Gift ~Eternal Rainbow~ and the endless love

~another bishoujo game~

Gift ~Eternal Rainbow~ aired between October 6th and December 22, 2006, during the same Fall anime season as Yoake Mae yori Ruri-iro na: Crescent Love, Happiness, Kanon (2006) and Otome wa Boku ni Koi Shiteru. The aforementioned series, of course being television anime adaptations of bishoujo games. The original source material of these anime were occasionally erotic in nature but the content was removed during the all-ages television run, though of course not without some fanservice and stimulating onsen or beach episodes. I would assume that most people knew what a bishoujo game or eroge was at the time thanks to the popularity of Kyoto Animation's adaptations of classic KEY Visual Arts visual novels like Air (2005) and Kanon (2006). Though on the whole, I would wager most people knew these as “hose H-games”; games with high school settings, cherry blossoms and the same five archetypes in a harem. Shows that, on the whole, appeared fairly unremarkable and understated in their run. Emotionally bankrupt and predictable in nature with their over usage of the same narrative beats. Characters you've already seen before dressed up slightly different yet playing the same role you know them for. So why were there so many? A 2009 MyAnimeList review^[a] of the television anime Gift ~Eternal Rainbow~ by user ZetaAspect concludes their write-up in explaining how, despite being a fairly unremarkable romantic drama anime, they were surprised to be enjoying their time with the show. Surprised because despite the preconceived notions of bishoujo game adaptations, this one was nice. A “pleasant” surprise at that, being from someone who previously noted their depleted patience for male wish-fulfillment H-Game and harem type anime. What was it that made Gift ~Eternal Rainbow~ special and what was with these bishoujo game adaptations?

First let me take a step back and provide some context. The same 2009 MyAnimeList review of the television anime Gift ~Eternal Rainbow~, user ZetaAspect opens their review, seemingly fatigued, writing “really, what isn't based on an H-Game nowadays?” I skimmed the rest of the review but my eyes kept returning to the very beginning and thinking about the possible throw-away line, implicitly categorizing Gift as “one of those H-game adaptations” in its top-level appraisal of the show. In the year of writing this review we saw only six television anime that were based on erotic games: 11eyes, Shin Koihime Musou, White Album (2009), Princess Lover!, Tayutama ~Kiss on my Deity~ and Tears to Tiara. There were technically seven, with Phantom: Requiem for a Phantom, though it could hardly be considered a standard fare bishoujo game. Amongst the shows listed, only three of which could really be considered standard fare harem anime typical of the high school-based bishoujo game adaptations of years prior. According to AniDB, in the year of Gift ~Eternal Rainbow~'s airing, disregarding adult OVA, ten anime based on bishoujo games were released. Though the year this category of anime peaked was in 2005, the same year as Kyoto Animation's Air adaptation. That year had significantly more than the five series in 2004 and six series in 2003. Though quantifying trends with numbers really doesn't get to the heart of the problem; statistically proving that there were “only” ten television anime adapted from bishoujo games really only proves that there were ten more in that year than there is now in 2022. The problem was the fact that anime fans during 2009 thought that there were “too many” anime based on H-games. “Too many” of something, perhaps implying that there was not enough of something else. Maybe they wanted more original stories with dark adult-oriented plots, or more 2-cour television anime. There were probably oldfriends still lamenting the death of space opera and mecha anime as they watched in horror as Code Geass and Kidou Senshi Gundam 00 began their runs of popularity. It occurred to me that other anime fans in 2009 thought of the tired genre of bishoujo game adaptations in the same way that 2018 otaku thought about light novel adaptations; both shaking their fists angrily in the general direction of Japan, trying to place blame somewhere.

My mind continued to return to ZetaAspect's rhetorical question: “what isn't based on an H-Game nowadays?” They didn't expect an otaku from 12 years in the future to answer their rhetorical question, much less want me to answer their question with numbers. That would be unsatisfying to me too. They didn't ask that question because they couldn't use MyAnimeList to check seasonal charts to find that answer out themselves. ZetaAspect opened their review that way because they wanted to call to attention the existence of a phenomenon in the anime industry they viewed as being significant enough to consider a trend at all. “What isn't based on an H-Game nowadays?” wants us to call our attention to the raw numbers as I already did- quantify the phenomenon and realize just how many H-game adaptations there were, comparatively to the non-H-game adaptations from the current year. Or maybe they were asking why there were still H-game adaptations being released when they were starting to wane in popularity. Or simply, that there were H-game adaptations at all. Though what really struck me was the nonchalant implication that such a category of “H-game adaptations” existed and was recognized as a trend clearly defined enough to be recognized at all. The anime in this category are frequently overlooked for their seemingly formulaic expressions of male-fantasy fodder for the nebulous bottom-feeding audience we know simply as “Japanese otaku”. This was an audience of shadowy figures buying overpriced DVD’s and character goods in their domestic market, allowing such a category to continue to prosper. Otaku everyone knew existed, never saw, and probably just assumed were the hikikomori they heard about in the news. Who was this category of anime for? “Japanese otaku” became the strawman for enduring trends like the continued releasing of middle-of-the-road bishoujo game adaptations that we have seen a dozen times before. Adaptations that, sometimes- especially so in their twilight years- found themselves plagued by rushed production schedules and tight purse strings. Simply existing to satiate a pre-existing audience of “Japanese otaku” who sat in their room surrounded by pretty girl merchandising. Otaku who were picturesque images of the kimoi otaku depicted in media who spoke funny and made women uncomfortable. This shadow organization apparently having enough of a sway within the market to single-handedly sustain a category of niche anime based on games that were slowly fading into obscurity. Was it really just wish fulfillment they wanted? What did they see in these shows that the general anime watching audience did not? “Yet another show based on an H-game” continued to ring in my ears.

It's a love story baby just say yes

There is a large percentage of anime fans, specifically surrounding the discussion of Gift ~Eternal Rainbow~, that tend to hastily conclude that Gift was just like Da Capo. A user by the name of yota71 on an AniDB review states that “[f]or me [it's] just a Da Capo clone…” Based on the two anime this user saw the similarities and categorized them with the same logical grouping of “Da Capo-likes”. Taken at face value, both series take place in a contemporary Japanese high school setting, include a somewhat snarky main character, feature emotionally unstable imouto-type main heroines and takes place in a fictional Japanese town where miracles are commonplace. I would see the biggest similarity between the two series is their inclusion of magical realism and the unstable beauty of the extraordinary we take for granted. In Gift, that is of course the titular “Gifts”, being miracles two people can perform when their hearts are connected, and is indicated on the ever-present looming rainbow outlining the town. In Da Capo, the transient beauty of the spring sakura blossoms falling is p3rv3rted in its excess, unintentionally providing curious commentary on the nature of over usage of such Japanese imagery. Gifts being overused diminish the extraordinary nature of miracles, sakura always blooming diminishes the wabi-sabi within the imagery of a new spring. Consequently, Gift ~Eternal Rainbow~ was described as a “Da Capo”-like by some folks on the English side of the net. Such an imprecise term as “Da Capo-likes” inspires the same frustration as videogames labels such as “rouge-like”, “Metroidvania” or “just like Dark Souls”. The definitions of these fan adopted terminology often invites more confusion than not, undercutting the intention of even adopting such categories to begin with. Though I guess the main point here is this: why did so many people group Gift and Da Capo together and why was Da Capo considered the better version, at least in comparison?

Gift was first released on May 27th for Windows PCs and was MOONSTONE ’s fourth officially released bishoujo game title. The developer was, by most accounts, a mildly successful adult bishoujo game developer during the mid-2000's and released a handful of games between 2003 and 2015. They never seemed to have a breakout hit like their parent company but still managed to release games that were a bit more popular than most and found their own niche in doing so. While relatively unknown to a Western audience, most might be more familiar with the sister brand “MOONSTONE  Cherry” for their excellent Imouto Paradise titles. The game was a collaborative project between developer MOONSTONE  and CIRCUS, the former being a studio that formed from former CIRCUS staff around the release of Suika A.S+ in 2003. CIRCUS, of course, being the developer most recognized for their work on the seminal bishoujo game D.C ~Da Capo~. The collaboration project was noted to have largely been handled by MOONSTONE  and they are credited as the original creators in the television anime, so I assume CIRCUS primarily helped with staffing and marketing while MOONSTONE  focused on the scenario. According to the credits page on VNDB that MOONSTONE 's own Kure handled the main scenario writing of Gift alongside Kuzumi Takeyuki, a CIRCUS-affiliated writer, who handled the Sena and Nene routes. Though the bulk of the routes as well as the “true” end was penned by Kure. He later went on to supervise the script writing for the 2006 anime. They also worked on the scenario for early CIRCUS games like Yaminabe Aries, Infantaria and a few chapters of Suika in collaboration with Kushiro Hiroshi and Mikage. In 2002, Kure-san worked on the Kotori and Yoriko routes in D.C ~Da Capo~ while Mikage handled the main routes with Nemu and Sakura. It seems that after the completion of D.C ~Da Capo~, Kure-san went to work for MOONSTONE  beginning in mid-2005 with Ashita Deatta Shoujo, where he handled the scenario and planning. Three years later in 2005 he worked as the main scenario writer and handled planning Gift and the Gift ~Niji-iro Stories~ fandisc.  

D.C ~Da Capo~ could be best described as “generic but iconic”. It's the bishoujo game to end all bishoujo games- though we know that to obviously be untrue, nor do I really think it intended to be CIRCUS's mic drop moment. Plenty of bishoujo games were released after D.C ~Da Capo~ that were very much deserving of the “generic” moniker but nevertheless remained in relatively obscurity, at least to us dumb western otaku. That's because unlike many of its contemporaries, Da Capo received multiple anime adaptations over the years based on the various games in the franchise. Many anime fans were introduced to the concept of a bishoujo game adaptation because of this show. While many were already acutely aware of the existence of “dating sims”, many a 2009 otaku figured that Da Capo was it. The show had cherry blossoms, a harem of cute girls covering the bingo card of 2000's anime tropes and a high school setting. It wasn't terribly experimental in design and spent much of its first season wearing the coat of a slice of life or romantic comedy anime. Da Capo had all the iconic events of an idyllic high school bishoujo game and it was easy to understand why it'd be considered generic. Da Capo didn't really attempt to reconstruct the genre through its usage of already-tiring events. It instead existed as it was and delivered exactly what it advertised on the box. In essence it was pure escapism. D.C ~Da Capo~ was the idyllic Japanese high school life reprocessed and distributed to be nothing more than it was; Da Capo represented a perfect version of itself. The sprinkles of magical realism invoked inklings of the same tragic savior complex offered through the sekai-kei series of the era like Saikano or Ilya no Sora, UFO no Natsu, with the same emotional weight. This was not a recreation of your monochrome days spent in high school with no friends and not being within a meter of a female. Da Capo was an RPG you could play to relive the mundanity only appreciated by those already old enough to regret squandering it. Adults who let the waves of late-night nostalgic memories wash over them. But this time was different, and you would do it right. This time you would save her and it would be alright.

To many an untrained eye, Gift ~Eternal Rainbow~ exists as something lesser than a Da Capo. Oftentimes relegated to being “just a Da Capo clone…”; an imitation of something already considered to be vapid by the majority of the general anime audience. There was a late stage Catch-22-like twist involving the once-beautiful natural phenomenon. There was a non-blood-related imouto character featured prominently as a main heroine and plastered across the memorially surrounding the series. There was a blonde twin-tail sorceress who suffered as a result of her family's power. Though curiously enough there was no prominently featured mascot character. Superficially, comparisons could be drawn between the two series. Danbooru de-tagging, breaking down into categories and sorting within one's personal database. Gift was developed in collaboration between MOONSTONE  and CIRCUS with some staff being shared between teams to produce the game. Inspiration from Da Capo was obvious but it's not a rip-off or a clone. A number of other series in the mid-2000's could also be dubbed “just a Da Capo clone…” leaving anime fans in despair asking “what isn't based on an H-Game nowadays?” Anime fans were conditioned to SQL-lookup and retrieve information through queries based on what data already existed. In this case, that was based on the likes of Da Capo. I call this "pettan recognition". Through an abstraction of this process, otaku can be distinguished from an average anime fan. Otaku search for patterns within data presented and draw conclusions, anime fans only see clones and copies. These adaptations were created because they appeal to a very specific subset of otaku who have a categorical attraction towards bishoujo game adaptations. The cliches stimulate and the archetypes entice a feverish mind. Just once is not enough- more is needed. Adaptations that reiterate upon one another and eventually blend together. This is not just about Gift ~Eternal Rainbow~ either for that matter. W - Wish, Wind ~A breath of Heart~, Tsuki Higashi ni Hi wa Nishi ni: Operation Sanctuary, even D.C.II ~Da Capo~ or D.C.III ~Da Capo~ could be considered “just a Da Capo clone…” and that's just off the top of my head. Plus, that's just with anime. There were dozens more that existed only within the genre to which it was created: bishoujo games. Games that were “Da Capo-likes” in ways that tested the upper limits of the meaning of “clone”. A game that itself had reiterated upon itself forth times and still has more to say. But these games had their audience. Otaku kept playing these “Da Capo-likes” and watching these “H-game adaptations” because they were important to them. The VNDB-esque tags defining the queries of otaku database information retrieval grew excited with overlapping data. Excitement in knowing that it would be mostly what they already knew to love, but knowing that tasteful deviations made would be within the “different but not different enough” margin of error. This was the audience of “Japanese otaku” ruining anime, you're welcome.

And her field of sunflowers

Gift ~Eternal Rainbow~ is a 12 episode television anime produced by Oriental Light and Magic that aired alongside the likes of Yoake Mae yori Ruri-iro na: Crescent Love and Kanon (2006). Comparatively it was nothing special, and it had no hook. The plot was standard bishoujo game fare with no surprises and the archetypes were to be expected. It suffers from main heroine syndrome and everything tastes like vanilla. Atmosphere is lackadaisical and lowkey, oftentimes nostalgic in its depiction of the anywhere-Japan-esque town. The overall drama spikes remain within a comfortable range of melancholic and melodramatic. You've probably already seen this anime before. Though for bishoujopilled otaku like me, the hook was just that it was one of those “H-game adaptations.” A “different but not different enough” bishoujo game anime adaptation that was made for people like me. Unquestionably my cup of tea, though the logic behind my obsession still eluded me. I of course could pick apart these types of shows for their tags and keywords of included fetish material, moe points and what have you. I know the aesthetic elements commonplace within and am able to point at them and generally speak with confidence as to what exactly I know to expect. But do these things really mean anything? These tags are only a vertical slice as to what selection of bishoujo game adaptations I have actually encountered. As such, my knowledge was incomplete, and it bothered me. I wanted to quantify something that was vague from its inception and put a label on something that was hardly as consistent as I wanted to think it was. bishoujo games, after all, are simply as vague a term to describe video games involving pretty girls. Though they typically feature pretty girls in the Japanese text-based adventure game (ADV) format. They do not have to include a traditional harem format in a high school setting and I knew this already, hence why I disregarded adaptations like Phantom: Requiem for a Phantom, because I knew it was not representative of what I was getting at. This train of thought led me to questioning the very nature of bishoujo games. I wanted "Da Capo"-likes, defining it as ambiguous a term to meaning a “‘Da Capo-like’ story”. To which extent the only person that understood half of what that phrase meant was someone who didn't really know what exactly Da Capo really was. I was still chasing the time-n-place offered by Da Capo’s comforting warm blanket of early-2000’s galge trends. Though such an obsession did not start with Da Capo for me. It in fact started many years before. You see, the truth was that I was still chasing Amagami SS in vain hoping to find something to recapture the magic it once showed me. So I decided to watch every anime based on a bishoujo game with the hopes of finding something meaningful. I started this journey in late-2019 and steadily worked through everything tagged as “based on an erotic game” on AniDB. The list was decently long but I was ready to see everything it had to offer. I wanted to trace the lineage of these types of shows and see how they built off one another. I really wanted to see how “Da Capo-like” they really were. And ultimately, perhaps figure out what exactly I was looking for all along.  

I decided to watch Gift ~Eternal Rainbow~ because it was taking up space on my hard drive. I had skimmed a few episodes in an attempt to figure out what kind of anime it was, and concluded that it must be a fairly mediocre anime based on a bishoujo game with middling animation and frequent off-model character designs. I expected a panchira in the first episode, a beach or onsen episode, an idealistically witty but not unrealistically-so main character, a tsundere love interest and a harem. I decided that I wanted something like this and decided to watch this series. Even if it was bad, I was still interested in this very specific style of anime generally speaking. I would say it's a bit of a categorical attraction- though in my case, a fatal attraction. I wanted Gift ~Eternal Rainbow~ to be nothing more than what its contemporaries set me up to believe. And you know what, that's alright. This anime didn't need to subvert my expectations nor attempt to be something ambitious to win my heart over- it already did simply by existing. My sentiments were captured perfectly upon reading AniDB user Digironin’s review ^[b]of Gift ~Eternal Rainbow~. He wrote how “It seemed as if I'd get another mushy summertime-drama with very expressive girl designs.” Mushy melodrama, summertime attitudes and over-designed bishoujo heroines. That is what I wanted: I wanted summer break again. I wanted to wake up at noon and know that I had nothing planned that day. I wanted to fall asleep on a Tuesday night knowing I had absolutely nothing to do the following day. I wanted my adolescent bliss back. A summertime’s worth of memories I constructed through my own memories and those of the anime I spent watching or games I was playing. But my summer vacation was over. I could only afford a weekend and Gift ~Eternal Rainbow~ promised to take me there. Another summer I knew but just different enough to surprise me. Lackadaisical in nature, as any good summers should be. Sundresses, sunhats and an endless field of sunflowers with blue skies above. The taste of freshly-cut watermelon with the evening breeze gently blowing on the wind chimes above. I could hear the windchimes and cicadas in the summertime but I never knew them. My summers were filled with watching hundreds upon hundreds of anime. To which extent the point where my memories ended and the anime's stories began blurred ever further. In his quick assessment of Gift ~Eternal Rainbow~, Digironin unintentionally provides a perfect distillation of the nature of bishoujo games- a “mushy summertime drama”. A summertime attitude that, despite the melancholia within, carries a distinctly summery spirit to the end. One that promised a quick resolution. One of adolescent worries that made the mundane feel so profound. Problems which once plagued our thoughts suddenly became inconsequential when “summer vacation” ended. We knew full well what to expect, and getting exactly that was almost gratifying. Digironin saying “[w]ell, granted - that much I got” reflecting my own satisfaction. Gift ~Eternal Rainbow~ succeeded in its lack of ambition, heralded as a pleasant experience by categorically attracted brain dead otaku like myself.

Like sakura petals crushed under-foot^[c], part 2

While watching the second episode of Gift ~Eternal Rainbow~, it occurred to me how disposable bishoujo game adaptations like this really are. An anime that hardly existed within the purview of the average consumer of the media. It was the harem anime listed on the seasonal bingo card. Seemingly forgotten before it finished airing. Some of these series hardly survive beyond the year they aired because of the lack of interest in them. Oftentimes relegated to fansubbing hell where “consistent” and “translations” are never a guarantee. Especially during the 2000's this was an extremely volatile place for a series to sit since it might get dropped and never completed. Since this was before the streaming era so there was no guarantee of anything being completed, and if the translator of a small group decided to not finish a project or was unable to, the likelihood of it being released in-full was slim to none. I previously covered^[d] the anime Tetsuko no Tabi which was self-admitted as getting a “lazy release” by m.3.3.w with the intention of it being cleaned up in the future. It was more like a rough draft of a release since subs were good enough with not much done with typesetting and the video quality was likely the only one at hand. Nowadays we have groups like ReDone and Fansubber who specialize in cleaning up old fansub releases. They usually obtain the highest quality video source possible or re-encoding themselves, then extract hardsubs by some miracle of subbing wizardry to put out a definitive release. These releases are almost always a labor of love and the types of anime covered tend to be abandonware type properties with not much of a following. I appreciate these unsung heroes since they are preserving the obscure that the majority of people tend to have forgotten about. Anime series that threatened to cease existing once the last person forgets about them. Luckily, thanks to the infinite love of fansub group Rakuda, Gift ~Eternal Rainbow~ received a properly high quality release. Though their encode is largely constrained by the average quality Japanese DVD release. However, the subtitle work is incredible and even goes above and beyond in most scenarios. I was immediately shocked to find the opening credits to have English translations of the staff and messaging on-screen, only to have my socks blown clean off when I discovered that all the credits were softsubbed over a clean video. This means that they typeset the entire opening with translated names, likely splicing in the clean OP instead of the original hardsubbed Japanese one typical of most home video releases. Additionally, the translation work satisfies my desire for the integrity of Japanese culture and language nuances to be preserved. Honorifics are intact, Japanese name order is preserved and proper nouns, such as food, remain Romanized but otherwise untouched. Not every line is translated perfectly but the project was put together nicely and has a consistently good quality to it as well. The final release also included video files of high quality rips of the game's opening as well as a CM for the Gift -prism- PS2 game which included introductions of each character made by their respective seiyuu. Overall, it was a very good release and I was happy to see attention being given to Gift ~Eternal Rainbow~ since I've seen similar series receiving poor quality releases even for their day, or simply forgotten.

The disposability of bishoujo games terrified me like nothing else ever has. A lot of these stories have already been told before in suspiciously similar ways. The archetypes reused and the settings nearly unchanged. Adaptations of games that don't change the expected scenarios and running through them like checkboxes in a list. Gift ~Eternal Rainbow~ opened with an imouto character waking the protagonist up, lingering by his bedside longer than “just a friend” would, hands behind her back invoking a graceful refinement that only a 2D heroine could. She captured an artistry only possible in a 1/6 scale angel. I was immediately reminded of the series’ direct influence, D.C ~Da Capo~, who's anime and game opened the same exact way. Having you, the protagonist, awake from a wistful dream by the girl on the box art. An event reminiscent of that in 1999's ToHeart with a similarly cute imouto-type osananajimi character with shoulder-length hair creeping into our house with unquestionably suspicious motivation to wake up the sleepy-headed protagonist. An image which places the player at ease implicitly telling them “I am here, don’t worry.” So, the protagonist was me, right? The reason the sprites of the protagonists in bishoujo games often are non-existent or have obscured features is because the developers want us to project ourselves onto them. They are the everyman and represent the player. They need agency but not enough to break the illusion. So yes, the protagonist is us, and he struggles to wake up. I am struggling to awaken from this dream within a dream^[e]. A bishoujo dream, perhaps? A dream of memories reformed into something beautiful but nevertheless unattainable. At least, not anymore. A dream that could only exist within the confines of a 4:3 window of an adult PC game. No girl would ever care to wake you up, but it would sure be nice, right? Somewhat heavy-handed in their caring of you with a playful sigh and a “mou, shouganai wa ne”, repeated in the same cadence of a mother watching over her child. A phrase with an elusive meaning, but within this context, implying the “hopelessness” of the sleep-headed protagonist who is unable to get himself out of bed. Perhaps indicative of the lack of willingness to let the dreams fade; waking from a nostalgic daydream to one of osananajimi characters and sakura no hana in the springtime. Or maybe he was just waiting for his angel to descend. The school on the hill and road up to it never being as much a hassle as we might make it out to be. Inconsequential “every-days” compounding in meaning as sepia fades^[f].

Bishoujo games and their adaptations are like the muzak of anime. They fill in the gaps of the greater anime culture by providing leisurely and unobtrusive experiences that most people forget to acknowledge. They are the series that blend together and all start to become the same entity- a looming spectre of the unchanging spirit of the times. They're on the posters and merchandise of otaku goods that your eyes gloss over in shops. The same over-designed pretty girl characters in seifuku tempting you with moe points to buy their product. They're the series that parody themselves. Representing nothing more than what they are. They're the games that Katsuragi Keima plays that we take for granted their existence but dare not ask if they really do exist. Do these games and anime exist as they are represented? I went looking for them and found them. My list of “anime based on erotic games” was not as staggering as I thought and went about watching them all.

Bishoujo game adaptations represent the presumed zeitgeist of 2000's otaku culture in Japan. Carried out thus by the shadowy “Japanese otaku”- the kimoi otaku, the kimomen or the denpa otoko^[g]- they all represent this strawman. Irony and true appreciation blurred and nobody really knows the extent of the true popularity these franchises carried. The ambiguity lies within the overcompensation practiced by the more vocal kimoi-ota who latched onto a specific series and perhaps made it seem more prevalent than it probably should. Advertisements in Akihabara of smiling pretty girl characters were seen and assumed to be catering to this crowd. A strong enough marketing push superficially creates popularity in a property's public image. This is especially true with the guerilla tactics seen on the battlefield of Akiba strip. For example, seeing dozens of new Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata merchandise silently remain available for pre-order on AmiAmi might lead one to believe that the series was still popular enough, or at least popular enough still to warrant making more goods. Even if none of those goods sell, the image of the franchise is still pushed and remains as part of the otaku collective unconscious. Even if items sell there's no metric to judge true success off. What I'm getting at here is that nobody knows if sales numbers mean anything if bishoujo games bought were never seen to their completion. Routes might be left incomplete or hardly touched at all. Most people probably never even saw the end of the common route. If a game sold well but sits on dusty shelves or game resale shops, then did it really succeed?

Scary monsters and nice sprites

My long list of shows suddenly looked more tempting. Though now my plight had a newfound purpose: I had to save them, I had to prove they existed. I was going to watch every single anime based on a bishoujo game because I knew there likely weren't many people- if any- who cared as much as I did about these types of shows. People assume they are “another typical harem with shallow characters…” implying they've seen one and know them all. Have all these people really seen D.C ~Da Capo~’s television anime? I have, I've seen every anime in the Da Capo franchise, even the spin-offs. Or maybe they are assuming all these anime are lesser Clannad's or Kanon (2006)'s? And shallow characters too? Dude, have you SEEN real people lately? The character development of even the crappiest doujin game puts that of my coworkers to shame. The characters might be shallow but nothing has depth if you really don't want it to have any. “Shallow” used to insinuate that archetypes have no depth. Tsundere are all the same, all girls are the same- so I'll let both rot my brain in the name of love. Yes, an uncorrupted pure romance towards that to which I love blindly. “Shallow” because you don't have the perspective to understand, or because you didn’t give these girls the time of day. I disregard my coworkers and the riajuu around me as “shallow” because I don't allow them the time to prove otherwise before judging them. Before they open their mouths I've already concluded that they are a “riajuu” to better justify my narrative. In school I isolated myself because I knew, deep down, the longer I stood close to the flame I would start burning too. I wanted to keep my ideals in check and pushed everyone away. I didn't even attempt to get to know people, quite the opposite, in fact. School was a battlefield and I desperately attempted to maintain a façade of stoicism. I am reminded of Edge Magazine's April 1994 review of DOOM^[h]. Now living in infamy, daring to- almost tone-deaf- in asking: “If only you could talk to these creatures, then perhaps you could try and make friends with them, form alliances... Now, that would be interesting.” Now that would be interesting indeed. If I talked with the people in my classes or at work then maybe I would be more willing to make friends with them and join them in afternoon outings in town. But of course, that would be wrong. DOOMGUY didn’t bother talking to his enemies, because they were unquestionably trying to harm him. DOOM (1994) was as much a “Da Capo-like” as my own life is a Tokimeki Memorial-like. TokiMemo and the genre it inspired provides a perpetual stasis of adolescence to be captured and provide a sandbox for the unsatisfied to try those three years again. I can't talk to monsters. “[A]nother typical harem with shallow characters…” or “another typical outing with normalfags”- we aren't all that different, you and I. We both are dismissing the idea of something we are not willing to accept based on preconceived notions. Your generalization of “another typical harem” or my “in another typical riajuu” closes the shutters before the sun even rises.

The World God Only Knows

Bishoujo games with high school settings, cherry blossoms blooming and the same five archetypes in a harem catch my attention. Emotionally bankrupt and predictable in nature with their overuse of the same narrative beats. Characters you've already seen before dressed up slightly different yet playing the same role you know them for. Shows that, on the whole, appear fairly unremarkable in their broadcasts. Oftentimes forgotten before they are released on home video. Taken for granted that they exist before slowly falling into obscurity. That is precisely the reason why I feel obligated to watch them all, to save them all. In the manga Kami nomi zo shiru Sekai, protagonist Katsuragi Keima explains how “there are no bad heroines, only bad games”. This line has stuck with me ever since early 2018 when I first watched the anime adaptation. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it over the course of my extended journey down the rabbit-hole of AniDB's list of anime based on erotic games. My convictions held steadfast because I felt like I was the only one who cared enough to watch every single anime on this list. But not only that, I actively enjoyed watching even the worst low-budget OVA Japan had to offer. Though this was not contingent on me being the self-appointed “only one who can appreciate bishoujo game anime adaptations” either. It had more to do with Katsuragi-san's assertion that there are “no bad heroines” that gave me purpose. Call it a savior complex or whatever but I had to justify the existence of these girls. I had to see them all and give them the time of day and give these otherwise forgotten anime meaning. It would be far too sad to leave these bishoujo game adaptations fall into obscurity, with the heroines trapped within. Even if the adaptations are shoddy productions, they are still a labor of love. Even within the murkiness of artistic intent, and postulating that much of the recycled story was written solely to capitalize on the late-stage capitalism technoreclusion, they are stories that somebody wrote. Human emotions exist somewhere in the kilobytes of text penned there. I don't believe that anyone can make something as long as a galge script without an ounce of intimacy somewhere in there. Memories recontextualized and familiar faces of friends or past lovers interjected for inspiration. Leaving us with rushed stories with characters that ultimately mean nothing serving as glorified abstractions to the pretty girl advertisements plastered on Akihbara's buildings. Pretty girls whom I feel deserve to not be forgotten and their series lost to time. Thus, I too can conclude: “there are no bad heroines, only bad anime”. Even the worst of which I can find some meaning or enjoyment within. I care about anime a lot more than most, but I think I love bishoujo game adaptations unconditionally. I have a categorical attraction to which I simply cannot help but see all it has to offer. Maybe this is what it means to fall in love. All-ages television anime adaptations of erotic games are more often than not fairly unremarkable romantic drama anime with understated slice of life elements and an overall ephemeral quality to them. Repetitive mushy summertime-drama with very expressive girl designs, filling in the gaps left in the hearts of those who lost everything that never was in order to venture beyond. Series’ lingering on that which the Japanese otaku still dreams of. That which I have no direct frame of reference for, but am still able to project onto in a similarly pure, escapist way- a pure expression of love. And I never want my summer vacation to end.