Genius!MC. Intelligence isn’t just for the LIs! No, I am not a genius. But when I was younger, I was quite the academic overachiever, which left me wanting to see someone like that—whether an academic overachiever or just anyone who would be conventionally considered “smart”—as the main character in more media than just Sherlock Holmes and Death Note. The desire to see an MC like that that would have pleased little!me still has not gone away. So far, the closest I have seen to this is that in Tokimeki Memorial, you can raise your stats enough that you’ll have higher grades than any other student character.
This is kind of cheating because I have seen this, but not in a Japanese otome, funnily enough. I can empathize with and relate to MCs who do not look like me at all, but it was really nice seeing an MC with super long, straight black hair worn down in Talents, as that is basically my one defining physical feature. And as I was scrolling around itch.io looking for this (I ended up finding it via search engine) I passed by a lot more otome that might fit that description. Meanwhile I cannot name any Japanese ones I know with an MC who looks like that… am I just dumb/don’t know enough Japanese games?
It’s funny it’s rare for otome games to have a protag with such a hairstyle because. Well. Surely that’s at least 30% of the player base over there. A genius MC would be cool, but to me what I want is a nerdy/geeky protag who looks it too. Meganekko MCs please!! If she’s great at school that’d be great (I was like that too), but I wouldn’t mind a loser-type MC either. I mean loser in a highly complimentary way, of course. I guess I’d like a girl who was more than “unremarkable beyond being kind and pretty cute.”
I wear glasses and was great at school, self-insert train here we come!
I actually would mind a loser-type MC because it is basically all I remember getting out of shoujo—naive idiot and also bully victim (which, not to victim blame, bullying is awful, but it is tiresome seeing this over and over). And in Western media, almost every high-school age protagonist also fits the bill of “average, and also bully victim”. So
I guess I’d like a girl who was more than “unremarkable beyond being kind and pretty cute.”
me too.
Oh, I wasn’t thinking “naive bully victim,” more like “classic otaku,” which can be done without being bothered at school or anything. Like by having really good grades that diverts attention from her obsession with [insert thing here], or by not being a student at all. 😁 Or someone alt would be called a loser by some people too, but if she has friends from the same/a similar subculture shielding her or is too tough-skinned to even entertain haters, bullying won’t be prominent either.
Ok this is gonna be hyper-specific, but has anybody here watched Vanitas no Carte/The Case study of Vanitas? I would love to explore the type of relationship that Vanitas and Jeanne have in an Otome game context. Or to be more blunt, a female Vampire protag with love interests who are really into being bitten 🩸
I have not but that sounds so cool. I wonder if that upcoming vampire otome is going to fill this, since one LI is a vampire. But MC is a hunter, so not so sure.
Ikemen Vampire might have but I dropped that quick. Freemium gacha :(
