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True Blue Short Story is an eroge visual novel developed by LiLiM DARKNESS and released on August 25, 2006. It’s a sequel to the TRUE BLUE visual novel from 2002 and it's basically a collection of short stories along with some new characters being introduced. Unlike its prequel, True Blue Short Story doesn’t give you any choices to select. These short stories are entirely linear, each having only one ending.

"I immediately turned my head to the side!"

The first short story titled “Medical Student?” takes place months after the true ending of TRUE BLUE (2002) where (SPOILER WARNING) Akito managed to save Aoi from the secret organization. A new character named Takeshi Shimazu is featured who is a tough looking medical student that drives a bright red sports car. In this story, Takeshi develops feelings towards Aoi Kanzaki which builds up a separation between her and Akito. The second short story titled “Kurusu family’s spring, summer, fall and winter” also takes place after the incidents of TRUE BLUE (2002) and features two new characters Natsumi and Haruna. They are two of Akito’s cousins who came from an all girl school and they came to live with him due to their parents going on a business trip. The storytelling was very compelling for these two short stories due to the fact that they both consist of netorare (NTR) just like the prequel. In terms of the way these new characters were introduced, it was pretty average. It's nothing too crazy.

The third and final short story is titled “Cherry blossoms, scattered flowers.” The premise for this one is relatively different from the other two short stories as it actually takes place in the past before the secret organization was targeting Aoi Kanzaki. Plus instead of Akito, the story mainly focuses on the perspective of Sakurako Midori who is Akito’s underclassmen. This story is about her having a crush on Akito and she wants to confess her feelings to him. However she was skeptical to do so as she saw another girl; Aoi Kanzaki, being close to Akito. She then relies on Ryuichi Saeki; the student council president, for some assistance on how she can develop a relationship with Akito. While there were no new characters being featured and no NTR content, the story was relatively unique in its own way. If you’ve played TRUE BLUE (2002), you would have noticed that out of all the characters, the story talks the least about Sakurako Midori. While there were some brief instances talking about her, it doesn’t fully emphasize on her personal life to have us truly understand her as a person. In addition, she was the only character in the entire TRUE BLUE (2002) visual novel that does not focus on her perspective. All of that was brought to light in this short story, allowing us to better understand Sakurako’s lifestyle and see what kind of person she really is instead of leaving her in the dark.

Putting the short stories aside, there’s also a fun little whack-a-mole mini game where you have to get a high score in order to unlock some extra CGs that aren’t attainable through the short stories. What’s funny is that the moles are replaced by Yuuichirou Shouda and hitting him will score you a point. The game also involves Aoi Kanzaki and hitting her will jeopardize your score. As you move forward into the later stages of the minigame, it becomes progressively harder. You’ll also face a new type of target which is a bulky bald man wearing sunglasses that looks like he’s from the Yakuza. It takes multiple hits for that target to have the game register as a hit, making it more difficult to avoid a miss. In addition, you’ll also acquire some special abilities that can accommodate your gameplay. There’s rapid fire mode where the mallet will rapidly swing at a fast pace if you hold down the left mouse button. There is also a homing ability where if you right click, the mallet will instantly hit your desired targets but it won’t lock on to Aoi Kanzaki.

The visuals were pretty decent. Putting the new CGs aside which look a lot more smoother than the CGs from the prequel, there are new background images which I assume have been reused from the previous visual novels LiLiM DARKNESS made. As for the character sprites, most of them were reused from the prequel. For the new character sprites, the illustration is a lot more smoother with more detail to them. One complaint that I have is that putting the new and old sprites in the same visual novel looks a bit odd. The art style and illustrations for the new character sprites significantly differ from the old sprites. In addition, comparing these old character sprites to their character model in the CGs such as Aoi Kanzaki displays a difference in art style as well. It seems that LiLiM DARKNESS just copied and pasted the old character sprite models into True Blue Short Story without any modifications. I think it would’ve been better to have all the old character sprites being redrawn from scratch to make the visual novel look more appealing..

In my opinion, this visual novel was pretty decent. While it is relatively short in comparison to its prequel, it does showcase some compelling stories by using NTR just like TRUE BLUE (2002). However, it would also be nice if there was another short story that hinted about what the secret organization was doing after the incidents from TRUE BLUE (2002). If that was added, then I’m sure it would thicken the plot even further while also filling out some of the plot holes from the prequel. If you really enjoyed playing the TRUE BLUE (2002) visual novel and you want to experience more, then I would highly recommend you to play True Blue Short Story.