After recovering from Room No.9, I wanted to experience another shocking Boy’s Love story, so I naturally turned to Paradise.

Azuma is the triumphant winner of a free trip to a resort. For someone whose life has been pretty boring between his convenience store job and his worn-out appartment, this sudden stroke of luck sets him on fire. Finally, the monotony of his dull life would be broken. He could already picture the beach, the girls and the fun he would have there. This trip would be nothing like his boring life—yes, but not how he anticipated…

Mitsugi, the tsundere who forgot to smile

Mitsugi hate to waste time—or even worse, those who make him waste his time. If you want to be on his good side, prepare to become his minion.

Right of the bat, Mitsugi looked really goofy to me. Who would wear a perfectly pressed suit on an island where it must have been boiling hot? And of course, he had a set beauty routine even during their crisis, constiting of a spray of cologne and water in his hair to comb it. It’s even funnier when you see the stark contrast between his polished apperance and the messy state of his cabin. It made him look like an hypocrite, moreso when he’s quite the perfectionnist with others, especially Azuma.

His attitude didn’t really help me grow attached to him either. At first I fond the banter between him and Azuma quite amusing, but it got old pretty fast. Some might call them ennemies-to-lovers, but for me their bickering was too childish to feel like it was building toward romance. It didn’t help that his reason for hating Azuma was so lame. Just because he bore a small ressemblance to his old mentor, he couldn’t stand him?

There’s also moments when he’s just plain cruel to Azuma for no reason. Like the time he pushed him into the river and let him almost drown. Or later in the route, when he forced Azuma to go down a cliff to check if the body was still alive. Not to mention how he bossed him arround and made him work to the point of exhaustion. After finishing the game, it’s true that those are small inconveniences compared to the awful things that the other 2 LIs do to Azuma, but it still bothered me nevertheless.

Another thing that didn’t work out in his favor was his voice actor. It didn’t matter what happenned — a steamy scene, a slice-of-life moment, or devastating one— his delivery was the same monotonous tone! One of the appeals of tsunderes is that they can get flustered easily. But Mitsugi was unfazed most of the time, and his VA didn’t gave him any range. Because of that and everything else, it was hard for me to really understand and like him.

Matsuda, a man with questionable tastes

Matsuda is the kind of manager you pray you’ll never encounter in your life: if you piss him off, he will smash your gut out. How he managed to get into this position with that kind of attitude is a real mystery…

He shares the same voice actor as Allan Melville from Cupid Parasite, who wasn’t my favorite from this game but had a really sexy voice nevertheless. I also liked Matsuda personnality because he felt reliable and the most competent. Just like Takara though, his route takes an unexpected turn that doesn’t make any sense. In the early H-scenes, Matsuda kind of pressured Azuma into doing things, while at the same time ensurring that he’s not hurt in the process. But then suddenly, all of that is thrown in the trash and he just does whatever he wants with Azuma.

I found it interesting how he warned Azuma about deceptive appearances and made him aware that he trusted people too easily, but I still thought his behavior felt really out of character. Even when he seemed to be losing his sanity, he was still the one fishing at night, protecting the food storage, and making sure their rationing system was respected. Clearly, he’s not a bad person and still wants to help the group. But because of the shame he felt after killing Kido, and fearing everyone else’s reaction, he decided to embrace being the “bad guy” in the most extreme way. It’s like he preferred to play that role rather than let others give him the benefit of the doubt for Kido’s death. Even though he’s the one warning Azuma about other people’s ulterior motives, I think Matsuda might actually be the one who has the hardest time reading other people’s feelings.

Takara, the twink with bodybuilder muscles

Takara doesn’t care about your gender (nice!) nor your meat preferences (oh…)! Yes, they just had to turn the open-minded guy into a cannibal…

I actually suspected him from the start because of his gigantic suitcase. Clearly if it was that heavy, there had to be body parts inside! I was also wary of him because he looked so young and harmless, so of course he had to have some hidden strength. His eyes also creeped me out for some reason, so let’s just say that I wasn’t looking forward to his route.

Turns out that Takara is a cannibal… or something. It’s actually kind of hard to figure out what he is because in other routes he seems genuinely afraid of death, blood and corpses, and it doesn’t feel like he’s faking it. His route felt both like an info dump and a setup for the next game. I’m just really conflicted about him. It’s kind of like when Bella falls in love with Edward, the vampire who could possibly turn her into a monster. Expect Takara is even worse, because he can actually really kill Azuma. I have a hard time picturing a cute love story (or even friendship) between them, but that weird pairing do make me feel curious for the next games…

The good ending where they are in the car, ready to leave Japan, and Takara is giggling because he tells the others he had sex with Azuma was… off-the-wall. Coming right after the bad endings and seeing them like that was a bit off-putting, but I guess it’s also part of the charm of the game to have these completely opposite atmospheres.

Azuma, the star of this game

I may have a thing for BL protagonists since Towa was also one of my favorite character. But Azuma was seriously the best! They may have gone a little overboard with his tragic past—because how can one person have such a shitty childhood?—but the way he keeps pushing forward, especially on the island, made me love him. He’s self-aware enough to admit that at first, he wouldn’t have minded staying there forever and creating his own “paradise,” but he still tries his best on the boat-making team or during food gathering. Even though he feels like he doesn’t care about life, he still does everything in his power to never lose hope and fight for survival. The bad endings are the perfect example of his tenacity. In “Paradise of my Own,” I was expecting him to die, but to my surprise, he actually managed to escape Takara’s room even after all the mental torture he endured there.

I also found his VA to be excellent in his range of emotions, to the point where I felt physically ill at the same time as Azuma had to endure pain! So I went to check who was the man behind the voice, and it’s actually the same VA as Seiji from Room No.9… This VA has clearly find his calling, and I hope that other games where he appears will get localized because he’s that good at giving life to his characters.

Shimada, my beloved

Shimada was my pick because he looked cute, had a nice voice and was clearly a freak from the start. His reaction when we enter the hut with the burned body gave me goosebumps! I was looking forward to his route, only to discover that there are only 3 good endings in this game… Why did Hongou and Shimada only get a single bad ending each? I still really enjoyed his route, in a twisted way. Maybe the game had numbed me, but I found it hilarious how he casually revealed that he used to go to battlefields to take pictures of corpses, as if it were a typical hobby. What kind of trauma does someone need to be into that kind of stuff?!

An unforgettable vacation

Paradise is horryfying, goofy, questionnable and appalling all at once… While I was playing, I sped through a lot of parts because they were simply too shocking. I may not have been on the island with them, but I started AND finished this game—which was the same kind of rollercoaster they had to endure.

I can see that the first game in the Paradise franchise may not be the best out of the three. To be fair, an uninhabitated island with no food or electricity was never going to be the best setting for blossoming love and heart-fluttering moments. Despite the uncertain future and their lack of nutrients I do feel like the characters did their best. They tried to work together, not let their emotions get the best, and resist the despair of their situation. The camaraderie between them once they returned to the mainland was especially touching, and I’m looking forward to seeing them work together, now that they have this shared unforgettable experience in Paradise -MUSUBI-. This was my first PIL/SLASH game, and not the last one (although I will have to brace myself because I know now what to expect from them…).

I also think we’ve seen the worst side of the characters in this first game, and that we’ll get to see other sides of them later on. I can’t say I truly liked any of them, but I’m still curious to see how they’ll act once they’re back in normal life—with their consciousness intact, and all the daily calories they need.

To end this article, I wanted to share some of my favorite quotes from the game. This Boys Love game had way too many questionable moments, and sometimes the translation really helped alleviate the stress I felt. The modern translation and humour made the experience even more unique. Takara’s quote both cracks me up and will probably haunt me for the rest of my days—because what did he even mean by that…?