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Kageyuki Shiraishi Route Review

We’re almost done y’all, Shiraishi is the second to last route you play chronologically in Collar x Malice and as such is one of the more complex characters in the game. A lot of things are revealed via Shiraishi, pretty much a good 90% of the secrets behind the greater plot in the game. Some of those secrets are going to be revealed here, but only as they pertain to my review and Shiraishi’s character. Warning, Shirashi’s my all time favorite in collar x malice so my final thoughts are definitely going to be a glowing endorsement of him. I mean, he’s got cat ears! What’s not to love?

Characterization

Phenomenal, dare I say showstopping. Shiraishi in my opinion is the toughest nut to crack in Collar x Malice and while I won’t argue he’s the most complex character in the otome genre (I certainly would put up a fight about that though), his characterization and his development throughout the plot is amazing. Shiraishi’s a criminal psychologist, a profiler who until being on his route is mysterious and doesn’t care for human connections all that much. Most of what you know about him is he’s incredibly flippant, and his assistant hates him. So it’s not surprising his working with Ichika turns him into a polarizing figure. 

To put it bluntly, he starts off as a huge dick. In a normal circumstance you’d have to be a complete saint to put up with him, he’s rude, has zero social etiquette to the point you’re led to believe it’s intentional and the way he talks down to people can be infuriating. However I think what kept me going throughout this route was how Ichika reacted. 

See, the payoff is enormous, because there’s effort from each side of the relationship to work out their differences and get to know each other more. Ichika immediately writes off Shiraishi as someone she intensely dislikes, but after speaking with the other detectives she makes an effort to understand him better. Shiraishi on the other hand, in an effort to work better with her on their case begins to learn her likes and dislikes, her temperament and generally kind of bumbles his way through cozying up to her. He gets her gifts, he tries to spend time with her. It’s kind of fun to watch because the burden this time isn’t 100% on Ichika to fix a man’s issues. 

Though like I said, he’s polarizing. I could definitely see a world where you’re either a Shiraishi lover or a Shiraishi hater. But in my opinion that’s what makes his character all the more interesting throughout the route. 

Plot Relevance

Shiraishi’s route is filled with an abundance of plot, but before we get to the big reveals about Adonis, let's talk about his Adonis pairs. 

Shiraishi’s enemies in this case are a pair of twins named Shion and Suzune Uno. Who went through the tragedy of their mother and father dying and are on a revenge streak. While I think the general idea of the plot is good, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The entire lynchpin of the case is that the twins’ mother was a schoolteacher, and due to a well off student organizing a harassment campaign against her she had a psychotic break, attempted to kill them (which their father prevented by sacrificing himself instead), and then took her own life. Since then they swore to get revenge on everyone who wronged her. Pic of them down below

My problem with this is how wholly unrealistic it is. If it wasn’t a student, say a principal or another teacher orchestrating this campaign I’d get it. It’s hard to deal with authority in schools, and not one culture is a stranger to a teacher abusing their position when they don’t get what they want. But even if you could call the explanation plausible I think it sends a pretty odd message when you craft a scenario where a student is completely able to ruin a teachers’ life and reputation. But outside of that, the twins came off completely sympathetic. And there was even a very non ableist description of DID included that wasn’t exactly a plot point, but was pretty decently handled I’d say. No multiple personalities murdering people, just the acknowledgment that one was there. 

Now other than that, we have the super fun stuff! Shiraishi’s route reveals a lot about Adonis’s internal structure and reveals perhaps the biggest thing (GIGANTIC SPOILER WARNING) Shirashi’s actually a brainwashed member of the organization! See there’s an ever looming idea that there’s a mole for Adonis in the police, turns out Shiraishi’s that very mole. This part was very well written and flowed into the narrative, now for all the explanations surrounding that reveal. Well I’ll leave that to the game. 

Character Interaction

Ichika gets a girls coalition in this route. Since she interacts so frequently with Shirashi she ends up becoming friends with his assistant, and she already has a female friend in the police force to start with. So she gets to have regular girls night outs! The girls are a pretty endearing trio, and I found myself giving a little half smile at their interactions. Ichika definitely needs someone who isn't an emotionally constipated man to have a real conversation with from time to time so this was a big refresher.

With Shiraishi, I described a bit of their relationship above. But when he and Ichika get closer leading up to his reveal as the mole it’s incredibly sweet. Shiraishi displays a unique love for cats that explains the incredibly embarrassing cat memorabilia he wears around his job. And you start to learn his lack of etiquette isn’t him being an asshole on purpose. He just genuinely hasn’t gotten much social interaction. He doesn’t have many friends, and the way he talks can be frustrating and hard to navigate. Now, he’s a grown man, so I’m not gonna pretend like a lot of the way he talks is intentional. But I became super endeared to him as I saw a much softer and more genuine side. 

Final Thoughts

Route gets a solid 8.5/10 for me. Shiraishi’s awesome, this route was very well constructed even if I had a lot of qualms with the actual story regarding the murder case and Ichika was pretty proactive! I enjoyed thoroughly going through this entire thing, and I hope to see more Kageyuki Shiraishi’s as I go through more joseimuke and otome games.

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Okazaki Kei Route Review

After an (admittedly long) hiatus we’ve returned to continue this review series and hopefully finish it off! Our third character is Okazaki Kei, my second favorite character in the game. Kei’s a well meaning security specialist who was assigned to protect Yanagi’s team, but you soon learn pretty early on he’s a glorified spy meant to report their movements back to the police. While I loved him as a person, I have a few qualms with his route. Since it’ll be harder and harder to give my honest opinions on a route without putting in spoilers, this review will start to get fairly SPOILER HEAVY. So be aware if you’re looking to play this game and spoilers will diminish your enjoyment. 

Characterization

Okazaki Kei is an incredibly complex individual that is more than he seems from the get go. Considering the common advice is to play Enomoto, Sasazuka, then Okazaki’s route in that order you can view it as the game ramping up the stakes. He’s a seemingly easy going guy housing dark secrets and a host of issues that would probably be tough for a therapist to work through in real life. 

And I think the game does a very interesting job of portraying them! Kei balances a lot of charming moments with the more intense ones just enough to get you invested in him and wanting more. His infatuation with Ichika, and by consequence the issues of an insane martyr complex and a possessive streak crops up slowly enough and is properly explained enough that you don’t feel like it’s a case of her being a mary sue. Okazaki is insanely affectionate, and it feels natural to his character in such a way that you think he’d behave this way with anyone. Which makes genuinely becoming closer to him in the story so much more satisfying! 

Okay I know I’m seriously gushing about him and his route certainly has its flaws, but I honestly suspended a lot of my disbelief for those flaws. That is to say, the whole way he solves his martyr complex kind of does rest on the power of heterosexual love. But the average otome enjoyer isn’t coming to the genre to see a plotline happen where a man gets six months of therapy. 

Plot Relevance

Following up on Sasazuka dealing with a member of Adonis, Okazaki does the same thing. While a lot of his conflict is primarily focused inward, the game doesn’t deprive you of a glimpse into the greater narrative and in fact connects the two fairly easily. 

On Ichika’s end, I have to say she did a fair bit of detective work here, most of it actually. Kei is firmly categorized as the brawn, a security guard, so a lot of times Ichika is bouncing ideas off him and taking initiative in the case. A breath of fresh air after dealing with her kind of being made out to be a bumbling idiot in Sasazuka’s route. 

Now the greater plot, is um, a piece of work. Okazaki’s route connects his internal conflict with Adonis. We’re shown a flashback of an assassination attempt on the prime minister, and Okazaki mistakenly attempted to save someone instead of committing himself to the job. The consequences were drastic, his partner dying to keep him safe. Except he finds out soon after that same partner was a mole for Adonis, and had a big hand in the assassination attempt. Kei is so traumatized that he develops the martyr complex that I mentioned just a few paragraphs earlier! He latches onto Ichika, because he projects a standard that she’s worth dying for. The narrative makes it clear it’s not because it’s Ichika, but rather because she was in the right place at the right time. 

So you expect a lot of the plot to be devoted to this right? Well, yes! But also no. Kei’s Adonis pair is a man who’s part of organized crime and was a former police officer. He grew increasingly dissatisfied with his job, being abused by his superior and constantly having his accomplishments stolen from him by said superior. As a result he grew so discontent with the police force he turned to crime. This is a very touchy and nuanced subject don’t you think? Exposing that police as an institution is rife with the ability for cops to be crooked, combined with them lording their authority over others. 

Well the game handles that with all the gentleness of taking a bat to someone’s window. The greater plotline plays out like such a weird pro-cop PSA that I felt kind of disoriented over it. You obviously can’t easily forget that this game is about the police as much as it as about dating guys. But I felt like I was getting slapped in the face over and over with “You NEED cops to protect you. Cops must ALWAYS be there. Corruption is only a few bad apples. Cops are IMPORTANT.” Like, I thought I was playing an otome game. Not debating the police’s general usefulness. And its especially stupid because Kei isn’t even a sterotypical cop! He’s specifically trained in security detail, you know, GUARDING people. Not chasing down criminals! Why was I getting this force fed to me on his route of all places?!

Character Interaction

This is where no exaggeration, the route was saved for me. Kei was accompanied by a junior officer named Hideaki Yoshinari who is effectively his right hand man, and their interactions are as funny as they are endearing. This also gives Ichika a handy outside character to talk to. This, combined with her speaking to her friends in the police force means she gets a wealth of outside interaction until the narrative closes her off a bit. However there’s actually a good explanation this time! I mean, if you can take Kei effectively being the game’s yandere as a good explanation.

Kei and Ichika’s interactions evolve in such a way that are incredibly interesting and pretty well written to me. Kei starts out infatuated with the idea of her, and with the idea of dying for her. He flirts, he gets touchy feely, and he makes her heart flutter. But it’s all in service to himself, and his inner monologues don’t really shy away from that fact. I mean, eventually they do truly fall in love. But Ichika growing to like him and thus not checking out of their potential relationship when she does catch wind of his freaky martyr complex, instead helping him work through it is super nice. And just to mention, the CG below the plot relevance header is an awesome and tension filled moment. Definitely surprised me a little bit. 

This is a side note, since I have nowhere else to put this but Kei’s um. Incredibly horny. I don’t know how else to put it, but we ramped up from rather vague innuendos and CGs that didn’t amount to much, to Kei openly talking about having sex with Ichika before the route’s climax (joke completely unintentional I swear). I mean this game is for adults, and every character is in their mid to late 20s, but still with how strong he came on I was shocked. I don’t think it helped that I’ve played pretty much every popular game Yuki Kaji has been in, and hearing the voice of the quintessential guy you call when you want him to play either screaming asshole or normal dude talk about how much he wants to have straight sex with you is crazy.  

Final Thoughts

I am being completely serious when I say even though I am giving this route a low score that Kei is still perhaps one of my favorite characters in the game. It’s too bad that the greater plot that intersected with his internal conflict was 5+ hours of having copaganda shoved down my throat. I indicated when I started this review that I don’t have good opinions of the police due to the aforementioned issue of my being black, and police in every country have a very very dark history of abusing their power. So I’m not going to act like that didn’t severely lower my enjoyment. 

I’m giving this route a 6.5/10. 

But like I said, Kei’s an extremely compelling character. So if you include my completely loving him, maybe you can inflate that rating by about 2 points.

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Takeru Sasazuka Route Review

Our next character review will be of the tsundere Takeru Sasazuka. Endearingly designed with hair analogous to seaweed, he certainly gave me a lot to say in this review. He definitely shaped up to be, in my opinion, one of the weaker routes in the game. So let’s talk about it! I will begin warning for spoilers now and in my future reviews due to me having to do a much deeper dive into the plot to explain my thoughts.

Characterization

Sasazuka is a very mean and abrasive character. He doesn’t get along with many people and the friendships he does have are pretty nebulous. Apparently, it’s said he gets along well with one of the heroine Ichika’s friends, Kotoho Sakuragawa. So naturally you want to know what the explanation for that behavior is to endear you to him.

I found that while I personally thought he was cute in his mannerisms you don’t really get a proper explanation for why he has such a thinly veiled superiority complex. Of course, there is the argument that he is so good at what he does that no one else comes close and thus it’s well earned. But Yanagi is their leader and a good friend to most of them, it’s no doubt a position he’s earned yet he’s still incredibly mild mannered. 

You could perhaps explain it via the death of his mother, but Sasazuka’s personality from the brief flashbacks we saw was incredibly well established by that point. So you’re kind of in a situation where he’s just an asshole because well...He is. I know it’s realistic that some people are just mean, but I do expect otome to have a proper explanation for their more prickly characters. 

Ichika herself does indeed become a lot smarter and detective savvy whilst being his partner. I think that characterization was diminished, though because a lot of the conclusions she arrived at were lorded over her by Sasazuka. The narrative never gives her space to really one up him in the investigative department with her skillset, she’s moreso just repeating things back to him that he made her figure out on her own. This is not to mention the fact she has weird hot and cold situations where she behaves like an absolute doormat toward him in some scenes but is incredibly argumentative in others.

Plot Relevance

The plot came in big here in contrast to Enomoto. Your sub villain is an online game addict, A perfect match to Sasazuka’s cyber hacker disposition. His design is actually one of the weakest in the game in my opinion, but it’s still really really good. This is a bit off topic, but a thing I’ve really appreciated about Collar x Malice inparticular is that the adult nature of the visual novel means that the designers have a lot more freedom when making characters. Especially when it comes to fashion choices, a lot of the characters have various quirks to distinguish them from the average person but their colors are muted and blend more into the atmosphere of the game itself. Souda is no exception, his muted colors communicating exactly what you want from him. A picture of him is down below

But the big villain of this route, while surprising, isn’t as surprising as you’d think if you played Enomoto’s route beforehand. He’s definitely a weak villain in terms of motivation, but his personal connection to the heroine and her family plays a huge part in that. It humanizes him to a better degree than others. To top it off his design means you aren’t getting emotional whiplash from seeing someone so goofy acting serious like Enomoto’s route. 

Now on Sasazuka’s personal plot, this was where the route kind of lost me. Sasazuka is looking to reinstate the firearms and weapons ban that was recently repealed due to being triggered by guns. Why, you ask? Whilst they were in America, he and his mother were unluckily caught in the middle of a gang war and his mother was shot. That’s it. While he came out of it with PTSD that I felt was very accurately represented, I just couldn’t help but giggle at the reasoning. A gang war? Seriously? Especially because the game uses it as some odd knock against Americans as if gang violence is something exclusive to them. It just came off as them having little understanding of how US based gangs functioned and using it more like a plot device. 

Character Interaction

This one didn’t get me heartwarmed like all the other routes did. As I said before Sasazuka is abrasive and has few friends. This means that we don’t really get to see him be meaningfully friendly with anyone. You get a passing mention of his being friends with Sakuragawa, but they don’t really show that properly. It’s a very missed opportunity, because Sasazuka’s route is incredibly insular due to his lack of interaction with the outside world. It’s mostly either him alone, him fulfilling the plot or him with Ichika. 

This is especially egregious, because his personality does not undergo any major change. Whilst I didn’t expect any dramatic transformation, Sasazuka is absolutely awful at stating his feelings and the romance never felt like it culminated properly. His kiss with Ichika is shared on the pretense of her being horribly worried for her younger brother, to the point she cries. This causes a miscommunication where Ichika doesn’t understand they’re together until near the end of the game where she confesses to him. His softer side is almost exclusively shown through inner monologues. I feel like he definitely could have benefitted from tangibly showing that softer side in an extended scene, because as it was, Ichika was forced to decipher a bunch of double meanings. “Oh he said this, so he must mean he’s worried about me.” To speak in tropes, too much tsun, not enough dere. 

Final Thoughts

Overall I rate the route a 7/10. Not one of the best. But his donut eating sprite sure is cute.

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Mineo Enomoto Route Review

Our first review will be of Collar x Malice, an otome game released to the PSVita that was ported to Switch after the announcement of the vita’s imminent death. It’s pretty much universally recommended when asking for a list of otome games that are plot heavy whilst still having endearing characters that make you care about them. So let’s see if that’s true!

For a brief summary, Collar x Malice follows our heroine Ichika Hoshino who is a policewoman in Shinjuku. After being attacked during a patrol she has a collar placed around her neck with deadly poison in it. She finds out that the attackers are connected to an organization called Adonis, who are perpetrators of the “X-day” incidents. A list of monthly crimes where they judge supposed criminals. Hoshino is taken in by five former police officers who each quit their positions for different reasons and have decided to investigate Adonis independently. After playing through the common route, you can select to be the “partner” of one of these officers.

I’m going to preface this that with my being Black I’m not too geeked with the heavy involvement of police within this narrative. However the game plays so much like a traditional murder mystery and the plot itself is so outlandish that I never felt uncomfortable enough to tune out. So with that said, let’s get into Enomoto’s route! For my criteria please refer to this post. 

Characterization

Enomoto’s character is actually the most stable and consistent throughout his entire route. When you meet him your impression is lovable idiot, and he kind of stays that way. This isn’t to say he’s purely incompetent, there are a lot of times that this trope is very overdone in a way where the male character is so horribly stupid you don’t exactly know how he got in the position he did. But Enomoto has a degree of intelligence to him that at least proves he knows what he’s doing. 

That said, he does have a lot more idiot moments relative to anyone else. It’s actually not as frustrating as one would think, even if you dislike his particular type of character. The narrative does a good job of making him endearing whilst not overdoing it so he seems one note. 

Other than that, he’s got absurdly strong morals that are never really compromised throughout the story. Everything he does lines up with what he says, and he never really has any moments where he contradicts himself. There are a couple moments where it seems like it, but in my opinion there’s not much tension in them. I found myself thinking, “oh man another situation where Enomoto might do something questionable. What’s the writer gonna come up with to make him avoid doing that.” This is not to say he had to do anything morally ambiguous for things to be interesting. Rather the drama came less from his internal conflict and more from outside sources.

This is not to say there was no internal conflict, as the first half of the route has heavily to do with the fact he’s made no progress in his investigation. Characters harp on him repeatedly for that, and he takes an appropriate amount of time to unpack that issue without it being magically solved. Of course Hoshino is there to help every step of the way, but she does it in a way that’s thankfully not the invasive fix-it heroine type a lot of otome games use.

Hoshino herself was kind of a polarizing character for me. Whilst she had many investigative and bright moments there are times she came off very oddly like a doormat. This is mostly a gripe with the conversations she’d have with her brother. He was very frequently unnecessarily rude to her, and while I don’t think it was necessary to be rude back she just does...Nothing. Except have an internal monologue which I didn’t find very effective. The game does a very poor job in explaining her family situation in regards to her younger brother in a way that justifies his clearly misdirected anger. 

Even when their relationship is being repaired, it takes a completely external event to get them to be honest with each other. It felt cheap, because they never really sat down and had a true heart to heart. Regardless, when Hoshino and her brother begin getting along their interactions are incredibly funny and have you coming back for more. So he’s not a bad character by any means.

Now we move onto the villains. We will start with the sub antagonist of the route, and not so coincidentally the killer in Enomoto’s case. I think they were...A bit of a letdown. I’m not sure what impression the game was attempting to give me, be it someone who just had a target of obsession and was just generic otherwise or something else. But I never really felt anything for this character. They show up incredibly late relative to when they reveal that they have something to do with Enomoto’s case, and their characterization is sub par. The only reason I can remember them so well is because their design is completely ridiculous and ripped any tension a certain event could’ve had out of it. It’s a shame, because I loved their design, it just felt very wasted in not making a complete character.

Now the main villain is...Actually done decently. He serves as a foil to Enomoto in the most blatant way possible. Essentially being the antithesis to his morals. The problem, I think, is that he never really genuinely makes Enomoto question himself. The narrative always sets him up to be pretty much universally in the wrong. So there’s no ambiguity in what he’s doing, and makes this more of a hero/villain story than anything else. 

Plot Relevance

This is where my main criticism of this route crops up and where you can see that this is clearly a giant introduction to the game. We don’t get many insights into Adonis as an organization, in fact they don’t really do much of anything in Enomoto’s route. The killer in his investigation is someone that is completely unrelated to Adonis outside of accepting a job from them, and a plot device conveniently keeps us from even interrogating them. Not to mention again that their design is so utterly ridiculous that you just can’t take any scenes involving them seriously.

However they aren’t the main villain. So this main villain must be connected to Adonis somehow right? No, actually he isn’t. Once again he has a rather vague connection to the organization at hand, that is to say he isn’t even a member. The villains in Enomoto’s route thus deal more with his personal character moments than the game’s greater plot. This was a point of frustration to me because I hate, hate, hate when otome does this. If I have a favorite picked out, I feel as if I should at least get some glance into the whole point I’m playing this game by playing their route. I’m not asking for different interpretations of the same events, but at least prove this character has some shred of importance aside from being boyfriend material. This is especially a pain point due to the fact that Adonis being an organization is definitely implied to have more than one member. Why did Enomoto not have one assigned to him? 

Character Interaction

This is actually a high point in the route. Enomoto and Hoshino have a wealth of interactions with the other former officers as well as Hoshino’s friends in the police itself. You never really feel like they’re isolated from the rest of the world. While the majority of their scenes are with each other, they’re always talking to someone else by the next scene. There’s always a different conversation to be had and that makes things feel really alive in the world itself.

A small criticism is that a lot of Hoshino’s conversations with the former officers outside of plot details, without Enomoto kind of boils down to “Oh man I totally wish I could get with you. Too bad you’re Enomoto’s partner.” Maybe I’m in the minority, but I do wish she could’ve formed a bit more genuine bonds as friends with the other prospective men. It would’ve made things feel more realistic considering they were all in this together. However I do enjoy how consistent their characters were and being able to see them onscreen. A personal pet peeve of mine is the heroine and her boyfriend being completely cut off from talking to other men because she’s “his” and the game wants to make that clear.

Final Thoughts

Overall I really liked Enomoto’s route, and him as a person. He’s got a pretty significant spot in my personal route rankings and I just love love love his personality. In terms of a numbered rating?

I’d give this an 8/10. I was never really bored and that’s a good thing.

#hantome review

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Review Criteria

So I am able to finally kick off what this blog was made for! Otome review! However I wanted to do something a little bit different, instead of reviewing entire games as many reviewers have already done. I’m going to be reviewing individual routes instead. I will be judging these routes with three main categories

Characterization

This is exactly what it sounds like, I’m going to be judging the main characters of the route. As well as how fleshed out other characters around them are and thus how they’re aiding them in their development. 

Plot Relevance

Does the plot matter enough in the route for you to not feel like you’re just playing a self insert fluff simulator? Or is there perhaps so much focus on it that you feel like you’re not exactly playing an otome game?

Character Interaction

 Are the heroine and her man of choice just in their own little world? Or are they constantly speaking to people and forming bonds with them. Are there perhaps too many moments where they aren’t speaking to each other instead?

With these criteria in place I’m hoping to give an insightful look into whether you’ll be having a fun experience while still getting the romance we all crave. Of course, I will also inject my own opinions outside of these categories. But I’ll generally be keeping a bulk of my writing within them so as to not seem like I’m being incoherent or getting off topic.

#hantome review