Tenshin Ranman Review

Company: YuzuSoft
Game site: 天神乱漫 LUCKY or UNLUCKY!?
Release date: May 29, 2009
Links: Getchu, walkthrough, seiyuu listing

A pure love school-based ADV that is both cute and slightly ecchi, Tenshin Ranman is YuzuSoft’s 4th release and has a different feel from their previous game.  The story revolves around Chitose Haruki, his misfortunes and a goddess that appears to reverse his luck. Will his bad luck finally be lifted and what good luck will befall him?

There is a patch (ver 1.02) for the game that fixes some minor errors.

	Sana-chan! Hime-chan!
	Ah, good morning, Honoka-san.
	What’s wrong? You seem more excited than usual.
	Big news! You two are featured in an upcoming article!
	Hou~
	What… is it about?
	Oh, everything everyone wants to know of course! That’s the purpose of the newspaper!
	…
	E-e-everything!? Nii-san will find out everything! Nii-san, don’t go around spying on others like that, even if we’re…
	Ah! But everyone else will know too! W-w-what should I do!? B-b-but, if nii-san is fine with it, then I don’t care if the whole world knows either!
	Come nii-san! Let’s tell the world how much we love each other!!!!!
	…
	Honoka, how could you be so cruel to your friends…
	How can this pure maiden live with the shame of strangers peeping into her heart….
	Gu~ru gu…
	Here, just read it. See ya!
	Hey! Come back here!
	… nii-san… ehehe…

Opening Theme

YuzuSoft doesn’t hold back when making OPs. This time, it’s almost fully animated and even has a dance (à la Haruhi). I didn’t quite see the point of the dance as it relates to the game, although it is cute. Sakakibara Yui does a great job singing this upbeat song.

Scenario

A normal day for Chitose Haruki is one of accidents and bad luck. Even if it isn’t raining, he will get wet. If he drops his cell phone, it’ll be into a puddle of water. He has lost track of how many times he has lost his wallet or house key. Over time, he has gotten used to it.

One day, a large cardboard box is delivered to his house. Haruki opens it and a girl steps out. She introduces herself as the goddess Unohana no Sakuya Hime and proclaims that she will help protect him from misfortunes.

「妾はな、その不幸からお主を助けに来た」

She says that he is cursed by the Gods with misfortune. While she cannot dispel the curse as it had been passed down for generations, she can help alleviate the effects by sucking out the misfortune. She then leans in and kisses him on the lips.

Tenshin Ranman has 6 routes, with 4 full length heroine routes and 2 shorter subheroine routes. The common route lasts until the beach outing in July, after which you are locked into a route. There are no bad ends. Mahiro and Yukari’s routes are considerably shorter and only resolve one problem and explain the character’s past. While, there’s not really a set order you should do the routes, I would recommend leaving Ruri for last. Her route is a bit different than the others. Once you have completed all 6 routes, an extra H scene will open up in mid-June (I highly approve).

As the subtitle to the game (“LUCKY or UNLUCKY!?”) suggests, a major theme among the 4 heroine routes is whether his misfortunes really are bad at all. Just like real life, there are two sides to everything and bad luck can have a good outcome. Other themes that are present include true happiness, sacrifices, miracles, sharing burdens, love overcoming all odds, and never giving up even if the future looks bleak.

The game is mostly comedic during the common route and then becomes more romance-based and dramatic during each heroine’s route. I like how the perspective changes sometimes to show the story from the other side, so you can understand their feelings too. While I think the endings were quite satisfying, I think the pacing could have been better. Some of the scenarios took too long to get going, especially Aoi’s. I also felt that some of the H scenes weren’t really necessary, especially those in the epilogue.

There’s a cameo of Yuiko and Futaba from Natsuzora Kanata. During the club activity trials early in the game, there are numerous parodies, including Prince of Tennis. Hime really shouldn’t learn from manga and games. I also thought it was quite nice of her to break the fourth wall and mention flags, routes, BGMs and event CGs.

THIS IS AN IMOUTO GAME
(Lies, Hime is not an imouto!)

Sana’s (HIME’S) route was pretty much perfect from beginning to end. From her nii-san suki suki aura to the final trial of their fledgling romantic relationship, I was extremely happy. I just wish there were even more deredere moments, especially during the summer months. I think I must’ve replayed her route at least 3 times now. It’s such a touching imouto route （ ´Д⊂ヽ

While I loved Sana’s route, Hime’s was just as good too. I was greatly moved by Haruki’s speech and was despairing when everything was going badly. Ruri’s helped explain about the curse, although I felt that the route wasn’t really about Haruki and Ruri’s relationship. I couldn’t get into Aoi’s at all since it was too drawn out (I liked the ending though). For a short route, Mahiro’s was sweet and made me feel for her character. I finished Yukari’s in record time since I was terrified of her.

「佐奈ちゃんが普通の妹なら、
全国のお兄ちゃんは大変なことになっちゃってるよね」

Micchi’s recommended route order:
Aoi, Mahiro, Yukari, Sana, Hime, Ruri

Micchi’s route rankings:
Hime, Sana, Ruri, Mahiro, Aoi, Yukari

Well as Micchi already covered the basic overview, I will offer up a few of my opinions and observations on the scenarios. As I do so love to complain I will start with everyone’s favorite, the negatives! I feel that Tenshin lacks a lot in the writing department. While Micchi pointed out the pacing being off, I feel the problem goes even deeper than pacing. The writing itself was overly descriptive, going into unnecessary details and dialogue that can normally be assumed and ignored. Felt to me as though they resurrected Nathaniel Hawthorne from the grave and had him write out the scenarios. Problem being that this type of writing often puts me to sleep… in fact I passed out at my computer during the Sana route. (That was not Sana’s fault) Of course we know this is due to Sana being good for nothing besides comic relief.

Pacing is of course the other major issue that comes to light, most profoundly with the Aoi route. Aoi just drags on and on and on until your finger itches and begs to hold control just to make things go faster. While it is difficult to properly illustrate the issue without revealing spoilers, I can say that with Aoi they dragged out her issues way too long. There were days and days and days that felt like carbon copies of one another with NOTHING changing. In most cases the romantic developments did not feel natural. Stories develop so slowly and awkwardly only to hit a point where, suddenly some catalyst brings things to a head almost instantly in comparison. Mahiro, Yukari and perhaps Hime had the best pacing while Aoi was by far the worst followed by Sana.

On somewhat of a side note I also felt that the overlap between the routes did not help much in keeping things interesting during replays. For the most part with one major exception the various routes began and ended on the same days dealing with a similar progression of events in the school. By the third route this was getting to be more than a little old and I really longed for some other events to take place. Even the date scenes were similar and gave off a feeling of copy paste being used liberally.

Now with my complaining out of the way time for what was good and made this game worth playing. To start witIT HAS SANA!!!! Interruptions from people obsessed with characters no one else really cares about aside, the characters are one of the main appeals of Tenshin. Yes yes I am aware that can be said for almost every eroge that people want to play. However what I am highlighting is that there are a number of touching moments and developments which really help you grow attached to the characters. Hime’s route especially was very well done with plenty of romantic moments mixed with a healthy dose of comedy. I especially enjoyed how the game would change perspectives to give another angle on characters emotions and or plot developments.

I also felt that Haruki having to actually do something other than be ‘kind’ was worth noting. Aside from the two half-assed routes Haruki takes a more active role than most protagonists. Having to actually work and prove that he truly cares about the other person. This came together especially well with the Hime route. I found this a refreshing change from the usual kind, lump of uselessness that are most eroge protagonists. Sitting around playing nice guy and letting the girls come to you gets a bit old after awhile.

While this will have to be quick to avoid spoilers I also did enjoy most of the endings. They were quite touching and gave a nice feeling of completion.

Zen’s recommended route order:
Whoever you want, Ruri

Zen’s route rankings:
Hime, Mahiro, sana, Yukari, Ruri, Aoi

Characters

Chitose Haruki

Destined to a life of misfortune, Haruki has resigned himself to getting into accidents and trouble. While he seems apathetic, he is actually a kind person who won’t give up on something if it’s for people close to him.

Normally, I wouldn’t include a picture of the protagonist, but Haruki was just too awesome in Hime’s route. When he wants to get something done, he sure doesn’t fool around. I agree with Sana that he’s probably a tsundere uke.

I rather liked Haruki as a protagonist. Besides the standard nice guy protagonist he starts out rather boring and the girls tend to bring out the other parts of his character even as he helps them with their problems.

Unohana Hime

Unohana no Sakuya Hime is a goddess sent to Haruki to protect him from misfortunes. A bit of a troublemaker and likes teasing people (Haruki) to see their reactions. She doesn’t seem to like her superior that much.

When the character designs first came out, my immediate thought was: Haruhi. While not exactly the same, there are similarities. Suprisingly, I liked her character as she’s playful, yet can be serious.

Hime is just.. so perfect.  I liked her character by far the most of all in Tenshin. Her playful teasing side is funny yet she knows when not to tease and joke around. Her stare of doom is epic as are her jealous outbursts. Hime is quite frankly the type of person I love to be around so I really enjoyed seeing those character traits in an eroge heroine.

I can definitely see the Haruhi resemblance as well. I think it is just the overall art style that really begs for the comparison.

Though I am sure that for everyone besides Micchi this goes without saying, I will venture to say it anyway. Hime > Sana hands down no questions asked.

I know I’m not the only one!!

Your numbers will pale in comparison to those who like Hime.

Rindou Ruri

Ruri is a fox spirit that followed Hime from the realm of the gods and ends up living together. She doesn’t like Haruki much as she thinks that he’s bothering her Hime-nee-sama, and often bites him on the arm. Converses with animals and acts like one too. Easily tempted by food. She often uses colorful adjectives to describe things.

Ruri’s just like a cute pet that takes some time to tame. It’s funny seeing her animal instincts and behaviors.

Loli furry. I really don’t like Ruri. Frankly I find her bothersome even though her biting is amusing. The whole innocent animal bit can only go so far. I can only imagine she is here to appease the furry crowd.

Chitose Sana

Sana is Haruki’s younger sister and has a huge brother complex. When she panics, she often says a lot of embarrassing things, although it just shows how much she loves him. Great at cooking and housework, and nice to everyone. A bit scared of ghost stories. Surprisingly knows a lot of otaku terms, probably from reading manga.

THE BEST IMOUTO EVER. Hau~ omochikaeri~!!!!!!! My favorite character ever. She’s such a loving imouto who cares greatly for her nii-san. Her slightly ero thoughts and dere side are killer, especially when she sneaks in at night to sleep together. It’s hilarious when she’s out of control. When she gets jealous, her ‘dark Sana‘ mode reminds me of Da Capo‘s Nemu.

Sana is an extremely cute character who goes to show exactly why the role of cute imouto is for comic relief. I like Sana a lot… AS an imouto to laugh at, nothing more. She can however cook. This is a plus and means I would definitely want her as my imouto. Nothing quite like having your own private chef mmmm delicious.

In the end her personality is too childish for me to have any interest in her.

She’s mine. Hands off.

C’mon share. Won’t hurt to let her cook for other people too! Let her be useful!

Yamabuki Aoi

Aoi is Haruki’s childhood friend, whose good looks and cheerful personality makes her popular at the school. However, she turns down everyone who has confessed to her since she doesn’t really have interest in romance. She often gives protection charms to Haruki to help him ward off misfortune, but they don’t seem to work. She isn’t honest with her own feelings and thinks of others before herself.

She’s a likeable character, albeit a bit boring. I couldn’t really get into her route.

I feel that Aoi’s character was not done justice with her route. She could have been developed far more without dragging things out so long. Her route aside she is a cute character who needs constant reassurance.

Tokiwa Mahiro

The student council president of Mizunagi Gakuen. She’s great at studying and very kind. Doesn’t like to trouble others and would rather do things herself. Loves curry.

The first of two subheroines, Mahiro is likeable and smiles a lot. Even though her route was short, I thought Mahiro’s character was well described. It’s odd that I’d like big-breasted senpais, but I’ll make an exception this time.

Another character I liked a lot. Mahiro has a really fun personality that makes you want to hug her. Unfortunately I cannot say all I want to about her or else I would ruin the bulk of her route.

Karasuba Yukari

The second subheroine, Yukari is Haruki’s homeroom teacher and is the youngest teacher in the school. Makes it known to her students that they shouldn’t do things to waste her time. She doesn’t like smoking, but she always keeps a lighter and cigarettes on her.

S. I don’t want to be her pet T_______T

I hope she puts you in a cage and throws away the key, so then I can steal Sana and make her cook for Hime and me! (In your dreams) I will place a Sana plush under a box, you cannot resist.

Ahh Yukari. The character for all the M people out there. Frankly I do like Yukari however I would have liked it a lot more if the main character would tease her back more often. She was really cute when being teased.

Subcharacters

The subcharacters are well rounded and utilized decently in routes (some more than others). They include energetic classmate Honoka, Aoi’s older sister Wataru, baka classmate Iori, Haruki’s childhood friend Kotarou, Haruki’s grandfather Shinichirou and strict teacher Oitake-sensei. Wataru reminds me of Shuffle!‘s Kareha when she goes into starry-eyed mode. Also, I didn’t know those glasses had such a powerful ability!

The subchar I liked the most was… Maebara!! She only appears in Hime’s route and is Haruki’s kouhai from a previous school. But… she doesn’t even have a picture and only has like two dozen lines. Am I weird for liking a character based only on sound!? I must be attracted to kouhai-types…

I bet you liked her because you could sense the loli with her still being in middle school. Don’t lie by using kouhai! It is just that she’s loli!

SANAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Overall, the characters were ok. I thought Aoi was too bland and Yukari was WAY too S.

Micchi’s character rankings:
Sana, Hime, Mahiro, Aoi, Ruri, Yukari

Characters really are what made Tenshin worth playing (especially Sana). Though only about half of them had interesting routes the characters themselves were not badly done and cover a rather broad range of personality types. Some of which are rather rare.

Zen’s character rankings:
Hime, Mahiro, Yukari, Aoi, Sana, Ruri

Graphics

The artwork for Tenshin Ranman are by Mururin and Kobuichi. The CGs and backgrounds are where this game shines. Coupled with the HD quality, the art is really well done and captures the sentimental moments quite nicely. I thought some of the eyes were a little bit off. There was a CG for epilogues too, which I generally loved since it felt like an ending. I was extremely impressed with the background quality; there’s so much detail. The tachi-e had lots of variation and there was a lot of movement on screen too.

My only complaint is that I would’ve loved to see more non-H CGs, as well as more group shots.

The SD CGs are pretty standard, but there were some I really liked, such as the one with Haruki and Sana at the movie theater. So cute!

I have to agree about the artwork being generally above par. As well as with there not being enough non H CGs.

To be honest while I liked the widescreen I felt it was entirely useless for the most part. I cannot really think of any point at which widescreen was taken advantage of. There were mostly normal sized images placed on a wider background. As such I can’t see the point of even making the game widescreen other than to use it as a gimmick to help sales.

However I feel that a lot of the emotional moments had somewhat bland shading which hindered the capture of emotion properly. When doing night and sunset type shots the shading really helps bring out the emotion of the scene and I for one felt it was a bit lacking, giving off an almost inorganic mechanical feel.

There were also a few scenes the most notable of which being the final Hime H scene that gave me a feeling of perspective being lost completely. In that particular scene the scale of Hime’s head to her body made her look rather loli. There were a few other scenes which repeated the same mistake, surely nothing major but still a minor flaw.

System

Widescreen HD! Woohoo!!! It looks so good. *drools*

The textbox is the usual and isn’t obstructive. It’s quite pink, like in Flyable Heart, but I don’t have a problem with it (although someone else might). Portrait shots of the talking character are shown on the left side. There are quick save/load, save/load and system config along the bottom, as well as the standard auto and skip functions. It is also possible to skip to the next choice or move back to the previous one. However, there’s a bit of delay as it skips forward (the date is shown on the bottom left).

I am in love with the keyboard shortcuts. Honestly, every game should have them. I can play the entire game without touching the mouse once. This was the also the first time I actually used quicksave/load a lot since it was so convenient. There are 90 save slots available, which is more than enough.

There a lot of options that allow you to customize the interface as you wish. I just lowered the BGM setting a bit. The highest dimension for the windowed mode is 1280 x 720, which I highly suggest. An interesting feature they used is background voices, such as other characters talking in the background while Haruki is talking to someone else. You can also turn off looped background voices sounds during H scenes from here if you wish.

When characters are introduced at the beginning of the game, their name pops up to tell you who they are. Pretty nifty idea.

When the date changes in-game, it is written on the blackboard. During the common route, there will be drawings and other generally funny stuff drawn on it.  After the beach outing, Haruki’s name will be written on the right along with the heroine you’re locked with. After their relationship takes the next step, their names (in the way they address each other) will be written under the ai ai gasa (love umbrella).

Along with the usual choices, there is a map select screen with SD chars that change when you hover over them. Cute chibis.

After you finish one route, the extra mode will be available off the title screen. The CG mode (regular CGs and SDs), scene/OP/ED replay and music mode are all accessible off this screen. Note that some in-game item pictures and CGs are not available, such as the club activity CGs.

As I mentioned to Micchi prior to the review, just like FH I felt the Pink was overdone. Apparently it is just me who dislikes that color being everywhere I look but I will steadfastly stick to my condemnation of Pink overload.

On to more constructive topics I must say that I did like the fact the load screen was in blue while the save screen was pink. This helped avoid something I do a lot when tired… load when trying to save. Always a face palming moment when you realize you just loaded a save from a few hours ago instead of saving the game.

Character introductions were a nice touch that helped speed up the flow of the game.. and thank god for that. I can only imagine how long things would have dragged on had they not done a speedy introduction blurb for each. Actually this is something I would like to see a lot more of. It would help avoid awkward introductory events and situations. As well as gives us a clear outline of the relationships right from the start. Allowing the writers to get right into the story.

The skip to unread function took so long it annoyed me quite a bit. Call me impatient but I would have preferred either an individual scene skip option or an instant skip to unread option.

Sound

There are 36 tracks in the Music Mode, including the OP and ED. The BGMs are probably the weakest part of the game. I thought they were mostly forgettable. The OP is catchy, but the ED was a bit of a letdown. With a great seiyuu cast, the character voicing was pretty much top-notch. Absolutely no complaints from me, especially with Agumi Oto voicing Sana. That makes at least 5 imouto chars of hers that I liked.

The music in Tenshin was standard fare. Nothing really stood out at all to me. In fact the bland music is partly to blame for putting me to sleep. Eventually I just muted the music and played my own songs in the background.

On the other hand the option to repeat voices in H scenes I felt was a nice touch that could have been done better. That is to say I did like that it removed the stop and go feeling when the voices cut out which does not help the mood. However the repetition is too short and has no randomizer, the combination of which leads to it being a roughly 5-10 second or so repeat. When repeating so often the voice becomes nothing but annoying and far too vocal, ends up sounding like a cheap porn movie. If you are like me and do not always wait for the voices then this compounds the issue to some degree with the cut off and resuming of the vocal tracks.

That aside, the trying to suck up the last bit of a slushie slurping noises that are pretty much a standard still annoy me. I cannot comprehend where or how they get such a terrible sound effect. Seems that this particular sound is a plague that has infested eroge sound effects.

H Scenes

Each of the 4 heroines and 2 subheroines has between 3 and 4 H scenes, with 1-2 positions per scene. The length is decent and the timing is well done as well, although I would’ve preferred to have no H scenes in some of the epilogues. There’s a choice to finish inside or outside, as well some others, such as Sana’s choice of underwear for her second H scene.

For a game that is pure love, there sure a lot of fetishes covered, including blindfolding, hadaka apron, vibrator use, footjobs and 3p. However, it didn’t quite reach the level of FairChild. I loved the use of looping background voices when the heroine isn’t talking since it makes the scene less disjointed. I didn’t like the slurping noises for Yukari and Ruri.

Personally, I thought Sana’s masturbation scene from her point of view, as well as her hadaka apron scene and Aoi’s waitress outfit one were the best. All of Yukari’s H scenes scared me. Also, Ruri’s was not quite as bad as Kururi’s from FH, although damn she’s small.

H scenes were fairly well balanced in Tenshin not being too long nor too short. Though some were somewhat awkwardly placed with little development to lead into them (I am looking at you Yukari). This placement often gave me the feel that the H scenes were being forced into the story for the sake of having more H scenes. Rather than having a natural flow of plot development that leads into them. Even when there was enough development the methods used to bring the story into an H scene felt very purposefully contrived.

Ruri I did not want to be around at all so rather than feeling guilty as I did with Kururi it was more of a fast forward till my ctrl key wears out.

Overall

All of Micchi’s reviews will be rated by assigning scores out of 10 to each of the following categories: Scenario, characters, graphics, system, sound, and H scenes. Half marks may be given. The scoring is as follows:

• 10 – Absolutely satisfied
• 9 – Among the best, only minor improvements
• 8 – Good overall
• 7 – Average, a mix of good and bad
• 6 – Below average, slightly disappointing
• <5 – Very disappointed

The overall score is a weighted sum (3x Scenario + 2x Characters + 2x Graphics + 1x System + 1x Sound + 1x H scenes) for a total out of 100.

• Scenario: 7.5
• Characters: 8.5
• Graphics: 9
• System: 9.5
• Sound: 7
• H Scenes: 8
• Overall: 82

As expected from YuzuSoft, Tenshin Ranman is a moe game with likeable characters and great graphics. The storylines could’ve been written up better, but they were satisfying nevertheless. Especially Sana’s. I proclaim this as an imouto game.

• Scenario: 6
• Characters: 8
  
• Graphics: 7
• System: 9
• Sound: 6
• H Scenes: 7
• Overall: 70

In the end Tenshin was a solid eroge. While nothing spectacular it does deliver as a good game that is worth a read. As I don’t have an unhealthy obsession over Sana I cannot say the game lives up to the hype.

Excuse me while I go play Sana’s route again. (This makes how many times now?)

「私、今．．．凄く、幸せです♪」

	Oh yeah, don’t forget to vote for your favorite!
	Found you!
	Gotta go~!
	… nii-san…