Aozora Meikyuu is a short and brief ecchi visual novel by developer Yume Creations, a team name that I’m not sure exists because Dream Creations was taken by a rhinestone trimming company or if the devs were just total weebs. One can definitely get the impression that it is the latter since Yume Creation’s other games are also short ecchi visual novels with anime girls. I want to make it clear I have nothing against anime tiddies and actually kinda liked Aozora Meikyuu, but it’s not a good game.

Aozora Meikyuu, which means “Blue Sky” in Japanese and leaves me once again unsure if the name was left in Japanese to avoid confusion with the similarly titled visual novel “Always the Same Blue Sky” that I also reviewed or if the devs are just total nerds, is something that I enjoyed in a “so bad its good” kind of way. More specifically, it is a poorly written and overall stupid mess, but it also has a unique charm that appeals to me as an otaku turned feminazi.

I would have to chalk the unique charm up to the fact that this game is clearly meant to appeal to lonely otakus without a girlfriend, and it appealed to me because I used to be one of those. The story is basically what you’d get if put every overused harem anime trope in a blender, put that blender into another blender, then drink the resulting concoction and get taken to the hospital where your dying dream is a magical girlfriend anime, only you realized you were dead all along because you died in a car accident after being rejected by your one true love.

Think that last paragraph is just crazy reviewer shenanigans? Well you may be surprised to know that only half of that was me making up random shit as I went along. The story is in fact your typical entry in the “magical girlfriend” genre. If you try to make a drinking game out of the cliches then you will die instantly. The main character is a loser otaku named Aoi who lives by himself until a beautiful naked woman named Sora falls from the sky and lands right by him.

Said girl has no social skills and is convinced that Aoi is her soul mate the moment she sees Aoi, and nothing you say or do to her will ever convince her otherwise. One can obviously tell that the two of them are going to be a couple by the end of the game, but it is genuinely jarring just how little chemistry they have. This can at least be excused by the fact that Aoi is literally the only man Sora ever met, but this dynamic is not touched upon or fleshed out in the slightest. There is nothing to indicate that this was ever intended as a character flaw in Sora because of just how shallow her personality.

There is a common trope in romantic comedies known as the “manic pixie dream girl.” This trope refers to a happy, loving, and upbeat female character whose role in the story typically is based around convincing a male protagonist to break out of his dark angsty shell. The trope has received some criticism due to a lot of examples of female characters who have no conflicts or backstory of their own and literally only exist to make a man’s life better and help him with his problems, but I can at least understand the appeal of it.

We all have our own problems and some of us have to deal with more than others, and some of us take longer to figure them out. The appeal of the “manic pixie dream girl” character is to have someone who will help build you up and support you even when you have learned to be distrusting and fearful of others. This applies to people of all genders by the way. Unfortunately, this character archetype feels a lot more awkward and forced when the person they are in love with is an absolute prick.

The only nice thing that Aoi does for Sora before she falls head over halos for him is let her stay in his house, and he does that very angry and reluctantly. You actually have the choice to say no to her and call the cops, but you get and early ending if that is the case. The weird thing about this is that it actually fits Aoi’s character more for him to call the police on Sora because Aoi has a seriously irrational hatred of women. Aoi is not just your typical dumb pervert harem protagonist. His dialogue borders on incel territory just with the amount of hatred and distrust he has towards “3D women.”

His backstory is even remarkably similar in that he poured his heart out to a girl in a love confession only to get his heart broken and remain bitter about it for the rest of his life. Surprisingly enough, I think having a genuinely misogynistic and bitter protagonist makes Aozora Meikyuu a bit more unique than your typical harem title, and there were moments in this game that made me surprisingly emotional.

Those moments were not due to the game’s own writing given that Aoi’s dialogue sounds like something out of a greentext story written to mock otakus, but it is more so a result of me once again not taking the story as just a story. As “just a story,” Aozora Meikyuu is amateurishly written and nonsensical, and the characters are just too flat to get attached to. Yet there were some parts of it that really stuck out to me on a personal level.

I always found something notably depressing and tragic about the tendency of some people to ball up and suppress their emotions as a coping mechanism for trauma. There is a decent chance that I have borderline personality disorder and thus have a deep rooted fear of rejection and abandonment. I am not like Aoi since I actually have a lot of really supportive friends and family members, but I wasn’t always like that. I was once lonely, scared, and distrusting of those around me, and thus I feel for those who are in the same situation I used to be in.

It is because of this that Aozora Meikyuu really could have used some better writing and character development. The premise of this game could have worked as an effective romance if it was more fleshed out, but instead everything feels forced. Aoi doesn’t so much as develop character wise more so than just kinda stop being a prick after Sora has sex with him. The scene in which Aoi basically starts to genuinely fall for Sora occurs when Aoi tries playing an eroge in front of her so she gets disgusted and leaves, but Sora instead gets aroused and then they do it.

This scene makes a surprising amount of sense given that Aoi’s weeb shit was literally the only thing he lived for for a number of years and that most girl would find it creepy if a man just started playing a pornographic game in front of them. It makes sense for Aoi to suddenly feel more trusting of Sora since she didn’t mock his hobby and to find someone who shares his unending sexual appetite, but it also just shows how shallow Sora’s character is.

I of all people know it can be a lot more comforting and affirming than you think to find someone who doesn’t judge you for having a ridiculously high libido and perverted mind. But at the same time, it really feels like Sora was written for the express purpose of being Aoi’s magical pixie dream girlfriend and not as her own character. As a result, the narrative feels lacking overall and like it could have been a lot better. And there is also the subject of that ending.

Spoilers

The twist ending to Aozoroa Meikyuu is that Sora is actually an angel that fell out of heaven and Aoi has been dead ever since he got hit by a truck after his first rejection. No it is not explained how the hell others could see him other than that it is apparently possible for people to die but still live on earth and be seen by other people. There is no attempt to explain how this works or why it was the case. Additionally, Sora isn’t even revealed to Aoi’s guardian angel or anything; she’s just kinda there by sheer coincidence.

Despite this, Aoi is taken to the afterlife where he will either be sent to the wheel of rebirth in the worst ending, go to heaven in the good ending, or stay with Sora and watch over the labyrinth leading to heaven in the best ending. Maybe it is just me, but it is hard for me to think that the best ending is the one that involves one basing their entire future around being with a girl they only got along with because they liked sex.

End Spoilers

While I won’t say that Aozora Meikyuu is a good game, I did find it amusing and curious. I don’t really know what this game was trying to do or if it succeeded at it, but it is at least interesting so I guess it can be worth a look for those who like weird ecchi VNs and other weeb shit. Also the art work is pretty good and Sora is pretty cute I guess, but she can do so much better than Aoi. And so can Yume Creations.

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This review was originally posted to my Patreon on May 6th of 2019 for patron only viewing. You can read my reviews one week before they are posted on Guardian Acorn if you pledge $1.00 or more to my Patreon account. New reviews are posted every Monday. You can also follow this blog if you would like to be kept up to date on my stuff, or you could follow me on any of my social media pages (listed at the bottom of the page) and could stop by The Guardian Acorn Discord chat if you would like to talk to me and my homies.