[Non-Otome] [BL] Hashihime of the Old Book Town -- No Spoiler Review
[Non-Otome] [Boy Love] Hashihime of the Old Book Town
System: PC
Price: $34.99
Voice Acting: Yes (Japanese)
ESRB Rating: Not Rated, Reviewer suggests AO (18+)
Overall Rating: Stole 9/10 ♥s
Pre-Game Perception: Navigating a gay relationship and dating in 1920’s Japan as a bookstore store clerk.
Morning-After Reflection: A story about self-discovery by examining the relationships closest to us, and the love that can come from them.
Story: “Jinbochou, Tokyo
June 1922, Taisho Era
The Rainy Season
Tamamori came to Tokyo with his sights set on getting accepted to the Imperial University. However, he doesn't pass the entrance exam, and is so undisciplined and wrapped up in endless fantasies that he's kicked out of his boarding house after only two years. Through a stroke of luck, Tamamori begins to live and work at Umebachidou, a used book store. There, he enjoys whiling away his time as a "student preparing for entrance exams" and taking advantage of friends who are also from his hometown. But one right after the other, mysterious deaths befall those friends and, realizing he's been repeating the same rainy three days over and over again, Tamamori finds himself racing throughout Jinbochou to save them.
In this pop-occult mystery that surrounds the deaths of his friends...
What is real, and what is a hallucination?”
Interest Rating: 9/10 This sounded like a super cool game, and a great way to step into the boy love genre. I came back to it again and again before I decided it would be my first. The intro was pretty neat and I was really looking forward to seeing how mysterious pop-occult it could be.
MC: This was my first boy love game, so I can’t say I know what a typical MC is for the genre. However, I’ve looked at several games and it seems the MC for boy love games tends to be shorter, smaller, and more feminine, which is not surprising since boy love is largely targeting female readers. If you didn’t know this factoid, you’ve learned something new! However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t suitable for gay audiences-- but that isn’t the point of this section. The point is that MC tends to be less manly than the typical man, and Tamamori follows this design. He’s a whopping 5’3”, a self-proclaimed bookworm, and when compared to every other adult man in the game, he often considers himself weaker and much less defined muscularly.
Tamamori’s name is not changeable; all the voiced characters say it, and Tamamori is also voiced. I really do love that feature. I’ve grown accustomed to voiced MCs and I thoroughly enjoy getting to hear the emotion behind the text. As I mentioned, Tamamori is small in stature, standing 5’3” with blue eyes and short black hair. He’s a bit selfish and not entirely likable, which I believe is the point of his character. Honestly, being flawed makes me like him even more. I really don’t like the ultra-pure and righteous characters; probably because I’m not a great person irl, so being able to connect with a protagonist that might be a bit greedy, selfish, or-- you know, flawed, helps me enjoy the story all the more. He’s also the receiver of most of the sexual acts, so if you were looking for a seme (top) MC, this is not your guy. Tamamori appears on screen from time to time, and he is in 70% of the CGs.
Likability Rating: Shu. Honestly, Tamamori is so flawed and realistic that I adore him. He’s human, and that’s what really needs to be in more games - MCs that are whole and complete. Any complaints I have are all superficial and have no bearing on if Tamamori is a MC I can get behind.
Plot: The snippet for drawing people into the game gives us a lot of information on the plot, so there isn’t much more I can say without repeating what was already written. Tamamori moved to Tokyo to get into the university, however, he didn’t pass the entrance exams and after failing two years in a row, he was kicked out of the boarding house he was staying in. Now he lives and works at a used bookstore called Umebachidou, located in the Jinbochou district. His friends start turning up dead, and he begins to repeat the same three days over and over again while trying to find an end to the nightmare.
Hashihime of the Old Book Town is read more as a kinetic novel rather than the traditional VNs I’m used to with many choices. There are no choices your first time through the game, as you are forced to go down Minakami’s route. After completing the game, with one ending since there are no choices, and restarting the game, you are presented with a single choice during the game to either go down a new route, or replay Minakami’s route. This happens long after you restart, so don’t expect a pop-up or anything, just skip or replay what you’ve already played. Each restart gives another choice, so by the end you’ve made a handful to get to the last route, but these choices are rather minor and there are no additional endings but one per route. All that being said, I found that I really didn’t care that I was just along for the ride and I really enjoyed the game as a whole despite my lack of influence. 10/10 would ride this fantasy again.
Replayability Rating: ★★★★☆ There’s no reason to go down the same route you’ve already played, however, each route is utterly different from the previous one. New stories to tell and new discoveries to make per character.
Love Interests: Alright, let’s meet the dudes we’re going to do-- well, I suppose a better way to put it is the guys who are going to do us. We have four lust love interests to get down and dirty with, and a secret character at the end of the game who I’m not going to name. Sorry, not sorry. I briefly mentioned in the plot that there is only one ending per character, and that the game forces you down each route to completion before being able to play the next, so the order is already predetermined for you. I hope you like dark haired Japanese men, because that’s what you’re going to get a lot of. I happen to like any type of man, so we’re good to go. #I’mThirsty.
First up is our childhood friend, Minakami. Minakami is central to the story, so it makes sense that we start with him to get the full story before branching off into any other route. At 5’10”, Minakami is a quiet bookworm who reads at an exceptionally fast rate. He appears to be Tamamori’s best friend, in that they get along best out of all the characters. He also is an avid reader of Tamamori’s writing; though Tamamori hasn’t been published, it seems that Minakami rather enjoys Tamamori’s work. Black hair and black eyes are going to be a recurring theme with many of these LIs, so get used to hearing it.
Kawase is the next route. Also a childhood friend, Kawase appears to be a bully that Tamamori questions why he is even friends with again and again. At 5’9” with (you guessed it) black hair and black eyes, Kawase is mentioned to be the prettyboy of the group. Apparently he has some good looks, though Tamamori mentions that is the only pretty thing about him since he does give off major asshole vibes-- even I figured that out on his first interactions. He is rather cruel in a lot of what he says, and claims to be a germaphobe, but Tamamori says it’s misanthropy (a general hatred of people).
Hanazawa is a man that Tamamori knew from his country-side village, though being a few years older, it seems Hanazawa had moved to Tokyo several years earlier. He stands at 5’11” with black hair and black eyes and typically wears his military uniform. He is a stoic man of few words and rarely expresses what he’s thinking, more a man of action than negotiations. Hanazawa has a strong sense of pride for his country, duty being put before honor. This was my least liked route, but your mileage may vary.
The last love interest I’m going to cover goes by Professor (Hakase in Japanese), though his name is Hikawa and he is referred to by it. Short black hair and a black eye patch that covers one of his light grey colored eyes, Hikawa is 5’10.5” and a character that Tamamori meets in Tokyo. He’s a regular customer at the bookstore that Tamamori works at, and according to our MC: “He’s a weirdo.” Hikawa certainly has his eccentricities and comes off rather strange, but Tamamori still develops a relationship with him through the story.
Boy Crazy Rating: 85%. Each man brings his own story to Tamamori’s narrative, and they make sense for each route. Even liking one least, that doesn’t mean I wasn’t still interested in the romance that was had. I’d husbando the lot of them, they’re welcome in my husbando harem.
Romance: Each route has a reason for the romance, and that works wonders for me. There isn’t just romance between Tamamori and his LI, there’s also romance in the game between others, and that’s nice to see, imo. The point is, there is a lot of love in this game, even when it is buried deep down and rarely spoken about. You have to remember this was 1920’s Japan, and this is a game about homosexual love between men. I think it tackles the topic with respect while still expressing the ideas society has about the act. Obligatory: They’re just GOOD friends! But really, I think the love in this game spans several types of affection and blooms from different reasons, from wholesome to lustful. There was rarely a time I didn’t understand why the characters would end up together, so I’m all for this romance that does happen to come up late in most of the stories, but does get there as the ultimate answer.
Heart Palpitation Rating: B+. Hashihime gave me love in a variety of ways, and I enjoyed every one of them. It moved me and I approve of all the relationships that came from Hashihime’s story.
Spice: Guys. Guys! This is a R18 game! Does it deliver? You bet it does! The whole of the story isn’t about f*cking, so it isn’t completely smut, but the game gave me enough smut that I’m rather content with my porn game that would have worked just as well with or without the sexing. However, I’m so glad there was actual sex, because I’d been craving some adult content that wasn’t flowery fading to black, or ridiculously unrealistic and made me laugh the whole way through at the poor attempt at fictional porn. How do you fail writing porn when things go exactly as you want them to? I’m not sure, but I’ve seen it. It was bad. But not this! This is some good stuff. I read Tamamori being pumped by five different guys (unfortunately not all at the same time) and didn’t find myself bored from repetition or too many cliché tropes. Not to mention that you actually get to see some D, and not just bodies pressed together. If you want some god damned spice with your romance, and you don’t mind dick on dick action, get you some of this flamer.
Cold Shower Rating: Pass. Decently lengthy sexual content makes this one spicy meatball. Take a shower to bring your temp back down to normal. Get yourself a fan and spritzer while reading. I know my loins were heating up.
Angst: This game has romance, it has spice, that means it isn’t going to have a ton of angst, right? Wrong. It certainly isn’t the angstiest, but it is pretty angsty. There are some very heavy topics in Hashihime, which makes sense since it’s about homosexuals in the 1920s in Japan; but even without the whole gayness being part of the storyline, the story itself is pretty angsty. Tamamori’s friends are dying and he’s repeating the same three days over and over again, that sounds like the perfect recipe for some angsty shit.
Time and time again they layered on the angst; the point I was close to tears came more than a handful of times, and I actually cried once during this game. The number of games that have moved me to tears is still able to be counted on one hand, but it’s growing. Hashihime gets dark. It gets heavy. It certainly got me. I think if I hadn’t taken breaks whenever things got rough, I might have made those teary eyes actual tears more than the one occasion. There are depictions of blood and violence both through text and pictures, though no gore if you’re worried about how bloody the game can get. I’ve included the disclaimer that comes with the game in case any of these topics are triggering, though most are not heavily depicted or discussed.
Drama Llama Rating: 8.5/10. We may have seen this drama llama before. We may have seen this drama llama before. We’re stuck in a time loop where we may have seen this drama llama before, and we know how dangerous it is. Try to avoid the llama, they do not have our best interests in mind.
Voice Acting: I enjoyed the voice acting, but it didn’t blow me away. I think my favorite was Kawase’s seiyuu, Marx (マルクス), who has no other games listed under that name, so it is either an alias or he literally did one game and that’s it. I assume it is an alias. I understand that many seiyuus use aliases, especially in this genre of boy love and adult content voice acting. Tamamori’s seiyuu, Fujikiri Haru (藤桐 花), also uses an alias, and I found he did a good job for the most part. I wasn’t a fan of his hitched, strained speaking during the sexy times, but I think he brought a lot of emotion otherwise into the game. I was a fan of the grunts from the stoic Hanazawa during the doing, voiced by Ouka Tayu (桜花 大夫). Yet another alias, I’m sure. He really didn’t have much in the way of script or emotion in most of the game, so besides some obscene grunting I can’t really say much about his work.
Expression Rating: Yu. Good stuff that really put the emotion behind the words, but not the best I’ve ever heard. More than passing but less than amazing.
Art: I wasn’t certain I was going to like the art style for this game, but it really grew on me and I ultimately enjoyed it. The whole game has this watercolor look to it, like being drawn and painted on old paper where you can see the grains of it or where the ink pooled or was overlapped. It’s kind of uneven and gives a very natural, genuine, and antique feeling to it. Each sprite has a few different facial expressions, and a few different poses, but half the game is told through CGs rather than backgrounds with sprites. It isn’t a realistic art style, and I think that’s the beauty of it, that it doesn’t look dolled up with all the new age graphics we can do with art. It helps the story feel more authentic. I dug it.
Still Picture Rating: ★★★★☆ Many authentic. Such storybook. Very mood setting.
CGs: Are you prepared for CGs, because you’re going to get some CGs. More than some. More than more than some. So many CGs you won’t know what to do with them. Seriously. Half the game is told through CGs rather than backgrounds with sprites, so you do get plenty of CGs with Hashihime. There are roughly 250 unique CGs with about 50 additional alteration CGs. Yes, you read that right, 300 CGs. The art for this game certainly sets the mood appropriately, and if you enjoy the watercolor-like style then you’re going to love what you’re given here. Nothing really seems out of place or awkward, even though the art is not the typical polished style that we see these days. I know I mentioned this in the Spice section of the review, but you get some graphic sexual content. So, if you were curious whether you’ll get some smutty smut in with your beautiful story, the answer is yes. Yes, you get some dick pics.
Look at this Photograph Rating: 94%. There are so many CGs that I have decided I would rather have a story designed like this than the typical background and sprite combo. Hashihime has changed me.
UI/Mechanics: There is not a keymap for this game, but the often used buttons seem to function the way they should, such as Enter progressing the story, or scrolling the mouse wheel up to get to the backlog. Fiddle with the keys to find what works for you before you get too far in the game, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it just fine. The menu covers a variety of options, such as turning certain characters speech volume up or down, changing text speed, and even an alias naming option that I never used, but I can deduce what it would do. There doesn’t appear to be a music section for the movies, which blared in my ears when I started the game, and when I hit each ending credits. Oh god, my poor ears.
There are no special mechanics for this game, it is a straight visual novel, and even less than most visual novels since it has very, very, very few choices. I thought the UI was designed well, with several buttons you can scroll your mouse over at the bottom of the screen to take you to where you want to go, like saving, loading, or the title screen. It’s very easy to navigate through the game, even if all you do is use the mouse to click on everything.
What’s this button do? Rating: B+. More than the minimum UI, but not as customizable as the ideal UI. A passing grade for design and features. Easy to navigate and use. Very atmospheric.
Errors: This is the easiest of easy to grade. Hashihime of the Old Book Town gets more than an E for effort, it gets an A for absence (of errors)! It isn’t perfect, there were 20 word errors where a word was missing or repeated, no grammar errors; and 25 times the coding was overlooked on the text so it would string two windows together, progressing the second textbox as soon as the first is displayed without prompting. Every once in a while the screen would load with a shift like film that isn’t lined up correctly, which was weird and I’m not sure if that is intended or an error, so I’m listing it as an error. That’s it. The translation is nearly perfect. The game functions beautifully, as it was designed to do. It’s so good that I’m starting to expect this level of gameplay from the big names in visual novels, and might actually start rating error-prone games much lower than I have in the past.
Here there be Bugs Rating: Pass. There’s the basic creepy crawly from time to time, such as a fly or mosquito, but nothing that will cause you a bother. This game gets a green light on the absence of errors from me.
Background Music: Haha, we’re back to me loving every BGM soundtrack I come across. My dislike for game music only lasted a handful of games, it seems. Anyways, Hashihime has some good scores, I think. The BGM helps with the mood of the game, and really amps up the feel of it all. It’s so well done that I really would find myself deep in this world, and I’m sure if I heard the music for certain parts my brain would Pavlov whatever emotion I’m supposed to be feeling during that scene from the game. I highly suggest you play the BGM during the game, even if you don’t want to pick it up to add to your collection.
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