Magical Otoge Series Review (free otome visual novels)

 

This post was originally published on Fuwanovel Forums on March 2nd 2018.

 

The western otome scene offers a decent amount of hidden gems – small, often obscure titles, that nonetheless offer impressive artistic qualities and/or interesting, unique ideas. It also never stops being surprising to me how many of those games are published for free, sometimes even without any Patreon support or other direct forms of monetization on the part of their creators. 

            Magical Otoge Ciel and Magical Otoge Anholly, developed by Batensan and published for free on Itch.io in 2015 and 2016, are among many high-quality, free otome VNs produced by the booming indie scene in recent years. Still, their author was able to establish a fairly interesting, distinct style both when it goes to art and the storytelling, very consistent between instalments and likely to be continued this year with the upcoming Magical Otoge Iris (with major hints at other, future projects). As both games are fairly short and simple, I've decided to review them together – the very similar writing, art assets and even shared elements such as UI structure and parts of the soundtrack make it justifiable to treat them basically as episodes of a single game. But what are they really about?

Magical Otoge Ciel could be a really memorable experience if the main heroes were just slightly more interesting – it shines the most in Ivin’s bonus route, because of the mystery and humour involved in that specific arc

 

Magical Otoge games, while only very loosely connected to each other when it goes to actual storylines, share a single, low-fantasy setting and offer a similar, comedic formula with very casual storytelling and cute, light-hearted romance. While they’re not completely devoid of drama, they focus on entertaining the reader with witty dialogues and amusing interactions between the (female) protagonists and their (male) companions. The first game especially follows a rather predictable otome formula, with Ciel, a princess frustrated with her isolation from the world and inability to travel and explore it, escaping her kingdom accompanied by her personal knight and his brother. On her adventure, she falls in love with one of the three possible heroes and receives an (unavoidable) happy ending. With little tension and uncertainty in the story, what makes it work are the amusing clashes between the overly-optimistic and slightly airheaded princess and her dead-serious bodyguards. However, things are maybe most interesting in the bonus route, focused on Ivin – a wildcard character, whose unclear intentions, mysterious past and sarcastic attitude make the dialogues even more amusing and add some additional intrigue to the overall story.

            All this is supported by somewhat minimalistic, but aesthetically pleasing art assets. With all art drawn by Batensan herself, the games have a very consistent and pleasant-looking style, but also suffer from lack of variety, especially when it goes to backgrounds and CGs – every route in Ciel usually only have 2 unique drawings, which is absolutely understandable in a free game, but makes it harder for the story paths to feel unique and makes the game struggle to give appropriate impact to some scenes. Something similar could be said about music, which is nice to listen to and fits the games' climate very well but, especially when repeating in the second instalment, can get slightly tiresome.

The second game does a better job at creating an interesting, varied cast of characters, while also maintaining the series' main strength - the light-hearted, well-written humour

 

While you might have already noticed that I had a bit of a problem with first Magical Otoge game playing it too safe, without any high stakes and only little bits of convincing drama, the second one came close to fixing that. Anholly tells a story of a young woman cursed with rampant ice magic – everything around her slowly transforms into a frozen wasteland and she ends up being the only inhabitant of her village after her parents pass away and everyone else leaves the unbearable conditions. People not identifying her as the source of the curse most likely saved her from being killed, why the kindness of her childhood friend, regularly delivering her supplies is the only thing preventing her from a lonely death.

            This is, admittedly, a fantastic setup for slightly more grim and deep story and while the author never abandoned her comedic style (with 4th wall-breaking jokes and puns all over the place), for the most part, it worked great. Also, this time strictly linear structure of the plot helped the quality of the writing and the pacing of the game, which weren’t always consistent in Ciel. In Anholly, the storytelling has a clear focus and the developing relationship between the protagonist and the game's main hero (who shares a similarly tragic background) is both fun and intriguing, even with the hopeless situation they both ended up in.

            It all leads to a predictably dark, emotional ending... Or rather, what would be a very melancholic, but compelling conclusion, was partially dismantled by the Batensan’s attempts to make it light-hearted against all odds (and probably even against the internal logic of the setting). Really, sometimes VN writers should just let sad things be sad – in some cases, a compelling story really needs that.

Both games have their touching and sad moments, but their general atmosphere is very positive – possibly to a fault, as some plot-points would be more impactful if the author let them be appropriately melancholic

 

To complete my obligatory complaining, I will also mention that the humour in Ciel did not always fit my taste, with modern-age metaphors and references that really had no place in the setting. It might be superficial to criticize that in an already 4th-wall-breaking game, but I always see that kind of "jokes" as symptoms of sloppy writing more than anything else – and admittedly, the second game is much more consistent in this regard.

            To sum it up, though, both titles ultimately proved really heart-warming and fun to read. If you’re looking for a casual and relaxing experience, I can recommend them pretty much without hesitation – while in theory the games are oriented towards a female audience, the cute romantic setups and the main themes they touch upon are very much universal. Especially as free products, they're definitely worth a try — although, if you really don’t like otome or prefer fast-paced storytelling, they might still bore you out of your mind.

 
Final score: 3/5
 
Pros:
+ Interesting artstyle
+ Pleasant, light-hearted storytelling
+ Genuinely funny
 
Cons:
- Could use a bit more tension/higher stakes
- Lack of visual variety


VNDB pages: Magical Otoge Ciel; Magical Otoge Anholly
Download Magical Otoge Ciel and Magical Otoge Anholly for free