Shiraishi: The resident nutcase—with a feline twist. Although Shiraishi pleasantly strays from your usual otome psychopath by boasting strikingly good sun-kissed looks and a charming and playful personality, he's actually a really derivative character. Take Enomoto's chirpiness, mix it with Sasazuka's bluntness and brains, throw in a couple of cat-themed accessories for good measure, and voilĂ ! That's Shiraishi for you. The poor guy's troubled past and his love story with Hoshino are just as unconvincing as his sense of style: I cannot believe for a second that a couple of hours spent with Hoshino over a two-week period are enough to overcome years of hardcore mental conditioning. Either Adonis' conditioning programs are utter crap, or Hoshino has some superhuman hypnosis abilities. The ending, on top of being depressing, is just ridiculously improbable. You want me to swallow that young and beautiful Hoshino is going to pull off a Penelope and wait patienly and lovingly for her terrorist boyfriend to be released from jail? Yeah, like heck she will. More like she'll find a nice normal guy to warm her up during those cold, lonely nights away from Shiraishi, and that'll be the end of it. All in all, Shiraishi's route is by far the most frustrating, implausible and unfullfilling of all the CxM routes.
Enomoto: Right of the bat, I couldn't help but see the would-be samourai as a mix of Impey Barbicane from Code:Realize and Sha Gojyo from Saiyuki. Add to this his ridiculous eye patch, and you get a character that I couldn't take seriously for the life of me. Mind you, Enomoto's backstory was intense enough and could perfectly have redeemed his route and his character; but then he had to ruin it all by fretting every time Hoshino was kind to him, by fussing about indirect kisses and using first names, and by being generally way too impulsive and immature. And he's a crappy investigator to boot. Why am I even working with this guy, exactly? Not only does he do virtually nothing to help me, but I'm the one who has to drag him out of his procrastination misery and kick his butt so that he'll come to terms with his past. Yeah, sure! I have nothing more pressing to do after all, right? It's not like I have a collar choke-full of poison around my neck or something. In the end, Enomoto is not a bad character, but having to pamper and reassure him constantly just got on my nerves on the long run.
Yanagi: Sheesh, what a giant snoozefest. I hoped that the game's poster boy and true route tenant would pack some punch behind his nondescript looks and low-key behaviour; but alas, Yanagi is every bit as boring in his own dedicated route as he is in the prologue and the other routes. There is not a shred of chemistry between him and Hoshino: they don't ever seem to feel comfortable in each other's presence, let alone attracted to each other. Then there is the massive issue of their common past: when Yanagi mentioned that he and Hoshino were "perpetrator and victim", I immediately pictured a situation in which Hoshino would have to choose either to get her revenge on Yanagi, thus subscribing to Adonis' ideals, or to forgive him and break the insane and potentially endless vicious circle of crime&revenge instigated by Adonis. That would have been the most intense and perfect outcome, wouldn't it? But NOPE! It turns out that Yanagi actually rescued Hoshino from a random abductor back in the days, after which the matter is prompty ousted and never referred to again. I seriously suspect that this event was shoehorned into Yanagi's route to create a connection of sorts between him and Hoshino. Like: "Suuuure, there's no spark at all between those two—but hey, they met in the past!!! That has to count for something, right?" Well, I'm afraid not. Yanagi's route could have been redeemed by the fact that it let me flex my investigative muscle at long last—but infortunately, that was too little, too late. And I'm still pissed off that the game required me to input a certain character's full name without giving me the opportunity to save or check my files first. I sure knew all the character's last names, but their first names? Are you kidding me, Otomate? I had to reload my last save to retrieve the first name in question, and I was none too pleased by that interruption.
Nope, you can't have them. |
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