If my Heart had Wings (この大空に、翼をひろげて / Kono Oozora ni Tsubasa wo hirogete, “Spread your wings towards this vast sky”), abbreviated IMHHW hereafter, is a game that has accompanied me for… a whole 3 years now. I started playing it in my second Bachelor semester, finished studying in the meantime, and recently, also this game.

The game was part of a bundle of visual novels that I got via HumbleBundle. I’d started by playing Highway Blossoms (HB for short) from that bundle, a cute romance story of two girls meeting by chance and then going for a road trip / treasure hunt crossover through America. For some reason I’d decided to make a let’s play out of that, so you can find the entirety of it on my Youtube channel. In any case, I had a lot of fun with that and I’d been wanting to get into Japanese VNs anyway, so continuing with IMHHW was the natural choice for me.

I didn’t exactly have high expectations for the game, but somehow I was under the impression that it was one of the most popular VNs out there. I honestly don’t know where that came from, as after looking at some stats on vndb.org and Steam, this doesn’t quite seem to be the case. I mean, it’s still a popular VN in terms of how many people played it (#30 on vndb), and a 90% recommended rating on Steam isn’t bad either, but I thought it was at the top.

In any case, let me say this right at the start: IMHHW is not good. I don’t know how it ever got those ratings, but man… do people have no taste? I mean, I played through the entire game as well as the “Flight Diary” DLC, so… it wasn’t trash on the level of DAL. But still…

But before I get into the details of what happened in the game, I still wanna talk a little about the experience of let’s playing it in particular. For one thing, I believe that context may have had a significant impact on my consumption and thus view of the game as a whole.

The Recording Experience

All in all, the experience was certainly less fun than HB. For one thing, all characters in HB are voiced (and pretty well at that) so I let them do the talking. All I had to do was contribute the narrator’s voice and the occasional snarky remark. IMHHW on the other hand… was also completely voiced, but in Japanese of course. Having the characters say their lines in Japenese, then reading the English translation after that would have made the whole thing an even bigger slog than it already was, so I recorded it without voice acting. Instead, I voiced all the characters myself. IMHHW has quite a few unique voices, and while it was fun to play around with that a little, all in all I don’t think I was anywhere near able to deliver a good voice acting performance for like ten different characters. I had to stay fully concentrated the entire time so I don’t mix up the voices. And having to voice everything alone, with the majority of it being high-pitched Japanese highschool girls, also meant I strained my voice quite a bit. In the end, recording was rather uncomfortable and I was often mentally and vocally done for after almost every recording session. On top of that, the result was obviously not even close to the original voice acting experience.

Since I mentioned the slog already: IMHHW is long. Or, well, it is long compared to HB at least. vndb puts HB at about 8h, compared to IMMHW’s 45h. That alone isn’t a problem, when a good game is long that means more enjoyment. But let’s not forget that IMHHW isn’t a good game. For one thing, the pacing is glacial. I made a habit of quickly summarizing what happened in the previous episode at the beginning of each one, and I had to skim the previous episode every single time because there is so damn little of… anything memorable going on. But let’s keep the critique of the game itself for the next section. In any case, I ended up recording about 80 episodes of this game, and I didn’t even include the last two routes in that since I couldn’t be bothered and people didn’t care any more.

The hardest part though was my attempt to fit every “chapter” into one recording session (the term “chapter” is only what I’ve coined it). A chapter ends when the screen goes white, then we get a little blurry look at some windmills and the game’s slogan (?) in the middle of the screen. Now I think that’s generally a good way to wrap it up, but it honestly seems a little pointless in hindsight. The chapters were often longer than the episodes I ended up making, so I had to cut them into multiple pieces anyway, ultimately defying the point of the entire exercise. Moreover, these “chapter ends” were placed seemingly arbitrarily throughout the story. For one thing, it’s not like they give any sort of pointer to where you are in the story. They don’t have numbers and they aren’t referenced anywhere else in the game. There were many places where I wished they’d given us a chapter end when they didn’t, and a few others that made me wonder why they used this lenghty transition, instead of a regular scene change. But the more painful part was the utter inconsistency in their lengths.

I’d usually prepared for a recording session by planning sufficient time that I could be alone without disturbances, set up my mic properly etc. But I never knew beforehand whether I would record for 15 minutes or 3 hours. Yes, I had multiple recordings that lasted over two hours. Every single one of these was painful. At the end I’d be completely tired out, praying for the game to finally give me a chapter end.

Now, to be fair, this isn’t exactly the game’s fault. It’s a lengthy, recognizable transition that they’re free to use however they like, and it’s entirely my fault for stubbornly relying on them to tell me when to finish recording. I’m just bringing it up here because it added to the overall pain of recording it.
Thinking back, I don’t even remember how I handled this in HB. Maybe they had more regular transitions that felt like good stopping points. Maybe I didn’t care and stopped recording when I felt like it. Or maybe I wasn’t bothered as much since the game was fun and I wasn’t tired from having to voice it in its entirety.

So, as mentioned before, I’d finished the entire game, but I only recorded the first three routes. That means the last two routes and the DLC were a solo play experience and man did that make a difference. I could play the game whenever I felt like it with no schedule or anything, no “clean up” work in terms of editing to do afterwards, no getting tired out by voicing the characters, enjoying the original voice acting and somewhat compensating for the pacing with my reading speed.

While I still wouldn’t say the game was great after that, I got a fair bit of enjoyment out of it and there were a couple good moments to be found. For the most part, I played it like I played KoiChoco: as my entertainment while having my meals.
Of particular note are the pacing and the voice acting: while the game is slow, it was much, much more bearable when I could just read along. I remember half-finishing Amane’s route in about an hour at the start, though to be fair, at that point I was rushing through it and not taking in the voice acting.
This brings me to the next point: I couldn’t have imagined what a huge difference the voice acting makes. IMHHW’s voices are somewhat forgettable if you ask me, but the acting is on point. It helps a lot with general immersion, and the tone of voice sometimes adds a lot to the expressiveness or the comedy of the scene.

The Plot

For context, here’s a little overview of what happens in the game.

We follow the main character, Aoi Minase, a second-year high school student who returns to his hometown of Kazegaura at the start of the game. He used to compete in bicycle races until he injured his leg. With a heavy heart, he left his sports-focussed high school and returns home. This is where the game starts.

He starts a “job” as a dorm mother for a run-down girls' dorm, with the wheelchair-bound Kotori demanding particular attention. At school, he meets the “super repeat student slash genius” Mochizuki Amane, who’s been working alone, as the only member of the Soaring Club, in the school’s garage for years to get a glider up and running. It’s her dream to take this glider above the “morning glory”, a rare cloud formation appearing only once in a couple decades. But the student council threatens to disband the club as it has only one member, and so Aoi and Kotori who’ve taken an interest in the glider and the morning glory, as well as Aoi’s childhood friend Ageha, end up joining the club to save it. Their new lives of working on the glider day in and day out after school, begin. After about a year, a morning glory appears and Amane and Aoi, piloting the glider, barely fail to reach it. Amane graduates as she’d promised the teachers, and thus leaves the club which is demoted to a circle, the glider confiscated and the garage bulldozed.

After a timeskip of one year, in which the club members have kept working to improve their skillsets, saved up the money for glider materials etc., they meet the Kazato sisters, Asa and Yoru. The older sister, Asa, heard about the glider and wants to join the club, with her younger sister Yoru tagging along to keep an eye on her. After hearing about their difficult situation, Asa offers the club members to use an old hangar, owned by her rich grandfather, to work on the glider. She joins the club, they sneakily steal the glider from the school, and start their work on building a new and improved glider based on blueprints left behind by Amane.

From here on out, the events depend on which route you ended up on. There’s five or six choices spread throughout the game, five routes for each of the girls as well as one “fail” route where Aoi ends up alone. A quick summary for each of the routes, in the order I’ve played them:

• Fail: Nothing happens. The game ends right away after the common route, with only one extra scene saying something along the lines of how they’ll keep chasing their dream of crossing over the morning glory. It’s almost comical how Asa and Yoru practically remain non-characters, Amane is hinted to still be there but never appears, and the problems with them missing an advisor for their club and having no runway to use are resolved in a sentence or two of narration.
• Asa: I don’t even remember, something-something romance.
• Yoru: not actually Yoru’s route, because the twins are both in love with Aoi and Yoru values her sister maybe a bit too much, so they just two-time it. Iirc both of the twin’s routes end up without them crossing the morning glory, and the twins keep running the club after Aoi, Kotori and Ageha graduated.
• Kotori: a somewhat decent romance between them unfolds, until an accident with the glider leaves Kotori… completely fine, but her parents are so worried they threaten to take her home. The drama around the accident reaches the school, leading to bully-teacher Tobioka taking the runway away from the club members, so they have no way to have the glider take off, should the morning glory appear. Aoi convinces Kotori’s father to let her take this last flight, they launch the glider via a slingshot and fulfill their dream of crossing over the morning glory. The ending felt like a lot of forced drama piling up at first, but was neatly and satisfyingly resolved, at least by the standards of the rest of the game.
• Amane: Aoi confesses to her right before she leaves, and an entire year passes without them exchanging even a word. We then find out Amane is so far out there that she thought of them as “going out” for this entire year, while Aoi thought that was her way of rejecting him. They make up and they eventually take the glider above the morning glory. I don’t remember what happened inbetween. To my surprise, we did actually meet Isuka towards the end of the game. There wasn’t much to her disappearing btw, she was hanging out at a hospital for recovery after her accident, and she felt too bad about what happened to talk to Amane after all that.
• Ageha: this one’s… weird to describe. Not sure how to even do it. Aoi eventually confesses to Ageha, but instead of having a “proper” relationship, they just have sex. Like, all the time. Everytime Aoi asks Ageha about her answer, she somehow dodges the question. Mostly by having sex again. In the end, we learn she has some sort of past trauma that I didn’t understand, but they still end up as a couple somehow and cross the morning glory.

That’s it.

My Thoughts

I would have liked to write a couple thousand words on each of the routes like I did for KoiChoco, if only… something happened in them. No, in general, I am not able to add much more detail to either the diverging routes or the common route because almost nothing happens. There’s very little I could say without straight up going through every scene one by one, or every minor event that ends up being completely irrelevant to the plot, the themes of the game, the characters and their relationships.

Sure, there’s some time spent on building character relationships, some of the drama I’ve mentioned before has actual (sometimes even decently done) buildup and eventual resolution. But in the end, I believe you could have easily cut two thirds of the game without losing literally anything at all. The majority of the game is spent on something something building/repairing/maintaining/practicing with the glider, school and dorm life, as well as some minor drama.

But before I go deeper into all my small and big gripes with the game, let’s talk about the positives first. It won’t take long.

The Positives

For some reason, the first thing coming to my mind, is how they never played Aoi’s dorm mother role for any of the cheap fanservice tropes it enables. Aoi never walked in on a naked girl in the shower or something like that, which surprises me to the point of confusion almost, because that’s kind of what I would have expected of this game. But in the end, IMHHW feels not too rich in terms of tropes you’re used to from modern anime, though it’s certainly weird and unpleasant in other ways I’ve rarely seen elsewhere.

Let’s see, what else… well considering that the game sort of lost my ability and willingness to care, it certainly managed to catch my interest again in a few places. Which is something I did not expect, and is a feat typically very difficult to accomplish I guess.
To be more precise, these moments were mostly on Kotori’s route. For one thing, their romance was decently done and somewhat cute. And the ending, while a bit too much and too sudden drama for my taste, managed to create a finale that had stakes and a certain level of excitement to it. Don’t get me wrong, none of this was particularly outstanding. It was at the level of a generic, formulaic Hollywood movie that does exactly what it’s supposed to at best. But at least those parts had me somewhat engaged and not dying of boredom, which is still kinda… leaps above the rest of the VN.

Now, I gotta say I’m pretty sure each of the character routes had its own theme and the way the route’s titular character develops. I don’t remember these, because they didn’t catch me in any way. I didn’t care, and the game wasn’t able to catch my interest. I can’t even tell you what Asa’s route, the first one I’ve played, was about from a thematic point of view, because I forgot. I’m not even sure whether this was due to the fact that the game had already lost my interest by that point and everything was just washing over me, or if the themes were badly executed. Though the fact that I was somewhat engaged again on Kotori’s route two routes later makes me lean towards the latter theory.

Wow, look at me ranting about the game in the Positives section again.

Anyway, the only other positive that comes to my mind right now is Ageha’s interactions with her little sister Hotaru on her route. They had some incredibly funny banter with each other, great dynamic, and were an all around entertaining vortex of chaos. It was quite refreshing, though it makes you wonder about their comparative lack of character during the remanining 85% of the game.

The Negatives

takes a very deep breath

Well, I don’t think I’ll have that much to say here. If I compared this to KoiChoco (which is the closest thing in terms of genre and scope that I’ve played), I had way more to say about it because the game had many good and many bad moments, and overall gave me something to work with. As mentioned before, most of the time nothing happens in IMHHW, and I’ve probably forgotten about half of the few times that something does happen.

That brings me to the first point: IMHHW feels bland and empty. I’ve said it before, you could cut away the majority of the game without losing anything. I mean, sure, some of that can be attributed to my lack of interest and care for whatever did happen. After all, I’m the kind of person who wouldn’t be able to watch a “pure” slice of life with no real drama or plot. And that’s what IMHHW is most of the time: the greater part of the game is spent on the everyday activities of our club members. Working on the glider, going to school, doing stuff around the dorm, activities with friends, etc. They are not relevant to the plot, so at best you could say that they build the relationships between the characters. But there isn’t much going on with either these characters or their relationships, aside from the obvious romance. And even that doesn’t make much progress until you get into one of the routes for the last third or so of a playthrough.

The only exception here is Kotori: she receives some decent development from the full-on annoying Tsundere she used to be, to a decent character, and I can appreciate that this doesn’t happen straight through a romance lense as it does with almost all Tsundere characters ever. All in all, that’s pretty much the only semi-interesting character development you’re going to see in the game. I don’t remember much meaningful development going on in the routes, though I guess Yoru must have had some to end up in a relationship in the first place…

Perhaps most notable is our main character Aoi. He’s about as empty as they go, aside from some bouts of egocentrism and meddling in other’s business. You might say the latter isn’t unusual for your stereotypical “nice guy” who can’t leave a damsel in distress alone… except other media tend to set up those situations where “he saves her” in a more believable way. Aoi, on the other hand, comes off as a creep, but more on that later.
Nothing was done with his character. Maybe I missed something, but it was really nothing at all. There’s his entire backstory, a broken athlete coming back defeated to his hometown, after an accident stole his dream from him… only to find a new dream to chase, in the sky - and the glider he builds with his friends. Quite poetic, isn’t it? Except again, you can remove his entire backstory and nothing of value was lost. It’s not like that doesn’t make for at least a decent setup, but it is never used for anything. Sometimes he’s cycling and mentions how he has to be careful not to strain his leg too much, making me go “ah right, that was a thing”. Sometimes it comes up and is connected to whatever is going on thematically right now, but never in a way that left an impression or… well, even a memory, because I know that it happened but I couldn’t even tell you when or how.

It’s a shame, because the setup certainly has something to it. And I feel like it may have been possible even, to make something truly great out of his interactions with Kotori, due to how they both had life-changing accidents, ended up depressed, yet found a (new) dream to chase, both of them in their own unique way.
Aoi, having to overcome the emotional burden his previous dream has become, to open himself up to something new. And Kotori, who had, in a way, given up on life, who has to learn that even though she’s lost so much and many doors in life have closed for her, there’s still so much she can do, and ways for her to dream again.
After that synopsis, I’d be excited to see how these two characters end up affecting and playing off of each other. But nothing of the sort happens. It seems like an obvious choice, but, as I mentioned, Aoi’s background is never used for anything thematically. He just got really into gliders, and the fact that he was initially depressed and empty when he returned to Kazegaura is almost swept under the rug. It sometimes pops up again in the most random places, and that’s it.

But since I’ve talked about Aoi already, let’s quickly go through the other characters.

• Kotori: I don’t think I have anything else to say about her. Her development from annoying Tsundere to decent character wasn’t bad, and her still haughty attitude, which would normally annoy me, is nicely counterbalanced by her friends making fun of her. All in all, she might be the best character in IMHHW if you ask me.
• Ageha: the childhood friend, although a bit more interesting than your average childhood friend/love interest crossover, she’s still not an interesting character that the game does anything with.
• Amane: the airhead genius who is almost too far out there to live on her own. Not that I have anything against characters with a little bit of crazy or whatever, but I feel like they’ve taken her too far. Add the fact that they gave her massive boobs and it gets to the point where she feels like less of a character, and more like a comedy device x fetish realization crossbreed. In the end, it’s hard to take her seriously, though at least she can be funny at times.
• Asa and Yoru: the twin sisters, who I’m not grouping because they’re similar characters, but because they do have a lot in common on a more meta level. Like how they seem to be there just to pick up loli fans, and are otherwise probably the most uninteresting characters in the game, or at least the most uninteresting choices. As I said before, I’m sure they had their own themes or something on their routes, but I completely forgot about it. In fact, I remember starting Kotori’s route after the twins and being impressed how good it was. Kotori’s route isn’t even exactly good, but it’s decent enough that it made me realize how bad the twins' routes really were. In the end, they feel very ‘tacked on’ and even more bland and boring than the rest of the game. Also, there’s sex scenes for the main character(s) on every route, which takes theirs to another level of disgusting…

There’s a couple more recurring (side) characters. One of them is An-chan, Ageha’s and Aoi’s ‘big bro’. He’s a decent character, and has some deeper ties to some of the events of the past. These are only revealed fairly late, which was perhaps the only bit of interesting and unexpected (in a good way) story progression in the entire novel.

We also have Tobioka-sensei, who has it out for the Soaring Club. You could call him the bad guy, a bully of a teacher. He later gets his “redemption” on Amane’s route, where we learn that his former favorite student, Isuka, who was part of the Soaring Club, retired after an accident. So he keeps blaming the club, hating them with a passion. We learn that he even held back a letter from Isuka to Amane, which made Amane think she disappeared without a word. Tobioka later breaks down crying, regretting what he did.
Truly heartbreaking. Now if only he wasn’t an asshole breaking the Soaring Club’s equipment with his own hands and also otherwise an unbearably arrogant prick.

Then there’s Masatsugu, uh I mean “Ma boi” who doesn’t deserve that name. We don’t talk about Ma boi. No wait, we will… later.

Next is Kanako, the secret best girl who didn’t even get a route. Which is fair, because Aoi doesn’t deserve her. Remember when I said Kotori might be the best character in IMHHW? Kanako is a worthy contender. As a side character, she doesn’t get nearly as much exposure as the others of course, but she’s there throughout the entire game. She’s sort of the Onee-san of the dorm residents, and despite not taking part in any of the Soaring Club’s activities, she still supports them with her connections, settling disputes within the club or making fun of Aoi. Lots of subtle and somewhat well done and interesting characterization going on with her.

There’s three more girls living in the dorm, but they’re nothing more than filler.
Last one on the list is Akari, the student council president who’s kind of a Tsundere for Aoi, but in this weird and aggravating way where she appears to be attracted to him while simultaneously despising him as a person for no apparent reason, even though there’s plenty to choose from.

Most of the characters form this one big friend group, but somehow they don’t feel like friends to be honest. They don’t have meaningful interactions, and the way they sometimes treat each other seems to display a general lack of care and empathy for one another.

By the way, there’s no (mutual) romance in IHMMW that does not include Aoi. I always find that a bit disappointing to see, because side character couples, at least in the few media I’ve seen where they exist, tend to have very solid romances with basically no exceptions. There are some in the DLC, but more on that later.

Finally, IMHHW has several moments that… well, I guess they don’t give the sort of impression they were supposed to. Several of them end up being somewhat creepy or otherwise showing the characters in a very bad light, which can be immersion breaking or estrange the reader from them. See section #4 for a compilation of such moments.

Dreams of the Sky

One of IMHHW’s main themes is about chasing one’s dreams, even if they seem unrealistic, and more specifically about gliders and flying. All of this fell almost completely flat for me.

On the topic of chasing dreams, the game follows the Soaring club members as they face the harsh reality of how difficult it is to build a functioning glider, coupled with repeated setbacks thanks to Tobioka’s meddling. We often find the club members depressed on those occasions, but they always end up pulling through somehow.
I couldn’t point out anything in particular that bothered me here. My best guess is that building a glider seems a bit too far out there, too unpalpable to be able to relate in any meaningful way. It’s only made possible through the introduction of the seemingly all-knowing genius that is Amane. She designs a glider from scratch, writes a flight simulator herself, etc. allowing the Soaring club to face this task that would otherwise be impossible for a bunch of students.
The entire process of building the glider is sort of just there, it’s not like we get a proper feeling for how it’s slowly coming together. And otherwise the only roadblocks are whatever Tobioka places in their way. This often ends up feeling like forced drama, meant to raise the stakes somehow by adding additional challenges to overcome, but mostly made me sigh in annoyance as I realize this is going to drag out even longer.

The game tried to spark the reader’s interest in gliders and aviation, but that mostly failed. I generally appreciate when pure entertainment media try to teach the consumer a little about whatever is at the heart of that specific media, and it’s obvious the IMHHW writers did their homework about glider construction, aerodynamics and what not. But unfortunately, the factual information about gliders mostly came in the shape of extended info dumps when you least expect them. Sometimes you go 10 hours without any of the hard facts at all, and then there’s suddenly this ten minute explanation about what forward-swept wings are, followed by another one only an hour later. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an interesting detail, but nothing that warrants such a long scene that feels almost commpletely decoupled from the rest of the game, only to explain something that could surely have been integrated more nicely and explained within three sentences.

Finally, the game wasn’t able to infect me with its fascination for the sky. Again, I have a hard time pointing to any specific reason for that. Perhaps it was the fact that I wasn’t invested in the game or its characters and their motivation. Perhaps a VN isn’t the best medium to confer such a feeling. But after watching The Summit of the Gods recently, I know that, at least, it can be done within media, short of experiencing it for yourself.
This way though, the flight scenes in IMHHW ended up being among the most boring scenes in the game for me.

They tried to channel this fascination towards a more concrete goal by introducing the morning glory, but again, weren’t able to catch my interest in any way. Like the gliding in general, maybe this feels too far away to be able to relate for me, and the morning glory way too arbitrary as a symbol.
It’s not like I don’t get it at all. The goal exists mainly so there can be a way, and its significance comes less from any meaning inherent to the weather phenomenon called Morning Glory, but from the effort it took to get there, plus all the smaller details of how this connects with each of the Soaring Club members' lives.

There’s lots of pseudo-psychological bullshit happening on every route when it comes to the character drama… at least that’s what it looked like to me. Nothing I could relate to in any way, and sometimes expressed in ways that made me wonder what the fuck I’ve been reading for the past five minutes. Like… did any of these sentences even make sense?

To sum it up, IMHHW is a rather long game (vndb rates it at 45h) but it has almost nothing to offer in terms of plot, thematically it falls mostly flat and the characters, far from making up for its other shortcomings, almost drag it down further.
I believe that many of the things I mentioned here probably wouldn’t have bothered me if the rest of the game was more convincing… but alas, that’s not the case so here we are! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Peak IMHHW

The following is a collection of moments where the game presents itself at its peak - mostly by alienating the reader when the characters suddenly turn creepy, or rarely being unintendedly funny.

Asa’s Cut
Starting off with something tame, there was a scene on Asa’s route where she cut her finger while cooking with Aoi. Being the gentleman he is, he immediately comes to the rescue - by sucking her finger. After the bleeding stopped, he handed her a band-aid and let her put it on herself. This is so dumb I couldn’t stop laughing for a bit when that happened.
Sucking her finger was both weird and completely unnecessary. She could easily do this herself, and in reality, she should. Sucking someone else’s open wound means exchanging bacteria. He took in her blood, and his saliva most likely entered her bloodstream. For this very reason, this is a harmful trope. Y’know, not considering the fact that sucking someone else’s finger without their consent and no necessity is weird af.

Honestly, if it were intended that way, the scene might be an amazing illustration of Aoi’s character. He does the weird and more “stimulating” thing (sucking her finger), but he does not help her to put on the band-aid, which I imagine might be a bit hard with onlyone hand. So ultimately he “helps” her with the thing she doesn’t need help with but which leaves the deeper impression, while not helping her with the potentially difficult part. He takes the spotlight, but contributes nothing of value. One might call it a perfect ego-trip.

Masatsugu at the Beach
In an attempt to keep this as inconsistent as possible, let’s continue with perhaps the worst one of all.
In one of the beach episodes, the club members notice at some point that they aren’t alone. Turns out Ma boi was sitting in a bush, stalking them. Most likely to see the girls in their swimsuits. He even happened to have a camera with him. The girls jokingly punish him by throwing beachballs at him. Ageha later comments that he probably “just felt lonely”.

The entire scene is a level of what-the-fuck that I cannot even put into words. I mean, someone stalking girls at the beach and secretly taking photos of them is already creepy as hell. This is the kind of person I’d want nothing to do with in real life. But IMHHW takes this a step further, since Ma boi isn’t stalking just anyone, but his (best?) friends… what the hell dude. This is a friendship-cancelled moment if I’ve ever seen one. To top it all off, IMHHW shows once more how little self-awareness it has through Ageha’s comment at the end. Sure, he might “feel lonely”. That’s certainly somewhat believable given the context. But this act way overshoots a certain line, and that’s not even considering the fact that he brought a camera to keep him company… because he just felt lonely, right?

Thinking back to this scene, I’m still confused. I mean, there’s no reason (other than this scene) to believe that the game is trying to present Ma boi as this disgusting creep type of character. But on the the other hand, I cannot imagine a sane human being coming up with this scene, thinking that anyone would go “haha yea poor Ma boi felt lonely, oh that’s funny” at this.

Aoi’s Meddling
There’ll be several moments here… I can’t go through all of them in detail. As mentioned previously, Aoi is meddlesome. This is not unexpected, it’s perhaps one of the most defining character traits of your factory-made romance protagonist. He can’t leave a damsel in distress alone. Women can’t fend for themselves after all, and how is a character like Aoi with no redeeming features supposed to attract them, if not by saving them when they need it the most?

There’s one scene where Yoru, who is notoriably anti-social (or just can’t be bothered I guess) is trying to get away from a group of girls pressuring her into joining a party or something. Aoi eventually decides this is enough and steps in by telling them she’s a member of his club and she can’t come to the party due to club activities. The girls finally show some understanding and leave Yoru alone. Yoru then complains that she’ll have to pretend being a member of the Soaring Club for the rest of the year, but eventually thanks Aoi for his help.

This is another one of those scenes I don’t get… Yoru is very clearly depicted as a “strong and independent woman”. She doesn’t need Aoi’s “help” to refuse an invitation to a party she doesn’t want to go to. Moreover, Aoi’s lie only camouflages the deeper issue, namely that she has no interest in interacting with these other girls. Situations like this are likely to pop up again until Yoru makes this clear to them, and judging from her character, I have no doubt that she’s capable of doing that. Sure you could argue that she’d probably communicate that in a way that would make these girls hate her, but honestly… that’s her style and I doubt she’d be bothered by that. Finally, she clearly stated that Aoi’s lie will spell more trouble down the road for her, since she’s either forced to admit that it was a lie, or to continue pretending that she’s part of the Soaring Club. The latter shouldn’t be too hard, considering that she joins most club activities anyway, but it’s about the fact that Aoi put her in an uncomfortable situation. It’s entirely his fault, but she’s the one suffering the consequences. The fact that he straight up covered her mouth when she tried to object makes it even worse. Ugh
And topping it all off is the fact that Yoru even thanks him for his help. This feels out of character honestly, and seems more like the writers conveniently bending the characters to whatever fits their romance narrative.

There’s many similar cases throughout the story. Close to the beginning, Aoi finds out that Kotori wants to quit their school and go back home. She got a signed letter from her parents that would permit her to do so. Aoi takes the letter and hides it until he convinced her to stay. That’s like… if she wants to quit, you have no right to stop her dude??

In fact, IMHHW makes ample use of Kotori’s disability so Aoi can be the hero saving his damsel in distress. That’s a special kind of disgusting honestly. There was one scene towards the start of the game where Kotori fell into the bathtub and had a panic attack. Aoi came rushing in, lifted her out of the water and the naked girl clung to him, sobbing, until she calmed down. Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong exactly with the details of what happened here. This could be a moment to show that people with a disability like hers have a tough life, and that even normal everyday activities like taking a bath can pose challenging… or to show that our Tsundere heroine Kotori has a soft side, as well as her own problems to deal with. But the way it was presented, as well as the context of how the entire rest of the game has Aoi treat her as “<girl> that is very dependent on him and partially controlled by him”… yea, this doesn’t leave a good aftertaste.
This is also the first scene where you get a glimpse of naked boobs, at least in the uncensored version of the game. Y’know, just to drive home the point of how much the game respects its female characters.

The second scene in the game has Aoi lifting Kotori out of her wheelchair (to repair it) the first time he meets her, without asking her for consent to touch her or anything first. There’s other situations where he pushes her wheelchair in a direction when she clearly states she wants to go somewhere else (and would be clearly able to push it there on her own). These are things I can take lightly because it’s just a VN and I don’t have any close relatives or friends with comparable disabilities, but I can only imagine how jarring this could be to read for someone in a similar situation as Kotori.

I guess one could possibly make an interesting analysis of how the game portraits Kotori’s disability.
On one hand, she mostly gets by well on her own. She can push her wheelchair herself and apparently has rather impressive arm muscles due to that. She’s mostly a strong character able to live alone away from her family, at the dormitory to which she moved of her own free will. She even becomes president of the Soaring Club down the line and she clearly contributes to the production and maintenance of the glider and its components, chasing her dreams with a strength and confidence that could be inspiring.

On the other hand, she has to be the damsel in distress for Aoi to save her several times throughout the novel. He frequently ignores her wishes and instead forces her along, as seen by him pushing her wheelchair somewhere he wants to go, or taking away her choice of leaving the school. Add to this the fact that she’s introduced to us as she’s standing atop a hill, helpless and on her own, crying because her wheelchair won’t move due to a flat tyre. The very first impression of her is how she can’t live on her own and needs Aoi to save her.
To be honest, the contrast to how she’s later portraied as cold (turning Tsundere) at the dormitory is interesting, but one might also see it as nothing but “bait” for her soft side, for the romance to come.

Finally, there’s that scene on Kotori’s route where she had an accident with the glider and her parents try to tear her away from the Soaring Club and take her back home. When her friends tried to convince her father to leave her, he said: “don’t involve her in the dreams of normal people”.
Holy shit, what an appalling thing to say to your disabled daughter. For context, her parents are otherwise depicted as certainly overprotective and overattached to their daughter, but undoubtedly well-meaning, good people. This comment however shows an utter disrespect and belittlement of people with disabilities.
The game does go through an arc of convincing the father that his daughter needs her freedom and be able to chase her dreams etc. which he finally accepts, but that didn’t leave much of an impression on me, compared to the quote from earlier which I will forever remember as perhaps the most hurtful thing I’ve ever heard a parent say to their child in any context ever.

Oh well, that’s all on Kotori and Aoi’s meddling I think.

Here’s some more questionable things that happened:
On Ageha’s route, Aoi went on a date with her little sister Hotaru, so he could ask her about Ageha’s secrets. What a shitty thing to do to with a friend, and abusing the fact that Hotaru has feelings for him is also not cool.
He even went on another date/swimsuit episode with her later to make Ageha jealous. Wow dude.

There was a scene where the Soaring Club wanted the help of the Touring Club, a bunch of guys who basically work as mechanics on the club’s car collection (let’s not question this). The only condition for them to offer their help to the Soaring Club… was for Kotori to show up at their club and shake hands with them, because they’re starved for female attention. In that scene, Kotori was struggling a lot to suppress her disgust. She eventually burst and told them they’re sweaty, greasy, stinky and what not, at which point they (I quote) “awoke to something strange” and started revering her as their queen.
While the ending is kind of funny, the entire depiction of the boys seems incredibly cliché and disrespectful, and I’m sure that people in the highschool-mechanics-bros line of business, for which I have only the greatest respect, deserve better treatment.

There was one scene I don’t remember, like, at all, so I’m just gonna paste the bullet spoint from my notes here and let it speak for itself:
Hotaru: “it’s sort of scary walking next to you.” Aoi: get’s a boner

Flight Diary

So while I was at it, I also played “Flight Diary”, the DLC to the game which contains a collection of 6+1 short stories, taking place on various routes and at various times. I’ll make this a quick summary/impressions write-up for each one.

The Kazato Sisters: A Day in the Life

This was the one I played first, because, naturally, I was the least excited about it. I mean, it’s about the twins, what were you expecting?
It’s a short story of only about 30 minutes, taking place at some point not long after the end of the Asa & Yoru route, showing, as the title says, a simple day in their lives. The twins are still living together at Flying Fish Manor with Aoi.

There’s no greater plot here, we simply see them acting as a couple triple, reading manga together, playing games, making a little firework at night etc. The entire story carries this sort of strange vibe where they’re acutely aware of the unusual nature of their relationship, how fleeting this summer is and that their lives may become way more complicated in the near future, but for now they’re enjoying it to the fullest.

To my surprise, I enjoyed this short story. In part this can surely be attributed to it being very short, but seeing them act as a believable triple, and with the entire story permeated by this vibe I described… it made for a unique experience.

The Day I found my Wings

This short story dives into Kotori’s diary, replaying some of the game’s greatest moments through her lense. I don’t remember anything about this.

I think I was slightly bored since it was mostly repetition and Kotori’s perspective barely added to her character, though in some scenes it was nice to see. Especially further down the road where her route and thus romance begins, getting her take made at least their personal romance story feel a little more complete.

Inherited Wings: Soaring Club Epilogue

This short story takes place after the end of Kotori’s route. It follows Aoi and Kotori through their last weeks at their school as they’re struggling to find worthy successors who will keep the Soaring Club running after they graduated. At the same time, both of them, but especially Kotori, are struggling with anxiety about the future, and choosing what it is they want to do after school.

We get to see a lot of Isuka in this story, as she often joins the Soaring Club for activities, and constantly pesters Kotori if she would sell her the glider once they graduate, which Kotori vehemently refuses. After various difficulties, back and forth etc., they eventually come up with the idea to found the Kazegaura Soaring Association, which would be like the Soaring Club, but not bound to the school, so the former members would still be able to fly with the glider, help with maintenance etc., and the Soaring Club from the school could persist as part of the association, now without their previous struggles of finding advisors, people with the necessary qualifications etc. This also fulfills Isuka’s wish of getting a glider to fly. In a big finale with another flight and all, they garner the support of Kazegaura’s mayor and the twin’s grandfather, who will let them use the garage etc. and give them official support as a sort of Kazegaura community development project.

This nicely resolves all the problems arout the club’s continued existence, Isuka’s wish to fly, Aoi’s and Kotori’s desire to stay in touch with this part of their lives etc. Additionally, Kotori is back on track and found what she wants to do in life. I forgot what it was.

Overall I enjoyed this part because it tread some new ground thematically (anxiety about the future) but also added some new elements, like this new goal they’re working towards which nicely resolves a lot of problems, as well as the fact they introduced Isuka as a proper character with a meaningful motivation and role in the story.

It still didn’t leave too much of an impression as you may have noticed. Ehe

Wings of Dreams: Soaring Club Prologue

This is not (or rather not just) a prologue. It’s a continuation of Amane’s route, with frequent flashbacks exploring her relationship with Isuka and what club-life was like back in the days when it was only her, Isuka and Tatsuya. It mostly features the developing romance between Isuka and Tatsuya, with Aoi and Amane as their friends trying to play some sort of role models for them, to show them what a romantic relationship looks like. This goes exactly how you’d think with Amane being Amane.

There was some good comedy on this route, and as I’ve said before, I’m a big sucker for side-character romances so that was nice, but that’s about it. As far as I remember anyway. I’m getting seriously worried about my memory.

New Wings: Akari

This is Akari’s route, and it’s similar in structure and length to the other routes.

It wasn’t anything remarkable but not horribly bad either, though a bit strange how there was no meaningful conflict with Ma boi. That said, it didn’t feel as tacked-on as I thought it would.

Inexpressible Emotion: Hotaru

This is the route of Ageha’s little sister Hotaru. I don’t know why this exists and I will not talk about it.

Seriously though, I literally don’t remember what happened. Perhaps I should have taken notes or not written this over half a year after playing… oh well.

Unfamiliar Answer: Kanako

Best girl finally gets her own route, let’s go!

Unfortunately, it starts out in the worst way possible, with Kanako waking up in Aoi’s bed and wondering if something happened. Just why?

Nothing happened, but it turns into this somewhat entertaining cat-and-mouse game where Kanako is trying to find out from Aoi what happened while he’s confused about her behavior, and then eventually there’s romance. I think that’s about it.

Again, I don’t remember many details, but the route did benefit from having some scenes from Kanako’s perspective, and the fact that she maintained her character pretty well. I was sort of expecting them to bend her for romance.

Oh but before you go, take one scene just to drive home that Aoi didn’t deserve her. They were on a date at a cafe together, Kanako holds some sort of motivational speech for him to resolve whatever he’s been struggling with. He thanks her, gets up and leaves right away to apply to practice whatever she told him about. She sits alone at the table, food in front of her, and without cash to pay for it because Aoi said he’d invite her. Good job dude.

Conclusion

Whew, and that’s it. I somehow feel like the article has gotten very long despite me not saying much. It’s still shorter than KoiChoco at least.

This is my official goodbye to IMHHW, a game that has accompanied me for about 3 years now. I will not miss it, but I guess I will still nostalgically associate it with the majority of my bachelor studies. Thanks to the few people who accompanied my videos on Youtube and had discussions about the game with me, which honestly made this a much more engaging experience than it would have been otherwise.

Unfortunately, I think the article suffered quite a bit from the facts that it took me years to finish this game so some of the parts I wrote about happened a long time ago, I did not take proper notes while playing, and spent almost half a year writing (or postponing) this article for no good reason even after finishing the game and the DLC. There’s undoubtedly gaps in my account of the events of the game and its DLC, and perhaps even one or the other misrepresented fact. Oh well, so be it.

See you next time, and I hope it won’t take nearly as long.

PS.: Please appreciate how I picked the club picture without the twins as the thumbnail, thank you.