JiveSync

One of my ideas during the pandemic lockdown was to learn Japanese; this decision is preceded by years upon years of not trying to achieve this goal, based upon the thought that I could never learn it. Before even that span, I could only read hiragana and katakana, along with a handful of kanji, and the phrases commonly uttered in anime and the weeb space. In those summer months of 2020, I started learning properly, albeit with the assumption of no acquisitions really sticking.

And here I am now, writing this review of a video game with mainly Japanese text, and with the discovery that I can understand most of the dialogue. What’s more, my metaphorical gloves are off, my persistence at the highest it’s ever been, and my daily routine has become evermore centered around learning Japanese, from watching Youtube content in the language, reading untranslated manga, and preparing to take the JLPT this December.

The topic of this paragraph is one that will remain mostly here, but the theme from it is peppered throughout: I’ve never had a greater joy before than this one of being able to understand Japanese text. I’ll wager that some of the satisfaction is from me defeating my fixed mindset idea from before, and another section of the pie is because Ichigo Mashimaro is one of my favorite series. The greatest amount, however, would be the journey that my learning Japanese has revealed, one which takes me into a less-traveled realm of understanding video games, doujins, and other related media more and more, towards appreciating them on a more intimate closeness. The only strategy I’ve been using throughout the venture is being persistent, no matter when my mind thinks I should give it up.

I’ve always loved visual novels since my very first one, which was Hirameki’s English localization of “Hourglass of Summer”. In addition, it’s a good genre to get into as one ages, due to these facts:

-None of the content is as stressful, as dependent on creative thinking, or as frustrating as when they arise from playing another, more action-centered game; on the contrary, playing them can verily increase relaxation, not settling on just fostering the emotion.

-Those fingers of yours aren’t going to be quick and pain-free forever; while playing these games, you simply press a button, or some additionals now and then.

(As I type these, I feel like I’m getting nearer to virtue signalling, so before I continue on, here is where I state that I’m only writing about myself and my opinions!)

-The aesthetic of the games is more relaxing, from the characters and the scenery, to the music and the voice acting. (Unless it’s Higurashi or DDLC)

-Because most of them never got an English translation, they’re an educational way to use one’s time: this desire to use my free time to attain something effective abounds within. I had a video game addiction when I was younger, and due to that I stopped playing them for around six years (No console of mine is newer than a Wii!); so I decided that if I’m going to play a game, I’ll only play one to achieve a goal that I consider tangible and fruitful, which is learning and reinforcing my Japanese knowledge.

A surprising plus of Ichigo Mashimaro is that the Japanese used is far less difficult when compared to the other visual novels I’ve dabbled in (Air, Popotan, and Kud Wafter); to hazard an effective point of measure, I currently can get by (most of the time) reading shorter texts at N3 level, and I can understand around 80% of the text here.

I say this because this is a good game to play if someone is learning Japanese and they want text that is more on par for a novice, delivered in a format that’s more fun than slogging through a textbook. None of the characters explain a situation deeply or wax poetic about something that happened. In addition, some more obscure kanji is written in katakana (uwasa/噂/rumor being an example).

As I prepare to describe the game proper, I’d say that a fair amount of my joy I receive from it came from that feeling of discovery that only arises should one not realize that it were to happen; if you wish to get this game, bear in mind that I’m going to be describing pretty much everything in a manner that will erase the aforementioned factor of unforeseen revelation for the reader. This sort of “spoiler alert” may be reaching (I can only understand myself, after all), and yet I was compelled to type this.

You start off by choosing what name you’ll go by, first and last; the characters call you by this name in the dialogue, and you can use kana and kanji. This screen took me some time to get past:

-You press Circle to advance the game, instead of X; this is the video game equivalent of buying a JDM car, and then turning on the wipers when you thought that you were using the turn signal.

-The controls for this section, where you select a writing script category to then type from (i.e. katakana is in a different section from hiragana’s) are those I didn’t find intuitive.

-last name/名字/myouji is written “苗字”, which was my first time seeing this. All in the learning process.

The plot of the game centers around the player-controlled protagonist, who is visiting where the Ichigo Mashimaro characters live, for a summer vacation of 27 days. He’s Nobue’s childhood friend and he spends time with her, along with Chika, Miu, Matsuri, and Ana. This is illustrated in an introductory sequence after you choose the name.

The main gameplay is what I’ll explain in this sequence; the list takes place as one in-game day:

1: You start in your house, and can either go outside, look at your messages, your bought items, your schedule, or go to the save/load/options area.

2: When you go outside, you open a map of the town and can pick a location to visit. Depending on the day and other in-game factors, some locations have some (or all) the characters at them, some don’t, and some allow you to buy an item. You can visit, as examples, the town lake, the station, a shrine, a convenience store, and the houses where the characters reside. As you progress, some locations (like Ana’s house), can be unlocked.

3: Any location you choose sets you into a dialogue scenario with the girls there, or a soliloquy if no one is there. Like any good visual novel, sometimes you get a list of choices to pick from. This scenario takes place as the morning event.

4: You are then back in your house, and it’s evening. You look at your available locations again, and repeat Steps 2 and 3 for your evening event.

5: Afterwards, it’s nighttime, and the “Go Outside” section becomes “Go to Bed”. You then go to the next day and repeat all of this list.

These additional factors apply:

-When you choose your path and advance in the days, the game sometimes gives you full screen pictures of the characters during an event. These are saved to look at later in the game’s main menu; you can access this gallery after you complete the game once.

-Sometimes, the girls invite you to an event that takes place over an entire day. These events (going to the beach, a matsuri, watching shooting stars, etc.) are longer in real time, and have more picturesque backgrounds. But watch out, as the game sometimes goes Oregon Trail on you and you get a cold for your full-day event!

-As the days go on, the girls give you their phone numbers (I’m not sure if this is some sort of points system, or if it factors into the game mechanics more), you see a scale of 1 to 5 Hearts on how the girls feel about you from time to time, and there was a time where I could pick one character out of the bunch during a soliloquy session.

I really like how the game doesn’t give any room for drama. It’s as peaceful and relaxing as can be. There aren’t any opportunities for you to pick a jerk option, and you can never decline an invitation; the closest it gets is when a character tells you they are doing something, and one option is to ask them to elaborate more, and the other is to help them out. An example of when you talk with Matsuri at the store, and she is buying groceries for her mom:

Option 1: What are you buying?
Option 2: Would like me to help you carry your bags home?

What’s more, some of the choices are about things that were unexpected, fitting in with the lighthearted nature of the game and the slice-of-life source material: one was literally picking one of the three choices of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Another came up when Chika asks you what happens to red litmus paper when you put ammonia on it, for her homework! As I’m learning Japanese here and have little time to learn much of Chemistry, sorry my dear but I just straight up used Google.

I’m not certain if I’m overthinking the complexity of how the scenarios change depending on your decisions (Because I overthink everything!). Retrospectively, when I considered my current in-game day, I chose based on circumstances that started from previous in-game days, or I thought through the possibilities of what may happen due to my decision, but the game cast the characters as talking to me more like each day was its own lifetime for them. I’ll illustrate my word salad with examples:

-Ana thanked me for visiting her house, but Frusciante caused a hullabaloo and she had to take care of that. She said for me to visit at a later day, but the game never gave the option after, of me choosing her house with her in it.

-I bought a cooking book and an English language book, thinking that these would trigger scenarios where I would, respectively, help Chika with cooking something, and Ana with learning English. These guesses were not given reality by the game. I don’t even know if the items do anything. You can’t take them with you during a scenario, you can’t give them to a character, and while you have an allowance, I didn’t see any ways to replenish the money.

-There was a scene at the shrine where I could give an offering. The game gave me the choices for my wish as either wanting to become great friends with everyone, or just Chika. I picked the former option, thinking that the game would give me a more “happy end”, as the cliche goes.

-After my cold keeping me out of the whole-day event, the characters talked as though the event that I missed out on never existed.

Then again, all of this could work the other way; maybe the game does have some behind-the-scenes calculation going on that factors every decision I make. I don’t have tons of concrete evidence to go by. I don’t know how much the game relies on randomness, after all. And I didn’t read the manual much because I was too excited to get the game going!

Also, I had my final scene before the game ended with Chika, who I picked during the soliloquy which I explained before. Perhaps other final scenes are possible. Too many unknowns exist and I’ve only just started playing this game.

The only possible criticism I could give is that you can’t pause the game during a scenario, and you can’t go back to the main menu to, say, look at the images you collected, while you are on the summer vacation. The only time you can access the main menu is when you turn the game on or when you finish one vacation cycle. In addition, the scenarios are on the short side; the half-day ones are only about a minute or two long (some of them only have a single digit number of spoken lines), and the full-day ones feel like five to seven. If you’re a marathon gamer, you could get through the whole summer vacation in one sitting. But when you think about it, this is the best criticism you can give, right? Because you love the game so much that you want it to be longer.

About the vacation cycle thing, once you complete the first playthrough, a prompt appears, explaining that if you load the save file that you used to log this playthrough, more scenarios and special features are available for your second playthrough. The analogy I’ll use is laughably specific and obscure, but it’s like when you play Gradius V, and the game puts you right back at the start after you beat it. This coupled with the sheer number of hidden gallery picture slots casts this game as being more deep than I anticipated. Ultimately, the looping nature gives the game the feeling that you’re visiting them once a year every year, not just a one and done visit.

And on that note, I love playing this game! It’s healing to hear them talk about the minutiae they’ve got going on. In addition, the events are on the whole quite funny, and if they aren’t, get ready to be mowed down by the heartwarming! I can’t get enough of the mid-2000s anime art style, and it shines here, what with how the characters are drawn, and how the scenery retains a more simplistic design with slightly muted colors. How the game looks gives me great nostalgia for when I browsed around the internet during that time period. During the longer scene of watching the shooting stars, I was hoping that it would never end. Well since I’m saying that, really I don’t want this game to end at all.

Ichigo Mashimaro is a wonderful way to just sit down for 30 minutes to an hour, and forget about whatever baloney is going on in one’s life. The content (Slight exceptions are when Miu is wishing for a bigger rack for her shooting star wish, and that you can choose an option to “read an ecchi book” at the convenience store. Some others exist here and there too.) is very wholesome, more than the anime itself, as the game removes Nobue’s yuri side for Ana. Honestly Nobue here is far less grumpy, smoking, and inclined to bonking Miu on the head. She smiles a lot more.

I want this article’s takeaway to be that this is what I thought of an obscure game; definitely not a meticulous review of the game mechanics, and far less a demand that you must drop everything right this second and go buy a copy. You decide what you think of this game now that we’re at the end of the road. In any event, I conclude with the reminder that while gamers all around are playing the latest and greatest, I’ll be in my corner playing Ichigo Mashimaro.

~ゑぼしどり

8-13-23 update: The pictures of this article are now archival! One time when I went to the save menu, the game never accessed the save from the memory card, leaving me unable to control anything. I thought that, because the prompt never came up to "don't yank out that card now", I could pull out the card and then put it back in. That erased everything on the card.

This isn't really a big deal, but it's unfortunate that I won't be able to replicate the route I took. Hopefully, with enough plays, I'll get these CGs back.

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