Japanese Reading Report: 24 August 2025

ランス02改 反逆の少女たち

食戟のソーマ

I was hoping to finish the series this week, but it looks like I'll be watching it for at least a few more days.

Overall the episodes this week were alright. Souma continues to be a fairly interesting character. There was one moment at the end of a pretty great arc (the one where Megumi has to win her right to continue studying) where Souma's perfectionism and sense of failure surfaced when he was alone. It was the first time that he really showed depth, though it seems to have been temporary as he hasn't demonstrated that side of himself much since. Speaking of that episode, I really like Megumi and I think that arc was a strong show of her character.

Apart from that, there weren't many interesting episodes this week. I was proud of myself for recognising the VA for Kerochan (from Cardcaptor Sakura) in the last arc I watched.

ランス０２改 反逆の少女たち

I managed to finish the game with a bit of a focused push on Saturday. Overall I really enjoyed this game. The combat was pretty awful, and there were a few gameplay mechanics that added to the frustration of combat, but for most of the final half of the game I was able to use the skip function to power through grindier sections. The obscurity of puzzles was also a bit of a weakness, though I think I was able to get into the game's mind a bit and smoothly walked myself through some sequences I would have struggled with in Chapter 1. So...

Chapter 4 was pretty great. It's the only chapter with a party of three: Rance, Maria, and Miri. A highlight of the chapter was the mirror with escalating sexual requirements. Somehow or another, Maria always ended up being bullied by Miri and Rance into performing for the mirror. This chapter also opened up most of the sexual options with the women in town, though I missed one of the side quests since I didn't think to talk to a certain NPC twice in a row. Since then it's become a habit for me to exhaust all dialogue before moving on just in case.
The chapter ended with two lengthy and boring boss fights. After defeating Miri's sister, Miru, we discover that she was inflating her age with the magic of her cursed ring, and Miri takes her back to town to recover.

Chapter 5 was another Sill section. It was even more straight forward than Chapter 3, with very few events, but the whole chapter is one annoying teleporter maze. Thankfully the end of the chapter was quite exciting. The maiden of the area, Ran, is a skilled swordsman and also has the ability to "charm" women with her eyes. Bard attempts to protect Sill, but he has his arm cut off in the process, and Sill falls to Ran's charms. When all hope is lost, Rance shows up and saves Sill from Ran. Ran becomes the least interesting maiden after she's freed from her curse; she's very apologetic but doesn't get much more depth than that. Upon identifying Rance, Bard confronts him and challenges Rance for Sill's freedom. Rance basically says he has no chance in the state he's in, Bard sulks away, and it's implied later that he's going on a journey of his own. I hope to see him again, because I think he and Rance have good rival chemistry.

Chapter 6 is the last chapter. It starts with a very cute scene between Sill and Rance. We find out that, now that we've broken the curse on three of the four maidens, the barrier cast around the town has lifted and they can now access the outside world. The town changes a little bit; none of the previous shops provide services any more, the princess from Rance 01 shows up and hangs out in the town inn, and each of the maidens sets up shop in a different part of town. Ran is working in an office, Maria is helping reconstruct the town, and Miri and Miru are running a new medicine shop. They sell a full-heal medicine which makes the rest of the chapter very convenient. Unfortunately, the party is reduced back to just Rance and Sill because the maidens are all busy. Would have been nice to have Maria or Miri to help out with damage.
Sadly there isn't much sex in the town in the chapter. You can do a side quest to help fix the fortune-teller's computer which results in an erotic scene, but that's it.
The final floor of the dungeon is not bad. It's broken up into a few visually distinct areas, which don't involve much overlap, so it's a fairly linear puzzle-solving experience. Early in the chapter we meet a succubus, which is a story beat that has some great scenes, but I mostly found it interesting because the succubus has a unique design. Rather than just a human woman with a bat/devil motif, she's a human woman with bat-like ears.

At the end of the chapter (sort of), we finally reach the last maiden, Shizuka. She was using the sexual energy of several women (foreshadowed in chapter 3) to power a time machine so she could return to the past and prevent her father's death. This was perhaps the only part of the story that actually frustrated me... Rance is totally uninterested in Shizuka's goal. After we beat her in combat, he frees her from the curse, tells her "It's not that easy to change the past," and then we fast forward back to town with a mission complete. At this point I was sensing a few loose plot points, but I was prepared for this to all be part of a "to be continued in Rance 3" teaser. Thankfully the game does have a complete story. After a celebration in the town, Chisa, the mayor's daughter and first character we met, offers anything to Rance as a reward. Rance chooses sex, naturally, and afterwards he lets down his guard and Chisa equips all four cursed rings. It turns out the evil wizard had possessed Chisa earlier in the game (it was pretty obvious at around chapter 4 that this had happened), and now he had all of the rings fully powered and in his control.
After some setup we team up with the maidens again and confront the wizard once and for all. The final fight is not good, sadly. Each time we beat the wizard he uses the power of the rings to mutate and regenerate, a bit like the final boss of Dragon Quest IV. He uses his ultimate attack to defeat us, and Rance demonstrates his love for Sill by protecting her. After the boss readies his ultimate attack for a second time, Rance closes his eyes to brace for death, but when he opens his eyes he finds that the problem has resolved itself. It turns out the 40 magical spirits of the maidens trapped inside the rings were able to overpower the wizard thanks to Rance. As a reward they offer him anything he wants. I'll let you imagine what that wish ends up being.

And that was Rance 02. Overall the game was not that long. Most of the 19 hours I spent was aimless running around, repeating dialogue trying to progress the story, and general genre uncertainty. I plan to play Rance 01 (the game) next, and I hope the genre awareness I developed in this game will help me there.

ISLAND

This week was mostly focused on the Karen route, though I did decide to return to the pivot point at the end of the main route to see how the other options progress the story. As it turns out, one of the options is just a bad ending, cutting short after Setsuna tries to make sense of being a person from the distant past. The other option, the assumption that we're from the future, put me on the Sara route. I was pleasantly surprised that Rinne's route wasn't just one of the three options. It makes me want to try harder to figure out a way to help her.

So far in the Karen route:
We visited, but failed to enter, an ominous research facility off the coast of the island. I later discovered the facility is also where Karen's mother, Natsumi, worked before she left the island for good.
Setsuna helped Karen with a bunch of biology homework, and I (Ruby) found out more about how blood types work. It was honestly quite educational. Setsuna also teaches Karen about X and Y chromosomes, and Karen laments her situation as a girl in a broad human sense but also in a specific island cultural sense. As the daughter of one of the three big families her life is being planned for her.
Setsuna and Karen share a kiss, but then their relationship breaks down pretty rapidly. We also learn a bit more about the customs of the island, and it's implied that Sara's decision to live alone at the shrine is partially to blame for Karen's circumstances. I don't fully get it yet to be honest. Setsuna "catches" Karen talking to a man he doesn't recognise about leaving the island. Setsuna assumes that Karen is just jumping from man to man in order to find a way off the island, but it turns out the man was Karen's brother, who had been studying at a university on the mainland for the last few years.

The final event I've experienced was a heart-to-heart between Setsuna and the island policeman, who we find out is engaged in an arranged marriage to Karen. He basically gives Setsuna his blessing to pursue her, since he's not interested in marrying her anyway. The conversation was kind of cute, but I do feel like it sort of hand-waved away a fairly big barrier for Setsuna and Karen. Maybe the mayor (Karen's dad) will refuse to let the situation resolve cleanly.

Since this route has ramped up the romantic tension, it made me think about dating games again. I think if I had to describe the difference between a game like this and a game like Amagami, I'd say: In dating games you construct a romantic story for yourself, and in romance VNs a romantic story is told to you. Both are totally valid. I enjoy romance in novels, for example, but I definitely don't feel like I'm engaging in romance with Karen. She and Setsuna are just experiencing a story together that I voyeuristically get to watch.