Update Eighteen: 6 July 2017

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Dogenzaka Lab is a developer that makes a lot of mobile otome games - otome being visual novel dating sims aimed at women - and, after the loosening of some of Valve’s standards w/r/t sexual content, their PC ports have hit Steam. The vn equivalent of trashy beach romance novels - you’re not reading them for a unique insight into the human condition, you’re reading them for the pretty men who desire you. I’ve played three or four so far and they’re all pretty… not great. A guilty pleasure, for sure. But this time, there was some surprises…

The Men of Yoshiwara: Ohgiya is the second installment of a Meiji-era alt-Japan where an unnamed island is plagued with a very low male birthrate. Therefore, what virile young men that there are are relegated to a pleasure district, to service women and produce heirs. This focuses on the men in the Ohgiya brothel, where your mother sends you to become a woman and produce an heir, so you can take over the family’s high-end kimono tailor business.

This is like a weird hodge-podge of… kind of empowering? (the reversal of the sex trade, where men are objects for women to buy, and you pretty much ‘save’ each man by rescuing him from the brothel and marry him) kind of very tone deaf? (this kind of institutionalized sex work - essentially sex slavery, because most of the boys in the game had no choice and were sold into this - is fucking horrifying) and also not a great translation? (the men are treated very respectfully and idolized by all the women clients, there is absolutely none of the kind of ‘you’re a dirty dirty whore no one will love you bc you’re tarnished now’ rhetoric that plague real-life sex workers, majority female, and this is replicated pretty much in every other piece of fiction with sex workers in it. Also, like I said above, the super happy end is you marrying your chosen hot man and legitimizing the relationship.)

Other than the goofy premise, which, you know, suspend your disbelief, Ohgiya is actually…. pretty good? The early Dogenzaka games released with absolutely piss-poor translations. Like in my Never give up! review, the issues weren’t even so much grammar or spelling errors, though it had (and has) those too, it was the poor use of language. It was almost caveman-like in the erroneous or too-simple use of language that drew every scene like a three-year-old’s fingerpaints. It didn’t work great, and made what softcore intimate scenes there were absolutely laughable. Dogenzaka apparently is doing good business and has upped their translation game accordingly, and now complex emotions are drawn out of each route, including some moments of real poignancy and emotional intimacy. The writing’s getting better, holy shit!

Beyond the big stumbling block of…. the mc just is never allowed to want to be intimate with these men. This is a common thread in Dogenzaka games, and in otomes in general, where the female mc just… cannot enthusiastically consent. She has to resist, she has to not want it, she has to be ashamed and embarrassed. She’s not allowed to say ‘yes’ in these games, which makes a lot of the intimate scenes really uncomfortable. This isn’t specific to the genre, or to Japan - she has to say no and be talked out of it (even if she actually wants this) because if she DOES say yes, if she DOES want this…. well, she just can’t! It’s just not done! This slutshamey attitude is even more absurd in this setting where…. she is showing up to a brothel…. specifically to have sex to produce a child…. with a sex worker. It reinforces the ‘with girls and sex, no means yes’ attitude which is incredibly dangerous and damaging, and it sucks to see that surface even in media made p much exclusively for women.

Okay okay okay, beyond the politics of this, I enjoyed myself, the dudes were cute, there was a lot of crying, the character arcs were interesting. If you’re going to pick up a Dogenzaka otome game, this isn’t a bad one to start with. There is almost no rapey stuff in it, too! which is also uncommon for otomes!

God, this gene needs to do so much better. Well, at least the boys are pretty.

Next up: Another Key kinetic novel about a robot girl, so I’m going to cry a bunch probably.

See you soon!