Kanuchi: Futatsu no Tsubasa (Kanuchi: Two Wings) is a fantasy blacksmithing otome game developed by Vingt-et-un Systems and published by Idea Factory under their Otomate label. The ‘kanuchi’ part of the title is an in-game title for the king’s exclusive blacksmith. The ‘two wings’, I suppose, refer to the fact that our heroine Aki has been possessed by the ghost of Kayana, a queen from 2017 years ago, and two are sharing the same body until further notice. It’s very weird as far as otome games go, but it’s also a tremendous amount of fun.

In a later post, I’ll talk more about the ever-changing story and maybe introduce the characters. Today, though, I want to introduce the gameplay. After all, otome games with actual gameplay are few and far between, much less those with alchemy/smithing action.

First the story: Aki’s grandfather, a blacksmith, is sick. She needs to earn money to buy him medicine. The city guildmaster rents her a blacksmith’s forge and a shop where she can live and work. Sadly, Aki doesn’t know a thing about smithing. Happily enough, she soon gets possessed by an ancient queen who does know about it.

And so they live and work and make lots of money in this cozy little house:

The table in front of Aki is the job board, where she can take job from random strangers and other game characters:

I haven’t actually checked, but I think she can take as many quests at once as are available. The deadlines are very generous as well. On a first playthrough like mine, some of the earlier quests are hard to fulfill because you don’t know where to find the resources to make the swords they keep asking for. You can’t repeat failed quests, either. Once you know where to find everything, though, quests become easy pickings with big rewards. I’m sure I could 100% the quest board if I ever replayed Kanuchi.

The main things requesters ask for are resources and swords. Let’s say I picked one that asked for some ore or jewelry or something. The first step to fulfilling it would be to check the handy-dandy in-game list of where to find absolutely everything:

That done, I just have to head outside and pick the required destination:

The house in the middle is Grandpa’s house, where Aki occasionally goes to visit the old man and give him his medicine. The other areas are foraging areas. Some of them may be blacked out if you don’t have enough time to go and get back before the next story event is scheduled. There’s no problem this time. Let’s go foraging in the Koou woods.

Foraging is a simple matter of finding a likely-looking spot (the game will tell you) and just digging around. Each dig costs HP, which can be refilled with food brought along. Unlike in the Atelier games, you never have to worry about monster attacks. Also unlike the Atelier games, there are no really rare items. Some ores are a lot more common than others, but absolutely everything will show up almost immediately if you only dig around in the correct spot. Finding the correct place is half the battle, but after that there’s nothing you cannot make. The only real problem early on might be your bag filling up way too soon…

…forcing you to either give up or throw stuff away. Once you have what you need, just head back to the job board, select “Report” and pick up your reward.

The other kind of quest you get are sword-making quests. I did a rough count, and there are about 50 swords Aki/Kayana can make, from mundane stuff like kukuris and claymores to fantasy staples like Laevatein, Excaliburn and Susanoo. And they’re all available to make right from the start, though your chances of success will depend on your smithing levels, and/or on how eager you are to save and reload repeatedly.

But what does an otome heroine need money for anyway? If this were Tokimeki Memorial GS, the answer would be clothes and accessories. Here the answer is the no-less-girly bags and horses. Except the bags are not for looking good but for gathering more stuff in the field and the horse is for getting around faster. Also they’re EXPENSIVE!

Just like real-life bags and horses if you want the really good stuff. Don’t ask me how I know this.

Once every 30 days, the guildmaster also drops by to collect his pound of flesh:

Guild fees, rent, a little money to Grandpa and miscellaneous expenses. The game deliberately keeps costs low so you have to try really hard to fail, though I suppose you could get a game over by making a big-ticket purchase right before rent day.

And that’s life in a nutshell for Aki. Neither time nor HP pass when making stuff, only when foraging, so you can stay home and take 100 quests in a row as long as you have the necessary raw materials. Cutscenes and story events actually come as a welcome change of pace sometimes. The only other way to move time forward is to go upstairs and hop in bed, Harvest Moon-style.

Later on there’ll be a cute mascot character in the middle of the room that you can feed stuff to. Every other day or so it will lay an egg that contains a random food or item. I didn’t get a screenshot of him, though, or of the bishie he turns into later on. Anyway, the bathtub can be used for a daily 50 HP boost.

As a gamer, it’s nice to know my character has good personal hygiene. The bed is for sleeping, obviously. The cooking range is for whipping up all kinds of delicious-looking and -sounding dishes that recover HP in the field, allowing you forage more. Cooking operates on the same principle as smithing, with a chance of failure that decreases as your (smithing!) level goes up.  The foods are temptingly illustrated, and I swear I gained 5 pounds this past week alone just looking at the various meals and desserts.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Lastly, while I’m at it, an explanation of the main menu.

The top option lets you check the contents of your bag. The only time this is really important is right before you go foraging, because it seriously sucks to take 3 days to get there only to find out you forgot to empty your bag. Second on the list is the story chart, which shows you all the story branches and options:

It even tells you whether you missed a conversation or a CG or if you’ve gotten everything available. I’m sure it will be tremendously useful for replays and completionists. Right now I’m just having fun playing FAQ-free.

The third menu option is the resources/foraging location list, which I already covered. After that comes status, where you can check up on Aki and her various love interests, who range in age from 13 (yes, 13) to 48 (yes, 48). More on them at a later date.

As you can see, they all have the same “My husband just beat me” eyes. You get used to it after a while. 5th menu option is a past dialog list, in case you missed something in a conversation. ‘Save/Load’ comes after that, then ‘Settings.’ Then ‘Return to Title’ and ‘Controls.’ It’s an easy game to play, provided you can at least read basic Japanese.

And that’s it for the non-story, non-romance portions of the game. The first 100 days of Kanuchi are spent developing the story and chatting to various guys. After day 100, you get locked into a particular guy’s route based on the choices you made along the way. I was aiming for Klato, but I was too nice to old man Ouba, and somehow or the other I ended up on his route. He’s my second favorite next to Klato, which is why I was so friendly to him, but he looks like this:

He has a 17 year old son, same age as Aki! In fact, there’s a very good chance that Aki is… ….well, I won’t spoil in this post. I bet I’m right though. Right now I’m on day 116 and on Ouba’s route, which is largely all reading and very little forging, which is just as well because I already made almost everything there is to make. The story is quite interesting and reasonably fast-paced. I haven’t fast-forwarded a single conversation yet, which is rare for me in this kind of game. I’m 13 hours in, in chapter 10 out of 11, so maybe I’ll be done soon. On the other hand, this is only Disk 1 of a two-disk game, so I really don’t know what the future holds. I’ll report back whatever happens, count on it.

Happy New Year in advance!