I can’t decide whether I’m happy or not. Tadashi is a much more interesting character and his route was a lot more fun than Susumu’s, plus he actually proposes marriage at the end and is willing to throw everything away to make it happen but I’m kind of wishing he hadn’t been.

I was well on my way to a bittersweet ending where Haru leaves the mansion while Tadashi enters a loveless marriage which he regrets every day for the rest of his life, boo hoo hoo, it’s so sad, sniff sniff… And then they had to ruin it all with a typical Cinderella Hollywood ending. I’m not unhappy, but the separated-for-life ending would have been fresher and more exciting. Plenty of games have ‘bad’ endings, but this would have been an unusually well-planned and telegraphed one, so I was looking forward to it until the last-minute swerve.

Besides, truth be told, I was secretly rooting against the Haru-Tadashi pairing towards the end. It’s all Tadashi’s fault. And Shizuko, and Norio’s. At some point they put it into Tadashi’s head that Haru was totally in love with him (but she wasn’t! Honest!). So what does he do? He servant-zones her before she can even confess! Dumped before she gets a chance to move, and for no other reason than “My friends think you like me, so I’d better nip this in the bud before you get ideas above your station.” But I don’t like him! I don’t I don’t I don’t! AAARRRGHH! The nerve of that guy! Who would like a jerk like him?!

RRGHH…

Who do you think you are?! I don’t like you that way, okay?

…It would really have helped if Haru had answered that way instead of acting all broken-hearted over that stupid jerk. Someone would think she really did like him, or something bizarre like that.

No, really, I could see the part where she was slowly starting to open up to him and see him as more than a master, and vice-versa but the sudden jump to “I know you love me so get lost” “Nooo, Tadashi-samaaa!” was a little weird. And annoying. And really weird.

But it would have been cool if the aforementioned bittersweet ending had taken place and Tadashi had spent the rest of his life regretting dumping the only woman who could ever love a sourpuss like him, but instead he’s rewarded for his perfidy by getting the girl in the end – and only because his brothers set it up that way. Maybe if I had kept his affection under 100 I could have gotten the alternate ending I was hoping for? Too late for regrets now. And I suppose the ‘good’ ending was kinda sweet. Kinda. Urgh.

I got more of the background story from Tadashi’s route as well. You know, the one about the assassin targeting the Miyanomori family and stuff. This time you don’t get to see the assassin himself, but you do find out something about those backing him. It seems like you’d have to play through all the Hanayaka nari Waga Ichizoku routes to get the full picture, which I’m certainly not going to do, but I will do Isami’s route next and maybe Masashi’s, maybe not, and then call it a day for this game. This game is waaay more fun than I’d bargained for when I started it.