As always, there'll be lots of spoilers down below, so beware!
I do apologise if I have trouble remembering key events in the plot, I took a break from the game over the weekend and ended up forgetting a few things.
The plot of Kazuteru's route has a very similar structure to Aoi's. It starts off with fluffy high school romance, then at around the sixth chapter Hikari travels to her boy's planet, some random war/other drama is going on, they try to solve it, fail, but then our heroine's "Starting power" or whatever saves the day out of nowhere, everything's OK, and then in the Marriage Ending she marries her chosen boy. Still, this route did have some very interesting things going on with it.
Like I mentioned earlier, the route starts off with Hikari and the others going to school and hanging out at home. In her classes, Kazuteru seems to be one of those loud "class clowns" who has difficultly completing work. He often talks to Hikari in the middle of class, and asks her for help a lot. At one point, he even gets her alone in her room and begs for her to teach him how to study properly.
Kazuteru also likes to flirt with Hikari a lot. He constantly has his head inside this book his grandfather wrote him on how to date girls. This means that a lot of his pick up lines aren't actually his own, he's just listening to what this book is telling him to do instead of thinking for himself.
(Attempted translation: "My only princess... ...")
The scene in Aoi's route at the school fair with the prince cafe is also there, except this time Lion (Kazuteru's bodyguard/pet who happens to be a white tiger) runs around and destroys everything. The Christmas play for the little kiddies is also there, but obviously this time Aoi doesn't get jealous. Or maybe he does, and we just don't see it...
In this route, Kazuteru's seemingly close friendship with Tsukasa is emphasised. We also find out that Kazuteru's planet (Mars, not some random fire planet like I had originally thought!) had some kind of civil war or something at one point, and his twin brother was lost in the process. We have absolutely no idea where this brother is, and he's never really mentioned much again nor found in this route, but I 100% believe that this twin is actually just Tsukasa. I don't know who else it could be, and I don't think he would be mentioned if he wasn't some kind of important character in the story. Plus, Tsukasa and Kazuteru have sort of similar hair colours....
The two friends/possible brothers go against each other in the school's elections, where they both try to run for student council president. Kazuteru goes up and does his election speech without any script or anything, but still manages to win the title. But then I think he sort of wishes he hadn't, because he ends up having to do so much work for it afterwards.
All of this slice-of-life stuff was alright, but it wasn't really that extraordinary. I had already read the same kinds of scenarios in Aoi's route, but luckily, things got a lot more exciting once Kazuteru and Hikari's Christmas date started.
Kazuteru decided to take Hikari all the way to Mars to show her around. It felt like they were going to space a lot earlier than in Aoi's route, but I think it did happen at around the same point in the story. So they go there, and Kazuteru shows our heroine around all the sweet shops, and they eat ice cream. If I were him, I would've shown her something exclusive to Mars, instead of something you can get literally anywhere on Earth. To be honest, his whole planet doesn't really feel that different from our own. It's probably the fault of the backgrounds that are used. Some of the are the same as the ones they use in the Earth scenes, and some just look like the location could be anywhere.
After the couple (they're not even dating at this point, but they might as well be) eat some sweets and have some cute moments together, the real fun stuff happens. Kazuteru goes off to get Hikari a rose, but then he gets captured - by Tsukasa of all people! I knew he was going to be the villain, because I'm pretty sure it says on the official website I read before playing, but I'm sure I would be quite shocked if I didn't know before!
I really like this CG. It feels like there are hardly any CGs sometimes in this game, but the ones we get are actually quite nice. I don't know why I said that they looked a bit rubbish in the last post.
So Tsukasa kidnaps Kazuteru, locking him away, then disguises as the prince and goes to meet Hikari. She immediately notices that something is off, because Tsukasa is quite bad at pretending to be someone else. But Tsukasa takes her into Kazuteru's home (which I'm assuming is a royal palace), and Hikari asks who he really is. Tsukasa reveals himself, but doesn't revert his disguise. He reveals his evil plan, which I couldn't understand because of my Japanese skills. I think he wanted to make Hikari his wife or something, then do something bad to the planet. He then kisses her, and we even get a CG of it. For some reason I found this scene really hot. I think I just have a thing for villain characters.
Why is it that every single otome kiss CG ever has the LI looking totally into it while the MC looks absolutely shocked? I know there's a reason for it in this scene, since she is actually surprised, but 90% of the other games who do this have no reason for it. Let the heroines enjoy their kisses!
It's strange, the only proper kiss scene in this route is once that isn't actually done by the LI themselves.
Hikari then does something that I seriously did not expect her to do. She manages to grab the key to unlocking Kazuteru's cell, runs away, finds Lion, and then uses the tiger to locate her lover to be and saves him! I had no idea that she had the potential to do that! I thought Kazuteru was just going to come in and save her instead. Good for her, she actually rescued herself instead of waiting for someone else to do it!
So Kazuteru and Hikari are reunited, and they hid together for a while whilst they figure out what to do about Tsukasa. But it's quite clear that our red-haired prince is rather ill. I think Tsukasa infected the whole planet with some kind of plague or something. When they mentioned it I thought it would be important to know so I Google Translated it, and it came up with the word "plague".
The two travel into the main city, where Hikari tells Kazuteru to wait. She then runs around looking for Tsukasa. It doesn't take very long for her to find him.
It turns out that in his true form, Tsukasa is very hot. I didn't care too much for him before, but after seeing how he really looks, and watching him be the villain, I was ready to jump from Kazuteru's route and straight onto his. But unfortunately, there were no dialogue choices that let me flirt with him. I wish that I didn't have to play two more routes after this to be able to date Tsukasa!
So Hikari tells Tsukasa that she's become his wife or something, as long as he saves everybody and doesn't try to destroy the planet or whatever his evil plan was. He tells her he'll do it, but then after Hikari sacrifices herself, he tells her that he was actually lying. Luckily, before he can harm her anymore, Kazuteru and Lion come to save her. This causes Tsukasa to disappear off into the darkness.
Kazuteru and Hikari wander around and do stuff (I've honestly forgotten what they do in this part), until he shows her his special place that nobody else knows about. Unfortunately, their alone time is ruined by this massive tree that's in the way. Apparently, Tsukasa put it there, and it's the culprit behind the weird plague thing that's infected the population of Mars.
Kazuteru tries to attack it, but he's not very successful. All seems hopeless, until Hikari's hidden magical power saves the day. This power is basically just a magical plot device. It's never really cared about in the story, until the end when the writers need it to solve whatever problem's going on. I sincerely hope than it's not like this in the other routes.
This causes everything to live happily ever after, and in the marriage ending that I got, Kazuteru and Hikari get married. Their love confession scene is awkwardly hilarious, because the other boys are all watching it happen in the shadows. I'm sorry that this plot summary was a bit lacklustre, but there wasn't really that much to talk about.
I wish that we could've found out what happened to Tsukasa. He just disappeared and we didn't hear from him again. I know he has his own route where we can find out what his problem is, but I wish he didn't just disappear here! We never got to see if he really was Kazuteru's twin!! In fact, it never got mentioned again. I would've expected them to at least close that thread by finding the secret brother or something at the end. Hopefully, all will be revealed in Tsukasa's route...
So, what did I think about this route? It was fun, but the high school parts weren't anything spectacular. I had forgotten about them once Hikari and Kazuteru had gone to Mars and the really interesting stuff had started. This route just really makes me quite excited for Tsukasa's.
Actually, I expected this route to be a lot longer, considering that Kazuteru is the game's "main guy" and is on the cover and everything. I'm also surprised that more of the overarching plot wasn't revealed here. Maybe it was, and I just didn't realise. After all, my Japanese skills aren't that perfect.
Throughout this review, I've mainly gone on about the plot and gushed over Tsukasa, but what about the romance? What about Kazuteru, the supposed star of the route? The romance was decent, I suppose. Hikari and Kazuteru are a good match for each other. In the final marriage scene, I was thinking "Aren't they a bit young to be wed?" but for some reason I didn't care when the exact same thing happened in Aoi's route.
Kazuteru as a love interest is alright, I suppose. He might be better for some people, but he's just not my type. As you all know, I self-insert heavily into these games, and I seem to not care that much for the boys who I don't have a "romantic" interest in, even if they are decent people or have good development. I know it's shallow, but that's just the reality of my weird opinions.
The two routes I have next to do are Shina and Mizuki's. I believe the other three are locked until I finish those two first. Whoever's route I do next will be up to the random name generator! I'm more excited to do Shina's over Mizuki's. Mizuki's a cute character, but I have a fear that he'll turn out to be thirteen years old or something, and that'll make the romance a lot weirder for me. It'll just give me flashbacks to Libera's route in Period Cube.
For some reason, I managed to finish this review extremely quickly. It's probably because I glossed over the plot a little bit. But now it's all over. I'll see you all in the next review, I suppose. Goodbye!
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