IkeSen and SLBP Kenshin

[waterscroll]

IkeSen Kenshin was enjoyable but I don't have a ton to say about it. Like most IkeSen route it was highly fanservice-y, serving enjoyable tropes while doing its best to respect MC's agency and consent. Here the trope was yandere and imprisonment. I didn't overthink it too much, but it did some clever things to run those tropes in a consent-y way. MC meets Kenshin when her friend Sasuke introduces her to Kenshin as his employer. MC decides not to tell Kenshin that she's working for Nobunaga but rather to say that she's working as a housekeeper for a wealthy family. MC and Kenshin keep meeting as Kenshin is investigating in preparation for war, she knows who he is but he doesn't know the truth about who she is. They go on a date and drink sake together and talk and get to know each other.

Then, next time there's a battle, Kenshin sees MC with the enemy forces and realizes that he's been tricked. When she falls off her horse and he takes her as a POW it seemed like an entirely reasonable thing to do under the circumstances. Even though she was more or less an enemy combatant (she wasn't fighting, but she was on the battlefield with the Oda forces) he treats her very well. He comes to visit her and makes sure she has everything she needs and at one point brings her bunnies to play with. It's very cute, and if you like prison romances it's a likeable one. Eventually they both come to understand that her feelings for him are stronger than her loyalty to the Oda forces, and he carries her out of prison to his bedroom and they live happily ever after.

Except that he's still at war with the Oda. So the second half of the route is her trying and eventually succeeding at putting a stop to that. There's other stuff going on too, he's traumatized by the suicide of his first girlfriend so he's terrified that something will harm her and gets all yandere about that. But he gets over it.

Anyway, I enjoyed it, but mostly because it was tropes that I like played in a way that I could enjoy them.

Now I'm replaying Mitsunari's route. So far I'm not finding the replay worth it, the scenes from his POV haven't added much. But I'm only on chapter 5 and we'll see.

Meanwhile, SLBP Kenshin is very much not like IkeSen Kenshin. He's gentle and very sweet, and though he also has traumas he mostly deals with them by being a hoarder and obsessively finding the beauty in everything. It reminds me of Mitsuhide's route in how slow and subtle it is, but I'm not liking it as much, possibly because Mitsuhide was more religious and Kenshin is more about aesthetics. In some ways it's even slower, I just finished chapter 8 and it's ony sort of begun to occur to MC that she might have feelings for Kenshin. It's mostly slice-of-life getting to know Kenshin and his retainers/extended family. Some of them are lovely characters, although none have routes yet. It looks like Kaegie will get one soon, but I would really like to see a route for Kanetsugu, Kenshin's no-nonsense practically-minded retainer who is an extremely devoted single dad and goes around with his daughter's name in big characters on his helmet.

I'm thinking I'll finish up this route around when Nobunaga's act 3 comes out, since it looks like it will be out March 8. Can't wait!

Meanwhile one PSA about the current event story - you don't get free energy hearts (and closet space) for reading. (ETA: This was fixed, you get the things now.) So I did my normal strategy of burning 50-60 energy hearts in the double points and coins fever at the beginning, because that way I end up with more in the end, and whoops, wrong strategy. As far as the stories themselves - I thought the Shingen one was ridiculous and he was acting like a caricature of himself, but I like the Saizo one, I thought it was an unusual take on him.