One day I randomly woke up thinking: “I wonder how many routes I’ve played… I guess I’ve dated about 600 2D boys, but maybe they are actually more?” and since I love writing these kind of random and useless posts, I actually counted them!

Can you guess how many are they?

Let’s talk about my most memorable routes, before looking at numbers.

You already know my best boys, since I made an husbando Top10, but there are a lot of unforgettable routes and characters who never made it into any list, so I think they deserve a mention now, for bad or good reasons.

Obviously, this might contain some spoilers, be careful!

MOST MEMORABLE ROUTES FOR WRONG REASONS:

Talking about horrific moments, obviously Moshikami’s Masato is the first one who comes to everyone’s mind.

But there are many characters twisted in different ways, whose routes made me think “who the hell decided this stuff was appropriate for an otome game??”.

One of the most terrible experiences I had was Seri, from Dynamic chord Liar-s.

Well, that series had abuse in many routes, but Seri was the most disgusting, since he was even guilt shaming the poor heroine for not falling in love with him and deserving rape for this reason. A fine gentleman we have here. Not that Tokiharu’s route in Kyohso was that better.

Rapists aside, there’s another shocking character who has absolutely no feelings of empathy, which makes him an emotionless creep: Chouchou Jiken’s Riitomo.

Wow, that man was really something.

But I think the route that got stuck in to my mind as the most annoying and painful to sit through was Ayato’s in More Blood: he kept sucking blood from the poor Yui, insulting her and leaving her alone after she fainted. The whole route just kept showing similar scenes of abuse, she felt so weak and fragile, all alone… I’ve never felt so much pity and sadness for an heroine. I couldn’t like Ayato from the moment, even if his personality changed a lot in most recent games.

MOST MEMORABLE ROUTES FOR GOOD REASONS:

You’d probably expect me to talk about good boys here, but…. you know, my tastes are terrible and maybe not conventional.

I could explain to you how Shinnosuke’s route gave me a sense of fulfillment and pure happiness, when I completed Glass Heart Princess Platinum; I could tell you how my heart started racing wildly when I was playing Ikki’s route in Amnesia Later; I could show you all my love for that sad, lonely creature called Kagiha, from Kokuchou Psychedelica.

But it’s something you can also read in my TOP10 husbando.

Here I won’t judge their actions.

Here’s the place where even bad boys like Mejojo and Auger are loved, since their personalities are so strong and powerful, but at the same time fragile and complicated, I couldn’t help but pity them, instead of hating; they were probably the greatest villains I’ll ever met in an otome game.

They were so amazing, they managed to crawl from the status of cruel villains to main characters.

You can love every single character of Black wolves saga, you can feel empathy for Julian, you may want to heal Rath’s sadness, you may want to devote yourself to your perfect oniichan… but you can’t stop fearing the wolves. You can’t pretend they don’t exist, no matter which route you’re playing.

Same goes for Piofiore’s Yang. Just by looking at characters like them, you can feel their special aura.

Another route I’ll never forget, is Bad Medicine’s English teacher.

I imagined myself confined in that punishment room, alone with him and his whip, in fear for my life… if only his route was longer and better written. It’s sad to see such potential wasted.

Can we also take a moment to appreciate Haruma from Blackish house?

His route was a roller coaster of pain, despair and sadness; but most of all, I can’t forget how he was somehow always observing the heroine in every other routes, being also present in many bad endings.

I’ve played a lot of great routes, with happy endings and weddings, but somehow the characters who are still carved deep in my memories are the most desperate ones, the tortured souls.

I wonder if I’m the only one? I bet most of the players expected me to talk about Lupin from Code realize, or Aiji from Collar Malice. Or Hijikata.

Well, they were good too, I can’t deny it. But their personalities are not that impressive for me.

Somehow, I feel I could write a book just analyzing every Diabolik Lover’s character instead, it would be more interesting; but I’m sure someone already did it and wrote some kind of never ending Bible.

Now, let’s go back to the question which led to this post in the first place: how many characters did I play? Since I’ve recently reached my 100th game, I expected them to be around 600/700.

But since there are many series, sequels and fandisks (I obviously counted every character only once, even if I played more routes with him), they were actually only 469!

Are you surprised? I was, but it’s still a pretty high number of confessions, first kisses, happiness and pain! But still, there are many memories that will stay with me for a long time.

I wonder if someone else will get curious and start counting too… let me know your number, if you try!