Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Do princesses have to be stupid? And pink?

Continuing on with reviewing (which really is more me making notes to myself) otome games (i.e. visual novels)...

Let me randomly pick you up
and carry you off in my arms while running
anytime I feel like it...because reasons.
Let's start with Princess Closet because it's sorta pissing me off. It's really not even a proper otome game as there are no choices to make save picking which eligible bachelor you want to read a story about.

Basically, some super rich clothing designer notices you one day and decides, hey, YOU are my MUSE (the word "muse" is used far more in otome/anime/manga than it EVER is in real life) and makes you the model for his brand, Princess Closet. Even though you're an "ordinary" girl and not tall or thin or any of the things a model normally is. You work in an office. You have no personality other than you really, really, really like pink.

So when it came time to choose, I just went for that dude. Reo. That may have been my first mistake though it's really probably the fault of the heroine. She is one of the weakest, stupidest, pink-froofy-lovingest idiots I've ever had the displeasure of reading about. And the story itself is pure wish fulfilment of any girl who has ever wanted to be swept away as some rich dude's all-consuming passion without thinking about what that actually means. Because this guy is low-key stalker-ish and doesn't pay any attention at all to what the girl says she does or doesn't want (which, to be fair to him, is precious little because she has about as much brains as a bowl of oatmeal and no backbone and he's so uber-rich that he has no social skills for dealing with "ordinary" people that get weirded out when you go and buy them a freaking restaurant on your first date).

This isn't one where you have to grind for points or anything. You basically get so many tickets a day and then can watch some videos to get some more if you want to. I've just used the free ones and read it on the way back from dropping my little dude at school because you don't have to make any decisions and can go on autopilot.

Which is pretty much exactly fitting for the stupid heroine. She can't even ever get out a complete sentence. Her dialogue is mostly: "Huh?" and "O-okay..." and "...I guess." and things like that.

I actually am so annoyed as I'm writing all this out that I've decided I'm gonna go ahead and delete it. So I looked up the ending episode on YouTube just now and...yeah...the end is exactly like you might expect. Rich dude tells her he's gonna marry her, gives her three seconds to respond and she doesn't manage to get her thoughts together enough to actually say anything coherent and he's all, "lol, time's up!" and boom, they're gonna get married and live happily ever after. So, yeah. Doesn't look like there was any character growth there at all...

If you can't tell how hard I'm rolling my eyes, you aren't paying attention.

I even checked out the endings for a couple of the other characters to see if she was just as bad in those. They were marginally better. Like she actually got out a complete sentence in one of them. But only slightly. Still want to tell her to grow a spine. And a brain.

I know that I write romance for teens. But I can't stand heroines like this. Even if you start out a bit wishy-washy, you've gotta go somewhere from there or else the story is no good.

I am rather wanting to write the script for an otome app now though because, yeesh, I could do it so much better.

I should've deleted this after the first episode. Ain't nobody got time for this.

(And, yes, I realise that there are people out there who really like this one. It's okay. To each their own. Like I said, it is pure wish fulfilment and if that's what someone needs, who am I am to complain? But I'm not going to spend any more time on it.)

No comments: