Title: ハジラブ -Making＊Lovers-
Developer: Smee
Release Date: 25th June 2021
Age Rating: 18+
Length: ~20 Hours
Links: Official Website, VNDB
The protagonist of this game is a young man with strong views about love, refusing to entertain the idea of casual relationships and waiting for his “soulmate”. Whilst working a part-time job helping at a festival, a series of fateful events allow him to meet four girls who all catch his eye:
Sonoike Sakura, his kind childhood friend who has yet to be honest with her feelings.
Shinohara Kouta, a family-oriented girl waiting for her fairytale prince.
Hakari Yui, the energetic kouhai who asks the protagonist to pretend to be her boyfriend.
Yofune Hatsuho, the enigmatic shrine maiden who wishes for a fiancee to appease her family.
As their relationship changes from acquaintances, to friends, and then lovers will the couple manage to navigate their true first love?
My Thoughts
I haven’t played the original Making*Lovers, which I believe is considered one of the better Smee games, but the heroine designs in HajiLove were super appealing to me so I decided to pick it up first. As a company, Smee are known for romantic comedies with memorable heroines so did HajiLove manage to deliver?
Whilst there were definitely some negatives to this game, my overall opinion was that the heroines and character interactions absolutely manage to cover for most of it. I’m not too familiar with Smee’s other games but I really enjoyed their style of humour.
Unlike most other games in the genre, this game lacks a proper common route – there’s a small prologue and then you just pick your heroine and immediately ask her out. I believe the original Making*Lovers had more of a mature theme with a working protagonist/heroines so this makes a bit more sense. Moving the setting to high school and keeping the same formula does feel a little awkward but the writers do generally create fair reasons for the heroines to begin dating the protagonist.
One of the things HajiLove does to mitigate the lack of said common route is split the heroine routes into two parts. The first part is when the two get to know each other and navigate the awkwardness that comes with a new (and first) relationship. The latter part is when the pair finally move from like to love and so become lovers – expect a lot of sweet ichaicha here.
This game’s gimmick is the “personalised” date that the player decides on – you’re given a list of places to visit and eat at and just pick what you like. These were fun and offered some replayability but were only used twice on each route – I really wish it was implemented a couple more times! I found it fun to think about which area each heroine would enjoy the most.
Moving onto the heroines, probably the make or break for a moege such as this. As a whole, they’re all great – super adroable and all likable. The fact that there are some short perspective changes probably helps with this and makes them all even more endearing.
Childhood friend Sakura is probably the most generic but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. She’s kind, caring and looks after the protagonist well but has been supressing her feelings for a while. She and her route were cute but I felt she was a little plain compared to the other heroines.
Next up we have the motherly/older sister-like Kouta who is in the same year as the protagonist. She may have one of the weaker reasonings for dating the protagonist – they both have similar views on “fateful encounters/soulmates” – but her more family-oriented route was more than heartwarming enough to make up for it. She’s utterly adorable but I’l admit I’m biased.
Yui is the game’s touken kouhai, and she takes the form of an idol-obsessed gyaru who meets the protagonist when he has a spare ticket to her favourite star’s show. She’s extremely puppy-like and takes an immediate liking to the protagonist. Unlike her peers, she’s very inexperienced with relationships so she tells her friends that she is dating the protagonist and begs him to pretend to be her boyfriend. While the setup to her route may sound dumb/generic it actually worked out quite well. I personally found Yui adorable and thought her backstory gave her a little more depth than the typical gyaru.
The final heroine is Hatsuho and I can imagine that she was pretty popular with players due to how eccentric she was. She exudes an air of mystery that continues pretty much throughout her route, although the reader does get to see different sides of her which is adorable. She and the protagonist get together as she wants to find a fiancee to make her family happy and after a fateful encounter she leaves our lucky protagonist her business card lmao. Honestly I thought Hatsuho was hilarious and really enjoyed the time spent with her on her route. I think she benefits the most from the short perpective change segments.
The primary reason I picked Haji*Love up over the original Making*Lovers was due to the art style. Personally, I really loved the artwork by Keeko and Mango Pudding – it just looks adorable! I did have a little bit of a issue with the CG allocations but will get to that later.
Whilst the BGM was of good quality and fit the game, it wasn’t particularly memorable. Out of the vocal songs, I prefered the opening song.
Unfortunately, not everything about this game was quite as positive as I hoped and there was one really glaring issue for me – the game has too many H scenes. “Too many H scenes in an eroge?!?!?” you may cry but please let me explain myself. The first half of the game was good and super cute/romantic, but after this it just feels like 90% of any romance is H-focused which just felt lazy to me. Each heroine has between 6-8 scenes and their routes aren’t even that long so I was getting kind of bored by seemingly constant H after a certain point. This means that there isn’t actually many SFW CGs for each heroine & I was super annoyed that one of the girls was lacking an ending CG due to this – like we could have spared one HCG for her ending?? I genuinely have no idea how this game got a console port because there would have to be a significant amount of changed content to pad out the routes lmao.
Final Thoughts
My Score: 7/10
Aside from my problem with the amount of H-Scenes (which I totally understand is probably personal preference) Haji*Love still actually manages to be an enjoyable moege, if only for the fun conversations with the memorable heroines. I believe the humour used in the game is pretty common across Smee titles so if it’s your thing then I would recommend this too.
I did end up buying both of the mini fandiscs for this game so do plan to play them at some point this year. I also did enjoy my first Smee title so ended up grabbing a couple more on sale – hopefully they are equally as fun!
Thanks for reading~
Zettai Renai! 