Pink Bobblehead Bunny

Friday, 22 March 2019

Sasazuka's Route: First Impressions

Hello again. Here is another one of my many posts on Collar X Malice. I seem to be writing a lot more about this game than any other. Yesterday I started my second route, Sasazuka's, but I didn't get past the first chapter until today. I played it so much earlier, I couldn't even stop because it was so good. But then my Vita almost died and I had to do other stuff, so I haven't actually touched it since lunch time. I think I'm somewhere in the third chapter now.

I have a lot of things to write concerning Sasazuka and his route. Let's just say that I completely understand now why so many people like him. Beware of the heavy spoilers down below! Also, I'm going to start adding more screenshots to my posts now, because endless walls of text are boring.

Sometimes I think that these posts look really bad because I end up repeating the love interest's name  about a billion times because I dunno what else to call them. It looks like that here, so I'll apologise in advance. To make it seem less bad I'm going to alternate between using their first and last names.

There's so much I want to say that I don't know where to start. I thought that this route would have not much romance until the very end, and that Sasazuka would just act really horrible and push Ichika away for most of it, but I was very wrong. So far there have been so many cute moments between the two. They've actually interacted quite a lot, maybe even more than Ichika did with Okazaki.

In the common route Sasazuka's just really mean, but he actually warms up to Ichika really quickly. Initially he tries to push her away when she decides to work on the same case as him, but once she passes his "test" he seems to act fine around her. But the nicknames he calls her haven't gone yet. I don't even think that Sasazuka has actually used Ichika's name once, it's just "baka neko" or calling her a dog. It'll probably never stop, even if they start dating.

I think that the pink haired police officer lady (Can't remember her name exactly, sorry) said that the reason why Sasazuka acts really rude is because he spent some time living in America and picked up their habits? It sometimes seems like he likes Western foods and stuff a lot more than Japanese ones. I wonder why he decided to move back to his home country? The game'll probably tell me later.

(I apologise for the annoying "auto" circle in the corner. Whenever I take a screenshot it triggers that by mistake.)

Another interesting thing I learned about him is that he didn't actually want to join the police. They just invited him in because his hacking skills were so good, but he didn't enjoy it so he left after two months. But once of the police people (I think his name's Seji or something, but I didn't want to take any risks) is trying to get Ichika to convince him to come back and help solve the X Day cases, but he really doesn't want to return for reasons unknown.
I suppose I'd better talk about the plot now. A lot of the story so far has been going to restaurants with Takeru because he really likes eating. I'm surprised that he's so skinny because he will eat loads. A lot of the choices the player has to make are just choosing what kinds of foods to buy him. There's been a couple of instances where I've had to go back because I've chosen the option that makes him the least happy. The things he likes the most are sweet things, but not Japanese sweets, as you can see from the screenshot above. Really he just eats a lot of junk food. I tried to select the option to cook him something, but for some reason his flat has no kitchen, so I had to go back and select the unhealthy option instead.

At the beginning of the route, Ichika and Sasazuka go to this randomly selected pub, but on the way out they see Kazuki, our heroine's bratty teenage brother. He's hanging out with his friend, who Takeru says is actually a suspect for one of those X-Day crimes. I predicted before that Ichika's brother would have something to with those Adonis people during the last route I played. It's really strange, because this friend of his, Akito, seems to only be able to refer to the heroine as "Ichika", even when you've changed it to something else like I have. None of the other characters do it. It must be a glitch or something.

I forgot to mention this, but before most of this plot stuff happened, I got a bad ending because I made Ichika go to this park on the way home, and these two random teenagers with their own sprites killed her. How unpleasant. Since it was my first bad ending, I ended up getting a trophy, so it wasn't all bad.

Sasazuka tells Ichika to call her brother's phone and ask him where he is. Her brother tells a big fat lie, saying that he's at Akito's house, when it's plainly obvious that they're out in the middle of the city. So Ichika rushes home with Takeru to investigate his bedroom. I'm so glad that I didn't get any of that "Why are you inviting a strange man into your house? ALL MEN ARE WOLVES!" stuff that I've seen in other otome routes, like Okazaki's. 

Kazuki's room is your typical messy teenage boy bedroom. But they find some suspicious clues inside of it. There's a CD of this singer who was arrested because of Adonis or X-Day or something, and inside is his contact details. Then there's a piece of paper with some really edgy song lyrics written down on it, a calendar which says that he's got a concert to go to, and a love letter from a fan. Ichika had absolutely no idea that her brother was such a dedicated musician, nor that he was hanging out with some very shady people. Understandably, she burst into tears. But Takeru was there to give her a shoulder to cry on, and the game gave me a very cute CG of the scene.


I like scenes like this. To be honest, I like any physical contact scenes because they're fun when you self insert.

Sasazuka and Ichika decide to go to Kazuki's concert together. It's a bit like they're going on a date. The concert's for that weird suspected criminal singer, where Kazuki's playing the guitar for him alongside the rest of his band. There's a CG for it, when it appeared this rock song suddenly blasted into my headphones with this guitar solo. The crowd seemed to really enjoy the music, especially Kazuki's performance. But then they run into Akito, but luckily he's nice enough not to tell Kazuki that his sister went to his concert.

A couple of days after the concert, Ichika decides to visit Takeru's lonely apartment, bringing him gifts of food. He eats then just falls straight asleep on his bed, so Ichika leaves him alone. But then she goes back to tell him that he left his front door unlocked, and he just hugs her in his sleep. That's what I do, I hug my pillow in my sleep for some reason, so if somebody sat next to me this exact thing would probably happen.


Ichika feels awkward but she doesn't want to move and disturb Sasasuka, so she just stays there, eventually falling asleep. Eventually Takeru wakes up in the middle of the night from a strange dream and notices that she's there, but he doesn't seem to care that much, so he just keeps her in his arms. He's surprisingly understanding about the whole thing and knows that it was just an accident. How cute. In the morning it isn't even that awkward when they wake up.

I really enjoyed that scene, but I'm glad to say that the route gets even better. In order to investigate him a bit more, Ichika invites Akito over for dinner, claiming that she wants to thank him for letting Kazuki stay at his house, when he actually hasn't been going there at all. Sasazuka also comes, claiming that he's just there because he's her boyfriend. It's turns into a really awkward but also a bit hilarious dinner party. Kazuki acts like a little shit because he does not like his sister's "boyfriend" at all. I wonder if Ichika will ever tell him that she actually isn't dating him at all?

Takeru gets to talk to Akito in private after that, whilst Ichika attempts to connect with her brother again. I don't think that we found out for sure if Akito was actually guilty or not, but it does seem highly likely that he had something to do with it. I don't think that Kazuki had any Adonis connections, it was only just his friends who did. Even though he's a suspected terrorist, I kind of actually like Akito. He seems like a nice person, but he's probably not underneath.

That's about as far as I got before my Vita's battery almost ran out. This route has just been wonderful so far. There's been a rather high amount of fluffiness in it alongside the plot. I hate to say it, but I think I'm actually starting to like Sasazuka and his route more than Okazaki's. This game just continues to amaze me with it's characters and plot. It's turning into a potential favourite game, meaning that it could beat Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly, my current No. 1 otome. The weekend means that I'll have plenty of time to get through this route without putting my Vita down very often. I expect the plot will get more intense later on, because right now everything's going quite smoothly.

I would love to write more, but I've got to play more of the game first! That means that this post is over. This took me ages to finish because my computer kept on distracting me, but now it's finally done and I can start my weekend. See you all later!




























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