All right everyone. Here we are. We finally made it to the 5th and final route of the game, Kaho. Have I saved the best for last? No, not really, but, this is what the makers of the game definitely defined as the “Main love interest”. If you haven’t read my past 4 other posts on this game, I recommend you do that now. If you’re far too lazy to do that, I’ll just sit here and glare at you as I retell you what the premise of the game is.
You (Kotaro) are in love with this girl Kaho. However, she’s extremely popular and doesn’t really notice you.
You declare that you’re going to get her to notice you and you go home on your bike a random day in mid-july. On the way home you’re covered in a weird powder and you wake up on September 1st. You learn that you and Kaho had recently started going out, but then she died yesterday (August 31st). You fall unconscious and that’s when you start your crazy time travel jumping in this two month time period, and are informed by a time cop that she needs your help to save her life.
The Kaho route then really begins. As you hop around you try to give Kaho a love letter. She rejects it, but when you jump again, you learn that she warmed up to you because she saw you save a baby bird and therefore are not a jerk. You learn she’s actually a very talented actress despite her normal shyness.
As you hang around her more you notice that she seems extremely unwilling to go home to her father, the artist. And you’re not sure why. So you decide to spy on her to find out. So you peer in the window and ….
Oh…oh my. yeah apparently the father is very controlling of his daughter. So without his knowledge, you decide to sneak to the balcony ala Romeo and Juliet style. ( i see what they were going for as early on they let you know that Kaho loves Shakespeare. yeah yeah writers we get it ya clever bastards)
Eventually you end up hopping to the day when there’s going to be a festival. And you decide to pick Kaho of course because in this route you never stop having the world’s biggest boner for her. By now Kaho’s beginning to feel the “I really want his dick but am too nervous to show it phase” of the dating sim relationship. Eventually you sit down and talk to her.
This is a very sad moment as you Kaho basically tells you she wishes this moment could never end because she’s too afraid to go home to her father. After a discussion with her you finally do the thing we’ve been waiting for the whole game. you f-
oh shit! i mean um… you kiss!
Yes! Exactly! You kiss! (coughs into hand) Um…. So yes. Eventually, you can’t take how much of a jerkoff asshole her father is and basically tell him he should go fuck himself.
As we reach the climax of the game you make it to the 31st of August. The day Kaho dies. As her waiting for you was the reason she died in the first place, you run to try to catch her before the accident. Unfortunately as she sees you, she’s so happy that she takes this as an opportunity to run across the street without looking both ways.
This is the basically the point where you’re like “Fuck.” She’s too far away and you see a car coming. There’s nothing you can do. As you get ready to lose her again, something INCREDIBLY unexpected happens. She’s saved. Not by you or the time cop…. but by her dad.
Apparently your talking to the father convinced him that he needed to treat his daughter more like a person and less like an object and just love her for who she is. Running after to find her, he ended up saving her.
Finally the two of you can be together as the crisis is averted and you embrace.
The game ends with a flash forward to a couple years when you see that indeed, Kotaro and Kaho are going to get married and live happily ever after.
So what is there to say about Kaho? She is a the average shy, demure Japanese girl. However, she’s also underneath that there’s a strong person wanting to come out as shown by her strong acting abilities. She really doesn’t trust many people deeply as the only man really in her life (her father) is abusive. Out of all the five girls, Kaho’s story is definitely the heaviest, and most detailed. You basically learn all there is to know about Kaho.
Of course, most people might like this idea, but at this point i did her route more out of obligation than any actual care for her character. See, when people normally say their “least favorite” of something, they’re basically trying to be polite. Because the alternative is saying “the one you hate the most”. However, in this situation “Least favorite” is ACTUALLY pretty apropos. I don’t dislike her, Kaho just happens to actually be “my least favorite.”
There is no character or route I dislike in this game. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy this game so much. I enjoy every single love interest in this game. Just because I don’t think Kaho is the greatest path, it doesn’t mean I don’t like her, I just…like her least.
One of the main issues I have with Kotaro in this branch is that start to finish you are obsessed with Kaho and it only grows more and more as the story goes in. It feels like the story wants you to go in that direction very badly, and it almost felt a little creepy after a while. It gave out a sort of non-character developing stagnation for me with Kotaro. Granted he went from obsession to truly understanding her, but at the same time, that sort of thing doesn’t do it for me. It’s still a great route, and Kaho’s adorable, but I have to go with a 7.5 out of 10.
So there you have it. There’s the 5 routes of Hourglass of Summer. For all the jokes I make about it, it really is the BEST dating sim I’ve ever played. It is purely fantastic. The music, the voice acting, the character development, the story, the art, it’s all amazing. Overall I give this game a 10/10. For the flaws I pointed out in it, it’s still as close to perfection as anything’s going to get for me. There are VERY few things in my arsenal that get a 10/10, so this game should be proud. well guys, hope you enjoyed, and see you soon for the Fall 2014 season! (9-10 shows. oh boy let’s do this)
