Osananajimi wa
Daitouryou: My Girlfriend is the President Fan Disc Review
Well
seeing as Obama’s term will be ending soon I figure I might as well get to this
fandisc while the parody is still relevant. So without further delay let’s take
a look at Osananajimi wa Daitouryou: My Girlfriend is the President Fan Disc,
originally released in Japan by Alcot on August 13, 2010 in a special edition
for Comiket followed by a regular edition on October 29 of that same year and
released in English by JAST Densetsu on July 4, 2014. How does this revisit of
the Osadai setting turn out? Decent, but…
Pros: The returning characters are all great to see again,
Remi is given good character writing, Irina’s story finally let’s itself focus
on being funny.
Cons: No after stories for Yukino or Ran, Kuon and the panda
are absent, the social commentary in Irina’s story is not subtle, text spacing
issues and typos galore.
WTF?!: Very much to the point Qoo.
The
Osadai fan disc is made up of two after stories: one for Irina and one for Ell.
Now I know that might sound like a possible deal breaker, especially if you
really like Yukino’s route and found Irina’s route disappointing, but I can
assure you that despite how disappointing that sounds (and is) this game is
very much worth a look since overall both stories make for a good read. This is
mainly because the returning characters are all as enjoyable as they were in
the original game (some more so than before). Of course seeing as there’s only
two stories I’ll just give my preferences here: Ell’s story is the better of
the two. Also since there’s no common route let’s get to why.
Of the
two after stories Ell’s is the one with the writing that best takes advantage
of the story it continues from. We see some progression in Ell and Junichiro’s
relationship, a plot point from the original story is addressed in a
surprisingly moving way, Qoo and Remi make for a hilarious comedy duo and
speaking of which this story manages to accomplish something I thought
impossible from playing Osadai: make Remi a likable character. I’ll give you a
minute to let that surprise sink in a bit before continuing…
I swear
I am not kidding you, the writer for this manages to give Remi a good arc and
make her a really likable character all throughout the story. Aside from the
aforementioned comedy scenes with Qoo, we also get some very good scenes
between her and Junichiro plus ones of her trying to connect with her sister
Ell. In many ways this feels like a well written apology for how annoying she
was in the main game, especially in how all the scenes end up culminating into
one brief scene that manages to cement her character development from the
positive relationships she’s formed to her desire to do good not only to make
up for past transgressions but because it’s the right thing to do.
As for
any flaws this story may have, there is one nitpick on my part. Basically there
is a minor plot point where at several points Junichiro does ponder his future
with Ell, but there really isn’t any payoff to it. It’s basically written off
on a positive note at the end. It’s overall not a major flaw since it does fit
thematically with the game, but it’s still enough to make you wish this could
have been a little better addressed.
Moving
on to Irina’s story, while this is the weaker of the two there’s still a lot to
like about it. First and foremost, this story excels in comedy, something the
original route really needed more of. As can be seen above there’s anime
reference based humor abound and some really good character comedy too. It’s
actually really refreshing to see interactions between Irina and Junichiro that
are not only funny but actually reflect the chemistry that existed between them
in the previous game and best of all do not devolve into awkward/forced drama.
Kind of ironic that the comparatively short after story has more laughs than
the original game’s longer route.
Still
the main factor that brings this story down is later on when it tries to do
social commentary. The problem isn’t that it’s out of place as it involves
Yukino and in the original her route did feature some; the main theme of it
being the importance of having at least an awareness of the political state of
one’s own country and what could be done to fix any problems there may be. The
thing is in Osadai that social commentary was subtle, so well wrapped up in the
story’s screw ball comedy that one could very easily miss or ignore it if not
interested. In Irina’s story there is no subtlety to it, as every scene
involving social commentary has it essentially beaten over your head to make
sure you get it. Presenting it this way only serves to make the commentary feel
out of place at best and annoyingly/boringly preachy at worst, the latter of which you
do not want in a comedy.
As for
flaws that both stories share, aside from the lack of after stories for Ran and
Yukino (seriously, in the latter case there’s plenty of comedic story potential
considering how that route ended), there’s also the lack of Kuon and a certain
talking panda from the returning cast even though they do appear in the trailer. There is a reasonable explanation for
Kuon’s absence given though strangely the latter is only given an almost
offhand explanation. My guess is their voice actors were unavailable due to
scheduling but the characters’ absences are felt all the same. Still, there is
one glaring shared flaw that cannot be ignored, a flaw that could have very
easily been fixed by proofreading…
Yes, as
can be seen this game has a typos the likes of which I haven’t seen since
proofreading papers typed on a broken keyboard and text spacing errors
comparable to an unpatched Kansen 5. There’s also instances where Japanese text
shows up in the text boxes. Fortunately these are all for simple things like
sighs, but all in all these are indications of the importance of proofreading a
game’s translation. There does exist a patch but it only fixes some of these
issues.
In the
area of presentation, the Osadai FD does about as well as the main game in
terms of music and voice acting. In the art department it’s almost the same
though there are some CG that look a little less polished than others.
As for
the ero scenes, they’re good though Irina’s story has the better ones when
compared to Ell’s.
In Conclusion:
Osananajimi
wa Daitouryou: My Girlfriend is the President Fan Disc is an overall decent
follow up to Osadai. The stories that it has to tell are good, especially
Ell’s, and you get to enjoy reuniting with most of the cast. While I admit it
is disappointing that Yukino and Ran don’t have after stories and there is a
bit of a void with Kuon and the panda’s absence, and you'll have to deal with typos popping up, for the low price that it’s available for (less than twenty bucks) it’s well worth picking up if you enjoyed the first game. Still,
I think there is one thing that we can all agree on as a plus for this fan
disc…the main villain of the first game does not come back (except for when we briefly see him in the trailer).
Final Score: 6/10 Above Average
Author Recommendation: Buy it Now.
