Yes, Date A Live. It’s not actually horror? Are you sure? Positive?
You’d be right. It’s a cliche harem comedy with some shounen battle bits as it goes. The main character has to date and basically seduce spirits, who are always girls, so that their powers go down and they stop basically exploding entire cities and countries. That last part is the one where this could easily a horror story. Think, if you make the wrong comment during a date, boom! Everyone you know and love is dead.
The first of three Vns in this collection does kind of have that happen. Some of the bad ends are you made the wrong comment, boom. Everyone in town died because you suck with women. That’s not really the focus of the story in any bit of Date A Live, but is a very easy what if of the whole setting.
Also, this is made by Compile Heart/Idea Factory and Sting and in my quest to finish every pervy Compile Heart game I had to read this Vn collection at some point.
Some overall stuff before going into specifics here, it’s more of two games and a fandisc then 3 VNs. Date A Live isn’t really an ecchi heavy series so while there’s a decent amount of attempts at ecchi in the VN, few of these really work mostly because of the body designs being too slender, especially any attempt at ass content. Also, despite the main character of Date A Live being a combat type protag, he is not in these. They depower him in each story which felt kind of bad, one of the few good things this series has is that the protag actually uses partial amounts of the conquered girls powers so he actively gets stronger as he goes through the series.
My biggest complaint with the whole story is the main character in general. By getting rid of his relevance for combat, you are left with a bog standard harem protag with his fear of actual female contact up to max. Half the girls want to jump him or get jumped, but even hand holding a group of girls he needs to get along with is to high level for this MC. According to some notes, he does eventually get used to seeing naked women so much he can stay calm and deal with situations, but in these he is nowhere near that. Any contact with these girls is almost a mental breakdown. In these Vns at least he also seems to have no confidence in these girls liking him, when their love for him is literally the most important goal for this lead. Their stated declarations come across weak when the next two lines he thinks he’s not good enough or some other dumb it’s not time yet thing comes up.
It’s also weird that for such a dedicated harem series, all three of these Vns lack a harem ending. If you did have a favorite from this series it’s nice as your favorite gets devoted screen time and plenty of cgs. It’s just an odd choice to cut harem out entirely.
Rinne Utopia
So this is a time loop story. It reveals this very early on, and it’s really just the reason all the routes happen and don’t at the same time. The actual story takes place around volume 4 of the light novels, right after the fifth girl is “dealt” with but before any events of the beach trip from Volume 5. Really I’m just stating you got the first 5 girls.
So this one has locked routes, the only of the three VNs other then the true route for each. The two locked routes make no sense though. The time witch girl feels like her route is leading to the big reveal for true, but it’s never referenced. In fact the one part of each route that is brought up in true is just basic daily life stuff, it’s weird.
The game opens with Tohka, the first main spirit, about to blow up the town because her power just went crazy. MC deals with this and then blacks out. Upon waking up he learns all his powers have left him, including his healing factor. He is a basic human for this story, running around trying to keep the agitated spirit girls calm since something in the air is making them dangerous.
Also the town is sealed off. Then memory shenanigans start and it’s pretty obvious this new childhood friend by the name of Rinne isn’t someone our lead knew before. After her intro the main character does question her a few times and does try to get closer to the truth of what’s going on a at least once a day. so props for having him try.
It’s mostly dating stuff after that. You can mix and match girls, but will bad end if you don’t have a clear favorite by the end. It’s okay, but nothing special as a read.
Arusu Install
So the military group that helps the MC made a virtual reality game to help him learn some game with the girls. Only that once he goes in he finds an AI person that shouldn’t be their and boom. He’s locked in and can’t get out. The Ai girl, Arusu, then has the people outside send in all the main girls so that Arusu can observe them with MC and learn what love is. This takes place after volume 7 and adds in a set of twins and a busty idol girl. I actually like the twins a lot, having one be a chuuni and the other a robot like kuudere is a nice change from constant tsundere and deredere.
As an extra VN to Date A Live, I think this is better then Utopia. Instead of kind of vapid dating and characters arcs the world forgets about in canon, the dates you do to decide your route are actually Arusu messing with their life roles. So let’s take Tohka, aka girl 1 as an example. She gets turned into the school nurse, a girl running an antique shop, a student… slave I guess, and a student with MC as a doctor for physicals.
It’s a lot more fun messing up their dynamics like this throughout and letting the girls be different people with their core traits still there. The endings don’t really have any weird drama to resolve like Utopia did either, in this it’s just them dating for a bit and done. Back to start until time for true.
Rio Reincarnation
The fandisc to the other two games, it’s heroines are Rinne, Maria Arusu, and Marina Arusu. So the original characters got their own VN. Kind of. it’s a short thing that basically just lets them all exist at once and has the MC deal with how he said goodbye to them.
Not much really happens, it just adds on to Utopia with some dangling plot threads. The new girl, Rio, is in the read for like 30 minutes total and is basically a plot device. It’s not worth getting through the other two games for, but it’s not a bad send off for the whole package.
Perv Stuff-
Rio Reincarnation has one single cg of a lingerie show between Kurumi and Origami. That’s it, most of the cgs are of the safe and emotional variety.
Utopia really only lewds Origami, though it tries with Kotori. Plenty of panty shots and butts with that trademark Neptunia esque cg wiggle. Plenty of the cgs are of the safe, tame style of pervy content where it’s a slight peek or they are pointing their butts at the camera or cosplaying.
Install lewds up Mika plenty, Yoshino(youngest) gets the second most for some reason, and the thighs on Maria and her monochrome twin get some focus. The rest are mostly safe, usually doing an odd fetish focus(ex. collared Tohka, cat girl Kurumi). Points to the twins puddle cg where you get their panty shot in a reflection. That felt reaching.
Save for Date A Live ~Rio Reincarnation~
All cgs, full memory section, everything unlocked.
english h-rpgs 