Otome Game Review: Love! Sushi Rangers

I think I’ve figured out why I originally burnt out on Otome Games when I started playing them a year ago for just a few months. I generally tend towards games of the “freemium” variety, but they are so slow to progress that I end up playing a bunch of them at once, which then results in me deciding that I’ve been playing far too many otome games, so I just stop and go back to more productive pursuits like knitting, watching k-dramas, and not putting away the laundry. So this time around I’m going to give up on games I find a bit boring a bit earlier in the process, and just go ahead and write a review. I figure playing one storyline all the way to the end is enough, if the game isn’t that great, right?

All that being said, this game Love! Sushi Rangers is bonkers, because it features the typical reverse harem scenario of any otome game but with sushi ingredients. Sushi ingredients given human form and personalities. Japan, everybody!!!!!!

Love! Sushi Rangers is available on android and iPhone

This game starts out with a premise familiar to any manga fan – someone’s parent is going crazy and abandoning them for no logical reason. It is almost as good as the plot device where a sudden marriage where the heroine gets an annoyingly attractive new sibling. In this particular case the heroine’s father, a world class sushi chef, announces that he is going to walk the earth to bring the gospel of sushi to foreign lands, leaving the family restaurant in the hands of his daughter, who is absolutely inept at making sushi. Yukari, who is a sensible girl except for her habit of falling in love with sushi ingredients, is angry and upset about this turn of events. She finds some unlikely helpers, as the sushi ingredients her father left behind turn into handsome young men, prepared to help her keep the restaurant running.

Other than the nutty aspect of dating sushi ingredients, this game is pretty boring. There isn’t really much of a plot to speak of in either of the routes I tried. Salmon and Tuna are engaged in a petulant rivalry with each other.

This rivalry sometimes becomes violent. Sushi fight!!!!!

While there is no plot to speak of, this game did at least have a sense of humor, as when the sushi ingredients ponder the morality of sushi ingredients eating sushi.

I did appreciate the heroine’s tendencies to yell in all caps when she’s upset.

As a free game, I think you can play up to three character’s story lines for free. I only played through all of Tuna and part of Salmon. It is very very unfortunate that Shrimp and Avocado don’t have routes. The power expended to get through the game for free is about the slowest to regenerate that I’ve ever encountered in a freemium otome game. You basically get only 2 chapters a day, which is a very slow pace. I didn’t think that the character designs were very attractive. Often the game presents you with empty rooms and subtitles, I’m assuming to save on the costs of doing additional illustrations. Lackluster art combined with almost no plot to speak of doesn’t really add up to a game that I’d be interested in playing much further, even though there are flashes of humor due to the wacky premise.