Otome Game Review: Isshoni Gohan. -Apartment Dinner Show-

Mugibata Akane moves from Hokkaido so she can attend a new university to learn cooking to help out her parents’ restaurant. Her parents can’t afford to give her too much money, and she loses her current part time job so she desperately tries to find another one to pay for her expenses. Starving due to lack of money to buy food, Akane passes out but is caught by a hot dude before face planting into the cement. He calls himself Satou and gives her some tea and riceballs. When he finds out her situation, he offers her a job as a temporary housekeeper at his dorm full of….HOT DUDES WITH FOOD NAMES :lol:. Sadly he abandons her to the wolves and runs off someplace leaving Akane to handle the residents of Meshiyasou on her own.

Yoneda Hikari – I thought his name was Komeda Hikaru lolol so after I realized I was wrong I had to visit the Otomate website everytime I played a new route. Hikari is a shy dude and even though he’s older than Akane, she’s really the like first girl he’s ever spoken to.  He doesn’t actually like cooking and is majoring in business. His older brother takes care of all the family responsibilities so he just lazies around. After going to the shrine together for New Years, they come back to the apartment but its raining so Hikari invites Akane to stay over a bit. He goes to take a bath and Akane was like maybe I’ll use the hair dryer while he’s inside…but instead walks on him half naked in a towel (・ω<).  Suddenly news comes that they’re gonna destroy the Meshiyasou dorm and it will be replaced with a restaurant.  They they enter a cooking contest to try to win money to fix up the dorm so that the school would change their mind about destroying this old place. The contest requires them to enter in a pair so Hikari enters with Akane cause everyone else is busy. They work late enough that she ends up staying in his room for the night. He lets her sleep in the futon while he huddles in a chair alone all cold by himself. When Akane wakes up in the middle of the night she comes over to him and gives him the futon. He then babbles that he’s cold in his sleep and then pulls her in to hug as a body pillow for the night (￣ー￣)ﾆﾔﾘ. They both end up sleeping like that the rest of the night. The next morning when Hikari wakes up he shits bricks ww.  He keeps thinking Akane has someone at Meshiyasou that she likes but she keeps telling him that it’s not true and that she really cares about everyone at the dorm.

Akane then realizes the guy she really does like is Hikari though.  So then Curry man tells Hikari that their contest entry sucks and Hikari gets bummed out thinking he’s not good enough to enter anymore. Hikari works harder after getting help from the other guys and finally makes something good. Hikari and Akane don’t win the contest but since Satou’s company has purchased the rights to Meshiyasou they can no longer destroy it. Wow well that whole cooking contest was pointless.  😐 So then when Akane tries to confess to him, his stomach rumbles and cockblocks her final line orz. They go eat in the park and then Akane finally confesses that she likes him. He babbles in shock for while but then is like I’M SO HAPPY CAUSE I LIKED U TOO BABY.  They walk together holding hands talking about the new stuff they’re gonna do as a couple. In the epilogue, Akane is bummed that Hikari hasn’t hit dat yet so Rikki and Toriyama come and are like “U GUYS NEED TO DATE”. They kick them out of the dorm and the two of them go to a movie. Unfortunately after their date they catch the other dorm guys spying on them and teasing them. They run away to the park where Hikari finally kisses her saying next time they’ll go somewhere they won’t be cockblocked. Hikari was alright I guess, but as with most of the routes in the game it was really dull and the cute moments were short lived. Also the entire contest is pretty much pointless since in the end, the dorm is set to be torn down until Satou’s company buys it so what the hell’s the point of all that WE MUST WORK OUR BEST TO SAVE IT drama. Kinda reminds me of this game and their failure to make it to professional leagues.

Unoha Nao – After hearing FukuJun in Diamond Alice, hearing him in this role was disappointing. He sounded like he was high/baked half the time and well for the most part I wanted to fall asleep playing his route. Nao’s charm point (?) is that he babbles in kansaiben but the down side is that he’s always sickly and always falling asleep.  He’s a senior but he’s missed a lot of school events due to always being sick or having a fever.  Apparently Nao is also an artist which I guess seems to work for his type.  Nao and Akane enter the contest to save the dorms together but Nao’s like “lol I actually can’t really cook anything”…and he gets sick. Again. He tells Akane that he’s going to study abroad because he’s been so sick he’s missed too much school to be able to graduate. Akane becomes a sad panda but Nao says that he doesn’t wanna give up his plans. He does say that even tho he’s leaving he still wants to help save Meshiyasou. He keeps getting sick and passing out so they can’t make progress on their contest entry practice BUT SOMEHOW Nao actually wins 1st place and the dorm’s saved. After everyone celebrates the victory, Nao and Akane go watch some cherry blossom trees at night. He tells her that he likes her and that he wants her to wait for him.  And so Nao flies away to study abroad and they promise to keep in touch via emails while she waits for him. In the epilogue, 1 year later, he returns and passes out in Akane’s arms （；^ω^）. He says his studies abroad are over, and they go see the cherry blossoms as promised smooching on a bench. Blah this was by far the most draggiest route in the whole game and well I know he’s the sickly character but I got sick of him always being sick :lol:.

Daito Natsu – Natsu is also a senior and you will often find him doing one of 2 things: Arguing with Rikki or picking up a passed out Nao off the ground. He’s all wafuu and sheit always walking around in his kimono. The best thing about Natsu though is probably his obsession with baby nukos. Ranmaru’s cat Pitan lives in the dorms and you will often find Natsu cuddling and playing with it.  They even go to a neko cafe together to cuddle all the baby nukes. （*´▽｀*） So then comes the mass of Natsu’s family problems. His father sprained his back and now he wants Natsu to return home immediately and take over the family inn business. On top of that they want him to do an arranged marriage so that his wife can be the new inn care taker as well. Not wanting to marry some random ho (and because he is in love with Akane), Natsu asks Akane to come back to his house with him acting like  she’s his lover he intends to marry. Akane decides she’s just being nice enough to help him but when she gets there she’s forced into a servant yukata and is constantly berated by one of the hostesses there. She’s also insulted by Natsu’s mom for being “useless” and “in the way” even though she’s a complete NOOB so of course she wouldn’t be able to do this stuff right off the bat. The mom’s like “anyone who marries into the Daito home should be able to do this job perfectly”. Well fuck u bitch if I was Akane I’d drop my shit and walk out :lol:.  Natsu finally notices poor Akane is suffering and he tells the bitch hostess to stop being a stupid bitch and carries Akane home on his back because she injured her foot and it started bleeding.

The two of them then return to Meshiyasou and decide to do a little practicing for the contest. Akane is so happy to be out of his hell hole house that she hugs him saying there’s not much time left until graduation. He blushes like an idiot and pushes her away sigh.  They win the contest but as always Satou’s organization buys Meshiyasou so it doesn’t have to get torn down etc. (´･ω･`；)  Turns out Natsu was then forced to do an omiai anyway because his mom found out that Akane wasn’t really his girlfriend. Akane then becomes a sad panda cause he’s leaving and Natsu’s like “hey baby how about you be my fiance for real and come back to my house once more.” Akane’s like hell yea and Natsu then asks her to spend the night at his place ＜●＞＜●＞. Unfortunately Akane cockblocks herself and falls asleep first only getting to score a kiss on the cheek. In the epilogue, Natsu visits Akane’s place asking her to come back home with him and be introduced as his REAL fiance. When Akane meets his mom again, she gives her a kimono which is only given to the “next lady in charge of the inn”. They go to the shrine and make wishes ….and we don’t even get a kiss CG -_-. Also most of Natsu’s CGs were just closeups of his face and some detached body part of Akane’s like her hand or part of her head meh. What a shame, I think they needed to really bring out his neko moe or at least have him show SOME romantic reaction to Akane before he popped the question for her to be his waifu.

Umino Rikki – Suzuken was one of the top reasons I bought this game so it’s a good thing his route wasn’t as awful. He’s a 3rd year and a flirt and party animal. His part time job is working as a DJ at a club so you will often hear some rave music coming out of his room (and making Rei throw shitfits.)  He also has a horrid fashion sense with purple glasses and purple polkadot pants, fashion police where. Most of his early scenes were like 3Ps with Akane and another guy but finally when they had a scene alone together, Natsu came to cockblock.  One night Akane goes to club with Rikki where he works. It’s her first time in a club but she’s not really into it. To make matters more awkward they run into his ex g/fs >_> and they call him a manwhore. Akane doesn’t wanna dance with all his hoes so she tells him to go on his own but Rikkis like oh you jelly? rowr how cute and tells the hoes to buzz off while he spends time with Akane instead. After he takes her home, he tells her his dream is to open a restaurant where everyone can partaaaay.  Fr xmas Akane comes back with him to his club and actually enjoys herself this time as he does some DJing. He gives her a cocktail to drink as well cause but it’s non-alcoholic. He then offers to let her “try” an alcoholic drink by kissing her but Akane freaks out so Rikki gives up for now. Akane keeps seeing girls around him and always gets upset.  Meanwhile whenever Rikki sees her with Natsu, he gets all jelly lol. When the hoes inquire who Akane is he just says “she’s just a kouhai to him and a housekeeper at his dorm and nothing more.”  Rikki gets Akane to enter the contest with him for the dorm saving. During practice though he suddenly runs out leaving Akane all on her own.

Natsu asks if Akane’s okay with all of this and while he comforts her, Rikki comes back all jelly & pissed about this. He starts arguing with Natsu and it causes Akane to cry. A few days later Rikki comes back calming dafuq down and he and Akane return to their cooking. To take a break Rikki takes her to his club but he gets roped into DJing and of course the moment he leaves her, some dude starts hitting on her and pulling on her arm. Just then Rikki comes to her rescue pushing the guy off her. After he walks her home he admits that when it comes to her for some reason seeing her with another guy drives him crazy. (￣ー￣)ﾆﾔﾘ  They win the contest but as usual the ho doesn’t back off and instead Satou comes with his “my company bought the dorm so its saved yay.” Before Akane can confess her feelings to Rikki, he stops her and confesses himself first. Akane starts bawwing saying she thought it was one sided cause he’s so popular with the ladies. Rikki tells her yea well you’re popular with the mans and had me worried too!  So anyway they smooch and agree to call each other by their first names when alone in private (*´ω｀*). In the epilogue Akane is still annoyed that Rikki is still a ho magnet. At his DJ job she finds him dressed in a nice suit for once instead because he’s making her a cocktail as a thanks for what she gave him for Valentine’s Day. He makes her a cocktail called Cendrillon. Well aside from Rikki’s manwhore ways, I really thought he was a cute character though some of his CGs look very ホモォ┌（┌ ^o^）┐. (I guess that’s how it was in the original CDs…) I’m glad there was at least somewhat of a conflict in the game and at least more obvious romance than in the previous routes though.

Toriyama Yousuke – Yousuke is my favorite because he actually shows emotions towards the heroine and his route was the only one that made me crave food (in this case being kara-age xD). Yousuke is the same age as Akane and they have a few classes together. He’s great at making karaage but he sucks at stuff like English.  I knew this was gonna be a good route the moment he fell on top of Akane with his hands landing with on her boobs. 😆 He often gets pissed when people call him shorty since like every Shimono character ever, he’s short for his age and is made fun of for this. So then the ultimate WTF happened when one day on the way to the dorms some flasher comes up to Akane, opens his coat, and flashes his ding dong before running away. (ﾟдﾟ) Akane then starts crying and when Yousuke finds her he’s pissed lol.  He manages to catch the flasher and beats him up  (mainly cause the flasher thought Yousuke was a short girl wwww.)  They partner up for the contest and work on the menu but because Akane’s  not that great at cooking she injures herself. Yousuke blames it on himself and then runs off somewhere killing time that coulda been used to practice for the contest. He goes MIA for a few days and doesn’t pick up his phone.

Akane eventually finds him thanks to Satou and he’s been moping on the beach feeling like a jerk. He can’t look her in the eyes so she grabs his face and makes him face her going YO HONEY ITZ NOT YO FAULT GET OVER IT.  After they return to the dorms, Yousuke gets sick a bit later so Natsu and Akane make him some okayu. He asks her to stay by his side and she does until he falls asleep （*´▽｀*）. In February, Akane gives him macaroons for Valentine’s day. For White day he gives her cookies shaped like birds xDDD. They win the contest but as usual it’s thanks to Satou that the dorm is saved. Afterwards, Yousuke confesses to Akane that he likes her under the cherry blossoms~ 青春だね～ He then hugs and kisses her (*´ｪ`*).  In the epilogue, Yousuke is super raburabu with Akane, sneaking in kisses when he can and surprising her. He gives her a mug  set as an early birthday present so she gives him 1 to use so they can have a matching pair. (´＾ω＾｀) Baww Yocchan was such a cutie pie, always blushing when Akane did stuff for him. In other guys routes when Akane gives them chocolates, aside from Hikari, none of them had any reactions. Meanwhile Yousuke was blushing like a dork the whole time. 😉  The flasher thing was hilarious cause I don’t think I’ve ever seen a situation with a hentai flasher in any game I’ve played. Interesting how it showed up in this game, when pretty much nothing ever happens. Well this and Rikki’s route were the most enjoyable ones in the game.

Karasawa Rei – I left Rei for the end cause I heard he had the best route in the game but turns out he’s just really the reason this game was rated Cero C.  Rei has a short temper and the only words ever out of his mouth are “SHUT UP AND EAT MAH CURRY BEEETCH.”  Unlike the rest of the residents, he’s not a student but faculty and he owns his own curry shop. (Still though he’s only 26 and since Akane is 19 I don’t really see it as a huge deal but could just be me…)  Hayashi Ruu is his brother but they were separated at a young age when his mom decided to divorce and remarry someone else but took Ruu with her. Rei and Ruu don’t really get along and their personalities are opposite. Rei is rude and selfish while Ruu is caring and polite. Rei is a huge badass but the moment a centipede crawls beside him he screams like a little girl and runs to Akane :lol:. They go ice skating for Xmas and Akane trips and lands on him causing them to accidentally kiss. He has like 0 reaction to this which makes Akane upset as her feelings start to grow for this do-S curry man. Knowing that his brother has some feelings for Akane, Ruu starts trolling and hitting on Akane acting like he’s gonna confess his love.  They partner up for the contest so he makes his super curry.　Akane catches a cold and is unable to come practice making the curry with him. He calls her and finds out that she’s sick and rushes to her apartment to take care of her (which was surprisingly nice of him). Afterwards he tells her not to come to his place for a while because she can’t handle all the work he does. Akane gives him chocolates for Vday and hes like “don’t worry i don’t see you as a woman, you’re just a plaything to me” =_=. Ruu knows that Akane likes his brother but Rei just wants to LETS COOKING ALL DAY ROONG.

So then Rei misunderstands Ruu and Akane  and gets all bitchy. He tells Akane he’s switching partners to Hikari and she’s no longer needed. Akane’s so shocked she trips and falls down the stairs but Rei dives in after her and injures himself instead. Due to injuring his arm, he can’t cook for a while as he recovers and he rages that there’s barely any time left before the contest. Akane offers to cook in his place under his direction. He yells at her non stop but eventually Ruu comes to help and they manage to make something decent. At one point though Ruu asks what Akane is to Rei and he’s like “…my slave!” Akane’s like wtf but after Ruu leaves, Rei gives her a hug (✧≖‿ゝ≖). They win the contest and Satou’s company buyout of the dorms is what saves them as usual. (´･ω･`；) In the epilogue, while everyone’s watching cherry trees, Rei takes Akane to a spot away from them. He then leans down and kisses her saying he felt like it lol and says he knows that she likes him. They make out non stop cause he says he’s been holding back way too long. And so to make up for all the lost time/pent up sexual frustration, Rei takes Akane home and they screw at her place. Next morning they cuddle in bed after waking up from the rowdy night before….LOL explains the Cero C ＜●＞＜●＞.  To be honest though, aside from a few scenarios, it didn’t seem like Rei gave ANY crap about Akane. I’ve seen my share of do-S characters and it’s usually pretty obvious when they start caring for the heroine. With Rei even if he cared about her, he’d immediately go back to IDGAF ABOUT ANYTHING BUT CURRAAAY mode and any feelings I thought he had for Akane were run over by a bus.  So when all of a sudden “lets make out and screw” I was like (・_・)…okay. On one hand yay some action but on the other hand, boo unwarranted poorly developed character action so meh. I would have honestly rather have gotten with Ruu instead…

Satou – Satou is the android robot and it’s supposed to be this heartwarming route but seeing how this game could care less for us to take interest in anyone, his route was no exception. One day Satou tells Akane “I think I like you” and shes like “umm do you even know what feelings are ?” When she tells him this he thinks too hard and short circuits. Suddenly a shitty driver comes out of nowhere almost ramming into Akane so Satou pushes her away and gets hit instead. He gets taken to the maintenance room to get fixed and Akane confirms that he’s an android. Unfortunately when he wakes up, his hard drive’s borked and he’s lost all his memories of Akane cause he was only able to recover data prior to her coming to Meshiyasou. Once he’s fixed she tries working with him as best as she can for the contest, without him blowing his fuse but constant reminders of his feelings (?) for Akane keep borking his program. Then Akane says she’s in love with him….and then he says he plans to get his lost data back. Eventually he manages to “unlock” the lock on his system so he recovers his backed up data of Akane and then he carries her home when she scrapes her knees. They somehow win the contest and after Akane tells him how she loves him Chobits style, he starts crying cause some fool installed tear ducts into him. In the epilogue Akane is upset that Satou’s programming didn’t magically evolve into having him be in love with her. A few days later he shows her the flowers that they planted together and that they finally bloomed. He also tells Akane that his feelings for her is what’s causing his program to short circuit all the time. They both look at the flowers as they hold hands for a pure Cero A ending. （ಠ_ಠ） Meh after hearing Hatano in Glass Heart Princess, this was another disappointing route.

Wow this game was PAAAAINNNNFFFUL  to sit through. I haven’t played such a draggy game in a long time. Or maybe I have but I play so many games I can’t remember anything 😆 The first bad thing is the system. Following in the footsteps of the brilliant programmer of Brothers Conflict, the UMD here lags. It lags so bad that it got to a point where the game would keep bugging out asking me if I want to shut down every 10 seconds. I got sick of this so I finally went and just ripped my UMD -_-;. Secondly, in Nao’s route, 4 of the CGs never saved into the gallery. When I was finished with his route I went to go look and BAM 4 question mark boxes. I checked the CG pack and confirmed that I DID in fact see those CGs in the game so therefore the game decided to not save them for whatever reason. The choices come up before the character is even finished talking so often you’re told to pick a choice before you even know what you should be responding to. The sound quality for the voices was like 16bit mono too. The BGM was ok but voices sucked to the point that for a moment I didn’t even recognize Ono Daisuke and Fukuyama Jun. Now for the game itself….LOVELY ART! Cute nukos! But that’s it. Since I was playing this at the same time as Festa Regalo, I could pretty much compare “2 cooking otome games” and this game fails both as an otome game and as a cooking game. For the cooking bit, the mini games were REALLY DUMB. Only maybe 2 of them were challenging but the rest were just stupid and a waste of time. When I say waste of time, I mean I failed one of Daito’s annoying games and still got his happy ending. The worst game being the egg one because 1. I had to hear Yonaga screaming UUUNNN! 7 times each route and 2. all you do is wait for him to go UUUNNN! and you press O. That’s it. That’s the whole game. （ಠ_ಠ）

The cooking parts with the guys themselves were dull. Instead of say having us pick ingredients like in FR or have us look at the actual recipe like in Arcobaleno, they would just babble on and on about how the food is made to the point of me zoning out and surfing the web. Now as a romance game, it fails because even though it’s cero C, 50% of the routes could be classified as Cero A. Rei’s randy end was the only reason this game is cero C. Everyone else just got either hand holding or kissing and could very well have been Cero B. The other thing is, you spend the whole game with cooking banter and there’s practically no romantic feelings until suddenly I THINK I’M IN LOOOVEEE BABYY (Rei of course being the biggest offender.) The only 2 characters where I felt any kind of “build up” was Yousuke, Rikki and MAAAYBBBE Hikari. Everyone else was mostly blah and it didn’t help that a lot of the CGs really CUT OUT Akane. They would show pics of her only the guy’s face close up, or the guy with just…her hands or part of her HAIR. Only a few characters got any cute romantic CGs while others were just “gaze at the hot bishie~”. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised since the original CDs everyone was just ┌(┌ ^o^)┐ﾎﾓｵ but in the Animate tokuten CD where everyone said romantic stuff to the listener, I was like why couldn’t the game have had a scenario like this. The drama CDs that came with the game also felt more fun to listen to than the game itself because the scenarios felt funnier? Or maybe because most of the routes were just a set template of “start part time job, suddenly dorm is getting shut down, end with your guy”. Anyway I felt like this was such a huge waste of money and one of Otomate’s other upcoming games Koibana Days has the same stank coming from it. Boys doing things with flowers instead of food this time with pretty art and probably a shallow plotline. I guess the only thing I get to take home as a consolation prize from this is the nice lunch set which I actually make use of.