A while ago, I got a visual novel Humble Bundle that came with a bunch of things I’d probably never have picked up otherwise, including KARAKARA.

Since it’s a romance visual novel featuring catgirls, I honestly expected it to be a lot like Nekopara, which I reviewed a couple years ago: silly, cute, not a whole lot of substance if you aren’t interested in the 18+ version.

There are some definite similarities, especially in regards to how its romance and fanservice are handled, but it’s actually quite distinct. Aside from anime catgirl fanservice, the two visual novels don’t really have much overlap, and KARAKARA has a much more defined plot despite taking me less than 2 hours to complete.

KARAKARA is set in a post-apocalyptic world where an unknown Disaster wiped out most of civilization, and humanity’s efforts to survive resulted in hybrids like our catgirl love interests here.

The main character runs a diner in Sagami Francisco (the result of American and Japanese survivors of the Disaster coming together) along with his friend/employee Lucia, and they routinely deliver food to the people who live in town. One day, as they’re driving, they encounter a girl named Aisia sleeping alongside the road. Since she has nowhere to go, they take her in as a new employee, and the story largely deals with how this changes their lives.

It’s a kinetic novel, so you don’t make any choices, and while it’s mainly focused on romance and comedy, parts of the plot were surprisingly interesting.

In short, KARAKARA is a cute, sweet story that has an interesting enough plot across its few hours that I’ll probably pick up KARAKARA 2 at some point to see how the plot progresses and hopefully learn more about the world.

Once upon a time, I wrote a freelance script about ten of the weirdest romance visual novels available at the time.

One of the visual novels I learned about as a result was Creature Romances ~Kokonoe Kokoro~, a visual novel about a romance with a giant grasshopper.

So of course I vowed to play it if it ever got an English release.

I figured there were two directions a visual novel like this could go. Either it would be disturbing and weird, with the protagonist seeing a world full of monsters around him like in Saya no Uta, or it would be silly and played for laughs like Hatoful Boyfriend.

But there was a third possibility I hadn’t even considered, and that was that the weird premise would be entirely inconsequential.

You play a high school boy who isn’t prepared to think about higher education or his future until his best friend Kokonoe Kokoro asks him to study hard so they can both be accepted into the same university. He is the only human character in the game, which no one ever mentions. Only one or two lines reference the characters being insect people at all. You could swap out the characters for humans and the visual novel would remain unchanged.

In the end, Creature Romances just left me asking why, and not because you’re romancing a giant bug.

It’s just a high school love story, a little cute but mostly bland. The juxtaposition of these normal romantic thoughts with the giant bug girl causes a mild amount of humor at first, but since the story never does anything with it, it loses even that once the novelty wears off.

So if you buy Creature Romances ~Kokonoe Kotoro~, just be aware you aren’t getting much besides the ability to say, “Yes, I played the grasshopper romance game.”