No One But You (PC) Review

The "action" takes place in the hometown of the main character, Hideaki, which is Okutama, but, of course, everything would be the same even if that was Hinode, Mizuho, or Kamikatsu, since, it's all about - nicely-drawn - generic rooms, generic schoolyards, generic shopping malls, generic parks, and generic hot spring resorts, with a surprisingly large assortment of pleasing, yet equally generic, variety of tunes playing along in these scenes. In other words, the actual place and time don't really matter much. What matters, though, is the story, or, to be more precise, the characters that appear in it.

Besides Hideaki, there's the typical cavalcade of women who - surprise, surprise - get very interested in him the moment he makes his first step into this clean and colourful anime world, and before he even attempts to steal their hearts. The cast includes the typical hard-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside tsundere, Yui, Megumi the stalker, cute and coy Shiro, courteous yet distant Chinachu, and deceptively carefree/foolish Ryo, who, by the way, is a romantic interest, despite being a dude…

The good thing with these bluntly stereotypical guys and gals is that it's actually just a first impression, since they develop quite nicely as the days go by - apart from the main character, that is, who, while not one of these forgettable visual novel nobodies, since he actually shows more emotion and frequently cracks jokes, is not something special. Then again, this has always helped with making the reader feel as if he (or she) is the protagonist.

Note that, just like in real life, there's a nice balance between joy and sorrow here, with humour usually being a false front for the underlying pain. Ryo, for example, who actually develops faster than everybody else, starts off as the annoying class clown, but quickly shows that this is just a psychological "shield." The rest follow a similar pattern by confessing more to Hideaki the more he tries to approach them. Speaking of which, the outcome of choices tends to usually make sense here, which means that when trying to reach a specific character ending, there's no need to follow a precise route or something - just be friendly towards whoever that is, and all will be fine. That isn't to say that there isn't some challenge available, though.

Yui's finale is as easy to reach as it is easy to miss, just by making a wrong move right before the very end. Flirting with Megumi and Shiro starts off as a pretty straightforward task, but requires some tricky decision-making afterwards, and Chinachu, whose back-story is weird, to say the least, is surprisingly difficult to approach. The only disappointment is the way the relationship with Ryo (an otherwise great character), turns from friendly to romantic in an awkward, and completely out-of-the-blue, way.

The best thing is that, instead of just a romantic comedy, this actually becomes a very emotional tragedy, with most of the back-stories being quite sad - and that's an understatement. The bad? From the humour, to the romance, to the drama, to the various aspects of the plot itself, the writing is very, very bad. Not the funny type of bad, however, just the boring one. Ever read any generic fan-fiction on the 'net? The kind that's riddled with clichés and badly-delivered plot twists? This is exactly like that.