#blgame

This is a bit of a shorter game because it only focuses on two main characters, so it took me about 15 hours to finish it, which is similar to the playtime of Parade's second game Room No.9. There are 5 different endings which were all pretty easy to get as there's not a lot of choices in this game, and I think some choices also aren't available during the first couple of playthroughs, so you don't really need a guide for this one.

Kento grew up in a harsh environment and as a result of that, he ended up in a juvenile detention center twice. After turning 20 and entering adulthood, he finally decided to turn his life around and find a job. However, one day while riding his motorcycle, he collides with a car and is hospitalized with serious injuries. Because of this past and his bad relationship with his family, he doesn't have any friends and family to rely on, which is why Yoshino, the man who owns the car he collided with, decides to help him. At first Kento's attitude towards him is bad and he doesn't understand why he keeps visiting him, but this quickly changes when he spends more time with Yoshino. After he's discharged from the hospital, Yoshino allows him to stay at his house until his injuries are healed.

The first part of this game mostly focuses on Kento's recovery, but there's a lot of timeskips so the pacing of the game doesn't feel slow at all. This game also has quite a lot of 18+ scenes now I think about it, but it doesn't feel like these scenes were just randomly thrown in there. When a BL game has too many random 18+ scenes I tend to get a little bored, but that wasn't the case luckily. In general I was just really interested in seeing how they'd eventually grow close enough to do those things together, especially because Yoshino's such a serious character and not the type to play around with other men, and I think Kento wouldn't either. I think as usual they're supposed to be ''straight'' lol, though Kento does have some dialogue in which he's also doubting this.

The sexual depictions in the game are mostly consensual, but like any Parade game, this one also deals with heavy themes such as abuse, rape, and suicide, which is also mentioned on the official website. The descriptions are sometimes very detailed, so just be aware of this before you play, though if you've played any of Parade's games in the past you'll probably be fine. Even though it deals with a lot of serious topics, there's plenty of cute scenes too. I really liked how Yoshino has two cats called Gomashio and Lulu, and at first Kento isn't sure how to react to the cats as he's not used to them, but later it's pretty cute to see him playing with them. I expected his personality to be a bit different honestly because he's pretty rude in the first 15 minutes of the game, but he really just wants to learn new things and make up for any mistakes he has made in the past. Because of his upbringing, Kento never learned many of the basic skills people his age usually know, for example how to properly clean the house and how to cook, so Yoshino decides to teach him all of that. When the game was announced I was a bit surprised that the protagonist was a muscular guy, because all of Parade's previous protagonists are (kind of?) skinny guys. I think this is also a reason why many people got interested in their games, as it used to be quite rare for BL visual novels to have a top protagonist in general, especially one that would top muscular older guys. Looking back at this though, I can kind of understand it now, because Kento's much younger than Yoshino, and throughout the game you also learn that Kento has a pretty innocent personality and Yoshino's the older one who's teaching him all kinds of things. So in the end he's not too different than the other Parade's protagonists, maybe only his appearance.

Yoshino's character was a bit mysterious to me at first, because I also wondered why he wanted to help Kento, which is mostly explained later in the game. He seems really stoic and serious at first and I understood that because he's a teacher, caring for someone is something that's also natural for him I guess, but letting someone live in your house and helping them bathe etc. obviously isn't something a regular teacher would just do for someone. I can't say much more because I don't want to spoil his backstory, but I do think it was incredibly well written and I finished this game in two days because I couldn't stop playing. Some parts of this game did remind me a little bit of their first game No Thank You!!, because even though the plot isn't similar, I guess the general atmosphere and build-up kind of is. For example in both games most of the other main characters seem to be living a pretty stable life when you're introduced to them, though later you learn that many of them have a darker backstory and are facing all kinds of challenges in life. In lesson you also don't learn a lot about Yoshino until later in the game, and there's many things about the story I really couldn't have predicted, which makes it a really good game in my opinion. The artist of this game is Nikaidou Shino who also did the art for Room No.9 and Lkyt. and I love their artstyle, so I certainly wasn't disappointed and all the CGs looked great. By the way, I always find it funny that there's a button to turn the body hair off, but if more people can enjoy the game that way I'm all for it.

Probably a bit of a vague review because I am trying so hard to not mention what happens later in the game, but I just wanted to say that I loved it! If you're interested in purchasing this game yourself, it's currently only available on Fanza which you do need a VPN for, but after that it was pretty easy to purchase. Also important, make sure to update Soft Denchi as it might give you an error while opening the game if you're running an older version of it (or if you don't have the software yet). Since MangaGamer localized all of Parade's previous games, I also think it's very likely that this game will get localized eventually. The game is not too long so maybe the localization also won't take too long? Who knows...! If you're not sure if you will like it or not you can also try the trial version, which can be downloaded on the official website now!