american otoge saturday, june 15, 2025 feeling: neutral

if you're at all familiar with my blog beyond just the front page, i'm sure you're aware i'm a massive fan of otome games. i started liking them in 2020 with korean mobile otoge love unholyc, but this year i got back into them thanks to tokimeki memorial girls side 3rd story. what a long name! as it is, i've currently played, from beginning to end, 8 otome games i think? it might be more. and i also have played a shitton of other games with dating elements in them. regardless, i've been getting a lot of videos on my instagram fyp abt the new otoge, "date everything", and honestly i have so many gripes about that game that relate back to my general distaste towards western otoge.

first of all, the point of this post isn't to act like japan/korea are just superior in every way and super cool; there are plenty, and i mean plenty, of shitty jp otoge (cough cough, amnesia memories, cough cough, brocon). i am korean so my goal with this really isn't to sound like those white people who act like east asia is just so superior and advanced and so much better than america; really, this is just for me to critique what western otoge tends to do wrong, in hopes that maybe someone might listen and people might start making good western otoge. although i know that's a far reach considering im just a 16yo girl on neocities.

honestly, before everything, i have to say what i dislike the most abt western otoge in general is their art style and inability to take themselves seriously; of course, this is a huge generalization. games like "a date with death", for example, don't do this. the art style in that otoge is incredible and it takes itself very seriously, especially for a free otoge. but other games, such as, like, dream daddy and date everything, just dont!!! and it kills me!!! i understand some games are just meant to be jokes, but i feel like the western market for otoge is so oversaturated with games that aren't being genuine and are meant to just be funny. not to mention, not to be like really annoying or anything, but the sexist undertones of that implication; otome games are heavily marketed to and associated with young women, and to make content in that genre that's purposefully meant to make fun of itself kind of bugs me. of course there's games like hatoful boyfriend, which is also making fun of itself, but the thing is that the jp and korean market of otoge has enough serious games that there's room for there to be funny ones, while it's the opposite in the western market.

i understand that the art style point is incredibly subjective and superficial, it's honestly just my own opinion and i know plenty of people who enjoy it and find the art styles attractive. i think it's great that the western otoge market has focus on multiple kinds of guys instead of just the same slim, twinkish, late teens to early 20s men that you see in otomate games. but that being said, a lot of western otoge tend to feel overly gimmicky, like with the two games i mentioned before (dream daddy and date everything). i recognize my opinion on this is probably due to the fact that i dont tend to play western otoge, so my knowledge of games is largely focused on the western otoge that have become popular outside of just otome spaces. i really could be wrong about all of this so please feel free to educate me if any of my points arent true!

as well, i've played a good handful of indie western otoge, albeit not all the way through, and i notice that the mc tends to never be all that relatable; i'm all for a mc who is her own character and not just meant to be a self insert, like the mc of code:realize, but i find that a lot of these games tend to not skew in either direction. it feels like there's a lot of projection from the author onto the mc without any of the projections necessarily being plot relevant (by this i mean that they make jokes based on current pop culture and stuff). there also tends to be a heavy emphasis on social media which kind of bugs me? i don't think it's wrong to mention social media or integrate it into an otoge, it can be done well (such as in tmgs3 or hakuoki ssl) and even add a lot more to the game. but when a game places a heavy emphasis on social media like twitter or instagram it just feels kind of cheap to me. this is totally my own opinion, though, and its not like this cant be done well, like i said earlier.

also, i feel like most of western otoge is targeted towards millenial women which is totally cool but like. can we please have western otoge for girls, too? however, i do get why this is; jp and kr otoge tends to be targeted towards younger women, so i'm glad older women still have options within otoge.

okay. one more thing. the stories!!!! like, i personally tend to play otoge half for the LI, half for the story; and i feel like most western otoge lean into the "dating sim" title as opposed to the otome game title. i mean, i could be wrong, but i feel like the point of otoge is to be a love story. not just a flirting sim. this maybe is just a cultural difference, because i think western games tend to have more user interaction than ea games (because most jp otoge only have, like, 20 dialogue options within a 6 hour route). but still, i'm just not a fan of this aspect. that's why i didnt like brocon, because it felt more like a date simulator than a romance game, and i feel like western otoge experience the same pitfalls.

all that being said, i will give credit where credit is due; western otoge being gimmicky does lead to a ton of interesting concepts. although i doubt i'll ever want to play date everything, for example, it is an incredibly cool concept and the mix of 3d and visual novel gameplay is super cool. also, the mc customization in more modern otoge is just lovely. i know theres a lot of indie games now that have custom pronoun options and customization of what your mc looks like, which is insane and i can't wait to see similar features be integrated into bigger otoge, too, because it could open up a whole new area of interaction within otoge. also, more recently, otoge with multiple LI's have been including female and male options for LI's which i love. tmgs3 did this, too, but i feel like the indie otoge doing this now have more fleshed out routes for the girls. often in jp/kr otoge, the female love interests feel very tacked on and less lesbian, more "friendship", which i've always hated!!!!

anyways. i hope i dont get like shot and curb stomped for this. i mean no hate to the creators of the games i mentioned, because the games are obviously popular with their target audience. like, western otoge tend to be for women in their 20s-30s, and those women seem to enjoy them! i'm just very much not the target audience at all except for the lesbian stuff, so i should probably just keep my mouth shut, but i still wanted to rant about this. both markets have their fair share of flaws, but with the current (small) rise in western otoge, i feel like this needed to be said.. ;; i hope that this doesnt offend anyone!

dokuro chan review tuesday, may 27, 2025 feeling: neutral

i feel like if you're online or a fan of goreshit you probably at least somewhat know of bludgeoning angel dokuro chan, but i dont know, i dont think that many people have actually watched it considering its limited run and the fact it was produced by a company that stopped making anime almost 20 years ago.. eep! but i took it upon myself to check it out upon learning konata's va voiced dokuro chan in the dub. and dokuro chan sounds the exact same as konata it's honestly kind of funny ^^

anyways, that doesn't mean much since while they're both eccentric characters, dokuro chan and konata are totally different characters, and their shows are just as different, though they're both moe slice of life comedy anime set in schools. i find dokuro chan (anime) to be both lovable and awful. the portrayal of a girl bludgeoning a guy multiple times each episode is fweaking amazing like i love dokuro chan to death and i find her to be way too good. the plot of her having to go back in time to kill sakuro (sakura?) kun for being a pedophile is also really really good. i love anime that condemns freaky gross men. that being said, while i think the show is a great take on female rage and good satire of moe anime, i think it really, really could do without all the panty shots of dokuro chan, since she's a middle schooler.

i found that season 2 really lost the plot because the bludgeoning cooled down and the fanservice ramped up a ton, but season one was still great besides what i mentioned before. dokuro is hilarious and i love how each scene seems like it's building up to something erotic just to become a overdramatic, comical display of violence. i also found the animation to be really really funny!

but besides all that, what i like the most about the show is undoubtedly the intro. goreshit has an amazing remix of the op that i'm completely in love with, but the original is just as good. and the animation is so funny. i just love the fact that the heroine subverts the awful expectations and stereotypes you're supposed to believe she falls into by being just absolutely insane and having no control over her anger. i'd love to cosplay her one day ^^

con debrief saturday, may 24, 2025 feeling: exhausted

oh man oh man. im so iffy about how i feel about cons but i must say going to a con while being in a fandom is such a fucking good experience. i got into cosplaying last year, but the con i went to today was the first con i'd been to in a cosplay i actually made ( in the past, i only cosplayed if my friend needed me to be someone to match her LMAO). it was really nice being a character from a game i liked and being recognized :)

i spent so much fucking money today, though. admittedly im absolutely exhausted as i write this- i went so broke i couldnt even buy food at the con, so when i got home i literally gorged myself on everything i could find and now im in like a food coma. moving on. i am going to post online images of every figure i got! i got 10 total only 1 not being from mha.. i have such an unhealthy attachment to mha its so bad

im so fucking happy abt my haul.. i've been wanting some of these figures for so long (shigaraki especially, i've been wanting a figure of his since 2021). i put them all up on my display shelves!!!

goreshit revisited thursday, may 22, 2025 feeling: sleepy

last year i was a massive on and off goreshit fan, but i wasn't really into anime or anything and kind of just listened to him to be edgy. the only album i really liked (still love) was dancefloor muthafuka because i'm nothing if not in love with 2000s europop nightcore trance music. but anyways. after briefly watching (and dropping..) azumanga, watching lucky star, etcetera, i could not stop recognizing parts of the shows that he sampled and eventually foundthis webpage about his samples, and i decided to check out some of the songs.

jeez louise! goreshit is freaking awesome. every time i rediscover his music i come back to same conclusion. yes i am a lesbian, but if i had to marry one man who wasn't shigaraki tomura, i'd like for it to be goreshit, because i feel we have a lot in common. he's still miles ahead of me though and one day i'd like to be on the level of coolness that he's at. he used toko as an album cover in freaking 2016!! i'm more envious of goreshit's vision than i am of anyone else. he's so fucking cooooool!!!

last year, my favorite songs of his were am i loli enough, loli fantasy, and please ejaculate inside me. of course, also fifth grade because i think everyone who's into goreshit to be edgy ends up liking that song. i really like fake ass bitches, kesha (the way she likes to fuck), say it ain't low, and i still love loli fantasy. his mashups if you can even call them that are so freaking amazing, especially with the first 2 songs i mentioned. like how do you mix weezer and bass down low and make it sound so good? in another life i was definitely, definitely an artist like him. but not this one. i can't even fathom how he does what he does, such as in chiyopop, where he clipped a bunch of parts of azumanga or something. like what? i can't imagine how much work that takes.

i feel like more attention needs to be brought to his albums that arent my love feels all wrong and tomboyish love for soda pop and and apple sweets, because splitshit 2 and dancefloor muthafuka and his copyright infringement ep are all really, really good.

my only issue with his music is that it gives me a headache. i'd need to drink a lot of water to listen to more than a few songs at a time, 'cause it makes me feel kinda stuffy. so i'll move onto some other music i've discovered lately.

i've been so so so loving denpa music. it's so different from denpage which totally shocked me, but after watching skylar's video on denpa music i realized how flipping cool it is. i also happen to get reccomended a ridiculous amount of korean denpa song comps on youtube, i have no idea why, but after listening to a few i realized how flipping awesome it is. however, i mostly prefer vocaloid denpa songs to like, anime openings and stuff. i wonder if bludgeoning angel dokuro chan's op counts as denpa? it's really good. but personally my fav is currently triple baka... i'm happy to be getting back into vocaloid after so long. i was a massive miku fan in 2018, but after playing a lot of project diva on my psvita i'm coming to enjoy it again. especially meltdown, romeo and cinderella, rolling girl, tell your world, really all of that. early vocaloid is really something. i miss miku's old design to be honest.

finishing bad apple wars monday, may 19, 2025 feeling: sleepy

last night i did shrooms and finished bad apple wars.. jeez louise you guys. bad apple wars is NOT a otoge i hear talked about nearly enough- a part of me understands why, because the love interest selection is limited with characters that don't really fall into any common tropes, and the budget for the game is clearly not amazing. but it was one of the first games i got upon getting psvita, and for good reason. first of all, the setting is really interesting. a lot of otoge i play tend to follow the same storyline of somem mystery or problem and while bad apple wars does have a plot that surrounds one big goal, the setting is ridiculously unique, as is the goal.

bad apple wars immediately begins with the protag dying by being hit by a car, and waking up at a school called nevaeh academy, where students have to either become "good apples" or "bad apples"; good apples conform to the schools multitude of ridiculous rules, cover their faces, don't have names, follow orders to a T, etcetera, whereas bad apples are actively aiming to break each rule in hopes of "expulsion", which they assume means being brought back to life.

the player is given the option early on in the story of becoming a good apple or bad apple; the good apple route has 2 LI's, bad apple route has 3. i chose the good apple route first, but i found it to just not be my cup of tea because i wasn't interested in becoming a prefect or anything weird like that, so i chose the bad apple route and went with shikishima as my LI of choice. wow. what a fucking good decision.

i always like when otoge have a lot of room for variety in routes, such as cxm having each route follow a different mystery, and bad apple wars was very similar. depending on your love interest of choice, you'll learn more about their life before they died. what makes this even more interesting is that each love interest is from a different period; my choice, shikishima, was the "oldest" of the group, being from the taishou era. i feel that this added to the interesting dynamics between characters a lot; little things like shikishima talking about things that didn't exist in his time, the differences in slang that characters from more recent eras and older eras used, etc, was very, very cool to see.

more than that, i personally am a massive fan of angst and bad apple wars is, undoubtedly, the straight version of doomed yuri, because no matter what love interest you pick, even if you do get "expelled" and brought back to life, you'll never see them again. this was more pronounced with shikishimas route, of course; the player/protag, rinka, is from a more modern era, nearly a hundred years after shikishima, and thus, they're fated to either live in a repressive environment together, or live happily without eachother.

i could be too into literary theory, but there was also a lot of themes of marxism and societal critique that i certainly wouldn't expect from a low budget, no-name otoge. the entire plot of the game is the protagonist and bad apples' goal of breaking each rule, which they're punished for; to be a good apple is to lose all sense of identity and become completely soulless in hopes of "graduating", and anything besides that is considered worthy of punishment, which is done by the prefects by hitting the rule-breakers with a stick that momentarily transforms their mental state into one of depression and despair. it's pretty interesting, right?

as well, each character is "limited" in their self expression. i only played shikishimas route so i can't speak for the others, but shikishima, who's a painter, is never able to paint any colors, no matter what he does, being the "limit" of his self expression. a part of me believes this is because one of the rules of nevaeh academy is that you can't express love in any form- doing so will cause words to be illegible or voices to be muffled- and shikishima pours his heart into all of his paintings, being in love with the world around him and wanting to capture that love.

bad apple wars is also, nearing the second half of the story, heavily focused on the purpose you were born for. shikishima allows himself to return to life, knowing he's sick with a incurable disease and will face certain death, because he believes his purpose was to share his feelings with the world. he's also a ridiculously well written character. i don't usually play routes for LI's who fit his trope- the kind of holy, esoteric light haired twink character- but i found that bad apple wars expanded greatly on it. shikishima is an incredibly three dimensional character and i didn't really find him appealing as a LI but i certainly fell in love with the writing of his character.

my only gripe with the game, besides the lack of LI's, which i think is excusable, is the romance. it could be because i'm a lesbian and obviously am really disgusted by romance (so why do i play otoge?) but i found that it was definitely the most outright flirtatious game i've played. you have to touch the characters in particular places (shoulders/waist up, nothing pervy) to get the right endings, which is already kind of weird, and shikshima is ridiculously flirty. i kind of hated that but i understand i'm certainly not the target audience. i prefer otoge that are more subtle in their romance.

all in all, i think the game is available on steam, so i urge you to try it if the romance doesn't bother you. it's super duper short, maybe like six hours total but i dont know for sure, not that hard to follow, and has such a gut wrentching, heart warming story and meaning that i think it'd be worth your time. it's certainly the most unique otoge i've played so far.

bro!con's faults tuesday, may 20, 2025 feeling: sleepy (again)

if you saw my otogefest page, i'm trying to play and re-play every otoge available on psvita. so my latest victim has been brother's conflict: precious baby, beginning with passion pink. going into this game, i was already aware of the pitfalls it has and the good of it, too, but jesus christ!!!! it's about as bad as you'd expect if you know anything about bro!con. psuedo incest being pushed in your face 24/7, a route with an actual child (wataru, the 11 year old youngest brother of the asahina family), and many, many routes with men over a decade older than the protag. sigh. i was looking forward to this game due to just how many guys are in it but it's straight up 2010s otoge slop; lots of suggestive scenes between, mind you, adults and a teenage girl, an abhorent amount of incest, etc. i understand that the main girl is the stepsister of the asahina brothers, but it still weirds me out. they could have just not mentioned that, but they call her "little sis" a lot. i also find it weird that 2 of the LI's are 11 and 14? it really makes me wonder who the target audience for this game is.

i chose kaname's route, which admittedly is good if you put aside all the bad about the game, but it's soured by everything i just mentioned and the shitty gameplay. like it's seriously the most boring otoge i've ever played. my intro to otoge was tokimeki memorial girl's side 3rd story, which has similarly "boring" gameplay- calendar-based system, stat grinding, date grinding, etc. but i found it to still be enjoyable due to all of the challenge within this gameplay style. you had to make sure your date outfits (which you bought on weekends) were always up-to-par with your love interest of choice's taste, and you had to get a job that would max out the right stats to end up with your selected love interest. plus, the animations would change as time went on; for example, at the start of the game, doing fitness would show an animation of just your character, but by the end, your LI would be with you.

all this is to say that there's a lot of potential in non-conventional otoge. bad apple wars is another example of this. bro!con, at least thus far, doesn't utilize this potential whatsoever. the dates get extremely boring with little to no variety as the game goes on, and sleepovers are similar. the calendar system is incredibly boring because it only maxes out your romance with a character, as opposed to other stats. it's a game i've found myself skipping most of. as well, the events are few and far between. i usually can enjoy non traditional otoge, but brocon makes me miss the storylines other games had.

tokimeki memorial is the main game i can think to compare brocon to, because both of them are fluffy, slice of life, early 2010s otoge. but tokimemo did everything right in terms of grindy, stat-based gameplay, and brocon has done everything wrong. i'm hoping that brilliant blue, the second game packaged with passion pink, improves upon this, because i read that passion pink is a lot easier and less strategic than the other.

my final gripe with it is how misleading the title is. for fun, i decided to two-time kaname by going out with yusuke at the same time, and there was only ONE conflict scene regarding this. which just seems strange, considering the title is literally brother's conflict. you'd expect there to be a lot more fighting and jealousy, but there really isn't. there's also little to no focus on any characters besides the LI you choose. It's just so bad. like genuinely, this is probably the worst otoge i've played after amnesia: memories.

anyways, i'll make a post about this on my game diary when i finish passion pink and brilliant blue. i hope the game improves in BB but i don't know how you can even improve on such a dogshit title and dogshit premise. and, once again, why the fuck does an 11 year old have a route?

about tomura shigaraki wednesday, may 21, 2025 feeling: sad

boy oh boy i have been planning on writing a post abt this for EVER and i finally have finished the puzzle. if you know anything about me youprobably know i love tomura shigaraki more than anything despite being a lesbian. and i've loved him since early 2021, making it four years now. i mean of course i really just got into him because of the way he looks and his stinky vibe and how similar we are, but when i got back into mha last month, i realized so much more about him. i actually paid attention during the show, which i didn't do back in 2021, and i finished it completely and then finished the chapters of the manga that weren't yet animated, and then read the 4komas involving the league and so on. safe to say i feel like maybe just maybe i kind of can speak confidently abt tomura and in "defense" of him. not to say trying to kill people is okay or defendable, but more to say that i want to explain his character and the motivations behind it. he's fictional, anyways.

tomura shigaraki is the main villain of my hero academia, being the leader of the league of villains, later, the leader of the paranormal liberation front, and all for one's successor. he was born as tenko shimura, the grandson of a famous hero, but his grandmother abandoned his father, leading to his father hating villains. however, in the society that MHA is set in, heroes are almost universally loved and celebrated, especially by children, which was why tomura, at a young age, idolized heroes and wanted to be one.

he was abused by his father for this, countless times, finding his only friends to be two of his classmates, his dog, and his older sister. on top of all of this, he had a skin condition that caused him to constantly itch at his face and neck; when his quirk manifested as a child, the reasons for this "incurable" skin condition finally became clear. his quirk manifested tragically, with him crying as he held his pet dog after being beaten by his father, only for his dog to crumble to dust. his sister came to find him upon hearing his screams, only for tomura to grab her and, once again, accidentally murder one of his friends- his sister. his mother came next, and then his father. however, the death of his father was all but unintentional, being the first time he really murdered someone, and suddenly, the itching vanished.

he left the house, now orphaned, and despite how alone and scared he was, none of the countless people he passed by offered to help him. all for one was the first to reach out his hand to tomura, miraculously unaffected by his quirk, and soon tomura became his successor, being given the name tomura shigaraki instead of tenko shimura.

all of this is just background because i assume most people don't remember the events of mha. what sticks out to me the most about his backstory is a line in the manga-

"i did this... i... chose this. it was my choice to destroy this house... and my family... other-wise... what's the point of these hands?"

this is such a key point of tomura's character and motivations. while he was influenced heavily by all for one, be realistic for a second. if you were already stressed and full of self loathing due to abuse, not to mention you were still a child, and your quirk manifested by you killing your entire family, wouldn't you come to the same conclusion? the itching that tortured him constantly only subsided upon murdering his father. being just a child, that was the only conclusion he could come to.

when we see tomura in the manga, he's 18 years old and the head of the league of villains, a man child with two goals; first, to kill all might, and second, to destroy hero society, both related to eachother. he hates all might because he represents the society he's come to hate. he believes a society that can birth a monster like him shouldn't exist. which is so flipping sad because his entire motivation as a villain is based off of self hatred and justification of his own trauma.

tomura shigaraki following the stain arc and paranormal liberation front arc is not the same tomura we see at the beginning; he's much more calculated and, eventually, hardly has his own consciousness, as he merges with all for one and becomes a shell of a person. for that reason i first of all, don't care all that much for him, and secondly, don't feel he can even be defended because while his motivations stem from the same reasons, they're built upon in a way that is just purely evil.

but tomura as we see him in the first two seasons is a petty criminal with big dreams and no plans to make them into a reality, a man who has been handed everything on a silver spoon held by AFO, and has not yet begun to destroy the world. in my opinion this is the purest form of tomura's character that we get, because this is who he is with the least external influence. stain and overhaul and re-destro influence him heavily in the later seasons, but a childish, naive villain is a lot more endearing than a calm and calculated one.

so anyways. i honestly don't think tomura was that bad of a guy in these first two seasons. i'm really empathetic when it comes to bad people because i have a really awful complex where i believe i'm the worst person to ever exist and that everyone hates me, so of course i'm drawn to tomura. this was a really pointless post. i jsut feel really bad for him. my poor baby boy.