Male Yanderes

The game starts out with a fairytale about a myrtle tree that became friends with a bunch of fig trees, alluding to later things in the story. The MC talks about how they have moved to a new city to go to their university, but are missing their adoptive parents and their friends. While the MC is grateful about their adoptive parents, they never knew about their biological one and because of this, felt alone despite having supporting family/friends. After arriving to their apartment and taking a quick nap, their mom calls to ask them how their move was and even requests that they take a picture of the city. The MC takes a nap afterwards and in that dream, the MC manifests a tulpa- a bird named Piko- who speaks to them. Piko explains that she will appear to the MC whenever they need help making an important decision and guide them to the best outcome. Upon going to sleep again, the MC feels a great pressure and has to wake up, though failing to do so leads to a bad ending.

Upon waking up, the MC decides to check their laptop to learn more about the city. They find out that Moongazers, a male idol group, is stationed in this town, a group that the MC is interested in. After deciding whether or not to put on a jacket, the MC goes out and can decide to say hi to their new neighbors. If they do, they will greet Nate and his girlfriend who give them a warm welcome. The MC goes out to town to the bustling city before encountering someone working for the church. The nun speaks about the fact that they're hosting a festival tonight, explaining that it celebrates many lost souls that joined their order and abandoned their wrongdoings. After being drawn in with the enticing offer of food, Piko appears, approving the decision of going into the church as the MC is tied to someone in there with a red string of fate. Once inside, the MC sees some sort of hallucination for a second before sitting down. The MC meets the head priest, Cain there, and speaks to him for a bit, before Cain explains the origins of the festival, Adventus Novae Steallae. He explains that there was a group called the children of Eden, which tragically had an unfortunate accident that lead to the death of many people. Those that survived were taken in by the church, and this event was created to commemorate the event. Cain introduces the MC to Luca, another member, who asks if the MC would like to attend the fest. If the MC attends, they will be seated next to Cain before a short prayer and eating. Not attending this feast will cause the yandere events to happen afterwards if you sleep with any of the other love interests, which we will cover in a bit. After the MC leaves, Cain will get Luca to keep an eye on them, happy that they will be tied by fate again.

As they walk along, Piko will note that there is another person coming by that is tied to the red string of destiny. They overhear some girls whispering about the fact that Aiden is in town currently, before soon bumping into Aiden himself. Aiden whispers that he was trying to buy some stuff at the store before being swarmed by fangirls before the MC offers to bring Aiden to a store nearby to check it out. While the cash register guy recognizes him, he promises to not tell anyone as he doesn't want more commotion to happen in the store. Aiden seems very thankful about this and the MC teases him about his food choices. The two of them see an arcade machine which they can play together. Aiden talks about some things with the MC before paying and heading out. After this, if the MC decides to stay with Aiden, it will initiate a sex scene in the back alley and afterwards, Aiden's other members will come pick Aiden up.

After this, Piko will appear, alerting the MC of another possible candidate for the red string of fate. Very soon after, another man, named Isaiah calls out from the crowd to flirt with the MC and even invites them to stay over at their art shop. Isaiah introduces himself as the town's famous tattoo artist and brings the MC into his shop. Isaiah gives them the pet name of Cielito while the MC questions why they're bumping into so many famous people. Isaiah offers to draw the MC, which they can either accept or decline. Accepting it will have the MC find all of the art supplies before Isaiah starts sketching them and eventually gifting said drawing to them. Another lady called Lily (a famous actress) calls for Isaiah, with him bringing the MC into a room to wait for him. The MC waits in the room for a while until Isaiah comes back. Isaiah states that he got some news about personal matters and the MC tries to console him about it. The two chat for a bit and can be prompted to have sex before leaving his room.

Continuing tradition, Piko will appear again stating there is someone nearby. The MC hears someone in a phone call talking about how their date canceled on them and he will end up getting the MC as a replacement as he drives them to the bar where his friends are. The MC learns that he is Haruto, the heir to a rich family though regardless of if the MC disagrees on going with him or not, Haruto will be able to convince them to go. On the car ride there, the MC asks about Haruto about his love of parties, how he likes long drives and his love of the color purple ( while also flirting with them). Eventually, they arrive at the club, Paradise, where we meet up with his two friends, Aurelia and Kyoko. Kyoko asks Haruto if he is going to see Axel, his best friend, but seemingly the two have had a fight, so Haruto refuses to go see them. After the two girls leave, more people come to hang out with Haruto even gambling and playing blackjack, which Haruto can even ask the MC to play. Nevertheless, the two end up in a private room together, and if the MC wants can watch Haruto do a little strip tease for them. Eventually, the MC asks about what Kyoko and Aurelia were talking about and Haruto explains that him and Axel's relationship fell apart because of a close ones death, and now the two hold grudges against each other as well. When the MC leaves, Haruto gives them his number.

The MC starts feeling tired after meeting all of the guys and wants to go home, but Piko tries to get them to meet the final person. The MC sends up seeing someone who is fussing about their books. They explained that they bought a book from a yard sale and wanted to donate it to the library. Given that they are next in line for being the head librarian, they wanted to make a good impression, however, after lending the book to a couple of friends, the person receives it back with a page torn out. The MC offers to help this person out and they introduce themselves as Axel. The two go to the library where they piece together the torn out page thanks to instructions from a poem. Once complete, Axel explains that the symbol seems to be of a ritual, but doesn't know how the decipher it. Axel mentions that its their birthday and the MC puts two and two together, realizing that this is the Axel Haruto was talking about. Axel gets really aggressive when the MC mentions Haruto though apologizes earnestly afterwards. The MC comforts Axel and in return Axel flirts with the MC before talking about poetry and depending on choice will lead to Axel reading some of their poetry to the MC or simply talking about other things. The two chat until the library closes and can initiate sex or just go home. At the end, the MC returns home and sleeps.

As stated before, the yandere scenes only happen if you deny Cain by skipping the event and instead sleep with one of the other characters, where Cain will interrupt afterwards. For Aiden, Cain will strangle Aiden stating that he should have locked the MC in the church. For Isaiah, the lights will suddenly go off and Isaiah will try to figure out the problem, leaving the MC waiting in his bedroom. After a while, the MC will try to look for him only to find that his neck has been cut and that he's bleeding all over the floor, only to reveal a bloodied Cain. For Haruto, while he is giving his number to the MC, Cain will stab Haruto from behind and trap the MC in the room with him. Finally, with Axel, the two will hear something fall in the library and Axel will go and investigate. The MC eventually tries looking for Axel and finds that they've been killed by a bookshelf falling on top of them.

In addition to the game, there's a section in the extras where you can "search" up various terms that appear in the game, a gatcha system that spits out cute images of the love interests and a place where you can buy items by playing games.

First of all, I have to praise this game for having so much content, even just in the extras. It must have taken a while to code three different games into this visual novel given that most visual novels in renpy don't have mini games like this. I like that all of the scenes with the love interests have at least one interactable element in it, whether it be a game or a simple click to find/piece things together. The aesthetic of the UI is very good as well, reminiscent of a Y2K era with lots of pink and flashy colors. I'm not sure what the significance is since it doesn't seem to match with anything in the game lore wise, but I am biased when games have a specific aesthetic that is shown even in the UI. I also like that the MC has a pretty unique situation of being adopted before moving to the city, likely alluding to the cult and event talked about with Cain. I'm not sure what's going on with Pika and the tuplas, but hopefully it connects to the rest of the story in some way.

It's pretty impressive that there's so many love interests all of which display some yandere tendencies in one way or another, usually by mumbling under their breath. That being said, the way that the MC meets all of them is kinda... uninspired. I mean sure, they have the help of Pika and they're connected all by the line of fate, and its even lampshaded in the game, but it is sort of boring to kind of just meet one of them after another, especially since there's little to no buffer between them. I think the other thing is that the history that is connected to the myrtle tree along with the church itself was something that isn't really mentioned too much in the game besides Cain's section and a bit from Axel's section. In fact, I sort of forgot about that entire mention right after we finished Cain's section, which I don't think is a good thing and I think it should be more prevalent in the story. The other thing I have with this game is that there's a lot of cool aesthetics from y2k but they aren't tied to anything in the game. If the MC themselves was really into the style or the game itself was more surrounding the idea of y2k, it would make sense, but as far as I can tell, it's not so the style is pretty confusing to me. Hopefully in the future, they are able to connect these things together so it makes more sense.

Every love interest in this does display some sort of yandere tendency, though it is mostly under their breath, either talking about how they met the MC before or how they want to keep them for themselves, but ultimately it's very little since the game is trying to establish the characters first before heading to the yandere portion. The only exception to this is Cain who is responsible for all the bad endings in the game so far, though it is pretty blatant considering in every one of those endings he ends up killing a love interest. From what we can tell, Cain is very jealous and has no problem killing even his own brother, and he is not happy when the MC rejects him. I'm not sure why he kinda just lets the MC sleep with everyone if they do go with Cain to the event, but I'm sure that's more of a gameplay quirk and less of a story thing. From what I understand, he's more of the "ring leader" of the other yandere characters, though I don't know what this implies, though the MC seems to somehow center around the tragedy that Cain talks about. I hope that we get to see more yandere stuff in the future.

The first story starts with Iori realizing that he is in love with his childhood friend, Remmy. Remmy starts to hang out with another girl named Rica a lot, going home with her and making Iori jealous. Iori ends up talking to Rica for a bit and after a while, Rica and Remmy break up. In the end Iori confesses his feelings for Remmy and seems to state that Rica actually had a crush on him the entire time. In the next chapter, we see Remmy's point of view instead. Here we see that Remmy actually started hanging out with Rica just to see Iori's reaction. We find out that Rica actually has a crush on Iori, which is why Remmy started to hang out with Rica so much. Remmy lies to Iori about having a crush on Rica, and Iori is pissed off. Remmy continues to talk to Rica about Iori and eventually when Iori does start talking to her, Remmy grows possessive over Iori. In the end, Iori rejects his confession to Rica and the two end up together, with Remmy watching Rica's face as the two friends embrace.

The second story starts with Kurokawa waking up and getting temporary amnesia, only knowing that he has to remember someone and never forget them. He ends up going to a school afterwards and later calls his mother about it. He remembers that his left arm has a sprain and can tell that his mother is keeping things from him. Later during school, another student named Usami comes to eat with him and seems interested in his memory recovery. While Kurokawa looks through his house for clues, he continues to talk to Usami about it. Usami reveals that his parents died in an accident and that someone promised to be with him. Usami pretty much almost kisses Kurokawa, wanting him to remember his promise quickly. Later, a teacher comes to him asking about Usami, though it seems that the two have never met before. Kurokawa starts piecing together what is going on, and finds out that Usami is actually his adopted brother. We find out this Usami is actually named Sone and that Kurokawa made a promise to him that he'd be by his side. Eventually the two end up falling in love, though Kurokawa's mother finds out and utterly disgusted, chases the two out. This is what causes Kurokawa to fall down the stairs next to Sone and how Kurokawa lost his memories. Kurokawa ends up visiting Sone in the hospital eventually waking him up. We see a flashback with Kurokawa listening in on his father talking about getting rid of Sone by shipping him off to another place so that he won't be a bad influence on Kurokawa. Later in the rain, Kurokawa ends up pushing and killing his father by pushing him down the stairs, thus causing everything in the first place. Kurokawa keeps this secret from Sone, happy that the two ill be together forever.

The next story follows two twins, Reizeru and Noizu, with Chris coming to greet Noizu. After hearing the rumors that the two can't be told apart, Chris comforts him as Reizeru goes to his class meeting. He is then told by other classmates to smile more like Reizuru. In the hallway, he sees Chris kiss Reizeru and afterwards starts taking to heart to act and behave more like his brother, to the point of Chris nearly mistaking him for Reizeru and where he was mistaken as Reizeru during the meeting. Reizeru confronts Noizu about taking his place in the meeting, and tells him to go back to being Noizu, but Noizu starts to argue with him, jealous that he has Chris and everyone's attention. This leads Noizu trying to kill himself with a knife only for Reizeru to try to stop him and the two to end up falling out of a window. Chris ends up coming during the last minute and sees the brothers fall. Reizeru wakes up in the hospital to finds Chris next to him and breaks the news that Noizu ended up dying. Chris confines to Reizeru that Noizu had been acting weirdly. During the funeral it becomes pretty obvious that Noizu was actually the survivor and that he will now pretend to be Reizeru to be with Chris.

The last story is actually really cute and not yandere at all, basically following a scary guy who is actually really sweet and hates that everyone is scared of him who meets a guy who makes manga. I honestly think that this might not even be the same artist who did the rest of them because the style looks so different.

Anyways, this anthology of stories all have at least one yandere in it (barring the last one) and have all twisted stories which I find entertaining. I always think there's something really fun about more twisted stories, especially those with yanderes since they can often go very far just for their love. The first story goes more for the both of them are yanderes, though in different ways with Iori being more jealous, destructive and possessive while Iori is far more manipulative. Seeing both sides of this does make me feel bad for the girl, Rica who just wanted help with confessing to Remmy though. Iori was just using Rica and even lies to Remmy just to see his reaction and Remmy pretends to be chummy with Rica for a bit just to get Iori jealous and this poor girl is just stuck in the middle.

The story about Kurokawa is kind of confusing, given that he is an unreliable narrator essentially seeing the ghost of his love, though I guess it makes sense given that he also doesn't really have his memories anymore. Seeing that he's the one who actually caused Sone to stay with him by killing his own father is pretty brutal, especially since it was his mother who caught them and eventually ended up leaving Kurokawa and Sone in a coma. But yeah, I'm sort of surprised that nobody ended up catching Kurokawa killing his father. Kurokawa is pretty possessive in this one and manipulative, not letting on to Sone that he was the one who sort of orchestrated the two to be together, and especially chilling given that he pretty much just realized after remembering and still continues on with his plan.

The final story of the twins is probably my favorite because of how vague the ending is. While it is pretty heavily implied that Noizu is the one who lived, its never outright stated and technically could just be Reizeru who lived (though that would defeat the entire plotline of Noizu wanting to become Reizeru). The tragic twins in BL is not a new idea, but I do think its done pretty well for an anthology story, with Noizu slowly realizing that he could become Reizeru and that Chris actually was not as good at telling the twins apart as he could have. It must have been really sad to realize that he just simply wasn't as notable as his twin brother and that everyone preferred his brother over him, even if they couldn't even tell the two apart, and that the only person who seemed to really be able to tell actually wasn't able to at the end. I think because its a tragic story, with the death of Reizeru being an accident, that Noizu is now forced to live as him. Though now he gets to be with Chris, as after all, that's why he threatened to kill himself and caused Reizeru's death.