure how to explain this) and that’s the same power that Nushi-sama had. When Fuu says she refuses to go with Kazuhi, Ren tries to protect her and Kazuhi switches into non trap mode and beats him down. Ren’s down but not out because he then awakens his Geass Nushi-sama powers and protects Fuu. Kazuhi rages and leaves saying that it’s not over yet. So now everyone is pondering whether the Nushi-sama Kazuhi was looking for is actually inside Ren rather than Fuu. During the final battle, Mukuto, Kuga and Hirose all give up their haraedamas to Touya so he can use his power to stop Kazuhi.

Ren suggests that he use his powers instead since he has the Nushi-sama inside him. He uses his powers to defeat Kazuhi – and acts like it took over him. Fortunately Fuu is awesome sauce and she can see through his act. Turns out he faked it so that he could absorb all the bad aura from the shrine into himself – even though he doesn’t actually have the full Nushi-sama power. Turns out that some of Fuu’s power actually leaked into him (possibly through their kissing 😆 ). Because of this it’s too much for his body to handle and when Fuu touches him, it purifies his body – which ultimately makes him disappear. She cries asking him to let go but he says this is for the best. Fuu is distressed that the person she loves is gone before her eyes but suddenly Chigira appears. Whadya know, Chigira is actually a Karas Tengu and also Togami’s crow master XD (and apparently he’s older than Touya lol). Chigira says that the only way to save Ren is for Fuu to become the true Nushi-sama, which means wh would have to give up being a human. Fuu agrees to do anything, despite the fact that she will be a youkai who will live longer than Ren who will be a regular human again.

Time passes and Fuu continues going to school and the broadcasting club but it appears that Ren has lost all his memories. They are dating now but it’s not the “same” as before. Turns out Ren is a trollface.jpg and he actually remembers everything but he’s been faking loss of memory because of guild. He feels guilty that Fuu sacrificed her humanity in order to save him. Ren is down but not out though – he says that he isn’t sure whether Touya did it on purpose or not but the haraedama is still inside of him. He says given time, he will reawaken his power and then he will make himself a youkai as well so he can live forever with Fuu. Until then he will keep his memory loss a secret. In the meantime Hirose, Kuga and Mukuto all somehow become friends once more despite their memory losses. Misaki sensei continues helping out the environment so Touya leaves his dama inside of him as well. Turns out Touya was also the school principal or something which is why he’s had these “environment” helpers for many years over and over. Kazuhi calms the hell down and says he did a lot of research and figured the best way to attract “fans” to help with the eco system cleanup was to become a trap 😆 Ren and Fuu continue to be raburabu and live happily ever after I guess. ヽ(^ω^ω^ω^ω^ω^)/ めでたしめでたし.

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So there we have it, Captain Planet the otome game! Err I mean frogger the otome game? I don’t even know anymore. I also have no idea why the sound was so terrible in this game for all the character voices. It sounded like they recorded it using some 10 year old computer mic in their apartments and sent the voice files to Takuyo. (´･ω･`；) The mini games were absolutely demonic. I don’t know what Takuyo was thinking. It’s one thing where you just press a symbol corresponding to your ps2 controller button but it’s another when the choices are COMPLETELY ARBITRARY like with the broadcast game. Seriously that shit made no sense to me. If you didn’t successfully finish each mini game too, you’d get a bad end and everyone would turn into frogs. (ﾉಥ益ಥ）ﾉ 彡┻━┻ I gave up trying the first time around and picked a character which had less of a complicated route before I got my first good end. I’m really thinking about putting any mini-game-esque Takuyo stuff on the backburner because these mini games are the bane of my existence. What is so fun about them – I don’t think I’ll ever know. The game system is cheap and in the CG gallery they will post each “instance” of a CG as a separate slot so while it looks like you have 16 CGs its only maybe 7 or 8 lol. There are special bonuses that you “pay for” with the damas you collect by succeeding at the mini games. Some of them are things like character profiles, special voices and special scenes. This is kinda nice but it makes me feel like that’s what the damas should have really been for – and not something that was required to actually get a good end 🙄 A lot of the extra scenes were really short and not always funny and the CM “talk” was only interesting between Ren and Chigira because Chigira makes everything awesome 😆 This is probably why the broadcast mini game amused me the most. Game wise I hated it and had to use a guide, but the stuff they talked about was really funny XD. Plot wise I think Ren’s route closed the game really nicely. For a while I felt like there was a lot of lose ends and completely random bs regarding the whole Nushi-sama business, but after his route all my questions were answered and mysteries were solved. The music was really nice and fitting for this atmosphere although I think I would have enjoyed this game had I played it in its appropriate season (summer). It’s really a shame as this game had a really sweet story but all the mini games were just oh so unnecessary. As a tip for the trash mini game just keep pressing X as that will be the right answer most of the time. For the broadcast mini game find a guide and the mushroom mini game you need 15 patterns to get 成功. I really want to try the fandisk if I can get my hands on it despite it having some kind of trump mini games in it but CGs like this one make me feel like it’ll all be worth it ‘`ｧ,､ｧ(*´Д｀*)’`ｧ,､ｧ