Otome Game Review: Him, the Smile & bloom

Have you ever wondered what life would be like as a florist? Probably not, but thanks to the power of video games you can play as one in Him, the Smile & bloom. Well, you’ll be able to do so just in one route since every love interest has a different MC paired with him.

About Him, the Smile & bloom

The love interests and their respective MCs

An ambitious approach that fell flat

Like I said, we have four different MC each paired with one of the four love interests. This sounds like a good idea on paper to explore different dynamics and see different personalities based on the age and life experience of the MC. In reality, the protagonists all seemed to be essentially the same character, with only trivial differences. One might be more outspoken, another one might be a bit more reserved and shy… But that’s about it. If we had only one MC, she would have displayed the same set of emotions and might have changed a little based on the route too.

We have four different MCs because each of them has a different career and connection to certain flowers. They all exist in the same “universe” and “timeline” with the love interests. But we never see a MC from another route appearing suddenly, it’s like they never cross each other’s paths. Which is a bit weird since they often interact with the love interests who work in the same shop.

Another selling point of the game is how it talks so often about flowers and plants in general. So I thought that I would learn one thing or two about them. There is an encyclopedia in the game that you can check out, and you get a notification each time a new entry is added. But unlike other otomes games where the text is highlighted in the text box where you get a new entry, here you have to manually go to the encyclopedia and search for it. It’s not even organized correctly, and there are no illustrations to actually see what the flower looks like. Given that this feature distinguishes this otome from the rest, I expected it to be better included than this.

My thoughts on the love interests of Him, the Smile & bloom

I didn’t understand how he fell in love so quickly, and it made the whole route feel inauthentic and hollow. There’s also a huuuge emphasis on the age gap he has with the MC, when it’s only five years that separates them…? It’s so ridiculous, especially when, conversely, we have female MCs not batting an eye when they are pursuing an older LI 20 years older than them. The MC is uncomfortable with the age gap and is scared that she’s stealing Touri’s youth since he’s still a university student. Which is ridiculous given she’s only 26. I would have loved to see an empowered MC who felt flattered and played along with the attention Touri was giving her.

Another problem is that Touri is barely developed as a character. He keeps mentioning the day they met, how it made him feel… But it never felt like they were creating new memories together where their feelings could have flourished in a more natural way. It’s not even that the love between the characters was rushed, it just never looked like it existed in the first place.

I do think I would have appreciate him more if he had a different VA. I like upbeat characters and found him cute… maybe if I replay his route in a few years I would change my mind about him?

I had a hard time with him at first. He’s a womanizer but acted like a jerk with MC when they first met! But I slowly changed my mind at some point and was confident that he’d be my favorite… Until they had to destroy everything with a miscommunication trope! And it’s among the worst instances I’ve seen. It’s the MC who gets the wrong idea about a certain situation, but when she talks about it with Sugawa he actually gets annoyed that she would interpret what she saw like this. He’s basically feeling dejected that she misinterpreted the situation. So instead of reassuring her, it’s actually the MC who has to find the right words to not piss him off. What a joke!

With his past life as a playboy, this route felt a bit icky to me. It’s not a trope that I dislike, but I didn’t feel like trust was established between the two characters to make their relationship concrete and believable.

I love the idea of childhood friend trope, but I have yet to find a good execution for it. Yet again, this is the worst execution of a trope I’ve encountered. Everyone knows about the “friendzone”, but Hokuto took it up a notch and decided to “familyzone” the MC. Because they’ve been together since they were children and their parents are friends with each other, he can’t imagine being involved with the MC romantically. In fact, he prefers to share this family bond, because in his mind it’s less fleeting than a romantic relationship…

I HATED this route with a passion… BUT it has a reedemable quality that I never imagined: its Bad Ending. It reminded me of Caleb from Love and Deepspace in his 1st myth where we get to see him as the Colonel. In fact, it might be my favorite Bad Ending across all the otome games I’ve played (not that I can remember a lot of them anyway…). Playing the whole game was worth it just for this ending, and I may revisit it from times to times because of how perfectly twisted it felt.

Everyone seems to love him in the otome’s community, but I didn’t particularly fell for him. What is nice is that there’s no miscommunication in this route, and Tenya actually takes the initiative multiple times to clear up misunderstandings and make the MC comfortable. There’s also a portion of the route where they pretend to be in a relationship which was cute to follow. But Tenya as a character didn’t really pull me in. He has the same issue as Touri, where he got completely smitten with MC out of thin air and has the same intense feelings for her even years later. In fact, his personnality flipped completely thanks to MC, which is unreleastic and a little weird… There’s an imbalance of feelings that I didn’t quite liked. While skipping real romantic buildup saves effort for the writers, it makes the whole harder to get invested in…

On a side note, he also has a “sleepyhead” kind of persona and talks reaaaally slowly in a monotonous tone. It really annoyed me, especially when we find out that he was a delinquent in high school that doesn’t align with his current sluggish vibe at all.

DON’T play this game before or after Cupid Parasite

In my case, I played Cupid Parasite last year but it was still pretty jarring to see so many similarities between the two games. The most obvious one is the artstyle since it’s made by the same person Y at (わいあっと). But there’s more! The love interest Touri Wataru shares the same VA as Gill Lovecraft. Since I really hold a grudge agaisnt him (Gill, not the VA!), it was really hard for me to tell appart the characters and be immersed in the actual route. On the other hand, Sugawa Ginnosuke looks like a carbon copy of Raul Aconite but since he’s one of my favorite in Cupid Parasite I didn’t mind it as much. And lastly, you’ll also hear Allan Melville while playing since his VA also voiced Ichige Hokuto. So to sum it up, three love interests out of the four available have some kind of connection to Cupid Parasite. It might have been less noticeable if the artstyle was different, but even the VAs didn’t alter their voices and I recognized them pretty much as soon as I started to play.

Another similarity in both game with the Best Ending is that it finishes when the couple reaches a major relationship milestone. From what I remember of Cupid Parasite, the LIs proposed to Lynette. Even if I’m not the biggest fan of this trope, it does make sense given her job as a matchmaker. In Him the Smile & bloom, it’s not always a proposal but it’s still a commitment made between the two characters. It’s kind of funny that the second best ending called the “Bloom Endind” didn’t have that, as if the best possible outcome was to take the Relationship Escalator.

A heavy case of non-romanceable side characters

There are just two male side-characters with sprite, and for some reason these two look like more interesting love interests than the love interests themselves… Especially Karakusa Rei who was involved in two MC’s life as a older and reliable figure. He has a possessive side to him that I would have love to see explored in a fully-fledged route… On the other hand, we have Utsugi Chikashi, the young and really positive part-time worker. I like how he has pink, spiky hair with full eyebrows which makes him look both cute and masculine. But hélas, we can’t romance either of them…

Final thoughts

As you might have guessed, I didn’t really enjoy this game… Slice-of-life otomes are a tough genre to pull off because there isn’t a lot of plot. So they really need to rely on deep backstories or strong character development, both of which fell flat for me here. The real highlight was the art and character designs (and Ichige’s Bad Ending lol). It may be that simpler otome games aren’t my cup of tea.

It’s a little spicy with some kissing scenes and implied intimate scenes, though it might be a bit less adventurous than Sympathy Kiss was.

There’s also a DLC with additional stories that I didn’t even play. It cost practically nothing, but keep in mind that it’s really short!