Japanese School Life

Overall, I enjoyed it, 6/10. I recommend buying it if it's at least half off. I'd say about a 5-8 hour read. Great length, it didn't feel too short, or drawn out. (Non-spoiler review) There's absolutely nothing NSFW, nothing even lewd or inappropriate. The swimsuit scene is the ONLY thing you could consider an exception, however it is very polite and I would be not be willing to call it suggestive. The story is very linear, there's exactly 7 options where you chance choose. Each option only changes at most 20 of the following lines of text. (Which isn't inherently a bad thing.) I would not call it "route options" but more like "scene options", since they only effect that one moment and not the story as a whole. However, they do effect which girl your favor. The art is quite nice, and while not the best on high resolution monitors (it scales up poorly), it's still always pleasant, making this issue fairly benign. The music is also very nice; it's up beat, very fitting, and doesn't get stale/annoying after hearing it for multiple hours. The story is quite simple, since it's a sweet basic slice of life (SoL) story. All scenes are happy scenes, with no drama or problems, they go to events and hang out, they play and do school work - again, a sweet nonchalant SoL story. There is this neat feature where there's provided descriptions/definitions for a lot of Japanese words, so words you may be unfamiliar with you can quickly read the meaning by clicking on it if it's blue. The problem I have is that the story focuses A LOT on "world building", than it does the characters. What I mean by that, is this: Despite the fact that basically every single second in the entire story you're talking to at least one of the two girls, most long conversations are about Japanese culture, customs, food, holidays, etiquette, religion, etc. Japanese religion is particularly heavy - it's a very common conversation topic. So, while you do get to know and hang out with the two girls, I feel as if you learn more of the Japanese ways than you do them. If the goal is two give you insight into, or a feel for, what the life of a Japanese School student does in real life (IRL), I'd say they did fantastic. If it was supposed to be a story about growing a relationship, and slowly falling in love, through using the things an IRL Japanese Student normally would do yearly, they did iffy at best. In short: It's a very simple and sweet SoL, that has good art and music, that gives you good insights into IRL Japanese culture, by using events and scenes throughout the story as lessons, from following you and two girls who are in school. Overall, 6/10, since I'll say it's a bit better than middle-road visual novels.