#I think peaches from in the valley below fits Tokisada and his route

[heatwaveorchid]

Some (Spoiler Free) Thoughts on Tokisada's Route:

Let's get this out of the way: I don't like shotas. Younger guys who do the whole oneesan thing don't do it for me except for Gretel, sorta, but I have a giant crush on Takuya Eguchi so I let that slide. Yet, Otome games love having them. Just really not my thing.

On the bright side, I tend to really adore guys associated with the color green. Shiraishi, Victor Frankenstein, Kent, Gretel I'm sorry for this one, Yang I'm not sorry about this one. So did Tokisada live up to his fellow green comrades?

Well...I suppose the honest answer is to wait until the end of my run but for now, I need to acknowledge the things I really liked and disliked about the route.

Pros:

+ The romance. I was pleasantly surprised by this. I'm gonna be honest here: I greatly preferred this romantic development in this route than in Riku's. I'm a sucker for the boy meets girl, boy is into girl, girl decides to give the boy a chance by going out on cute dates, girl falls for boy trope. I found it to be surprisingly realistic and rather refreshing. A lot of their early scenes were super cute and all of those cute moments were utilized effectively for the later plot moments, which is something I like because I'm an emotional masochist. I think he and Olympia developed really good chemistry as the route went on that if felt natural.

+ I learned about some history? Yeah, that was cool. I caught Tokisada saying something something that I culturally recognized and then I learned a bunch of stuff about Catholicism in Japan of all things. Speaking of Catholicism, Olympia Soiree does the religion much better than Piofiore did. The less we talk about that, the better. I'm a history minor but my area of focus is not Asian History (although I do know a bit about Central Asian) so I learned a ton of new stuff here which is always awesome!

+ The villain of the route. I think I simped harder for the villain than Tokisada himself. So much so I want to write something about it. Also the bad endings were kind of fire, imo. Trashfire but it's still fire!

+ This route gave me an intense need and craving to try mint chocolate ice cream so I bought some talenti and it was amazing. Thank you, Tokisada, for opening my eyes. Your taste in ice cream is impeccable.

The Neutral:

+/- Tokisada's character development. At times, I felt this was too on the nose sometimes, like yeah he wants to change and grow up, we get it. He also does some stupid stuff which I high key kind of found myself groaning at. He does grow by the end, at least and wants to keep changing. Was it as perfectly done as say... Shiraishi? No, but by the end of the route, it did feel like he had changed for the better and found a purpose and a place to belong, which is always a great thing.

Cons:

-It bears repeating but I really don't like his character archetype. Shotas just aren't my thing. At least him and Olympia are close in age, I suppose?

-I loved the villain but I wish there was more time spent on it. It wasn't as bad as Riku's route, where the villain's motives felt weak, as though it'll be revealed in a grander scale on another route, but I felt more could be done. I'm still so intrigued by this person but there's so much more than could be done.

-I found the ending to be rather rushed and it kind of felt cheap. Don't want to delve too deep into that, but yeah.

Verdict:

I hate to say it but I liked this route more than I intended. My expectations were extremely low but I kind of came out pleasantly surprised. I feel kind of bad it's above Riku's in terms of route rankings even though I would much rather date Riku, lmao. He's not at the top of my green guys, who are at an impossibly high tier for me but he tries his best to be a good guy, which is neat.

I'll give him 7 and a half mint ice creams, but I'll be nice and give him 4 ice cream and 4 peach emojis🍦🍦🍦🍦🍑🍑🍑🍑

And a new thing I'm incorporating:

Flashback counter: 76, 79 if you wanna include the short story

I intend on taking a super small break for Deltarune because I realized the other day that I've played 10 Otome games in a row and should try something else, but I'm super excited to get on Yosuga's radar, because he sure was on mine since the moment I spotted him. Also purple is one of my favorite colors. so what it doooo 💜💜💜💜💜💜💜