I’m going to admit something a little embarassing. When I was younger, around 12, or 13 I want to say, I used to watch tons of Anime Youtubers. The Anime Man, the Lost Pause, others that I can’t remember off the top of my head. Now, I regret being a fan of these creators for several reasons, but as a kid I genuinely liked their content. As I’m sure is the case with almost everyone. I grew up and overtime stopped watching not only Anime Youtubers, but also anime as a genre by and large. There are anime that I adore, but I’m no longer an “anime fan” if that makes sense.
Problematic Beginnings
All of that aside, I do think I’m uniquely qualified to review “Death Match Love Comedy!” As I previously stated: I used to religiously watch these Anime Youtubers and that includes all of the visual novels they played. I even remember watching the Game Grumps play Sakura Spirit over and over again. Thanks to that I do know a good amount about visual novels. I know the stereotypes, I know how they usually characterize their Main Characters and I know that these games are usually quite lewd. Needless to say, I wasn’t surprised when I started the game and one of the first conversations involves breasts. The whole conversation was a tad juvenile, a running theme when it comes to this games writing. I later found out that this was a localization of a game from 2013, this explains the writing at the very least.
Slapstick Abundance
One thing that did catch my attention was how many times the main cast of characters got into fist fights. I’m no stranger to slapstick, especially not in anime, but in Death Match Love Comedy! It feels overused. Within the first hour of playtime, the main character had gotten physically assaulted no less than a dozen times. It was so frequent it would make the three stooges blush. I will admit though over the course of 3 or 4 hours the characters begin to find their footing. The way the characters spoke to each other felt more natural as time went on too. I didn’t find myself laughing at any of the jokes, or attempted humorous scenes, but I did find some of them amusing.
Plot and Priorities
The game centers around Kei Yagi, a freshman in high school with low self esteem and a short stature to match his low intelligence. The beginning of the game starts with an explosion killing Kei and anyone around him. While narration explains what happened we get the first of many cliches. Without any hint of irony we get the classic: “I bet you’re wondering how I got in this situation…” transitions. It cuts back in time to the aforementioned breast discussion and we are introduced to the main cast of characters. They are: Kei Yagi, the protagonist, Rumiko Tsuno and Otoba Shirotsume, the two love interests Asuka Hirakoba, Yagi’s “Archnemisis” Shinoka Kudan, someone you know very little about at the beginning of the game, then there’s Miya Togo and Ryuto Arisu.
All of the characters fall into their own archetypes so it’s easy to tell their personalities before they even speak. The plot starts off with the two main love interests Tsuno and Otoba confessing their feelings to Yagi. We then relive the opening sequence and discover that it was a hallucination. A mysterious pink floating cat-like object then tells the protagonist that next time he gets a confession, he will explode for real. The next several hours of gametime will be a mostly slice of life style romantic comedy. Nothing special or noteworthy so far stood out to me aside from how ridiculous the premise is.
Fascinating Story Flawed Execution
It does get a bit more interesting later in the game but after my first 6 hours I felt a bit bored. I want to say I’ve gotten to about the half-way point as of writing and while it has picked up in quality and has admittedly become much more interesting I ultimately haven’t enjoyed my experience very much. This confused me at first because I know of PQube and have only heard of great things for Raging Loop. It turns out that Raging Loop came out a few years after Death Match Love Comedy and the improvement in writing quality between the two is astonishing to say the least. When it comes to visual novels though, you could do a lot worse than Death Match Love Comedy! The writing is serviceable and can get amusing at times and later in the game the story gets genuinely gripping.
Conclusions
If you are into visual novels, this game has something for you. If you can get past the juvenile writing, how loud the music is and you can get past the slow beginnings, this game has more to it than just being a slice of life story and once it gets going it can be an enjoyable experience. This game isn’t for me but I can see the vision it’s going for.
