Akane Rin’s father died when she was little and so her mother became a prostitute to try to make a living to support them. Rin never understood this because she was too young but due to this she had no friends and a lot of kids/parents spread rumors about her. One day her paternal grandma Sumi took her back to her place where she lives in a village called Momiji that is filled with ayakashi. Rin didn’t really like them and after spending a month there she ended up returning back to her house. 10 years later, her mother died probably from being killed by one of her customers but Rin never knew why. She never cried during the funeral and she’s been living on whatever money her mom left while going to school. One of the ayakashi, Gin, who she met when she was little comes to visit her and asks if she wants to come back and live with him and the other Ayakashi at the village she went to in the past. He said that he’s running a restaurant there and she gets free food as well as a place to live. Rin figures she doesn’t wanna deal with any  burden of her mother’s leftovers and is running out of money for paying bills…so she decides to leave everything behind and join Gin and other ayakashi at Ponpokorin restaurant.

Click to jump to final thoughts

Before I go into the routes a brief explanation of the system. Basically in the loli years if you pick choices where Rin is a rude snotty brat, she grows up to be a negative nancy who is quiet and tries to wall herself away from others. However if you pick choices where you thank Gin and granny for their hospitality and realize that eating food with everyone is the bees knees, Rin grows up to be a genki girl who loves to cook and eat. Personally I just love genki Rin, but sadly the quiet negative Rin feels more realistic to the background she was raised in so it’s hard to decide who the “true” heroine is. Based on the plot though, in my head genki-Rin will always be the one true heroine! The common route basically follows both Rins interacting with various ayakashi in the village and even the evil ones who want to eat her, simmer down and take Gin’s cooking instead 😆

Inushima Uta – Uta is one of the guardian dogs at Momiji shrine along with his twin brother Yomi. He is constantly yells at Rin for being a bratty selfish ingrate for throwing away Gin’s lunches, and getting caught in a trap by a spider youkai lady. She’s easily taken advantage of those who are “lonely” and feels like they can understand her. Uta and Yomi both have to wear eye patches because many years ago, a bunch of stupid kids found their shrine, threw rocks at their statues and broke their eyes. The hatred for humans turned them into ayakashi but when they take the “human” appearance, they don’t have an eye.  At one point a classmate girl has a crush on Uta and she basically uses Rin to get closer to him by giving her baked goods to share with Uta & co. At first Rin and everyone think the girl wants to be Rin’s friend but then Rin discovers that basically the girl likes Uta. Still unaware of what “liking someone” entails Rin basically gets jealous and upset at the girl, at Uta and at herself for not being able to express her emotions. She then goes to talk to her firefly ayakashi friend Kei who makes her realize that she’s also in love with Uta.

She feels bad at getting in a fight with him so she runs home to apologize but Uta won’t come out of his room, not even for dinner. At night though he finally comes out and Rin gives him leftovers and as they talk she accidentally blurts out that she likes him. They give excuses after babbling like dorks until Gin comes and yells at them to go to bed. At school the next day Rin tells the girl who likes Uta that she likes him too and she can’t give him the girl’s cookies anymore. After this Rin and Uta start blushing and stuttering like dorks around each other. But yea the usual Ayakashi and humans can’t be together cause the human will die and leave the Ayakashi behind. Despite this Gin tells Rin that she should go for it because the time they spend together will be what’s most important. Unfortunately before Rin can come out with her feelings, Uta gets captured & beat up by an oni in the woods. She and Yomi hear a “bell for help” from Uta and run to rescue him. While Yomi acts as bait for  the angry troll, Rin runs and falls down a snowy cliff eventually tumbling into a passed out Uta. Uta is surprised to see her and then starts to lick off all her wounds claiming that doing so will make them heal faster. (ﾉ´∀｀*)

Best End: Uta tells Rin to run away on her own, leave the village and cut off all connections with any Ayakashi. Rin refuses saying she loves this village and everyone, including Uta. Uta says that he doesn’t want her to get hurt because of Ayakashi involvement anymore and he doesn’t want to constantly feel burdened by his feelings for her because they will never be “complete” due to the whole human/Ayakashi thing. Rin agrees to leave but makes Uta promise that he won’t get killed by the oni. As Uta is fighting with the oni, Rin shows up and tells him to eat her instead. Uta ain’t havin’ none of this so he unleashes his true form and true power beating the crap out of the oni. After this Uta ends up knocked out asleep for a week and then finally wakes up. He and Rin confess their feelings to each other and in the epilogue they tell the shrine god that they’re officially dating.

After they ichaicha the god quietly tells them to enjoy their remaining time together. Once you clear Asagi’s route, the god scene is replaced instead with a scene of Rin kissing Uta on the cheek. He no longer has his eyepatch cause genki-Rin saved the village and gave him an eye. Good end: Uta and Rin ichaicha happily ever after 😁 Bad end: Uta sacrifices himself to save Rin and kill the oni. Rin leaves the village but Yomi is upset and angry that Uta died for some human. Omake: Rin goes to Kei to thank him for letting her realize her feelings for Uta…but Uttan follows her and grumbles in jealousy. She tells him she won’t go secretly talking to other mans anymore and kisses him on the cheek. After tsuning in embarrassment some more, Uttan takes her hand and they walk back home. (ﾉ´∀｀*) Uttan pretty much ended stealing my heart from the start and it pretttty much remained that way until I finished the game. He kinda reminded me of Lucia from Beastmaster & Prince :D.

Ibuki Haginosuke – Haginosuke’s kind of a genki classmate but behind his smile is a lot of hard livin’. His mother died in a car accident shortly before she was supposed to have Haginosuke’s  baby sister.  The mother died on her way to the hospital for her checkup.  His father somehow survived but the mother died with the baby.  However before they could perform autopsy on the mothers body,  it vanished and nobody ever found it. They held a funeral with an empty casket. Haginosuke just spent time with his grandma while his dad was in a coma at the hospital. On his birthday in February, Haginosuke went out into the snowy woods to look for his mom cause he didn’t understand death. He ends up somehow finding his mother’s dead body and it finally hits him that she’s died. They then took the body and gave it a proper burial. His father awakened some time later but the family was torn apart, and ever since then Haginosuke doesn’t like eating with his family. The mystery of why his mom’s body suddenly appeared and why his sisters fetus wasn’t  inside was never solved. People started thinking she was an ayakashi and that’s why Haginosuke has been searching for an Ayakashi who could answer his questions.

They run into a girl named Sakura who is the granddaughter of a bookstore owner who looks a lot like Haginosuke but has no idea who he is. They suggest that she meet with Haginosuke – and also the fact that Haginosuke’s “unborn sister” was supposed to be named Sakura. When Haginosuke and Rin go to gramps again he gives up lying and tells them the truth. Turns out an Ayakashi named Mine took over Haginosuke’s mom’s dead body, hid in the woods and waited to give birth to Sakura. Unfortunately trying to give energy to a dead body pretty much depleted all the life energy Mine had. She ran into shota-Haginosuke and wanted to bring him to see his baby sister but it was too late and she basically died right beside him (which is how he awakened to see his mother’s dead body.) The other Ayakashi felt sorry for both Mine and the children so they helped bring both Haginosuke and the body out of the woods, and they brought the baby to gramps telling him that Mine named it “Sakura”. The reason Sakura can see Ayakashi is because of the leftover powers from Mine. To try to get Haginosuke and Mine to meet up, they decide to throw a birthday celebration for both of them because they are both born on February 1st.

They have a small celebration with Sakura, Haginosuke and Rin, and the present is a hair pin from Sakura and Haginosuke’s mother. When putting it on Sakura gets memories of her mother before she had the baby. Haginosuke then spills the beans and tells Sakura the truth about them being siblings. At first Sakura is happy she starts to cry but suddenly something goes wrong and she starts going berserk yelling that her real family is only her grandpa. Turns out the Ayakashi power left inside of her starts going bonkers and she runs into the forest with Haginosuke & Rin chasing her to stop it before something bad happens. Good End: Sakura’s Ayakashi goes nuts and tries to eat both Haginosuke and Rin but wanko boys come to save the day. After this Rin comes over Haginosuke’s house waiting for him to wake up. After he wakes up she makes him some soup and takes care of him. Sakura in the meantime recovered and all the Ayakashi powers inside of her have vanished.

Rin admits to Haginosuke that Gin and co. are all Ayakashi and apologizes for lying to him all this time. Sakura also comes to him and apologizes for going bonkers and then the siblings hug. Rin also gives Haginosuke a late  birthday present so he gives her a kiss on the forehead as a thanks. (*´∀｀*) Later that day he comes to Ponpokorin and confesses to Rin that he loves her and they kiss…until they are cockblocked by everyone else there XD. In the epilogue, Haginosuke, Sakura and Rin go to the woods guided by the Ayakashi tsundere bird man who had saved  baby Sakura many years ago. They go to where Mine gave birth and make a small grave for her as a thanks. Best End: After genki-Rin saves the village this end is unlocked. Haginosuke and Rin begin dating and in the spring he takes her to a place full of cherry blossoms as they ride on his bike together. Bad End: Haginosuke dies and Rin is so depressed that Gin erases her memories of him to make her feel better. Omake: Haginosuke stays for dinner at Ponpokorin again and afterwards he goes outside with Rin. At 11 PM he then asks if he can spend the night in Rin’s room (ﾉ´∀｀*). Rin babbles no in embarrassment so he kisses her instead and says he’ll just have to leave it at that for now :P.

Hana Suoh – I kept having flashbacks to Boris from the Alice games because of Sugiyama voicing yet another catboy :lol:. Suoh is a cat ayakashi who likes to just sleep in Rin’s house kotatsu and eat all her food 😆 He’s also an attention whore cat who just wants to cuddle with Rin and gets mad and jelly when she doesn’t pay attention to him and focuses on reading books with her newly found reading buddy. Because Rin spends so much time with Sasagawa and books, Suoh gets pissed and they get into a fight. The following day Rin gets news that Sasagawa’s been attacked by something and is now in a coma in the hospital. When Uta & Yomi go to the hospital to visit him with Rin, they say it reeks of Ayakashi and all signs point to Suoh as the perpetrator. Rin wants to believe in Suoh and she goes to him directly asking him if he knows anything. Much to her shock, he says that the human was “gross and not worth eating which is why he didn’t die”. Rin is shocked and disappointed but thinks maybe Suoh is just making things up because he’s still angry at her, continuing to believe that he didn’t do it. He takes Rin into his shack up in the mountains and nearly strangles her out of jealousy but Rin’s all like no bebe I love you I’m sorry for making you feel all ronery!

After this Yomi and Uta find them and tell Rin to take a bath and tell Suoh that because he attacked a human he’s a threat to Rin. Rin says it’s ok and after going back home, bathing and eating she returns with Suoh to his mountain shack. He tells her a story of how over 150 years ago, he was a plain ol’ cat who was adopted by a fisherman. The fisherman and him lived together until Suoh’s cat body died and became a nekomata. Because he became an Ayakashi, he was able to talk to the fisherman and the 2 had a jolly ol’ time conversing with each other. Unfortunately the other villagers saw them and called the fisherman a heathen for being associated with Ayakashi. He got tired of all their shit and decided to move into his shack in the mountains away from the village. However being all alone he got depressed and every night would curse the ayakashi for taking “Suoh” away from him. Suoh felt bad for burdening his old master and decided to leave and try to live on his own. Sadly he never had any cat friends and his attempts to get food from the village would get him stoned by people because of his 2 tails etc.

He decided that maybe he’ll try to make up with the fisherman again and return to his shack up in the mountain. Unfortunately when he returned it was too late as the fisherman was killed by a roaming ayakashi. Suoh felt guilty and lonely because had he not left, he might have been able to protect his master.After they chat it up a bit and Rin gives him a hug she makes him spill the beans that he in fact didn’t hurt Sasagawa. It was another nekomata and when Suoh is about to take her back home, this nekomata shows up and wants to kill Rin. As Suoh fights him to protect her, her doggie bodyguards show up and Uta gives the feline a smack down turning him back into a plane ‘ol cat. They take Suoh back to the house along with the cat to tend to wounds. While the cat is knocked out, Suoh tells Rin that the other cat was abused his whole life by villagers and kids and because of that he grew hatred towards humans. He then ate any humans that had spiritual powers (ability to see ayakashi) and gained the strength to then go wild and attack random humans in the village. Sasagawa was basically a victim of his random rage. Suoh then sneaks a kiss on Rin and everyone’s like ZOMG GET A ROOM XD

Best End: Suoh confesses to Rin that he loves her and for some reason she’s like hmm how do I feel about him??! I thought her confession before was a love confession but I guess not…? Well either way she’s like yep I love u too~ and they hug in his ghetto shack in the woods. Rin asks him to come back to live with gin & co but he says he wants to protect the shack as long as possible until it finally crumbles due to age and weather – rather than having it be destroyed by woodland creatures & ayakashi. In the epilogue Suoh crawls into her room through her window in cat form and then turns into human form cuddling with her in bed. After they wake up, a raging Uta comes to wake them up to tell them it’s dinner time. Good End: They ichaicha together at Ponpokorin. (Honestly these good ends don’t seem much different from the best ends sans CGs.) Bad End: The other nekomata kills Suoh and Rin visits his grave every day. The other nekomata shows up and says she’s just doing it to satisfy her guilty conscience. He then kills her to put her out of her misery.

Inushima Yomi – In the human arc, Rin is more positive and had learned how to cook in order to spend time eating with her mother. Also because she’s so genki now, the focus shifts of her inner problems and more on to the guys of the game. This is really saddening because I would have loved to see the genki Rin paired up with Uta or Haginosuke. I feel like only the quiet Rin is well paired with Suoh. Yomi is extremely tsuntsun especially towards humans because of the damage they did to his and Uta’s eyes. This tengu named Guren demands that Rin be his waifu and Yomi ain’t havin’ none of this :P.  As time passes Yomi simmers down his tsun and gets more deredere towards Rin. Apparently it’s a thing that Tengus just come down from their mountain and every few years steal a human woman to make their wife.

This only happens to women who can see Ayakashi, like Rin and well the Tengu guy loves the WILD ones so Rin is just his type. Rin figures the best solution to this is to run away from the village but instead she ends up getting hurt with her man harem coming to save her (;´･ω･). Gin ends up threatening the tengu dude telling him to GTFO or else, so he leaves.  After this Rin realizes she’s in love with Yomi but Yomi is afraid to open his heart out to her. Kamisama shows Rin the past of when Uta and Yomi were just shrine guarding dogs and the history of humans cleaning up their shrine, and then time passing, and the humans getting old and dying. There was a period where they were forgotten and when some kids finally found them again, all they did was throw rocks and destroy their statues eyes. The hate and anger from the two of them is what turned them into Ayakashi and Yomi decided that he will never trust any human again and just communally hate them from the start. So turns out Guren the douchey tengu, started abducting young women from the village in Rin’s place instead. Rin goes to him and makes a deal that if he lets all of them go, she’ll marry him (in addition to him not killing Yomi.)

After a week goes by, Rin confesses her love to Yomi and on the final day agrees to go with Guren. Yomi catches them and tries to stop them but Guren knocks him away and takes Rin to the woods. He then proclaims that Yomi pissed him off by “taking his waifu” and says he’s going to kill him anyway. Rin’s passion for Yomi though and her desire to throw her life away to save him….kinda kills Guren’s interest and he figures he’ll never get her to love him anyway. He gives up and leaves her alone. Best End: Uta and Rin confess their love to each other as they hug and smooch in the forest. Gin & co. find them and tell them that sacrificing yourself isn’t going to make anyone happy and then make fun of them because everyone knew they had the hots for each other. (*´ω｀*)In the epilogue they ichaicha until March 9th where they go to the cherry blossom tree and Yomi starts crying saying he knew he had “died already”. He doesn’t go into details and says that one day Rin will know but she will be able to accept the truth.

Obviously that’s referring to Yomi realizing about the loop they’re in and once you finish Asagi’s route, this part changes. Instead this time Yomi doesn’t have his eye patch and when they get to the shrine, the sakura tree is bare. Instead of yelling about him being dead though he just calls Rin by her first name and says he loves her while denying it and being a tsuntsun :P. Good End: Guren comes back to Ponpokorin to have some of Gin’s cooking cause it’s the best in the west. Everyone is shocked and Yomi is kinda pissed so after eating tengu man leaves. Yomi and Rin then go to his room where they ichaicha and Rin reassures him that she only has eyes for him. (＾ω＾) Bad End: Yomi gets killed by Guren trying to protect Rin. Rin refuses to become Guren’s wife and kills herself but the dude is a creeper and he marries her dead body anyway. ಠ_ಠ Omake: Uta and Rin fight over something but when Yomi walks in it looks like NTR ＼(^o^)／. They run after a pissed off Yomi to try to explain themselves but he just rages and closes himself in his room. He then continues to give Rin the silent treatment the next 3 days.  Eventually with Haginosuke’s help, she gets Yomi to talk to her and he admits that he’s extremely jealous because it looked like she and Uta were having fun. Rin gives him a kiss and tells him that she only loves him. (*˘︶˘*).｡.:*♡

Serigano Manatsu – The guy whose family runs a produce store and he often delivers it for Ponpokorin. He’s also really derpy and constantly crashes into poles/fences when he tries to ride his bike/scooter. He’s also voiced by Okitsu Kazuyuki and since his name is Manatsu, the shota son of Gin calls him Ma-kun. Manatsu also loves Tsuzuri and it’s very similar to how Masaomi treated Wataru in Brothers Conflict so honestly the whole thing was like Masa-nii’s route all over again (￣▽￣) Manatsu is also Gin’s brother in law because Gin’s deceased wife was Manatsu’s older sister which also makes Tsuzuri as Manatsu’s nephew.   Throughout the route Manatsu seems like he wants to get close to Rin but the moment she reciprocates, he immediately distances himself so she can’t tell what he is thinking. For Valentine’s day Rin makes him honmei choco but lies and says it’s giri because he tells her wont accept honmei. Soo after school Rin sighs and goes up to the Momiji shrine where she runs into some ayakashi kid who steals the choco away. It ends up flying and rolling into the woods and despite Rin’s best efforts to track it down, it’s cold and snowy and she loses it while injuring her foot.

Since she doesn’t come home, Manatsu is worried and runs up to the shrine to look for her. He finds her injured and asks why she did this and how she made everyone worried. Rin just starts crying and confesses to him that she loves him and tells him about the chocolate. Manatsu hugs her and says he loves her as well – but they’re DESTINED TO NEVER BE TOGETHER!  Some tapir Ayakashi comes into Rin’s head telling her that hers and Manatsu’s souls have been reborn over and over, fallen in love, but then one of them would die because DESTINEEEE. The moment that they fall in love the wheel of fortune begins to spin and it will basically force Rin to die. Meanwhile back at the ranch, Rin is out cold because of this destiny and Manatsu takes her unconscious body and brings her back to Ponpokorin. For some reason Manatsu has memories of him constantly losing Rin and he’s in despair that it’s happening again. A week goes by with Rin out cold and they bring in god-shota for help. He tells everyone that Rin’s been attacked by a nightmare eating tapir ayakashi who will keep eating her dreams until she dies. Manatsu then admits that he encountered this ayakashi many years ago and it basically brings misfortune to anyone who cannot face it.

God-kun tells Manatsu to find the tapir and kick its ass. Meanwhile Rin’s in dreamland seeing a flashback of Rin-hime and Manatsu who was the servant of her father’s. They fell in love with each other but she was forced into an arranged marriage with the emperor. Unfortunately he had a harem of women and the jealous ones cursed Rin-hime and she got a horrible disease and died. Manatsu didn’t want to live without her so he killed himself only to repeat this over and over for years to come constantly blaming himself for not running away with her in the original generation. Oh also before that time he met with a baby fox nuko who he named Gin and that’s basically what Gin was before he became an Ayakashi so he and Manatsu go waaaaaay back. Rin-hime comes into Rin’s head and tells her to break Manatsu from the curse. With this, Rin wakes up and runs to look for Manatsu. She finds him battling the tapir and as it turns out the tapir was an ayakashi born from 1st gen Manatsu who cursed himself and said Rin-hime’s death was all his fault. Best End: Rin tells the tapir that Rin-hime never hated him and doesn’t regret the decision he made 1000 years ago. The tapir turns back to Manatsu’s 1st gen form and he and Rin-hime are finally reunited. Meanwhile the curse is broken so Rin and Manatsu, present time, can finally be together as they kiss under the always blooming cherry blossom.

In the epilogue, Rin gets sick so Manatsu takes care of her and she has a dream where she sees 1st gen Manatsu & Rin get married and live happily ever after. Before Asagi’s route, he ends up disappearing from her sight but post that ending, he’s there and gives her a kiss. Good End: Rin and Manatsu ichaicha as they begin dating and he indirectly proposes to her asking her to be his “new family” in the future. Bad End: Rin accepts her fate to die but she blows out her “fire of life” in order to never be reborn again. She figured if her being reborn and reuniting with Manatsu makes him upset, then it’s best they never meet again. Manatsu also then asks the tapir to end his life too because he cannot live without Rin. Omake: Manatsu comes over Rin’s room and he’s in a randy mood cause after he kisses Rin it ain’t enough and he pushes her down on the bed saying he wants MOAR. Rin’s like OMG, pushes him away and runs off :lol:. She’s pretty surprised since she had always seen him as this “nice oniisan” but let’s face it nice oniisan is 25 and he wants to hit dat future waifu of his. She runs into him after school and he apologizes for getting all horny in her room and she apologizes for not being ready. They end up making up with hugs and kisses (ﾉ´∀｀*).

Kimura Asagi – Asagi is the mystery man but the entire game changing plot is revealed in this route. The truth is, all of Momiji village is stuck in a time loop because in fact it was destroyed by a tsunami/hurricane about a week before Rin came there – on August 20th (Rin arrived on 8/31). Only 12 ayakashi survived, including Gin, so they joined together and used the “memories” of the village to recreate this “dream world” of it. It was all mostly because of Gin’s wish to be reunited with his son again. The memories of the world actually all stored in the cherry blossom tree at the top of Momiji shrine and that’s basically what Asagi is. It would be in this eternal time loop but everyone would be “alive”. Also this is kind of tying in with the whole you playing the game over and over is basically also YOU sort of controlling that time loop. Kinda reminds me of what they did in the Amnesia game :P. That is all until Rin came, and being an outsider, she kinda crashed the time loop party. Because she’s an irregularity, time started to move for the village and Asagi’s time loop snow globe began to crumble.

After Asagi reveals the truth to Rin she’s horrified at how she’s interrupted the “happy fake world” but he tells her there’s 1 way to save the village. If Uta and Yomi had their other eyes, they could use their true powers to protect the village from the tsunami. Asagi uses his remaining powers to send Rin back in time, because unlike others, she isn’t tied down to the “time loop”. So Rin is sent back in time, to the time that her loli self visited grandma at the village. She even bumps into her 7 year old self before running to the shrine to fix the dog boys statue eyes. She uses the eyes from her teddy bear Ku-tan, which are actually spiritual stones that 1000 years ago Manatsu gave to baby fox nuko Gin. As she returns to the future, Asagi tells her goodbye because he’s no longer needed for the time loop since the village will be saved. After Rin returns, she loses all memories of Asagi, but starts crying and isn’t sure why. Good End: Rin successfully saves the village and this unlocks the true endings of a “happy future” for everyone else in the game. Unfortunately byebye for Asagi because his role is done.

Bad End: Gin explains to Rin that he’s had to move between communities a lot so people wouldn’t think he’s some kimoi ayakashi so he was never able to get close to anyone. That all changed when he came to Momiji village and so his wife and son are the most important things to him. When he lost his wife he was in despair so losing Tsuzuri he couldn’t take it anymore and wished for a world where Tsuzuri would be alive, even if it was synthetic. He also added that while the fake world was running, it was slowly draining life energy from the 12 Ayakashi, including Gin himself. That’s why he gave a “time limit” so that he wouldn’t die but would at least have enough time to “heal” his heart wounds. Unfortunately the dogs and Tsuzuri overhear their conversation and they’re shocked to find out they’re really dead. After discussing Rin says that Asagi may have a way to save everyone (like in the good end) but by the time they come back to him, it’s too late. God also tells them that because Asagi has no power left, they can’t repeat the loop so it’s pretty much the end. They all combined their powers to instead send Rin back in time to return back to her home and ask her to at least “remember” her time with them. There’s not enough power so the other 11 Ayakashi all come back to help out and thank Rin for everything.  The game also implies that the “genki” Rin is the true heroine because Rin’s “other quiet self” was in the time loop dream. (At least that’s my theory.)

Rin wakes up on a train to Momiji village on 8/31 and her memories of the time loop all feel like a dream and she forgets it as she wakes up. When she gets off at Momiji station, she sees a sign on the station that there was a natural disaster there and the station is the only thing left. The station attendant confirms that the village was destroyed much to Rin’s horror. Omake: Asagi’s tree blooms freshly and so his ayakashi form is reborn and he comes as a new student to Rin’s class. Unfortunately she has no memories of him. Sometimes I think honeybee doesn’t know the difference between emotional and extremely draggy. They wasted at least 20 minutes showing flashbacks from Asagi’s point of view before his demise….but they weren’t much different from what we saw before. I get it, it’s supposed to be meaningful, but it dragged on so much it felt like the emotional effect was lost along the way. The other issue was that in the omake, Asagi is magically alive without any explanation. Does the FD explain this? I mean yea trees can grow once more, but does that mean that every spring Asagi will show up – then vanish every winter? 😆 I honestly really enjoyed the bad end because it felt realistic and I just wanted to give Gin a massive hug. I felt so sorry for him and all the shit he went through. Also honestly putting the whole “Tsunami destroys village” theme in a game seems horrifying to me. I can only imagine how horrified Japanese gamers might have been playing this once everything was revealed. They actually used the 3/11 plot in a manga I was reading recently and I was pretty shocked/horrified that they would do this.

Gin Omake – Gin’s Omake shows how he originally got settled in Momiji. He got hit by a car but wasn’t killed and Rin’s grandma & grandpa found him and took him home. Rin’s grandma Sumi could see Ayakashi so she wasn’t afraid of him at all. Gin ended up staying with the two until Sumi’s husband died and he promised to stay with Sumi until the end.(´；ω；`)ｳｯ… And so time passed and Gin got to know Manatsu and Mafuyu and he and Mafuyu both fell in love. They had Tsuzuri and 5 years later, Mafuyu died from an illness. Saddened by the loss, Gin decided to start Ponpokorin because Mafuyu always said that Gin’s cooking was good. Just as everything was set up though, it was time for Sumi to go and she died of old age. Before she went, she asked Gin to take care of Rin for her. (´；ω；`) I don’t know what it is, but anything involving Rin’s grandma just made me baww. I sat there with a straight face through Asagi’s entire route, but give me Sumi flashbacks and the tears just flooded. Maybe it’s because she was so kind to both Gin and Rin despite everything and how she asked Gin to take care of her lonely grand daughter. At the same time though they never really did explain why Sumi wasn’t able to just adopt Rin from her mother. I guess the mother made it not obvious that she was performing child neglect or maybe in Japan their child care services are crappy or something (눈_눈).

Kamisama Omake – The shrine god is bored so he goes around trying to socialize but everyone runs away from him. Turns out they did a surprise party for him as a thanks for always watching over them.

Honestly it’s hard for me to put down my feelings on this game. First of all I dragged it out because I started it the day before FFXIV patch 3.1 came out. Had I played it consecutively I would have been done in about a week and due to me playing a bit here & there the “mood” would constantly be broken up. (Also at one point when I was playing some ass for brains spilled his food all over me on the subway and I wanted to strangle him.) The common routes for both human/ayakashi arcs are fairly long but once you finish them you skip most of the game. So just like with Oyayubihime, you get into the issue of the routes just feeling like they fly by you once you finished your run. Therefore Uta and Yomi’s routes felt like the most “memorable” because they were the first route I played in each respective arc.

The other problem is the game is buggy as fuck – that is Honeybee’s shit attempt to port the PC to Vita. Touch screen doesn’t work 50% of the time, buttons are unresponsive, and the text history & menu buttons are reversed from what it says in the manual. Often auto mode will just….stop moving until you manually press buttons to wake it up again.　Oh and let’s not forget the usual “dim while in automode” problem which I started smacking the joysticks to light my screen back up. The port had SOME new CGs but they were kinda wedged into the common route so they didn’t feel like they were “new” or stood out as anything special.  It feels like it wasn’t really worth getting the Vita port with all the bugs for 1 new CG of each guy, therefore making it legitimately WORSE than its PC counterpart. The sound quality was garbage as well with the bgms sounding like 8bit mono, which is awful and really kills the mood for a lot of the scenes. Speaking of BGM, in the omake during cast comments you had the bgm during the seiyuu talking and the game bgm in the background which made it sound really awful until I went into options and sent the BGM to mute.　(눈_눈)

The other thing was I can’t stand the heroine’s voice. The voice actress mostly voices squeaky galge heroines and she voiced Cordelia in diabolik lovers. To be fair I think she did great as Cordelia, but her voice in Gohan sounded like nails on chalkboard to me. It was worse in the human arc she sounded like she was about to orgasm half the time. I’m sorry to anyone who likes her voice but it just grated my ears. I think it’s great to have voiced heroines in otome games but I wish they would have been someone less irritating to the ears.  As far as favorite chars, Uta wins by a mile. I also liked Manatsu though but I kinda wish I spent more happy time with him. Well I generally wish I spent more happy time with each guy because it felt like the moment they finally realized they like each other – depresing plot bomb – resolution – the end. I also love Rin’s grandma Sumi, anything involving her made me baww forever. (´；ω；`)ｳｩｩ　Also I feel SO BAD for Gin because he’s lost so much in his life. As far as play order I followed Jyuguchi’s suggestion by playing the human arc first and the ayakashi arc second with Asagi dead last. I think the ayakashi arc reveals a lot more and it’s good to “stick” to one arc because the changes in the 2 heroines are so jarring that it’s best not to jump between the different arcs.

Anyway overall, I think the story is pretty decent (even if I’ve seen it somewhere before) and the characters are nice but something just felt lacking and I just didn’t feel as moved/enjoyed the game as much as I think I should have. I’m gonna attribute it to all the programming issues which really took a lot out of the game play experience for me. The lack of CGs also didn’t help, as there were a lot of “fade to white” kiss scenes or cute scenes with no CGs at all :(. (Only Yomi and Manatsu got an actual kiss CG 😨) Each guy only had about 8 CGs (ignoring the chibi cgs) total which is a really low count! I don’t know if the fandisk helps to “fill in that gap” but I am considering getting it simply because I don’t trust Honeybee’s shitty porting efforts. If I have to deal with a buggy game with slow skip then I may as well just get the PC version to begin with. It’s like they didn’t learn from their time with Seishun Hajimemashita, but this time, they couldn’t even be assed to release a patch to fix any of this. Therefore I think if you play this game, just stick to the PC version because the Vita port is a steaming pile of poo.