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Valet Style: Slice of life with a side of ojousama and female butlers


Clephas

863 views

As I mentioned in my most recent post, ojousama-ge are one of my guilty pleasures. So quite naturally, I couldn't help but get my hopes up for this VN. It definitely has its ups and downs, and it provides some entertainment... but the downsides are kind of painful.

 

First, the common route of this VN is some of the better slice of life I've seen in the last few months, with a mostly comedic bent. The protagonist, who is dirt poor, is a generally capable guy who is busy living life when a pair of yakuza sent by loan sharks appear to sell him to an old man that likes pretty young men. He is saved by the female butler Tomoka on the orders of his former imouto, Sayu, and then he is brought back to her home, where she pushes him into going to the same school.

 

This absurd beginning pretty much sets the tone for the entire common route. This VN is full of 'zannen' characters, especially the heroines, and normally I would have been perfectly happy to sit back and be amused by all this... but there is a general sense that the writers didn't know what to do with their own setting. Despite its generally amusing content, the common route is fairly uneventful, and the fact that you basically choose what scenes you will watch after a certain point completely breaks any engrossment you might have experienced.

 

Last of all is the biggest downer... the heroine routes. It isn't that there is no drama - there is - it is that it feels really pale and contrived solely to create an artificial-feeling climax. Sayu's route is decent, as is Tomoka's... but Mirei's route feels so contrived that I had to sigh in exasperation. Understand, the best any route in this VN gets from me is a 'decent' rating. I will probably have forgotten this VN entirely in a few months, simply because it really just is that forgettable.

 

A few other minor points that irritated me about this VN... there are three voiced male characters but the protagonist didn't get a voice, despite the fact that he possesses a distinctive non-self-insert personality. The protagonist is a genius but there are very few points where he shows his abilities off. Mirei is a total moron, and that doesn't change even in her path (considering her family's wealth, you would have thought there would be family issues she was too stupid to remember, but the entire path was just a ridiculous waste of time).

 

Visually, this VN is probably just lower than the middle in quality terms, though it is better than most crap moege, it is not as good as one of the 'frontline' companies' works.

 

Overall, I can recommend this to people who like lots of slice of life... but anyone with hopes for a real story will be disappointed.

 

Edit: Let me a bit clearer... this VN feels 'unfinished' when it comes to the individual heroine stories. Yes, there is some drama, but the ending parts feel extremely rushed and poorly paced. Worse, there really is nothing in the way of content after the climax... and the climax in general is not that interesting.

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