I have completed Majikoi and did all of the main and side routes including the final route after...I want to say 88 hours? With me removing any idle time. I have never reviewed a visual novel in great detail before so this will be new and challenging for me but just bare with me, I will try my best.
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DISCLAIMER: I need to get the elephant out of the room before I continue and I feel like I need to be honest here. Majikoi is originally an eroge visual novel with porn scenes (all of the characters are stated to be at least 18 despite appearances and it's used as a plot device actually).
However, I played the Steam version of the game (with the full voice patch) that has removed all of the eroge scenes. From my research, quite frankly, some of the scenes are quite problematic and badly written for reasons I rather not go into detail.
But in short, the existence of those scenes just overall decreases the quality of the game. I will be speaking from my SFW experience of the game and will treat the scenes as if they never existed at all.
That said, if you're not put off by any of the information above, then feel free to keep reading.
...............................................................................................
So what is Majikoi? Majikoi is a visual novel that features a group of tightly knitted high school friends called The Kazama Family. You have the main character, Yamato Naoe, proclaimed tactician that is not afraid to use underhand methods and have a wide network of people, who surrounds himself with an assembled rainbow of characters in the city of Kawakami, Japan.
The main girls, who are considered as the samurai girls, each having their own full fledge route are Momoyo Kawakami, the strongest fighter in the world that is always seeking battle and those that are stronger than her. Yukie Mayuzumi, is a shy socially ill adapt girl who talks to her cell phone strap, Matsukaze; but is also a powerful sword saint.
Then you have Miyako Shiina, an archer that is normally quiet and cold but quite caring and open towards The Kazama Family, especially towards Yamato with her nonstop love and affection for him. Christiane Friedrich, who's a German exchange student who is fascinated with the land of Japan and has the heart and attitude of a samurai. And Kazuko Kawakami, who's treated like a happy go luck energetic dog girl, always hard working and always training to achieve her dreams.
Not to forget the males of the Kazuma family. With Shoichi Kazama, who's considered to be the captain and leader of the Kazama family and has a free spirit that always calls for adventure. Gakuto Shimazu, a muscular, thick-skinned overly arrogant man that always tries to woo a woman, only to fail every time. And Takuya Morooka, the straight man that is relatively normal compared to everyone else but also likes manga and games a lot.
And that is just the main 9 characters out of dozens and dozens. Majikoi has no shortage of colorful personalities with its vast amount of side characters, which is very impressive for a visual novel of its genre.
While some of them may be one-dimensional with only a few personality traits, nearly, if not all of them are highly entertaining, to say the least.
An important note is it's essential to install the full voice patch. Besides the lines that are Yamato or lines to narrate the events of the story, every single line was originally fully voiced in the Japanese release with over a hundred different voices.
However, JAST USA could not afford the licensing for the voices outside The Kazama Family. So the game was officially localized without the rest of the voices.
Playing Majikoi without the voice restoration patch is doing a massive disservice to the game. While a lot of the voice acting for the nameless and faceless characters that only appear a handful of times isn't great, to be honest.
The voice acting for characters that appears more often with portraits is fantastic with their voice acting and helps a lot with the delivery, engagement, and emotion with their lines that would otherwise be silent.
The beginning of Majikoi, which is also known as the common route is Yamato getting by day by day with his school life interacting with various people.
Not only from The Kazama Family but with the rest of his classmates at 2-F, their rival class, 2-S, various schoolmates from other classes, and well as plenty of people scattered around the city of Kawakami.
Very often, Majikoi is written like a comedy shounen slice of life and the game's humor is pretty slapstick, over the top, sexual and even meta fourth wall breaking. Due to the nature of the game being an eroge, Majikoi holds no barrels with every sexual joke, innuendo, and piece of dialogue you could imagine under the sun.
In fact, to give one example, one of the side characters earns the name "Yonpachi" because he memorized all 48 sex positions, given his constant horny and perverted nature.
The game also uses plenty of reference humor, the fact that pretty much everyone hits and beats up everyone when they do something silly and sometimes the characters just get put in unbelievable situations you just can't help but laugh at it. If anything, Majikoi is great at brightening up the player's mood with its funny antics.
Of course, Majikoi does have its serious moments as well since it's never just all fun and games, The Kazama Family often gets into serious problems that often test the strength of one's beliefs, ideas, and thier relationship with the person in conflict.
After passing the prologue, the game will open up to the player choosing a character and spending time with them to enter one of 5 main routes and 6 side routes with a final hidden route later on.
Spending the day with the character will get rid of a red bubble and you have to get rid of all of them to get locked into thier route. There will be quirks that interfere with the character selection such as one of them running away or appearing out of nowhere.
The other form of gameplay is making choices, which is standard for a VN. Some of the choices only affect a few lines before continuing forward with the story but other choices can lead to a bad ending, even if the results aren't immediate.
Majikoi is considered a harem VN, but I think it's very different from the majority of the genre. For starters, most harem protagonists tend to be as bland, boring, and generic as possible with not much of a personality.
However, Yamato has a set personality being a scheming tactician no matter what route the player select. Personally, I found it hard to self-insert into a character with such a redefined personality.
Not to mention it's extremely rare for male characters to receive routes in visual novels. While they just side routes, Majikoi has a greater focus on spotlighting male characters with 3 male routes. It's something I greatly appreciate, considering I was never fond of the overly female focus in the visual novel genre.
And it's important to note the number of battle shounen fights, duels, showdowns, and full-scale assaults Majikoi features, due to the nature of Kawakami being a city built on martial arts, it's nature many of the characters exhibit peak and even superhuman strength. Silmair abilities you may fight in other battle shounen series.
Now it's depending on the route in which the situation The Kazama Family gets involved and how huge the scales are. But Majikoi seamlessly combines action, romance, comedy and drama to make it a pretty engaging and gripping story to read no matter the mood.
The routes can vary in quality and I say this is the biggest and perhaps only weakness in the game if you decide to go with the non-porn route. I believe it comes down to subjective taste but it's clear not all routes are made equally.
For instance, I wasn't exactly a fan of some of the side routes since they felt undercooked and rushed because of the short length compared to the main routes, even if I enjoyed Capt's route a lot. Not to mention I'm just not as interested in some of the characters focused on the side routes.
All 5 main routes are good at least, but again the quality can range from good to amazing. For instance, I liked Momoyo's route the most because of the exciting hyper action and tactics that were going on and I enjoy the chemistry between Yamato and Momoyo and how Yamato strives to improve himself for Momoyo.
However, my least favorite was the Mikayo route. While it emphasizes a lot of personal development and still has some neat moments for the character, it was just far too melodramatic and high school drama is just something I don't seek out for my tastes.
Again, your mileage may vary for the routes but I can say with confidence, at least without the porn scenes that can potentially damage the reputation of the characters, that all 5 main routes are good at least and genuinely much better than the side routes.
However, I found the final route, which is unlocked after completing all 5 main routes, absolutely fantastic and nearly a masterpiece as far as shounen writing goes.
I won't spoil anything of course but it highlights the best of Majikoi in all of the right ways and I was deeply engaged and hooked the entire time from beginning to end. Easily the best part of the game and it's super rewarding after spending much time with the game.
All and all, regardless of which path the player takes, Majikoi has a heavy message about the joys of friendship and spending time together, enjoying life, and doing various activities together. And if enough friends come together, then anything can be overcome together.
As cheesy as that sounds, it's also heartwarming and feel-good to see close friends that deeply care for one another despite the fighting spats, teasing, and various personalities. Majikoi does an excellent job of making the Kazuma Family feel like a group of friends that loves each other no matter what.
Despite the route imbalance, if you don't mind the visual novel genre, the vulgar humor, and doing a bunch of reading. Majikoi is a delightful treat for those wants action, romance, comedy, and drama all in one with dozens of colorful and vivid personalities and the many exciting and larger-than-life ways Kawikama City can pan out over the course of one summer. Then Majikoi will be an excellent experience to see the unbreakable bonds of friendship.
....................................................................................................
DISCLAIMER: I need to get the elephant out of the room before I continue and I feel like I need to be honest here. Majikoi is originally an eroge visual novel with porn scenes (all of the characters are stated to be at least 18 despite appearances and it's used as a plot device actually).
However, I played the Steam version of the game (with the full voice patch) that has removed all of the eroge scenes. From my research, quite frankly, some of the scenes are quite problematic and badly written for reasons I rather not go into detail.
But in short, the existence of those scenes just overall decreases the quality of the game. I will be speaking from my SFW experience of the game and will treat the scenes as if they never existed at all.
That said, if you're not put off by any of the information above, then feel free to keep reading.
...............................................................................................
So what is Majikoi? Majikoi is a visual novel that features a group of tightly knitted high school friends called The Kazama Family. You have the main character, Yamato Naoe, proclaimed tactician that is not afraid to use underhand methods and have a wide network of people, who surrounds himself with an assembled rainbow of characters in the city of Kawakami, Japan.
The main girls, who are considered as the samurai girls, each having their own full fledge route are Momoyo Kawakami, the strongest fighter in the world that is always seeking battle and those that are stronger than her. Yukie Mayuzumi, is a shy socially ill adapt girl who talks to her cell phone strap, Matsukaze; but is also a powerful sword saint.
Then you have Miyako Shiina, an archer that is normally quiet and cold but quite caring and open towards The Kazama Family, especially towards Yamato with her nonstop love and affection for him. Christiane Friedrich, who's a German exchange student who is fascinated with the land of Japan and has the heart and attitude of a samurai. And Kazuko Kawakami, who's treated like a happy go luck energetic dog girl, always hard working and always training to achieve her dreams.
Not to forget the males of the Kazuma family. With Shoichi Kazama, who's considered to be the captain and leader of the Kazama family and has a free spirit that always calls for adventure. Gakuto Shimazu, a muscular, thick-skinned overly arrogant man that always tries to woo a woman, only to fail every time. And Takuya Morooka, the straight man that is relatively normal compared to everyone else but also likes manga and games a lot.
And that is just the main 9 characters out of dozens and dozens. Majikoi has no shortage of colorful personalities with its vast amount of side characters, which is very impressive for a visual novel of its genre.
While some of them may be one-dimensional with only a few personality traits, nearly, if not all of them are highly entertaining, to say the least.
An important note is it's essential to install the full voice patch. Besides the lines that are Yamato or lines to narrate the events of the story, every single line was originally fully voiced in the Japanese release with over a hundred different voices.
However, JAST USA could not afford the licensing for the voices outside The Kazama Family. So the game was officially localized without the rest of the voices.
Playing Majikoi without the voice restoration patch is doing a massive disservice to the game. While a lot of the voice acting for the nameless and faceless characters that only appear a handful of times isn't great, to be honest.
The voice acting for characters that appears more often with portraits is fantastic with their voice acting and helps a lot with the delivery, engagement, and emotion with their lines that would otherwise be silent.
The beginning of Majikoi, which is also known as the common route is Yamato getting by day by day with his school life interacting with various people.
Not only from The Kazama Family but with the rest of his classmates at 2-F, their rival class, 2-S, various schoolmates from other classes, and well as plenty of people scattered around the city of Kawakami.
Very often, Majikoi is written like a comedy shounen slice of life and the game's humor is pretty slapstick, over the top, sexual and even meta fourth wall breaking. Due to the nature of the game being an eroge, Majikoi holds no barrels with every sexual joke, innuendo, and piece of dialogue you could imagine under the sun.
In fact, to give one example, one of the side characters earns the name "Yonpachi" because he memorized all 48 sex positions, given his constant horny and perverted nature.
The game also uses plenty of reference humor, the fact that pretty much everyone hits and beats up everyone when they do something silly and sometimes the characters just get put in unbelievable situations you just can't help but laugh at it. If anything, Majikoi is great at brightening up the player's mood with its funny antics.
Of course, Majikoi does have its serious moments as well since it's never just all fun and games, The Kazama Family often gets into serious problems that often test the strength of one's beliefs, ideas, and thier relationship with the person in conflict.
After passing the prologue, the game will open up to the player choosing a character and spending time with them to enter one of 5 main routes and 6 side routes with a final hidden route later on.
Spending the day with the character will get rid of a red bubble and you have to get rid of all of them to get locked into thier route. There will be quirks that interfere with the character selection such as one of them running away or appearing out of nowhere.
The other form of gameplay is making choices, which is standard for a VN. Some of the choices only affect a few lines before continuing forward with the story but other choices can lead to a bad ending, even if the results aren't immediate.
Majikoi is considered a harem VN, but I think it's very different from the majority of the genre. For starters, most harem protagonists tend to be as bland, boring, and generic as possible with not much of a personality.
However, Yamato has a set personality being a scheming tactician no matter what route the player select. Personally, I found it hard to self-insert into a character with such a redefined personality.
Not to mention it's extremely rare for male characters to receive routes in visual novels. While they just side routes, Majikoi has a greater focus on spotlighting male characters with 3 male routes. It's something I greatly appreciate, considering I was never fond of the overly female focus in the visual novel genre.
And it's important to note the number of battle shounen fights, duels, showdowns, and full-scale assaults Majikoi features, due to the nature of Kawakami being a city built on martial arts, it's nature many of the characters exhibit peak and even superhuman strength. Silmair abilities you may fight in other battle shounen series.
Now it's depending on the route in which the situation The Kazama Family gets involved and how huge the scales are. But Majikoi seamlessly combines action, romance, comedy and drama to make it a pretty engaging and gripping story to read no matter the mood.
The routes can vary in quality and I say this is the biggest and perhaps only weakness in the game if you decide to go with the non-porn route. I believe it comes down to subjective taste but it's clear not all routes are made equally.
For instance, I wasn't exactly a fan of some of the side routes since they felt undercooked and rushed because of the short length compared to the main routes, even if I enjoyed Capt's route a lot. Not to mention I'm just not as interested in some of the characters focused on the side routes.
All 5 main routes are good at least, but again the quality can range from good to amazing. For instance, I liked Momoyo's route the most because of the exciting hyper action and tactics that were going on and I enjoy the chemistry between Yamato and Momoyo and how Yamato strives to improve himself for Momoyo.
However, my least favorite was the Mikayo route. While it emphasizes a lot of personal development and still has some neat moments for the character, it was just far too melodramatic and high school drama is just something I don't seek out for my tastes.
Again, your mileage may vary for the routes but I can say with confidence, at least without the porn scenes that can potentially damage the reputation of the characters, that all 5 main routes are good at least and genuinely much better than the side routes.
However, I found the final route, which is unlocked after completing all 5 main routes, absolutely fantastic and nearly a masterpiece as far as shounen writing goes.
I won't spoil anything of course but it highlights the best of Majikoi in all of the right ways and I was deeply engaged and hooked the entire time from beginning to end. Easily the best part of the game and it's super rewarding after spending much time with the game.
All and all, regardless of which path the player takes, Majikoi has a heavy message about the joys of friendship and spending time together, enjoying life, and doing various activities together. And if enough friends come together, then anything can be overcome together.
As cheesy as that sounds, it's also heartwarming and feel-good to see close friends that deeply care for one another despite the fighting spats, teasing, and various personalities. Majikoi does an excellent job of making the Kazuma Family feel like a group of friends that loves each other no matter what.
Despite the route imbalance, if you don't mind the visual novel genre, the vulgar humor, and doing a bunch of reading. Majikoi is a delightful treat for those wants action, romance, comedy, and drama all in one with dozens of colorful and vivid personalities and the many exciting and larger-than-life ways Kawikama City can pan out over the course of one summer. Then Majikoi will be an excellent experience to see the unbreakable bonds of friendship.