My girlfriend is the camera - Random Review - Love Rec. (Trial Edition)
Entry posted by Satsuki
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May hit me hard with a heck amount of games. 4 titles for May eroge, 4 trials for June eroge, plus Akiba's Trip and Neptunia Re;Birth2. And Sakura Fa--- no, screw that ****. Still, I somehow found the time to put together a review for Love Rec. - the newest title from ALcot that will be released on June 26. Now, let's get to it~
SYNOPSIS
Love Rec’s story takes place at a small school located in a quiet town near the sea. Protagonist Akira Yanase is a camera freak who records even during simple meals. Together with his childhood friend Chiho they started a video shooting group. But they meet strong opposition coming from the genius director Miyuki. A competition breaks out between the two of them with the prize of recognition as reward if they win.
Akira starts running around in order to gather more members, but finds no one, with the closing date getting closer each day instead. At that time his favorite camera gives of a strange light and a small girl makes her appearance. She introduces herself as Hitomi, a camera fairy. And with the addition of Nori, a professional in video editing, Akira’s surroundings have completely changed.
Together they worry, get angry, laugh, and cry. And as they live out their youths their hearts get closer to one another, little by little.
CHARACTER
1. Yanase Akira
Protagonist. A camera-freak who "talks" better with his camera rather than talk directly. He is the president of Movie Research Club - including him, Chiho and Hitomi. He is also a pervert boobs-lover.
2. (Yanase) Hitomi
A.k.a Sony ALcot HDR-H10M. She is the camera-spirit that came from Akira's 10 years old camera (Note: Every character in this game are 18 or older 
). Childish and a bit stubborn sometimes, she plays the role of Akira's cousin at school. Despite being a spirit, she is a big glutton. Her "battery consumption" is also pretty bad, being an old model camera. Calling Akira's "Nii-sama".
3. Yoshinaga Chiho
Akira's osananajimi and next-door neighbor. A mischievous and playful girl who doesn't even mind being called Akira's "wife". She usually comes over to Akira's house to wake him up and make breakfast/bento for him. Teasing Akira is her hobby.
4. Shirosawa Miyuki
President of Film Club and Akira's "rival". A honor student that is always serious in her work and respected by lots of people at school. She always acts all high-and-mighty toward Movie Research Club's members (except Hitomi). She lives in a big mansion, and always ready to use money to solve problems.
She is a lolicon. Nah, she just loves cute things.
5. Mikuriya Nori
Kenichi (school vice president, Akira's friend/classmate)'s imouto. Online, she is known as OZ - the famous anime creator. Offline, she is a timid NEET girl who almost never goes to school. She is a soft-spoken person and has the habit of apologizing to people even for the smallest thing.
STORY
Morning. The first thing Akira - our protagonist did - was grabbing his Sony ALcot HDR-H10M camera and try to take a picture of a sparrow outside of the window. For him, photography is love, photography is life. He even proudly called Hitomi - the pet name of the camera he received 10 years ago as his birthday present - his "waifu". After done with his morning routine of maintaining the camera (with lus-- I mean love), he looked through the lens. Suddenly, he saw a little girl peaked her head into the frame. Of course, there is no one like that in his room, since he is not (yet) a lolicon criminal! As he tried to wake himself from his "dream", he looked through the lens again, and the girl was still "standing" there. She said: "I will come to see you right now!". Rainbow light then pour out of the LCD screen, and a little girl suddenly came out from there!
"Goshujin-sama!"
She introduced herself as Hitomi - a camera spirit came out from Akira's camera to repay his kindness of taking care of her over the past 10 years. Of course, Akira couldn't believe her that easily, so Hitomi tried to perform magic to make him believes. However, the only thing she could do was making some balls of light floating around her, before running out of "battery" (a.k.a hungry) and fall flat on the floor. As Akira brought her onto his bed to let her rest - his osananajimi Chiho - came in calling him downstairs for breakfast. Great.
After a long introduction and explanation without being able to convince Chiho and Akira's mother that she is really a spirit, she somehow got the approval to live inside his house. They had breakfast, then Akira and Chiho headed to school while talking about the popular anime creator OZ-sensei, unknowingly that Hitomi was following them until she spoke. Since she wouldn't be able to go to school with them just like this, this was the perfect time to convince Chiho that Hitomi is a spirit! Boom! She transformed her clothes into school uniform, totally surprised both Akira and Chiho. Suddenly, Akira's camera blacked out and went dead - along with Hitomi falling flat on the ground - again!
"When I run out of energy, the camera will also run out of battery."
Her body and the camera are one - or so she said. When she ate food, the camera's battery would also get charged. Of course, it could also be the other way - charging the camera would fill her up. But battery charge and food went in different stomachs, so she still needed food to "live" (nope, you are just a glutton).
3 people processed to school after feeding Hitomi with vending machine's food, they met Miyuki - the president of Film Club. As they talked, the reason for the rivalry between Movie Research Club - which Akira is the president - and Film Club started to come out: Akira was originally member of Film Club. However, after realizing his passion of taking photo of people's smile, which was not what Film was about, he left the club and decided to make a club for himself - with the support from Chiho. There were conditions though: his club has to have at least 4 members, and they has to win against Film Club in the upcoming competitor. If they lost, then Akira would have to go back to Film Club - as Miyuki really valued Akira's talent with his camera. After the talk, Hitomi ended up being "dragged" in as the 3rd member of Movie Research Club.
After school, Kenichi - Akira's friend - invited him to go and meet OZ-sensei. He agreed right away, since it's always that he had the chance to meet the popular anime creator. What he didn't know, is that OZ-sensei is actually Kenichi's imouto!
"Auuu...I took an arrow in the knee..."
After a big commotion due to Kenichi "trolled" her - Nori - to distract her from work, resulting in her "crashing" knee right in the kotatsu, they exchanged introduction. Knowing that she is also student from the same school, Akira tried to recruit her to his club and asked her to help with movie editing, but got refused because she was already busy with her work as OZ-sensei. As her father went home and wanted to talk to her, Akira and Kenichi went to the park. There, Kenichi asked Akira to help with Nori's situation: Due to her talent, she was forced to priority money-making work as OZ over school by her father, and as her brother, Kenichi didn't want that. Of course, Akira wouldn't refuse.
Next day, Akira, Hitomi and Chito went to meet Nori after knowing the situation. They met Miyuki there, found out that she also wanted to ask OZ-sensei to help with her movie for the competition (she knew her address through "rich people's connection"). As they talked about work, Akira made everyone surprised with his statement "The person I want to work with is Nori. Working with OZ is really boring. Yes, it's true that her works are good, but they have no passion in them." He then dealt a final blow to Nori, making her shouting at him and run back to her room: "When was the last time you had fun making a movie?".
Despite that, Akira still sent his photos and raw movie to her everyday in case she wanted to work on them. Few days later, Akira, Hitomi and Chiho visited Nori to check on her. Nori explained that she was only angry at herself for unable to give an answer last time, and still working on the movie normally.
"L-Like I said, please sto---Hya! Kya!"
After having dinner with Mikuriya's siblings and have an overly friendly exchange with Nori, they went home. Suddenly, they heard Nori calling them from the back, since she wanted to have a talk with Akira. There, she finally decided to join his club.
Their work progressed fast after that, as Nori started understanding the joy of making movie by herself, not relying on client's order. However, life was not that simple. One day, her father came crashed in her room.
15 minutes before the deadline of the movie competition. Everyone was waiting for Nori in the school courtyard. Because of her father, she had to put her "real" work up first, so she had very little time to work on Akira's movie. Finally, her call came, carrying her crying voice about a traffic jam due to a traffic accident, thus she wouldn't be able to make it in time. Fired up, Akira decided to go straight to her with the bicycle lent by Kenichi, not to forget to take the camera with him.
Flying through the street with max speed, suddenly, he heard Hitomi's voice. And then, "miracle" happened.
The world around him suddenly lost its color, everything around him suddenly stopped moving as he rushed toward Nori's bus stop. The world then started moving again after he reached the destination, he then carried Nori back, and somehow made it in time.
In the end, their movie lost the competition, but its high quality was still enough to make the school recognizing Movie Research Club as a club. From there, the journey of their youth continue....in the full version of the game.
Another charage-with-the-smell-of-drama from ALcot. Same as Clover Day's, this game also has a pretty relaxing common route, with mostly school-life-comedy, ichaicha and the ultimately cute of the central loli heroine Hitomi. However, there are clearly some hints in the trial that say "s*** will hit the fan in heroine routes". I can almost guess which route will be about what though, except Hitomi route, which I'm still not really certain about. The comedy level is really high, with a lot of lame gags and tsukkomi. Preparing yourself for tons of photography/animation terminology coming, since this is the main focus of the game (or so I suspect, although there is not much of them in the trial).
GRAPHIC
Carrying over the whole set of staff from Clover Day's, including Chikotam, Narumi Yuu and Nimura Yuuji, the art is undoubtedly good. However, not sure why but I don't really like the design of Chiho. Especially her smile and laugh, looks just kinda...weird. Actually, Miyuki too. Also, seem like they reused some CG from Clover Day's to cut cost. Not that I'm complaining though, it doesn't really matter to me.
P/S: Hitomi = Anzu x Hekiru's daughter confirmed.
MUSIC
Pretty enjoyable. I really like the "defeated" music they used when Akira's group came to visit Nori and found her dead sleep under the kotatsu 
The OP sounds pretty normal at first, but after listening to it for sometimes, it's now officially in my playlist.
VOICE
I just can't get enough of Hitomi's voice with all of the traits from Anzu (despite having different seiyuu). Other characters also have nice voice that suit well with their personality and appearance.
CONCLUSION
With the almost same set of staff, if you enjoyed Clover Day's, then you will surely also enjoy this one.
And even if you haven't, then think about this: How many time in your life do you have the chance to date a camera!? ALcot gave you that precious chance, then please, by all mean, take it!
Temporary Score
Story: 8/10
Character: 8/10
Graphic: 9/10
Music: 8/10
Voice: 9,5/10
Overall: 8,5/10
My previous review:
Dear Mariko (OELVN)
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