LeMU.waterbottle

When­ever I am just too fed up by this game, I think about this loli, then I am moti­vated again.

Com­pany: Roco­coWorks
Sce­nario: J-Ment (カタハネ、airy fairy)
Graph­ics: 笛(Fue) (カタハネ、airy fairy)
Pub­lish Date: Aug. 24, 2006

Ero­ge­Space Median Score: 72

Home­page: http://www.rococoworks.com/volume7/
Ero­ge­Space Page Link: http://erogamescape.dyndns.org/~ap2/ero/toukei_kaiseki/game.php?game=10273

Game OP

There are sev­eral (need­less) con­fes­sions I’d like to make.  First: I have no immu­nity against Fue-san’s draw­ing style ever since being intro­duced to Kata­hane; and yes, that is the rea­son I started play­ing this game, ignor­ing the alarm­ingly low rat­ings from eroge.  Sec­ond con­fes­sion: I now regret about spend­ing time on this game.

Iron­i­cally, after play­ing its trial ver­sion, I felt this game could be some­thing.  Another les­son learned besides to not be seduced by a title only for its graph­ics is: do not trust a game’s trial ver­sion to be a good rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the game. 

By now you should be able to tell that I really dis­like Volume7.  I don’t tend to write neg­a­tive reviews since if a game doesn’t fit my taste; I wouldn’t want to fin­ish it and cer­tainly wouldn’t spend time writ­ing about it.  But let this be an exception… I can’t seem to find any Eng­lish review for Volume7 at all.  Something is bet­ter than noth­ing.  Be warned though, since the game is not trans­lated, there’s good chance that my info is not accu­rate xD

Story Syn­op­sis

In the near future where most nations has joined together and formed uni­fied gov­ern­ment, tech­nolo­gies devel­oped and resulted many monop­o­lies to sim­plify people’s lives.  A strange phe­nom­e­non occurred: over the course of years, mys­te­ri­ous domes came into exis­tence at var­i­ous human set­tle­ments across the world.  The domes are mostly wide enough to cover a small town (or at least, a por­tion of it), and have an invis­i­ble bar­rier that pre­vents liv­ing crea­tures from cross­ing it.

Nana­hama is the name of the place where the first such “dome” appeared in Japan.  What is dif­fer­ent about this dome from oth­ers is: the land­scape and build­ings inside this dome is replaced by what was there a hun­dred years ago! 

The main story takes place two years later after that event.  Stu­dent reporter Kino Kyouka of TLS and stu­dent inves­ti­ga­tor Tokiwa Tohmaru of Jupiter met each other in a set­ting where both of them are trans­fer­ring into a high school, located close to the Naha­hama dome.  What they about to find out is that they are already engulfed into a chain of events that leads to the truth behind Nana­hama dome and beyond.

Orga­ni­za­tion & Groups

Venus — The police/public secu­rity of the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment (SOL).	Jupiter — SOL’s research agency deal­ing with the “domes” worldwide.
Tel­lus — Super media monop­oly.  Neu­tral with SOL; pos­sesses tech­nolo­gies such as high-efficiency voice translation.	Mer­curius — Mega busi­ness con­glom­er­a­tion. Mainly pro­vid­ing the equip­ments the gov­ern­ment and TLS needs.
Mars — Nat­u­ral­ist orga­ni­za­tion whose mem­bers opposes SOL’s wide use of “Bless”, a super com­puter can pre­dict future’s weather and beyond.

Main Char­ac­ters

PoV Pro­tag­o­nist.  Tokiwa Tohmaru, ordinary-looking high school stu­dent, is actu­ally a stu­dent inves­ti­ga­tor of Jupiter.  His title is a won­der: I always think of “inves­ti­ga­tor” and “stu­dent” to be mutu­ally exclu­sive for an ado­les­cence like Tohmaru.  Maybe it has some­thing to do with his abil­ity of pho­to­graphic mem­o­ries, lol.  Tohmaru likes lux­ury Chi­nese cui­sine too much… and because of that, his wal­let is always empty.

Kino Kyouka, loli-ish stu­dent reporter of TLS sent to do some “insider” coverage on Nana­hama dome.  Ran­dom acci­dents are always around her to cause her trou­ble… and it only gets worth when she employed Tohmaru as her cam­era­man.  I think she can be con­sid­ered as a tsun­dere char­ac­ter… when she’s with Tohmaru, at least.  Note: her cell­phone has a per­son­al­ity who has the poti­en­tial to annoy you to death; be warned.

PoV pro­tag­o­nist.  Oogami Ryu­ugo, under­cover agent of Venus, is a big man with a kind heart (<- I’m seri­ous).  Com­ply­ing to his mis­sions, he rented a room inside the dome, at Kotora’s rice shop.  His over-protective nature and seri­ous­ness often made me ques­tion that how he is suit­able for an under­cover job.  Sur­pris­ingly, I got the answer from the story.

Win­ner of the pop­u­lar­ity poll, good-wife Kikushita Kotora-san!  Of course she was still sin­gle before she meets Ryu­ugo.  Any­way, she lives alone inside Nana­hama and is run­ning a rice shop and is pro­vid­ing Ryu­ugo a space for sleep­overs.  Kotora was saved by Ryu­ugo when she was falling down from a sec­ond floor bal­cony due to some acci­dent.  She has a really nice per­son­al­ity… did I men­tion that she would be a good wife?

PoV pro­tag­o­nist, Tsu­jiura Yashiro.  A free artist one day con­vinced a pass­ing high school girl named Sakura to be his model.  He is also known as a senior mem­ber of Mars, and an artist who draws things that nobody buys.  He is def­i­nitely not a loli­con.  Yashiro one day found out his model is inside Nana­hama dome, then he goes into action of get­ting into the dome… illegally.

Doumy­oji Sakura, who now calls her­self a ghost, is roam­ing inside Nana­hama dome eat people’s food when they are not watch­ing.  Being a ghost, she has the abil­ity to make her­self trans­par­ent and float… and the abil­ity of eat­ing tons of food with­out get­ting full prob­a­bly has some­thing to do with her­self being a ghost too!  Too bad she doesn’t remem­ber promis­ing a cer­tain artist to be his model xD

Fukami Yurie-sensei is the only fac­ulty in the high school where Tohmaru and Kyouka trans­fered to.  That being said, I should prob­a­bly reveal the fact that the only stu­dents enrolled at that high school were those two, exclud­ing a maid girl named Mari who has become an exchange stu­dent and leav­ing for head­ing into Nana­hama dome.Yurie-sensei is a very strict teacher, and she talks in a way that for sure you know how strict she is.  Though she has another iden­tity… make sure you read Tohmaru’s route first ^.^

The loli, Tsu­jiura Ryouko, is my favorite char­ac­ter in Volume7.  This loli is Yashiro’s younger sis­ter (with­out blood rela­tion­ship).  Now, I have no idea why this kind of rela­tion­ship was not “elab­o­rated”; any­way I digress.  The loli speaks with a very inter­est­ing Kan­sai accent; moe points +1.  Cute masks, moe points +2.  Cute pets, moe points +5.  Ryouko is also kinda mys­te­ri­ous since she some­how can get in the Nana­hama dome freely with­out any problem.

Graph­ics — 10/10

10/10 is a per­fect score, and it prob­a­bly will be the same for all games with Fue being the graph­ics designer.  His style can sim­ply be described as “cute”.  Though one can say that every female char­ac­ter here looks like a loli from an outer point of view, but there are suf­fi­cient dif­fer­ences between each char­ac­ter to dis­tin­guish “who’s the real loli”.  For exam­ple, the above CG is a por­trait of Mari… who is actu­ally a year above Tohmaru and Kyouka, lol.  Any­way, she nor­mally looks like this:

Other than hav­ing female char­ac­ters adorably drawn, male char­ac­ters also pos­sess each of their own unique­ness.  Just look at the three PoV pro­tags, each of them are of dif­fer­ent shape and face and of course, per­son­al­i­ties.  Between the CG and tachi-e, there is no notice­able dif­fer­ences and it looks very nat­ural tra­vers­ing from CG to nor­mal back­ground + tachi-e mode.

The back­ground are some­thing pecu­liar to see as well.  The focus here is to con­trast the land­scape and feel­ing between shots taken out­side of Nana­hama dome, which is mod­ern, and the shots taken inside the doom, where the color mood of each back­ground switch to a more sub­tle theme for stress­ing the dif­fer­ences.  Unfor­tu­nately I didn’t snatch any screen­shots show­ing what the inside looks like, but just think about what is it like for Japan 100 years ago… yeah.

Voice Act­ing — 7/10

Volume7’s voice overs are mixed.  Good things go first.  Volume7 achieved some kind of diver­sity of char­ac­ters, con­se­quently, diver­sity of voices are expected.  Female voices are mostly within the stan­dard; my favorites are Ryouko and Kotora.  But male voices are a bit strange and lack­ing… it’s espe­cially dis­heart­en­ing in occa­sions where the male voice sud­denly lost emo­tion, and devolved into “just read­ing the lines”.  Then at last, a per­sonal issue with Sakura’s eardrum-breaking voice ._.

Music - 7/10

Hard to say any­thing about the music about this game other than… the tracks fit the mood.  Though lack of mem­o­rable ones, none of the BGM is annoy­ing.  Over­play­ing is a bit issue, but it’s well within limit of becom­ing dis­tract­ing.  The game’s OP/ED, sung by Rita, still within expec­ta­tion.  Kangetsu Anmi, the vocal for the game’s insert song, along with Rita, also per­formed in Kata­hana.  Can’t really find fault in both of their voices… hope­fully one day an album can be released to include their Kata­hane and Roco­coWorks songs.

Sys­tem — 7/10

Com­mon fea­tures like voices in log, dis­able char­ac­ter voices, TIPs are present in Volume7, and the usage of them are con­ve­nient enough.  Now, from the screen­shots you prob­a­bly can see that ugly, dumb look­ing text box.  Now I’m pretty sure that you can’t change its style or opac­ity, cor­rect me if I’m wrong.  I have no idea why game released in 2006 can still have this kind of text box ._.

After the main story ends, new H scenes are appended and can be entered through the nor­mal H scene selec­tion.  Those are more than just another H, but rather offers some insight into the pair’s rela­tion­ship.  So def­i­nitely check with them when you fin­ished the main story.

Story — 4/10

The game’s plot­line can be divide into three chap­ters: 1st the intro chap­ter of how Kyouka and Tohmaru met. 2nd chap­ters are indi­vid­ual routes that include Tohmaru PoV, Ryu­ugo PoV, and Yashiro PoV; also in the same set­ting, the story for the­ses 3 routes are not repet­i­tive, though some­times two routes nar­rates the same event but from dif­fer­ent PoV, which is inter­est­ing to read.  The last chap­ter of the plot­line is the shared route that sup­posed to con­clude the story.  The PoV of the last chap­ter is not fixed… I think all char­ac­ters who has a tachi-e became PoV at least once ._.

The roman­tic plots mainly take place in the 3 indi­vid­ual routes.  To describe each route with one word… Tohmaru -> bor­ing, Ryu­ugo -> good, Yashiro -> funny.  Tohmaru’s route is a bit dull and the devel­op­ment of his rela­tion­ship with Kyouka is kinda too implicit–If I remem­ber clearly, it was like one day they had a fight, and few days past they slept together –_-  Though their encounter with each other was humor­ous enough, the only other shin­ing spot in Tohmaru’s route is the end of it where a small cli­max is the moti­va­tion to con­tinue to read and find out why ‘that’ has hap­pened.  Ryu­ugo and Kotora’s route is the game’s best (romance, dramatic) part I’d say… and I’m sure those who voted for Kotora in the pop­u­lar­ity poll agrees with me xD  Now at last, Yashiro… the fun part of his route is largely con­tributed by Sakura.  I burst into laugh­ter when Yashiro asked Sakura to make her clothes trans­par­ent so he can draw her nudity.  Sakura tried, but she could only make her entire body trans­par­ent, not cloth­ings only xD

The real beef I have against Volume7 is pretty much about how it concluded.  A bunch of behind-the-scene secrets were revealed revolv­ing Nana­hama dome and peo­ple who were involved in this story.  But this con­clud­ing chap­ter did not offer any in-depth expla­na­tion of  the dome phe­nom­e­non at all what­so­ever!  So the ques­tion like, how could the domes around the world just spawn from thin air all of sud­den, how exactly can the dome’s enclo­sure pre­vent “liv­ing crea­tures” from cross­ing it… what’s the mechan­ics behind it?

And oh boy, the var­i­ous Sci-Fi ele­ments intro­duced to the story only turn out to taint the entire pic­ture.  Time trav­el­ing (not humans, the land­scape inside Nana­hama dome), mem­ory eras­ing tech­nol­ogy, mys­te­ri­ous tech­nol­ogy that allows sub­way trains to go in and out of dome freely, genetic mod­i­fi­ca­tion which allows a per­son to TRANSFORM one’s appear­ance into another per­son, and finally, the most ridiculous: virtual humanoids who act COMPLETELY like a nor­mal being but then turn out to be some sort of android with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gent and CAN DISSOLVE INTO AIR WHEN THEY DIE.

Almost for­got to men­tion, there is a super com­puter in the story, “Bless”, is capa­ble of pre­dict near future and Venus’ oper­a­tion is relied on the instruc­tions Bless gives.  I mean wow, sure, geez, future-predicting machine, awe­some!  But wait that’s not all.  If one to make a spe­cial con­nec­tion to the super com­puter, he or she is able to dodge opponent’s move­ments in a melee combat…

Seri­ous, what the hell is this?

Volume7’s con­clu­sion chap­ter is the worst abuse of SF ele­ments in any script/novel I’ve ever seen.  I under­stand that the game’s story is focused on romance/adventure, not on Sci-Fi the ele­ment itself, but this is sim­ply too much to take.  A com­mon audi­ence prob­a­bly would not ques­tion how a time-traveling machine could work, but they’d like to see some attempts on explain­ing how exactly an entire area can just revert back to what was like 100 years ago.  Per­son­ally, I’d also like to know how much of the past land­scape came to existence–was it just the build­ings and roads?  Any per­sonal belong­ing in the build­ings?  Any trace of past own­er­ship of the houses and stuff?  I guess the ques­tion “how come only the land­scape but not any peo­ple appeared” is answered by the story.

Hav­ing the crit­i­cal part of the story’s theme left unex­plained is one of the hell that has bro­ken loose.  To think about it, a tech­nol­ogy that can erase a par­tic­u­lar part of a person’s mem­ory, plus the pos­si­bil­ity of hav­ing your genes mod­i­fied so a dif­fer­ent per­son­al­ity can live within you and trans­form your body into another appear­ance, plus the most unbe­liev­able tech­nol­ogy of mak­ing androids who look and think per­fectly like humans and only they have a fancy death ani­ma­tion and can be remade after­ward.  These set­tings com­bined allows the script write to write any­thing beyond com­mon sense jus­ti­fi­able, and that’s what exactly hap­pened to Volume7’s con­clu­sion chapter–it fell apart due to the unan­swered crit­i­cal ques­tions and ran­dom Sci-Fi ele­ments on rampage.

tl;dr: The script writer not only bites off too much too much of a pie than he could chew, he doesn’t real­ize his mouth is still being filled with can­dies.  I don’t want to see any­body doing that in front of me and I cer­tainly don’t appre­ci­ate read­ing a story of the same nature, hence the 4/10 score.

H scenes

Noth­ing out of ordi­nary, noth­ing impres­sive, noth­ing gross, just your typ­i­cal every­day activ­i­ties in any eroge.   I don’t remem­ber the exact num­bers of H scenes for each pair… maybe like 3 per pair?  I love how Sakura’s mind set where “being a model => strip naked” sur­prised Yashiro too much that he can’t focus on his draw­ing!  Then since Sakura is being a per­verted ghost, they just went on hav­ing sex.

Good new for Yurie-sensei’s fans, she has own H scenes too! … though I can’t say her part­net, who is a high school girl, is appro­pri­ate.  Don’t ask me who that girl is, find about it by play­ing the game :p

Weight­ing

Story: 45%
Graph­ics: 28%
Voice Act­ing: 14%
BGM: 10%
Sys­tem: 3%

Final Score: 65/100

In con­clu­sion, Volume7 has its good, its bad, and its very worst side.  Unfor­tu­an­tely, to me, it was a grand waste of time to read through the entire thing.  It’s hard to believe that the staff behind this game is the peo­ple who made Kata­hane (ero­geScape rat­ing = 84).  After fin­ish­ing up Volume7, I went on try­ing the trial ver­sion of RococoWork’s newest tilte, airy fairy, which is to be released on Nov. 27th.  Luck­ily I get to know the fact that airy fairy’s story is not inter­est­ing to me before I actu­ally fin­ish play­ing the game.  Now, the long wait for Katahane’s (Chi­nese) trans­la­tion is about to end, since there is already par­tial trans­la­tion patch released and I’m just be patient for the full translation ^.^