Time to start the ball rolling with the Date a Live Galges with the very first one, Rinne Utopia. Shido one day finds Touka on the school roof with her powers exploding, and she’s unable to control them at all and Shido can’t get close to her either. As Shido tries to get close to her she her Spirit powers end up attacking him and he conks out. He starts tripping balls and seeing a random spirit telling him that his world is going to change into a world he doesn’t know, and disappears before he wakes up into his harem taking care of him, and a mysterious new “childhood friend” of his, Sonogami Rinne. More spoilers under the cut.
Shido wakes up to see more unknown things, such as the new Tengu Town tower in a very strange shape. I mean, how the fuck do you even build such a shape? What is architecture? After Origami jumps into bed the same night, he wakes up to head to school when he meets his childhood friend, Sonogami Rinne where he thinks he’s tripping balls since he doesn’t remember any childhood friend at all. Kotori informs Shido that there’s something currently causing a disturbance in all the spirits’ spirit powers, and now all their powers are unstable and have been returned to the spirits. Technically speaking, Shido is now able to die and he has to date one of the girls to keep their powers in check.
I’ll be only writing short summaries of each girl’s route other than Rinne, as the game is centred around her and her route is like the big reveal. All the other girls follow a pattern on going on dates with Shido full of fluff, he ends up controlling their powers, them getting caught in ” zones” having to fight strange spirits. Kotori will then figure out that the new Tengu Tower, several spots around the town are points of a barrier, and Shido has to choose whether to respond to Kotori’s call. For all routes other than Rinne, if you take her call in the middle of a date, he will take the Spirit to attack the tower, but will in the end die, or go to the good end with the girl he’s dating and forget about all that shiet ever happening.
Tobiichi Origami (CV: Togashi Misuru)
I decided to get over Origami first due to the fact that I REALLY REALLY HATE HER. Like she still doesn’t get her attitude off in the game. I guess that’s her essence, but eh, SHE’S FUCKING WEIRD. I mean, she has this strange crush on Shido that she spends the game yet again, smelling his underwear, attempting to strip in his face in private. Oh, and if you’re asking why Shido has to date Origami, it’s because she’s an /important character/ in the main series and she’s from the AST, so Ratatoskr needs information from them because mainly AST has more resources but they’re on bad terms due to their differing views on dealing with the spirits. Of course, her dates turn out to be pretty normal with them studying at her place, when suddenly it turns into some uh fanservice-y madness Origami has. At the same time, her place is fitted with communication jamming so Kotori can’t interfere while he’s at her place. After staking out New Tengu Tower and finding strange guardians there, Origami receives an order from AST to stake out another point in the city, which is a lighthouse where they meet another guardian. Origami’s pretty angry by the fact that she can’t defeat any spirits, and seeing this Shido tries to convince her to stop being in the AST so that she can be a normal girl, and that she should smile more. However, she’s just like “I won’t smile until I get my revenge on the spirits” which gets him upset, so he continues to date her anyway. Shido keeps trying to get her to smile, but she insists that she has to destroy all the spirits while he tries to convince her to like the spirits. One day after a date, they return to her place, and she says that she was happy with the day & wants to smile but she can’t, and that maybe she wants happier days now. Seeing her like, this, Shido decides that he is going to DEDICATE HIS LIFE TO HER TO MAKE HER SMILE!! This results in him completely forgetting about Kotori and decides to continue on their house date with her. They end up staying together for the rest of their lives. Time skip to many years later, where they’re married to each other, and Origami now has a baby, and she’s finally smiling!
Yoshino (CV: Nomizu Iori)
Yoshino is the loli of the series and she is indeed a child, being small and all, that has a hand puppet friend Yoshinon. Yoshino spends her time admiring Shido and having cute dokis for him, but a problem with her is that if she loses Yoshinon, she will start going cray and with all the spirits’ powers with them right now, she starts throwing ice EVERYWHERE. Shido ends up having to find Yoshinon before she goes on a crying roll until her powers explodes. She’s also really shy as herself and half the time needs Yoshinon to be with her, as such their dates turn into like 3P dates with Yoshinon tagging along. After the dates with Shido though, Yoshino starts learning to be more brave and do things herself, and Yoshinon suddenly becomes….really sentimental. One day, when Yoshino’s sleeping, Yoshinon asks Shido what he’s going to do if Yoshinon disappears someday. Shido promises Yoshinon that he’ll make sure to take care of Yoshino even if Yoshinon is gone, and Yoshinon does disappear! One day Yoshino comes over to Shido’s school one day brewing up an ice paradise because she’s crying that Yoshinon isn’s responding to her anymore. Seeing her plight he promises to be by her side and they’ll go and find Yoshinon together. Of course, over the next few days they go around the town to find Yoshinon and Yoshino’s so desperate that she sees a random rabbit plush toy as Yoshinon. Yoshino starts crying again because Yoshinon’s a very precious friend to her, and she doesn’t want him to disappear like that. Shido tells her that she needs to be strong, so if Yoshinon ever comes back she can welcome him back with a smile. The next day, while Yoshino’s drawing a picture of Yoshinon, Yoshinon comes back to say that hey, he doesn’t want Yoshino to be sad so he’s back!! They then promise to be together as the three of them forever. For the next few years, Shido goes out with Yoshino, and one day before a date Yoshino’s struggling to put on some lolita clothes she got for herself, and Shido has to put in on for her before they head out.
Yatogami Touka (CV: Inoue Marina)
Touka’s your generic airheaded high school girl created from the fact that she’s spent the least time on earth being one of the last few spirits created, so the only things she knows are to eat, and that she likes Shido. She’s pretty clumsy in what she does, but she tries hard to make up for her flaws. Just like any generic galge girl would do. Okay eitherway Touka’s her usual self, crushing on Shido and getting aggressive on Origami when she gets close to Shido. They go on normal high school student dates together, such as going to the game centre to get a plush for her, and going to buy bread with her. They even go to the playground to play, and play games together at home where Shido makes it easier for her to win. They go to the movies as well, and the geez the options, where picking the horror movie ends with a bad end because Touka freaks out and kills Shido. xD After failing at making some cookies for Shido, Touka gets into a slump and tries to avoid Shido at all costs by refusing to eat his bento, and other things. Touka begins worrying that Shido wouldn’t like her cuz of how clumsy she is and how everything she wanted to do for him didn’t turn out well. After assuring that he won’t dislike her no matter what she does, they meet at the playground again where he finds out that she’s jelly of Rinne who’s like the perfect wife and she’s been worried about how Rinne’s his type and she doesn’t have a chance because she can’t do anything right. The next few days, they go on more couple-ish dates where Touka gets the dokis for Shido that she’s never felt before. Shido starts falling in love more with Touka, and the final day, they go an aquarium where they watch a dolphin show together. The dolphin keeps spraying water on her though, getting her all wet thus providing us with some free fanservice, and since she’s having so much fun Shido doesn’t pick up the call from Kotori. In the Epilogue, a few years later, they’re getting married, and htey’re happy they can be a happy family together from now on, just like how the penguins they saw at the water show were.
Itsuka Kotori (CV: Taketatsu Ayana)
Kotori’s the tsundere younger sister who has 2 sides to her, the bratty & tsun one, and the cute and demanding side of her, depending on the colour of her ribbons. She spends more time with her black ribbons after the spirit incident started, and only puts on her white ribbons when she’s dealing with strangers, Rinne, and trying to piss of Shido by being in cute mode. Shido figures that he can probably date her too since she’s a spirit as well and he needs to keep her powers in check, but she just tells him to bugger off and go date the other spirits. He stil lcares for her though, staying up until she comes back from Ratatoskr work so that she can have her dinner, and she gets mad at him for ignoring the spirits but shuts up when he says that he’s worried. Kotori finally gives in and decides to go out on dates with Shido, but it’s cut short when more Ratatoskr work comes in. Shido manages to squeeze in more dates with her as she calls him out to the park to let her relax and lie on his lap. After a few more dates with Ratatoskr work cutting in between, Shido realises that his little sister is packed with so much work to do at this age due to the spirits. Due to the Ratatoskr work, she’s so tired that she starts getting dizzy while they’re out in town and Shido has to piggyback her as they go home. One day, while everyone’s out, Kotori tries to make moves on Shido but he fucking doesn’t get it and plays the oniichan card making her upset, but she hidesit and goes to sleep. She returns in her imouto mode, getting ignorant over everything until Shido confronts her at the sky terrace in town one night because he’s done with her imouto act. After telling her that she’s special to him, Kotori changes back to black ribbon mode and admits that she thought that she could get close to him but as she predicted, incest isn’t the thing. Shido promises to be together with her forever, as a younger sister, and she promises him that they will be together forever. They hug each other, and from then on, Shido was always together with Kotori, and their relationship gets closer. In the epilogue, Kotori’s quit Ratatoskr due to no more new spirits appearing, and they now spend time together much more. They’re lazing in the park when she suddenly asks if Shido likes her, and Kotori says that they’ll be together forever.
Tokisaki Kurumi (CV: Sanada Asami)
Kurumi keeps herself undercover throughout the entire game unless you purposely go and find her, since she’s the mysterious (and creepy af) and the most dangerous spirit who is technically out to uh, “eat” Shido in order to fuel her lifespan from using too much time. AST and Ratatoskr are out to get her but her powers are one of the strongest, and she escapes from them pretty easily. At the same time, she still needs them for spoilery reasons I shall not share as this is the game. Kurumi seems to like animals though, as Shido always finds her at the rooftop looking at the birds while spending her free time. However, she still keeps her motives a secret while doing weird and lighthearted stuff like stalking Shido. (ノ*゜▽゜*) She invites him for a date one they were they go to town and relax, and they reinforce her love of animals. They get crepes as a snack and when he gets cream on his fingers, Kurumi thats sucking them to get them off. Things are going pretty well with them hanging out with each other until they have a date at the shrine in town. They talk about Shido there until the evening, and when the day ends, Kurumi starts getting pushy with Shido asking him to stay longer when it turns out…..this Kurumi is one of the many copies of the original Kurumi who was still more emotional than her original self. A fight breaks out as the original tries to kill the copy as falling in love with Shido will harm the original’s goals. However, as the copy Kurumi is about to get killed by the original Kurumi, something stops the fight by unleashing some power which stops the original from attacking. Due to this, the original retreats, and the copy makes it out somehow. Kurumi ends up admitting that she has little time left as a copy and she’s happy that she was able to spend the time with Shido, and she has no regrets. With that, she disappears and Shido spends the next day looking for her around town. He eventually finds er in front of his place, and invites her into his room. She admits that she didnt want to see him, but somehow her feet led her there. She continues on saying that she has only one request, which is to stay with Shido until she disappears, and Shido hugs her. This leads to them making out where Shido isn’t bothered to pick up Kotori’s call. In the epilogue, they’ve graduated from high school where Shido doesn’t regret a single moment of his hight school life after meeting Kurumi, and they meet at the rooftop to uh probably make out as Kurumi starts stripping in front of him in happiness.
Sonogami Rinne (CV: Hanazawa Kana)
If you still haven’t figured this out yet (not that I expected anyone to figure it out), the childhood friend Rinne is actually “Ruler”, the spirit who talks to Shido in his sleep. She placed herself as Shido’s childhood friend in order to monitor him. The deal with this entire situation of the barrier around Tengu Town is due to her appearance created from a huge amount of Spirit Energy having a consciousness of its own. How the barrier was placed, was when Shido was getting stressed about having Spirit powers sealed in him, until they were released back to the spirits which caused Touka in the prologue to be tripping balls on the roof. Trying to stop and help Touka, Shido ended up dying from Touka’s exploding powers, and that was the exact point that Rinne activated her “Eden”. “Eden” is technically Rinne isolating the entire Tengu Town in her barrier, editing everyone’s memories and slipping into Shido’s life as his “childhood friend”. The point of this “Eden” was to make sure Shido would be happy and live a happy life with the girl he falls in love with him. The centrepoint of this entire barrier is the New Tengu Tower, which a couple other points like the old Tengu Tower, the lake in town & the local shrine. This explains the strange brand new Tengu Tower appearing, which is the centre of all of this. However, from all the other girls’ routes, there will always be an end where Shido picks up a call from Kotori, where he will stake out New Tengu Tower with his lover spirit, and end up getting killed. That’s all part of the grand plot because every time Rinne had to eliminate Shido & his lover in order to stop them from knowing about her, the town within the barrier would “reset” and everyone’s memories were wiped back to the first day. The trigger for this was actually Shido’s death, as Eden was activated at the point when Shido died due to Touka’s powers exploding to keep him alive. However, due to the countless resets that Rinne had to go through, Eden has become faulty and Shido starts to retain memories from previous cycles, so much so that he remembers Rinne as his childhood friend, and he can now see Ruler’s face clearly in his dreams.
Trying to solve the reset issues, Rinne tries to stimulate what he did with the spirits, which was to date him. Rinne literally copies almost one of every date with the other girls, such as a movie date with Touka, the study date with Origami, the ice cream date with Yoshino, the park date with Kotori & the crepe date with Kurumi. Rinne continues to try and repeat what he did with the girls in the previous cycles, making moves on him, trying to solve the reset problem. However, due to her copying the dates in previous cycles, Shido starts having flashbacks of the previous cycles and wonders what’s going on with his memories. In a final desperate attempt, she decides to lead him to the lake, one of the points where she starts a feel to kill him in her spirit form. Right before she kills him, Shido recalls all the dates in that he’s had with the rest of the girls, and that’s where all the girls come and rescue him. After they’ve defended him, Rinne quickly retreats back to her base, and Shido decides that he’s going to save her as he has feelings for her. They send Origami, Yoshino & Kurumi to deal with the guardians at the 3 vital points of the barrier, so that Touka & Kotori can take him to confront Rinne at New Tengu Tower. Shido enters the tower with the 2 spirits covering for him, and confronts Rinne at the top of it. She reveals herself to be “Ruler”, explaining the truth to him. She doesn’t get why he refuses to accept this paradise, and proceeds to kill him when Shido yells at her saying that he just wants to go home with her, back to their normal days even if this was just a world created by her. He’ll find a way to get back to reality with her, and she stops. Rinne admits that she was happy being together with him, and in a final attempt to say goodbye to him, she activates “Paradise Lost”, which makes her tied up in bondage, I mean, uses her powers to forcefully kick everything into sleep and have good dreams. The rest of the girls catch up to him and try to pave a way to get Shido to Rinne, but they’re all eventually knocked out by the roots of “Paradise Lost”, and Shido almost gets close to Rinne when he’s thrown into a dream as there’s no one defending him anymore.
Shido’s thrown into a dream where he’s living peacefully together with Rinne, like how he wanted those normal days with Rinne. They go on a date together all throughout town, and it ends in the evening when they’re at the sky terrace. Rinne says that she’d like to do this all the time, always, in the future and be together with Shido forever. Shido says they can’t do this anymore, and the world around him starts getting weirder and weirder as he notices that something’s wrong. Shido’s memorises eventually resurface themselves, and Rinne says that she can never become his family when he’s sent back to reality. Rinen realises that he’s broken out from Paradise Lost, and there’s no other way she can hold him back anymore. Shido just asks her to go home with them back to their normal days, and says that she’s the most precious to him now, and he wants to be with her together. As he confronts Rinne, she tells him that due to him breaking out of Paradise Lost, Eden is no longer stable and will probably destroy Tengu Town, she convinces him to seal her powers by kissing her. Doing so will remove the barrier and everything that is about to destroy the town, and it’s the only way she can be with them. Rinne says that she saw a very good dream for her last, and they kiss. Rinne starts crying, and the entire barried dissipates. However, she didn’t tell him one thing, which is the fact that she doesn’t have a physical body and she can’t go back together with them. She apologises for lying to him, and starts crying saying that it’s the first time she felt tears. She then says that she felt that the days they spent together were true, admitting that she loved Shido before disappearing. Shido ends up remaining at the sky terrace despairing over what he did to Rinne, and after hearing that Rinne saved him from dying, he starts crying and asking why did she have to leave. Shido returns to his normal days with Touka, with only him remembering everything that happened, promising to never forget Rinne. In the Epilogue, an unknown spirits approaches Rinne, thanking her for all she has done, and that she can rest now. In the extra Rinne Fantasy Epilogue, it’s an AU where Rinne reappears again as a transfer student to Shido’s class, and Shido’s overjoyed to see her again.
~Final Thoughts~
I didn’t write any comments for any of the routes because I had more of a general impression of the entire game over the individual routes. For all the girls other than Rinne, it was just pure fanservice I could enjoy for them, and “what if” situations if they got into a relationship with Shido. For Rinne, the main route however, I cried a lot. Especially when the plot hit the climax right at the ending where everything was revealed, and Rinne’s love for Shido. I really liked how they managed to write the story into one where all the fanservice/side routes played a key point in the plot of the final route. Just..Rinne’s story made me cry so much. Even after watching a walkthrough again to refresh my memory about what happened, I was still crying after it finished.
Overall, in general, the game was pretty enjoyable to me. For an average person who likes to play galges, I wouldn’t recommend playing this unless you’re a fan of the series prior to playing the game. I am a fan of the series, so I enjoyed it a lot. Except for the fact that there was a lot of unnecessary fanservice I didn’t need, but I guess that’s just me cuz being smacked with butt and boobs just wasn’t my thing. I know it’s a galge, but it just isn’t my thing and I get tired of it pretty easily. As a game itself, I believe it was too short. If I remember the PS3 version had some extra content(?) but from playing the main story it just wasn’t worth the money with that little content it had. Everything was just too short. Thankfully, I got the game in the PSVITA Rio Reincarnation pack, so for those who want to pick up the game, it’s best to get that as it’s definitely worth the money! This is only the first review in my onslaught of Date a Live reviews from the pack. I’ll be back with another one soon enough, and we shall continue the story then.
未来へ向こう 