Because I liked the story idea in Taisho Alice, and there was a huge psn sale, I decided to pick up the vita port for Oretsuba – game I’ve been meaning to play for a while. I had seen the anime a while ago and thought it was really funny so I figured the game would be the same. Unfortunately while the game does have its jokes, it ends up dragging scenes on but despite this, it has a solid story. Anyway spoilers ahead so if you plan to play this, be sure to jump to my final thoughts. Our story features 3 protagonists – Haneda Takashi, Chitose Shusuke and Narita Hayato.

So the big spoiler, aka the reason I even picked up this game, is the protagonist has dissociative identity disorder, just like Alice did in Taisho Alice. This time though, we get a front row seat from the brain of Haneda Youji, the true owner of the body, who has created 4 other personalities. Yes I said 4 because there’s a 4th one I will discuss below. There’s a lot of bird themes going on in this game as well. First of all, all of the personalities are named after famous Japanese airports, Haneda  & Narita in Tokyo, Chitose in Hokkaido and Itami in Osaka. Next, because of Youji’s favorite childhood game being Wing Quest, he called all of the personalities by bird names. His original self is Condor, Karura is Garuda, Shusuke is Eagle, Hayato is Falcon and Takashi is Hawk. They all meet in this big house in his subconscious located in Gretagarde – the setting for Wing Quest. While Shusuke and Hayato are aware of each other’s existence and work together to balance their work/life, Takashi is unaware of either of them. Karura and Youji are basically in the depth of the subconscious hell so they never come out period. Whenever  someone “takes over” Youji’s body they call it the “cockpit” aka who is currently piloting the Youji-plane. So as you can see everything is wing related which also goes for the title as well. And now let’s go into the characters.

Haneda Takashi – Takashi is a hard working smart high school kid who gets bullied and constantly asked to do other people’s chores ever since he was little. Back at his old hometown he had no friends so he often ate food in the bathroom stall. The other boys would make fun of him and call him toilet-food Haneda and beat him up. That’s when Youji then created Shusuke and Hayato in order to help Takashi deal with the bullies. His classmate Asuka is basically his only “friend” but she’s just using him to act like her boyfriend so that other guys don’t hit on her. He is a personality that Youji created as his ideal self, so despite the bullying, he acts like everything is fine. It’s the personality closest to his real self and he picked the name Takashi cause when he awakened from a coma he read his nametag wrong.

Chitose Shusuke – Shusuke was created to be the overly confident guy, the opposite of Takashi, who often visits bar Alexander. Eventually he takes a part time job there because the manager needs help when one of his staff, Kinako, takes a break to study for exams. While there he ends up constantly in lucky sukebe accidents with Tamaizumi Hiyoko, who is also a budding writer. Also the bar owner, and its patrons are a bunch of pervs who constantly hit on the waitresses and even the children there flip the waitresses skirts raging about them not wearing striped pantsu. (;´･ω･) Shuusuke’s route reveals  that Kakeru used  to  know  him from an orphanage the two of them had been sent to for mentally disturbed children. Haneda Youji at the  time  had Karura inside him  and  he was  often locked in the  room next to  Kakeru. All Kakeru heard was  him screaming like a maniac and banging his head against the wall. He sneaked into the  office of  the teachers and Found Youji’s files that  listed his mental disorder. Kakeru felt like he wanted to be friends with Karura and they used to talk through the  wall  a lot… until the  teachers decided Kakeru was fine and returned him to his family. After this  Kakeru became Youji’s stalker and  found out about  all his other personalities but was desperately waiting For Karura to  come back. He tells  all of this to Shuusuke and says he  will  continue  to  watch over him until his bff Karura comes out again.

Narita Hayato – Hayato is the hard boiled dude who takes all sorts of random side jobs at Yanagihara at night. A lot of them are dangerous but he tries to avoid that shit and it feels like he spends most of the time hanging out with Flame Birds and other random gang members as a neutral party. He only fights to defend himself from the delinquents but because he’s strong Kakeru respects him to join his “gang” – but it’s all a lie since Kakeru has basically been stalking him for the past 10 years He ends up accidentally getting involved with Kakeru’s sister Naru when he bumps into her at a crepe stand and she’s looking for her bike. He ends up as a bystander between two gang turf wars. Hayato’s route reveals that Kakeru’s been taking drugs to try to force a dual personality on himself like Youji does naturally. Hayato spends his time helping Naru find her bike (which was just taken to some bike lot for being left in a no-bike-parking zone 😂).

Itami Karura – Karura is like a weirdo medieval dude who wants the other 3 to gtfo because he feels he needs to take back his place as KING. He’s also fucking insane and he starts flipping his shit for no reason at random inanimate objects like snowmen or at stray dogs. He also randomly beats the living shit out of animals and people without realizing what he’s done or how the person got hurt in front of them. He starts going off the moment someone refers to him by the other guys’ names. He considers Kakeru his only friend who he refers to as “phoenix” and he calls the rival gang leader as “Raven”. Most of Karura’s knowledge is made up of Youji’s time spent playing Wing Quest so he has no real world common sense and everything he thinks is based off your decisions in the rpg.

Haneda Youji – Youji is the real deal, the original, and even Karura refers to him as “father”.  Youji witnessed a trauma when he was young which caused him to shut his real personality deep in his subconscious and create alternatives. When he finally comes out, he thinks he’s still like 7 years old and freaks out when he realizes that 10 years have passed since his real personality has come out. More of this will be discussed when I get to Kobato’s route.

 

And now let’s talk about the heroines and their routes:

Watarai Asuka – While I liked Asuka in her own route, she’s annoying as all get out in everyone else’s. She’s a tsundere, but she’s also jealous and posessive of Takashi. When his other personalities take over, even if permanently, she demands that they let her see Takashi. She actually loves the fact that he has multiple personalities because it lets her validate her own creation when she was a child. She asks Takashi to be her fake boyfriend so other guys don’t constantly hit on her, but Takashi manages to actually fall in love with her. One day Asuka invites him over her house because she starts to like him but he just tells her “he must go his people need him” (aka to his imaginary world). Asuka gets annoyed and further aggravated when he tells her that the other world is more important because they are just “friends”. I mean it’s a natural assumption since he was her fake boyfriend from the start. But then she gets all pissed off at him and just gives him excuses to avoid him. Instead his class mate Kurodo starts a passionate friendship discussing about Navel’s other eroge (like Shuffle 😂). Takashi later finds out Kurodo has some incurable disease and they don’t know how long he has to live. Eventually Asuka pulls the stick out of her ass and invites Takashi over her house again where she told him about her imaginary friend she had when she was little. She didn’t really enjoy talking to people because she felt fake, but felt like she could naturally talk to this imaginary friend boy she made up named Asumu. She then tells Takashi that his world is based off her video game and it’s not “real”. Upon hearing this he falls into his subconscious where Shusuke tells him the truth about Youji and how Takashi and him are just replicas created from him. He wakes up from dreamland not knowing what to do with himself and even though Asuka tries to convince him he doesn’t need him imaginary world anymore he runs out of her place.  After thinking this over and talking to Kurodo he decides to move on from his RPG world and comes to Asuka’s place where he asks her to officially date him for real and kisses her. (And they bang but it fades to black and saves me time because thank god vita port 😂). In the epilogue, they’re ichaicha as always and in the summer they go out together with Asuka wearing a summer dress and hat that Takashi really likes. There’s also a final monologue by Takashi thanking Hayato and Shusuke for leaving him some money.

Yamashina Miyako – Miyako is this crazy chick who got dumped by  her boyfriend and just went nuts cause she’s a rabid yandere. She  then  goes on  a date with Takashi but they accidentally run into her ex  on a date with someone else. They leave  the  area but Takashi suggests  she text him her feelings. The ex obviously rejects her so she has a fucking meltdown saying she wants to die. Apparently she  had keys  to  his apartment and  would  sneak in and  sleep in  his  bed. He knew cause he had security cameras set up  Lmfao. In other parts of  the  game  she’s  pretty normal and  enjoys playing online  games. 🤔 Once they  begin  dating  she  becomes a clingy yandere who  sends him  a million texts if  he  doesn’t immediately respond and  goes crazy cause she  can’t be stuck to  him like  glue at school. After Takashi reveals  that  he has DPD she  tells  him about  how  she  knows  someone similar to  him  and  that  the personality he created Chitose and Hayato are “inner self helpers”. In the  epilogue Miyako moves  in  with Takashi who  gets  a job and  has been seeing a doctor for  his  mental disorder. In the bad end she goes full  yandere, and  kills  him lol. Also in the prelude, her entire route is like a digest of her constantly going into her ex bf’s apartment and doing nothing but sleeping in his bed, fucking creepy. ಠ_ಠ

Hayashida Misaki – Misaki is just a rando who never appears in the game but they gave her a route in the Vita port anyway. This route is so boring  Even Kurodo makes  fun of  it saying it was just added material for the port. 😂 They have  Chitose wipe memories of Asuka from  Takashi’s mind in order to get her out of the picture. This opens the  path for  him to get  with rando girl. It keeps being  switching between Takashi and  Shuusuke with Shuusuke confessing his love  to  Hiyoko lol. The route ends  with Misaki fighting with Hiyoko over who  won his heart. ok?? 🤔 What a waste of  time  that  was lol.

Tamaizumi Hiyoko – Hiyoko is a budding writer, hates lewd dudes, works at Alexander, is very cold to customers who try to hit on her. Her first meeting with Shusuke is him being tricked by Kakeru that she’s a different person, and he goes to interview her asking her the color of her underwear. ／(^o^)＼ Hiyoko is pretty tsundere and I honestly have no idea how she continues to work at Alexander despite the owner being sexual harassment extraordinaire. So in that sense, I can sympathize with her constantly being aggravated and annoyed at people, especially gross customers who hit on her. Eventually Hiyoko gets all deredere for Shusuke because he defends her several times. She finally accepts his feelings when he sees her in a school uniform (that she wears JUST for him xD) and grabs her and makes out in the restaurant bathroom. After the tenchou leaves them alone at night in the cafe (and they prolly bang in the R-18 version) Shuusuke finally reveals to her about his mental disorder. Hiyoko already knew because Kakeru spilled the beans to her but said nothing because she wanted Shuusuke to open up first to her. Kinako and Shusuke also go to the publisher and convince her into giving  Hiyoko’s book another chance. Hiyoko is so happy she thanks Shusuke and calls him her one and only prince – in front of the whole restaurant. 😂 In the epilogue, Hiyoko’s book is a huge hit and Shusuke remains as the owner of Yuuji’s body. Shusuke leaves us with a goodbye epilogue speech explaining all the personalities merged into his.

Ootori Naru – Naru is by faaaar my favorite heroine because her dynamic with Hayato, and pretty much anyone else, is the funniest thing in the game. She is Kakeru’s sister, and has a foul mouth like he does but not intentionally to be mean just…shit comes out lmao. Because of this she has like no friends but takes a liking to Hayato cause he’s the only one who gives her the time of day (and a tsukkomi.)She and Kakeru have lived separately ever since they were kids and when they bump into each other on the street they just say hi and move on. Naru often makes the appeal that she’s a school girl and Hayato is a dirty ossan who just wants a school girl to bang. 😂 She lived with her father abroad in  the  Netherlands so  when  she came back to Japan she had a bit of a culture shock since she didn’t hold back her thoughts like most of the other kids in Japan. Because of this she was  unable to make any friends. Naru and Hayato end  up  becoming  ramen eating buddies as well. She also reveals to him because she hates school (and is a rich ojousama) she actually has been skipping school for about 2 months. She would leave the house in her uniform but then get to school, feel depressed about going and just never go. Her mother was Dutch but died a while back and left behind a beeper that Naru keeps close to her. No one ever really sends her messages except for her birthday, her friend Ai, Paru, Hayato and her bro Kakeru send her bday messages. Kakeru also calls her “Ru” but they get embarrassed of being close to each other in public so they act like they don’t know each other around others.  Eventually Hayato falls for Naru and confesses to her at her house on her birthday party while Paru and Ai are asleep. (And then they screw but I couldn’t even get an edited kiss CG (¯―¯٥)). At the end they get Naru’s bike back and the violent dudes who hurt Hayato’s city friends are arrested. Kakeru also quits Flame Birds that he created for Karura and eventually Flame Birds falls apart. After watching a porno together (because Hayato was trying to see his friend Platinum act in it lmao) he gets all riled up and they hump…after which Hayato asks why Naru’s pubes aren’t blonde like her mom was ＼(^o^)／. Naru also ends up  returning to school and making friends other than Ai and Hayato, but she and Ai stop talking mostly because Naru basically took her crush lmao. They all think she’s this amazing ojousama with a turbo ikemen perfect boyfriend so because of this she has to try to avoid Hayato in public so nobody knows how her bf is really a bad mouthed poor guy. In the epilogue, Hayato leaves us with a speech about how he got a job and saw a doctor about his condition. Everyone still calls him by his other names but he uses Haneda Youji as his legal name.

Koda Ai – This route was one of my least favorite, Misaki aside. Ai is like a valley girl and spends her time hanging out with Flame Birds because her childhood friend Kazuma is in there. Ai confesses her love for Hayato but he rejects her mostly because he knows her childhood friend has a crush on her but she’s friendzoned the guy. So then for a while Hayato takes over the body and has to deal with everyone at school but takes a break from Shusuke’s restaurant job. Eventually Ai tries to get to his heart through his stomach by making him bentos. I guess this is super effective cause after a while Hayato tells her he loves her and accepts her previous love confession. After they become a couple they go reveal the news to poor Kazuma, Ai’s childhood friend, who’s recovering in the hospital from a stab wound. Kazuma claims he likes someone else and that Ai is like a sister to him. 😟 Once they leave Kazuma mumbles to himself that it’s all a lie and he doesn’t appreciate being NTRed. 😟😟 This is why I hate this route and I hate how it ends with them all just accepting the ntr and being bffs wtf. There was a scene in Ai’s route that left me confused where Hayato received a photo of her being kidnapped (and possibly raped in the R-18 version.) From my understanding the reason Kazuma got stabbed is because he rescued her (?) so if I am correct in this assumption, this makes the entire route even worse because he risked his life for her but she picked another guy anyway. ಠ_ಠ

Haneda Kobato – Youji’s “sister” (but actually his cousin) who has watched over his multiple personalities for 10 years but wished that her real brother would return to her. When he finally does she is shocked to learn that his time mentally has stopped as of 10 years ago. Once you reach Kobato’s route, Karura and Youji end up spying on Shuusuke trying to act like Takeshi and send telepathic messages to him telling him to gtfo the “throne” aka the “cockpit” of Youji’s body. Eventually they duke it out and Youji decides to combine everyone back into himself and regain control of himself. In school he also now stands up to his bullies thanks to all his inner personalities. Alice, a foreign girl that knew Hayato, also starts coming over his place as Kobato teaches her Japanese. At one point the personality combination breaks down and Youji finds himself discussing with the others about how the combination was “synthetic” to begin with. They realize they don’t know what happened to trigger creating them so they tell Youji to try and face his past to see if that would change things. He then comes out and decides to go to his old hometown to try and remember everything, asking Kobato to come with him. He remembers how he wanted Wing Quest badly but his mom refused to get it for him. He finally got it cause his friends got bored of it and gave him their old copy. Youji recalls some older kid bullying Kobato and beating up himself… and that’s when went “crazy” with this inner beast, and beat the living shit out of the bully. After that nobody laid a hand on Kobato but due to this everyone avoided both of them. Youji’s aunt & uncle asked to have his mom watch over Kobato while they were working overseas as usual. Youji’s mom then went crazy and started thinking that Youji is her ex husband, Yoshiki and that Kobato was stealing him away from her.

By the way her ex-husband, and Youji’s dad, was actually a member of a famous idol group Flicky 5. Actually I am not even sure that he was her husband, from what it sounds like, it was probably just a lover who got her preggo with Youji and then threw her to the side.  The outbursts from the mom only seemed to happen when Youji and Kobato were alone together but if they were separated or there was another person with them she was totally normal. Eventually his mom took drugs and became an alcoholic jumping from job to job. To protect Kobato, Youji kept his distance from her and she would often hide in another room away from the mom’s eyes. However one day when the mom saw Kobato come out from hiding, she flipped her shit again. So in self defense Youji let his inner beast take over and he ended up killing the crazy mom by stabbing her (or so he thought). When he came to his senses he realized what he did and then escaped inside his subconscious but created other personalities to be able to take care of Kobato. They go to the church where Youji learned to control his inner rage with the phrase “Let there be world peace.” After the incident though, he was taken to that mental institution where he was locked in a room while he screamed and banged his head against walls. Kobato sat outside his door  even though she was scared of him. Eventually Karura was created and took over Youji’s body while he started telling Kobato stories about Gretagarde aka his memories from Wing Quest. Kobato was happy that at least Youji was speaking instead of yelling like a rabid animal. She would talk to him through the window… after being silent for a while due to the trauma she witnessed. The workers kept them separated and when Youji realized that he needs to put away his anger to be with her, he sent Karura to the depths along with his original self, then created Takashi, Shuusuke and Hayato after being in a long coma.

Kobato explains in the present time that Youji didn’t kill their mother, she killed herself with a drug overdose. Apparently while Youji did stab her, that’s not what killed her and she was treated for those wounds. She died after Youji and Kobato were taken away by the asylum. Kobato gives him a letter his old priest left behind that tells him that he’s done enough to compensate for his sins and should forgive himself. The reason he got to know the church is because his unconscious body was taken there and as Kobato kept calling out for him that’s when he awakened as Haneda Takashi (cause he read the kanji on his nametag wrong 😂). On Christmas eve, Kobato and Youji to out together to celebrate her birthday and they are unsure if their feelings are love or just longing after being “separated” for so long. They agree to grow up and see the world and if they still feel the same they can ask the church folks for advice. He ends their date by kissing her forehead. 😉 In the epilogue Youji moves out of his aunt & uncle’s house and into his own apartment. Since her parents are gonna be working overseas for a while, Kobato decides to move in with him and he gives up on trying not to be a siscon while trying to pass his college exams again 😂. There’s a bit more to this can of worms since in the R-18 version they did some questionable things so I guess ultimately the whole thing is similar to Yosuga no Sora. I also thought about that “wild beast” personality that would come out when Youji was distressed and helpless, and I think that’s a 5th personality that we know in the game as DJ Condor – since the voice was similar when telling Youji to “go nuts”.

TOO LONG!! Mother of god according to my save slots I put at least 91 hours into this game and that’s even after I basically force skipped through the dejavu/same old gags of the Prelude routes ಠ_ಠ.  A lot of scenes would drag the same jokes over and over and OH CAN WE MOVE ON PLEASE!? I don’t know if this is a galge thing or just something with visual novels from 10 years ago but I had this issue in a lot of old otome games as well so it must be a time period thing. Games these days just get right to the point (which is also why they feel so much shorter lol). I did enjoy the humor and the gags but when you would see the same characters making literally the same jokes for the 10th time my mind would just wander off. Once the story would return back to focusing on the protagonist and his mental illness then I’d pay attention again because I was really curious to find out what happened and how everything started. Probably the least favorite thing to sit through was all the gang wars and all of Kakeru’s bullshit. I know I said I missed Hino Satoshi in otome games lately, but good lord after this game I think I’ve had my fill of him for a while 😂. As far as voicing the guys in the game – they are only part voiced during certain scenes (that I can’t go into detail without spoiling here.) As far as heroines go, my favorite was Naru by far and Hiyoko would be 2nd because when she deredere’d to Shusuke it was really cute. (*´ω｀*) Asuka started out ok but became annoying af, I never really was a fan of valley girl Ai (+the NTR) and while I like Kobato I feel like most of my feelings for her are just pity…for all the shit she has had to witness for most of her life. (´・ω・`) Overall I think the story is well written, but I just wish it would have gotten to the point faster. I was able to “get” the quirks of the characters and the jokes and the atmosphere the first 15 hours I spent on the game, I didn’t need another 80 hours to “solidify” this and it ended up being a huge flaw of the game for me. Also a lot of Amazon reviews mentioned how all the heroines have same face syndrome – well they do. All the guys look completely different but the ladies are probably interchangeable save for the hair. That said, it didn’t bother me because they all had distinct personalities so if you really care about art, it might bother you more than me. I’d still recommend this game if you’re into psychology/mental illnesss related stories or if you enjoyed the plot of Taisho Alice but be aware that there’s a LOT of text to get through so you will find yourself playing this for a few weeks or start force skipping stuff.