Hatoful Boyfriend

So, last Friday I bought a computer game, which is something I almost never do. This one is the English version of a Japanese game called "Hatoful Kareshi" or "Hatoful Boyfriend". It's a type of game called a "dating sim", where the goal of the game is to win the love of one of the other characters. Which character you end up with (if any) depends on the choices you make throughout the game. I don't think we have so many of these games in the U.S., but in Japan it's a pretty common type of game.

This game, more specifically, is a dating simulator where all of your love interests are pigeons. Well, pigeons, doves, partridges... several types of bird. In an era where bird flu has killed off most of the human population and birds have become intelligent, you are the only human student at a school for gifted birds. You can date several of your classmates, the homeroom teacher, or the school doctor. Each one of them has their own backstory and quirks. The homeroom teacher, for example, is a narcoleptic quail.

By varying your decisions throughout the game, there are 12 different endings you can reach. Most of them are happy, although one of the characters will murder you if you date him. My favorite storyline ends with an RPG (role-playing game) style battle to save the school from the evil forces summoned by Dark Sorcerer Wallenstein (who is also a bird). In other words, the fact that you are dating birds is not even the craziest aspect of this game. That's only the beginning of the madness.

Playing through the various routes has kept me quite entertained for the past several days. I have come to like these pigeons, and to sympathize with their plights. Some of them have had pretty tragic lives. But you don't get the full scale of the tragedy until you play through the final route, which only becomes available once you've played through all the other possible stories. In the last route, the game turns from a dating sim into a murder mystery. Your character, the human girl, is murdered partway into the story, and from that point onward you take the perspective of one of the birds who is trying to find the killer. Along the way, you discover some very disturbing things about the school's history. Each of the birds makes some soul-scarring discoveries or revelations about their own pasts, as well, and for each one of them their entire world view crumbles to pieces as they watch in horror. No one escapes unscathed. Basically, each of them has their soul crushed in the most horrifying way possible. Only at the very end do the pieces start to fit together, and what you find is not especially comforting.

There's an epilogue after the game that restores a little bit of hope, but I have to say that after playing all the way through, I was emotionally exhausted. Which is kind of amazing, when you consider the inane premise of the game; how does a game about dating birds manage to manipulate the player's emotions to such an extent? In a really strange way, it's almost a masterpiece.

So, yeah. This weekend, when I wasn't working or seeing friends or going out with Tatsuya, I was dating birds. And it was epic.

A side note: The title of the game is a pun. "Hatoful" is meant to be the pseudo-English word "heartful" (it's English according to the Japanese, at least), but "hato" is also the Japanese word for "dove".

For your enjoyment:

It is time to end this, Dark Sorcerer Wallenstein!

Your best friend is a cross-dressing pigeon. Just go with it.

An encounter with the "punkgeons".

And so the world was engulfed in pudding. The end.