I was admittedly not expecting much, but it ended up being my 2nd favorite visual novel release in 2023. Basically, I love that this is a gritty psychological thriller. It hooked me within the first 10 to 15 minutes and didn't let up within the whole 14 hours on full auto read.
The name Criminal border makes sense as most of the main characters do things that are heavily immoral but technically not crimes. That made a lot of the character interactions and motivations quite interesting.
Despite the psychological thriller aspect, there is a surprising amount of great wholesome slice of life. Mostly used for breaks in the drama, but a few of the relationships are surprisingly heartwarming, despite the deep shit some of the characters are in.
I thought the main character was going to be a useless "hetare" but he turned out to have quite the really interesting character arc relative to the tone of the series.
Even though this visual novel is definitely dark and gritty, it did not resort to stupid shock value H scenes (like NitroPlus, Subahibi, Clockup, etc) In fact, basically all of the H scenes are surprisingly relatively vanilla (most of which are actually plot relevant for once!). At worst, some things are fetishy but many of those are shown through surprising comedy SDs.
Honestly, any flaws I have are due to the structure and some minor things. More specifically, while I do quite like the title heroine "Hina" there were a few aspects of her that were a little too good to be true. While I quite liked the unique art style, I wasn't a fan of making almost all the major girls' boobs way too big. While the visual novel had a very clear character and story arc that was definitely completed and very well done... at the end of the day, this is still episode 1, so there's still a larger scope plot cliffhangered at the end.
I pretty much can't give it any higher than a 9/10 and that's purely because it's just episode 1. But I loved just about everything about it. I will be sad if nothing past episode 1 gets translated just because it doesn't seem to be taking off that well.
The name Criminal border makes sense as most of the main characters do things that are heavily immoral but technically not crimes. That made a lot of the character interactions and motivations quite interesting.
Despite the psychological thriller aspect, there is a surprising amount of great wholesome slice of life. Mostly used for breaks in the drama, but a few of the relationships are surprisingly heartwarming, despite the deep shit some of the characters are in.
I thought the main character was going to be a useless "hetare" but he turned out to have quite the really interesting character arc relative to the tone of the series.
Even though this visual novel is definitely dark and gritty, it did not resort to stupid shock value H scenes (like NitroPlus, Subahibi, Clockup, etc) In fact, basically all of the H scenes are surprisingly relatively vanilla (most of which are actually plot relevant for once!). At worst, some things are fetishy but many of those are shown through surprising comedy SDs.
Honestly, any flaws I have are due to the structure and some minor things. More specifically, while I do quite like the title heroine "Hina" there were a few aspects of her that were a little too good to be true. While I quite liked the unique art style, I wasn't a fan of making almost all the major girls' boobs way too big. While the visual novel had a very clear character and story arc that was definitely completed and very well done... at the end of the day, this is still episode 1, so there's still a larger scope plot cliffhangered at the end.
I pretty much can't give it any higher than a 9/10 and that's purely because it's just episode 1. But I loved just about everything about it. I will be sad if nothing past episode 1 gets translated just because it doesn't seem to be taking off that well.