Random VNs: Tayutama Kiss on My Deity (edit: and the FD)
Entry posted by Clephas
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First, let me say that this was the very first non-violent VN I played after jumping into Japanese-language (untranslated) VNs. I should also say that it was the one that taught me that even a VN of this type (what I later came to call a charage) could have a truly solid story. This VN is the reason I'm frequently willing to give charage the benefit of the doubt, and it is also the reason why I became somewhat obsessed with ojousama heroines. Mifuyu is still one of the better ojousama heroines I've seen, both setting-wise and as a character.
My second playthrough of this game gave me an even greater appreciation for what makes it stand out... and made me once again dust off my hopes that one day LoS will stop making kusoge (three kusoge in five years is a bit much).
There are points of this VN that I found irritating both now and the first time I played it. Those points haven't really changed, though. The biggest one is that the story is set up so that the bulk of the events don't change, until after the prologue>3 common story arcs are over. While this can be called a common route... the fact is that the order in which they occur is altered by which heroine you chose, but you still have to go through the same events (with a mixture of unread and read text) three times after your first, with only minor changes. This is a mild irritation but still an irritation.
The upside is that the common route itself is actually fairly well-written, so that you can get a good idea of what each of the heroines is like in the common story arcs, so you don't feel left behind when things move on to the heroine arc (which is relatively short compared to the main story arcs). A lot of the reason for the way this game is done is that the canon/true heroine of the game is Masshiro... and her path is emphasized more strongly (and is longer) compared to the others (I really recommend that you play Masshiro's last or Masshiro's only... one or the other).
The protagonist, Yuuri, is the only child of the priest of the Yachimata Shrine and a direct descendant of Masshiro's 'progenitor's' former master/ally (the full extent of the relationship isn't revealed, save for on Kikurami no Hime's side). He is a fairly normal young man (yes, that was already the staple of what I came to call charage by then) with a passion for fixing bikes and a fondness for the shrine he grew up in. Despite his problems with Ameri, he is actually fairly perceptive, with an intuitive grasp of concepts that some people have to seriously think to get at. Nonetheless, he is ultimately just a 'normal' guy who happened to get involved with this mess.
One thing I think a lot of people who read this will be... amused by is the h-scenes. To be blunt, all the things that can go wrong with a person's first experience with sex can and do go wrong in this VN. The 'girl has an orgasm the first time' trope that has defined most h-scenes since the beginning of the current decade isn't present in this VN, and that actually has an effect on the heroines' stories at times. I say it is laugh-worthy because I spent most of my first ten VNs laughing rather than fapping to h-scenes... I literally spewed soda on my monitor during one of the h-scenes in Jingai Makyou, lol.
On the other side of things from Masshiro is Ameri... which is in a lot of ways the opposite of Masshiro. To be honest, having Ameri as a heroine kind of pushes things. Tsundere osananajimi have never been one of my drugs of choice, and Ameri is one of the worst of those. She makes a great side-character and semi-antagonist, but as a heroine...? Her path is also the most... pessimistic of the paths, at least in part because Ameri was also the heroine that had the most difficulty with the Tayutai as a species of being in the first place.
Yumina's path is... pleasant. I like Yumina as a character, as she grows throughout the story when you pick her. In the later part of the game when you choose her, she has matured immensely, and her ending is one of those ones that just makes you want to smile in pleasure at the characters' happiness and that of those around them. If you like heroine paths that end up warm and normally happy, this is a good path for you.
Mafuyu is in a lot of ways the ideal modern woman (if you ignore her setting). She is intelligent, capable, wise within the limits of the society she was born into and lives in, and is capable of accepting other people's advice (to some extent) without automatically assuming she is always right... once she trusts them. Other than Masshiro, her path is the strongest in this VN, and I honestly think her personality is the most interesting. She has become something of an archetype for a lot of similar characters over the years, but her view on Japanese society was the cause of one of my first post-VN epiphanies that broke part of my weaboo armor. That said, she isn't perfect... while she is willing to give those she trusts the benefit of the doubt, she can have a tendency to dismiss the opinions of those she doesn't yet trust outright, at times. Her best quality at times like those is her ability to admit when she was wrong.
Mashiro is... Mashiro. She is the enfleshed reincarnation of Kikurami, who sealed herself away along with the other Tayutai some five hundred years before the beginning of the story. She has a lot of old-fashioned thought patterns, and a somewhat one-track mind when it comes to the things she believes are necessary. She desires the coexistence of humans and Tayutai above all other things, and her affection for Yuuri is an odd mix of her own personal love, memories of Yachimata Kageharu inherited from Kikurami, and her need for him as an ally to deal with the other escaped Tayutai leaders (in other words, she is complicated). Some people have trouble with her as a heroine because she is more than a little pushy and is sometimes inconsiderate of others' circumstances... not to mention that her idea of basic training resembles that of a drill sergeant from hell at first, lol. For all her courteous nature, she is kind of scary when she snaps, though.
Mashiro's heroine path is my favorite non-tragic immortal heroine path in a charage. I say this because a lot of immortal heroine paths tend to have... weak endings. Moege immortal heroines in particular tend to 'lose their immortality' somewhere along the way, which is irritating since I don't see a reason why they should give it up, lol. A lot of that comes from the Japanese unspoken taboo against exceeding by too much or falling too far below society's norms. Exceptional individuals tend to end up isolated and the less-capable looked down on as human trash, when societal impulses are left to their own devices over there, lol. Anyway, I am immensely fond of how they wrap up this path, and I wish all other immortal heroine paths would at least take it as an example of the ideal.
Overall, this is a VN that exemplifies what is best in the fantasy charage sub-genre, breathing life into a set of characters that have remained in my heart strongly, even to this day. I can honestly say that I enjoyed replaying this VN almost as much as I enjoyed playing it the first time, which is rare in my case with a charage. If there is a downside to having used this VN as my starting point for charage, it is that so few manage to reach the same level, lol.
PS: The joke story that opens from the main screen when you finish the entire game is hilarious. The second story that pops up on the bottom is Kikurami's past, and it is a fairly sad story, with a linguistic level that will probably stump most newbies.
Edit: Adding It's happy Days fandisc
Tayutama It's happy Days
It's Happy Days is the fandisc to Tayutama, providing a side-story and extended after story for Mashiro.
The side-stories
The side-stories cover time spent at an onsen ryokan (hot springs inn) where various events occur and you watch a few h-scenes. For those who wanted to know what it was like for Yuuri immediately after the ending (as opposed to five hundred years later) with Mashiro or Mafuyu, it is a nice treat.
The extended After-story
The extended after-story is just that... an extension of Mashiro's ending that fills in gaps in the conversation and gives you an idea of what happened between the end and the epilogue of the original game through conversation.
- Narcosis and Funnerific
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