It’s been a while since I played a romantic visual novel, which makes it funny that the next one that I’m playing for review is developed by MangaGamer. Known for their eroge storefront, MangaGamer has pulled together their resources to create their first in-house developed visual novel, Koropokkur in Love ~A Little Fairy’s Tale~, strangely not an eroge.
It’s good to see MangaGamer entering the visual novel development space with their first title, which ran a successful Kickstarter campaign. However, a lot of doubt can arise when one wonders if the publisher has what it takes to also develop their own titles. Thankfully, that’s not the case with Koropokkur in Love instead, I actually really enjoyed myself.
Koropokkur in Love tells the story of a young Koropokkur fairy named Asirrera who really wants to leave her hidden village and hang out in the human world, which is exactly what she does. Being that she is a fairy, it was tough to keep up in crowds of people or enjoy herself so she uses her magic to turn herself into a human. Close by, at a maid cafe called Petit Fille, owner Satoru is struggling to keep his business afloat. Asirrera ends up making things harder for him after she accidentally ruins his event.
To make it up to Satoru, Asirrera promises to help out at the cafe for free. However, Asirrera’s secret of being a fairy isn’t kept for long and she explains who and what she is. Throughout the story, the theme of fate plays a rather large role in the plot. As Asirrera and Satoru grow closer it’s only natural what would follow, but the story isn’t as clean and cut like that and these characters do end up gaining some depth in the later chapters of the game. Additionally, Asirrera’s two friends Cirta and Haruante end up being good additions to the small cast of characters.
Being a kinetic visual novel, there isn’t much player interaction so if the story’s first 30-minutes doesn’t have you wanting more then it’ll only go downhill from there. Koropokkur in Love has an interesting enough premise that made me want to continue to find out what happens to this strange fairy girl and why is she so set on being a part of the human world.
The romance in Koropokkur in Love is pretty adorable but also expected. As believable as the character’s feelings were, it’s not something that a fan of this genre hasn’t seen before. There were also some rather funny scenes throughout every chapter that had a knack of keeping a cheesy smile on my face.
The character designs were by far one of the best parts of the game. However, I must say that I am a fan of the artist Hinoue Itaru, who worked on Koropokkur in Love. I understand that not everyone feels the same way, but I personally feel like her over the top anime style characters give them a retro vibe that I don’t see in too many visual novels anymore. I enjoyed all of the expressions of the characters as well as the CGs, which I only wished there were more of.
The music in Koropokkur in Love is very good, which is something that I wasn’t expecting. I usually give indie visual novels some slack on the music because budget always gets in the way of getting nicely composed tracks. The team at Funczion Sounds created a nice arrangement of melodic piano tunes to uplift the emotional scenes, which made them more enjoyable.
Koropokkur in Love ~A Little Fairy’s Tale~’s generic story isn’t creating new waves in the visual novel space, but the combination of the game’s music and character design makes it all feel worth it. The story can be completed in under 4 hours and I think that is perfect for it to not overstay its welcome.
Koropokkur in Love ~A Little Fairy’s Tale~ is a great entry from MangaGamer as their first developed visual novel. With that said, the story plays it extremely safe and would probably only hold the attention of someone in the mood for a romantic comedy. This isn’t a long visual novel, but the characters are charming enough to look back on fondly and hope for more stories from these Koropokkurs.
