True End Blog – Visual Novels, Otome, RPGs –

Like Tsubaki, Kaname is pretty open with his affections from the start. Ema doesn’t take him seriously and I don’t really blame her. Her brothers warn her that he’s a playboy and tends to spend the night at his exclusively female parishioner’s houses for… spiritual reasons. He offers to show Ema what he means but Tsubaki warns her that he just uses pick-up lines. A big shocker is that Kaname kisses Ema really early on in his route! While on a family vacation to the beach, he steals a kiss from her. She’s extremely affected by this and can’t act normal around him for a few weeks, purposefully ignoring him. They have a heart to heart and agree to get along again as siblings to which Kaname agrees to “for now.” But in the future, will they stay just siblings? No, they won’t, we know where this is going.

 Kaname continues his flirtatious assault and slowly Ema’s heart begins to waver. There was quite a steamy scene when Ema spends the night in his room. (which is honestly a weird mechanic, it’s under the guise of her wanting to spend more time with her brothers or not being able to sleep, but I think Ema might just be the densest otome protagonist I’ve ever experienced.) Kaname puts the moves on her aggressively, pinning her to the bed and kissing her neck. He stops when she protests, still insisting they are just siblings.

 Kaname shows his serious side in his other events. He discusses how his work as a monk affects him and is actually quite sincere, gentle, and kind. He just loves to flirt! The climax of this route is where Ema sees Kaname on what she assumes is a date! With another woman! Why is she so upset about this? He’s just her older brother, right? Two weeks later, she overhears Tsubaki yelling at Kaname in his room. It was nice to hear him absolutely lay into him for playing with Ema’s feelings and dating other women behind her back. Kaname doesn’t take this lying down, and insists he’s serious about her.

 Kaname comes out of the room, realizes Ema heard everything, and the pair go on a drive. Turns out, that was a girl he used to date but he was breaking it off with her when Ema saw them. He tells her that he loves her, only her, and won’t hand her over to anyone else. He knows she might not believe his feelings just yet, but Ema tells him to make her believe him. They make out in his car, and the screen fades to black.

 In the epilogue, I was SHOCKED to see that Kaname cut his hair! He stopped bleaching it! He quit being a monk! He’s working at his mother’s company! He’s cleaned up his act! He picks up Ema from her high school graduation with his new look and a bouquet of roses. We end with a funny morning-after scene where Kaname picks up Ema’s phone and Ukyo (another brother) freaks out at the implications.

I was curious how this route would play out because it’s not everyday you have a cross-dressing love interest in an otome game! Unfortunately, I think he got the short end of the stick by being introduced so late in the game. His second event is at Christmas, where we experience his male persona for the first time. Ema can’t recognize him and wonders why this strange man is calling out to her. She also asks why he’s dressed like that, to which he responds that he actually prefers dressing in male clothing and only dresses as a woman for work. I’m still skeptical. He is very handsome in men’s clothes though! They spend Christmas Eve together and Hikaru remarks that if he tells his brothers they’ll probably go insane with jealousy.

 Their interactions revolve around Hikaru interviewing Ema to get information for his novels and experience her genuine, high school girl reaction to various scenarios. Some of these scenarios include him flirting with her in different ways, imitating some of the other brothers like Yusuke and Louis. You also learn that he writes psychological thriller crime novels with morally gray protagonists, which made me question why he needed information from a high school girl or to cross-dress as a woman, but eh. 

 I feel like I need to mention that Hikaru is adamant that he is a straight male through and through. Ema actually asks if he identifies more as a woman or if he likes men more, and he’s a bit offended. During their sleepover scenes, he makes sure Ema knows that he’s a man and not actually a kind older sister. Ema is falling for him at this point, however the CGs were incredibly similar throughout every event. He would interview her at his house and tease Ema causing her to blush. Over half the images were just then sitting there with different expressions and slightly different poses.

 We did get a super cute casual sprite for him that you see in ONE scene though! Look at him! He’s overworked and behind on his manuscripts like all novelists in Japanese media are.

 Ema realizes her feelings and gets upset that Hikaru only sees her as a source of information and doesn’t actually have feelings for her. Or does he? Of course he does! One big surprise making a short route even shorter is that the last TWO MONTHS are skipped. After Ema gets upset with Hikaru and stops visiting him, they don’t see each other for two months!! You don’t schedule anything or have any events, it’s a pure time skip. Ema receives a package from Hikaru that contains a magazine with his latest work. It’s a romance extremely different from his previous writings, about a man who interviews a girl and slowly falls in love with her.

 This, of course, is actually his true feelings for Ema. He locked himself away for a month to properly express them. Awww!! The epilogue is an event celebrating Hikaru’s success as an author. He was really bold, telling Ema he reserved the penthouse suite on the top floor to keep her away from the other brothers and for her to be prepared for him to take off her dress tonight. Also, it turns out he dresses as a woman because it’s easier to get information out of morally corrupt individuals and criminals to use in his novels. That feels waaay more dangerous than it could be worth.

 Masaomi’s first few events showcase his kindness as a pediatrician and how family oriented he is. He really cares about his brothers and became a pediatrician so he could better take care of them. It doesn’t really come off like their mother and late father did much parenting after Masaomi was old enough to take care of the younger brothers but he also doesn’t seem to mind. The first few scenes involve Dr. Asahina at the hospital and then taking care of Ema when she’s sick, including showing him her stomach!! Scandalous… She accidentally raises her sweatshirt up too high and shows him a bit of her bra. Masaomi is shuffled off to a marriage interview because his mom thinks it’s time for him to get married. Kaname, Wataru, and Ema  spy on it and Masaomi turns her down, mentioning he likes someone already.

 Masaomi keeps a stuffed rabbit named Usa-Tan in his lab coat to comfort upset children at the hospital. Usa-Tan is very functional! Turns out he has secret pockets, a calculator, notepad, and more built in. Masaomi has Usa-Tan Model 00 and Wataru has Usa-Tan 01. For Christmas, Masaomi gives Ema Usa-Tan 02! A few weeks later, Wataru tells Ema that she should check all the pockets on Usa-Tan because again, he has a lot of functions. She finds a beautiful necklace adorned with pink hearts tucked inside a pocket, realizing her feelings for Masaomi. Aww!

 Disaster strikes when Wataru attempts to retrieve some plates from a raised cabinet. The plates shatter and seriously injure Wataru’s arm. The family grabs Masaomi to help but the sight of blood makes him faint. Now he’s passed out on the floor, with only Ema able to snap him out of it enough for him to use his training to put pressure on the wound and stop the bleeding. He passes out again as soon as Wataru is in the ambulance though, prompting them to take him to the hospital as well.

 Wataru is stitched up and no worse for wear, but Masaomi has to stay a bit longer and finish his IV fluids. He’s pretty embarrassed that he wasn’t able to take care of his family because of his fear of blood as that was the entire reason for becoming a doctor. 

 Soon we are at the confession scene. Masaomi has been coming home super late from the hospital looking pale and exhausted. Ema stays up to cook for him, and it turns out he’s been staying late at work to watch surgeries and get over his fear of blood. That’s why he looks so ragged when he gets home. He tells Ema that she’s not his family or sister, which is an awful way to express that you want her to your girlfriend. But that’s what he’s getting at. He wants to become stronger and a fitting man to be with her. He also admits he turned down the marriage interview because he was worried he’d never see Ema again. Him using the word “girlfriend” made him feel more like a schoolboy than a 31 year old man.

 I’m going to assume there’s a timeskip here but it’s not made explicit. But I’m assuming so because we jump to Ema and Masaomi getting married! All the brothers are in attendance and Yusuke, if you remember him from part one, is absolutely distraught. He’s so upset. It’s played for laughs as his little sprite zips across the screen crying but I felt so, so bad for him. Thankfully the wedding CG was absolutely lovely and it felt like a good ending!

 The epilogue is what I hope and pray is another time skip, because now Ema is pregnant. God, I hope she at least graduated high school. I did warn you that Masaomi is very family oriented! Yusuke is even more upset by this. I’m glad the other endings didn’t focus on how depressed the other brothers are because it’s… pathetic. She’s about 3 months along and seems to be very happy with Masaomi and building a family together. The end!

 Sadly, harem is a bit of a misnomer here. In this ending, Tsubaki and Azusa distract Ema with video games until Wataru comes in with a blindfold. They guide her to the living room, where all of the brothers have planned a party to celebrate her one year anniversary of joining the family. Yeah, not really a harem, at least not romantically. I don’t know what I was expecting. But, it was really sweet as Ema thought about each brother and mentioned what she liked about them. There’s a great CG, and I was so relieved that I was actually able to trigger this ending. When Ema realizes she’s adopted, she struggles a bit feeling like she’s completely alone in the world. It was great for her to see how loved she really is. Can you believe I was able to trigger all of the events and endings this time? Thank god!