Thoughts on Majikoi A-1

To you loyal readers out there (if any), I’m sorry about the lack of activity around here recently. I have basically NO idea what the other two are doing, but the holiday season made me very lazy. Also among the other things that happened in RL, I recently received notification that I’ve passed the first stage of the JET Programme application process. So yeah, they told me my interview will be on the 7^th of February.

Excitement level from JET interview notification: 7/10

More importantly, last Friday I was basically checking Anime-Sharing every hour to check if Majikoi A-1 was out.

Excitement level when Majikoi A-1 download links up: 10/10, and rising

Yes that’s right; an eroge release was more important to me than prospects of working in Japan. Honestly I was a little surprised myself =p. Anyway it’s time to talk about Majikoi A-1.

Links: Walkthrough, VNDB

A-1 is the first of the 5 Majikoi A fan-discs and it features routes for Benkei, Azumi and Sayaka. For those of you who don’t already know, I am a HUGE fan of the Majikoi series and I often find myself daydreaming about it. Among the Majikoi heroines, Benkei is one of my favorites. So as one might suspect I was SUPER looking forward to A-1.

Azumi’s route (5/10)

This route follows on from Monshiro’s route from Majikoi S in the sense that Yamato is working as a butler for the Kuki household. The major interaction among Yamato and Azumi is initiated when Yamato offers to help Azumi’s one-sided love towards Kuki Hideo. Given how Hideo like Kazuko, you might see how this is a problem.  As Yamato, Stacy and Lee think of ways for Azumi to appeal to Hideo, Yamato finds himself falling for Azumi.

After Azumi is rejected by Hideo Yamato swoops in and confesses his feelings to Azumi. Despite being rejected, he comes back and confesses over and over. Seriously, his similarity to Miyako is even mentioned in the game. At this point where Yamato starts confessing (over and over), you don’t really see anymore romantic development occurring and things stay like this until the end of the route.

There are a number of time skips in this route…three I think. Through them you see Yamato’s progress as he climbs the ranks among the other serving staff in the Kuki household. The other purpose of the time skips seems to be to show how bloody long it takes Yamato to ‘capture’ Azumi; at the end Yamato’s 26. But I have to hand it to the guy for holding out with an unrequited love for that long.

I found this route to be extremely average and half of me feels that it was a waste of space. To me, constant confessing doesn’t account to good romantic development. Also, since the two actually don’t actually get together until the very end, there’s NO room for icha icha; it’s basically just SEX. Another thing that didn’t sit well with me was the fact that most of Azumi’s dere isn’t caused by Yamato. However I did like how the final time skip let you see some of the cast when they’re older.

Sayaka’s Route (7.5/10)

This route was quite solid and I have to say that Sayaka’s personality is pretty funny. Not too much of a lolicon myself, but I’m thinking that Sayaka will satisfy some of the lolicons out there. 

Things start off with Sayaka visiting Kawakami city during the start of summer vacation. You soon find out the reason behind Sayaka’s sudden visit is because she had a fight with her father. Turns out her father set up a marriage meeting for her and she left home saying that she already had a boyfriend. Obviously this leads onto the fake lover setting. I’ve seen a lot of fails when it comes to using this setting—mainly in manga.  However Sayaka’s route pulls it off quite nicely because the setting isn’t in effect for too long. Before long the two realise that they’re pretty much in love with each other.  However lying is never good, especially when you do it to a girl’s father, and the two are required to ‘prove’ their love.

Sayaka’s bright and friendly is very interesting, given Yukie’s awkward and shy nature. However she’s similar to Yukie in the sense that they’re both a quite perverted deep down.  Whenever she misunderstands what someone says she silently rambles off, which was hilarious. It was too bad that this route was pretty short.

Benkei’s route (9.5/10)

Benkei is an amaenbou; Nuff said.

LOL, that above line REALLY doesn’t suit my personality, but it basically expresses how I feel about the route. I went into the route with high expectations and came out very satisfied.

As in Majikoi S, Benkei and Yamato often meet up with Hige-sensei for what they like to call the ‘Lazy Club’. After the two get closer, by Benkei’s request, Yamato gets into a routine of patting her on the head. YES, IT’S MOE. What’s even better is that this leads to more amaenbou behaviour, which equals more moe XD. Benkei shows a few moments of jealously throughout this route, which only added to the awesomeness of the route.

Plenty of icha icha and the romantic development progresses at a nice pace. It’s a little unfortunate that the confession scene is an indirect one. However looking back on it, it was done pretty well. Not much drama in this route, nothing major anyway, for which I’m grateful for. The inclusion of any drama would have probably ruined this route. Benkei’s fighting ability is never really observed that much in Majikoi S. Fortunately there are several battle scenes in this route which give a pretty good indication of her true strength. The ending was solid and shows Benkei’s mental growth.

Overall this was a very awesome route and I’ll probably play it again very soon. Actually, I think I’ll play it right now =p.

That’s enough about the routes themselves.

The game basically had the same Majikoi system that I’ve gotten used to over the years. However one thing that REALLY bothered me was that sometimes when there were close ups of character sprites, the images would be pixelated. There was a similar issue that affected the title screen of the game and made the game feel cheap.

In the config menu there are various screen settings, but the game forced me to use 800×600; I’m assuming the pixilation is due to my computers specs. However I’ve never seen these issues in the older Majikoi games. Anyway here are a few more CGs to keep you going.

I’ll end things off with my thoughts of the other Majikoi A discs that are to come. Here’s the list of them:

Ａー１： Benkei　 Azumi　 Sayaka　
Ａ－２： Seiso　 Monshiro after+　 Cookie 4 is
Ａ－３： Lee　 　Stacy       Tsubame after+
Ａ－４： Homura　 Rin　 ——-
Ａ－５： Yoshitsune　 Takae　 Margit after+

Of the Majikoi A FDs I would say that this one (A-1) was the one that I was looking forward to the most (Benkei XD). I’m HOPING that the blank space in A-4 will be used for a Benkei after route, but I have my doubts. Seiso looks like she already has a love interest in the Majikoi universe, so I’m interested in seeing how they’ll squeeze Yamato into there. If I recall correctly, Rin’s strength is similar to that of Momoyo. Since she wasn’t really talked about at all I am very curious as to what her personality is like and the fights you’ll see her in. I really don’t see the point in routes for Lee and Stacey; both of them aren’t particularly interesting or attractive. Well Lee I can sorta understand, but a route for Stacy looks like it’ll be a waste of time.

Anyways that’s it for now. I’m currently working on a joint post which should be up some time soon.