So I finished playing Charade Maniacs! (Yes that's the real name even in Japanese. It's just straight up spelled in English) Some of you may know this as the one where the hot person gets their gender stolen. We will get to that, but I'm going to list our my thoughts on each route in the order I played them! This is gonna have a LOT of spoilers!!!
Basic Premise
Sci-fi version of Japan where you are a high schooler who get's stolen by some sort of entity to act out little skits for aliens. Aliens are not very emotionally intelligent but they fucking love it. It's literally their favorite thing is to watch these little skits. The especially like it when you kiss or stab each other.
It's also a fund the traitor type mystery story, where you are living with 9 sexy people but some of the people are running the streams which is not very sexy of them.
Ok on to the bachelors \(･◡･)/
Ebana Kieto
He's kind of boring but I like him tbh.
He is the most normal of the love interests I would say. Both in writing and his personality. He's the Tsudere and they try to portray him as the hysterical misogynist. But honestly he's the most mentally sounds and the least misogynistic??! Like even the writers are more misogynistic then him??? Like he says he doesn't like women but he's the ONLY person (including the writers) who doesn't expect the MC to do domestic chores like cooking and cleaning and even feels like it's HIS responsibility not hers. Also it's revealed later that his dislike of women comes from heterophobia (fear of the opposite gender not "oppression" of straight people lol) from trauma so like??? IDK why I was supposed to see him as the misogynistic one when other characters are literally like "OMG a girl!!! She can cook and clean for us!!!"
Anyway the them of his route is bodily autonomy and I liked how the theme was linked to these desperate trauma's in his life: his loss of contacts with his sisters and mom, loss of his arm, his CSA experience. Where it's understandable why these experiences would lead to him becoming cold and desiring control over his life even at the cost of isolation.
Is he boyfriend material though? I would say yes. He's the same age as the player character (CANNOT say the same for some of the other castmembers), he makes you tasty food, and he really wants to emotionally open up even though it's hard for him.
Also he is easy to tease and bully so...
Character: ★★☆
Route: ★☆☆
Romance: ★★☆
Iochi Mizuki
I AM NOT NORMAL ABOUT THIS CHARACTER!!!! I MIGHT AS WELL JUST GET ON ALL FOURS AND START BARKING LIKE A DOG!!!
They have this cleaver and calm disposition and are portrayed as the detective of the group and have a sexy air of mystery to them. Inside though... they are coming apart at the seemed (and I'm cumhing apa
The theme of this character's route is penance and self sacrifice. It is INSANE how much they want to be put naked on the cross like Jesus. They want to stop the Other World Streams (that's what the broad cast of the skits for aliens is called) at all costs, since people die in them and that's bad even if the aliens like it. However, their older brother (who they looked up to) was really supportive of the Other World Streams and would even help kidnap people to be in the streams. Iochi's brother was going to sacrifice Iochi and take them to be in the other world stream when they where a child (where Iochi would likely die). Iochi did not go with their brother and then never saw him again. I think this is where they developed their martyrdom kink.
At the climax of their route they essentially try to sacrifice themselves two different times only to neither succeed in dieing or changing the situation in a meaningful way. They spend the whole route messing with your emotions and lying to you only for them to end up a broken mess in your arms desperately wanting to be forgiven. It makes me cu
They have a big confessional scene to you where they start to break down crying, and I think this part is MAJORLY missing a scene where the player character is like "and how are you going to make it up to me?" and then the sexually service you.
Some issue...
Ok so this character is 24 and the player character is 17... It's pretty uncomfortable at times. Also they drug you (for plot reasons not SA reasons). It's also difficult that this character is the one who can be interpreted as trans and they are one of the most predatory :/.
Speaking of which, this one IS the one that get's their gender stolen by aliens, EXCEPT it was a trick and they are actually just non binary! The non binary stuff is handled... Not the best... Some of the other characters act pretty transphobic to them and there is the classic transmisogynistic bathroom joke...
The character does have some fun lines like "Would you like to think of me as a man? Or maybe you'd like it better if I was a women?" which I think invites the characters and the player to reflect on gender rather then fixate on Iochi's gender specifically. However, this is always in reaction to other characters' perception and the player is encouraged to think of Iochi as whatever gender the player wants them to be. Iochi doesn't actually get to have agency over their gender IMO. Which is fine for a game where the point is to objectify these characters, but I just wanted to point out that it's not exactly the place to go for NB representation.
But tbh I closed my eyes and pretended not to see the issues with their route because they were whispering in my ear and sucking on my neck and I was like BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK
but I can't give the route a perfect score. Iochi if your reading this you can make it up to me by getting on your knees and
Character: ★★★
Romance: ★★★
Route: ★★☆
Banjo Tomose
This girl is NOT ok in the head... God sends his toughest battles to his weakest warriors...
Oh Banjo, my special girl. Where do I even start with him.
So this is the childhood friend character. He acts pretty reasonable, but pretty cold, when it comes to the whole situation. He's a big part of the common route and even confesses his love to you??? but then you get kidnapped, and then the player character just kind of... forgets about him in other routes LMAO. But this is his route and instead of forgetting about him the player character gets to watch his mental decline.
[Edit note: idk why I switched into she/her pronouns for Banjo here...]
What's so wild about her is that she absolutely knows that she is being crazy. She never denied it, and she can see that she's pushing the player character away. But horrifically she can't seem to stop herself because she can't imagine herself not completely enmeshed with this girl even though this girl DOES NOT feel the same.
So it's pretty funny because the player character for real sees their relationship as plutonic and likes it that way and instead of like winning her over he tries to force their relationship to be codependent T 0 T and this weirds her the fuck out, but the more she distances herself the worse he becomes TT 0 TT so it just keeps getting worse until she just will not act in the broadcast with him anymore and she loses her emotions as punishment TTT 0 TTT.
I was going to say the theme of this arch is being cucked, but there is another character who is even more cucked then Banjo so now idk.
They were surprisingly able to pull together a really interesting ending that involved teaching the aliens charades and emotions. He also comes to detangle his self hood from the player character and appreciate her friendship. But then they undercut it by the fact that they start dating in the end anyway.
I don't even know how to rate this one in terms of romance because it does not feel like a romantic story at all. It feels like a guy going through the heros journey equivalent of learning he can't yandere his best friend into dating him.
Also fun fact he was voted the most "universally despised" love interest on the Otome Reddit last week T 0 T
Character: ★★★
Romance: ???
Route: ★★☆
Chigasaki Mamoru
I literally love her. She deserves so much more then this god forsaken world has to offer.
Chigasaki is the beautiful and sensitive ojou-san, also she has anxiety. She is always kind to you and even tries to protect/hold your hands you when you are in a scary situation.
BUT SHE SPENDS THE WHOLE ROUTE PUSHING YOU AWAY!!! I WAS HEARTBROKEN!!! And she keeps saying stuff like "you shouldn't touch me" or "I've just been tricking you this whole time I'm not a good person." and the whole time I was just like I don't know why your saying these things about yourself ; A ; She's literally like the shiny golden mole where she can't see her own iridescence.
She also takes punishment games to avoid touching or harming others!!! Where she looses mobility in her leg and then later her eye sight! And everyone is like please Chigasaki don't do this! But she's so full of shame she can't bring herself to do anything that's not self harm!
And the reason she does this is because she is half alien and has an alien hand!!! Her mom was kidnapped years ago and had a spicy romance with ab alien before she died!!! She feels a lot of shame over this because the human characters find the aliens scary and disgusting, while they aliens literally discriminate against her!!! They throw things at her and injure her!!! And they hate all the skits she's in except the ones where she gets hurt!!! She is also one of the traitors but also like so is half of the cast.
Her route is heavily about ostracisation and I thought it was handled really well! It tied together both her social ostracisation as well as physical ostracisation as she starts of disabled and becomes more so thought the route (side note it's pretty interesting how many characters have disabilities in this game). It's a really touching moment when she embraces you with her alien hand and kisses you because she's not just accepting your love but also accepting herself as something that should be love ; A ; !!!!!
Probably no surprise to anyone that the alien character gets a perfect score from me... But! I literally love her and I found her route extremely romantic!
Character: ★★★
Romance: ★★★
Route: ★★★
Gyobu Souta
slutty jigsaw...
Gyobu is pretty interesting because he doesn't fit into really any tropes I've seen before! He is confident and flirty, but also a hikikumori. He loves table top games, but doesn't have any friend to play then with. He also actively makes himself suspicious even though he is not one of the traitors lmao. He's just in it for the love of the game.
The major theme of his route is loneliness I would say. Like all his seemingly contradictory actions and character traits come together when you realize how lonely he is. He REALLY struggles with connecting with others. To the point it's actually really difficult for him to act out scenes where the characters are friends and care a lot about each other because that kind of thing is so foreign to him, but he also deeply wants it.
So I think it's interesting that his alienation doesn't come from an external source of like people ostracizing him but it's actually from this internal disconnect he feels from society and others around him.
Okay also his route is good if you want to fujo out because half of his romance is with another one of the bachelors!!! Where like he had been kidnapped by the aliens once before and survived but was longing for something in the other world stream. WHAT WAS IT??? Another man..... named Dazai Mei ... Who was also kidnapped...
So Gyobu doesn't remember Dazai (the AI took away his memories of Dazai). But he feels this emptiness, that he doesn't know what it is but he will do anything to figure out. And when Gyobu remembers Dazai has this melancholy joy know he will be forgotten again (because of the AI), but realizing Gyobu never truly forgot him in his heart ; A ; Also in Gyobu’s ending its implied that he and the protagonist are going to “find what they have forgotten” aka go back again for Dazai. Like!!! The ache in his heart he feels without Dazai is so profound!!
Ok so there is a pretty intense SA scene with Gyobu in this route :/. I actually like the way Gyobu’s character is handled. One of his characters flaws is making other uncomfortable to give himself more control in social situation. So we get to see him learn and struggle with the consequences of taking advantage of a situation and pushing things to far. But the protagonist is written in a way that really bothers me... where I think they had an opportunity to explore complicated emotions with her, but they where just like “she’s able to push him away and protect her virginity, because girls can't have any complicated feelings around sex”
All around his route is kind of a mess, but it's the kind of mess I like.
Character: ★★★
Romance: ★☆☆
Route: ★★★
Fujoshi Bait: ★★★
Dazai Mei
Gyobu's normies cuck boyfriend.
This route was not romantic at all to me T 0 T. He's some guy in your class who had a crush on you.
You forgot about him because in the previous round of kidnapping he sacrificed himself to stay in the other world streams and be forgotten by everyone on earth so that everyone else could go home. He made a deal with the AI that he would run the next stream/kidnapping and if the protagonist remembers him then he gets to be remembered again and everyone can go home. BUT if you don't remember him then he has to stay with the aliens and be forgotten forever.
So yeah the theme of his route (and maybe the entire game) is being cucked lmao. Like it's so crazy to me in most of the routes he had to just watch you fall in love with someone else and then... be stuck being forgotten forever??? I think his character is interesting in some ways where he really is just a guy doing his best in a cast of people with SEVERE issues. I also like the drama of him being like "What's most important to me is my classmate I have a crush on so if she can't remember me I might as well be stuck doing skits for aliens forever"
But the thing is his feelings for you kind of pale in comparison to Gyobu's feelings for him??? Like Dazai why didn't you pick Gyobu to be the one to remember you? Also I just really don't understand why he put so much trust in me so I just kind of felt like damn... Putting a lot of pressure on me dude...
Also I have NOT even talked about his relationship with Akase yet!!! (More on this later)
I honestly think he would have been moch more interesting if he was the Otome protagonist, because he has some pretty complex and intimate relationships with the other bachelor's right off the bat. He has to run the other world stream this round, while also having this weird bet with the AI, and is also had to live with people he had past relationships with but forgot about him! Idk I just think he should be the girl that gets to pursue the men, and that the protagonist should be one of the bachelor's instead.
Character: ★★☆
Romance: ☆☆☆
Route: ★★☆
[Edit] Ok felt kind of bad I gave him 0 stars for romance, but like there was NOTHING in his route that made me feel romantic about him except seeing his relationships with other men
Haiji Takumi
EVIL BABY!!! DO NOT LET HIS FACE FOOL YOU THIS ROUTE IS SCARY!!!!
So he is... The elementary schooler... He is 12... And at first your like OOF WTF, but also you can see that it's evil early on in the game but you are like no... Surely not the 12 year old is causing us to die... But then he starts saying things like "Don't you think it's pretty here? Don't you want to stay here forever?" and your like : |
So he is the Evil AI who caused all this kidnapped you, made you act out skits, made the aliens out of dead animals and humans on the moon, ect. BUT it's NOT because he's evil. It because he got his morals turned off!!! The humans who made him got suck on the moon and turned off his morals so that he would kill them peacefully!!! I could not get over this plot point honestly I was like his morals??? TURN OFF??? likE HOW DID THE PRIGRAM HIM?? WHY CAN THE MORALS BE TURNED OFF???
So he's basically just doing random weird stuff for the sake of it cause he's just an AI running without any instructions. I think it's really fascinating and eerie that there was no grand plan or intergalactic conspiracy. Just random acts stringed together.
His route is the most interesting in terms of the use of the medium. There are VERY few choices in this game and MUCH FEWER that even impact the story, but at the end of his first route there's suddenly a flury of questions from him!!! And if you answer wrong he'll be like "let's my ask again" and the dialog tree will loop back in on itself!!!! And depending on how you answer he'll be like "I think we need to start this from the beginning" and it will take you to the begining of the game!! These elements are very haunting and makes it feel like he is talking to you the player. To get the "True End" of the game you need to get both bad ending from this dialog tree and then GO BACK MANUALLY to the beginning of tree and then he'll nutter to himself "I didn't think you'd be this thorough" and you'll have a NEW CHOICE. It freaked me not gonna lie!!!
Anyway in the true end everyone gets to go home together, they bring back to life the people that had previously died in the streem, Dazai is remembered by everyone, you turn Haiji's morals back on and put his program in a robot dog body, ect. BUT ALSO HAIJI HAS TI BE TRIED IN COURT DUE TO HIS CRIMES SO THE GAME ENDS WITH YOU TAKING A LITTLE ROBOT DOGGY TO THE COURT HOUSE????
Honestly perfect ending.
The issues in this one I feel like are too obvious to even be worth mentioning. I really liked the writing in this route though.
Character: ★★☆
Scary: ★★★
Route: ★★★
Stinky
This CG... she's really sucking him off infront of the his & her mugs huh
So yeah I didn't like this guy at first... Like he's like "oh think of me as an older brother" but then sexually harassed you as a "joke" he is also a 23 year old with an implied preference for high school girls... However! During his route! I still didn't really like him lol! BUT he was more interesting than I thought he'd be.
So this dude is OBSESSED with Iochi (aren't we all) but like in a transphobic chaser way??? Like he cannot stop thinking about their gender... Or weather they men or women... Or what BATHING SUIT THEY WEAR. Iochi is meant to be his rival in this route which is SO funny to me because he is not really involving in Iochi's route at all lmao.
So he is pro the other world streams. Why? Because his younger brother stopped thinking he was cool in middle school. Like I haven't had a younger sibling so maybe that's what it's like. So, I actually thought this was pretty interesting about stinky. Like yeah thier world back home isn't perfect! And it's reasonable to think that this world isn't any more cruel and in fact maybe is less so! But they don't really explore this that much and kind of land in "it's cause he got crazy" which is boring IMO.
In terms of the age stuff I actually thought it was handled better then Iochi's route cause it's actually shown as questionable where Iochi's is more like "yes it's questionable buy iochi is a good person so it's fine." Also it's implied he was groomed by your mom maybe??? So that gives that whole aspect a cyclical nature. Again though this is under explored. Also he keeps implying that he either wants to unbirth you or be unbirthed by you. It's not clear which he wants, but what IS clear is he has problems.
So the highlight of this route is where you stab him for a skit and HE PUSHES THE KNIFE IN DEEPER AND MOANS. HIS BLOOD COVERS YOUR HANDS WHILE HES FUCKING COMING.
Another highlight of the route is that the protagonist actually gets a lot of agency. She obviously doesn't really agree with him so we see actually take action and make plans against him. This may sound minor, but I don't think I can emphasize enough how upsettingly passive the main character is in this game lol.
Character: ★☆☆
Romance: ★☆☆
Route: ★★☆
[To be continued...]
. I sure hope a ghost doesn't steal my gender!
. when you're in a bad situation and there's no good way out of it, sometimes it feels preferable if you can hurt yourself rather than have to take it from someone else.
. Yes I think they should date you instead of the player character and then age isn't a problem and also they wouldn't be around transphobic aliens and people stolen by aliens.