Title: はるるみなもに!
Developer: Clochette
Release Date: 24th March 2017
Age Rating: 18+
Length: ~20 Hours
Links: Official Website, VNDB
Yamagami Tatsuki comes from a long family lineage of shrine workers, whom have looked after the mountain shrine in Tamatsue for hundreds of years. His younger sister is the current Goddess of the Mountain and he was her attendant for many years. Tamatsue has recently appointed a new Goddess of the Sea to take over the shrine in town and on the day of their arrival, Tatsuki finds a girl struggling in the water of one of the mountain lakes. After saving her, it transpires that her name is Kanau and she’s the new God of the Sea. However, she’s not exactly the most confident in her appointment to her new role and begs for Tatsuki’s help. Will the two of them be able to work together in order to restore the Tamatsue Shrine to its former glory?
Characters
Yamagami Tatsuki
Tatsuki is a frank and pragmatic young man who has spent his whole life working at the mountain shrine. Having spent most of his childhood as Miori’s attendant, he’s used to dealing with goddesses and so is happy to help out Kanau as she learns the ropes.
Harugasaki Kanau (CV Ayumi Sarah)
Kanau spend her childhood sickly in hospital before her powers awakened and she became a Sea Goddess, making her a rare case amongst deities. Unfortunately, her parents passed away shortly before this so she has to move to Tamatsue by herself and is nervous about being in charge of the shrine. Kanau is unable to use her powers consistenty or even transform into her goddess form, however, being close to Tatsumi or hearing him call her name helps her with this so she asks him to “worship her” and help her gain control of her abilities. The Tamatsue shrine of the sea is situated in the part of town where people have little belief in the supernatural, adding to the challenge she has before her. Kanau is an extremely clumsy girl but she’s always trying her best!
Yamagami Miori (CV Haruka Sora)
Miori is Tatsuki’s beloved younger sister and was born as the shrine’s mountain goddess. Despite being beloved by all the shrine goers, Miori didn’t have a normal childhood and hasn’t even left the mountain itself. This means that her hobbies are pretty much things you can do alone – watching movies, reading books or going swimming in one of the mountain lakes. She’s very close to her brother and Ema, often video calling the latter. Miori’s familiar is a flying squirrel called Monga, whom she sometimes sends to the school in order to speak to Tatsuki.
Matsufusa Ema (CV Hanazawa Sakura)
Ema is the childhood friend of Tatsuki and Miori, whom lives in Tamatsue. As a child, she used to help out at the mountain shrine, which is how she comes to know the siblings. She’s a bright and cheerful girl who enjoys teasing Tatsuki. She works part-time in her family’s Japanese Teahouse and enjoys cooking also. Ema has a kind heart and offers to let Mei stay with her after she decides to stay in the town.
Hatagami Mei (CV Sawasawa Sawa)
Mei is a Thunder Goddess and, unlike Miori and Kanau, she was not born as a human. In fact, she was “born” from a single bolt of lightning many, many years ago. Mei is a goddess without her own shrine and has been considered a bit of a nuisance to other deities. However, she comes to Tamatsue after hearing that there was an unclaimed shrine. Despite being disappointed to learn that there is in fact a goddess in charge of the shrine, Mei decides to stick around in order to help Kanau out while she learns the ropes of being a goddess. Mei is loud and rash, with a tendency to cause a ruckus wherever she goes due to a lack of understanding of humans but she has a kind heart and means well. The name “Hatagami Mei” was given to her by Tatsuki.
Ibuki Asumi (CV Hanataba Bouquet)
Asumi is a student at the highschool Tatsuki attends and is known to the group for being very negative towards Kanau and deities in general, including Tatsuki because of his relation to the mountain shrine. She used to be a member of the school’s swimming club until she quit after her father got lost at sea a few years ago. She worries about her mother and how she’s coping without her father and so spends a lot of time at home with her. Despite having such a negative opinion about deities, she struck up a friendship with Miori as they both enjoy going swimming in the lakes on the mountain.
Artwork
Character design and artwork for this game was handled by Shintaro, whom is known for his work on some of Clochette’s other titles.
Sound
Opening: Be With You
Ending: Hello!
Ending: Kaze ni Fukarete
(All songs by Airi)
The game’s BGM was composed by the pair Tomaru Ryouta and Suemasu Ryouta, from the Elements Garden group.
System
The game’s system was pretty standard, with fairly obvious choices so a walkthrough probably isn’t required.
Shout-out to the really nicely organised settings menu though – does pretty much what you’d want & everything is on a single page. Bless. The only setting I ever care about is max text speed though, haha.
The game does have a sprite viewer and it’s a pretty decent one.
My Thoughts
This was my first title from Clochette and I went into it thinking that it would be a pretty standard chara-ge. Given that this developer has been around for a while, I had expectations that the game would be pretty decent. However, I must say that I found this title to be on the disappointing side.
The problem I had with this game is that it was just really boring – I didn’t find the game particularly amusing, exciting or enthralling overall and it was becoming a chore to finish by the end, which isn’t really something you want to be thinking whilst playing anything.
There were some flashes of potential – especially during Asumi’s arc of the common route, which was somehow better than her actual route. However, overall the story telling wasn’t the best. Now, this can normally be over-ruled by having enjoyable character interactions or humour but everything just felt very forced to me and pretty forgettable.
Like, don’t get me wrong, the girls themselves are cute and have some good points but the romance in their route isn’t great and every single route has the exact same ending, which is nothing less than bad and lazy writing. I understand what the writers were trying to do with this type of ending but perhaps include a unique epilogue for each heroine set after this so there’s some sort of differentiation?
Given that this game won the Moe Game Award for “Pink” (vanilla) Ero when it came out, it’s no surprise that the H-scenes in this game are actually probably its one area of value. With 5 scenes per heroine and most of their CG sets dedicated towards them, it’s clear that this was important to the developers. I don’t really care how many H-scenes a game has so long as there’s good characterisation and relationships, which is again something this game was lacking. It was as if they started with a decent enough concept, and then decided to turn it into some vapid nukige in the heroine routes. Don’t get me wrong, there are moege/charage with a lot of H-scenes that still manage to be a good, romatic read but this is not one of them. There’s also probably better nukige you can buy if H-scenes are what you’re after, thus making this game a half-assed attempt at either genre.
The artwork in the game was generally very nice but, like I mentioned, each heroine has only 6 non-HCGs and even then, not all of them are SFW so it felt like even fewer. I will say that some CGs have a ridiculous amount of variations – the game lists the number for each CG and I’m sure I saw one with over 100!
The BGM & voicing in this game were decent but nothing particularly spectacular. I will say that the opening song is really good though and was what made me buy the game in the first place. Don’t make the same mistake as me.
Final Thoughts
My Score: 4.5/10
Whilst the girls may be cute and the artstyle pretty, there’s not much else enjoyable about this game. Yes, even moege have standards and this completely fails to meet them.
I bought this as part of a “buy 3 clochette games for 7k yen” set and my first thought after finishing the game was that I should’ve picked Kamikaze Explorer instead so that sums up my thoughts really.
I’d recommend to avoid this title, primarily because there’s better moege and/or nukige out there.
Thanks for reading!
Zettai Renai! 