Women's Clothing is a legendary work in the Beautiful Girl game
Since the fire of "Girl In Love with Sister", the representative work of the beautiful girl game company "Caramel BOX" in 2005, the pure love work with the theme of "the protagonist sneaks into the women's college in women's clothing" seems to have become one of the industry's favorite creative templates. However, compared with other ordinary beautiful girl games, "Women's Pure Love" is still a somewhat special type of game.
First, it sets the inevitable core contradiction for the story from the beginning; Second, it also requires producers to be able to strike a balance between male and female perspectives when creating scripts, depicting a more unique emotional ups and downs in the usual love stories and "lilies" works.
But perhaps it is because of the existence of these creative thresholds that the "women's clothing" works have become one of the most popular game themes in beautiful girl games. And the work I want to talk about today is the representative of this batch of high-quality "women's clothing" works - in a sense, it may even be more familiar to contemporary players than the landmark "Girl Loves Sister".
"Etiquette of the Near Moon Girl" was released on the Steam platform on June 17
Etiquette of the Girl of the Near Moon (月に寄りそう乙女の作) is a "women's clothing" beauty girl game released by Navel ten years ago – interestingly, it was also Navel's first "women's clothing" theme work.
In order to make a satisfying game, the production team of "Etiquette of the Girl of the Near Moon" gathered the core members of the Navel Society, including Aoi Nishi and Hiroshi Suzuhira, who were responsible for the original painting and character design, who were responsible for the script, such as Wang Quesun and Lin Bin, and the opening, closing and interpolation songs of the game were also sung by Akira Migo, Sasuke Sahana and Miyuki Hashimoto, who were familiar to the players.
For today's players, there is obviously no need to say more about how successful "The Etiquette of the Near Moon Girl" has been, after winning the sequels of "moe-gameaward2013" (萌えゲーアワード2013) in that year, Navel launched "Girl Theory and Its Peripherals - Ecole de Paris- " and "Etiquette of the Girl in the Near Moon 2" in one fell swoop, and actively ported the game to major console platforms. There is no doubt that "The Etiquette of the Girl with the Near Moon" has become the most representative work of Navel, and even the entire "women's clothing" theme game.
And like most similar games, "The Etiquette of the Girl in the Near Moon" also uses the plot structure of "the protagonist woman dresses as a man to infiltrate the girls' school" - the male protagonist, Ōzo Youxing, is the illegitimate son of the leader of the consortium because of an extramarital affair, and has long grown up in an extremely distorted family environment, which forced him to give up his dream of being a costume designer. Therefore, in order to be able to sneak into the women's college founded by the well-known designer to study, You Xing, with the encouragement and help of his sister, changed into women's clothes and became the exclusive maid of the talented girl "Sakura Koji Luna" who lived in the "Sakura House" of the mansion. For the next few years, he will be an attendant to "Asahi Kokura", learning costume design skills while taking care of Luna's living with three other cohabitants.
Even today, after playing countless masterpieces, "The Etiquette of the Near Moon Girl" still has a fairly strong work quality - whether it is in terms of operating system, illustration style or use of music, it is difficult to associate it with a game "ten years ago".
There are a total of four attackable heroines in this game, except for Sakura Koji Luna, the hostess of the "Sakura House" who is obviously of a more special status, the other three are Yushir, a big miss from Switzerland, Mizuho Hanamiya, who was born from an old nobleman in Kyoto, and Yanagisse, a commoner who has a special relationship with Youxing. Each character has their own strong personality traits.
As one of the traditional elements of the "women's clothing" work, "The Etiquette of the Girl near the moon" is the protagonist of the male and female costumes "Kokura Asahi", from the appearance to the psychological state, there are a large number of unique portrayals based on "gender" and "cross-dress" - with two-sided words and deeds, natural with serious personality, exquisite and cute appearance, and soft heterosexual atmosphere emotional description, coupled with nishi Aoi, a female illustrator, for the role of exquisite and delicate image depiction, directly led to many players like to jokingly "she" Called "the real heroine".
However, it should be admitted that the success of "The Etiquette of the Near Moon Girl" is indeed inseparable from the shaping of the protagonist "Asahi Kokura". Unlike most similar games, Asahina Kokura is not a "genius" who can easily solve the problem, while embracing the "gender" problem, he has always faced the crisis of losing his dream, special identity and ability identity throughout the story, no matter what story the player chooses, he cannot escape his worst enemy.
At the beginning of the story, "The Etiquette of the Girl of the Near Moon" shows the player an extremely gloomy and dark prologue in a way that is similar to classical drama - in the process of less than ten minutes, the tragic life of the protagonist Ozo Yuxing from birth is quickly spread, but after the prologue, the style suddenly changes, and the whole becomes bright and joyful - this unique narrative structure, in addition to directly pointing out the core contradictions of the story, allows the player to naturally understand and substitute for the protagonist's behavioral motivations. It is also a good performance of the transformation and growth of the wandering star.
Perfectly echoing the complete three-dimensional character image of the protagonist "Asahi Kokura" is the first heroine of this game, "Sakura Koji Luna"—to put it bluntly, it is the existence of this heroine that has made the "Etiquette of the Girl of the Near Moon" series and Navel achieve today's achievements.
In the game, Sakura koji Luna is the employer of the protagonist "Asahi Kokura". Luna, who has a talent for costume design, has a lonely and cold personality, and the special appearance and past brought about by "albinism" directly leads to her defensive posture and way of saying and acting, often shutting herself in the studio to carry out "costume design" related work. For the so-called "same-sex love", there is no interest in it. In simple terms, you can understand her personality as "arrogant with mild S tendencies", but at the same time appear more rational and independent. The spat between her and Yushir is one of the most interesting scenes in the story.
However, as the game progresses, players can gradually understand Luna's inner charm from Asahi's perspective - contrary to her weak and lonely appearance, she can always show a strong personal will no matter how powerful her opponent is; Under the character of aggressive words and deeds and love to tease others, it is considerate and caring for the friends around them; Under the genius of design ability, there is also a side that is not good at typography and tailoring- and as her relationship with Asahi deepens, this charm is gradually amplified step by step.
And the real brilliance of the script of "The Etiquette of the Girl of the Near Moon" is also here.
In the Luna Line, the author devotes a great deal of time to describing the slow progression of their relationship. As a designer, Luna and Asahi, who is a pattern maker (a character who makes designs into sample paper in clothing production), support each other, and while facing the psychological trauma of the party, they gradually cross the usual master-servant relationship, and finally face a common crisis hand in hand. And even compared with those equally excellent beautiful girl works, "The Etiquette of the Girl in the Near Moon" is no less exciting to describe this process - whether it is the scripter's precision in grasping the feelings of the characters, or the fire for the rhythm of the whole story, there is no trace of extra ink.
In fact, as the heroine of a single beautiful girl game, Sakura Koji Luna's popularity among players has long been somewhat "incredible". In the "Getchu Pretty Girl Game Awards" organized by the beautiful girl game sales site Getchu, Luna is the only character in history to win the "Most Popular Character Award" for three consecutive years - and even more outrageously, in the 2013 award-winning "Girl Theory and Its Periphery - Ecole de Paris-", Luna only appeared as a supporting role for a very short time. In the 2014 award-winning Etiquette of the Girl of the Near Moon 2, she even appeared only as a store bonus. To this day, Luna is the only "hall-level" popular character in the award.
I don't know if it is lucky or unfortunate, under the influence of Luna's too strong character charm, the other character routes in this work are also somewhat influenced by her. Because the shaping of a certain character is too successful, the presence of other heroines is greatly reduced, which is also the most embarrassing place in this work.
Considering that the character route of this game is shared by multiple writers, it is not surprising that there will be differences in style or level. But as I put it back and forth, "The Etiquette of the Girl with the Near Moon" has done enough in the overall character composition - even the most despicable "villain" in the story, it is difficult to make people feel disgusted from the bottom of their hearts, let alone these heroines who have been created with their hearts. However, Sakura Koji Luna's character design is too three-dimensional and perfect, even as a supporting role or a friend of the protagonist, players will unconsciously be attracted by her light.
Like Asahi and Luna, the other three heroines in this game, Yushir, Mizuho and Shun, also have their own independent personalities and personalities. When players choose their route, they can also clearly see their respective troubles and secrets, and if only in terms of the completion of the script, the route of all three of them can be called remarkable.
But on the other hand, as Asahi's employer and a friend of the three heroines, Luna shows her unique goodwill and charm no matter which route she is on, as a price for not setting a "plot lock", players have a good chance of directly choosing Luna's route, which eventually leads to the eclipse of other people's stories.
In addition to the charismatic characters, another subtlety of the story lies in the scripter's use of the setting. To be honest, as far as the theme of a "women's clothing" beauty girl game is concerned, "costume design" is really not a dazzling theme - but "The Etiquette of the Girl of the Near Moon" tightly grasps the theme of its choice from beginning to end, not only setting the stage of the story in Tokyo Harajuku, which is known as the "Fashion Capital of Asia", but also focusing on all the dramatic conflicts in the story in the process of costume production.
Although it does not involve too complex costume design concepts, in order to prevent players from unfamiliar with the terminology in the work, a "terminology dictionary" has been added to the setting interface so that the game can be read at any time. This attachment to the worldview and setting naturally becomes an important cause of the integrity and rationality of the story.
What I never thought was that until a few years later, when I clicked on "The Etiquette of the Near Moon Girl" again, its story and characters would still be so attractive to me - after all, in the past decade, the beautiful girl game industry has already experienced an unknown number of updates, and many "women's clothing" masterpieces have appeared in the player's field of vision every three to five years, but even so, there is no work that can replace the special status of "The Etiquette of the Near Moon Girl", let alone any role. It can once again give the player such a strong impression as Sakura Koji Luna.
Perhaps, this is the real sense of "masterpiece", the posture that should be there.