[Kinkoi] [SPOILERS] Anyone pissed off at Reina's first H scene?

[gieh]

First of all, I'm posting this in several forums online because I'm interested in hearing the opinion of as many people as possible, so if you've seen this rant somewhere else already, please ignore it and don't waste any more time on my silly tantrum.

Now, on to the actual rant:

I dunno, I was expecting something more wholesome from this kind of game than

Spoiler

'they get together because they had sex while high AND THEIR FIRST TIME WAS A THREESOME.'

That was absolutely horrible writing and super off-putting.

Reina is a really awesome and fun character so I was really excited to see some wholesome romance between her and the MC, but the way they 'got together' was so horribly written and such a stupid copout I don't want to continue with her route... or this game anymore. I just want to see wholesome romance between the protagonist and the characters, man (plus some drama and sadness, that's fine). But I really despise this kind of stuff.

At least in Sylvie's route,

Spoiler

the threesome is optional and happens after they've been a couple for a while, so I don't mind it (but she's also drunk. What the hell is wrong with the writers of this game and drunk/high sex?). .

I guess this wasn't the right game to choose. Anyone else thought that or just me? It reaaaaallly cheapens the romance IMO (like they couldn't think of a way to get them together without stripping away their ability to become a couple consciously) because it deprives the couple of their agency, but I might be in the minority, so I'm interested in your guys' thoughts. Yes, I know this kind of thing happens a lot in real life, but it's not what I seek from my escapist moege/nakige fiction. I want wholesome teens experiencing love for the first time, not... this.

Sorry for ranting, and I'm not saying anyone who actually enjoyed that scene is wrong - I just personally hated it. I'm curious to see how many people agree with me.

[adamstan]

1 hour ago, gieh said:

I just want to see wholesome romance between the protagonist and the characters, man (plus some drama and sadness, that's fine).

I haven't played Kinkoi yet, but since often H-scenes instead of being "characters making love to each other" turn into "characters performing the porn scene", I tend to avoid them and go for all-ages editions whenever available

And with a few VNs that I played recently, even if when playing the all-ages version I thought "hmm... a little bit of sexy stuff wouldn't hurt", checking out the actual scenes from +18 version was a huge letdown more often than not.

Edited February 15, 2022 by adamstan

[gieh]

2 minutes ago, adamstan said:

I haven't played Kinkoi yet, but since often H-scenes instead of being "characters making love to each other" turn into "characters performing the porn scene", I tend to avoid them and go for all-ages editions whenever available

The problem here is that the problematic H scene is what brings them together, so it is still part of the plot, even when not shown (I presume). You make a good point about 'performing porn' instead of 'making love', but there are plenty of VNs where a scene can be both romantic and porn-y (I like 9-nine for that, especially since the scenes are actually short and to the point instead of lasting a frickin' hour).

[adamstan]

I personally didn't like sex scenes in 9-nine either - mainly because of the animation style, but also I thought that there were too many, had issues with their placement, and still found them too "porny" for my taste. So for this game I also preferred all-ages edition (the Palette's Complete Edition - not the Steam one).

I think the last VNs where I enjoyed H-scenes, and found them relatively "wholesome" (with some exceptions) were Palette's Sakura Strasse and Yuzusoft's Natsuzora Kanata (and those games don't have all-ages versions anyway )

I also loved the way the relationship was depicted - sex included - in the short EVN called The Language of Love.

Edited February 15, 2022 by adamstan

[Bredan]

I didn't read Kinkoi yet as well, but from your description, I can understand what irks you.

When I read a VN for its story, or characters, most of the time I'm not welcoming well too 'liberal' sex when it's mainly done 'out of character'... poor writers (probably most of X scenes writers) seem to believe that everything is fine if you stick some label (closet pervert or whatever) to explain a 180° change in personality during H scenes.

But that's understandable, if not really enjoyable for me. I believe that the turn ON procured by this kind of 'art' can quite easily be like the effect of a drug : the more often you take some, the less it has effect. In fact, to me it seems so true that I have the theory that a lot of tropes of the otaku culture (incest is not that bad, especially with imoutos, NTR, heavier than 'normal' tendencies toward what's considered extreme like scat or gory sex etc.) are well and alive because a lot of consumers are 'numbed'/adapted to this.

So what do you do as a writer that tries to sell a bit more with H scenes ? You try to add some kink even in vanilla, to spice it a minimum to overcome, to some extent, this numbness.

 

Edited February 15, 2022 by Bredan

[gieh]

I've processed my thoughts better and summarized them somewhere else already, so I think I'll try to copypaste them here as well:

1. People seem to care a lot about whether a sex scene in an eroge is hot... which shouldn't surprise me, as it's an EROge, but still, I'm a bit surprised that I seem to be in the minority that thinks it's just something that demonstrates the feelings a couple have for each other. That might be one of the reasons why I don't care about fanservice-y or "hot" scenes if they make no narrative sense because I never, erm, 'use' eroge in a way people 'use' porn (I never fap to it, basically).

2. I seem to really care about agency in fictional relationships. Anything that deprives characters of their ability to make conscious decisions about their relationship is an incredibly huge turnoff for me (and very upsetting to boot). In this particular situation, I would have been fine if they made a conscious DECISION as a COUPLE to have their first time be a threesome. I hate the fact that the writer forced their hand and took away such a special moment from them.

3. Making your audience care about your characters is a big double-edged sword as a writer, but doubly so for the audience whom you've made care about said characters. If the writer makes them go in a direction the audience wants, it's an absolutely euphoric feeling. But if they go in the direction the audience specifically doesn't want them to go, it's gonna hurt a lot. Like I said, lack of agency in a relationship is a huge problem for me AND the writer did an amazing job making me like Reina. Those things combined made me quite upset in the end. Especially since I hate mind-altering substances IRL, so I already dislike seeing them in fiction in general (and 'drunk/high sex' is an overdone trope that you use when you want to force the characters together without having to think too hard about making it plausible and natural; also, it's part of the real world that I don't want to see in my escapist fiction).

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But that's understandable, if not really enjoyable for me. I believe that the turn ON procured by this kind of 'art' can quite easily be like the effect of a drug : the more often you take some, the less it has effect. In fact, to me it seems so true that I have the theory that a lot of tropes of the otaku culture (incest is not that bad, especially with imoutos, NTR, heavier than 'normal' tendencies toward what's considered extreme like scat or gory sex etc.) are well and alive because a lot of consumers are 'numbed'/adapted to this.

So what do you do as a writer that tries to sell a bit more with H scenes ? You try to add some kink even in vanilla, to spice it a minimum to overcome, to some extent, this numbness.

 

That's kind of exactly the problem. To me, sex in VNs should be lovemaking, something that a couple does together, like adamstan said. They can totally go crazily kinky if they're into it, they can invite other people if they're into it. But it has to make me believe this is who they are and this is what they're into. Don't get them high/drunk and do whatever to move your plot forward because you can't think of a way to make them a couple; there's enough of that sh*t in real life.

[Bredan]

13 minutes ago, gieh said:

That's kind of exactly the problem. To me, sex in VNs should be lovemaking, something that a couple does together, like adamstan said. They can totally go crazily kinky if they're into it, they can invite other people if they're into it. But it has to make me believe this is who they are and this is what they're into. Don't get them high/drunk and do whatever to move your plot forward because you can't think of a way to make them a couple; there's enough of that sh*t in real life.

I get it, but you can't most of the time have (or at least very hard to write) your 'vanilla' characters with 'vanilla' love/relationship if you intend to make it coherent with someone that 'happily accepts a threesome for the first night, and with a love-rival as the third partner at that !'. I don't like it, sure, I just understand : in fact, being 'high' may be more coherent if you were planing anyway to add such a sex scene.

As for very light 'kink' in vanilla : I feel SMEE is very good at it without (completely) denaturing their heroines. For example, in Fureraba Rina clearly displays some masochist tendencies without going too far and it clicks well for me. Or in Kanojo Steps : Kuon quite liberal with cheating and exhibition etc..

But well, back to your message : there's plenty of things I begin to find intolerable in JP VN/LN/Anime/Manga, and relations between people and the way it is handled is often at the top of my complaints... your example is just one more. I just, then, have to ask myself : is it worth it ? Do I get enough pleasure even with those recurrent shortcomings to continue consuming ? For now, the answer is still yes, but I wouldn't swear it will be 'yes' for ever.

[gieh]

1 minute ago, Bredan said:

I get it, but you can't most of the time have (or at least very hard to write) your 'vanilla' characters with 'vanilla' love/relationship if you intend to make it coherent with someone that 'happily accepts a threesome for the first night, and with a love-rival as the third partner at that !'. I don't like it, sure, I just understand : in fact, being 'high' may be more coherent if you were planing anyway to add such a sex scene.

For me, 'vanilla' doesn't imply 'people without hardcore kinks'. It just implies 'couple who are in love with each other and have a healthy romantic & sex life'. So if they're established as liking to experiment in bed, then I have no issue with that. It's a tough sell to convince me on that, sure, but people have different kinks - it's not impossible to believe.

And if the author is 'planning' to add such a sex scene from the start, then it's his job to establish the characters as ones who would reasonably do that early in the story. No cheap shortcuts.

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But well, back to your message : there's plenty of things I begin to find intolerable in JP VN/LN/Anime/Manga, and relations between people and the way it is handled is often at the top of my complaints... your example is just one more. I just, then, have to ask myself : is it worth it ? Do I get enough pleasure even with those recurrent shortcomings to continue consuming ? For now, the answer is still yes, but I wouldn't swear it will be 'yes' for ever.

Honestly, while I'm unsure about the idea of 'trigger warnings', they could be really useful here - having a database of stories that can be tagged with tags such as 'cheating', 'NTR', 'imouto', 'loli', 'out-of-character perviness', etc. and you being able to filter them out by those tags would be a nice solution.

There are still plenty of amazing anime/manga/VNs/LNs that do relationships (not just romantic ones) between people wonderfully (Fruits Basket and Violet Evergarden immediately come to mind). Also, sometimes stories that make really creepy sex jokes can treat sex in a very mature way when they actually take it seriously - Mushoku Tensei has a lot of creepy pervy jokes, but when it has an actual sex scene, it's one of the most beautiful and tasteful sex scenes I've ever seen in an anime, taken very seriously by the show, without any cheap pervy jokes whatsoever.

[Shaun]

7 hours ago, gieh said:

That was absolutely horrible writing and super off-putting.

I don't agree at all, the writing was fine and was not off-putting at all, you can dislike something but to say the writing is horrible is just wrong imho.

[gieh]

3 hours ago, Shaun said:

I don't agree at all, the writing was fine and was not off-putting at all, you can dislike something but to say the writing is horrible is just wrong imho.

Sorry, I should have clarified, but it was obviously short for 'in my opinion, the writing is horrible'.

Or, more accurately, 'in my opinion, it was a cheap writing trick to bring them together while depriving them of any agency and making them act out-of-character for the sake of having a hot sex scene, also ruining the important moment of a couple's first time'.

[Seraphim]

I'm generally not big on h-scenes, in part due to how they tend to play out in more or less the same way every time, so I find it a bit refreshing whenever someone breaks the norm. That said, the fact that they were high kinda ruined this scene for me. For some reason, I tend to be slightly offput whenever a heroine is influenced by something, even if it's only a matter of getting drunk or smoking a cigarette. Drinking and smoking don't bother me whatsoever IRL, so I honestly have no idea why it would when it comes to VNs.

Edited February 16, 2022 by Seraphim

[gieh]

2 hours ago, Seraphim said:

I'm generally not big on h-scenes, in part due to how they tend to play out in more or less the same way every time, so I find it a bit refreshing whenever someone breaks the norm. That said, the fact that they were high kinda ruined this scene for me. For some reason, I tend to be slightly offput whenever a heroine is influenced by something, even if it's only a matter of getting drunk or smoking a cigarette. Drinking and smoking don't bother me whatsoever IRL, so I honestly have no idea why it would when it comes to VNs.

Me personally, I'm very uncomfortable with the 'high/drunk sex' trope in general. I can stomach it if it's between an established couple, but as a way to bring two people together, I find it a cheap trick and a waste of something that could potentially be much more interesting development.

[Stormwolf]

What is this with being high? Yes they were kind of high, but it's not like they were smoking or in other way intentionally trying to get high. But i get what you mean. Reina was the least off putting threesomes in the vn imo. I'm on the other side with this. A threesome the first time with no obligations to one another is way more realistic. Sylvies just throwing mina or whatever at you was way more off putting. And Elle also irked me, but i don't remember the details anymore. Think it was something like Elle being way more into Sylvie than MC during the scene or something.

Edited February 16, 2022 by Stormwolf

[gieh]

14 minutes ago, Stormwolf said:

What is this with being high? Yes they were kind of high, but it's not like they were smoking or in other way intentionally trying to get high.

That's actually what makes it so bad to me. They didn't even make a conscious decision to get high. They were under the influence of a substance that was forced upon them by some wacky contrived circumstance. It's very unfair to the development between the characters, from a meta standpoint, imo, as it shakes things up for no real reason than shock value and fanservice.
 

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A threesome the first time with no obligations to one another is way more realistic. 

Like I said in my first post,

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Yes, I know this kind of thing happens a lot in real life, but it's not what I seek from my escapist moege/nakige fiction. I want wholesome teens experiencing love for the first time, not... this.

Basically, the game led me to believe it's a moege/nakige. A scene like that is a genre shift and a mood whiplash. I know some people are fond of them, but I personally prefer when a story stays true to the genre(s) it communicated for the majority of its screentime.

Plus, whether it's realistic or not depends on the personalities of the characters involved. And the game didn't make me believe any of the three might have made that decision when sober.

As for Sylvie, at least the threesome in her route was optional, whereas here, it is forced upon the audience and an important part of the plot.

[Stormwolf]

That is fair. You like what you like and hate what you hate. I prefer vanilla in my eroge too given the choice. I kind of enjoyed kinkoi as a whole, but some parts of it irked me. Sylvie and all the backstories felt like she was more into Ria than protagonist all the way through and Elle seemed to be into Sylvie also but to a lesser degree and not really problematic. Reina's route to me was the best. Didnt read Akane, but Ria was also good.. in a way.

[littleshogun]

What I can say? Well seeing that you're very angry so much that you post this across three forums (Here, VNDB, and Reddit), perhaps you better check whether the girl that you like from the future VNs that you'll read will have the sex scenes that you're dislike or not so that you didn't need to be angry anymore. If anything else, what I can learn is that I suppose not all people like the scenes even though personally I don't have the problem with it.

PS - By the way it's not like this is the first time the writer wrote drunk sex here, seeing that he did it back at Tsujidou with Maki.

Edited February 18, 2022 by littleshogun

[gieh]

2 hours ago, littleshogun said:

What I can say? Well seeing that you're very angry so much that you post this across three forums (Here, VNDB, and Reddit), perhaps you better check whether the girl that you like from the future VNs that you'll read will have the sex scenes that you're dislike or not so that you didn't need to be angry anymore.

Not sure how I would check that. Vndb has a tag for 'sex under the influence of drugs' or something like that, I think, but Kinkoi was missing it (I just checked). Also, I don't know whether I'll like a character or not until I actually buy and play the game, so that doesn't help either... but yeah, I will probably at least check for that specific tag in the future, or even just the threesome tag to be safe (though I'm not specifically against threesomes; it's just this specific combination of plot points that happened to converge in a way that was very unfortunate for me... and even then I wouldn't really care if it wasn't a character archetype I was so looking forward to seeing in a VN).

Also, 'disappointed' is a better way to describe how I felt than 'angry', imo. I don't think I was ever rude or confrontational in any of those forums.

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PS - By the way it's not like this is the first time the writer wrote drunk sex here, seeing that he did it back at Tsujidou with Maki.

Yes, people on Reddit explained it to me, so I might also check the writers of any VNs I buy in the future (though that might make me miss on some stuff, too. For example, the writer of the very extreme Subarashiki Hibi also wrote the very vanilla Sakura no Uta).

[Bredan]

4 hours ago, gieh said:

I don't think I was ever rude or confrontational in any of those forums.

This is just my interpretation, but I think he meant "angry at the VN" or "angry at the writers", not "angry at the forum users". I, at least, did not feel you were angry at us (and thus potentially disrespectful). At most, you seemed passionate on this subject.

[gieh]

5 hours ago, Bredan said:

This is just my interpretation, but I think he meant "angry at the VN" or "angry at the writers", not "angry at the forum users". I, at least, did not feel you were angry at us (and thus potentially disrespectful). At most, you seemed passionate on this subject.

Even then, I was mostly just disappointed. Maybe a little bit angry at the writer (but only regarding his writing, nothing personal), but I had enough common sense to realize he didn't owe me anything and he had the right to have his own artistic vision (which I have the right to criticize, but I'm not entitled to demand how he writes his stories).

I think everyone can empathize with how I felt - we all had some moments when a fictional story took a turn we really didn't like and felt the need to vent a little to feel better, right? I see stuff like that on MyAnimeList all the time. That's all I did, really. I'm good now. Still dropping the game, but I feel refreshed thanks to talking to you guys here and to other people on other forums. I really like discussing stuff like this both with people who agree with me and with those who don't. It's not only cathartic (because it helps me process my negative feelings), but also enlightening (because I get to see where the other side is coming from and learn something).

[snakezenn]

I was fine with it, let me clarify why though. First, I was not too into Reina honestly. I was doing it to get to the Ria route. Second, I personally thought it was funny not to mention its the only scene with Jogasaki. Perhaps I watch too many anime romcoms but this feels very much to me like the writer was writing something similar to those. 

[TexasDice]

No/yes. This scene is the hottest thing to ever be written down in human history. Imagine being this much of a cuck.

It's a Chinese powerpoint porno-game, jesus christ. I hope for your sake that you never accidentally buy a Purplesoft title.

 

Edited February 20, 2022 by TexasDice
Also, making the vote the inverse of the thread question is very underhanded.

[gieh]

12 hours ago, TexasDice said:

No/yes. This scene is the hottest thing to ever be written down in human history. Imagine being this much of a cuck.
 

Are you calling me a cuck? I'm not sure I understand what you mean by that?

As for being hot or not - as someone above said really well, I prefer when characters in VNs make love instead of performing porn for the audience. I don't really use VNs as fap material (waiting 20+ hours until a sex scene kinda defeats the purpose...) - to me sex scenes in VNs are just part of the story, so I judge them solely based on whether they make sense in the context of the story or not - this one was extremely out-of-character (in my opinion), used what I believe to be a cheap writing shortcut to justify the out-of-character behavior, and ruined a great setup (again: in my opinion) for a very well-written character (you could take it in any number of directions, and I would have been fine with a lot of non-vanilla options too, such as Reina suggesting being FWBs instead of dating because she had commitment issues, to give just one example - that would introduce a lot of interesting drama into the story while still being believable; but the writer went for pure fanservice and threw just too many things into a single scene, out of frickin' nowhere).

If you actually play VNs (mainly) for porn (which is totally valid and no less legitimate than my approach), then I can totally see why you would love that scene. No need to call me names just because I have different preferences - I respect yours.

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It's a Chinese powerpoint porno-game, jesus christ.

Yeah, like I said above:

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we all had some moments when a fictional story took a turn we really didn't like and felt the need to vent a little to feel better, right? I see stuff like that on MyAnimeList all the time. That's all I did, really. I'm good now.

I'm not depressed because of a fictional story, if that's what you're suggesting. I was just disappointed a fictional story took a turn I strongly disliked and thus I wasn't able to enjoy it anymore. Pretty normal thing that happens to everyone, I think?

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I hope for your sake that you never accidentally buy a Purplesoft title.

I've seen bits of Chrono Clock and the entirety of Happymaher; saw nothing wrong with them. Or do you mean a different company?

Also, if you're suggesting I can't handle extreme stuff - I played Subarashiki Hibi and was fine. You know why? (spoiler for Subahibi below)

Spoiler

Because even though Subahibi kinda masqueraded as vanilla for a bit, it was dropping hints that it wasn't very early in the game and showed its true colors also quite early. So I didn't expect vanilla stuff from it.

Basically, I like it when a story sticks to the genre it communicates early on. I know a lot of people love to be surprised by sudden genre changes, and that's a perfectly valid preference too. Personally, I really don't like mood whiplashes. So, if Kinkoi hadn't established itself as a moege during my first +50 hours of playing it, I wouldn't have been upset by that scene because it wouldn't be unusual for the game.

But if you meant that Purplesoft does mood whiplashes / sudden genre changes like that, then thank you for the warning, I'll try not to buy their stuff, then.

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Also, making the vote the inverse of the thread question is very underhanded.

Definitely not on purpose, but thank you for pointing that out. I was kinda assuming people actually read questions? Too late to change that now, but don't worry, people on different forums made it quite clear that I'm in the minority. Not sure what I would be trying to accomplish if I was actually trying to be underhanded, though? It's a poll to tell me whether my opinion is popular or not, so why would I be trying to manipulate its results? To lie to myself? That would defeat the entire point of this thread.

[Stormwolf]

On 2/20/2022 at 6:31 AM, TexasDice said:

No/yes. This scene is the hottest thing to ever be written down in human history. Imagine being this much of a cuck.

It's a Chinese powerpoint porno-game, jesus christ. I hope for your sake that you never accidentally buy a Purplesoft title.

 

How can it be hot if its a chinese powerpoint porno-game? I mean it's just drawings. Imagine finding that hot. Better seek medical aid.. Right?