After my first playthrough, I started a fresh file and chased down Haruto Mizushima and Leiji Myoga. Along the way I made a late game save right after the semi-finals, 10 days before the end of the game. Somehow this was enough time to get not only Myoga and Haruto but also Arata Mizushima, Yukihiro Yagisawa and Chiaki Togane as well. It might even be enough to get Housei Toki, but I don’t like his voice, looks or attitude, so I’ll leave that one up to your imagination.

I got all these endings one after another last night… why yes, I did sleep at 3am, how did you know? Since I played them in quick succession, I don’t/I can’t be bothered to remember all the details of all the routes. Blame the characters for not being interesting enough. I’ll cover what stood out for me the most in each route.

Leiji Myoga – Violent chuunibyou

Chuunibyou = delusions of grandeur often associated with being a dumb teenager who thinks they’re smarter and more special than they actually are. The term was crafted specifically for Leiji Myoga, methinks. In its absence, we can also call him “unrepentant jerkface” and that fits just as well.

Our first encouter with Jerkface is when he leaves his precious violin on a store counter and Kyouya Kisaragi picks it up and starts to play IT. Now Kyouya was definitely in the wrong. You don’t touch people’s stuff without asking. It could have been a priceless Stradivarius for all he knew. But Myoga just flies out of the back and punches him for touching his precious violin. If it’s that precious, what was it doing just lying there? And I get that you’re upset, but is violence really the answer? How about a simple, “Excuse me, could you please stop that?”

In a lot of otome games, when a guy starts out mean the heroine’s love slowly softens him up. Not Myoga. He never apologizes for anything and never changes a whit except to admit that he’s in love with Kanade. One of his scenes has him getting cut saving her from a hostage situation. A hostage situation she’s only in because Myoga was rude and cruel to one of his own ensemble members. Of course he never admits he could have handled the issue better, because he’s chuunibyou and thinks he knows everything.

So the route is one long slog through Myoga being nasty to various people in various ways until we beat him at the finals. His excuse is that Kanade once beat him 7 years ago and he’s been mad ever since. I mean there’s a little more to it than that, but not much. So he’s allowed to win contests but she’s not? Anyway we beat him, he confesses to Kanade (sort of), she says… wait, does she respond? Can’t remember. In La Corda d’Oro 2 you had the chance to turn down a confession, but in La Corda d’Oro 3 it all plays out automatically. Man, I would have loved to see his face…

Haruto Mizushima – Uptight kouhai who is not so bad.

I got two endings for Haruto. You get a normal ending with a static picture for filling out all pink notes and a true animated ending for going beyond that to get golden notes.

Haruto starts out annoying because he’s super dedicated to the Orchestra club and expects everyone to be as well. So any suggestion of frivolity or light-heartedness is met with a frown and a stern lecture. Where do you get off lecturing me, kid? Show some respect to your senpai!

Eventually he discovers that Kohinata-senpai isn’t as airheaded as she first seems but actually works hard to win the competition. He quickly switches to supportive kouhai mode and even helps her relax by taking her to the amusement park when he thinks she’s getting too tense. It’s not that he changes – guys in La Corda d’oro 3 don’t change, which is both good and bad – but rather he finds that she fits the image he’s looking for so he doesn’t spare any effort to make her happy.

At the climax of the game, first he chastizes her for being too excitable when she calls him to look at some kittens. Then she gets trapped in the clubroom after an earthquake and call him, and he breaks the door down like KAPOW! to save her. Hug, hug, I knew you would come to save me, hug hug, you can depend on me any time~ hug. I don’t even know what that was all about. Basically he’ll be mad if she makes a fuss over little things, but if she really needs help he’ll be there. That’s nice.

In the regular ending, the two of them hang out and eat lunch everyday for a while and eventually he gets tired of the status quo and confesses his love for her, the end. The “true” ending takes place right after the finals. Again he confesses his feelings but with a lot more words. That’s it. IMO the normal end was cuter.

Yukihiro Yagisawa – So pure and honest <3 And a bit of a pain in the @$$

Such a good kid. So nice to his team mates and to everyone in general. He’s a feeder too, like 8 out of 10 of his events involve him giving Kanade a sweet dessert to eat. I thought his route would be drama-free, but no, the writers had to some up with something.

After Kanade blows off a club meeting to hang out with him, he gets all mad and sad like “You should take this more seriously, I’m not gonna hang out with you any more!” Like, why is it any of your business what the Seiso Academy team does? Just chill with a pretty chick and be happy, what more do you want from life?

After bugging him and raising his affection further, he eventually gets over himself. He realizes that 1) Just because she hangs out with him doesn’t mean Kanade isn’t working hard, and 2) Him blowing up like that was just an excuse to hide his growing feelings for her. No need to hide it baby, I love you too~  I really like his goofy-cute blushing image, but it doesn’t show up often enough. Definitely getting him first in Another Sky.

Don’t remember a thing about his ending though. I think we walked around in the garden after the finals and he confessed his feelings again, even though he had already said them bluntly before. How is this long-distance relationship going to work? Umm. Love will find a way.

Arata Mizushima – Nowhere near as annoying as I’d expected

I tend to dislike bubbly, excitable characters in any form of media. And in real life, come to think of it. At first I thought the writers at Ruby Party found out Hihara was popular so they just imitated him blindly without thinking. Thus I expected Arata to be a generic happy guy with no problems at all.

Which he more or less is. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t show up that often, but I didn’t find him annoying at all. Except the part where’s he’s always hugging Kanade for no reason at all. Haven’t you heard of #metoo? The story is that Arata and his family spent time in Brazil, and that’s why he has no concept of personal space, ‘cos, you know, foreigner in an otome game, never has any common sense.

The events I got for Arata… I remember a scene where he brought some watermelon and everyone split it. And in an other event we hung out at the local shrine festival. Eventually I got a scene where he promises to hang out with Kanade but has to leave. He comes back to find her rubbing her eyes because she got some dirt in it, and thinks she’s crying because she misses him sooo much. DOOD. Get over yourself.

Then he feels like an idiot when he finds out that wasn’t the case. Then he goes into a funk because summer is almost over and he won’t see her again. Then I raise his affection for a while and he confesses on the beach that he loves Kanade. He doesn’t know how the long-distance relationship will work out, but he wants to give it his best shot. I think his is the only route that gives serious consideration to how the whole “dating in different schools” thing is going to work. But he also seems like the type who will forget about her once some cute freshmen join Shiseikan next year.

His ending scene is a little different from the others. Instead of just standing and talking, he fools around so much that they both fall into the pool at the party. DOOOOD! My lovely new dress! Somehow this is supposed to be romantic. No, dude, no. And I forget everything we talked about because I’m still mad.

Chiaki Togane – I actually kind of like him

Another jerk, but not as jerkish as Leiji Myoga. His problem is he was looking forward to facing Ritsu Kisaragi in the semis and is disappointed to face Kanade instead. So he puts her down at every turn, calling her a Plain Jane and saying her playing lacks verve and pizzazz. Or lacks “a flower” as he puts it. Cue her running around all week asking people about flowers. Was it supposed to be funny? In the end she plays normally and beats him handily. So much for the floral accents, eh?

If you raise his affection like crazy before August 20th, you’ll give him the courage he needs to take on Leiji Myoga in the solo violin finals and draw with him. Not win, draw. After all his big talk, he can’t even beat a guy Kanade can whoop with both hands tied behind her back, just playing the violin with her tongue and eyelids. Attitudes in this game are so far removed from actual skill, it’s hilarious.

For the most of Chiaki’s route, you just hang out from time to time. I think we picked out masks at the shrine festival and hid from fangirls. Another time she went with him to a hot spring because there’s no way driving to an isolated location at night with two guys you barely know without telling anyone could possibly go wrong. Ah, sweet fiction.

When he won the solo competition she gave him a congratulatory kiss on the cheek. At the end of the game, he asks for another kiss, this time not as congratulations but out of love. The whole route is very WHAAAA? because one moment Togane is all “jimiko jimiko jimiko” then you raise his affection a tiny bit and he gets all blushy. But again, it’s not that he has changed. It’s just at first he didn’t see you as a worthy rival and now he does. How that transfers into falling head over heels in love with her, lol dunno. He’s another guy who will forget about her by next summer, I bet.

Summary. Summery.

If you’ve played a romance game with, say, an ice queen character, and over the course of the game she gets all lovey-dovey and deredere and you’re like “NOOOO I wanted an ice queen!” La Corda d’Oro 3 is the game for you. All the way to the end the cocky guy will still be cocky, the happy-go-lucky guy will still be happy-go-lucky. You might discover that the so-called deliquent is actually a nice guy, but that’s because he was a nice guy all along and you just didn’t know it, not because you softened him through love. The only character that suffers a lurve-related personality makeover is Sei Amamiya, the massive exception to the rule.

It’s good if you like “What you see is what you get” games, bad if you expect “character development” or whatever that thing is when you end up with a completely different guy from the one you started with. Personally I’m fine either way, as long as the game is fun.

Since I managed to multi-task so many routes this time, I only have four left to go (six if you include Toki and Houzumi, which I don’t). Two of them I actually want to get, the other two I can go either way on. Kyoya and Ritsu Kisaragi, do want. Daichi Sakaki and stammerin’ shota Nanami, ehhh. But I have a handy save after the first competition match that I can use to get anyone I want. I’ll knock ’em out this weekend, then I have some time off at the end of next week that I can use to finish Tokyo Xanadu eX+ if I’m so inclined. But actually I just want to start Atelier Escha & Logy. Ah, a gamer’s life is so complicated!