Let's get straight to the point: I ADORE
Bad Apple Wars, so much so that it can claim the honour of being my absolute favourite otome VN so far
. (Yup, I love it even more than
Norn9—although to be fair, there's but a teeny-tiny gap between the two games in my heart.) But as the title implies, it was not always that way. It took a lot of time and runs to reveal that game's true potential, and my feelings for it went through a lot of ups and downs in the process. Without further ado, here's the story of how
BAW meekly but decidedly
climbed to the top of my personal otome chart. (Minor
spoilers!)
Things started auspiciously, as I had an instant crush on
BAW the very second I started playing it. I was hopelessly fond of the sharp character design, the distintive art style, the vivid colour palette, the lush soundtrack, the unique font, the lively translation, the zesty voice acting, the eerie setting, the mesmerizing atmosphere—the
everything. I just
loved that game, period. It oozed some strong
Danganronpa vibes, and yet it was unique enough to not feel like a complete rip-off of said
Danganronpa. I relished the fact that the heroine was this bland, unremarkable, nearly blasé character instead of your usual cheerful and upbeat otome MC, and I was delighted by her uncanny ability to maintain her apathetic edge even in the face of a completely foreign and ludicrous situation. I cleared Satoru's route first, and I enjoyed it so much that I was just
that close to jumping on my keyboard and ordering a physical copy of the game. However, experience had taught me to be cautious with VNs and otomes, and to not judge a whole game on a single route. So I restrained my roaring purchasing impulses, and kept playing.
And sure enough, things started to deteriorate right from the second route. I went for Higa, and I was quickly irritated by Rinka's submissive attitude towards the Bad Apples and by the goody-two-shoes and holier-than-thou attitude of said Bad Apples. I started suspecting that the writers had a mighty big bias towards the Bad Apples indeed, and that the choice between two sides I had somehow been promised was nothing but a marketing sham. Then I played Alma/Aruma's route, and the repetitions promptly drove me crazy. Higa's and Aruma's routes had so many scenes in common that I felt like I was virtually playing the exact same route, only with a different suitor. And to my utter dismay, the same pattern reared its ugly head yet again in Shikishima's route. That's when I resorted to skipping massive chunks of the game in order to reach the next exclusive scene without having to sift through mountains of already read dialogue; and by the time I polished off Watase's route, I had virtually stopped reading segments that didn't feature the beau du jour. That sure didn't help alleviate my negative feelings towards
BAW, as all that skipping made me feel more disconnected from the game than ever. To add insult to injury, the story was not answering all my questions, and you know how much I hate it when a story leaves me hanging and doesn't bother tying loose ends. In a nutshell, I was pissed off, and my initial love for the game had turned into contempt and aversion.
I thought things were well and truly over between me and
BAW—but lo and behold, a few days after the end of my run, I started nursing second thoughts. I though that maybe I had missed some key information by skipping so many scenes; and I wondered if maybe the bad endings, which I had carefully avoided, could shed light on some unexplained story elements. Most importantly, the game still tugged at me and draw me in somehow; and deep down inside, I really didn't want to dislike it. And that's how I decided to give
BAW a second chance and found myself replaying the whole game from scratch, bad endings included.
And to my utter delight, everything clicked into place during that second playthrough. It turned out that
BAW is one of these stories in which nearly every word uttered by the characters contains meaningful information and is relevant to the plot, and that I had indeed missed a lot of important narrative elements by force-skipping entire sections and avoiding bad endings. I finally managed to piece everything together and I was able at long last to understand the whole story—and holy cow, is it a mind-blowing story indeed. Very consistent rules, no major plotholes, no trace of ad hoc or deus ex machina and last but not least, a delightful plot twist—albeit a bit too muted for it own good. It took an awful lot of unraveling to get the full picture, but gosh, that was
so worth it. The game's title finally made sense, as well as the fact that there's only one true side available: the sole purpose of the NEVAEH Academy is to coax dead youngsters into overcoming despair and recovering the will to live, and that deed can solely be achieved through being a Bad Apple. Fully understanding the story's stakes also gave me a new appreciation of all the characters, whose hurdles and hardships suddenly became much more touching and heart-wrenching. And that's how I found myself not just merely loving
BAW again, but loving it ten times more than when I started playing it.
It goes without saying that after all that,
BAW brilliantly passed the Shall We Get Physical test. And it passed with honours too, since I ended up purchasing the regular North-American edition AND the Japanese special edition. As they say in french, when you love, you don't count the (shipping) costs! Having said that, I'm going to skip the route report for that game. The reason for that most unusual course of (in)action is twofold: first, the romance in
BAW is clearly secondary to the overarching story, a mere side dish to be enjoyed along the way; and secondly, although I kinda liked all the guys and could relate to their plagues, I don't have much to add about them. I was thinking of laying down the rules of the
BAW universe in a dedicated post, but I'm not sure I'll have the drive to do that. What I have the drive to do, on the other hand, is play the last otome VN I snatched during that January PSN sale. Let's get back to the love grinding! Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!