Imouto to Kanojo - 妹と彼女 それぞれの選択

I just finished Imouto to Kanojo, one of the most interesting romance drama VN I’ve read, Masaki Shunsuke’s writing is really something else; it’s very captivating and mood-setting. The way he structures and plots his routes is unlike anything else; hes great at playing with your expectations to the point that I’m sure wether you have played his earlier title Hajimete no Kanojo or not would also change your way of approaching Imokano From what I’ve heard Hajimete no Kanojo started as some sort of nukige but the writer decided to take it to the next level when (I imagine) he realized he could do something interesting there; as a result it is kind of a glorified nukige since it has like a hundreds ero scenes but also it has a interesting display of his writing abilities playing some tricks between the protagonist and reader’s pov accompanied by some cool character writing, especially when you get to the “ura” routes and his unconventional way of “ending” the routes also hit me hard since it’s not something you usually see in eroge, they’re very FullDespair and play with your expectations building up between them.

Imokano is some sort of spiritual sequel but it’s planned as a utsuge from the get go instead of a nukige, also showcases the good stuff from Hajimete no Kanojo to an even better showcase resulting in a much more easy to read VN, although way longer too, probably close to 3mb of text if not close, took me almost 50h to finish it. Not that Hajimete no Kanojo is hard to read but if you tell someone “it has 100 ero scenes and NTR but it is worth it trust”, they’re not going to be very interested, I imagine. But in reality the writer plays his cards very well, making it shine in ways I never thought I’d have visualized beforehand, and to be honest the ero writing is top tier to the point I feel bad calling them ero, here they’re just an extension of the game, and same for Imokano, although there are barely any ero outside of the last route there.

Focusing on Imokano It’s about two siblings with 4-5 years age gap that love each other but obviously can’t be in a relationship, with the protagonist Kei looking for an answer to their current predicament that can let them both be together. Kei’s narration is kind of weird at the start since the guy is obviously depressed and somewhat suicidal but it doesn’t really come out like that in the surface too much through his own narration. He’s been dedicating his life to fix this situation without any success, until one day he randomly meets with Mitsuki, a mysterious girl who looks and sounds exactly like his sister, and a few days later her sister Haruka and Mitsuki have swapped spots with Kei and his family being completly unaware since Mitsuki’s acting skills are like top tier. The way it plays between Kei’s POV since he doesn’t know, and the reader POV it’s interesting since it is obvious for us whenever they swap, the text plays nicely with what you see to make it more fun, but I wonder if it would have been more interesting if they have picked the same seiyuu for both characters and make it harder for the reader to know. Anyway, from there on it’s kind of a love triangle completly carried by the mastermind Mitsuki, or at least that’s what it looks on the reader’s eyes until the end of the first route where the writer pulls out one of his crazy endings leave us cliffhangered and unlocking the “ura” route; kind of expected coming from the other VN but cool sequence nonetheless. Overall it’s a good starter route in a similar way to Hajimete no Kanojo, leaves you wondering what’s the deal between the two girls and wtf is going on.

Second route is from Haruka’s POV, this is probably my favorite part of the VN as her narration is quite nice, the start of the route pretty much kind of answers the questions from the first route, but makes Mitsuki even more of an enigma. After the start I’d say the pacing, for lack of a better word, kinds of turn into shit since half of the scenes are kind of repeated from Kei’s POV but with different narration, sometimes interesting, sometimes not, and becomes kind of dreadful to read at times since it’s very foreseeable what’s going to happen. This happens a lot in VNs with multiple POVs but considering the game length it should have speedran more the scenes already seen, moreso since the new stuff is all very good. Now let me remark how fucking great the last parts of this route is; when you get to the events that end the first route and you see all that went up from her POV, and the continuation to the cliffhanger ending from Kei’s POV. It’s a godlike way playing setting up and execution between routes. Easily the highlight of the entire VN for me and one of the best sequences I’ve read since it goes for like 2 or 3 hours, really top tier stuff.

For the third route, I’m kind of conflicted. I kind of was expecting something really crazy it being Mitsuki’s route but it becomes something closer to a nakige for more of its duration, and the entire “plot” also is kind of… silly? from the start with that random guy and Mitsuki’s action, to the entire 3p setup that feels like it goes on forever. I think a lot of my problems also come from me not really understanding Mitsuki’s character too well and the fact that I was expecting something very different coming into this; the whole thing with her mother and the 愛 vs 恋 didn’t convince me too much. Not to say that it doesn’t have some parts I liked like the surreal imagery and narration of Mitsuki at times, but overall I can’t say I was too thrilled about the whole route.

That said I still think it’s one of the best romance/drama VNs out there, maybe not to the point to be one of the greatest, but not too far either, well not that there are too many crazy psycho drama romances out there to begin with. It definetly could have had a bit of a trimming in text length since it’s way longer that needs to be, but on a scene by scene it’s well written enough that I didn’t mind it too much. But yeah for fans of the genre it’s a solid recommendation together with his other VN Hajimete no Kanojo. Could have been easily VN of the year if it didn’t come out in the same year that had Scaji and Setoguchi titles.