They pretty much share a route so I typed it in one post. Yayoi is the oldest of the Isumi sisters, and is obviously the motherly kind of girl who is always looking after her younger sisters and Masaki. She’s 4 years older than him, and doesn’t have a job nor does she go to university. Yayoi is basically like a housewife for her imoutos and is a kind onee-san. I do like kind onee-san characters sometimes (although the cool/strict senapi-like type appeals to me much more), but even Yayoi is just too “motherly” for me. In fact, rather than my mother who is moody and often at work, Yayoi reminds me much more of my grandpa. Good-tempered, always smiling, willing to listen to anyone, doing housework all day, cheering for people to chase after their dreams, etc…the list could go on. I won’t try to induce disturbing mental images for you or me, so I’ll end my comparison here. Anyways, Yayoi is the kind type who doesn’t get mad easily, but once she does (like when you break Masaki’s air conditioner…), she becomes traumatizingly scary jsut by her aura.
Yuri is Masaki’s co-worker at Mitsuko’s studio. On the day of Misa’s photoshoot, Yuri came knocking on the door to ask Mitsuko to look at her photos and the latter is less than impressed. After seeing her countless albums with each picture that is properly dated and labelled, Mitsuko decided to hire her for the day and Masaki convinced her to hire her as an assistant. Yuri is hard-working and dropped out of school and left her home in the countryside to become a photographer. She’s poor and living alone right now, and also isn’t the most feminine girl around. They say she’s a bit similar to Yayoi because she is kind, always smiling, and willing to listen to everyone, but also like a female version of Masaki. She is one year older than him and likes to call him Maeji. She also has an older boyfriend at the beginning, but of course they never did anything because only the main character can take a girl’s vriginity!
Like Akira and Misa’s route, Yayoi and Yuri’s route branches in the 1999 segment after Masaki has started dating Yayoi and left for New York. I guess Misae and Touko got the better end of the stick as side characters because Masaki didn’t need to break up with anyone for them. Anyways, in the 1998 segment Masaki falls for Yayoi after she attends some class reunion and a guy confessed to her there and then hugged her. Yayoi was like “do not want” and went home drunk. Masaki confesses to her but she asks for some time to think about it. She accepts the confession at the hotsprings trip and h-scene ensues. The next day the Isumi imouto think something is up with Yayoi so they devise a plan to get her drunk and reveal everything, but they get drunk instead lol. The day after that Masaki and Yayoi go to the lookout by the lake where love is rumoured to come true, and the officially start dating. They go back home, the Isumis get to know Yuri who Masaki invited for dinner becasue she is poor. Things go well until Masaki gets a chance to go to New York, where Yayoi tells him to focus on work because his dream is her dream, but Masaki is like “YAYOI-SAN WILL BE LONELY SO I SHALL DITCH WORK TO GO ON DATE!” *facepalm* Yayoi finds out that Masaki skipped work and will ruin his dream when Yuri comes to tell her and she is disappoint. Like usual, Masaki’s photos turn out like crap when he’s going through the angst and even decides to give up on his dream and stay with Yayoi.
Masaki gets yelled at by Yuri and Michiru, who also reveals that Yayoi was a genius who could do anything when she was younger but found it pointless to acheive her goals without hard work so she decided to stay back and support other people on their dreams. He finally realizes that Yayoi wants him to go to New York so he makes up with her, takes fabulous photo, and leaves for NY. The Isumis also tell Yuri that she can come eat anytime. Half a year later, he comes back to Japan in April and Yayoi has learned how to ride a motorcycle (CARD GAMES ON MOTORCYCLES!!). He tries to get Yayoi to move to America with him but she refuses because she wants to take care of her imoutos. Here’s where Masaki becomes REALLY stupid. He makes Michiru, Marika and Akira sign a contract saying “We shall do all housework ourselves so Yayoi can go to US” and presents it to Yayoi in hopes of convincing her to leave her imoutos and go with him, but it obviously doesn’t work. He starts raging and asks why she doesn’t want to go, but she doesn’t explain and leaves. Masaki continues to meet with the 3 imouto (at the cafe, where his bill goes well over 10000 yen from just dessert) to try and get Yayoi to go with him. Finally, he rages at her for not telling him the reason because she thinks he will be hurt and she is treating him like a child. Yayoi says that she can’t go with him no matter what and says that they should break up because she doesn’t want Masaki to be concerned about her and instead focus on his dream.
Masaki runs off to Mitsuko’s studio in hopes of ranting to her, but he meets Yuri there who is in just as much of a ranting mood as he is. It turns out that she has just found out that her boyfriend is cheating on her and she’s been angsting because she’s been at Mitsuko’s studio for half a year and barely made progress (whereas Masaki went from crap to genius in 3 months). Also, her cheating boyfriend has become a stalker, waiting in front of her apartment every day for a chance to “explain” things. Masaki tells her that it’s not safe to go home and invites her to live with him. She takes the offer, and of course this is an eroge so a girl living in the MC’s house will not result in simply sleeping. Yuri asks Masaki to take her first kiss because he is kind, and obviously kissing results in an h-scene. The 3 Isumi imouto find out about Yuri and Masaki living together and they tell him to worry about Yayoi instead. Michiru tells him that if he wants to choose Yuri, he should go see Yayoi and end things off clearly so that she can take a new step. Yuri’s boyfriend comes to look for her at Mitsuko’s studio, and asks Masaki (who he thinks is Yuri’s superior) to let him explain things to Yuri. Masaki agrees and he starts explaining how he went out with her as a joke at first and then fell in love for real, etc. He does it in a way that deosn’t sound like a jerk and asks for forgiveness and Yuri tells him to give her some time to think.
In the Yuri end, Yuri sees Masaki’s old crappy photos and decides to work hard, officially break up with her boyfriend, and go home to explain things. She says that she always thought she worked hard because she was poor and had to earn cash, but she’s actually been slacking off on her dream. She leaves for home, and sends Masaki a letter saying that she’s decided to stop working as an assistant for Mitsuko. Masaki finally gets it into his head that he likes Yuri and breaks up for real with Yayoi. Then he runs off to the train station with the intention of going to Yuri’s hometown and bringing her back. At the station, he runs into Yuri who just took the train back. He assumes it’s to tell Mitsuko about her resigning, but she’s actually back to become Mitsuko’s DISCIPLE instead of an assistant, and start back at zero and work towards her goal of becoming a photographer.
In her epilogue, Yuri and Masaki are working in New York as photography partners.
In the Yayoi/Yuri end (sort of a bad end I guess, since the credits don’t even play at the end but you get Yuri’s 3rd h-scene), Yuri decides to go back home and all, but Masaki stops her and confesses to her. She tries to resist, but he pretty much forces himself on her and she becomes his girlfriend. Later, Yayoi comes to his house hoping to reconcile. Masaki loves Yuri now, but he’s too much of a wimp so he accepts Yayoi and lives the rest of his days as a two-timing coward who lost his passion for photography.
In Yayoi’s end, Masaki realizes that he’s been running away all along and Yuri tells him to go try and understand Yayoi even if she doesn’t see things the same way as him. He realizes that he saw Yuri as both similar to himself and Yayoi, thus he ran away to her. Yuri also decides to go home because she’s been naive this whle time. He goes to the Isumi house to make up with Yayoi, but he sees Michiru there instead. He proves to her that he’s serious, but it turns out that Yayoi left home on the day the imoutos went to Masaki’s house to ask him about Yuri. Yayoi and Michiru had an argument and the former was gone the next morning. Since Masaki left for New York, Yayoi had been trying to find her own dream. When Masaki came back like a pro, she felt inferior and ran away, refusing to go to America with him. She was scared of not being able to do anything in America and would only hinder Masaki, so then Michiru raged at her and she ran away from home in fear of facing her.
Michiru doesn’t want Masaki to be tied to such a weak person and asks him to go be with Yuri. Masaki refuses, so Michiru offers herself to him with the tsundere line “D-don’t misunderstand! I-I’m only worried about your future…I just want your goal to come true!” Masaki is surprised that she’s been so concerned for his future and thanks her. However, he believes in Yayoi, saying that she definitely had a reason and isn’t running away. He asks Michiru to believe in him and help him search for Yayoi. He decides to get his friends and Mitsuko to ring up some of their bike otaku friends to ask if the’ve seen Yayoi or her bike. Moments later, he gets more clues and concluded that Yayoi drove to the onsen they went to last summer. The TV mentions that the heavy rain caused floods and blocked roads, so basically Yayoi was gone for so long because she couldn’t come back due to the rain. Michiru tries to call the onsen but the telephone lines aren’t working so Masaki decides to go there by train. He gets to the onsen to find out that Yayoi already left. He figured that Yayoi went to the lookout by the lake, and goes there. He finds the lookout completely wrecked, and Yayoi is clinging onto the side of the cliff. He tries to pull her up, but a tree branch gets stuck in his arm while grabbing ahold of her. She tells him to let go but he refuses and pulls her up while having a branch stuck in his arm.
Yayoi admits that she felt inferior and tried to change herself to match up to Masaki, but then realized that she is happy being the way she is and wants to go to America to support him. Masaki ends up in the hospital and his wound was so deep he can’t bend his thumb and index finger anymore.
In the epilogue, Masaki has become independent from Helmut and ever won the first prize in a photography contest. His right hand hasn’t recovered, but that hasn’t stopped him from taking photos. He and Yayoi also go back to visit the onsen and the lookout by the lake, where everything began.
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Hnnng that was great. I didn’t expect Yayoi to have such a good route, since the motherly type characters always get shafted if they’re even gettable/exist in the first place. At first I thought Masaki was a complete retard and facepalmed lots, but he became a pretty cool guy by the end. I like how they actually showed character development in Masaki instead of making all his development take place off-screen in NY and coming back as some magical adult who is pro at everything. Yayoi’s route was eventful, stuff actually happened, and I didn’t just set it on auto while I go off browsing unlike most of the other routes. Yuri’s route, on the contrary, felt quite bland. Her ero voice also greatly disturbed me, as it sounded like it was really painful.
Personally, I’m not a fan of Yuri nor Yayoi’s character types, but I liked the drama here.
カレーまみれ勇者の冒険 Curry Chronicles 