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I admit I wasn’t very excited, when I first started playing Meiji Tokyo Renka: the art didn’t attract me too much, and also the plot didn’t seem very interesting; but a movie was announced, so I was curious to see if it was actually worth it.

The heroine seemed immediately quite funny to me, because her attitude and answers towards guys are quite original and interesting; also, her great love for meet was hilarious sometimes!

I think the best merit of the game are the characters: they are all based on historical figures, but with really exaggerated features and weird behaviors that made this game really enjoyable and memorable.

My favorite was Ougai, who is supposed to be a literary man and also an army doctor…. but in fact, he’s basically a strange guy who loves to walk around the house naked! I was laughing so much when he said “what’s the problem? It doesn’t matter if there are guests, you can undress too” with such a straight face! He seemed to fall in love at first sight with the heroine, and he offered to host her in his house immediately, for no reason. His route was really the funniest to me, I laughed very much! And he was really nice and caring, he’s perfect husband material.

Shunsou lives in the same house: he attends art school, and he’s such a typical tsundere who loves cats and pretends he doesn’t care about the heroine, but he obviously does.

Let’s take a moment here, to fully appreciate KENN’s voice with the dummy head mic. It was perfection! He’s one of my favorite seiyuus, but I’m not into drama cd, so it was the first time I could hear him speaking directly to my ears like that, and it was paradise!

I appreciated this feature even more in the FD, because there were more dokidoki moments and that was really an exciting experience for me… I wish it could happen more often in the future!

Otoujiro was a cross dresser geisha, and I’m usually not attracted to this kind of character, because… well, they look like women most of the time. I quite liked his personality tho, so I wished I could spend more time with him actually dressed like a man; I had to wait for the FD for that, but I was satisfied at least!

Kyouka is another tsundere, and I admit I didn’t like him at first: he had quite a bitchy and bossy attitude, that annoyed me a bit. But then he really grew on me, and I fully appreciated him while playing the FD: there were a lot of funny moments there (when he was deadly scared by a cute dog) and also romantic times that made me finally like him very much. I also liked how he changed when he fell in love and became really nice towards the heroine.

Fujita was a serious policeman, with a really cold attitude that made him quite uninteresting to me for most of the route: I don’t like kuudere that much, and it was also awkward to see the heroine trying to approach him, even if he was always suspicious and rude with her. I don’t even know why he suddenly started blushing and being nice, because… well, I don’t see him and the heroine as a good match tbh. As always, the FD showed me great improvements, because at least we got to see them as a couple, sharing more cute moments.

Yakumo is……… weird. I don’t have other words to describe him! He’s from Greece, but he lives in Japan; he teaches english, but actually all he cares about is researching about mononoke. This route was really funny in a weird sense, because he’s completely crazy! I couldn’t see him as a romantic interest, even if in the FD he becomes way more interesting: this route felt more like a comedy to me, which was not completely bad.

Charlie’s route was locked, because he obviously hides all the secrets behind the heroine’s time travel to the Meiji era. His do-m personality was actually really amusing, even if I felt quite sad every time he tried to convince the heroine to marry another boy… you’re worthy too, be more confident! His ending was also the “true ending” of the game, so completing it made me quite sad instead of satisfied…. that’s why I’ve played the FD too, but it wasn’t enough.

I’m glad another game has been announced, I’m probably going to get it…… but my poor wallet is crying, so it’s probably better if I wait for a while and prioritize other releases.

Do I recommend this game?

Well, overall I think it’s good, but not really amazing. The dummy head was a great feature, the characters were really original and the heroine was nice; but the art was quite mediocre, the backgrounds looked very cheap and the plot wasn’t always interesting. You can try to play it if you’re also looking for some comedy, because Ougai and Takumo are really something you can’t see very often! I just hope the next game will improve the lacking points.