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This time I played Aishiau Koto Shika Dekinai(Nothing But Loving You), an adventure game that has been on my to-play list for quite a while. Mainly because it's one of the few game adaptions of a josei manga I've ever seen, especially on the PS1. I read the manga and then went straight into playing this. While this post is primarily about the game, I will be comparing it to the manga. It's an interesting adaption, but there's aspects that have me recommending the manga over it.
Aishiau Koto Shika Dekinai is a 6 chapter manga by Erica Sakurazawa published between 1995-1996, so the PS1 game was only 2 years after it. Erica Sakurazawa is a famous josei mangaka, considered along with Kyoko Okazaki and Shungiku Uchida(who I first read/wrote about in this post about horror anthology Holy!) as mangaka who focus on the sexuality of women. The game was developed by Coconuts Japan, which is mostly known for Pachinko games.
The manga/game is about the model Nanako, who at her new gig after being fired for her brashness, meets the model Etsushi and is immediately taken with him. Unfortunately for her, he has a boyfriend, Shin, but he does seem to be interested in her and they grow closer. Meanwhile Nanako has the actor Mitsuhiko always showing up proclaiming how much he loves her. The rest of the story revolves around this love square.
The way the game presents the story is through full voiced screens with limited animation. Like those videos where they zoom in on single manga panels, voice them, and have some animation. There's very little interaction outside of a few minigames like a slot machine, tapping circle to make a wish on a shooting star, etc. And most interestingly, there's always a cat on the bottom of the screen that meows sometimes? I didn't figure out what this was here for until I read this blog post that explains this is where choices are made. You press circle when the cat meows to branch the story, and since I didn't realize until after playing, I only got one ending(I saw another in a YouTube playthrough) out of the apparently 4.
The ending I watched on YouTube was just the manga's story, but worse, mainly because it took out some scenes, mostly the sex scenes. The ending I got was different than the manga, and I thought it was worse.
Ending Spoilers (CW: Suicide, Discussion of Sexual Content)
The ending I got has things between Nanako and Etsushi going well, which causes Shin to attempt suicide. Etsushi finds out and gets back together with him, ending things with Nanako. She goes to Paris to do modeling, an ending implying Nanako and Etsushi still have feelings for each other.
This ending removes all the meaning from the original story into a bittersweet ending with shock value that doesn't feel particularly earned. It also suffers from the problem even the original manga ending in the game has: the removal of the sex scenes erases necessary context. You don't get the scene where after he has a fight with Shin goes to Nanako's place and ends up breaking down when they are about to have sex. Without this, the new ending feels like Shin is manipulating Etsushi when the scene shows he does still love him. It also informs Nanako's changing feelings in the original ending. It has her questioning what she's been doing up to this point, and starts to figure out what she wants. The sex scenes between Nanako and Mitsuhiko are there to show she at first sees him as just a tool for sex, which by the end she realizes she actually loves him. This all culminates with the final scene between Nanako and Etsushi, where he admires/reminds her how she goes for what she wants, leading her to finally try to get into Paris Fashion Week. The new ending/game throws all that away.
It's a confusing change when that's what the mangaka is known for and the sex scenes are not even particularly explicit. It's the main reason I'd recommend the manga over the game, it feels incomplete otherwise.
This ending removes all the meaning from the original story into a bittersweet ending with shock value that doesn't feel particularly earned. It also suffers from the problem even the original manga ending in the game has: the removal of the sex scenes erases necessary context. You don't get the scene where after he has a fight with Shin goes to Nanako's place and ends up breaking down when they are about to have sex. Without this, the new ending feels like Shin is manipulating Etsushi when the scene shows he does still love him. It also informs Nanako's changing feelings in the original ending. It has her questioning what she's been doing up to this point, and starts to figure out what she wants. The sex scenes between Nanako and Mitsuhiko are there to show she at first sees him as just a tool for sex, which by the end she realizes she actually loves him. This all culminates with the final scene between Nanako and Etsushi, where he admires/reminds her how she goes for what she wants, leading her to finally try to get into Paris Fashion Week. The new ending/game throws all that away.
It's a confusing change when that's what the mangaka is known for and the sex scenes are not even particularly explicit. It's the main reason I'd recommend the manga over the game, it feels incomplete otherwise.
It's a pretty short game, about an hour and a half, understandable considering the manga is ~180 pages. Unfortunately trying to get other endings is annoying because there's no skip functions and the strange way of branching the story makes knowing what choices affect what is difficult, which is why I only got one ending. Considering how I felt about it, I don't think the other ones would be much better.
While I don't think it's a completely successful adaption of the manga, it is an interesting one, one that makes me wish we got more Josei game adaptions, or even just more Josei games in general.