Note: I am—and always will be—using the scoring/rating system that I describe here, in the About page of this blog.

Short, Objective Review

Noble ☆ Works (henceforth referred to as Noble Works so I don’t constantly have to switch to Japanese keyboard to type out that star) is a medium-sized cozy romance visual novel by Yuzusoft that doesn’t particularly lay any heavy plots on the reader. There are five routes and one bonus route. The quality of each route varies, ranging from very good to a waste of dev time that could have been used for other things to disappointing to an unfortunate degree. Everything else is pretty much around average with the exception of the addition of a few somewhat unique VN elements, such as back sprites, which I appreciated greatly. It’s good for people who just want some romance and fun. The longer, more subjective, rambling review follows. Spoilers ahead.

Introduction

Noble Works is the visual novel that I decided to immediately follow Umineko no Naku Koro Ni with, as I had decided that I was pretty sated on plot for the time being. It’s a very cozy (this word is pretty much the descriptor I would give this VN) romance story in a not-very-relateable setting that has great girls, good girls, average girls, great bros, and a waste of a bonus route. It took me a little over two weeks of casual reading (read: binge reading on Sundays and occasionally on weekdays) to finish.

It’s pretty much okay.

General VN Stuff

Noble Works was fun to read, and the devs apparently wanted to make an impression with the little things. I don’t read many visual novels, so I can’t quite say for sure if this is entirely unique, but Noble Works has back sprites. As in, sprites of the back view of a character. It’s unexpectedly refreshing to see a character turn their back to you because they’re looking away to have a conversation with someone else. It seems really minor, but it was definitely something I appreciated as I read.

In addition, there is a secondary sprite of just the speaking character’s face in the left side of the dialogue box, as kind of a nice secondary to the inclusion of back sprites, so you can always see a character’s expression as they speak. Speaking of expressions, the characters are very expressive in Noble Works. Perhaps it’s just been a while since I read a romance visual novel—my last one was Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate like five months ago—but I was impressed at how often characters changed their facial expressions. There’s an average of maybe 3-4 expressions in every line. Along with the back sprites, it adds a nice refreshing feeling to conversation, and actually made me slow down reading so I could watch the faces change in tandem with the voice and dialogue.

As another “little thing” that the devs put a lot of care into, the sprites themselves are a little more dynamic than expected. Though things like sprites moving across a screen aren’t anything particularly new, Noble Works plays around a lot with the scale of the sprites. There’s a memorable scene where one of the girls is unconsciously standing pretty close to Takumi in the beginning of her route. When she’s called out on it by another character, she quickly hops back, and her sprite actually gets smaller. Rather, her sprite was very slightly larger in the beginning of the scene, to the point where I didn’t even notice it until she had “jumped back.” In addition, sprites actually dim in scenes where they’re outside at night. The devs really seemed to like the idea of displaying character actions with more than just their faces, and though it’s not something that I would say raises the standards of visual novels as a medium, I think it’s nice and fun.

For extras, there’s obviously a CG viewing gallery and a music box, and also a very detailed sprite viewer that unlocks after completing all routes that let you play around with pretty much every single sprite-related thing I mentioned above.

Sound

Not much to say here. The soundtrack is average. I recall thinking I enjoyed a few of the tracks; the only one I remember explicitly is Hinata’s theme. Each character has their own theme that plays during their key moments. Unfortunately, there are sometimes scenes in which a character’s theme plays during a more serious conversation, that leads to some weird dissonance, as each character’s theme is rather everyday happy music. In addition to the OP that plays near the beginning of common route, there is only one ED between all five routes. I don’t really care, but it’s worth noting.

The voicework is pretty good. There aren’t many emotional lines, but the ones that are come through nicely. I wouldn’t say the voice acting is amazing, but it’s good enough. Standout characters in terms of voice acting are Akari (“bakaaaaa”), Hinata, and Maya. I actually hate the teacher’s voice a lot—it’s very airy and I dislike the way she tends to draw out the trailing syllables of words—but I guess that’s just her character and maybe some people like that stuff.

Translation

I read Noble Works in English. I used version 1.02 of an English patch by The Oxford Comma is Superior Subs.

I’ve put forth my thoughts in other places as to the importance of good translation (by the way, the above links contain spoilers for somewhat-recent chapters of Nisekoi) in media that’s experienced second-hand like manga and visual novels. Unfortunately, this translation doesn’t quite make the cut. The grammar of the English itself is fine, which is good considering the name of the group that did the patch, but there are more than a few errors scattered throughout all of the routes that’re just too blatant.

Japanese is very easy to mistranslate, but this challenge can be overcome by keeping context in mind. Unfortunately, it appears that the translator(s) of this must have shuffled half of the lines and translated them one-by-one randomly, leading to lines that are sometimes the opposite of the original Japanese’s intended message, or just plain nonsensical. I feel that a lot of the mistakes are indicative of the translator being unfamiliar with Japanese as a conversational language. There are numerous homophone errors and even a few blatant misheard words which result in the occasional mid-conversation non sequitur.

What follows are random corrections that I threw at Irru as we read. These are probably all going to be from Maya route, since that’s just the last one we read. Minor spoilers for Maya route, then.

“Ojou makes that face when she doesn’t see me” should be, “Ojou’s making a face I’ve never seen her make before.”

“You know all too well what more I have to say” should be, “I know all too well that I’m sticking my nose in business that isn’t mine.”

“I didn’t think that you would serve as a substitute to the last day” should be, “My first impression is that this should be done on the last day of you being a substitute.” When discussing whether or not Takumi can confide in Maya about being a body double.

“I don’t like that part of you” should be, “I hate when people act like that.” Context for this one makes the importance of the TL more apparent. Tatsumi had just helped out someone who was being shaken down by a group of thugs.

“How could you forget that time? That I’d be your best buddy, the perfect servant, you said it clearly” should be, “I was forgotten by her earlier! At a time like this, I have to act as her best buddy, her perfect servant!” Said by Kotetsu, to/about Maya. The wrong TL implies an event that is not actually part of any narrative. It also implies an incorrect characterization of Maya’s personality.

“I did it a little as a kid” should be, “Something happened to me when I was a kid.” This wrong TL instead removes the implication of an important event in the speaker’s backstory.



And so on. There’s much more, even within that route alone. I won’t bother with another rant on the importance of translation, you can read the posts I linked earlier for that. I would consider the quality of this translation to be sub-par, even considering the trash that’s considered par for fan translation nowadays. I guess I can at least be appreciative of the fact that the entirety of the VN has been translated at all.

Plot

The overall plot of Noble Works is as follows. Takumi is a high schooler living in abject poverty who manages to eke out a living by working part-time jobs, the total number of which that he has under his belt summing up to somewhere close to aleph-naught. Through a number of contrivances, his next job ends up being to work as the body double of a rich family’s heir who he happens to be identical to and attend super-bourgeois school in his place.

The “main plot” is kind of whatever and is more of a setting piece for Takumi to meet the girls in the first place. There’s a varying degree of satisfying resolution to this body double plot throughout each of the routes, ranging from it not actually ever being resolved to nice resolution that reaffirms the relationship between Takumi and co..

Each of the routes except for one has plot that form a bit of a theme around rich people life. The plot itself is usually light and quickly resolved, with more time given to the somewhat ominous foreboding that tends to precede each event as Takumi finds out some detail from someone he knows. Plot and drama definitely isn’t a strong point of Noble Works, which could be something you may or may not want. I personally found it a welcome change from the plot-heavy Umineko (I loved Umineko; I’m just saying a break is nice) and its quick-and-easy approach to drama contributed to its laid-back, cozy feel and allowed for more time to be given to characterizing the route’s relationship.

Routes

Dramatis personae:

Takumi : Poor guy who has to act not-poor. The hero of our tale.

: Poor guy who has to act not-poor. The hero of our tale. Shuri : The really frail rich heir that Takumi just happens to be identical to.

: The really frail rich heir that Takumi just happens to be identical to. Akari : Rich girl; the older sister of Shuri.

: Rich girl; the older sister of Shuri. Sena : Maid (kinda). Akari’s personal servant or whatever you’d call it.

: Maid (kinda). Akari’s personal servant or whatever you’d call it. Hinata : Genki shorty from Takumi’s old school who just happens to transfer to the rich one.

: Genki shorty from Takumi’s old school who just happens to transfer to the rich one. Shizuru : School chairman’s granddaughter. Takumi teaches her how to play shogi.

: School chairman’s granddaughter. Takumi teaches her how to play shogi. Maya : Socially awkward girl with a weird dialect that has a totally subtle yakuza background.

: Socially awkward girl with a weird dialect that has a totally subtle yakuza background. Kotetsu : A guy who is the goldfish poop to the goldfish known as Maya.

: A guy who is the goldfish poop to the goldfish known as Maya. Makoto : Takumi’s first friend at the new school. She’s robbed of a route in favor of garbage.

: Takumi’s first friend at the new school. She’s robbed of a route in favor of garbage. Chiaki: The übermaid who works for Shuri and fam.

As mentioned at the top, Noble Works has five routes and one bonus route, each branching off from a common route of medium length. The common route is fun and does a good job of introducing each character and showing their interactions with each other, though it certainly doesn’t have any particularly memorable slice of life scenes (I’m talking about stuff like juicy Yuuji from Grisaia no Kajitsu).

Common route is littered with seemingly unimportant choices like whether you want to ask someone to get you pleb food or where you want to go to relax, which end up being deciding factors for which route you get on, so reading a guide for the routes is recommended. In terms of other recommendations, do not do the bonus route last, as it’s not very good at all.

The routes diverge from common route at a scene where Takumi has to choose whom he wishes to dance with at an end-of-exams party. Each of the girls’ routes still has a hefty dose of the rest of the case, though of course this varies somewhat. In addition, each route has PoV segments that add to the route with varying degrees of effectiveness. The following route-specific comments are done in the order I read the routes, with the exception of the bonus route, which thankfully I did third. Each of these route reviews is horrifically biased by my own tastes, but I’ll do my best to get across some objective points as well. Also, the image for each girl will be a chibi artwork from the route because I don’t really care about accurate portrayal.

All scores are out of ten, with a score of 5 being average. Spoilers ahead. Duh.

Akari

Those of you who know what I do on the internet are probably aware that I’m a sucker for the whole slow-paced love epiphany storyline. So, I very much like the plot of Akari route. It’s a nice, slow, simmering plot where she falls in love without realizing it initially, and has to reconcile her feelings with her perceived obligation to her status as the daughter of a rich family. There’s a lot of cute parts and the PoV segments are used to really good effect as she wonders to herself what’s going on inside her head and puzzles out her feelings.

Unfortunately, Akari’s route also includes a very shoehorned-in second plot that is probably the most large-scale development of the five routes, which comes across as a bit weird and unnecessarily convoluted in a VN as cozy and fun as Noble Works. Despite previous developments, Akari is suddenly thrown into an arranged marriage due to a the manipulations of a laughably corrupt board member of her father’s company. It’s not particularly interesting, and I personally would’ve liked some more relationship stuff.

In addition, because Akari is rather removed from Takumi and his school friends, due to being a year older than Takumi’s Shuri persona, this route unfortunately ends up more or less phasing out the circle of friends. They appear at the end to give Takumi some help in saving Akari, but in the end there’s not even any resolution of the whole body double plot.

Not bad. 6.5.

Sena

Easily the most lukewarm of the routes. Sena is a cute somewhat-maid character who works for Akari and her family due to a sense of obligation for them taking her in. As a character, she’s cute and has one of those classic “constantly mistakes things for having sexual undertones” tropes associated with her. Other than that, there aren’t many interesting characteristics. I was kind of expecting this to be more centred around omelets, since that’s the thing that gives them a reason to do stuff together in the first place (apparently Takumi is very good at making omelets specifically). Instead, this route is pretty much Headpat: the route, and is very warm and cuddy.

The relationship is kind of odd, where Takumi takes on the role of a paternal substitute more or less because he has big hands. It slowly transforms into a relationship, with a few intermediate sequences that I found pretty funny where they’re both kind of unsure exactly what kind of affection is being passed back and forth between them.

Drama is minimal in this route, just a few issues that she has with her extended family. It’s an interestingly poignant plotline, as the main source of conflict is the fact that she can’t quite bring herself to accept them as close family after she lost her parents. The idea of distancing yourself from those who want to take care of you after you face tragedy in your life is something that isn’t explored too much in romance VNs.

And it’s not explored that much in this one either. 5.0.

Hinata

I was expecting Hinata route to be mediocre at best and I ended up wrong. It’s quite good. Hinata is an underclassman from Takumi’s old school who transfers into his new one and immediately recognizes him, despite him trying to play it off. She’s one of those tiny little girls who makes a lot of weird sound effects, and also refers to herself as “boku.” Hinata is very cute, and though the relationship is a bit slow to start up, once it starts up she really is quite good. Her reactions to the things that Takumi says are top-notch, and her personality is such that the effect of her relationship with Takumi are immediately and easily apparent—even to those who don’t know her well. It’s nice to see the heroine of a route so obviously happy to be in a relationship.

The route is slow-paced, with a decent amount of confusion on her part as to what exactly she feels for Takumi. I feel that the whole “love epiphany” part of this route isn’t as good as it was in Akari’s, but it’s nice nonetheless. The plot takes an odd turn for its last third where her rich grandfather claims Takumi isn’t good enough for her, but it’s pretty much resolved instantly. I do, however, like that the final part of the plot has some long-term say in what Takumi will do from now on for the sake of their relationship’s future.

In addition, this route has what I would argue the most satisfying resolution to the whole body double plot. Takumi’s identity is called into question, and because of his duty to Shuri to not disclose the fact that he’s a body double, the friends that he’s made get pissed and stop speaking to him. Eventually, he tells them and they’re all very reasonable about the whole thing because the situation’s ridiculous and out of his control in the first place. Each of them talks to Takumi and Hinata about how they forgive him and they’re still friends, and the route culminates in a bookend dance between Takumi and Hinata.

I liked it. 7.3.

Shizuru

I wanted to like this route. Shizuru is the most ojou of the ojou characters in Noble Works, and her scenes in common route are pretty decently cute. The reason she and Takumi interact at all (she takes classes a year ahead of Takumi) is because he has agreed to teach her how to win at shogi. To be honest, Shizuru’s existence within Noble Works is somewhat forced—due to her distance from the rest of the characters—to the point that her common route scenes tend to just be teaching her shogi or randomly running into her in a hallway. Not that those kinds of encounters are bad. In fact, I liked them much better than the actual route.

Shizuru’s route involves the fact that she is apparently to be engaged to Shuri. Not Takumi, but Shuri. Of course, Takumi falls in love with Shizuru, and of course it’s mutual, so the main conflict is a reversal of Akari route, where this time it’s Takumi who has to choose between his duty to Shuri and his love for Shizuru.

Unfortunately, Shizuru route appears to have been written by someone who is neither a writer nor has experienced a relationship in their lives. The writing is stodgy—assuming the translation can be trusted even somewhat—and is often inconsistent. One specific example involves a scene opening with “ten days passed since that day,” then a few lines later that time period is referred to as a week, and when you look at the days in the log it’s actually been about two weeks.

To add to my criticism on the writing quality of this route, the pacing is abysmal. The route “kicks off” with Shizuru suddenly and angrily demanding to teach Takumi how to perfect his table manners, and also something about naginata training. This turns out to be because she’s aware that Shuri is being considered as her fiancé, and she wants him to be at least a decent pick in the eyes of her family.

There’s not much anything in the form of intimacy (not talking about physical intimacy) that is even hinted at in the first third or so of this route. In fact, Takumi seems to be just kind of dragged around bemusedly and he puts up with it because he’s worried his apparently bad table manners’ll give away his identity. And then the story transitions into a confession from Takumi to Shizuru with the grace of a translator impulsively creating an entire blog to rant about the manga series he does because he didn’t like the newest development. And then a few h-scenes that aren’t particularly appealing and are actually a bit weird to have to get through cause they happen at school, one of them in broad daylight in the courtyard.

Then the bigger secondary plot happens that I can’t actually really even remember because I was so disinterested at this point. Something about people finding out Takumi’s identity and then Shizuru gets pissed cause it turns out that the boy she fell in love with is in fact not in fact the boy whom she has in fact never met, but in fact is the boy whom she thought was the boy whom she had until a certain point never met and had been under the impression that she had met but in fact never had. What I’m saying is the route is trash.

Shizuru had potential for a good route, but the potential is buried under an avalanche of bad writing and h-scenes that I would consider lack both necessity and taste.

This route blights an otherwise nice VN. 1.0.

Maya

Maya route is very, very good. It’s one of those routes where I have very little to complain about, other than I wish it were somewhat longer. Maya is a socially awkward girl with this terribly hilarious dialect (sounds like Hiroshima with the “-jaken”) whose family is apparently a yakuza family. In terms of where she stands as a character, she’s top-tier for me. Incredibly cute and assertive when she wants to be, her route is very, very nice.

Part one of her route is over very quickly. Apparently no one in the cast has cottoned on to the fact that she is very clearly from a yakuza household. She’s really nervous about it, having been stung in the past by previous friends, and eventually she tells them and it’s one of those moments where no one, heartwarmingly enough, gives a crap.

The route then rolls into the relationship with her as she gets flustered by all the stuff Takumi says about her and eventually she realizes, with a bit of prodding from Kotetsu, that she’s in love. She’s very much okay with this and after only a short span of time, the relationship is official. The best part of this route, other than Maya herself, is the fact that the relationship kicks off with Takumi confiding his body double secret to Maya, with some very reasonably-given permission from Akari and co.. This deception is accepted by Maya, who considers the situation and also considers the fact that, since she became friends with “Shuri” only once Takumi had started as his body double, it didn’t actually mean anything more than a change in what to call him in terms of their relationship. It lends intimate and trusting undertones to their relationship, and the relationship is developed consistently and constantly via the phone conversations that they have almost every night.

The route’s secondary conflict comes from the fact that, surprise surprise, Shuri apparently has a fiancée, and anyone who would bother to look it up would know. There’s actually a rather satisfying scene toward the beginning of this where Kotetsu tries to tell Maya about Shuri having a fiancée and how that most likely means bad things for their relationship but Maya is totally confident and just tells him to not worry, because at this point she’s already in the know. I’m kind of a fan of deliberate avoidance of really trite plot developments.

Anyway, the route’s actual conflict in the second half is that Maya’s dad finds out about both the relationship and the Shuri-fiancée thing, and gets hopping mad and tells Takumi to never come near his daughter ever again. Takumi then does what any protagonist does and gets the shit kicked out him by his future-father-in-law, and ends up getting his blessing because of the fire in his eyes, Johnny Joestar style. Less fingernails, though.

I like Maya route a lot. It’s the best one Noble Works has to offer, and apparently most other people agree. It’s heartwarming, cute, well-written, and well-paced. There aren’t any thoughts or emotions that seem forced or out of nowhere, and though the plot is pretty cliché, it’s a cozy plot for a cozy VN.

Maya is now in my top 3 for romance VN heroines. 9.2.

Bonus Route

Noble Works‘s bonus route is hot garbage. It’s a teacher route, most of which is done within the common route scenes. The contents are thus. Teacher lives in poverty (she actually cannot afford to pay for consistent meals) because she apparently wastes all of her above-average teacher salary on microbrewed beers. She teaches “Shuri” about curry bread and holds his head in her chest during school hours because she’s definitely a professional teacher. The route ends more or less immediately after the usual branching point, with one h-scene shoved in just to make sure it’s “worth it.”

This route is garbage but it’s what I would expect for a teacher route. What actually makes me rather mad is that the devs probably could’ve made a Makoto route, which would have probably been amazing, and decided to give us this. It’s actually annoying. The only saving grace is that it’s mercifully short.

Therefore the next paragraph will be a review of a hypothetical Makoto route. 0.0.

Makoto is the “best friend” character in Noble Works, a girl who is the first to greet you at the new school, since she already apparently is acquainted with Shuri, though not yet friends. She’s one of those silly and perverted characters that loves to grope other girls and interrogate people about their relationship, but holds a very concrete goal of being a fashion designer, and the work that she puts into achieving her goal is shown multiple times in several different routes. Her route would be good, assuming decent writing of course, as she has a good thing going with Tatsumi throughout the entirety of the VN, and I can actually imagine the first scene where she’s the one blushing rather than making others blush. Would be very good. Instead, we got teacher route. It’s also somewhat annoying because Makoto gets left out of the plot a lot of the time despite her somewhat central nature within the circle of friends, mainly because there isn’t much reason for her to ever participate, especially when it comes to the plots involving Takumi confessing that he’s a body double.

Conclusion

Noble Works is an easygoing romance VN that you can just kinda sit back and read when you have nothing better to do. It’s nothing that’ll grab you and keep you in rapt attention as you read, but the girls are cute and the established circle of friends and at-home situation is fun and relaxed. I recommend it to people who are just kind of looking for some time off from plot-heavy visual novels and are just looking for some simple romance.

Route Rankings

Maya Akari Hinata Sena Shizuru Bonus Route

Yes, I know I gave Akari a lower score than Hinata above but I ranked her higher. I loved her initial relationship plot but it wouldn’t make for a good review if I scored her route higher than Hinata’s, when Akari route’s later plot was so unnecessary. So, I liked Akari route better but because it’s due to heavy bias on my part, I gave Hinata route a higher score. Or rather, I gave Akari route a lower one. Also, you can probably just skip Shizuru and bonus route if you’re worried about reading fulfillment.

Final Score

A little better than average. I love Maya route but Shizuru route is hellishly disappointing. Akari route is good, Sena route is more or less unremarkable, Hinata route is pretty good as well. Bonus route makes me wish whoever it was that decided to do that instead of Makoto route had never been born. Music is average, voice acting is pretty good, the other little features are very fun and make for a nicer experience than otherwise. Every route’s plot in the general scheme of things seems like plot for the sake of plot, and I would perhaps want better, more natural, and less artificially intense plot that still is heartwarming in its resolution and develops the relationship in each route.

6.4 for Noble Works.

4.0 for the translation by The Oxford Comma is Superior Subs.