Hey y'all. Welcome back to my impressions of KoiChoco. I finished the Michiru route in this session and wanted to share my thoughts with you. Let's Jam!!!
Here are the rules for my play so you know what to expect from this portion:
Around half of the meat of the content in this session was adapted by the Anime but it still felt like an afterthought, especially the parts that were only alluded to in the original work that AIC Build fully animated and fleshed out the story of. I'm not sure if I appreciate the changes made yet since, on the one hand, they do give more context to the greater narrative and help introduce the prequel Visual Novel's main cast; on the other hand, I still stand by the notion that there were things that weren't adapted that really should have been.
Now, I won't be discussing the ending in full, but in terms of general presentation and structure, I enjoyed this route more than both Isara and Chisato's (but Isara is a very close second). Both were interesting and welcomed changes to the common formula. Sadly, the 40 Oojima rolls never made a future impact or appearance, though. I also feel that the reveal and resolutions of the final important character to the story, Kana, was a bit too handwavy and convoluted for what the route's general narrative was going for, but the Anime, in my personal opinion, did drastically improve it with the alterations made.
I expected her scenes to be finished during the first two hours but then the developers snuck in an extra helping right after the two hour mark, so I'll briefly touch on it here. This meme perfectly encapsulated what I saw of it; her cat hair was definitely not just for show at all.
NOTE: I don't hate any of the sex scenes so far but this last one really caught me way off guard on this route. I will openly say that I will never forget this one. Moving on!!!
Chisato as a character never bothered me as much as she did many other readers and Anime watchers. I think some of it may be how much more Anime I've consumed than Visual Novels I've completed along with mostly staying out of the greater community for both. I have chatted with others over the years for both hobbies but have found how open and forgiving I am to many of the common tropes to be the rejected way of viewing things. As someone who has experience with a similar toxic relationship (Yuuki and her really are unhealthy throughout most routes so far) and past traumas (no one died in a horrible way in my case but the losses were still real and relatable), I felt sympathy towards her. This route, she did something I never thought she would: she blessed the relationship between Yuuki and Michiru in a realistic and overall very mature way. His happiness and her real love for him both took priority here. This entire exchange broke my heart.
My favorite part of the exchange was when Chisato realized how broken their relationship had been for a long time through watching how broken Michiru was and how Yuuki truly really cared about her. Loving someone with a mental illness (as someone who has his own) isn't a bad thing but rarely do media address it in a positive or neutral light. Here, Yuuki genuinely caring about another person and Chisato giving up her selfish desires, both of these traits make them still a great pair of close friends.
I'm not going to give full context for the following screenshots; the art and animation team went all out for these. They put quite a bit of effort into this route compared to the others so far, which fit what kind of character Michiru really was and how her story played out in a bit of a fit of chaos.
I hate to admit this but this kiss scene and everything around it was hot. She's a very short, fragile bodied girl compared to the rest of the heroines, so of course Yuuki would be bending down to kiss her. I also find it interesting how much they age up her appearance here compared to most of her moe appeal ones instead. Often, she has a very derpy, goofy expression but for story reasons and where this happened, making her a woman in this scene made a massive amount of sense. Her real self and story both were pretty hard on me, so I am glad she received a serious pass in the visuals.
Michiru playing with a camera was never something I thought I needed in my life, but now, I want to give her head pats for it.
The school President and Michiru sharing mutual secrets and some history along with how completely messed up Yuuki's mental state was, this represented all of those extremely well. I love these so much because of what cutting both characters out of the scenes really meant in context of those scenes.
I plan to do Mifuyu's route next and then finally finish with Satsuke, Yuuki's political rival. I hope you enjoyed my thoughts here, and I'll be continuing to post in the future as I go. What were your thoughts? Are you also playing this? Leave your comments below, vote and reblog. Thanks for reading and have a wonderful night.
