For my tenth blog post, I’m returning to the roots of this blog: KoiChoco.

…okay that actually just happened by chance. In any case, as you may know I’ve watched the KoiChoco anime last year and also wrote a blog article on my impressions. The anime was far from the best I’d ever watched, but it was sufficiently entertaining. And whenever I watch an anime that is at least decent, I get interested in the source material. So I recently installed the visual novel, the original Japanese version, which also doubles as great Japanese practice by the way. Just like with the anime, I wanted to write about the experience, as I realized while playing that I have quite a few things I wanted to talk about. Let’s get right into it.

The General

Overall, the VN was fairly enjoyable. I played all routes and had a good amount of fun with that. Towards the end, it got a bit boring, not because the content was worse, but simply because the various routes somehow feel… too similar I guess? But first of all, here’s some background:

KoiChoco (or “Love, Elections and Chocolate” / 恋と選挙とチョコレート for the full title) follows the main character, Yuuki, and the food research club (Shokken for short) he’s a part of at his highschool. The club is basically just a place to get together for this group of friends, hang out and enjoy some snacks at the school’s expenses. At the start of the game, the next student council elections are coming up and the strongest candidate, Shinonome Satsuki, is promising to improve the school’s financial situation. To the shock of the Shokken’s members, that includes the abolition of clubs that don’t do anything meaningful, such as theirs. The Shokken’s members decide that the best way to avoid this, is to win the student council election with a candidate of their own. Yuuki is democratically chosen for the role.

Structure of the VN

From here on out, the VN follows the Shokken on their two weeks long journey, through the preparations for the elections, the preliminaries and finally the main elections. Structurally, the first week roughly corresponds to the common route, while the second week branches off into one of the five different routes. Each route corresponds to one of the love interests for Yuuki, including

• Sumiyoshi Chisato, the girl with the orange twintails. She’s Yuuki’s childhood friend and likes to introduce him to others as her property.
• Kiba Mifuyu, Chisato’s and Yuuki’s best friend, with dull blond, almost grey hair. She’s a somewhat sickly girl, one year older than her classmates since she had to take a year off due to extensive hospital stays and surgery.
• Morishita Michiru, a quiet (cat) girl. She was introduced to us in the second scene of the game, through a panty shot… oof. In any case, she joined the Shokken in that very scene, making her its newest member.
• Aomi Isara, an economic scholarship student (keitokusei for short). Her family is poor and, like most keitokusei, she’s bullied at school, though she hides it with her cheerful personality.
• Shinonome Satsuki, Yuuki’s rival in the election, typical “cool beauty” archetype with her long brown hair. A calm and righteous girl, aiming to become student council president after she realized their expenses are severely unbalanced through her work on the school’s financial affairs bureau. Also the little sister of Shinonome Hazuki, the Shokken’s advisor.

For the first playthrough, the game forces you into Chisato’s route. This didn’t really bother me since I’m a completionist at heart and was going to do all routes anyway. After that, I went with the order Aomi -> Mifuyu -> Shinonome -> Morishita. By the way, I’ll refer to Shinonome junior as Shinonome and Shinonome senior as Hazuki, since that feels the most natural after playing the game.

The game actually has a rather consistent progression in terms of in-game time. As I mentioned before, we follow Yuuki and the Shokken for two weeks until the final election at the very end. Except for the various endings, the game goes through every single day one by one, ending each on a short transition screen with the logo. The game doesn’t hit you in the face with it (“3 days remaining”) or anything like that, so it’s actually easy to miss when you’re not paying attention, but I really liked it. It gives off this feeling of steady progress through the plot. That also makes it relatively easy to predict these, I’ll call them chapter ends, which always make for a great point to take a break or stop reading for the day. That was particularly noticable compared to IMHHW which was very unpredictable, sometimes cramming 3 hours of content into a single “chapter”, and sometimes just 10 minutes, over the course of several or just one in-game days and with no consistency whatsoever. That was especially painful since I recorded that game and never knew how much time to plan for one recording session.

The skipping was unfortunately a bit painful in some parts. Due to the somewhat rigid strucure of the game, there is quite a lot of overlap between the different routes. I mentioned that the first week corresponds to the common route and the second week branches off, but the actual cut is not nearly as clean. The second week still contains some election related scenes that are exactly the same on all routes. Then there’s a couple scenes around the middle of the game that are almost the same, but there’s just one line off here and there that were adapted to the changed circumstances. This means that sometimes you let the skip do its thing on your second or third playthrough, but then it stops five times in one scene just because there’s a single line differing from what you’d already seen on the other routes. Also, you’re apparently just not allowed to skip at all during the first four or five days of the game, which meant I had to manually click through it all when I needed to redo the early choices on my third playthrough. Pain.

Before we move on, please note that from here on out you may encounter mild to heavy spoilers for the game’s and anime’s plot. I will neither mark nor hide them, so proceed at your own discretion.

Election business

The election business itself was handled surprisingly well. For background, the school where this takes place is huge, numbering about 6000 students and feels, at least in terms of internal affairs, almost like a mini-state. The elections reflect a lot of the problems that we see in today’s politics, the majority of which are presented decently. A couple of them still feel a bit over the top considering how this is just some small scale school politics.

In any case, if you thought that Yuuki would just win the election through the power of friendship, you’re wrong. There’s three major institutions at the school: the financial affairs bureau, the general affairs bureau and the bureau of public order (BPO). All of these are run completely by students, and I’ll refer to them as “the big three” from here on. Typically, the student council president comes from one of these three institutions. There’s a preliminary election round one week before the main election, and every candidate who doesn’t collect at least 10% of the total votes cannot run for the main election. The game tells us it’s been 7 years since the last time that a candidate from outside the big three even passed the prelims. As such, the odds don’t seem to be in Yuuki’s favor. That said, they are offered support by Mouri, the current student council president and member of the BPO. They suffered some heavy setbacks during Mouri’s term and have decided that they have no chance to win the next election. For them it would be preferable to have an independent candidate, such as Yuuki, in power. That would also make it easier to win the election next year, without one of the other two institutions having an established candidate. Mouri asks for the Shokken’s cooperation and offers them the votes of the 400 members of the BPO, as well as strategic advice in return. The Shokken members accept his proposal.

Mouri’s support suddenly puts them in a spot where passing the prelims seems quite realistic. They only need another 200 votes. They do the obvious smart move, visiting all the other clubs who are affected by Shinonome’s planned budget cuts, and ask for their support, as well as asking all their friends and classmates for votes. In the end, they barely make it past the 10% hurdle of the prelims. Another independent candidate dropped out here, gaining only 9.8%, thus putting Yuuki into a great spot to soak up another 10% of votes. It continues after this in a fashion that seems logical and quite believable. Just like the two other candidates, he makes speeches on the school grounds every day before and after school. He’s emphasizing the fact that he is an independent candidate, not part of the establishment like the big three, which is a somewhat empty point on its own, but a fairly effective tactic both in real life and in the game. Furthermore, he realizes that the big three enjoy some privileges when it comes to the election, and pointing out these unfair advantages got him the support of even more students. I won’t go deeper into how the election continued for now, since this actually depends a lot on which route you go. Some of the routes investigate the school and its inherent political problems from various angles and focus on completely different problems. The overall strategy of the Shokken and their election program also change accordingly. I was actually just expecting the focus to be on a different girl on each route, so this was quite the welcome surprise. I’ll go into the details of the politics of each route in their respective sections below.

There’s just one last thing I wanted to mention here that bothered me a little: you may have noticed that I haven’t talked about the other candidate from the big three, the candidate of the general affairs bureau. His name is Tatsumi, but he’s a bit of a weirdo and it’s clear that Shinonome is the “real” rival here, since’s she’s consistently about 10% ahead of Tatsumi over the course of the entire election. That said, while Shinonome’s election manifesto includes a wide variety of topics, which mostly seem quite reasonable and thought through, the focus is actually on the finances and that is also her main pitch. She has a good number of secured votes from the members of the financial affairs bureau as well as lots of horny male fans, but aside from that? It seems weird that she gets so much support. I just find it hard to believe that students would get this excited over proposed improvements to the school’s finances. Especially since, due to the nature of the problem, this mainly means budget cuts. While it hurts to say that, you win votes more with flashy slogans and fancy proposals than with necessary, but not nearly as flashy, reforms of the underlying institutions and their inner workings. At least that’s my perception of politics. Moving on.

The Comedy

KoiChoco had some decent comedy and I did find myself laughing out loud a couple times. That said, most of the game is just slighly amusing with a lot of obscure stuff happening that is never explained, as well as a couple running gags.

One of these is the fact that Yuuki seems to see things that apparently no one else sees. As an example, Tatsumi is always wearing a bag over his head, with a face sketched onto it. We never even see his real face. That is pretty weird and I have no idea why it happens. I guess it could be a metaphor of some kind, but if so, I don’t get it. Also, I don’t think the game is that subtle. When Yuuki mentioned that “Tatsumi’s face is weird” or something like that, Chisato rebukes him: “He may not be handsome, but that’s just rude Yuuki”.

There’s also Mifuyu always making references to some really old manga, toys etc. And every time someone asks why she knows that much about old stuff, she just says “I guess it’s because I’m a year older than everyone”, and proceeds to giggle. I’m actually not a fan of this one, perhaps because I don’t get the references, but also because it’s always played perfectly straight and at some point it gets a) boring, and b) hard to believe her friends are still surprised by this.

I do like the subtlety of a lot of people calling Yuuki “Ooshima” (his last name is Oojima) and how he corrects them at the start of the game, but at some point just gives up on that.

For some of these though, I guess your mileage may vary. Yume, the only male member of the Shokken aside from Yuuki, is clearly gay. But what you’re more likely to remember him for, is being a creep. He just drops those random comments ouf of nowhere, such as “Yuuki, your nape is looking quite sexy today”. Or when asked what he wants to eat, he says he’d like “jogurt and a sausage” or something like that. At some point the Shokken members have a sleepover at the school and Yuuki and Yume, being the only boys, share a room. Then at night Yume uses Yuuki as his bodypillow, and Yuuki is actually unable to protect himself from that, since Yume just so happens to be a Judo blackbelt. Alright.

That one got almost unintentionally comedic again when there’s that scene where the members are in the school’s open air bath (basically an Onsen), properly split into guys and girls of course. Yuuki is just sitting in the bath, desperately trying to suppress the horny while the girls are playing, splashing around etc. on the other side of the wall. At some point Yume says “sounds like they’re having fun” in the most innocent way you can imagine, while the girls are busy loudly comparing their boobs.
“Is that all you’re feeling?”, Yuuki asks him, surprised.
“What else would I be feeling?”, Yume answers, visibly confused.
At least he was the only decent person in this scene. I guess Yuuki was supposed to be the relatable one here, but that sort of thinking just weirds me out honestly.

Since we’re talking representation already: there’s also Shiohama, the reporter… person. Everytime they appear in a scene they seem to switch genders, or at least switch between the male and female school uniforms, hairstyles, as well as putting on/taking off their glasses. The first couple times Yuuki asked them about that, but Shiohama denied everything. It was quite believable and I was on my way to thinking that’s another one of those cases where Yuuki just “sees things”. But towards the end of the first route, Yuuki flat out asked:
“So which one is the real you?”
Shiohama smiles, and answers along the lines of “Neither one is fake, and both of them are the real me.”
While I usually have trouble relating to LGBTQ anything, this was a genuinely strong and wholesome moment. I was quite surprised. But of course Yuuki made sure to get us back on track, going out of that scene thinking “Damn, now I still don’t know which one’s the real one.”
Did the VN just try to devalidate this genuinely good moment they had only seconds earlier? What? I honestly don’t get the intentions here. It feels like they had two different writers with wildly different ideas writing this scene together.

There’s a couple more moments in the novel that just… threw me off. For example, there was that one occassion where the Shokken members wanted to get some information from Shinonome. Knowing that she’s a huge fan of the “Oojima rolls” that Yuuki bakes, they decided to send him to bait her with one. The two meet outside of the school, he hands over the roll, she eats happily, and then asks him what he wants in return. Surprised that she saw through him, he asks for the information they want. She apologizes and says that unfortunately she’s not allowed to disclose that information just yet. That one was obviously out of Yuuki’s power. He walks off from their meeting spot afterwards, and halfway back he encounters the other Shokken members. They make it clear they heard every piece of the conversation. When Yuuki asks how they know, Non-chan (one of the club members, basically crazy researcher/loli hybrid) casually reveals that she’d put a little device with a microphone on Yuuki, and listened to everything they’ve said.
… what the hell? As an IT person myself, this is absolutely unacceptable. It’s a crazy infringement on the privacy and personal space of one of their closest friends. For me, this would be a lowkey friendship cancelled moment.

It doesn’t completely stop there, they actually blame him for not “accomplishing his mission” next. That’s obvious, but if they listened to the conversation they should also know it’s none of his fault. If Shinonome says she can’t disclose anything, then what’s he supposed to do? Threaten her?
They continued to decide that he needs some sort of punishment. This part is obviously meant sort of comedically, they don’t seem to be actually mad at him, but still…

Also, there’s almost the entirety of Yume… as I said, he’s a creep. He’s not exactly a bad person, in fact, he’s probably the most reliable member of the entire club and also seems to be a cool guy… on the few occassions where he’s not a fucking creep. The majority of the time, he’s the kind of uncomfortable, off-putting person that I would do my best to keep my distance from in real life. Reminds me a little of Origami from DAL, though not that bad.

Chisato’s Route

The first route that we’ll take on. On the romance side of the route, the plot looked roughly like this:

Chisato had a little brother called Daiki, who loved eating chocolate. One day, she refused to share her chocolate with him, so he ran off crying, got hit by a car and died. Since then, Chisato sort of uses Yuuki as a replacement for him, making him eat half a bar of chocolate once a week. It is also clear that she’s in love with him, though she’s pretty tsundere, with big emphasis on the TSUN. The main conflict here is how Yuuki is in love with her as well, but simply cannot imagine a relationship with her as long as she still uses him as little-bro substitute, which seems like a fair point. He eventually confronts her and tells her to choose: they can become a couple, but then he won’t play his role as her substitute anymore. At first she’s unable to make that decision, but after a couple days of crying, she eventually gets over it. There’s a little more detail here of course, but I honestly didn’t care too much. This problem is simply too specific and dramatic to relate to for me, but it wasn’t badly done. The fact that I’m not a fan of Chisato meant that I couldn’t really bring myself to care about their moments though, so in terms of the romance the route fell flat for me.

Instead, let me just rant for a second about how much I hate Chisato.
She is is so… fucking… obnoxious. Whenever Yuuki interacts with another girl that is not Mifuyu or Hazuki, she immediately gets jealous. But instead of playing these as just jealousy moments, she yells at him and blames him.

“What the hell are you doing Yuuki!?"

This might be at least sort of understandable if they were a couple, but for a good part of her route as well as all the other routes, they aren’t. And even if they were, she just goes too far. There’s a scene where Aomi tells Yuuki how scared she is about Shinonome winning the election, as she wants to abolish the economic scholarship program, and Aomi wanted to fulfill her little brothers dream of going to the same school as his sister. Yuuki promises her that he’ll try his best to win the election and prevent that. She starts crying, takes one of his hands into hers and thanks him. It’s a good moment, and it had no romantic elements if you ask me. Then Chisato crashes it completely by violently kicking Yuuki in the back so that he falls over. What the hell? She then continues to scream at him and try to hit him with her fists.

Moments like these make me want punch her so badly. She absolutely deserves it.

There’s tons of moments like these, though it doesn’t usually go that far. At some point she asked him
“How do you feel about Aomi?”
“Would be nice to get along with her.”
“Heee… so you want to enter a deep relationship with her?”
“Wait, it’s not like that, I meant it would be nice to be friends with her!”

The second line is kinda impossible to translate without dropping the nuance, but anyway… She proceeds to accuse him of having ulterior motives, etc. That’s another one of these cases where she a) just goes off assuming wildly incorrect things, and b) then gets mad at him based on her incorrect assumptions. Even if her assumptions were right, she’d still have exactly zero right to be mad or blame him for anything. She is such an insufferable person, being friends with her seems like it’d be a load of pain. In fact, seeing their interactions, it is hard to believe they’re actually friends. Other characters, Mifuyu in particular, tend to remark how well they get along in moments where they’re in fact quarreling. I usually like that trope, but in their case it doesn’t seem like they’re having fun. Chisato is mad and Yuuki is having a bad (and possibly painful) time thanks to her.

There’s one situation that illustrated to me just how shitty their relationship is: at some point Yuuki randomly met Aomi while out shopping and they talked. No biggie. The next day, Chisato asks him if he met Aomi yesterday. He lies to her, because he knows exactly she’s going to make a scene again. This is not the first, nor the last time he acts like that by the way. In any case, Chisato sees through the lie right away. She isn’t mad for once, but disappointed. Mifuyu, who is also present, remarks that you shouldn’t lie to your friends like this.
It was this remark that drove the point home for me. Mifuyu is absolutely right. You shouldn’t lie to your friends about stuff like this, especially if it’s something that trivial. And yet, I did not question Yuuki’s lie at all. When Chisato asked him, I didn’t doubt for a moment that he would lie to her. I would have acted exactly the same way. Because there wasn’t the slightest doubt that Chisato would act in the most obnoxious way possible, like always, being an asshole and making the entire situation a pain in the ass. That was the point where I realized that her toxic behavior was enough to make sure you won’t even talk to her the way you would to any decent friend.

There’s some more examples where she’s needlessly possessive and critical of everything concerning Yuuki. Like in one route, he had stuff to worry about and ended up not being able to sleep. When he shows up the next day with bags under his eyes, Chisato is worried about him and tries to comfort him… nah, I’m joking of course. After he mentioned that he was unablet to sleep, she gets mad again and yells at him to try harder. Wtf.
Her obsessiveness shows in so many small ways. At one point, Yuuki wanted to see if a harmonica that belonged to Hazuki was still working. Chisato stopped him, saying she’d blow it herself. She didn’t elaborate, but it was obvious she wanted to prevent an “indirect kiss”.

What also bothers me is how Yuuki handles these situations. He’s honestly just too weak of a character, always affirming Chisato’s behavior as if he were actually guilty of something, instead of telling her to shut the fuck up as he should.

Chisato is in general too full of herself. Introducing Yuuki as her “property” might be funny at first, but over time it just feels weirdly possessive.
She also does the job of the club’s election campaign organizer, which leads to her having strategy meetings with Mouri. The role fits her the best out of all the Shokken members, but when Mouri compliments her for coming up with good plans herself, she always goes into this haughty “oh I know I’m smart, praise me more” mode. This is something that I’m used to seeing from dumb characters, but Chisato is actually depicted as decently intelligent. Seeing someone act like that is always off-putting. It’s downright bragging and I find it repulsive.

Anyway, onto the last part of the Chisato rant: as I said, she’s a tsundere. But she lays on the tsun-part way too thickly, and her few dere moments just feel… off. They’re not believable, as they feel too different from the bitchy behavior we’re used to. It gets worse once they actually become a couple: she sheds her tsun-skin and apparently decides to live as dere for the rest of her life. This is just boring. Honestly nothing feels as empty as a character that went from tsundere to just dere. She literally lost her entire personality towards the end of the route. Not that she had much to begin with aside from the jealousy and obnoxiousness.
She’s also not a bad person in general… for one thing, she sticks up for keitokusei in her class when they get bullied, and also approached e.g. Mifuyu and Aomi when they were too shy to make friends. It’s so hard to accept that people are actually multi-faceted!

Whew, now that that’s done, time to talk about the other characters for a bit. There was actually some good development for Yuuki, as well as Ai and Kii, who are typically called the club’s “monkey combo”. Yuuki himself gained confidence through his public speeches, going into public debates with Shinonome and Tatsumi etc. Mouri eventually tells Chisato to not hold hands with him at school, since he apparently has quite a few female fans, and they don’t want to lose them.
This development is also depicted through Ai and Kii, who initially don’t get along too well with Yuuki. They were part of the club from the start, but they would often quarrel with him. They are also depicted as very generic, stereotypical girls, talking about makeup all day and going on all sorts of diets, as well as being superficial in general and not very smart either. They’ll also often grumble about the work they have to do for the elections and are sometimes found slacking. They do get their own role when it turns out that the hightech stage built by Non-chan for Yuuki’s speeches needs an electricity source. They end up kicking the pedals on stationary bikes all day for these speeches, and eventually get really good at it. There’s a couple occassions on this route where they have to get somewhere very quickly, and Ai and Kii show up to save the day, letting Yuuki or whoever else hop on the back of their bicycle and riding like the wind after that. Towards the end of the route, Ai, Kii and Yuuki declare their mutual respect for each other, the work the other party has done and how their contributions were indispensable to get this far. Real good moment that I didn’t expect from these characters.

In terms of politics, this route was also quite interesting. There’s this rule for clubs that they can only spend their budget with the Takos & Takoma chains, which have a couple stores on the school grounds and also offer deliveries for all the clubs. The Shokken members realize that this is a dumb rule and decide to abolish it. That would also help the school’s finances since these chains are about 15% more expensive than the alternatives. As soon as they declare this publicly as part of their program, Mouri visits them and tells them to redact this proposal, but as he doesn’t want to give them a reason besides stating that they’ve opened “Pandora’s box”, they refuse and eventually lose his support. Shortly afterwards, they start receiving threats. They decide not to fold, and the next day flyers full of misinformation discrediting Yuuki are dropped over the campus. On the last day of the election, Chisato is abducted, and they threaten to kill her unless he takes back his candidacy.

It was pretty good, and in some way eerily realistic until here, but the abduction and threat to kill her went a bit too far. While probably realistic in real-world politics, it just feels off in the context of this school. Oh well, all is resolved in the end and Yuuki barely loses the election. Seeing how far they’ve come though, Shinonome postpones the abolition of clubs and budget cuts by half a year, giving them a second chance to produce actual results until then to save themselves.

Aomi’s Route

Ah, Aomi. The little girl full of energy who everyone likes to dote on. As mentioned before, she’s a keitokusei which are pretty much generally bullied. They are allowed to go to the school with no tuition fees, but instead they have to do various kinds of work for the school for no pay. It is not really elaborated on what kind of work this entails though. Apart from that, they’re separated into their own classes from their second highschool year, as well as being prohibited from joining clubs.

As you may have expected, the political side of this route focuses on fixing the school’s bullying problem, which is illustrated for us through Aomi. I had heard previously that her route would be kinda heavy, and I assumed that was because of the bullying… I was wrong.

Yuuki became quite fixated on the keitokusei problem. He mentioned to Mouri that he wanted to do something about it, but was told not to bring up the topic at all. It was a delicate problem and no one knows a solution for that. If he went in there without a well thought out policy, he would be torn apart by Shinonome and Tatsumi, and even if he came up with a good policy, the regular students don’t care about the keitokusei so it wouldn’t get him votes either way. Yuuki agreed with that at first, but eventually came up with the idea of strengthening the school’s “moral commitee” or whatever it was called, to prevent bullying. He brought that up during one of the public interviews, without discussing with the other club members or Mouri first. He was visited by Mouri immediately afterwads, telling him how disappointed he was in Yuuki. Chisato left right after that, blaming Yuuki for only thinking of Aomi and sacrificing all the club members' hard work. Various events happened over the next couple days which resulted in everyone aside from Yume and Morishita turning their backs on Yuuki and leaving the club. Losing Non-chan’s stage and the power provided by Ai and Kii, Yuuki would hold his speeches while standing on a bucket in front of the school. People started making fun of him and he lost votes quickly.

This was the kind of heavy that I meant, and absolutely wasn’t prepared for. In fact, this affected me so much that I was seriously considering taking a break from the game, but before I got that far, I was over the worst. Yuuki and Aomi, now a couple, came up with a new and improved policy: the ratio of students quitting their school was much higher among the keitokusei, compared to the regular students. This was attributed to the bullying. Since the keitokusei didn’t have to pay the admission fees for the school and were used as an unpaid labor force instead, every keitokusei that quit was a notable financial loss for the school. They came up with the idea of using all money that was saved when the ratio of quitters among the keitokusei decreased, to prop up the budgets of all clubs, giving regular students an actual incentive to not bully them, or maybe even actively intervene when others did so. They presented the idea to Mouri and he was overjoyed, praising them for an amazing policy that might allow them to turn the election around.

At this point, Yuuki decided that, with a proper plan in his hand, it was time to win back the friends he’d lost. So he went on a ride around the city with Aomi, visiting the other club members, presenting their idea and Mouri’s stamp of approval to them and asking them to come back. Well, that worked out and everyone came back, though it took some extra convincing for Chisato. She eventually broke down crying, apologized and confessed that she’d just been jealous.

All might seem well at first, until Yuuki is eventually informed by some keitokusei from his school that, since he proposed this new policy, the bullying actually got worse, which left him quite depressed. He eventually came up with another policy that should finally solve the problem, barely lost the vote against Shinonome, but was made vice president by her to implement the policy he’d proposed. Happy end!

Whew, after this long exposition dump, it’s time to get into everything that’s wrong here.

First of all, I’m quite torn when it comes to the first policy involving the club budgets. On the one hand, this feels like a very realistic approach to the problem. It’s not just an appeal to people to not be shitty people. These obviously don’t make sense, since we’re talking about people who go out of their way to make others' lives worse at no benefit to themselves. No, their policy gives the bullies an actual incentive. This is probably the smartest solution to a problem like this that I’ve ever seen. On the other hand, I’m still disappointed how this ignores the underlying problem. I don’t think there’s a solution to people just being assholes, but it’s not like these people disappear when they don’t bully the keitokusei anymore. Maybe they’ll bully someone else, or maybe they’ll act shitty in other ways. Is the problem really solved here?

Moving on, what really bothers me is how his ‘friends’ just left him over what happened during the election. While I agree that Yuuki should have discussed the policy he came up with, with the other club members before just putting it out there… what sort of friend would turn their back on you over something like that? I found their reactions believable at first, but after thinking about it for a little, it made me really mad. When he went around visiting them, I mainly thought two things. First of all: they’re not worth it. They’ve shown they’re not actually your friends if that’s all it took to make them leave. Yuuki may have started it, but they’re the ones who escalated it far beyond repair in my opinion. The other thing that bothers me is how this focused mostly on the fact that he had a good policy now. He didn’t win them back by talking things out, but by presenting results. Seriously? They’re supposed to be his friends, not business partners.

Anyway, that was all on the political side of this route. I don’t have much to say on the romance, I didn’t really feel it. I liked Aomi, she was always this girl who spread positivity through her demeanor and her smile. This was actually conveyed really well, which is quite impressive in this medium. But I personally found it difficult to see her as a love interest. In my opinion, she has more of a little sister vibe I guess (not the dreaded imouto). As such the romance between them felt kinda empty to me. Aside from how she always cheered Yuuki up when he felt down, I didn’t feel much chemistry here either.

Finally, shoutout to Hazuki for giving the two of them coupons for a love hotel. Peak teacher

Mifuyu’s Route

Mifuyu has been friends with Chisato and Yuuki since middleschool. When she entered their class, one year older than all her peers due to her health problems, people found it hard to approach her and treated her as a “senpai” instead of a classmate. Chisato was the only one who approached her normally and eventually allowed her to settle in and make friends. It is later revealed that she’d been in love with Yuuki since back then, but she’d always prioritized Chisato’s feelings over her own. She’s continuously, half-jokingly, trying to get them to become a couple.

There’s this running gag they had, where, whenever Yuuki felt like Chisato was too mean to him, he would turn to Mifuyu, tell her he’s in love with her and ask her to go out with him. She would then reject him, saying that she already had someone she was in love with. It was always obviously comedic, but knowing that Mifuyu was in love with him the whole time gives this gag a rather painful note. Pretty nice setup.

Anyway, stuff happens, Yuuki and Mifuyu end up kissing, and afterwards she’s really shocked because she feels like she betrayed Chisato. I honestly have little understanding for that, if you feel like it would be wrong to kiss him, how about you just don’t!?

Afterwards, she holed herself up in her room for a couple days, pretending to be sick. Yuuki eventually got through to her, thanks to her Mom’s support who sensed what was going on. He visited her at home, and they sort of made up I guess? And then they had sex.

Hold on, what?

…is what I thought. Are you serious? Isn’t this too fast? Honestly made me mad at Yuuki. As her friend he should be able to tell that this is not the right moment and he should probably give her some more time. Oh well, that happened and all is well. Or so I thought, until immediately afterwards, Mifuyu broke down crying, saying how she’d “betrayed Chisato again” and that now, there was “no going back for real”. Seriously?

SERIOUSLY???

This is the point where I lost all my respect for her. Has she not learned a thing from last time? I guess kissing is something that could perhaps maybe possibly happen in the spur of the moment (can it?), but just having sex? There’s limits to how stupid you can be. Is she just too horny, or what? I have exactly zero empathy for her doing that and then crying how she regrets it afterwards.

A couple days later they end up in the club room alone and talk out their problems. Mifuyu says that she just wants to go back to how it was before. Yuuki finds that hard to accept of course, and eventually tells her: if she manages to properly turn him down, he’ll give up on her. Great tactic by the way, to confront her with her own feelings. In any case, she isn’t able to do that, but still tells him she wants to go back to being friends and forget everything that happened. He then agrees, but says he’d like to have sex with her one last time. She accepts.

S E R I O U S L Y

What a stupid move, from both of them. I was lowkey expecting their relationship to continue as fuck buddies after that, since they are obviously not able to control the horny, but it didn’t. In fact, Mifuyu tried even harder to get Yuuki and Chisato to become a couple after that. Way to hurt someone I guess? She goes so far that Chisato eventually gets real suspicious and realizes whats up. Ironic. They then meet up to talk it out etc., a bit of drama happens, Mifuyu eventually accepts Yuuki. And then they have sex again. Heh.

But just because we need more drama, Mifuyu gets really sick after that and has to go to the hospital. They eventually say she might actually die, because we needed some extra drama. She ends up not dying and that’s it. Great storytelling.

Yea, that was the entire route, pretty much. There was also no political component here.

I’m a bit disappointed, because Mifuyu was one of my favorites initially and I actually like her less now. Plot-wise it was just unnecessary drama and people acting stupid. Also, I feel like Mifuyu prioritizing Chisato’s feelings over her own is a deeper issue of not properly valuing herself, which should be talked about but never was.

Shinonome’s Route

Shinonome Satsuki, Hazuki’s little sister and Yuuki’s rival in the election, is the love interest on the fourth route I’ve played. She seems to be the kind of very serious and calm character archetype that would be very fitting for student council president. She does get a couple funny interactions with Yuuki though, which also lead to her coming up with a new nickname for him every time they meet. It feels a bit like she’s more alive when she’s alone with Yuuki, compared to her usual demeanor. Like in the anime, there’s some genuine chemistry and I’m here for it.

They meet by chance a couple times and eventually come to the point where Yuuki sneaks into the girl’s dorm to Shinonome’s room every night. To play Shogi with her, obviously. Hazuki finds out eventually, and half-mockingly complains that she doesn’t want to get NTR’d by her little sister. Peak comedy.

At this point I’ll have to talk about Hazuki’s and Yuuki’s relationship a little, because it’s… peculiar? First of all, some background on Hazuki: she’s the Shokken’s advisor, and typically hangs out with the other members. She also put up her own beer keg in their club room. Don’t ask. In any case, it’s rare to get a scene with her where she’s not drinking beer. She gets so little respect from blends in so well with the other club members that most of them don’t address her as “Sensei” and she’s mistaken as a student by visitors. Chisato even straight up drops all honorifics and calls her by her first name. That said, she still fulfills her role as an adult, often pitching in with some well thought out advice or bringing them back down to earth when they need it the most.

Moving on to her relationship with Yuuki… even after this route, I’m still confused. What’s pretty clear though, is that she’s in love with Yuuki. She says it a couple times, though mostly when she’s drunk, but Yuuki doesn’t take her seriously anyway. He comes over to her house to cook dinner for her sometimes, and it was also mentioned that they kissed at some point. This is never properly explained though. Regarding the kiss, apparently she got drunk, as usual, so I guess that just happened? But why he comes over to her house to cook for her, I have no idea. Both of these things happened or began before the game’s start.
I also find it questionable how openly she tells Yuuki about this. Teacher-student relationships are problematic, at least from a legal perspective. Her feeling this way is one thing, but outright trying to win him over, when this could have a serious impact on both her own and Yuuki’s future, just feels inconsiderate in a way. This wouldn’t even bother me if it was seriously talked about at least once. But no, Hazuki just mentions that “it’s a crime” on the side, and no one felt the need to talk about this any further. Oh well.

After seeing how close Yuuki got to her little sister, we get a scene where they’re alone, talking about how Hazuki is in love with him. He mentions that he took that all as a joke. She then, not drunk for once, confesses to him again in the most serious way possible. When he asks if it’s a joke, she says she’s serious. He still thinks it’s a joke anyway. Wow. This is pretty hurtful, actually.

Another important plot point that comes up several times during this route is the conflict between the two sisters about Hazuki leaving their home. Hazuki lives alone, having left home a couple years earlier (she’s 23 in the VN). Shinonome never found out why Hazuki left, and is seen arguing with her, trying to get her to come back or at least explain why she won’t. At some point Yuuki asks Hazuki himself. She asks him if he’s in love with her little sister, and when he says he’s not sure, she concludes that she still has a chance. She then proposes that they, the two sisters, are going to have a match. If Hazuki wins, she’ll get Yuuki. When Yuuki mentions that Shinonome probably isn’t interested in him, Hazuki adds that she’ll tell her what she wants to know. Shinonome accepted the proposal, and Yuuki apparently didn’t have a problem leaving the decision who’s going to be his girlfriend to them. Like, come on, that’s just weak. Totally in-character for him though.

Shinonome decides they’re going to play Shogi, and Hazuki adds some rules, effectively making it a drinking game. Yuuki couldn’t bear seeing Shinonome suffer through the alcohol and eventually asks Hazuki to take a break. When she prys him for the reason, he admits that he’s in love with Shinonome and doesn’t want to see her suffer. Hearing that, Hazuki resigns and says Shinonome may have him. I’m not sure at this point whether she was trying to play matchmaker for her little sister, or if she just decided there’s no point in forcing anything if Yuuki clearly feels differently. In any case, while the drinking rules were a smart play from Hazuki’s side, I find that a very questionable thing to do to her little sister.

They become a couple after that and go on a date on the weekend. Apparently someone from their school spotted them, so a rumor that they’re dating spreads. During the next “public debate” the student council presidential candidates are in turn asking each other questions. Tatsumi immediately asks Shinonome and Yuuki “what they did on Sunday between time {x} and {y}”. While Yuuki is shocked and unable to answer, Shinonome just flat out says they were on a date together. Tatsumi, who was expecting to slowly drive them into a corner while they’re pretending they did something else, sees his plan shattered. Right after that, it’s Shinonome’s turn to ask, and she asks Tatsumi whether he thinks it’s acceptable to pry about someone’s private life on a live broadcast like this. I just gotta say, what a legend. It may not come across as such in my retelling, but that was easily the strongest moment any female character got in the entirety of this VN. Also, that’s a “I’m proud of my girlfriend” moment if I’ve ever seen one.

When Yuuki returns to the club room, he expects to be verbally beaten up by the other club members for betraying them or something. To his surprise, Mouri is already expecting him, and even praises him for his outstanding move. Shinonome’s questioning of Tatsumi’s morals actually led to a sharp decline in his support, but the fact that their favorite female “idol” is in a relationship actually weakened her own basis too. While the same goes for Yuuki ’s vast crowd of female supporters of course, he’s not affected by this nearly as badly, making the entire incident a rather big win for him. Surprisingly, the rest of the club is quick to accept this. Even Chisato got silenced by Mouri beforehand, so she is actually not fucking annoying intervening much on this route.

What follows are some interesting looks into how a relationship between political rivals affects them and their lives. The newly formed couple swears to not let their relationship affect the elections and apparently everyone accepted that. Shinonome’s underlings though are despairing over these developments. Yuuki overhears them insulting her, they also start a smear campaign against him, and she eventually loses all their support, forcing her to resign from the elections as a whole.
At some point, she confesses to Yuuki that she was sort of hoping for their relationship to be exposed, since it would render her underlings' practices of “idolizing” her and catering to the male (and partly female) audience’s “special” interests ineffective. She reveals that she wanted to win “the right way” - her way. I think her actions are quite understandable. I imagine the whole “idolizing” thing to be incredibly uncomfortable either way. Yuuki, however, lowkey berates her, telling her she should think of her underlings more and consider how much effort they’re putting in, trying to make her campaign a success. This is then illustrated through the Shokken, and Shinonome is moved when she sees them working together. It’s not like Yuuki doesn’t have a point: Shinonome was indeed quite cold whenever she talked to her underlings, and seemed to reject everything they came up with to turn their campaign around. That said, the comparison is still weak. The relationship between Yuuki and the other members of the Shokken is fundamentally different than that of Shinonome and her underlings. Besides, the sort of plans they came up with (“idolizing” Shinonome, smear campaign against Yuuki etc.) were all highly questionable. In the end, it feels like the VN is trying to force some sort of lesson on the reader, and, while said lesson isn’t wrong, it doesn’t really make sense in the context and the way they’re trying to present it. Shinonome also regrets wanting to disband the Shokken, since it’s obviously a wonderful club, which is like… uh, NO!?

In any case, there’s some character development for Shinonome who had her hopes and dreams smashed before her eyes and Yuuki eventually wins decisively etc. All is good. Shinonome joins the Shokken and lowkey replaces Yuuki who barely gets to visit them now that he’s busy being student council president. The fact that Yuuki directly profited from how their relationship seriously damaged Shinonome’s standing left a somewhat bitter aftertaste though. I mean, it would for me if I were him, and it feels a little weird that this was never mentioned. Oh well.

Yuuki also gets 1000 “free passes” from Shinonome since she broke a promise to him that she would see the election through to the end. Every time he does something that makes her angry, she (loudly) decrements the counter. In one scene about two weeks (?) after the elections, the counter is already down to 500. While that practice may seem trivial, perhaps even a little funny, watching it in action in that scene made it feel kinda toxic. Have fun I guess.

Finally, I did not talk about the big reveal yet: why Hazuki left home and refuses to go back. Well, the blog article is already going to be stupid long as is, the exposition I wrote for this route is way longer than the other routes as well, and I really have nothing much to add about the resolution. Let me just say: it wasn’t very interesting. This mostly stems from the fact that it’s something entirely within the Shinonome family, which we never get to meet, so it really has no practical effect on the rest of the plot. Hazuki explains it, turns out everything was (sort of) just a misunderstanding, and the sisters get along better now.

This was the route I was looking forward to the most and it did not disappoint. While politically it wasn’t super exciting, it still had some interesting facettes and easily the best romance in the VN.

Morishita’s Route

Ah yes, Morishita Michiru. This is probably the route I was least excited for in terms of romance, but at least plot-wise it was rather interesting, shining a new light on some events and the politics among the big three.

As you might expect, the character that is silent to the point you forget they can even speak, barely shows emotion ever, generally ignores almost everyone that isn’t Yuuki and also simply answers with silence whenever she doesn’t like the question, doesn’t make for good girlfriend material. I guess they wanted to go with the cat girl image too much here. If it were me, her behavior would honestly annoy me too much to even bother talking to her. At some point it’s not gap-moe (never has been tbh) or funny anymore, it is nothing but a majorly disrespectful way of treating the people around you.

It is also not particularly interesting watching it play out. She doesn’t have meaningful conversations with anyone but Yuuki, as she literally ignores them, perhaps giving them a “Futsuu” (“as usual”) at best, if she’s feeling nice. Even her conversations with Yuuki feel like some sort of weird question-and-answer game, where he’s trying to get something out of her by asking further and further questions until they get to the point where she feels uncomfortable (?) answering again. This is necessary because she doesn’t really talk if you don’t directly ask her, and even then she answers the question in the most concise way possible. One (or more like several very similar) situations take this to the peak of irony. When Yuuki is once again about to despair over the overwhelming odds stacked against them in the election, the other club members try to convince him that they’re “doing well”, “everyone’s gonna do their best”, “it’s not that bad” and whatnot. But he isn’t convinced, until… drum roll… Morishita steps up, says “Daijoubu”. Refuses to elaborate, leaves. Okay, minus that last part. And then Yuuki thinks “Yea you’re right! We’ve come this far!” and continues his motivational monologue he literally had to make for himself, because Morishita obviously won’t… you know, contribute anything of value here.
It also really doesn’t help, at least in my case, that she has some lowkey loli-influences and also talks a bit like a child.

Moving on from Morishita to the overall plot of this route: Morishita carries a broken harmonica around, that she says a good friend gifted her. Said friend enrolled in their school two years before her, but about a year ago, Morishita lost contact to her. She then decided to enroll there herself in order to find that friend. She refuses to give any more information, neither about that friend, nor about herself. Yuuki eventually figures the friend is called “Kana” because that name is carved into the harmonica that he “repairs” (read: cleans) for Morishita at some point. When she plays the only song she knows, which she learnt from Kana, Mouri storms into the room shouting Kana’s name, then makes a smooth 180° and leaves in the most suspicious way possible. Yuuki starts making his own research into Kana’s person and whereabouts. He eventually gets real suspicious of his girlfriend as well, but Morishita just goes full horny mode whenever he brings up certain topics. Successfully silenced, lol.

After a lot of back and forth that was so insubstantial I don’t remember any of it, Morishita can’t bear the feelings of guilt anymore and tells Yuuki that she’s a spy. She then runs away and Yuuki is apprehended by men of the BPO. He’s dragged before Mouri, who offers him cooperation over violence. Yuuki agrees to being told everything but keeping silent about it all.

We learn that the BPO raises its own secret Stasi group of special agents they use to spy on the students. Both Kana and Morishita are part of them. They are recruited from a special children’s orphanage. Morishita apparently had a difficult childhood, growing up with abusive parents and several revisions of foster parents before ending up at that orphanage. Her father beat her up whenever she showed any emotion, which led to her becoming a kuudere refusing to let her emotions show. When she arrived at the orphanage, she was sufficiently traumatized and broken. Kana became her one and only friend. When Kana disappeared, Morishita resolved to find her, by enrolling into Takafuji academy via the only method available to a pennyless orphan like her: become a spy for the BPO herself, breaking her promise with Kana to never go the same route as her.

Kana, in the meantime, made quite a name for herself (well not really since she’s a spy). Initially unwilling to follow someone’s orders, when she got paired up with Mouri they became THE STRONGE… ahem, a pretty successful duo. Mouri becoming president was apparently in huge parts thanks to Kana’s work as well. But shortly after that, Kana was attacked on one of her missions, leaving her comatose. After realizing that a regular hospital can’t offer proper treatment for her, Mouri strikes a deal with some opposing faction that is not described in more detail, allowing him to hospitalize her at a specialist hospital owned by said faction.

When Morishita joins the spies, he tries to keep her out of everything as much as possible in an effort to protect her in Kana’s place. As such, she only gets to do routine missions, such as checking the, uh… wiretaps placed in every clubroom. Now think back to the panty shot that was our intro to the game… turns out she was actually checking the wiretap placed under a table or something. Now, I certainly did not expect to get a justification for that panty shot after playing through 90% of the game. I’d still prefer if the first scene, or the first CG, or… y’know, the entire game, did not include a wildly unnecessary panty shot. Well, whatever. Yuuki asks Mouri to let him see Kana, and Mouri actually agrees… after Yuuki wins the elecion.

The rest of the election period is really just a short montage of the Shokken doing stuff, with Yuuki eventually winning the election. In the meantime, Morishita refuses to meet Yuuki, since she’s too afraid he might hate her now after knowing the truth about her. When Yuuki finally visits Kana together with Mouri, he brings Morishita’s harmonica with him and plays a part of that one song for her. Guess what, Kana’s eyes start moving before she goes back into full coma. They plan to bring Morishita there next, since she can actually play the full piece.

When Morishita visits Kana a couple days later (without Yuuki, since she still refuses to see him), Yuuki suddenly gets a call from Mouri, telling him that Morishita escaped the hospital with Kana. Quite an impressive feat, lol. Yuuki is of course the first one to find her and they make up. Morishita took Kana away since she thought one of the doctors was going to kill her otherwise. She can see the feelings of other people by the way. Minor detail. In any case, she plays that song for Kana, who wakes up from her one year of coma, everything is good, happy end.

The whole spy-thing may be a bit wild, but the plot of this route was quite a bit different to what we’d seen so far and rather interesting to follow. It was also nice to see some actual emotion from Mouri for once. Well, he wasn’t actually emotionless like Morishita, but a rather controlled gentleman. Seeing a bit more of his character, most importantly his worry and also despair for Kana, really added to his character. I was getting invested in his and Kana’s romance, as they seemed rather cute together. They’re not a couple and Kana is quite tsundere, but that was actually funny since Morishita called her out everytime she tried to go tsun. Certainly more interesting than Yuuki and Morishita, if you ask me. So when we got the final scene, a couple weeks after she woke up, we learn that her rehabilitation is going well etc., I was just waiting for Mouri to show up. Even their reunion happened offscreen, so we actually didn’t see them together at all until that point. “Oh where Mouri is, you’re asking? He’s on a journey to find himself or something while Kana recovers”
Yo are you kidding me? DUDE!?
How about you support your not yet girlfriend or something ffs

Well, that was disappointing. What was not disappointing, was that Chisato just accepted the fact that Yuuki chose Morishita. A welcome surprise. I’ll take less Chisato bullshit any day. To give you a quote that I absolutely wanted to include:
“Enlightenment is when you realize hating Chisato is what makes you love the other girls that much more."
- lostmynic

The Sex Scenes

There are some things I wanted to say about KoiChoco’s sex scenes, since I didn’t really talk about them in the previous sections.

The main impression that remains from them is… boredom? I’m not sure if VNs are just not the right medium for porn, but wow… I half-skipped almost all of the sex scenes. They’re like 50% slurping and moaning sounds, and 50% colorful descriptions of how they’re going even harder now. What’s also somewhat disappointing is how they’re incredibly samey. If you removed the CG, voice lines and names from the text, then I probably wouldn’t be able to even tell which girl Yuuki is having sex with. While they do explore different setups etc., the scenes just have very little character. And for some reason, except on Morishita’s route for reasons outlined above, it feels like Yuuki is always the one starting things, being in control and wanting it, while the female characters are mostly just getting dragged along. On the first route I was expecting that to develop and change over time. By the third route, I had accepted that to be the formula they’re going with for all of them.

The only exception here was Shinonome. Her first scene had way more dynamic and character than the other four routes, and she also clearly asserts what she wants and takes the lead sometimes. It feels much more balanced than the rest. In general, her first scene was much more… enjoyable… to watch than the others, and it was also not just in line with her character as we knew it so far, but even added to it.
…cue the second scene where she degenerates to just as boring and passive as the other four. Welp. We take what we get.

Finally, a moment of unintentional comedy I wanted to share: whenever you quit the game, a randomly chosen character among the voiced ones speaks a specific line for you as a goodbye. Now imagine you’re quitting in the middle of a sex scene, and you hear Shiohama (reporter person) saying:
“Shuzai kyouryoku arigatou gozaimashita” - “Thank you for providing material (for an article)”
Peak comedy. I couldn’t stop laughing for a while after this.

Anime Rewatch

After rewatching the anime with a friend this month, I thought this would also be the perfect opportunity to see if I still feel the same way about it, as well as how it compares to the VN. Retsu gooooo!
This is the last section. I promise.

The main impression that remained of the anime after my first watch was, that it is surprisingly entertaining. It wasn’t that original and did nothing particularly well, yet I still had a good time with it for some reason. When I went into the rewatch though, I expected to be bored. I didn’t think it would still be entertaining the second time, especially since I’m generally not a big fan of rewatching. Not even of really good anime.

But I was surprised yet again. While for some difficult to describe reason the first five or so minutes felt like I was watching something of very low quality, I still enjoyed the entire anime and didn’t get bored once. While one could find the first three or so episodes boring (before the main election business picks up), after that I believe the series has a pretty good flow. They tried to somehow fit all the routes in there more or less, which doesn’t work particularly well if you ask me, but at least means it never gets boring. The animation sometimes contributed greatly to the comedy as well.

Let’s go over all of the routes in a bit more detail.

Chisato

The resolution to her trauma was dumb, honestly. She just sits in her room crying for a couple days (?) until Mifuyu comes by, switches to a pretty sick new style that I wish she had in the VN, says some vague stuff that I didn’t really get even after having read the source material, and… that’s all it took for Chisato to feel fine again?
I complained about this in the original article already, but it feels even worse now that I know how the VN resolved it. At least there it was a product of Yuuki and Chisato trying together for her to overcome her trauma, which also sparked the start of their relationship. It even had one or two moments that would have been rather strong if I cared. The anime has none of this and the resolution feels arbitrary.

There was a good moment where Yuuki punched Chisato though. Not that it was really relevant in the end, but it was nice seeing him fight back for once. Guess what never once happened in the VN.
Chisato as a whole has been toned down considerably in the anime as well, which certainly made it an easier watch. We barely get to see any of Chisato’s usual being fucking obnoxious.

Mifuyu

This girl probably got the short(est) end of the stick when it comes to how her route was treated. We get to know she’s writing fan fiction about her romance with Yuuki, and she says some confusing things during her conversation with Chisato that I mentioned above. When she changed her clothes to this crop top, we can actually see her scar, which is one of the two central components of her route in the VN. But it is not really talked about and rather easy to miss. This scene contains almost the entirety of Mifuyu’s route that we get to see in the anime, and it is incredibly vague and confusing at best.

Aomi

Compared to the VN, the anime chose a very different approach to how they’re using her character. She’s bullied (as all keitokusei are) in the anime like in the VN, but it certainly goes further in the anime. In the VN, she’s more of a catalyst for Yuuki to learn about the school’s bullying problem and the initial motivation he needed to engage with that problem. The anime just focuses on showing us how shitty her life is. We see her staying in the school until it’s dark to finish her work, calling her family to tell them to eat without her. She is harassed by this one group of girls who eventually go to the point of stealing her underwear. The VN never went this far, there was no sort of violence against Aomi at any point. While people regularly say “she stinks” or something while passing her, her life isn’t nearly as bad in the VN. Her work is also much less concrete in the VN, where we only get to see her help the Shokken as the keitokusei assigned to support them, but we have no idea what sort of work she usually does.

The VN engages much more deeply with the school’s bullying problem and what political measures could be used to resolve it. That part was fairly interesting, but unfortunately completely missing from the anime. I guess it just didn’t fit, which is fair enough.

It was rather interesting though, how the anime seems to depict Shinonome as the candidate who was morally superior to Yuuki in every way, in no small part thanks to the fact that she wants to tackle the aforementioned bullying problem. Contrast to how, in the VN, Aomi was actually afraid of Shinonome winning, as she was planning to abolish the keitokusei system and replace it with a scholarship system. That wouldn’t be nearly as accessible to poor students like Aomi.
If you look closely enough in the anime though, you see the exact same proposal in Shinonome’s manifesto, that Yuuki looks through at some point around the middle of the anime. As such it seems like the facts are just weirdly (accidentally?) misrepresented by the anime in a way that gives some situations a very different meaning.

Shinonome

The anime gave us some of the good romance buildup that we also saw in the VN, but then decides to ditch it all to go for the Chisato route instead. Even in the anime, Shinonome’s feels like the better romance. What a punch in the face. Well, at least they gave us the full backstory of Shinonome’s and Hazuki’s family problems. I didn’t care much about that in the VN either, but the way the anime also rushed it certainly didn’t make it any better. As they don’t enter a deeper relationship than that in the anime, we obviously skip all the political problems that followed in the VN.

Morishita

This is perhaps the most interesting comparison. The VN mentioned several times how the “Oosawa incident” left the BPO with a rather bad reputation and that even student council president Mouri suffered greatly from that, despite actually doing a pretty good job as a president. But it doesn’t really go further than that and a lot of things remain vague in the VN. We know Oosawa was appointed head of the BPO by Mouri, as part of the deal he struck with <non-descript opposing faction>, but caused a lot of trouble to the point that person was displaced from the office. We never learn what the incident actually entailed, who exactly the aforementioned opposing faction is, or what led to Kana being in a coma.

The anime fills in a lot of the gaps here, by introducing us to a new character: Yuina Oosawa, who never actually appeared in person in the VN. She radiates peak villain aura and we learn that a keitokusei was sort of bullied off the school by her, which is what was later known as the Oosawa incident. The opposing faction she’s part of is called the Katahira faction and actually seems to be a rivaling faction within the BPO. Finally, Kana was apparently on a mission to uncover a secret deal between the Katahira faction and the general affairs bureau. She fell into a coma after being run over by a car on that mission - which was driven by Oosawa.

I like that they actually built on the VN here and gave a much clearer shape to these rather vague circumstances. It just made me realize how much the VN was lacking here though, and I wish we’d gotten the details there as well. Besides, things still don’t really add up. We suddenly hear about this second faction in the infighting within the BPO, but this is somewhat difficult to believe. It simply doesn’t fit with the impression of Mouri having the BPO under good control, which the VN gave me. Then again, these details were only added in the anime, so I probably shouldn’t try to “port” this back as canon to the VN. If we just look at the anime itself, it is much easier to believe this infighting is occuring, since we generally have much less of an impression of the BPO’s organization.

The anime also depicted Oosawa as openly hostile towards the Shokken. She told Mouri to stop cooperating with them, since he’s not sure they’ll be good puppets for the BPO when they win the election. As Mouri doesn’t obey her, she takes things into her own hands by abducting Chisato, trying to force Yuuki to resign from the election or at least miss his final speech.
If you think about this clearly for a second, her actions don’t make any sense. Mouri and the BPO aren’t supporting Yuuki out of the goodness of their heart. They made it very clear that Yuuki winning the elections would be preferable to Shinonome or Tatsumi, the candidates of the other members of the big three, winning. If Oosawa succeeds at making Yuuki lose the election, she’s literally played into their enemies hands. Oosawa and Mouri should be on the same side on this one. But I guess they really just wanted a dramatic ending, so they adopted the whole abduction plot from Chisato’s route in the VN.

Closing

KoiChoco is actually the first (Japanese) VN I’ve finished so far, and in the original language no less. Still somehow finished this before If my Heart had Wings, lol.
I’m pretty happy with the result. While I certainly won’t remember it as the greatest thing of all time, I had my share of fun. I was mostly reading while e.g. having dinner in the evenings after work, and that is a rather pleasant mode of consumption. I’m also satisfied in terms of the language learning experience, as I managed rather well and picked up some new vocabulary along the way.

Besides… boi, that was long. This is my first article to actually break the 10.000 words. I hope this didn’t turn into a pain to read along the way. Perhaps I should have tried harder to keep the route summaries short… well, too late now!

See you next time!