So I left HNK2 for last because I feel like it’s the bastard child of the whole series. The only thing it has going for it is Kazuki Yone is still the artist for it but the characters are different, the seiyuus are different, and the entire Tamayorihime story is twisted in such a weird way that I wonder what they were thinking then they made it. Well they realized the ORIGINAL was a massive failure so actually this is in fact a remake of the Hisui no Shizuku (hence the 真) because apparently they remade all the chars personalities and for some reason kicked off the HNK1 cast off the face of the earth. I’m not about to extend my hiiro marathon and play the original for comparison so you’ll just have to satisfy yourselves with the remake review XD. So this time we have a good girl Suzu (similar to Saya from HNK4). Her mother is the Tamayorihime but she says soon the Ryujin (Dragon God) seal will break and Suzu will be the next in line for the Tamayorihime duties. One rainy night the seal does break and her mother Ayako indeed goes to seal it, sacrificing her life in the process. On top of this, the spirit of the Toyotamahime, who just so happens to be the older sister of the original Tamayorihime (that we never knew) escapes and possesses Suzu’s older sister Mao. So now the village has a half broken seal with demons running around everywhere and Suzu’s gotta train to seal it up. If that wasn’t bad enough, Toyotamahime-Mao comes and tells Suzu that she hated Tamayorihime (Marsha Marsha Marsha!) and wants her to die while fully breaking the seal so she can get the rest of her powers back. Suzu’s like “k sure I’ll die as long as my mans are alive” but Suzu’s childhood friend and guardian Akira won’t be havin’ any of that. Additionally, in HNK2, the guardians are humans and are not gods with inner animal powers. They fight with weapons which they are able to pull out of thin air (lol) if their bond with Suzu is strong enough thanks to the Magatama powers. This also means that if the bond weakens, they will be completely useless bums so Suzu’s got a lot on her plate. With the help of her loli neko guardians Sana & Kana, and manharem (+1 sarcastic token bff chick) she’s got to get her sister back to normal and save Japan!

Shigemori Akira – So Akira’s like the main dude like Touma/Takuma w/e and similarly to those 2 he gets pretty screwed for being a main dude of the series! He’s already got a head start with Suzu because he’s been her childhood friend and guardian since they were little kids. As if you couldn’t guess already, he’s also had a crush on her forever, but sadly they wrote his character really poorly so you couldn’t even tell he had any feelings for her until maybe half way through the game? Or maybe the like 5 moments where he actually showed his feelings. Or maybe it’s because Nojima Kenji sounded like he was reading a VERY SRS book and forgot he was voice acting a bishie I don’t know honestly. ( ≖Д≖；) Since Suzu’s mom is dead and sister is MIA, no one in school will talk to her except Akira, who is fairly popular but only really gives a crap about his time with Suzu. So after some battles with Mao and her follower Ramon, Suzu goes and talks to the village chief who gives her the briefing on Tamayorihime and Toyotamahime. Turns out that everyone only gave a crap about Tamayorihime and when Toyotamahime, the sea goddess, had a baby with some random dude, he left her and she dumped it on Tamayorihime. Tamayorihime then took the baby to raise it, so everyone gave her even more attention,  and so Toyotamahime (omg these names are annoying to type) was like RAAAGGE (lol what is this the little mermaid) and swore to seek revenge on her younger sister.  So then the 2 sisters battled under the sea and Tamayorihime died sealing her sister and so through the generations they’ve had to seal Toyotamahime/Dragon God ho and sacrifice themselves doing it. Sadly for Suzu, her mom kinda failed epically and died without fully sealing da skank which is why it took over Mao’s body.

Suzu then gets all depressed about it and Akira tells her that he doesn’t protect her because of her powers but because he cares about her as a person. He even does some crappy magic tricks to try and cheer her up. In the meantime the winglolis Sana & Kana tell Akira to come over and they send him and Suzu off on a picnic saying that she has a love confession for him. Suzu’s like (*ﾉﾉ)？？ and then finally Akira’s like “well IF you were to confess to me I’d say that I’ve loved you forever and I will always protect you.” Fortunately, Suzu’s not dumb as a brick and she gets the picture regarding his feelings for her. (´＾ω＾｀) Sadly Otomate doesn’t seem to wanna throw us a bone and that’s as far as it goes until  Akira catches her trying to leave on her own to sacrifice herself to Toyotamahime. He tells her that he’s gonna take her out of this POS village if she has to die for it and he doesn’t care if this country is destroyed if she’s not gonna be with him. (Kinda reminded me of Shinogu from HNK4 lol.) Mao runs into them and beats Akira up really badly telling them that if in 5 min they can run back to their holy shrine (where the anti youkai spirit is strongest) she will let them live. However because they’re too busy chit chatting about how it’s Akira’s fault that Suzu’s dad died (cause he saved him when he was a shota being attacked by a demon), Mao catches up and Ramon knocks Akira out completely. Suzu agrees to go with her, and she kisses an unconscious Akira goodbye saying she loves him. The condition of Suzu opening up the Dragon god seal and dying is that all her close friends will be saved when the rest of Japan is blown to smithereens.

Before they can go to the seal place though, Akira finds them and has another beat up session with Ramon saying that even if Suzu dies, they will still fight against Toyotamahime so her dying isn’t an option here. Ramon is so moved by Akira’s awesomeness that he says “I’ll see you at the battle field dude” and peaces out. Suzu continues babbling about how she needs to die while Akira continues bitching that she needs to live until she realizes that her mother didn’t die wishing for her to do the same thing. She wished for Suzu to live on and so Suzu breaks into tears part 100 and hugs a sore Akira (who deals with it cause it’s mah woman huggin me so its awwwright.) They return to the village where at this point because Akira’s bond weakened with Suzu (due to her wanting to die and him wanting to live), before the final battle she asks him to stay back since he can’t fight. He’s like “well if our bonds are weakened we need to strengthen them” and then Kana’s like KISS DA GIRL and so Akira’s like ok lols and so they kiss….BUT LOLOL TROLLOMATE DIDNT GIVE US A KISS CG. That’s right its a CG with their faces looking at each other but during the kiss NICE WHITE FADEOUT YEA. I LOVE DEM WHITE FLASHES THANKS OTOMATE ( ಠ益ಠ ). Afterwards Akira’s like “lol I lied, I actually got my powers back a while ago – I just wanted to make out with you hehe.” Suzu’s like (／ρ＼)いやーん and so now that their bond is like glue, they go off to fight Magatamahime. Everyone’s sorta split fighting each one of Toyotama’s lackeys, Akira fighting Ramon and Mao against Suzu.

Suzu yells out “Mao-neesan” multiple times to get her sister’s attention and I guess it works and Suzu’s able to seal away Toyotamahime out of Mao’s body. She thinks she’s gonna die due to this but then she hears her mother’s voice saying it’s not her time yet so she wakes up and sees her sister sleeping safe next to her. Just then, the Dragon god seal (the rest of Toyotamahime) breaks and it merges with Ramon’s body and so they gotta fight & defeat Mr. Fugly now. After Ramon is defeated, we see a flashback where Toyotamahime is a loli and nobody gives a damn about her except Ramon. Before she got sealed she realized that she wasn’t always “alone” and regretted that she realized it too late. (Also rofl loli  Toyotamahime sounded so much like Asche from UTM since they have the same VA – where as when she voiced Mao she sounded a bit differently.) Anyways battle is over and Akira & Suzu hold hands as they watch the sunrise. Everyone else joins them and Sana is so pumped she starts spitting out random Engrish lines 😆 In the epilogue Ryouji becomes the new village chief since his dad retired. The Mibu bros. return to their town saying they’ll come visit again and everyone helps clean up the shrine for Mao’s return (I dunno she’s at the hospital maybe or something.) So then loli nukos tell everyone to GTFO so that Akira & Suzu can have their ラブラブ time together (yes she really said that) and the 2 of them eat shaved ice on the deck. Well the upside is that it wasn’t that long, but downside is wow lack of romance? I really wanted to like Akira because I felt he had some tsundere potential but I felt like that UMF was just not there. NojiKen sounded bored most of the time, even during the lines where Akira was blushing (´・ω・｀). The lack of a real kiss CG was a huge downer, especially since this is a remake. What you couldn’t have added some smooching? I don’t even wanna know what the original was like at this rate lmfao!

Takachiho Riku – Riku is Suzu’s younger brother but he definitely loves his nee-san more than a brother should 😆 He will do anything for her, and if she says that snow is black, then he will say snow is black. When he finds out that their mother died he’s kinda chillax saying yea I kinda figured and the whole Sana/Kana picnic scene was rather meh since at this point we’re still in “brother” mode. So things finally get interesting when Tenko shows up saying that he wants Riku’s body as his next vessel and he then wants to destroy the Toyotamahime because he hates that stupid ho. At the same time he also informs Riku that he’s not really Suzu’s brother and in fact he was adopted by her family and his real last name is Munakata. (lol more HNK4 references…did I mention Riku also enjoys gardening?) So anyway after Riku hears about this he feels like he no longer has a connection to Suzu because obviously Akira is so much more manlier than he is 🙄 That night he decides to run off and give his body to Tenko thinking he can trust the evil shota and Suzu runs after him begging him not to leave her. He says that he’s always been protected by everyone and he’s tired of being left behind so this is the only thing he can do. Suzu returns home empty handed and then goes to see Riku in that abandoned shack the following day. She tells him that they found a way so that he doesn’t have to sacrifice himself, but he still refuses to go back with her. She then hugs him saying that she won’t leave him ever again and that she loves him. So then Tenko shows up to cockblock and he’s not the least bit pleased that Riku suddenly changed his mind about being his vessel. The other guardians show up and beat him down until he runs off and then Ramon comes and gives us the “see you at the battle site dudes” speech.  Before the final battle, that night Riku says that he’s in love with Suzu, as a woman, not as a sister. Suzu says she loves him as a man and not as a brother.

They glance into each other’s eyes and Suzu’s like “we mustn’t brother!” and he’s like “wut” and she’s like “you know, it’s like we’re in a shoujo manga!” So then he’s like “ok so then what happens next” and Suzu says probably some dramatic kiss scene so Riku gets the picture and they furiously make out. LOL THE BROTHER GETS A KISS CG BUT THE MAIN DUDE DOESN’T ／(^o^)＼ﾅﾝﾃｺｯﾀｲ. Sana & Kana of course saw everything and then they’re like “so here’s some baby name suggestions!” ﾌﾟｯ(※థэథ)∵.*.∵ At the final battle, Tenko breaks the seal and releases the angry dragon god but somehow Mao is freed from Toyotama’s grasp due to this. Suzu almost gives up and is about to seal it with her life, but then Riku yells at her to not give up and so with their power of love they destroy it. Afterwards Riku yells out like a dork that they defeated it with the power of love and they have plans for babies lmfao. xDXDXD He even admits to them being in a 禁断の関係ﾌﾟｯ(※థэథ)∵.*.∵ and then he kisses her again! THATS RIGHT HE GETS NOT ONE BUT TWO KISS CGS LOLOL. In the epilogue, Mao collapses into the hospital and while she’s there, Riku & Suzu clean up the house. The final CG has them doing laundry as Suzu grumbles that her cute little brother is now a sexy man beast lol. So anyway did I mention how I’m laughing at the fact that Riku got 2 kiss Cgs and Akira got 0? I can see where the inspiration for Gekka came from Otomate! ^q^ I actually thought Riku was really sweet. The whole brocest thing was kinda weird until they’re like “you’re not related so its OK” and then it was just adorable haha. Riku’s devotion to his neesan was hard core stuff but I guess this time instead of Suzu wangsting about dying, it was him instead. It wasn’t so bad though and the blush on his face was so cute. ﾐｭﾐｭ（´ε｀* )☆ Despite his route being mostly identical to Akira’s I found it a lot more enjoyable.

Mibu Katsuhiko – Katsuhiko is a lot like Hibiki from HNK4 (lol here I go with the comparisons again) in a sense that he’s not gonna spoil the heroine with b/s and he’s a man on a mission to do something regarding his family. When he first meets her he tells her how stupid and naive she is and that she sucks as the Tamayorihime since she can’t even keep her village from being defiled by demons. His goal is to get revenge on Tenko, one of Toyotamahime’s lackeys. Katsuhiko has a younger brother, Kotaro (who based on his skin color is either some bastard child or wants to be a gyaru-o ww) who is actually the opposite of him and while to  Katsuhiko everyone’s just a tool, Kotaro actually tries to make friends with them. Katsuhiko also is somewhat of a tsundere because he babbles how he doesn’t give a damn about Suzu and she’s just a tool, when push comes to shove he does protect her. He says of course he does it because he wants to use the Tamayorihime weapons that she’s given to him, but then he’ll turn around and go (〃`ω´〃)ふん. Turns out it’s not that Katsuhiko loved his father or anything, but he’s getting revenge because the whole Mibu family has this whole family loyalty crap going on. Apparently the government hated them and they killed most of their family except for Katsuhiko & Kotaro’s.

So then when their dad went off to kill Tenko, somehow he knocked up Suzu’s aunt or something in the process and that’s how Mao was born. (What’s with all the irresponsible knocking up going on in this game?? （ಠ_ಠ）). Mao was of course rejected by the Mibu’s and then her own family kicked her out, so Suzu’s mom took her in but Mao’s been depressed and vulnerable which is why Toyotamahime was easily able to take over her body. So anyways, Katsuhiko continues trying to scare Suzu off from stopping him from his mission, by like shoving his naked self on to her but it’s not very effective cause Suzu’s too bummed out abuot finding out her mom’s dead. (Also when Riku heard that he was half naked with his sister he raged and pulled out his weapon lmfao. ( ﾟ∀ﾟ)ｱﾊﾊ八八ﾉヽﾉヽﾉヽﾉ ＼ / ＼/ ＼).  So after Katsuhiko gets beat up badly by Tenko, and they do their research about Mao being a Mibu, he suggests the best way to save her is to turn her frown upside down and make her realize she’s not a reject. Katsuhiko then becomes surprisingly DERE and when he goes off to train with his bow, Suzu runs after him telling him he should heal his injuries but he puts a flower in her hair and apologizes for always worrying her. Sadly this doesn’t last too long when suddenly he’s like “WELP SINCE MAO’s A MIBU I CAN’T BETRAY DA MIBU BLOOD SO UH I GUESS IF YOU ATTACK HER IMA HAVE TO KILL YOU.” So then Katsu’s like okay peace out and he dumps Suzu so his magical bow disappears too.

After this they basically spend the next 2 hours of my gametime trying to get Katsuhiko to stop wangsting and going out on his own trying to solve everyone’s problems (like Hibiki…lol). During this ordeal they end up fighting with Mao and Katsuhiko and Kotaro end up facing off as well while Kotaro’s like “god damnit this is such a god damn waste of time, why you make me do this Otomate (ﾉಥ益ಥ）ﾉ 彡┻━┻”. Finally after like I don’t even know how long, Katsuhiko is magically convinced that he doesn’t have to follow that whole b’s with the Mibu bloodline and decides to rejoin Team Suzu to defeat Tenko, free Mao and defeat the angry dragon.So then the night before the battle, the wing loli nukos leave Katsuhiko & Suzu alone at home while they all go with Riku to Kotaro’s place…but NOTHING HAPPENS. Yes sadly despite being like a really largely drawn figure on the game cover, Kotaro suffers from the same romance issues as Akira: A kiss scene with no kiss CG! How wonderful! So he just hugs Suzu and apologizes, again and the next day he makes her breakfast. She takes a nap and has a dream where he leaves her so she calls his name out and he holds her hand. That evening she’s like “so what do we do about your disappeared weapon?” and Katsuhiko’s like “no problem I got it right here baby” and he pulls down his pants makes out with Suzu to get their “bonds” back on track.

Hooray on kiss CG etc. In the final battle Tenko betrays Toyotamahime and turns into a teenage mutant ninja cabbage. After cabbage boy is defeated, Katsuhiko makes out with Suzu in some black off screen hole and then Kotaro cockblocks them complaining that they get a room. In the epilogue Katsuhiko & Kotaro decide to move and stay in Suzu’s village with their mother. He realizes that he doesn’t give a crap about Mibu loyalty anymore and I guess they don’t give a damn since Tenko’s dead so now his mother is safe from persecution. Suzu brings lunch to him, Kotaro & Riku who are out fishing while Katsuhiko is being a lazy bum and reading a book in the shade. Lol meh. Katsuhiko had so much potential to be awesome like Hibiki but they barely even touched it because most of his route was REVENGE REVENGE. I mean I’m ok with revenge, but his revenge is dumb because he was doing it out of “duty” rather than because he actually gave a crap about what he was avenging. (　´_ゝ`) I guess Otomate liked Katsuhiko as much as they liked Yuuichi since both of their routes and endings were equally anti-climatic in my eyes. What a shame – I really would have loved to hear more tsundereness from Ishida Akira 😆

Mibu Kotaro – Kotaro is of course Katsuhiko’s younger brother and he’s always overshadowed by his brother’s awesomeness. Sadly there’s not much difference gameplay wise because his route is pretty much shared with Katsuhiko except some select scenes and the final battle. Kotaro I guess would be the token shota of the series, being 2 years younger than the heroine and while his looks kinda remind me of Mahiro, he’s not as obnoxious and in fact he just wants everyone to get along! He even sacrifices his own feelings for Suzu, despite him thinking that she’s cute while Katsuhiko calls her a bumbling idiot. He doesn’t care about the whole Mibu lineage loyalty crap and he just wants to make some new friends and go on a date with the 美人お姉さん. Similarly to Katsuhiko, he also sleeps half naked and he falls asleep that way in Suzu’s room so needless to say Kana & Riku rage and beat him up the next day ＼( ^o^)／ . So after a while rather than constantly idolizing his bro, Kotaro starts to grow feelings for Suzu and he tells her that he can’t stop thinking about her and there’s this PAIN IN HIS CHEST! Lol puppy love. (*´ω｀*) He says that he feels like a hole will open in his heart if Suzu has to die so if that case comes up he tells her she should run away. After Katsuhiko goes through his whole betrayal thing, Kotaro is completely torn because he always idolized his brother but now he doesn’t know what to think. After the faceoff with Katsuhiko, he has some raburabu time with Suzu. She hugs and thanks him saying she loves him for bringing everyone back together.

The next morning he comes into her room to say that she gave him courage and when he sees her sleeping he falls asleep next to her. Suzu doesn’t really mind, but of course Kana & Riku do and Kotaro gets beat up again 😆 Before the final battle Kotaro says he’s terrified but he wants to protect Suzu as himself, not as Katsuhiko’s shadow. He confesses that he loves her once more and when Suzu says she loves him too, he gives her their crappy first kiss xD;. Well at least their faces touched, that’s more than I can say for his brother! The final battle is the same as Katsuhiko’s and despite Kotaro wanting to shine on his own, he still sucks and Katsuhiko has to show up to save his butt. This gives Kotaro courage and he grabs Suzu’s hand and defeats teenage mutant ninja cabbage. (Another thing that reminded me of Mahiro was Kotaro’s ore no onna line lol.) So in the epilogue Kotaro & Suzu go on their first date even though all they do was just walk around cause Kotaro’s a poor bum who can’t take her anywhere decent. Nothing against Kotaro but his route was mostly meh since it was just a skip marathon of Katsuhiko’s. That’s not to say that some of his scenes didn’t make me grin but it was in a “aww how cute” rather than a (*´д｀*)ﾊｧﾊｧ  kind of way. He was a bit of an immature kid (can’t be helped he’s only 15) but at least he wasn’t an annoying boku-shota. Also his VA didn’t sound nearly as grating as he did in Arcobaleno lol.

Amano Ryouji – Ryouji is originally introduced as Mao’s fiance and the son of the village chief. He’s known Suzu since she was a loli so you could also throw him into the childhood friend category. He works as the school librarian and is the cool and mature adult of the bunch. The whole fiance thing with Mao is a sham, because the two of them are more like partners in crime rather than lovers. Their goal is of course to end the whole sacrificial lamb thing that Tamayorihime’s have had to go through because they want to save Suzu (and because they couldn’t save Ayako – Suzu’s mom.)  He eventually tells Suzu about the sacrifice thing and despite his father pushing upon it, he says he’s against it and wants to save her. Ryouji is actually a lot like Suguru from HNK1 but unlike Suguru, he actually has enough appearances in his route. When they were younger, Suzu said she wanted to grow up and be his waifu and they even had a fake wedding ceremony in the forest lol. From that day forth he obviously was waiting for her to RIPEN 😆 Sadly, Ryouji’s dad, the village chief is a fucking dickhead and he tells Suzu she has to die for the seal or else he will kill all her guardian buddies. He’s basically in cahoots with Toyotamahime but of course the old fart’s a god damn idiot and doesn’t realize that if Suzu dies, the stupid dragon will be freed and he and his village will all die anyway (　´_ゝ`).

One day Yasunori calls Suzu telling her not to trust Ryouji because of the cahoots with Toyotama thing and asks her to come over his house. There he says he saw Ryouji talking to Miroku so he could be a traitor, but when Suzu gets home, Ryouji now tells her that the government dudes came to his house to make an alliance with his father.Suzu’s pissed off and frustrated because she doesn’t know who to trust anymore but Ryouji just calmly tells her to trust with her heart on who is her ally. So then the old fart threatens for her to make up her mind, but Suzu continues to refuse to just go and die for his bullshit so he has his village idiots capture and throw her in the Amano house basement. When she wakes up she finds Ryouji there with her but it appears he’s under a brainwashing spell cast by Miroku and he’s also become Toyotamahime’s manbitch. So the damn whore’s all like LOL I TOOK SHIT FROM YOU HOW YOU LIKE DAT NOW BEEITCH. Suzu gets depressed and falls asleep dreaming about loli Mao (lol Asche) whining about some ring she lost that her mother gave her. The next day Miroku and Ryouji show up to see Suzu and Ryouji’s now also become Miroku’s punching bag. After they leave, Suzu gets pissed off and kicks the door non stop yelling that they let her yet (fuck yea you go girl) until she finds a letter on the floor.

Inside it’s Ryouji’s writing and it says “I’ll save you tonight”. Suzu decides to believe in him and that night Sana gets her out and when they run outside they run into Toyotamahime and Ryouji. Turns out Ryouji was never under the spell (or rather he broke out of it instantly) but he pretended to be just so he could fool Miroku and Toyotamahime.The whore rages and casts a slow death spell on Ryouji, who tells Suzu to run away and that when he dies, his guardianship will be transferred to Yasunori. Suzu runs into the forest where she meets up with Yasunori in some abandoned shack. He tells her that since Toyotama & Tamayorihime’s are sisters, she can break any spell Toyotamahime casts so she can save Ryouji. Suzu’s like hell yea Ima go kick some whore asses and she goes and saves Ryouji and breaks his death spell.  Yasunori acts as a distraction to the village idiots but he gets captured by Miroku. Miroku then gets a cue that it’s not final battle time yet via Otomate HQ and runs off saying the final battle will be the next night (cause he’s got other plans.)  So then everyone return to the abandoned forest shack and have a party to try to relax before battle, while Sana, Erika & Kana tell Ryouji and Suzu to go make lovin’ all night in the woods. The two of them go in the forest and Ryouji tells her that her mother’s dying message to her was “I love you my chillin'”  and “Don’t lose hope.”  Ryouji leans down on his knee and promises to protect Suzu and proposes to her indirectly saying he’ll make her happy.

The next day they all return home and before the battle, Ryouji comes over and kisses Suzu as a good luck charm. He also then asks her to become his lover and someday marry him for real. Just then it’s battle time and before they fight, Miroku basically gives us his sob story about how a bunch of village idiots betrayed him when he tried to stop them from sacrificing each other to ayakashi. They instead made him the sacrifice so he killed the ayakashi, raged and killed all the villagers and then became an ayakashi himself. Poor guy, but his voice annoys me so no pity from me. （ಠ_ಠ）So then they fight just like in Akira’s route and Suzu yells to wake Mao up – which works until Miroku knocks her out and uses her power to summon the angry dragon. Just then Ryouji shows up and kicks the dragon’s buttocks and soon after Mao wakes up going “I won’t give my sister to you – unless she’s ok with it.” Suzu of course wouldn’t pass the opportunity to marry a sexy beast like Ryouji so she says she’s awwright.  In the epilogue the Suzu is feeding Ryouji with a bento that she spent all night making for him. (´＾ω＾｀) So anyway yea Rouji’s route was pretty exciting! I thought it really helped put a nice background on the whole village idiot thing and really helped develop the deal with him as well as Mao. I also thought most of his route was actually interesting to sit through and I was sittin there going “Why couldn’t they have made Suguru’s route like this?” Maybe they realized their mistake and this was the proof lol.

Kamo Yasunori – Yasunori is probably now my favorite character in the game. Isn’t it funny how the best characters in HNK are always the ones with unhead of voice actors? I guess they don’t bother trying too hard for popular VAs cause they figured everyone would be too busy fangirling to care about the storyline (except for me!) Yasunori is the defender of justice government boy and he’s actually Erika’s supervisor despite only being 16 years old. He’s had a crush on Suzu since he met her and he always says crap that makes everyone around him roll their eyes. So most of Yasunori’s route was kinda like Ryouji’s except during the Miroku scene, Suzu takes his hand so that she gets his curse on to herself instead. Yasunori’s not a guardian so all he can do is fight with his brain by doing stealth research and things such as traps etc. He cares a lot about Suzu and he spends so much time doing research all night long that he collapses and Suzu goes to visit him. Erika’s a super wingwoman in this route and everytime Suzu comes over their place, she goes “for a walk” so they can be aloneT together. ( ≖‿≖) The 2nd time Suzu visits, Erika tells him that his princess is here to see him, and then she tells Suzu that he loves her a lot and would do anything to protect her despite her worrying about who to trust with all that’s going on.  After hearing this Suzu gets all nervous around Yasunori and then he thanks her telling her that it’s her smile that keeps him going.

Suzu tries to talk to the old fart on her own about her fate and Yasunori’s not dumb, so he shows up saying the hell with the government and all he wants to do is protect the girl he loves. ヾ( 〃ω〃)ｯ ｷャーーーッ♪ He tells Suzu to run away as Miroku beats him up because he’s weak and that’s the most he can do. Suzu doesn’t want to leave him but suddenly Kei decides to betray Toyotamahime saying he’s not sure why but something’s telling him to save Suzu and Yasunori. The 2 of them escape and instead Kei gets captured and has a death curse put on him. Suzu and Yasunori run to the le abandoned shack in the woods while Erika goes to get the other guardians.  He whines that he’s a useless sack of potatoes and that he has connections to Takara Kiyono (lol the only remaining HNK1 reference) who can help Suzu run away. He also says he wants Kei to be their ally because he can kick butts so he wants to go rescue him. Suzu says  that Yasunori saved her with his research in his own way and says she wants to rescue Kei as well. While Yasunori acts as a distraction, Suzu uses her Tamayorihime powers to break the Toyotamahime barrier and rescue Kei. Sadly they run into Miroku and Tenko and their efforts pretty much go to waste as Kei sacrifices himself so Suzu and Yasunori can run away ＼( ^o^)／ It’s not a complete loss though because after Kei dies, his guardian weapon (cause apparently he’s the 6th guardian) is transferred to Yasunori who now becomes Suzu’s official #6.

Miroku loses to Yasunori’s shield and then is like whatev’s I’ll just release the dragon tomorrow night and kill you all wahahhaa and runs off with his idiotic laughter. Suzu and Yasunori return to their shack and everyone is there thanking him for protecting their princess. That night he then thanks Suzu for making him realize what a high and mighty snob he was and then he attempts to kiss but smacks his face into hers or something. They try it again and he looks like a massive dork but it was just so sweet lol. (*´ω｀*) On their way to the final battle, Suzu starts wangsting about how she’s useless and Yasunori turns around and kisses her again xDDD. Oh look, he got 2 kiss scenes m9^Д^)m9^Д^)m9^Д^)ｼﾞｪﾄｽﾄﾘｰﾑﾌﾟｷﾞｬｰ. He says that if he kisses a girl twice, it gives him a reason to keep fighting. So then at the battle Miroku kills Toyotamahime and uses her soul to summon the dragon. He joins the ranks of the fugly and thanks to Suzu and Yasu combining their powers, they defeat him. Mao’s alive as usual and in the epilogue Suzu and Yasunori are having a raburabu bentou together. He says that he requested to stay and work in this village so he could be with Suzu forever. (´＾ω＾｀) DDDAWWWWW YASUNORI IS SO FREAKING ADORKABLE. Seriously most fun and best character in the whole game. It’s like they really put effort into his personality or maybe it’s just that I don’t like boring ass personalities like the likes of Akira and Katsuhiko meh lol. It’s kinda annoying though that he’s actually not in most of the promo images for HNK2. They all shove Akira & Katsuhiko in there but lol wgaf about those too (　´_ゝ`). Yasunori ﾐｭﾐｭ（´ε｀* )☆♥

Mikoshiba Kei – So Kei was obviously the char they like shoved in last minute hoping to convince me to care. Alright I admit, he was hot & voiced by Kondo Takashi but that still didn’t fully convince me when he and Suzu fell in love in the span of like 4 days xD. His route is so identical to Yasunori’s that when you look at the “affection meter” it looks as if Yasunori’s at 100% and then suddenly…Kei! When Suzu first has an actual scene with him he says that he recalls being with Tamayorihime in the past perhaps as her lover. After Suzu breaks the death spell he recalls that he was captured by Toyotamahime forced to be her manservant but his heart continued to have Tamayorihime in it after all these years. So basically yea he’s TM’s 6th guardian and since this is now his route, he doesn’t die and then suddenly Suzu’s like “I think I love you!”  and then she’s like “I wish you’d love me for me not for the Tamayorihime inside me!” And fortunately for Suzu, Kei easily rebounds from TM to her and is like “it’s cool, I love you too babe” and then they make out. Lol alrighty then! In the final battle since they defeat all of Toyotamahime’s lackeys, she becomes hopeless and just sells her soul to the dragon to revive it. It revives and instantly sends a massive attack that levels everything and massively injures Kei. Fortunately our defender of justice Yasunori has made preparations for everything and he tells Suzu and Kei how to defeat it so they kick some serious ass. Poor Yasunori, got NTRed in his own route if you really think about it 😆 In the epilogue Suzu gives Kei her father’s old yukata and the 2 of them enjoy the summer day. Well I think Kei was pretty hot and stuff but yea his route was pretty vapid and pointless lol. I really wish there was more to it than that but I guess that would then basically just be Akira & Katsuhiko after that point so maybe it’s good they cut to the chase. (　´_ゝ`)

There was a mini game where you matched up words to the PSP buttons and after 4 levels you get to pick a dude who you get a mini scenario with (unvoiced.) I did Yasunori first and I got every single answer right off the bat, same for Kei. However Akira, Ryouji and Katsuhiko….ESPECIALLY THAT SOB KATSUHIKO UGH ( ಠ益ಠ ) Fortunately there were no CGs and if you failed 3 times you could just start over but man I couldn’t tell if Katsuhiko wanted you to be TSUN or DERE that bastard lmfao. Now I hate him even more ^q^.  やっぱりやすにゃんは一番だ♥ If you did win the guy over, the starting screen of the game will turn into a wallpaper of said guy.

So anyway did I mention that Yasunori’s the best character? 😆 I mean just by looking at the above pic you can pretty much tell everyone’s personalities and who will probably the most interesting one. The BGMs were actually all different except for the final battle one which was taken from HNK1. I do admit that the OP song to this was probably the only HNK song I liked. The art by Kazuki Yone was lovely as usual (save for that one pic of Katsuhiko’s hand e_e) As far as heroine goes, Suzu was rather boring at first, especially in Akira’s route but I really liked how she was proactive in  Riku’s, Yasunori’s and especially Ryouji’s. I think because of that those were my favorite routes in the game. Kei was just shoved in there for Hijikata fans or something and despite Katsuhiko and Akira being shoved in the front of every promo pic, their routes were rather uninteresting. I guess Katsuhiko MIGHT have been more interesting had he not gone off the deep end with his Mibuwangst and Akira coulda used more tsundere moments to actually get me to care about him. (Why are the childhood friend routes always so uninteresting? Like the concept itself stays afloat in their heads or something.) While Kana & Sana weren’t baby fox nuko, I think by the end I grew to like them a lot x3.  The game wasn’t too long so it didn’t really drag on that much to be honest so I didn’t feel like it was painful to sit through. I actually wish they had added more romance scenes in addition to what we saw to make it more wholesome (cause lol Akira and Katsuhiko really coulda used it sigh.) It’s a pity the  omake scenarios weren’t voiced but it was still a nice little touch at the end. The whole Tamayorihime concept is really pointless to me by now though. It feels like they can just shove it on to anyone and just throw in 6 guys to protect the girl with Monster X having to be sealed or else the girl will die. For all I know there’s gonna be a Hiiro no Kakera 5 where they gotta seal Inuyasha or Orochimaru or something.  It was also a bummer that you’d play one guy’s route and there would be 1 other guy whose route would be identical except the last maybe hour or so of the game. SO ANYWAY YAY AFTER LIKE 2 MONTHS I’M DONE WITH EVERY HIIRO NO KAKERA GAME! ε=＼＿○ﾉ ｲﾔｯﾎｰｩ！ Thank you all for keeping up with me xD; I have plans to do more of these “series” marathons but I think I will be taking a break and playing a few random games before diving into another one.