This is a visual novel created by a company named Jirai Soft and this is the only decent VN they have, well I never read Hotarubi no Shoujo but Kurui no Tsuki was awful… moving on with the review.
Basic plot.
Augment is a VN that starts in such incredible way, it hooks you immediately, the main character is an 80 years old dude who is in a home for elderly, lamenting on his life, on how plain and dull it was and how he regrets being a good for nothing. Remembering how he depended on his sister all his life and so on… basically he hates himself, thinking that he is a burden and decides to commit suicide, so he grabs a knife and stabs himself on the neck.
While he is dying he starts thinking that he doesn’t want to die and wants another chance and at some point a weird voice tells him that his wish is granted and that he has a second chance to find happiness.
This scene was amazing and a little bit gory too, in fact the entire prologue is very well done.
After that he find himself in the park which was really close from his house where he grew up while he was still young, he is actually young again, at least his body is. He goes back to his house and there he meets all his family members again, including his father, mother and sister. This part again has a really good impact and it was really well done, everything mixed with good humor.
Basically he travels back in time with the help of this shinigami or god of dead, which granted him a second chance to find happiness in his life.
So the VN is about him reliving his life and trying to find happiness… by fucking… I mean creating a relationship with one of the 3 heroines (falling in love, creating a new life with them etc, etc)
Up until this point the VN was fantastic, at least it was something new, sadly it just doesn’t keep up…
There is a common route and 3 heroines. To unlock the real or true ending you need to read all of them. After reading everything you can re-read it again to unlock at certain points hidden eroge scenes with certain characters and new eroge scenes for all the heroines or new things to discover, it’s kind of like an omake or fandisk but inside the game itself.
The heroines and plot.
Your childhood friend Shiho Umekawa.
Her route was kinda meh and it was ruined by a particular eroge scene, which was placed in a really bad time.
Nothing really interesting to talk about her without spoiling everything.
”spoilers
Basically she was raped for a long period of time and blackmailed to not say anything since she was very little and when she got older the guy raping her lost interest in her because she grew up so he stopped suddenly. This makes her believe that she is tainted and nobody would love her, specially not the main character, either way he doesn’t care and they live happy…. not.
So in the original timeline the main character was in love Satsuki and not her, (this is prior to him going back in time to find happiness) but by going back in time the first time he kinda overwrote himself, erasing the “him” that loved another girl, from one moment to another he stops liking Satsuki and starts falling for her instead, so she kinda doesn’t trust him or something (him falling in love with satsuki is actually satsuki’s route)…
The problem with this route is that even if you leave aside the fact that she KNEW that he was loving another girl until a few days ago and now he loves her because he is another person now (?)… after she tells him everything about the raping (I won’t even going to mention the trope about how she was always in love with him and all that crap)… she ask him “Can you hold me?” And I thought at that moment, “Oh god! Are they actually acting like human beings? Is she asking for a hug and not for anal sex and to drink his 20 loads? Is she actually asking for a hug in this situation, asking for a way to feel like the main character doesn’t hate her and meant when he said that he doesn’t really care that she was raped and that he will be for her if she needs anything not matter what?, No, it can’t be true…” aaaaaaaaand it wasn’t, they just fuck, yes after she told him and revels her trauma, something that literally changed her, leaving her in a state of something like a living corpse with fake emotions… she was probably mentally devastated after telling everything to the love of her life!! They fuck…
-By the way the main character has the ability (or the shinigami does but it’s the same) to travel in time as he pleases by killing himself if he actually really wishes for with all his might-
But here is the real awesome part, he kills himself to go back in time again to the time that she was first raped to apprehend the rapist!
He knocks a rapist which is like 40 years old and carries him to the police station alone with many of his porn videos raping other girls because, yes, he was with all the evidence with him at that time…(?) then the main character kills himself yet again to go back to the time where she tells her everything… and she also happens to remember him from rescuing her from the past that day when she was going to be raped… it’s just a mess and all too convenient and again everything happens and is resolved in 1 or 2 hours.
Also let’s think about this from Shiho’s perspective, she told everything to him, he “pretended” to accept her with her “tainted body” and after that he goes back in time to make her pure again. Now if he only had asked her about it before doing it it wouldn’t be so bad but one can only assume that he was lying and only pretended to accept her but in fact wanted her “pure” and “not-raped”.
My other huge problem with her are her huge fucking tits, is annoying and looks bad.
(UGHHHHHH)
Satsuki Jin, a tsundere from another class of your same age and also the best friend of your childhood friend.
Her route was the worst one for me, she was a decent character and the tsudere side very mild on her. She has a pervert good for nothing old brother that is used as a punch bag and nothing else…
Remember how bad and convoluted Shiho’s route was? Well compared to Satsuki is nothing. I won’t even bother explaining it because it doesn’t make sense and it was overly dramatic to a point that it was almost funny, it’s actually almost as bad as the true ending.
Nami Susonobe, a junior or “kouhai” from your school too.
She was probably the best route. She likes to cook and is kinda timid but not clueless of what goes around her. You actually spend time with her, just bonding and developing your relationship. Their love is not forced which is something very refreshing to read. She doesn’t love you from the start and they also share the same type of humor which makes them a really fun and dynamic couple, constantly teasing each other of following the weird pattern they have of speaking mostly with jokes or doing the boke and tsukkomi.
Also the sex with her didn’t feel forced, it felt real and not just an excuse to show them having sex. It was a natural progression of their relationship.
She has a really overly protective sister (for a good reason) which happens to be your English teacher and she also hates you and doesn’t wants you to be with her. This route didn’t need any stupid forced drama to be good, it was good on its own. Without the forced drama it would have been a decent story to read but nope…
”Spoiler”
This is just bad I can’t even describe it… so in this route there is actually another shinigami killing her for fun… and so the main character kills himself several times to travel back in time and saves her from this bad shinigami that is tossed into the story for no reason other than forcing a bad drama into the plot.
This actually seems to be the only way that the writer had to include gore into the VN because every time she gets killed it is in a gruesome way and a dog eats her after or the dog controlled by the shinigami kills her. It was the dog all the time, damn CUJO!
And no it’s not a joke…
It’s pretty bad but at least not convoluted… kinda…
Finally we have the Main character, Hideya Kawashima.
He is actually interesting and not your typical main character, he isn’t clueless of everything around him and constantly jokes and teases (sometimes to the point of bullying) with everyone. He is 80 years old so he acts accordingly… kinda. For the most part he is pretty funny specially with Nami.
About the humor, I usually don’t really like the type of humor used in this VN but even so I found myself laughing with some scenes so it was pretty good.
There are other characters but those are the main ones. I should also talk about Hideya’s sister (she also has huge tits that are annoying) and the shinigami itself but I’m tired already and there is no point in talking about them since it wont redeem this VN and I still need to talk about the true ending…
The true ending…
The true ending is the worst part of the whole VN. Have you seen that picture of dustmania where the guy is fucking a brain? It’s THAT bad! I wanted to see something about the Shinigami since they actually tricked you into believe that there is more to that character. For example at the end of some routes the Shinigami says certain things that leads you to think that there is more to him/her/it also he/she uses the pronoun “boku” (mostly used for male characters) but has a girl distorted voice so is hard to tell if it is a she or he, which was probably used on purpose for that reason to maintain an ambiguous identity… but they don’t, instead they do what is up until this point a common thing in this VN, threw some sad stuff, make it very convoluted and then resolve it in a few minutes…. everyone is happy YAY.
The main problem with this VN is that it turns itself after the prologue in a pure comedy… which isn’t bad per se but the prologue kinda tricks you, making you believe that it will be something else, and you keep expecting that but when it comes is just a forced drama at the end of each route that doesn’t fit with the rest or anything … if it even makes sense at all in the first place, and it last around 1 or 2 hours.
If I have to describe this VN I would say that it is 85% comedy and 15% of very bad forced drama.
The music and Art.
The music was good with some good solid songs here and there that fit well with the scenes, it’s fully voiced except for the main character which is only voiced in the true ending and the art was actually pretty good too aside from the huge tits in some characters.
There is yet another really annoying thing regarding this VN, every time you start open the game the logo of the company shows up with a fucking loud noise.
(careful if you are using headphones)
Here are some CGs.
”Spoiler”
Pros:
- Good humor
- Good Art style for the most part
- Amazing voice acting
- Pretty good music
- Nami’s route if you leave the ending part.
Cons:
- Bad drama and nonsensical endings.
- Bad true end.
My rating of this VN is a Ryuk out of 10.
For the reading difficulty, is hard to say but I would say medium, not something to start with. The humor and how the main character talk is not something you will read normally, he talks in a teasing way pretty much 90% of the time, making references or derailing the conversations over and over again, using crude humor, kanji puns and everything you can imagine, for example he can start talking as if he were a fighter pilot (using military language) and keeping that going for a while and some characters follow his humor, so it’s not something easy to read probably for a beginner or as your fist VN. Also the drama parts can be quite tricky or they were for me at some points, if you read the spoilers you can understand how convoluted and tricky it gets.
There are a lot of reference here and there, I still don’t know if the “kain” that he refers at one point is the legacy of kain the games or not.
It took me around 30 hours to complete it but my reading speed is quite slow, you can’t just read one route if you want to read the true ending.