After 3 years of testing, writing and designing, Meyaoi Games have just released their much anticipated ‘Seiyuu Danshi’. Seiyuu Danshi is a visual novel Boy Love game where you play as Haato (name changeable) a 23 year old voice actor whose laziness is probably his proudest feature. When his agency gets a new president, Haato is challenged to win the prestigious Seiyuu Award by the year’s end or be kicked out and jobless. Over the next 365 days you must steer Haato into a life of hard-work and perseverance but not without some naughty fun on the side.

Quick Info

Where to buy? Itch.io $32.99 USD

Number of Romance Options: 5 guys + 2 shorter unlockable routes

Voiced? A voiced patch will be added in December

First play-through time: 10+ hours

Total Play Time: A LOT

Rating: R18

As mentioned, the game takes place over the course of a year, and it’s up to you to decide how Haato spends his days. Mornings are dedicated to voice acting classes, raising your characterisation, technique and singing abilities so you can take on auditions for various roles. Each audition you do rewards you with money and fame points. Auditions can be a tad tricky to get used to, you are shown a scene and you must tell Haato what emotions he should reflect in his acting. You must get over the first star to pass the audition. On my first play through I found the auditions very difficult and failed pretty much all of them, it then lead me to a bad ending as I couldn’t pay my rent! On my second go, I made sure to save before each audition so I could keep trying to pass it.

Besides your work, each day you have the chance to explore the town, help out on side quests, go shopping or spend time with your man. This was definitely the most impressive part of the game – the sheer number of activities you could do. You might feel like watching a movie to increase your affection levels or go to the bookstore to gain some knowledge. Or, at the shopping mall, buy new furniture to decorate your apartment or special underwear to surprise your bae! I found working on stat increases did get quite tedious at times, so for my next play through I’ll try to break it up with my time spent with the other boys.

On certain days throughout the game special events will be held, giving you the chance to amp up your best boys’ love metre. There’s Valentine’s day, a planetarium date and a theme park date, just to name a few. I’m not sure if I did something wrong, but about half of these special events didn’t have any CGs attached to them, which would have been nice to see! I was also a tad disappointed that there wasn’t a Halloween event, I really wanted to see all the boys dressed up. But I suppose they developers wanted to reserve all the costumes for the bedroom scenes.

Speaking of the bedroom, after Sunday dates, your lover will invite you to a love hotel for some sexy times. The interactive feature definitely awakens your inner perv as you can use an assortment of dress up items and toys on your beloved. As you switch up your actions you can unlock special CGs, chibi pictures and chibi animations. I did tend to stumble across the same CGs time and time again, so I’m really looking forward to when Meyaoi release their CG and picture guide. The art in the game is so good, I almost feel like Ash Ketchum and I ‘gotta catch em’ all’, but in this case, unlock them all.

But underneath all the fun and dirty features, there’s actually a really great story. You spend so long on the game, you feel like you’ve actually developed a relationship with the guy you’re romancing, and each little scene provides more insight into his personality. I remember feeling absolutely devastated when I received Toshiyuki’s bad ending, I had tears in my eyes! But when I got his good ending, oh wow the celebration! Haato is such an enjoyable character to play, you don’t get to see much of a serious side to him, but I guess that’s what makes him endearing. He has a child-like view of the world and is so positive.

Overall, I’m pretty blown away by this game. There’s so many incredible features and a real heart to the story. The character designs and CGs are so polished and detailed, I’ll be making it a personal quest to collect each and every one. As the game is very VERY long, I’d recommend not rushing through, take your time and play bit by bit otherwise parts like stat raising can get frustrating quickly. I’ll be very interested to see the partial voice acting update in December, in the meantime check out my tips down below for the game. I’ll link the official walkthrough over here once it’s released!

You can also check out the official Seiyuu Danshi site over here , if you’d like to support Meyaoi games check out their patreon for heaps of exclusive art and behind the scenes info!

Some Tips & Recommendations

Since the wonderful Meyaoi team is putting together their own walkthrough, I thought it’d be best to give some tips on how to maximise your gameplay / things I picked up later in the game.

Make sure to get the anime radio host job

Buy a computer as soon as you can afford to – you can level up characterisation and technique at night time

After completing side quests make sure to talk to everyone involved, for example I didn’t chat to the cinema girl after a quest involving her and continued paying full price for movie tickets until late December when I finally had a chat

Don’t just go on dates, visit your crush around town as it will unlock special scenes

Be patient! I didn’t start a ‘lover’s’ relationship with Toshiyuki until mid July and he’s apparently the easiest to get!

Save before auditions so you can try it a few times!

Each boy has an action he really hates on dates, for example Tocchan hates people touching his glasses. Make sure to not do this!

If you want to check your progress visit the fudanshi in the park. The blue indicated friendship points and the pink is love! The stars are a tracker of story progression.