Amakano 2

As a love story, Amakano 2 feels unfocused and artificial. Besides getting together with the given heroine of choice, there is no other goal of the story. Every single scene revolves around showcasing the heroine’s quirks (as in the common route) or showing lovey-dovey scenes. After having finished one route, I have no reason to believe that the core structure will deviate from what has been presented so far.

There’s no overarching goals or core themes to be found in the story at all, so the various slice-of-life scenes feel as if they serve no purpose to the gender narrative. This is exacerbated by the fact that many scenes are drawn out to their maximum while not developing anything at the same time. The common route drones out and it kills the little momentum the story has. It overstays its welcome way too early, which is unfortunate in and of itself. These scenes would be fine if it had a purpose, but alas.

The characters themselves feel non-existent. They are static the whole way through as they don’t grow and develop throughout the story at all. They have no goals besides “Fall in love”, so all their actions are artificial. The only reason why the characters act differently is any scene is for love, but even that is resolved very quickly as the characters revert back into their usual selves. The protagonist barely ponders on his love before he even confesses, making it artificial to the maximum. The main characters are there just to showcase an autumn love, being caricatures instead of actual breathing characters. The side characters barely exist and serve only to pad out the setting, even though it is underutilized and empty.

Just like in the original Amakano, Amakano 2 does not use the autumn setting to its fullest potential, instead using it as a backdrop to its romance. The town the characters stay in feels empty and doesn’t have an ounce of vibrancy at all. Each new place in the town is only there so the characters can have another spot to repeat sweet nothings to each other as nothing progresses at all. Once the confession has taken place, everything plateaus as the main goal of the VN has been accomplished, it stops building towards anything as there is nothing else the VN has in store to build up towards in the first place. After a certain point, it all feels meaningless.

It really is a travesty if an entire chunk of the VN can be removed and the reader does not feel lost. I can safely say that a good 75-90% could be removed and nothing would be lost at all in terms of actually understanding what is happening. There is no significant story progression or character growth that happens, as these meaningless scenes are drawn out to their tipping point. One poignant example that sticks with me is that the ”first” h-scene is split into three separate scenes, each with a SoL scene in between. All three h-scenes employ the same CG, have similar actions happening and are shorter than the subsequent h-scenes after them. In other VNs, I could see these three scenes being tied into one scene, which is why I casually referred to them as “one” h-scene rather than three.

Ultimately, Amakano 2 feels soulless as a romance story, as I feel it would have been vastly improved if they put some care into actually developing the characters and setting beyond just simple romance.