Glad that’s over.
Alright, first off Bokuten has a relatively nice storytelling format. The story is about love love and love. Love will save the world, love is everything in the world and love is the only thing that bloody matters.
Like such, before entering heroine routes the common route consists of several different love stories with different settings. Going from generic ones like “my crush is moving far away!” to more interesting ones like a case of blackmail, ntr and to deal a final blow, the girl in question became addicted to sex by the end of it all.
In each case Tomoe is forced to play cupid and try to help them become couples and get a happy ending.
By the end of all that crap, heroine routes arrive. Unfortunately the heroine routes aren’t all that much better than those sappy love stories that occurred in the common route.
In Yuri’s route you have a yandere little sister Momo who doesn’t want Tomoe to take her sister away. That would be cute if it weren’t for the fact that she’s a little too annoying in her possessiveness. In a nutshell, when young Yuri tried cooking and ended up burning down the house, killing both of their parents as a result of this.
If it ended there it would just be a tragic story. But then here Momo is practically guilt tripping Yuri into being her servant to repent for her terrible, terrible crime of attempting to cook.
Anyway if Momo got what she deserved then all would have been fine with me.
Except in the end it was more along the lines of: Yuri stops being such a pushover against Momo and Momo gets shocked. What happens after that you ask? She takes a 180 degree turn in personality and suddenly becomes that cute little sister who “doesn’t want to get in the way” of her precious sister. Therefore she goes to a cliff and jumps off, leaving a note that she’s going to live with some far, far relatives.
It was like the story suddenly changed its mind, it didn’t want to make Momo look bad after all when it was practically beyond hope for her already. Far from feeling touched, I was actually questioning what happened to her corpse? I mean, I’m pretty sure even if you jumped off a cliff, your corpse doesn’t magically vanish. I guess in that area you can only hope that some animal comes along and eats it so that it becomes much harder to discover.
Next up is Minamo’s route.
Let’s be frank, I hate idol stories. They tend to cause predictable drama here and there because idols can’t date! I don’t think I’ve ever read an idol story that I genuinely enjoyed. Though it’s not as if I hated all of them either.
In this case there was, at least, not as much retardation so it was readable. The endings weren’t particularly happy though. Basically it’s a choice between Minamo chasing her dreams and becoming an idol but breaking up with Tomoe as a result or giving up her dreams and running away with Tomoe. Though I still held the doubt as to why her mother couldn’t at least explain that she needed to do gravure work to build up a reputation before becoming an idol. That probably would have saved a lot of drama.
Next up we have Naruko whose route was… eh.
Her route was probably fitting to be placed last as it reveals some key points in the last route. In a nutshell, it’s revealed that the red threads that tie couples together… are retarded.
Well… so, these angels are here to help couples get together. Upon getting them together, a red thread is tied between them. Yay happily ever after. Now there’s a catch. These threads apparently aren’t… infinite. Don’t even ask why. What happens when the limit is hit you ask? A thread gets taken from an existing couple and that couple usually breaks up as a result.
As our dear fallen angel puts nicely, it’s like a job where they pile up stones then destroy it and repeat for eternity.
My head hurts from the stupidity of this situation but alright, let’s accept it for now. Oh right, I should also mention that this reveals that all of the previous couples that Tomoe helped ended up breaking up again after that. It probably also means that the previous two heroine routes wouldn’t have ended up particularly happily either way.
In this route, the drama is… well, the thread is going to break and so Tomoe and Naruko will become unhappy if they get together. In one ending I think they simply… magically forgot each other and the other ending wasn’t that much better either.
How stupid.
Finally we have Aine’s route, will this be much of an improvement!?
No, not really.
In Aine’s route Tomoe finally shows signs of transforming into an angel, the origin of angels is revealed and the reason for the retarded red thread limitation is also revealed. The reason is… wait for it…
PLANET EARTH IS ALIVE, IT HAS FEELINGS AND IT’S DEPRESSED
Yeah, screw this. I don’t care about the setting anymore.
As I don’t give a damn about the setting we’re skipping right past that stuff and getting to the point. It’s revealed that to the surprise of everyone except the reader, Aine is Tomoe’s first love (in childhood) who died and became an angel. She also forgot her memories as a human while at it. Well things happened and they manage to fall in love with each other. But being this story where happiness isn’t permitted, of course things turn for the worse.
At the end of it all, Aine turns back into human while Tomoe becomes a genuine angel. While at it, Tomoe is revealed to be the kind of angel which can’t be seen or touched by people. He just silently watches over humans all alone.
Not exactly the sort of depressing ending considering you can say that both sides were happy but definitely not a happy ending either. I want to say a lot of things about the setting but I’ve given up ever since it’s revealed that Earth is alive. Seriously, what else is there to say at that point?
;_;
Overall it was a decent story as long as you excluded the setting. I found it retarded to begin with but I didn’t think it would get even worse by the end. Not a bad read if the reader enjoys bitter stories. Unfortunately I’m not that sort of person so it was all around silly.
Moving on, will finish another route or two on Pricolle before starting the last VN of the month, Hapymaher.
The Monologues of a Bored man 
VNs with superpowers, monsters, demons, angels, youkai, psychic abilities, virtual realities, time travel, is the earth being alive that much of a crazy setting? :P
its been used before like in Rewrite for example
I’m fine with crazy settings, in fact if anything perhaps I actually like them. My problem was more with the contents of the setting. I don’t buy the idea of love this and love that. Not to mention I can’t see what they’ve done as a fundamental solution. It sounds like history would just repeat itself either way.