Otome Game Review – Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side 2nd Season

English Name: Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side 2nd Season/Kiss

Japanese Name: ときめきメモリアル Girl’s Side 2nd Kiss

Official Site: http://www.konami.jp/gs/game/Girls_Side/2nd_Season/

Platform: NDS, PS2

Genre: Simulation, School Life

Plot: There is no specific plot. .. I mean, Daisy (no official name but most people call her Daisy online so…) had recently moved into Habataki Town and there she starts her high school life. That’s about it.

Prologue: In Habataki Town there is this legend of a mermaid and a man who fell in love. The mermaid who had taken on human appearance lived happily until the heartless villagers exposed her identity. The mermaid left the guy after promising each other that they will meet again. Even after she had left, the guy waited day after day at the sea and finally decided to take a boat to sea. He was never seen again.

Okay, that prologue is terribly translated from the official site as I was searching for what on earth the plot of the game is. It’s basically a school life simulation where you can get clubactivities, jobs, go shopping have events (such as cultural festival, school trip, christamas party) and raise your stats (brains, art, athletic, charm, etc.) to get the guy you want. The only route the prologue counts for anything is the main route, Saeki Teru.

———————————————————————————————————

Saeki Teru

The main guy or the ‘prince’ as they call it in Tokimeki Memorial. As most people would have guessed, he is the one in the intro who asks the girl if she is a mermaid. They didn’t do a good job is disguising who the boy was. It was obvious anyway. On the first day of school, Daisy gets lost and for some reason she ends up at a lighthouse. She sees Saeki in the shop window with some waiters clothes on and he is extremely rude to Daisy and shoos her off. I love how different Saeki acts in front of Daisy and all his fangirls at school. Well, when he finds out that she is in his year, he forces her to keep quiet about having a job. The accidental kiss (there’s one for each chara except the bonus ones) for Saeki is on the way home together, she falls on his lips. Anyway, Saeki’s reaction has to be the best of all of them (but that’s only my thoughts).

Saeki often gets called by some girls (proves his popularity) and Daisy does the same as a joke and a pissed Saeki makes her buy him lunch. He also uses Daisy as a excuse to avoid hisfangirls. His dates are funny too, if Daisy is late, he gives her a chop. Uhh… Why? Although that seemed to create this craze online that a chop = Saeki. Anyway, another funny scene is when Daisy goes to bathroom during a date and when she comes back she catches Saeki checking himself out in the shop window. His excuses are hilarious. As expected, the school play starring Daisy alongside Saeki is about the legend of the lighthouse. Only shame (?) in his route is that there is no 3^rd year chritmas scene at the party and instead Daisy goes all the way to his house. And for some reason, Saeki sleeps on Daisy’s lap and she also falls asleep. Well, Saeki isn’t brave enough to do anything to her so I guess its fine.

His route is about how the shop that he’s working at (it belongs to his granddad) is goingn to close. So after January of the 3^rd year, he calls Daisy over and says that as the shops is going to close, he’s going to move away and that he wants her to forget about him…. Huh? !（￣□￣；）I thought I went into a wrong route but it seems like it was meant to happen. Anyway, you can’t ask him out on dates anymore and on valentines day, Daisy goes all the way over to the shop to find him and there’s a scene with… HIS GRANDFATHER!! NOOO!! Although its only a small chat why do I have to meet the GRANDFATHER???

Well, in all of the confession scenes of Tokimeki Memorial there is simply a zoom up of the guy you are going for and a silhouette scene of the two kissing. I find the school life part much enjoyable than the ending as it gets quite boring and you cant skip it. Anyway, Saeki gives Daisy a key to the shop that belonged to the grandfather and it’s a happy ending.

———————————————————————————————————

Shiba Katsumi

Kaa-chan!!（*´▽｀*）Definitely my favourite character and he has the voice of Zoro (One Piece), Hijikata (Gintama) and Masamune (Sengoku BASARA). That proves how manly he is!! Along with Sugita Tomokazu (Gintoki from Gintama), he has to be one of my favourite male seiyuu’s. More like most of my favourite male seiyuus are in Gintama. Anyway, Shiba is a tall, silent guy and the athletic guy you can go for in the game. The rival is Toudou Tatsuko and she looks like a yankee or something like that. Not really, but she’s tough. Well, being the coward that I am, I avoided all of the VS modes by not even meeting her.（￣￣ー￣￣）

Shiba’s plot is all about Baseball and it seems like he had punched someone and got sent off so since then he doesn’t play anymore. But as Daisy is in the baseball club he joins too. Well, not really. A player gets injured and Shiba takes his place. He’s like ‘If you weren’t there I couldn’t play again…’. Um. What about the player that got injured. Didn’t he bring the chance along. Well, Otome games don’t need to make sense. Anyway, the team (with the help of Shiba as it seems he’s on pro level at baseball) manages to get to the final of the Koshien (baseball tournament for whole of Japan). This took over 300 times of repeating the Baseball command. Shiba calls Daisy out the night before to talk. Man he’s cute. Lol. I’m simply a Shiba fan so ya.

His date events are good too as in one date when Daisy and Shiba got to the beach, she gets lost and theres this panicking Shiba who had been running aroung looking for her. Seems like she got lost when the meeting point was only 10m away from the changing rooms.

In the last confession scene, it has Shiba saying how he couldn’t have done anything without Daisy and although I felt that he was repeating what he said before, it was okay.

———————————————————————————————————

Hikami Itaru

I didn’t even want to do this route. I mean, KONAMI made a very small effort in designing him. He looks like he has a piece of bread stuck to his head in some CG’s and hes a megane. AHHH! As he’s the study guy in the game, it was annoying as I had to have extremely high stats but if I get too smart I would have met the rival character. The first impression was terrible and the CG of him going to school was simply riduclous. He’s on a bike and he has  a SAFETY HELMET??（￣。￣) His speech for the Student Council elections has him insulting the school. And not surprisingly he failed and he didn’t know what he did wrong. Well, on his second try, he managed to get through because of Daisy.

One scene I liked was the cultural festival where they are doing ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’. Hikami forgets his lines after Daisy’s confession of love. Uhh. That’s about it. Never liked him anyway.

———————————————————————————————————

Hariya Kounoshin

Weird Name. No wonder he doesn’t like it so everybody calles him Harry. Odd thing is that if you get on better terms with him, he lets you call him Harry-sama… Why? He is my second favourite character after Shiba and unlike the others, he tells Daisy to be ‘honored at having kissed Harry-sama’ at the accidental kiss. （￣ー￣）His events are okay but the reason that I like Harry is because of his personality. He is awesome. He is the ‘style’ guy you can go for and the rival called Haruhi is the best girl friend in my opinion.

There are a couple of CG’s with him playing the guitar or singing and in one of them it has him making Daisy be the first one to listen to his new song. One of his dates (?) that I really liked / remembered was when Harry caught a cold and a worried Daisy goes over to visit him. Harry opens the door in a blanket and is shocked when he sees her and Daisy notices that his hairstyle is different. Turns out Harry hadn’t had the time to style it and a embaressed Harry tells her to go away. When Daisy does try to leave, he says ‘actually, don’t go’. [link = http://www.nicovide.jp/videos/nv986942/]

His confession is cute as the height difference in the silohette scene was quite low compared to Shiba who I had done first.

———————————————————————————————————

Christopher Weatherfield

His events with Harry are hilarious. Chris can’t bring himself to say Harry and always says Harry-kun which pisses Harry off. Well, when Chris gets annoying, you simply have to ignore him and that’s what Harry does. The only thing that puts me off about Chris is his hairstyle. I understand that he is meant to be the artisitic guy who is free to do what he wants but the hair is ridiculous in a different way to Hikami.

The accidental kiss doesn’t embaress him and he even wants to do it again. Anyway, I’m not sure if it’s a bad thing but Chris likes Daisy too quickly. Well, he loves girls or something, the first time Daisy meets him he’s like, I know every single girls name in this school. Great. How much time does he have on his hands? His girl-loving gets annoying if you’re not going for him.

His events are normal and not as extraordinarily as his appearance. As expected (?) Chris seems to be the son of some sort of millionaire and there’s one CG of him getting surrounded by black suited men. And this leads to Daisy having to be Chris’s secretary for a day. Not only is Chris in a suit, he tied that weird hair up. Wow. Seems like in Otome games, the normally happy-happy character always has to have some depressing CG’s or events like Heisuke (Hakuoki). Chris seems to have some depressing scenes as well. Well, confession and (￣△￣) ！！ HUH! why does  he go back to england after school? How are you supposed to get happy ending?

———————————————————————————————————

Amachi Shouta

The shota in the game. You can’t avoid meeting him but if you’re aiming for him you have to wait a year ‘till he comes to school as he’s one year younger than Daisy.

He is the type who seems to act extremely nice (and he uses his position as a cute shota well) to be extremely popular with girls and ends up having a bad personality. At least he’s not a yandere, I guess. Quite shocking (?) but those kinds of people exist in the 3D world so shame. He’s so popular that he gets birthday presents from girls of other schools and has such a bad personality that he asks Daisy if she wants any of the presents as he doesn’t need that much.

Well, there are a few cute CG’s like him sleeping on a date at the beach.  It’s cute because he looks extremely retarded. (￣３￣) kind of face. He gets serious sometimes as well when on a date, a group of girls gossip about how cute he is and how he looks like a girl. Daisy says that he is cute so he shouldn’t bother about what they say but Shota goes serious and says ‘do you also take me as a girl and not a guy’. Wow. Manly (?). He is a bit girly considering that he’s in the cheerleading club but the guy squad is quite manly.

The confession kiss scene is hilarious! The height difference.

———————————————————————————————————

Wakaouji Takafumi

The teacher Waka-sama. Seems like a light-hearted guy but it turned out that he has a IQ over 200. Behold the 2D world where anything is possible.Instead of going to his house, the date takes place on a cruiser. He can also talk English properly.

He’s a little odd considering that he drinks coffee from a lab beaker. There were a couple more CG’s but I don’t remember much about them. orz. In Otome games I normally do the teacher route last anyway. He’s awesome but not my taste.

———————————————————————————————————

Masaki Motoharu

The easiest to get but also the most annoying if you’re not aiming for him. He doesn’t go to school as is Daisy’s senior so the only way to meet him is choose to work at the flower shop. You can’t ask him for dates but he asks Daisy out quite a lot and he can take her on a drive like Waka-sama has the cruise. Another negative point about him is that there’s 4 CG’s of him… DRIVING A FRICKING CAR (SAME POSE, DIFF CLOTHES ONLY).

He comes to the cultural festival and there’s a CG of him in school uniform to avoid standing out. He even comes to school to walk Daisy home. One of the events that I liked was when one of Masaki’s friends calls him to tease him about Daisy and the phone gets passed to her and she has no idea about what he was talking about. Masaki sighs about how dense she is. Even I did.

His confession CG was funny (?) because of how his hair is spiky and that made his silhouette look retarded. (＾▽＾)

———————————————————————————————————

*BONUS CHARACTERS*

Akagi Kazuyuki

Shopping, shopping and… shopping is all you have to do. Also ignore everybody else and reject all dates and just be antisocial.

Daisy meets Akagi when they are both sheltering from the rain. He offers to get an umbrella. Runs off. Runs back. Gives umbrella to Daisy and leaves in the rain. (Doesn’t he need an umbrella?) The next time Daisy meets him is on a bus and she simply gets off at her stop and leaves Akagi. Next time they meet he actually introduces himself. (Took him long enough) He visits school and after going shopping over 50 times (in other words, you wasted a whole years worth of Sundays to go shopping) he asks Daisy on a date. Well, a misunderstanding occurs at the date and it not until they’re bothsheltering from the rain again that he clears it all up. Everything okay and confession time.

…

More like. WHY DO YOU HAVE TO GO SHOPPING SO MANY TIMES!?

———————————————————————————————————
*DS ONLY BONUS CHARACTERS*

Majima Tarou

Bad hairstyle #2 (Chris’s one is better). Bad personality #1. How dare he do that to Daisy! An Asshole. Not even interested in him. He should go die in a hole.

Anyway. He’s Daisy senior by one year and a play boy. Daisy goes on one date with him and once its his graduation, he dumps her saying it was only a game. Anyway Daisy doesn’t accept it and so this leads to her working at a shop where Tarou and his girlfriends hang out. More like acting as a fricking slave.  Then after spending loads of time working there, getting all stats worse and increasing stress, he suddenly protects Daisy from his girlfriends saying she is his most precious person. HAH? Well, he asks for another date and there he asks if he is a asshole and before Daisy says anything, he replies himself. Whets the point in asking then?

Anyway his confessions not bad and I will definitely NOT play his route again. He pisses me off.

———————————————————————————————————

Komori Taku

L! His command (to try to bring him to school) looks like L from Death Note. He is a transfer student who ends up being a hikkikomori so Daisy has to visit him to get him to go to school. When he does come to school he has this image change that goes from L to … uhh… Mori from Ouran high. NOOO! L!!

He has friends now all because Daisy gave him courage. She also goes home with him everyday and makes his friends ask him if she’s his girlfriend. ヾ(´▽｀;)ゝ

———————————————————————————————————

This is a game I wont be removing from my DS for a long time. The characters are adorable and it was worth going through the effort to play them all. Only shame is Hikami and Masaki. Especially Hikami. He’s meant to be one of the main guys to go for.

Fav Character? SHIBA!!!!

———————————————————————————————————

The PS2 opening sequence. At 1:05 in order, Shiba – Chris – Amachi – Hikami – Harry – Waka-sama – Masaki-sempai – Akagi (the reflection) – Saeki

———————————————————————————————————