Kisakino Emi is an orphan whose parents died in a car accident when she was in middle school. She’s been living at an orphanage but attending a local high school so other than that part she was just your avg high school girl. One day she gets an invitation to a fancy ass all boys school owned by the rich Sumeragi corporation. Their goal is to have a girl, a “Princess” so to speak be in the school for a year to help them test waters to make the school reopen as a mixed gender school (just like with all the other HimeHibi games.) Unfortunately there’s a catch – she cannot tell her friends, or anyone, as it’s a top secret project, so they basically cut off all her communication and force her to live as the Rapunzel of Sumeragi Gakuen.

Arashiro Masamune – Masamune is like the “aniki” who all the guys look up to. He’s childhood friends with Chiharu and 2nd top of the school. He also basically is part of a yakuza family which the game doesn’t quite go into the detail until you basically figure it out from the black ends. I thought at first he was gonna be some tsundere, but he’s actually really just a rough oresama type dude. The plot of his route is they plan to have this Valentine’s Day commercial to show some “romantic moments” between the guys at the school and “girls” (aka dudes dressed up as girls from the school) to try to attract prospective female students. But for some stupid reason, they also decide to have Emi act in there too, even though she’s an actual girl. Of course when everyone sees the commercial they’re like ZOMG A REAL GRILL and flip their shit and I’m sitting here like “if you wanted to keep this thing with her a secret why the fuck did you have her act on live camera ?? You could have just used her to show the crossdressers how to act like a girl during practice right??” So this whole plotline basically becomes the branch for the 4 different Black and White endings. The 2 White Endings basically have Emi then challenge Masamune to a “fake duel” where he intentionally loses to show that hey she’s a boy (she wears a wig) and there’s really NO girls at this school. Somehow this convinces everyone and so the school magically becomes mixed gender the following year, Emi and Masamune graduate and he offers to pay for her college tuition and live happily ever after.

Meanwhile, the Black ends, which I felt were more realistic focused on what happens if Emi fucked up  the acting and her wig basically flew off on camera. The Scandal end had the yakuza come after her, which basically revealed Masamune’s true side where he beat up to a pulp the guys who tried to kidnap her. But suddenly she turns into this moeblob like omg you hurt them ;w; I’m so scawed of you Masamune uwu but I wuv you so I will just lie and pretend I’m totally happy with you owo uwu. That’s literally how Emi felt to me in this ending, even though I really liked Masamune being realistic in it – because in the White ends he was just like “brb gonna go take care of my Yakuza problems off screen so we can live happily ever after” lmao ok. In the Black Lily end he basically was like “look you got nowhere to go, the school doesn’t want you anymore, the project’s cancelled, you can only just return to the orphanage but you’ll be kicked out soon cause you are gonna become of legal age so come with me baby”. I mean he ain’t wrong, and I guess out of desperation she decided to go with him, but unlike the Scandal end, it looked like she had some feelings for him, but in this one rather than it being Bonnie & Clydal, it just felt like she’s just like “welp I guess I am desperate so I’ll just go with this yakuza ikeman lol”. I mean I kinda wish they made it more romantic like in a dark way? I mean they could have because the Scandal end was somewhat like that….I guess I had really high expectations from the Sweet Clown writer. Anyway the biggest disappointment? That final Black Lily end was the only end with the actual kiss CGs, and all the other kiss scenes were just sound effects + black screen. Come on, what year is this Takuyo? But yes we absolutely needed 2 unique CGs of Masamune in a pool. ಠ_ಠ

Sumeragi Chiharu – Chiharu is supposed to be like the main guy/prince but holy shit was his route so boring I could literally spend 3 hours browsing the news and it would be more interesting than whatever shit was going on. There’s tons of bullshittery where Emi is forced to “learn to act like a princess” even though they just kinda grabbed her out of the orphanage and threw her into this stupid school. But hey guess what as it turns out, the reason this whole thing is even happening is because Chiharu was the one who picked her out on purpose. It wasn’t some government run thing or anything – no he literally picked her because like 10 years earlier she gave him some bunny handkerchief when she randomly met him in a cherry blossom garden. And of course as the template goes, Chiharu remembers all of this and being an actual normal 5 year old, Chiharu doesn’t remember anything. These childhood friend stories are so insanely out there with the whole “how dare u forget the guy you met for like 5 seconds when you were a small child!?” So this dude’s been stalking her for like 10 years and now finally used the excuse of “I want to make our all boys school co-gender” just to bring Emi into here. I

mean ok fine, I would have been totally ok with this template, but they just DRAGGED IT OUT the entire time until literally the end when he reveals everything. On top of this you got his weirdo dad who was like grr I don’t want the school to be mixed gender and I’ll destroy her orphanage if you try something funny dear my son. So yea basically the combination of this bullshittery dragged on for 5 hours while I read the news and looked at cool new keycaps for my keyboard and then watched as the good end CG flew by without a kiss CG as usual. What else irritated me is the whole time Chiharu decided to call her “Princess Lily” so everytime he just kept calling her Lily over and over and I kept thinking about the heroine of Piofiore – a game I utterly despised so that also left a bad taste in my mouth lmao. The Black Lily ends weren’t anything to write home about and were mostly just Emi failing to be a proper ~princess~ and the dad being like you’re a useless sack of shit GTFO. Then Chiharu was like nooo muh childhood crush you cannot LEAVE and basically locks her up in his uguu bedroom of live where she lives and spends all day with him while Stockholming it up.

Senzoku Yumeji – Yumeji hates the Sumeragi’s because at one point he was living with them as an adopted child but then got thrown back to the Senzoku’s when it was time for Chiharu to be the next heir. He had to basically be a backup because apparently the Yumeji family cannot go against the will of the Sumeragis or some shit. His whole goal is to just take them all down using Emi as his tool. But welp oh noes, Emi falls for his bullshit and is in wuv with him uwu and now she wants to save him from his “past” and “last name”. At first I was honestly kinda creeped out by him because he set up a thing where Emi won a special prize from him where he cooked a meal for her at his private bar (that he just has on the side cause he’s loaded ohohoho) and then he gave her some sexy red dress like…HOW OLD ARE U SENSEI. I don’t know maybe before I used to like the sensei routes in otome games but now they kinda creep me out?? The whole route too there’s always that air of “oh no we mustn’t because you’re my student” which is kinda typical for Takuyo but somehow I really liked the sensei route in the first hime hibi game. The 2nd was a disaster cause the guy was like 21 years older than the heroine, but they don’t list his age in this game so honestly… who knows?

He seems really young looking (and sounding) but for all I know he’s like 35 and being a huge pedrobear. ┐(´д`)┌ Also damn bro you’ve hit a new low when you need some high school girl to save you from years  of boiling pent up internal raging. In the White Lily ends he’s the first guy so far that got an actual kiss CG there, and it was so dumb because he was like “I love you but we’re student and teacher so uh please don’t date any other guys”…and shes like “oh ok I love you too” and he’s like “nvm lets make out lol”. 😂 And apparently he used to be known as a manwhore who constantly had different women in his car, but that’s because he’s a stupid ass reckless driver and the moment they went for a drive with him, they’d get so terrified for their life they’d basically instantly break up with him. Emi was the only one who put up with his bullshit so auto-love I guess. ಠ_ಠ In the Black Lily ends, Yumeji turns into a giant dickweed and forces Emi to confess her love for him before being like LOL I JUST USED YOU BITCH LMAO. And then in the Scandal end he continues to neg her while she’s like uwu I wuv you and then for some reason in the Black Lily end he changes his tune and is like “yes I would like to defile you wakai musume”. BLEH I mean the other 2 chars were pretty boring but this was just offensive and gross. No thanks.

Todoroki Kazumi – Kazumi, whose name looks like the kanji for “Single Horn” also gets the stupid nickname of Unicorn. Well turns out the reason is because a god damn unicorn tulpa is stuck in his head giving him magical “future sight” powers which also earned him spot on Sumeragi’s program as well as pride from his father who are a family of fortune tellers. Unfortunately apparently by meeting his ~dream maiden~ aka Emi, the unicorn gallops away leaving Kazumi to be a useless sack of crap but at least now he wuvs Emi and is pretty much a normal human being instead of a weirdo. It takes him a while to adjust because he goes from calling her his one and only destined maiden to “we’ve become friends” and somehow because I’ve reached the White Lily end suddenly this quickly changes to “I love you”. At least he got a kissing CG but unfortunately it all kinda happened so quickly in between him building a snowman an ice sculpture side plot. In the Black Lily & Scandal ends basically Unicorn takes over after the idiot Ema threatens to hurt Emi and Kazumi basically has a mental breakdown. In the one end it’s like some weird 3P? because Kazumi and Unicorn keep swapping “personalities” and Emi is like oh noes am I cheating on them both!? In the 2nd end Kazumi just goes full yandere and threatens pretty much everyone so he can have his alone time with Emi. Honestly the entire thing was just so weird, the whole dual personality and him constantly spouting I’M UNICORN just made me roll my eyes most of the way down. Also by now I was quite sick of Ema’s shit like he was almost just created to literally be an exposition fairy to show up, start some shit, and move the plot along. It’s like the plot was stuck in some endless sludge until he came around which made him (and the writing) even more irritating than it already was.

Kamibukuro Nakahito – Obviously, this isn’t his real name and for the sake of my own sanity of calling him Paperbag boy, I will call him by his real name which is Ayumu. Anyways, this was the best route in the whole game to the point that it makes me wonder if the people who wrote this route even wrote any of the other routes?? The route was perfect, the kind of thing I missed from Takuyo in their otome games and it just amazes how much the other routes were just complete crap in comparison. So the deal with Ayumu and the paperbag is he has this shitty past because his mom was a huge slut and basically kept changing guys constantly. It’s a mammamia situation where Ayumu doesn’t even know who his real dad is because his mom was always with a new guy. Eventually though she managed to snag a Sumeragi and land a goldmine, but like with all her other boyfriends, they abused and hated Ayumu because he was basically in “the way”. And so one day Ayumu ran away, and ended up at the Arashiro house where he was eventually adopted to basically live and serve that family. So needless to say, his entire outlook on life is “Money talks” and so he pretty much threw out all of his emotions and is only ever “moved” by the prospect of flying coins in his face. At the beginning of his route, Chiharu randomly buggers off and assigns Ayumu to basically be Emi’s personal servant. Despite this, she refuses to use the “money trick” to make him do things and actually treats him like an equivalent to herself. This both confuses and angers him, but also somehow this makes her fall in love with him and well frankly I don’t blame her because he has the same voice as Miser from Cafe Enchante and it’s really really hot. (// ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°//) He realizes she’s in love with him, but he’s too stubborn to admit it (and also because he doesn’t feel like she should be with him because as he says he’s just a “villager A” while she should instead go with one of the princes.)

Despite the huge obstacle she’s never had to conquer in any of the other routes, Emi still tries her damnest to get Ayumu to fall in love with her (and also admit it lmao.) All of his attempts to push her away fail miserably, and in the end he just gives in and admits that he loves her in his usual back asswards way. Well at least that’s how it ended in the White Lily end, and in the Pure End is where he said it directly and also told her his real name. (n*´ω`*n) Anyway I didn’t go into big details in the route but one of the things was where Emi had dreams of him riding a white horse and being like “hey baby I will take my paper bag off for you” which was so freaking funny my sides went into orbit. 😂😂😂 I mean he eventually did take off the bag for her only to reveal that he was the random guy we met at the beginning of the day (which I honestly guessed because why the hell would there be a CG for a random guy who never shows up again lmao.) The black lily/scandal ends were interesting because turns out Ayumu was a legitimate son of that Sumeragi guy his mom banged and was one of those “secret hidden child” scandal things. Because of this and his relationship with Emi, he ends up staying with her at the “old” unused dormitory of the school. In the Scandal end though there’s a camera watching them in some creepy voyeuristic end while they make out lmao, and in the Black Lily end it’s kinda sad because basically Emi uses money to get Ayumu to do what she wants him to. She’s so in love with him that she starts to be unable to sleep for days and goes mentally crazy because she can no longer tell if he’s reciprocating her feelings because he’s paid or if he truly feels that way about her. Anyway overall, I really enjoyed this route and I honestly wish the rest of the game was this way. But alas, Paperbag is best boy.

Well that was certainly disappointing considering how long Takuyo had to work on this game. The writers appear to have worked on previous Takuyo games that I enjoyed but the only truly enjoyable route in the whole game for me was the Paperbag boy LMAO. It’s like the only route where the heroine felt like she had to actually work for it instead of just being paraded around as “~ze Princess” (and I realize I say this ironically when her god damn name is literally “Princess Smile” 😂). The music was completely elevatory and would make me fall asleep half the time, and while the character designs were nice, I don’t think the designer did the artwork itself? Some of the sprites felt like they had really long necks and some of the CGs just felt kinda awkwardly drawn as far as poses are concerned (which unfortunately kinda ruined a lot of cute scenes.) On the topic of CGs, the CG choices were REALLY terrible. Most of the CGs were something like this:

 

Seriously why? Who cares that he’s just standing there extending his hand or he’s standing there ~thinking about cherry blossom~ literally who cares. But hey when it’s time for any kiss CGs?? Fade to black baby. The funniest part is in some of the routes the kiss CGs wouldn’t even be until you get to the “bad” endings lol, so I couldn’t even enjoy the “pretty art” anyway. Anyway I rambled about most of the routes in their respective areas but overall just a huge disappointment. While I do like Paperbag-kun I wouldn’t recommend buying the entire game just for his route unless you find it on some 90% discount sale or something. On that note, his voice actor who voiced Miser in Enchante totally needs to be in more otome games cause his voice is AMAZING. He’s not a newb or anything, he’s been around for a while, but for some reason he just never really did otome game voicing until now – or rather he did it in completely oddball games I never even touched. Other than him though, I couldn’t really care for any of the voice actors, I know they weren’t popular but their voices just didn’t feel like they were really fitting or really trying to act in an otome game (or maybe trying too hard like in the case with Yumeji.) One last thing someone on Twitter asked me if I’d recommend any of the other 2 HimeHibi games, and for the first HimeHibi I’d say yes especially since they ported it to the switch and I’d imagine they fixed all the system bugs the PS2 version had. The 2nd one has another watered down heroine like this one and wasn’t anything memorable (other than yet another creeper pedo sensei.)

Anyway new FFXIV patch dropped today so I’ll be busy with that but I do have Tricolity Eyes & Beast Darling in my queue I bought during the winter sales to play next once I get some free time 😆