hallo! welcome 2 my blog; well i dont really use this as a blog but more like a space to rant. so a journal? this is my place
for ranting abt otoge and anime, talking about upcoming events in my mundane life, and talking abt my hyperfixations. meow!
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.
