Amanatsu: Perfect Edition
releases on TBD
Japanese coming-of-age VN from hit developer AZARASHI SOFTWARE. After moving to a sleepy seaside town, Haruto befriends three unforgettable heroines, each with unique traits—and a surprise confession. Navigate your own summer of love on this sugar-sweet journey of romance and discovery.
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One of the most mixed I've been on a visual novel in a long time, especially for a slice of life heavy romance moege I was fairly interested in.
The main draw for me was the setting being in the countryside, something we rarely see. Outside a few details, I feel like the countryside setting wasn't taken advantage of as much as I'd like, with the characters usually sticking to a cafe, school, or occasionally the beach.
Amanatsu was trying to be a good mix of pure relaxing wholesome slice of life (think toneworks like Hoshi Ori Yume Mirai), with some recurring goofy over the top humor (like SMEE's Making Lovers or Fureraba). There are some legitimately great wholesome moments, and some pretty funny moments. However some of the attempted wholesome and comedic moments are ruined by some quite frankly very lame and unfunny characters, which I'll explain more about later.
Hayase Yuu, the scenario writer, has previously written slice of life stories with mostly/only adult age characters like Making Lovers, HaremKingdom, and Chihiro Himukai Always Walks Away so it was kinda disappointing for him to go back to the high school setting you see in 95+% of romance visual novels. Thankfully, he did a pretty good job writing some legit believable awkwardness that would come with a first time high school couple getting together.
The main mixed/disappointing thoughts I have about Amanatsu heavily relate to the characters themselves.
I'm mostly OK with with the main protagonist Haruto. He has some legit interesting issues how he's lonely due to forced to not having a social life due to being forced to study all the time. As this is a slice of life title it's not covered too much but it was enough to explain some of his personality. He can be pretty funny times with goofy outbursts. However any humor around him failing at small tasks or making the occasional sexual harassment joke was lame.
Kagone was easily my favorite character and honestly if it weren't for her I would have dropped the visual novel during the common route. She's energetic, talkative, has great jokes and quirky banter, and is a very openly sweet girl that's easy to get along with. I thought the whole thing of clinging to Haruto's arm all the time would get annoying but it stayed endearing all the way to the end. She actually had surprisingly interesting character depth. It didn't get too deep as this is a "wholesome slice of life romance" story, but it was covered enough to satisfy me. In a way she was a much better version of Reina from Making Lovers, having a similar energetic assertive vibe, but replacing Reina's selfish brattiness with wholesome selfless quirkiness instead. Her romance felt the most natural, so along with me liking her most, she was the only heroine route I ended up actually doing.
Sadly the MC and Kogane were the only characters I cared for consistently.
Kazuha was just an unfortunate mix of traits I don't like. She was a "modern" tsundere, aka very short-tempered and most prone to verbal insults, especially since the main character is clumsy and/or gets into lots of early "perverted accidents". Amanatsu going with very boring shallow ways to rile up a tsundere for the masochistic tsundere fans is lame. Thankfully Kazuha mostly isn't the physically abusive tsundere type and is a nice caring person so I didn't dislike her too much but I was disappointed in how mostly generic she was. The fact she's the MC's blood related cousin and no one seemed to care was the final straw of me deciding not to do her route.
Yashiro was a character I thought I would like since I tend to like "quirky weird" girls. However, she was the type of quirky weird I tend to not care for: one who's just weird for the sake of being weird. My favorite types of weird girls are the ones not afraid to be themselves. Yashiro just felt like a bunch of random "filler jokes" nothing particularly funny or unfunny, just random stuff thrown out there. Thankfully Yashiro is a nice enough person so I didn't mind her. The main reason I didn't do her route... apparently the developer Azarashisoft loves designing at least one girl with boobs much bigger than their head. There's a point where big boobs goes from hot to just stupid looking, and Yashiro's design was definitely on the stupid looking side. Oh and her phallic head owl "god" was lame. Ultimately decided not to her route, though I considered it.
However, what was EASILY the worst aspect of Amanatsu was the side male characters. Usually these shouldn't be problem, and in fact male/female group interactions can potentially make a great VN even greater (Majikoi, Edelweiss, Nukitashi, Little Busters, etc). However I HATED the male side characters for how lame and/or stereotypical they were. When someone who tends to like group interactions DREAD any time a potential group slice of life scene happens, that's when you know something is wrong. It got to the point I actually MUTED their voice acting, which is something I almost never do in visual novel.
Mitsuru is a bad overweight otaku stereotype constantly yelling unfunny 2D jokes and occasionally forcing the group to act out his otaku whims. Iori was a camp gay man stereotype from 2000s media, making constant remarks about being a "maiden at heart", comments about being gay, and occasionally wanting to "get physical" with the main character as a "joke". Kou was the least bad, just being a stoic musclehead, usually not the type to start bad jokes on his own. However he will more likely make bad jokes worse, e.g. make a random comment how he's into older married women or making up stories about Haruto's supposed ex-girlfriend.
I get side males are a common trope to make the male main character "look better" but they did NOT need to go this far in making them so lame, unfunny, and stereotypical, especially with how often you see them.
Thankfully once the heroine route starts you start to mostly have one and one time with the main girl and those interactions (in my case with just Kogane) are great in terms of comedy and wholesomeness. However in a slice of life heavy title where I dread having to read... almost half the slice of life, is not a title I can wholeheartedly recommend unless you just REALLY think these side characters are funny (for some reason).
Final Note:
I'm usually not the type to overly complain about translation/localization choices but one thing I have against Amanatsu specifically is the inconsistent choices compared to other Shiravune-translated titles. They for once just kept "Senpai" in the text as is, which is interesting. But then proceeded to have weird localization choices like onii-chan -> bro-bro or Aniki-> King. While some Shiravune localization choices in previous titles are weird, at least they were consistent. If you're gonna only keep "Senpai" but not anything else that just looks wrong to me. Go all in either way, imo.
The main draw for me was the setting being in the countryside, something we rarely see. Outside a few details, I feel like the countryside setting wasn't taken advantage of as much as I'd like, with the characters usually sticking to a cafe, school, or occasionally the beach.
Amanatsu was trying to be a good mix of pure relaxing wholesome slice of life (think toneworks like Hoshi Ori Yume Mirai), with some recurring goofy over the top humor (like SMEE's Making Lovers or Fureraba). There are some legitimately great wholesome moments, and some pretty funny moments. However some of the attempted wholesome and comedic moments are ruined by some quite frankly very lame and unfunny characters, which I'll explain more about later.
Hayase Yuu, the scenario writer, has previously written slice of life stories with mostly/only adult age characters like Making Lovers, HaremKingdom, and Chihiro Himukai Always Walks Away so it was kinda disappointing for him to go back to the high school setting you see in 95+% of romance visual novels. Thankfully, he did a pretty good job writing some legit believable awkwardness that would come with a first time high school couple getting together.
The main mixed/disappointing thoughts I have about Amanatsu heavily relate to the characters themselves.
I'm mostly OK with with the main protagonist Haruto. He has some legit interesting issues how he's lonely due to forced to not having a social life due to being forced to study all the time. As this is a slice of life title it's not covered too much but it was enough to explain some of his personality. He can be pretty funny times with goofy outbursts. However any humor around him failing at small tasks or making the occasional sexual harassment joke was lame.
Kagone was easily my favorite character and honestly if it weren't for her I would have dropped the visual novel during the common route. She's energetic, talkative, has great jokes and quirky banter, and is a very openly sweet girl that's easy to get along with. I thought the whole thing of clinging to Haruto's arm all the time would get annoying but it stayed endearing all the way to the end. She actually had surprisingly interesting character depth. It didn't get too deep as this is a "wholesome slice of life romance" story, but it was covered enough to satisfy me. In a way she was a much better version of Reina from Making Lovers, having a similar energetic assertive vibe, but replacing Reina's selfish brattiness with wholesome selfless quirkiness instead. Her romance felt the most natural, so along with me liking her most, she was the only heroine route I ended up actually doing.
Sadly the MC and Kogane were the only characters I cared for consistently.
Kazuha was just an unfortunate mix of traits I don't like. She was a "modern" tsundere, aka very short-tempered and most prone to verbal insults, especially since the main character is clumsy and/or gets into lots of early "perverted accidents". Amanatsu going with very boring shallow ways to rile up a tsundere for the masochistic tsundere fans is lame. Thankfully Kazuha mostly isn't the physically abusive tsundere type and is a nice caring person so I didn't dislike her too much but I was disappointed in how mostly generic she was. The fact she's the MC's blood related cousin and no one seemed to care was the final straw of me deciding not to do her route.
Yashiro was a character I thought I would like since I tend to like "quirky weird" girls. However, she was the type of quirky weird I tend to not care for: one who's just weird for the sake of being weird. My favorite types of weird girls are the ones not afraid to be themselves. Yashiro just felt like a bunch of random "filler jokes" nothing particularly funny or unfunny, just random stuff thrown out there. Thankfully Yashiro is a nice enough person so I didn't mind her. The main reason I didn't do her route... apparently the developer Azarashisoft loves designing at least one girl with boobs much bigger than their head. There's a point where big boobs goes from hot to just stupid looking, and Yashiro's design was definitely on the stupid looking side. Oh and her phallic head owl "god" was lame. Ultimately decided not to her route, though I considered it.
However, what was EASILY the worst aspect of Amanatsu was the side male characters. Usually these shouldn't be problem, and in fact male/female group interactions can potentially make a great VN even greater (Majikoi, Edelweiss, Nukitashi, Little Busters, etc). However I HATED the male side characters for how lame and/or stereotypical they were. When someone who tends to like group interactions DREAD any time a potential group slice of life scene happens, that's when you know something is wrong. It got to the point I actually MUTED their voice acting, which is something I almost never do in visual novel.
Mitsuru is a bad overweight otaku stereotype constantly yelling unfunny 2D jokes and occasionally forcing the group to act out his otaku whims. Iori was a camp gay man stereotype from 2000s media, making constant remarks about being a "maiden at heart", comments about being gay, and occasionally wanting to "get physical" with the main character as a "joke". Kou was the least bad, just being a stoic musclehead, usually not the type to start bad jokes on his own. However he will more likely make bad jokes worse, e.g. make a random comment how he's into older married women or making up stories about Haruto's supposed ex-girlfriend.
I get side males are a common trope to make the male main character "look better" but they did NOT need to go this far in making them so lame, unfunny, and stereotypical, especially with how often you see them.
Thankfully once the heroine route starts you start to mostly have one and one time with the main girl and those interactions (in my case with just Kogane) are great in terms of comedy and wholesomeness. However in a slice of life heavy title where I dread having to read... almost half the slice of life, is not a title I can wholeheartedly recommend unless you just REALLY think these side characters are funny (for some reason).
Final Note:
I'm usually not the type to overly complain about translation/localization choices but one thing I have against Amanatsu specifically is the inconsistent choices compared to other Shiravune-translated titles. They for once just kept "Senpai" in the text as is, which is interesting. But then proceeded to have weird localization choices like onii-chan -> bro-bro or Aniki-> King. While some Shiravune localization choices in previous titles are weird, at least they were consistent. If you're gonna only keep "Senpai" but not anything else that just looks wrong to me. Go all in either way, imo.