At last Otomate released a fandisk for Ninkoi. Yes apparently THIS is the fandisk while the last game was a PORT with new characters/new scenes. That said it’s been SO LONG since I played/was into ninkoi that by now my passion for the series was rather underwhelming. I think had they released this sooner (perhaps at the time when they released the port?) I might have had a bit more excitement. The fandisk features an after story of Kaede and her man graduating, joining Sanada Yuushitai and getting married. Anyway brief review as after all, it’s mostly character fanservice.

Sarutobi Sasuke – Sasuke’s arc features drama around him trying to balance work, his kabuki stuff and being Kaede’s boyfriend. Obviously he is unable to do this without passing out from exhaustion so daddy finally relieves him of his Kabuki business after 1 final performance. Despite  dating Kaede for a year he’s still very skiddish around her and even though we got a shared bath scene it was so…underwhelming??? 😂 It doesn’t help that despite Sasuke being 19/20 he still looks like the same 16 year old he was in the first game.

Kirigakure Kurodo – Kurodo’s route was centered around some weird jealousy regarding to Kaede even speaking to other guys….I mean you know it’s bad when even his kagebunshins get jealous and start fighting amongst each other wtf. The plot is shifted to protecting Hidetora from an assassin and once that’s all done with, Kaede and Kurodo get married. Probably the best part was Kurodo using his kagebunshins to harvest food for the house and cook dinner for the wedding reception. 😂 At least at the end they get to the sexy times, honestly it did at least feel like the two of them grew up….while Sasuke’s route still felt like endless puppy love in comparison.

Kirigakure Tadahito –  I was actually surprised how well written and involved Tadahito’s route was compared to the first 2. The fully fleshed out story regarding his crazy classmate and the growth between him and Kaede was really well done. At first Kaede was kind of annoying me with her jealousy and distancing herself but in the end I’m glad she had friends to help her get past it.  Tadahito is such a pure angel though lmao, I like how they actually keep that pure innocent image throughout his route – with the exception of the stuff he says during the meromero jutsu 😂👿. Also I was worried he was gonna get screwed out of a kiss CG again, but fortunately I was proven wrong as it was the final CG of his route.

Ukita Yoshiie – Ukita is a sleeping log as usual but now that we’re past the first game, he clings to Kaede like glue. I think honestly they overdo it to the point that he absolutely refuses to do anything unless he’s joined with Kaede at the hip. An example being he refused to stay in the Sanada Yushitai dorms  because he wouldn’t be allowed to share a room with Kaede (unless they were married.) I thought he was doing better when he was assigned to teach some students (on his 4th year of repeating his senior year lol) but yea once they graduated…..back to being a “jellyfish” that attaches itself to Kaede 😂. Then it got all serious in regards to serving Hidetora and once that was resolved suddenly Ukita remembered he wants to marry and bang Kaede lol. This is once again just feels like all the romantic stuff is shoved into the end. Also I was surprised how Ukita is apparently some rich boy and has a mom?? 🤔 I guess my memory of the last game faded so much that I kept thinking he’s some poor orphan guy…or maybe I’m mixing him up with one of the other 10 characters… 😅.

Toyotomi Hidetora – Hidetora is over the top as usual, he’s basically the ol’ timey Japanese prince type and it’s more obvious now that he and Kaede are lovers. He brings a ton of flowers and embarrasses her in front of everyone at her graduation. Also for some reason most of his meromero jutsus have him babbling how he wants to drop everything and make babies with Kaede 😂. The assassination plot that was in Kurodo’s route is repeated here as well but this time focuses on the side from Hanzo, who as seen in Ukita’s route is still bugged by his past ties to Tokugawa. On top of this they throw in some bitchy princess who insults Kaede saying she’s not good enough for him. 🙄 The whole thing is resolved quickly with Hanzo basically kicking everyone’s ass and suddenly we’re at Hidetora and Kaede’s wedding. In an ironic state of events, there’s no love scene at the end – yet in the omake Kaede gets preggo lmao. Maybe they just held hands and it happened, like in Clannad. 😂　After going through the CG gallery I also realized Hidetora didn’t get a kiss CG….he got a hand kissing CG (watf).

Hattori Hanzo – Compared to how angry Hanzo is in the other routes, seeing him suddenly be all deredere in his own was so weird lol. He’s a turbo jealous tsundere/yandere though so he’ll randomly get annoyed at Kaede talking about her time with class mates and at one point he pulled her out of class to tell her the story of his past (wtf like you couldn’t wait till after class? lol). But then I honestly felt really sorry for him because the issue of him doing everything “on his own” and not “relying on anyone” came up. I honestly really sympathize with him on this, and the entire thing weirdly hit close to home and made me really appreciate Hanzo as a character more than before. His marriage proposal to Kaede was so dorky and adorable 😂 and then seeing him cry after everyone else in the game made a house for him and Kaede was so sweet. It  really put a light on how great all the other guys in the game are, including Sanada who is buttmad that he’s NTR’ed in every route. 😂 Only thing that really bothered me is there was a lot of cute “kiss” scenes but they just showed his sprite and you heard the seiyuu doing the noise…but no CG…really would have been nice to have one there. Actually Hanzo didn’t get a single kiss CG in this game…wtf? ಠ_ಠ

Anayama Daisuke – So while Hanzo got 0 kiss cgs, Daisuke literally begins his route with a makeout session in front of everyone to prove Kaede his future waifu 😂. In fact after she graduates they plan to get married immediately before she joins the Sanada Yushitai. Additionally, Kaede finds out that Daisuke’s step mom stops being a miserable wench and she and Daisuke’s dad have begun to work things out (aka he stopped being a manwhore supposedly). Unlike the other routes, Daisuke and Kaede got married first and then she joined the yushitai. The route has a silly power of love ending, but I got another kiss cg and a steamy bath scene out of it… aka the kind of expectations I walked into this game with 😂. So all in all I actually enjoyed the route a lot and kinda wish a lot of the other routes were like this one. They were also totally biased cause he had some of the nicest cgs in the game. 😏

Yuri Kamakiyo – WordPress idiotic app erased my draft for Yuri and now I’m scratching my head trying to remember what his route was about. I do recall thinking his first route CG was really cute but the rest of the route was 1 giant cockblock. Everytime they’d get a cute moment together, someone would just so happen to show up and cockblock any cute moments they have. Otherwise, I honestly can’t remember anything – I think the level of mutsuri was definitely toned down..I feel like Kamakiyo had better moments in other people’s routes as far as that’s concerned.

Garaiya – Here’s my beef with Garaiya even though I absolutely love this character. He became this hot ikeman in the end of the first game – he starts off the FD as a hot ikeman, and then for one of the yushitai missions he has to become chibi again. That’s cool, but when the mission ends, he continues to stay small …way into his wedding. So he wears this RIDICULOUS OUTFIT:

Like I get it, they wanted to have at least 1 western style wedding – fine. But he could have been left as an adult, wear a NORMAL tuxedo and I would have 0 complaints. I know he’s all chuuni and that’s his thing, but for gods sake at least for his wedding can you get him to look like the hot ikeman that he is. But no, instead we get this weird shota wedding, where Kaede even looks taller than him with a top hat and they have their PUPPETS KISS ok what. He then continues to stay in his small form way into their honey moon until Kaede gets attacked by randos (and despite being a yushitai ninja can’t defend herself for squat) and that’s when Garaiya FINALLY returns to his ikeman adult form, saves her and their honey moon ends. The other issue is that a lot of his CGS were SO WEIRD. This became more apparent when I went into the omake and saw the review of the first game and compared to the CGs in this game, the old ones were way better. The final CG in Garaiya’s route here – the scene was super cute with Kaede kissing him – but in the CG his face looked turbo derpy. Overall Garaiya’s route had some cute scenes, he even went for the kiss in his meromero jutsu and we got a CG….but the quality of the cgs, the wtf wedding and then the completely random argument over housing in the omake just left me really disappointed. The up side is though, we finally got to see him in something other than his ninja outfit (and the dumb shota tuxedo)

Sanada Yukikage – I left Sanada for last specifically because he literally spend THE ENTIRE GAME being angry in every guy’s route that Kaede was not choosing him. Dude, I get you’re “the main guy” but there’s 9 other routes here, wait your god damn turn (；ಠ益ಠ；).  Also in the first game we had that whole thing about Kaede trying to get Sanada to see her not as a student but as a lover, yet here we are in the FD acting like oh noes it’s so shameful for us to be all close together because he’s my sensei…umm was the new writer not briefed on what happened in the last game? 🤔 His jealousy was pretty bad in other guys’ routes but it’s exxxxtreeeme in his own lol but at least the breaking of the meromero seal helps him admit this and helps them both stop “holding their feelings” back. At graduation he basically tells everyone that he and Kaede are lovers shocking everyone but the main guys of the game who already knew the obvious. Sanada also asks her to live together with him with the prospect of marriage instead of moving into the yushitai dorms. Then a rushed plot of some angry dude trying to kill Kaede because he doesn’t want Sanada marrying her and Sanada using his magic ninjutsu to combine with her meromero jutsu to beat the guy up – only to make the guy realize how terrible he is and be in debt to Sanada the rest of his life. They get married and have kids and bring up the topic that their daughter will also inherit the genjutsu and they’ll have to protect her someday too etc. They didn’t even give kids names or faces in the CGs sigh. I also hated how the moment Kaede found out that someone is threatening her over the marriage she didn’t tell Sanada and decided to try to “figure it out on her own”. Also the entire part of Sanada wanting to Kaede to never work as a ninja again and just stay home with the kids completely crushing her entire dream of being part of the Sanada Yushitai lol. I don’t know the game just left me with a bad after taste on Sanada….he wasn’t the ikeman sensei from the first game, he was this jealous possessive annoyance.

I feel like this fandisk came too late or they headed into a direction that was misguided for the original intention of this series. I feel like this kind of fandisk should have come a year after the original game but instead we got a Vita port, and 4 new characters. That said I think had the FD been a lot like the “original” game it might have rekindled my love for Ninkoi…but it felt overall just “OKAY”. There were cute scenes here & there, but a lot of it felt like it was adding more historical feudal stories to try to take up time instead. It’s like they were trying really hard to focus on a story/plot but let’s face it, what matters about ninkoi isn’t story or plot…..it’s the meromero stuff. This time around the meromero jutsu scenes/training felt like they were shoved in. In the first game Kaede’s jutsu was “sealed with a kiss” but here the seal breaks for no reason – or I should say for the sake of breaking just so they can throw in more of those meromero jutsu scenes. Ultimately it got “fixed again by accident” aka power of love so it breaking in the first place felt even more pointless.  I guess what I’m trying to say is, the main appeal of this game was kinda put to the side to make more “interesting stories” because they actually did put effort into making unique stories for 10 characters. But honestly, I just wanted more cut fluff scenes…that’s why I liked Ninkoi…I don’t need a deep plot. 😕 Actually the harem ending was an extremely SHALLOW PLOT! But it’s a harem end, it was silly and I wanted to spend that kind of time with each individual guy instead.

A lot of the cgs felt a bit off as well. A lot of them were cute, but there was a few that looked so weird that they actually ruined some scenes for me. I don’t know if it’s the coloring style or otomate’s infamous copy cats doing the cgs or what. The biggest offender was Kaede where her face was 😮 in most of the cgs, as if that was the only template they had to use 😂.

Also it bothers me how there was a lot of side characters with fairly important roles but they had no names or faces. Kaede’s classmates who became her friends and helped her out in the Yushitai….were still “girl 3” and had their hair covering their eyes like some mobage heroine. The other thing is, in the omake, which unlocks AFTER you clear the routes, there’s a section that has flashbacks to the previous game. I would have preferred the flashbacks to be unlocked by default because I honestly could have used a refresher PRIOR to playing the FD routes. The only positive thing about the system I can say is that you don’t need a guide, all you do is 大成功 the meromero training and you get a happy ending…so it was nice not having to pick up my phone every couple minutes to check what choice I need to pick.

I could tell this was Otomate’s kinda side project thing because they couldn’t even be bothered making link banners. They also hadn’t even updated their ninkoi blog until a month or so before release and the previous update was a YEAR earlier. So overall I guess I had different expectations for the FD but at least unlike the Code Realize FD, the characters actually DO get married in the end of their routes here. 😂 I think ultimately if you were a ninkoi fan at some point, the FD does provide a lot of nice wrap up for the series…but the core element that made the game fun is watered down.

Edit: Looks like the bundle of the vita port & this FD are coming together for PS4.