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My Guilty Pleasure: Ojousama-ge


Clephas

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What is an ojousama-ge? It is fairly simple... it is a VN where multiple heroines (sometimes all or most of them) are young women from wealthy families. I love these VNs... but it isn't so much because I like ojousama heroines (though there is that, since I love people with warped personalities). Rather, it is because some of the best charage, nakige, and non-action story-focused VNs I've played are ojousama-ge.

 

Examples
Otome ga Boku ni Koishiteiru 2
Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashi no
Akatsuki no Goei (the first one only, since 3 varies its heroine types a lot more)
Noble Works
Otome ga Tsumugu, Koi no Canvas (and the FD)
Ojousama wa Gokigen Naname

 

Now we come to why these VNs tend to be more likely to be good... and the answer is relatively simple. To be blunt, settings where multiple ojousama heroines are possible tend to be a bit more detached from everyday life than the average VN setting, thus giving the writer more flexibility to form the plot of the various routes and overall VN. Another aspect is that people with money tend to be the target of all sorts of problems, from simple marriage issues to kidnappings and assassinations. As such, it is very easy to create an exciting story that feels relatively realistic in such a setting.

 

It is pretty easy to see from this why I generally get excited about ojousama-ge, now isn't it?

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Proper manners without being a push-over always make me smile. There are interesting traits to explore reservedness, pride, leadership. For the purposes of playing around inside the "mold", the ojyousama archtype is like new-game plus, perhaps?

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The arranged marriage plot type always ends up rubbing me the wrong way somehow. I also don't care for the prim-and-proper "Gokigenyou onee-sama~" bullshit that accompanies some of these. That said, not all of them are like that, noble works seems relatively light on the latter, although I'm fearing whatever arranged marriage bullshit it may pull.

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lol... arranged marriages are the norm in most wealthy classes around the world (outside the nouveau rich).  In Japan, it is because frequently families run conglomerates and companies rather than stock-holders, even if it is only a figurehead... There is less of that now than there was forty years ago, but it is still common.

 

As for the onee-sama thing... that's such a common insert in VNs - even ones that don't have ojousamas - that I've more or less resigned myself to hearing it in just about every non-action VN.

 

Edit: It is also why most wealthy men have mistresses... other than the boredom issue.

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I'm used to reading about the american upper class, where arranged marriages are very uncommon/practically non-existent these days. And I have to imagine it's a lot less common in Japan than these VNs would lead us to believe.

 

But the realism isn't the issue. I just get really mad when a heroine is having their lives dictated by others down to something as huge as marriage and they just accept it. I suppose I should then like these stories because they obviously always end with the heroines going with the protagonist instead of their pre-arranged partner, but there's invariably major plot points along the way that piss me off. 

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