I didn’t expect this game to end up like the dumpster fire that it did, but here I am. It’s year 1930, our heroine Kozuki Elena moves to Yokohama from Kanagawa to enroll in a Christian all girls school paid for by a mystery doner. Her parents have both died and her mother was Russian so Elena is only half Japanese. She’s uncomfortable around men and when she moves in to town she finds out about various murders that have been happening recently. As the days pass, Elena starts to get targeted by blood craving zombies and her school friends get killed. She finds out the reason spans to her family’s past and so along with her showa ikemans, she decides to uncover the truth.

Koshadou Haruka – This whole route feels like a reject episode out of Maria sama ga Miteru except the fact that Haruka is a dude in drag. Also all the other girls at the school of course are super jealous that Haruka pays so much attention to Elena further adding to the marimite template. 😂 But yea that all comes to an end when Elena is attacked by hiiro no kakera ogre reject that wants her blood. When Haruka jumps in to save her, he gets hurt and gets slashed across the chest. When Elena goes to help him she sees that no boobs! and is shocked to finds out he’s a guy. No time to explain Haruka continues to fight the monster and only afterwards he explains that his family are a bunch of onmyojis who only have daughters lead the family line. So because he’s born a man, they forced him to dress up and act like a woman his whole life and he has to continue to do so despite Haruka finding out the truth. He offers to leave the dorm room he shares but Elena still sees him as ~Haruka sama~ and doesn’t wish for him to do that. So then shit gets weird when one of the army dudes who works with Masanari goes nuts because of ~Elena’s magical phermones~ and attacks her. After this Haruka and Masanari form an agreement to protect her, but it’s more like blackmail from Haruka saying if he doesn’t agree to his terms he will tell everyone the zombie man was from the army and that would kill the army’s reputation. So then the zombie who killed Haruka’s family shows up and Haruka’s unable to purge him using his onmyoji techniques. In fact what gets the zombie away is Elena’s magical powers that she didn’t know she had. After this they speak with Elena’s father’s friend who reveals that Elena’s father did illegal experiments in Russia (asked by the Russian army of course) during World War 1. He injected people with a cocktail made using Olga’s, Elena’s mother, blood.

Unfortunately it would just turn those people into blood craving zombies and they would be of no use. Shindou dad lost touch with Elena’s dad due to the war and had no idea what happened to him until he saw Elena again. They go to Kanazawa a few days later to talk to the priest that Elena lived with to ask about her parents. He can’t reveal the stuff the parents admitted in the confessional, however he reveals that they didn’t die in an “accident” or a “fire”. He says they were killed by “something” and apparently Haruka was left so shocked from the incident they decided not to speak with her about it again. They then head over to Haruka’s old family house that’s still around being taken care of by the mysterious donor man. Inside the house they find out that 1. The principal was Elena’s father’s research assistant and 2. Her parents were crucified on the wall and killed in front of her. Apparently Haruka’s parents were killed the same way so they make the assumption it’s the same zombie. Haruka also explains because of him wanting to live as a man lately (because of his crush on Elenea) his onmyoji powers have been weakening vs when he was acting/living like a woman. The blood stems from some women in Russia in the southern area that was mixed with the Chinese back in the day. And so from there spawns the magical russian lineage in the Koshadou family and also why Olga and Elena have it too. Additionally, Haruka had an older sister…whose name was also Haruka. However, he was the “hidden child” that his mother hid from his grandma because by some awful tradition, all male babies are killed in their family.

Grandma, the current leader, has no idea that the real female Haruka died along with the parents and thinks that Haruka is female. She wants Haruka to hurry up and marry his bodyguard and produce an heir ~ which is obviously not possible. Haruka’s mother was supposed to be the next leader but now with his mother and sister dead, the Koshadou family has no true heir to lead on. Haruka has always lived in his sister’s shadow, being like her, and didn’t mind it, but with Elena in the picture and his love for her, he no longer wants to be that shadow. He wants to be his own person, make his own decisions and act like a man. Well grandma finds about this when that zombie from before attacks Haruka’s house. He reveals he’s Suou, Elena’s father’s assistant who got really mad when Elena’s dad started to make medicine to cure the zombies he created. Suou wanted to create more superior beings soo he killed Haruka’s parents and continued experiments on himself. He eventually succeeded but lost in his excitement he went nuts and killed Haruka’s family in the same fashion as Elena’s  with the stupid crucifixion. So then grandma starts raging about how Haruka should have been dead and that all males are cursed in the family.

Suou then reveals that’s not a curse but an effect of those who have the oliga gene in their blood. Apparently it all came from Kiev in Russia, but after getting mixed so much in generations, it became a trigger for males who possess the gene to turn into blood craving zombies. This trait only affects males and females who possess it are totally fine. So that’s why they’ve been killing all the male babies before they turn into zombies. When Suou starts getting his gross hands on Elena again, as on cue, Haruka’s zombie gene finally awakens and he turns into one too. He starts beating the crap out of Suou but eventually wears himself out. Fortunately somehow Elena manages to use her kotodama to make Suou run away. Unfortunately this isn’t the end cause grandma commands Kazuha to kill Haruka and instead make Elena become their clan leader and then marry Kazuha and have his babies. For some dumb loyalty reason Kazuha obliges and throws both of them into the underground prison cell. (Do you ever wonder why there’s random prison cells in otome game rich person houses?? 🤔) Anyway they talk Kazuha into letting them escape and they go bang in the woods 😂.  After this they run into Suou and the principal in the church where Haruka and Suou have a zombie battle. Haruka wins cause he gets a blood donation from his future waufu. After this he kills Suou he forces the principal to stop the zombie experiments and leave the school. Elena and Haruka then go traveling together to live together the rest of their lives. In the bad end Elena marries Kazuha but continues to be Haruka’s lover… akaka 3p end. I fail to see how this is bad 🤔😂😂.

Shindou Masanari – Masanari and Elena’s fathers were bffs and they had decided they would help each other and also have one of Shindou’s sons marry Elena. Since Masanari is only 4 years older than her, they decided that he would be the one. Unfortunately neither Masanari or Elena know of this until 15 years later when they discover a letter left behind by Elena’s deceased father and confirm it with papa Shindou. 😂 Masanari dislikes women because he thinks they’re too weak and frail like his sick mother who died when he was a child. He tries to use Elena as a bait and it works pretty well but she gets hurt in the process. Additionally he has her move into his house with his father because he hates the idea of her sharing a dorm with Haruka. Eventually he gets a little more deredere when dad tells them to go on a date and when they have to “pretend to get married” for another zombie bait. But then after their fake wedding ceremony not only does it attract a zombie, but it also awakens Masanari’s urges for some reason. Once dad finds out Elena’s been used as bait, he gets pissed and then reveals the experiments her dad did in Russia. So then a coup de tat happens when Masanari’s captain kills the army leader in command at a party. He then cuts Elena’s arm and as her blood flows it awakens like a shit ton of zombies and the whole place goes wild.

Unfortunately this also starts to affect Masanari but thanks to Elena’s kotodama powers she makes the zombies stop in their tracks. So now Masanari’s captain Tsukada blames the zombies on Elena and says she’s a terrorist controlling them. They arrest both Masanari and Elena and throw them into prison and Tsukada reveals his great plan to basically continue the shit they did in Russia to make “strong” warriors but this time in Japan. He goes on about how he and Masanari’s father were stuck as POWs in Russian camps  in -30C weather. (Which is weird because I thought this game takes place before WW2 but the thing I found on google tells me WW2 lol Otomate.) So now he wants to “change” Japan and that’s why he explains his coup de tat and preparations of his zombie army for World War 2. 😩 He captured Elena because he feels she’s the “key” to controlling the zombies at his command and wants her to be part of his plan. Apparently a lot of the people in the army were injected with the drug to make them turn into zombies including Masanari which is why he had a reaction to Elena too. After Tsukada leaves Masanari and Elena in the prison cell, the obvious happens and Masanari’s zombification begins happening.

Somehow while being assaulted Elena realizes that she’s in love with him and when she starts crying it magically snaps him out the zombie trance. 😂 He asks that if this ever happens again to command him to kill himself because he wants to die as a “human being” not a zombie. And so Tsukuda gets his army of dudes to line up and execute both Masanari  & Elena unless Elena calls upon her ZOmbie ARMY™ to save her 😂. She refuses and instead she and Masanari try to talk everyone out of it ,and explain the truth about how Tsukada killed their army captain and wants to control Japan with his own zombie army. While they are believed at first, the shooting squad leader is liek ZOMG WE NEED THESE POWER TOO smh. Eventually Masanari convinces the other guys not to shoot them and when Tsukada realizes he’s lost, he comes out and shoots himself. In the epilogue Elena drops out of school to become Masanari’s actual wife. In the bad end they both get shot to death. Honestly Masanari is really annoying in routes other than his own, to downright cruel…as he basically intended to use water torture on Elena in the beginning claiming she was lying and knew about the zombies. Wtf honestly.

Minamoto Iori – Iori is 24 years old and the principal of the girls school Elena attends. He’s also a huge troll who calls himself a superior human being that doesn’t turn into a zombie like the others. He also works with Suou so he intentionally throws parties with famous people coming to them and invites Elena. All this does is attract zombies and once again gets Elena’s friend Midori brutally murdered. Iori says that he got injected with a medicine full of genes from Elena’s mom and apparently he was super compatible which is why he didn’t turn into a creepy zombie. He calls Elena the queen of zombies because her pheromones turn men into beasts 😂. Iori then ends up locking her up in his house saying he won’t let her return to the school and tells her anywhere she goes the zombies will follow. He then extracts blood from her by forcing her on the ground poking her with a needle. Elena doesn’t want to be a zombie maker so one night she decides to try and kill herself. Once she finds out her father was working on a zombie cure she changes her mind. Iori also reveals that his school was created to collect girls with a similar DNA as Elena which is why her friends got attacked. The game then attempts to make me try to like Iori by showing what a sad and neglected life he had as a child. At one of his parties Elena overhears that Iori is a child of his father’s lover and that because he wasn’t fed properly as a child his body never developed so he still looks like a child despite being almost 25. This route is doubly weird since Haruka spends a lot of time in Iori’s house and Suou doesn’t lay a hand on her vs how he was basically non stop in Haruka’s. 🤔

Iori’s half brother Kazuyuki finds out that Iori is “engaged”(fakely to avoid gold diggers) to Elena and gets pissed off. Iori doesn’t give a crap because it’s thanks to his hard work (though actually it was all Ritomo’s doing lmao) that their family has such a fortune. Iori gets extra pissed when he finds out his brother tricked Elena into walking into a brothel. After telling Kazuyuki to gtfo, Iori tells Elena about his past and how his family harassed his mother until her death leaving him all alone. At age 14 he came down with tuberculosis so they quarantined him away from the rest of the Minamoto house. Elena feels sorry for him and says she’ll be his family which finally makes him remember he has human emotions again. 😞 He reveals to Elena that the zombie antidote is complete. Elena also comes to the realization that he plays games with people as a reason to keep on living cause thanks to his past he’s mostly dead inside. Elena tells him that she will live on with him and help him find the will to truly live again rather than “not die”. Iori finally gives in and admits he wants to be with her. Elena gets kidnapped by the Russian mafia thanks to Kazuyuki. They claim they’re just taking her back and they worked with her father. They refer to the zombies as “devils” in Russian and say they are saving her from Iori who is using her for his research. Before Elena can explain that Iori has changed, Iori comes to her rescue. Just then the Russian soldier reveals that Iori killed Elena’s parents. He claims that Iori had asked Suou to kill Elena’s parents and steal their research because he didn’t want to die from the tuberculosis. Just then Suou kills the soldier and admits he did kill her parents. She tries to leave and when Iori goes to grab her hand she rejects him and slaps him away. That’s when he finally snaps back to his old self, says they’ll play one last game and the prize is his life.

Just then the Japanese army bursts in and tells Iori he’s under arrest but Suou grabs him and they run for it. A few days later news breaks that Iori plans to overthrow the government with his zombie army but leaves a hint at where he is so Elena goes to look for him. She finds him in the church and he’s basically asking Elena to kill him by giving her a knife to stab him with. Ultimately she can’t do it because she loves him and wants him to live. He reveals that when he had tuberculosis he only wished to not die, and then he went into a long coma…only to awaken after being given the medicine from Suou. Little did he know that Suou killed Elena’s parents to get it and the medicine had adverse effects on him – as he watched his best friend Ritomo grow up to an adult while Iori remained looking like a 14 year old child. After Elena cuts her hand with the knife Iori begins freaking out and tells her to stop saying he will drop his plans to overthrow Japan. Just then Suou shows up and he’s pissed that his zombie keikaku is no more and tells his zombies to attack them. Elena stops them, and Suou with her voice and then Iori stabs him in the heart killing him. Haruka comes and helps defeat the durdle zombies and after this, it’s all kept hidden while Iori and Elena head to Russia to find the completed CURE for Zombie-fication. Kinda disappointed at the really detailed kiss scene with no CG at the end though lol. Iori stabs himself (while forcing Elena to hold his knife) and dies.

Sydney Watkins – Sydney is a journalist reporter by day and phantom thief by night. Fortunately during one of Iori’s parties, Elena figures out his identity very quickly when he saves her from the gross hands of Suou. Like with Iori’s route, Elena gets abducted by him and locked up in his house after her friend Midori is murdered by Kase at the party. So apparently Elena and Sydney had met a long time ago when she was just a wee babby when he had rescued her from her house just as her parents were brutally murdered by Suou. Elena attempts to escape but Iori catches her and threatens to get both Masanori fired and Sydney arrested for being a spy if she tries to ask them for help. Iori even tries to drug her so she won’t escape, but instead Sydney comes as Kaito Blan and rescues her taking her to the house he shares with master Juan Garzon. He seems really sweet to her but it’s all a lie because he’s actually a Russian spy and he kidnaps her to return her back to the Soviet Union. While kidnapped in some storage house, she wakes up to find Sydney doing an exchange with Iori to get his research on the zombies in exchange for her release. ヽ(。_゜)ノ What a disappointment, I liked him (even if he was like 14 years older than Elena 😦 ).

Adding on to MORE SURPRISES, suddenly the Japanese army bursts in telling the Russians to surrender. Once they reveal that the army was injected with the zombiefying drug and when they smell Elena’s phermones they start transforming and attacking everyone. As Japan and Russia fight over Elena 😂 sudden Juan comes in with a gun telling them that Elena belongs to England on his behalf! 😂 Dis be some international intrigue. Juan takes her back to his house surrounded by English bodyguards and explains to her that he had a feeling Sydney was a spy and wasn’t too shocked to find out that was true. He also then reveals that Rodion Alexandrov and he ran away from Russia to seek asylum in England where he was adopted by the Garzon family. The connection is apparently King George the 5th’s mother was the sister to Juan’s grandmother. He also then reveals that he’s part of the royal Russian tzar family and Nicholas the 2nd was his uncle. As history tells us, the entire royal family was captured/murdered and Juan managed to escape. As Elena gets ready to sleep,  Sydney bed intrudes revealing that he’s actually a DOUBLE AGENT! 😎 He says that his army division was actually going around killing the zombies there. He wanted to join forces with Elena’s father to stop them, but by the time he found him it was too late..and instead found Elena surrounded by her parents’ bloody corpses after Suou got his hands on them. He takes her to the docks where he says he’ll take her to America and they run into Juan – who isn’t angry, but instead was actually in cahoots with Sydney all along! In fact he calls Sydney the TRUE TZAR and asks him to revive Russia once again.

Apparently he’s Nicholas 2nd’s mysteriously escaped son Laska Alexandrov and Juan’s cousin (which was disproven in 2008 when they found his remains as he was murdered with the rest of his family.) Suddenly Victor Ivanov shows up saying they had captured and killed him and is angry that he’s still alive. Sydney is ready to move on and not return to the old tzar days, but Juan is not and he takes Elena hostage pointing a gun to her head demanding Sydney do as he says. Elena says she has no idea what he hell Sydney’s real identity is anymore but she wuvs him anyway! Victor gets pissed off and shoots at Sydney but Juan gets in the way to protect him and takes the bullet instead. After he dies a brief flashback shows Sydney escaping together with Elena’s parents as well as baby Elena as they fled back to Japan via Vladivostok. And so uh they jump on the nice boat and make out as it sails to America uh..ok. The bad end has Juan being yanhomo and shooting Sydney because he cannot be apart from his tzar even in death! Well at least, historically, this is the true end. 😂 Overall, a disappointment with all the Russian revelations that were mostly irrelevant (and historically wrong) to the rest of the game o.O. Also I don’t know what the hell the point of him being a phantom thief was???

Shindou Ritomo – Ritomo’s route feels like you’re seeing the entirety of Haruka’s route in the game except this time they shove Ritomo in a lot of the scenes. There’s also flashbacks revealing that Ritomo’s mother was scared of how “cold and emotionless” her son was. Well apparently google tells me this is called Alexithymia and Ritomo appears to be a classic case. His whole life he’s been pretty logic based and not emotion based – so when he found out his mother was dying of disease, his response was “we’ll still survive because our father is the one who pays for our living expenses.” He learned about emotions through observing his brother Masanari and seeing his facial reactions to things. Everything to him is about science and so when he begins to develop feelings for Elena he has no idea how to handle them or himself around her. The reason he got connected to Elena’s father is because after his mother died he thought he was a “failed creation” just like the ones Professor Kozuki wrote in his letters to Ritomo’s father. Ritomo decided to find out more about his research in hopes he could find out more about himself as well. After doing some research on the blood of Elena’s mother Olga he finds out about O-Phobia and O-phelia and decided he wanted to ~experiment~ using O-phelia on someone….and the perfect candidate was his sickly friend Iori! 😅😅

When Iori says he doesn’t want to die, Ritomo suggests that the research he’s been following from Professor Kozuki might save him. A few days later when Elena goes to talk to Iori, she finds out  that the school Iori made essentially for her. He called it “Ieva” which is “Eve” in Russian because it was supposed to be a “haven” for people with similar DNA to Elena because she could “call upon the zombies”. She also finds out about how the entire army has been injected with zombie-meds and that’s why Kase had turned on her like that. She runs to talk to Ritomo in panic on all the info she just heard and he suggests they visit her old church in Kanazawa. When getting there she discovers her house was not burned in a fire like she was originally told and that her parents were brutally murdered when she was 5. When visiting her former house the memories flood back to when Suou came to their house one day and whipped out his knife angry that Professor Kozuki was ending his zombie experiments. Olga screamed at Elena to run for it so Elena ran away from the house while Suou stabbed her parents to death. She then ran into 14 year old Ritomo who was on his way to her house. Ritomo took her back to her house only to find her parents dead in a pool of blood with a deranged Suou, proudly telling him that he “did it”. He then decided to crucify their bodies on the wall because they were Christian (wtf.) and then chopped off both of their heads because Ritomo had once told him he wanted to observe a human brain…. 😱😱😱. Just then Elena began screaming which made Ritomo freak out too because his brain had finally learned fear and despair. Ritomo passed out and got taken to the church by Suou who called him a god for opening his eyes 😐…Ritomo instead said Elena is the true god since she gave him his emotions back. Soo basically you have now Ritomo who decided to dedicate his life to giving Elena a perfect life, while Suou was dedicated to do whatever his god Ritomo told him to. (ᇂLᇂυ)… yeah..(In the meantime Elena had gotten saved by Sydney who she called her angel.)

Ritomo  started by telling Suou to give his zombie medicine to Iori. He also decided to reunite with Elena in 10 years because his body couldn’t handle the surge of emotion. He wanted Elena to make him be like a human and not the emotionless monster his mother called him. So that’s why he paid anonymously for her life as Mr. Id and sent her to Ieva School to meet her once again (though little did he know about the shit Iori was doing with Suou on the side) 😂. Back in the present, the next day Elena wakes up in horror to find herself at Iori’s house with the murder of her parents standing in front of her. She’s horrified further because Iori, person who used her father’s research to cause harm is there along with Ritomo… guy who knew everything since day 1 and never said a word. Suou tells her to just relax while they make the perfect world where she is a God. Iori is like lol I’m just bored so yolo. (╭☞´ิ∀´ิ)╭☞ She also finds out in horror that they had intentionally told her church nun to make sure she got bullied as a child so she’d always be alone and never interact with anyone. Ritomo also revealed that he wrote letters to Elena’s dad pretending to be his own dad… and the promise he made to visit her family on that fateful day that’s why he was there alone. In reality Ritomo’s dad was still away at war. Iori then bragged that out of the 3 of them he’s the most decent one… GREAT CHOICES THERE, I’LL TAKE HARUKA THANKS?? 😐 So their plan is of course to spread the “zombie virus” using Elena’s blood sigh. So their plan is also to start world war 2 and win with a zombie army that Elena will command…. wtf is this shit 🤣🤣🤣🤣. Additionally the reason Ritomo wanted Elena to remember the horrible experience was so she could scream again and give him “emotion” but this time it didn’t have as much of an impact so he says he wants her to experience a similar trauma again. Iori then tells him on the spot that he’ll never become “human” the way he is. Ritomo then lies to his father and brother saying Elena will be staying at Kanazawa for a while.

A past flashback also revealed that the building of Ieva, and having Iori inherit his family fortune was all thanks to Ritomo’s bullshitting skills. The following day Ritomo says Elena is his goddess that gave him the power to process emotions and he doesn’t care if he dies as long as she keeps on living. Elena decides to get to the bottom of things by taking Ritomo on a date. He basically says he wants to make a world where she controls everything because otherwise if people find out about her blood they’ll want to use her… like Iori is doing now so honestly idfk what the difference is 😂😂. So suddenly he has feelings for Elena and has no idea what this is and Elena may be moved but nope, Ritomo you’ve been ruined forever (☝ ՞ਊ ՞)☝. When Elena tries to stop their plan to pass the zombie virus to world leaders at Iori’s party, Ritomo tries to kill himself saying that if his plan doesn’t go through to “save her” he has no reason to live. Elena then remembers that his dad told her that when Ritomo was born he was a victim of child neglect because his mother was hospitalized from his birth and his father was always busy with the army. So basically Ritomo didn’t have his own emotional but was able to see others hidden emotions and bring them to light. It’s because of what Ritomo innocently told Suou 10 years ago in that church which gave him the confidence to go and kill Elena’s parents. Ritomo of course does this subconsciously and has no idea of the consequences or why they are bad. Suou admits he’s just blaming Ritomo for his own inability to control himself. And so the magic happens when Elena tells him she loves him and suddenly it unlocks all the emotions he’s had sealed away for 24 years. And so in the end the world zombiefication plan is stopped and Suou instead works on completion of the zombie curing medicine to undo what they did. Elena and Ritomo continue their lovelove life ever after. In other news, Otomate sure loves casting Namikawa to voice sociopath main guys 😂😂. In the bad end, Ritomo somehow erases her memory and the game resets to the beginning… having Elena enter Ieva for the first time, this time as a senior and with Ritomo as a teacher at the school. Creepy. (( ;:⊙;д;⊙)):;

You ever play one of those games where EVERY GUY IS TRASH. I mean aside from Haruka, the rest of the game is basically a giant dumpster fire and well I don’t think any of these assholes deserve poor Elena. And holy crap Elena, honestly after I finished Haruka’s route the entire feeling of “trust NO ONE” kinda lingered on and was basically on target for the rest of the game. Everyone just tried to take advantage of her, lie to her and try to conceal the truth ~all for her sake~ like wow get out! Get out with your lying ass bullshit. The top of this flaming shit bus of course was all the zombie bullshit which just gave me Hakuoki flashbacks 😂

So needless to say even though I think Elena was really great heroine considering the bag of flaming shit that was thrown into her face every route, and I really love the music the story is just…….WHUT. I mean I can’t say that it wasn’t interesting trying to find out WHY the hell stuff happened but once I found out it’s like REALLY. Really.

Honestly I’m not sure if I could call this a kusoge or not. It seemed like they put some decent effort into crafting the story but some stuff was so bizzare (not to mention heavily grotesque) that it kinda left weird aftertaste. Some of the artwork looked pretty but in certain CGs people looked like they had a massive case of giraffe neck. The biggest annoyance was once I finished the game, apparently there’s a trophy for recording 60 voice lines for each character x 6 = 360 voices + then registering 180 of them into a play list. WHAT THE HELL OTOMATE

The good news is you can record the same voice over and over but it’s still a waste of time to use a system I didn’t even know/cared about…so if you do play the game just start saving voices as you go to save yourself time at the end (　´_ゝ｀). Anyway the Amazon reviews said this game is bad, but I did enjoy at least “finding out and unraveling” the mystery and Haruka was really sweet. Unfortunately other than that, I can’t say much other than Otomate screwing up Russian history and dejavu from Clock Zero and Hakuoki. Play order would be Haruka → Masanari → Iori → Sydney → Ritomo.