Hey y'all. I hope everyone's doing well. I continued my playthrough of KoiChoco yesterday and put 4 more hours into it. I'm glad I did because it's pretty great, in my personal opinion, especially now that I'm starting to diverge a bit from what the adaptation covered. Despite some light issues I had with how the Anime handled the introduction, having both be different is not at all a bad thing; it makes playing through the game a fresher experience. Enough dilly-dally, shilly-shallying. Let's jam!!!
The Full Main Cast Reveal
This scene had me laughing with how out of the blue it came. Up until this point, the main character Yuuki Oojima hadn't shown his full face yet. The adaptation did a great job with him. He's just some normal, snarky teenage dude in a wacky world where everyone in the Food Research Club (Shokken) know that they're living in a game. I love how most of them are directly cheesing the camera and player here without it feeling out of place. Although, Yuuki is probably not looking at us at all. It's been somewhat confirmed that the game logic of the world is possibly a form of mental distress on his part; when he realizes he's actually the protagonist in a real visual novel, it goes some places. 🙃
Who Should I Lewd with My See-Through Glasses
I love how little this actually tries to be a full-blown all tits and asses out Hentai game. It's true I haven't played that many Eroge so it's very possible this style of humor won't work for more experienced players, but this gag was fun. The setup here: it's Sunday and everyone is celebrating the new arrival of Michiru, the cat girl, in the club. Outside of the VN, she's canonically acknowledged as a "cat girl" in a manga series from her perspective called Stray Little Cat.
Further context: in my previous post, I pointed out a gag involving glasses that let the player see the newdy bits of the girls in the club that was also very much a joke about DLC and other nonsense. Well, it continues here. I chose to look at Hazuki, the teacher, and holy hell did they get me good. I couldn't post what I saw because it was technically full-body nudity but nothing about it was sexy. It was censored in a "creative" way: let's just say "got wood" would be underselling how they got around the issue. It was also a great way to show the kind of character Non-chan is. 🥵
Non-chan is Still Best Girl
These all came in succession of the previous joke while also acknowledging another joke from my previous session (that I won't write about here) and then taking a massive dump on Chisato's dangerous cooking. For the party, she baked a batch of cookies that were based on a recipe from Aomi (which in itself was almost a horror story about how her cookies came out). Non-chan may look and sound innocent but she has sass and class (especially when she showed her true self later on in that session; she is very much the adult in the mix).
The Monkey Girls Need Help
Michiru ate one of Chisato's cookies without anyone noticing while they were all debating on the merits of her existence. It wasn't as dark as it sounds; it was more just them doing the normal club thing where friends are comfortable enough to shit on each other (pardon my Japanese). They just discovered that her latest batch of cookies were actually edible and this scene showed how much it broke these two's brains. The music that played here was something you'd find in a classic horror-thriller (like Higurashi) and the background is exactly what you thought it was: that's a snapshot of some kind of biological weapon / plague.
Chisato is a Mess; She Needs Protecting
Her backstory I felt was one of the least interesting parts of the adaptation (still good, nonetheless). It took up around 25% of the entire runtime and was handled competently enough but also hurt the general tone and pace when her issues came up due to how much the series wanted to be a wild comedy. This scene was the first time you get to see her real damaged self that only Yuuki and Mifuyu get to see on the regular. She had just come over and shared her uneaten chocolate with Yuuki as both a period joke (called "her time of the month") and a tender, nice way to show the love they both had for each other.
NOTE: I’m a guy and the period joke comment could be offensive to some people. I don’t normally think those are in good taste but it was definitely a thing in this game and pointed out because it was there. This is not going to be for everyone and some of the humor is very much what would be funny to teenagers (which these characters are and often act like such)
On a side note: I genuinely love her personality. She's very much a trope (Tsundere Patient Childhood Friend) but also just very funny. Her voice actesses in both the adaptation and this game (believe they are different) took her character and gave it layers through varying levels of complete tonal whiplash without feeling out of character. If you've seen Konosuba, Chisato is very much the Aqua trash waifu character that has things happen to her that were her fault to begin with but also genuinely feels like a good person with a bit of sorrow underneath that mask. When she's depressed, it's very much in your face without being intimidating, at least in my case.
Michiru Is Wearing Military Garb; Headpats Incoming
I won't talk about the implications of this outfit here, but I don't remember the Anime showing her wearing this. I think it says quite a bit about her hobbies and possible upbringing but also is just adorable. I can kind of see why and how her character designer was brought on to do some work for Fate Grand Order now. Yu Akinashi hasn't done a massive amount in either the Anime, Visual Novel or Gaming spheres but what she has done has been very much an evolution of what you see here. In fact, the Ryuusei World Actor games are apparently military espionage ones (making them immediately of interest to me).
There's Other Moments, But...
My goal here is not to do a full let's play but instead highlight and talk about different moments that were of note to me in a staggered play time approach. I think 4 hour sessions with a short break every 30 minutes to an hour on days that I'm either off work or taking a partial rest day is so far a good pace for me but depending on how things go this month, I may need to alter that a bit.
Have y'all been playing this too? If not, what have you been playing lately? I'd love to read your thoughts. If you enjoyed this content, feel free to vote, comment and reblog. Thanks for reading and I hope you have a wonderful night.