Lewd.
Impression
This is a good arc. I’m surprised that Seiren has managed to somewhat pull itself together at last. So much has been done in a mere span of two episodes – Kyouko has joined the Home Ec club, her relationship with Shouichi has been established and we’ve already had hints of romance between the two and Kyouko working out her own feelings for him. Nothing like that was achieved with the other routes, because they wasted too much time on group activities and meaningless things that didn’t really advance the romance between Shouichi and the designated heroine. Might this be because Kyouko’s his childhood friend, making it easier to set up a romance? Possibly. I won’t deny that. Shouichi and Kyouko do look good together, and are already comfortable with each other, which makes it easier to establish that sort of intimacy and personal connection that the other Seiren arcs took so long to set up. But being a childhood friend is a curse in itself because of the high chances of being friend-zoned. That’s what made Rihoko’s route in Amagami so infamous – it ended without a romance at all, and it was only in Amagami SS+ when Junichi got together with her. A prior childhood friend relationship shouldn’t be any easier to use as a story setting if there’s good writing, but for Seiren it seems like that’s necessary for the route to get anywhere.
I like Kyouko, she’s really cute. I know I said that about Tooru as well, but they didn’t do much with Tooru and Kyouko is an active, fun character. She has a nice dynamic with Shouichi. I see a little bit of Junichi and Ai’s relationship in them actually, I’m not sure if it’s just because of all the Inago Mask references and the relatively childish stuff the two are into. Of course, in terms of the supporting characters we have a call-back to Amagami just like with Mako in the Hikari route – the two senpais in the Home Ec club are, of course, girls with the exact same character designs as the Tea Club duo from Amagami. Their personalities are basically identical as well. It’s like they’ve never left! I’m not sure why Hikari keeps turning up in every route, though. What’s even stranger is that she’s more likeable in every arc that isn’t her own, especially with her secret deer fascination.
I’m also slightly confused by the timing of Kyouko’s route. In Amagami all the routes were parallel, in that they all had the same starting point and depending on what Junichi did, they branched off into various possibilities. Seiren seems to be linear. Kyouko’s route takes place after the finals, after the summer camp and also after Comiket. Hikari went to the summer camp alone, so Shouichi didn’t go down her route, and clearly nothing much ever came from him playing games with Tooru. Thus, he’s now got his sights set on Kyouko. I guess it makes sense, but I always got the feeling that things like routes in omnibus romance series are supposed to be mutually exclusive. I’m pretty sure Tooru took his breath away the first time Shouichi saw her, for example, so I’m not sure him meeting her and gaming with her is supposed to be compatible with him later being interested in Kyouko.
Well, it’s not like Seiren has been a paragon of high standards and good-quality writing this entire time, right?