Rose Guns Days is a four part 07th Expansion game that I honestly hear very little about in comparison to other works by them. If there was a tierlist, Rose Guns Days is on the "people have definitely played this one but you have to dig around for the western fandom" tier, right next to Iwaihime (which I also have not played).As I am trying my damndest to read more games this year and in turn write about them, and Rose Guns Days is a bit lengthy, I thought that rather than saving my thoughts 'til I had finished the entire thing, I would take it season by season. And so, this is what I am doing. Whenever I finish a season, I will come back to this post and expand upon it. Here's my thoughts on seasons one and two.
Season one is below.
Jump to season two here.
Rose Guns Days - Season One
Here's the premise for anyone just curious about what this game's actually about.
RGD is an alternate take on Japan's defeat in WWII, having a large natural disaster sweep over the country while it's at its most vulnerable and costing them the war. America and China quickly close in on this disaster-stricken Japan and occupy it with their own people and military forces to rebuild the country to their liking. The majority of the story (of season one) takes place in the past, with occasional narration in the far future to help give the reader some additional information that bridges some gaps or fleshes the past world out. This future narration also lets us see the post-war world of Japan far off in the future.
RGD is also actually features gameplay. I am allergic to playing most kinds of games so this shocked me to my core. Visual novels with gameplay are not uncommon obviously, but they're pretty uncommon for 07th Expansion, which usually produce kinetic vns (meaning there's no choices to be made, it's just text you read with nothing else stopping you). This gameplay is just mousing over parts of the screen and occasionally clicking. You have the option to play it, cheese it by pressing spacebar, or putting all the gameplay on auto mode. You can guess by the way I'm talking which mode I did.
The only cgs in the game occur in these gameplay segments.
And now for my actual thoughts and not just discussion of the setup. Drumroll please.
...
The game... is good.
RGD has a great premise and great opening. We're put dropped right into the action, we have a loveable scrunko protagonist to follow, it's another one of the usual "start out with daily life and build it up from there" set ups in other 07th Expansion games, and I didn't ever feel particularly bored with it. I think this is because the story and world setup is pretty interesting.
Spoilers for MGSV, but the one point I thought MGSV had that was good is simply "Goddamn we should not all be speaking English we're losing our language". The loss of tongue/culture because of colonization/imperialism/westernization is something that is an actual thing in the real world. MGSV failed to do anything interesting with this because it's MGSV, but RGD takes this idea and runs miles with it— Japan is moved in on by America and China and is quickly stripped of its identity. Japanese people who don't move along with the times suffer for it, those who do are treated better but at the same time are never going to be truly respected unless they abandon everything that makes them "Japanese". It is a genuinely good concept to see explored, no matter how cruel it is. It gets us to look inwardly on ourselves and what makes up our respective cultures and world views, and to look outwardly to see how this affects others.
And because we see how badly Japanese people are mistreated, it makes seeing Rose's struggles all that more real. Rose is not exactly the main character, but she still has a lot of the focus on her as a person of power within the story and has really good writing for a woman in a visual novel. Her arc is great. She starts out as just an average girl with some leverage, but then the drama heightens, and she blossoms into someone you're not only rooting for, but who you think can actually, maybe, POSSIBLY succeed, something her at the beginning of the game probably could not do. She is seriously such a great character, she gets me to feel so many things.
Like Higanbana, I was engaged the entire time playing RGD. I would say the difference between this and Higanbana, though, is that the pacing and stakes go from 0 to 100 in such a stealthy way that by the time it happens mid-chapter 3... It's overwhelming. And then it just flat out doesn't stop. RGD has a relatively unassuming setup and somehow by the middle of the first season it's this massive, heart pounding, teeth clenching roller coaster ride.
The characters are also so much fun. I am really invested in their lives, and I think this is in part to the way Rose Guns Days's story is told. You have the main plot going on, and you also have parts of the game where you can explore individual scenes, which was something I really liked when Utawarerumono did it. The difference between RGD and Uta, though, is RGD uses this scene select for both daily life segments and when the plot heightens. So not only do you get to see characters just living their lives, but them responding to times of crisis.
I really like these scene selections because they offer neat looks into things that are sometimes not relevant at all, and Ryukishi doesn't have to waste time trying to string all these scenes together.
I'm sure you're all wondering... "Lone, who's your favorite character? Rose?" It's actually Claudia. I adore everything about Claudia. Give me enough time and I could bullshit an essay about how she's actually the greatest character of RGD. She's sweet, she has a restaurant, she likes potatoes, she has dreams, she's adorable. What's not to love about her? Aside from Claudia and Rose, I also very much love Leo. Thinking about it hard, there isn't a character I actually dislike except for Miguel because he's every anime boy trope I hate.
To wrap up all my praises, I want to talk a little (okay a lot actually) bit about Caleb. The above paragraphs were basically spoiler free, but the rest of this is going to have spoilers. TL;DR if you don't want to read spoilers: Game VERY good. Go play it. Moving on.
Caleb was probably, no, DEFINITELY the star of season one. I had no idea that they were going to go where they did with him, and I put this partially on the fact that HE'S IN THE TUTORIAL FOR THE GAME! My brain saw this and thought, "Yeah he's clearly an ally character because he's here being fun in the tutorial." And I was right... Until I wasn't!
Throughout his appearances, you don't really get a bad feel for him. He seems like just your average post-war Japanese guy, someone with as much conviction and care for the Japanese as the rest of the main cast. And that's basically all you'd think of him, just as an average guy. Until mid-chapter 3, when the bomb incident occurs and Leo goes to ask him and his friends for help. They make an explicit point to have Caleb point out that Leo has a map of Alfred's bases that's more accurate than what Caleb and his men have.
I don't think most people are supposed to find this odd until after the fact. Why would Caleb be keeping tabs on Alfred's bases? Is he planning something? No, he couldn't be. He's just a friend and he's gonna help us [the rest of the game happens] ok nevermind.
We as the audience already know Caleb's feelings on things, his Japanese spirit and his desires for Japan to be Japan again. So once Alfred is out of the picture, it makes sense that someone would see this as an opportunity to rise up to power. Caleb probably could have overpowered Alfred if he really tried, but as other characters said, Alfred's existence was something holding everyone back. If someone's at the top, no one's really thinking about surpassing them, even if they can. But if the throne is empty, then of course people are going to get ideas. And Caleb has ideas.
When he first comes to Primavera to demand money, it's such a conflicting scene— on one hand, I still really, really liked Caleb. He was a bro. And on the other, it pissed me off that he was doing what he was doing. Not only because the Primavera group are genuinely likeable and fun characters, but because even though there might have been "good" intent in his actions, Caleb was still asking too much of them.
As the game reaches its climax and it keeps getting worse and worse for our #PrimaveraBros, Caleb is still pretty annoying, and his actions are wrong, but his motives are... Not entirely unreasonable. He wants Japan to be Japan again, but he only knows war, and so he will accomplish his goals and end his own personal war with... more war. He is both tormented by war but also sees it as his only answer.
Caleb is 100% in the wrong for disturbing the lives of average people, for ruining Primavera, literally all the awful things he's done cannot be understated. But seeing how he's tortured by his past and how he's doing this not for some cartoonishly evil or stupid reason... I for some reason cannot entirely hate him. It's like a 90% hate and 10% like ratio. He's going about everything the wrong way, but is there even a right way? Is there any other way but brute force?
This game man. Oof. It gets me. There literally is no black or white answer to anything. Everything is all gray. I love it so much.
Now... What do I not like about this game so far? There's basically only a few things.
One: This game suffers a bit from what I like to call Redundant Ryukishi Writing.
This isn't the same thing as me complaining about the way Ryukishi writes daily life scenes like it was in my Higanbana review/thought post. Those, I think they're just super boring. And this isn't the same thing as when scenes go on just a little too long in Umineko. Redundant Ryukishi Writing is when Ryukishi has a really good point or idea that I enjoy and that he enjoys even more, and he just CANNOT stop mentioning it. I cannot be the only person who notices he does this, and I would say it might be at it's worst(? maybe just most annoying) in RGD.
He does this with a few elements in season one, mainly:
- Mentioning that Japan has changed
- Saying that women have it easy in post-war
- Fuckigng SOY SAUCE STOP TALKING ABOUT HOW SOY SAUCE IS EXPENSIVE
I don't mind the first point when it's done well. Specifically when we see elements in the RGD world where Japan... has changed. Things like jobs being impossible to get, the forms needed to get real estate being in English, military occupation, etc, etc. I only dislike this when we're 6+ hours in the game and characters still feel the need to go, "Wowzers, Japan sure has changed, huh! You need to know English or Chinese to get by! Audience do you understand Japan has changed yes or no" during these scenes.
It makes sense in the first hour or two for them to say these lines. It doesn't make sense to keep having them say it, especially when the world is being described to us in all sorts of ways and that on its own is self explanatory. They know Japan is different now. We also know Japan is different now also. Let's take a break. The soy sauce stuff also falls into this first category.
The second category... is both something that suffers from Redundant Ryukishi Writing and is also a point I sort of dislike.
Two: Time and time again, it keeps getting mentioned how easy women have it, that all they have to do is cozy up with foreign men and they can rake in the dough. After the Helena plot point, I really wanted them to stop saying this because we have seen plenty of examples of how this is "true" (I will get to these air quotes in a second) and the Helena plot point is the perfect place to realize the audience understands things and you don't have to keep saying it anymore. But they just... KEEP saying it. Stop! Please!
And I dislike this point on its own because... You can basically tell through this plot point that a man wrote this game and these characters. From a woman's perspective, aka a Lone's perspective, this stuff does not really seem all that easy for women at all. Turning to nightlife as a hostess or as a prostitute is not an easy decision or something that's easy in the long run, especially when this choice is literally only made as a necessity for these women.
This also assumes the women are being properly paid (lavish clothing could easily be rental from their club rather than being their own) and not being sexually/emotionally abused by their employers— at Primavera, I can't imagine the latter happening, but you can't say the same about every single club in Japan full of women only being hostesses because it was either this or die. Is it really that easy? Could you call prostituting yourself to survive when you probably never wanted to do it as "easy"? Think about that for a minute.
There was a Stella moment that sort of touched on how this life is hard for her as a woman because her youth will run out (I see this as a really shallow framing of the overarching problem). This gets brought back up later in Helena's section of the game where it also points out that "Hey, women are people too, right guys?". And then, as one last hurrah, this idea gets brought up again toward the end of the game in a way I actually wanted, mentioning that this is a hard life.
...But it's literally only like five lines!! Like, come on man!!! Say more!! They can harp on so many points in this game but they can't for this specific point when half the cast are hostesses and have to live these lives?! I'm gonna start throwing things.
Even if the nameless NPCs we're supposed to disagree with are saying woman have it easy, it doesn't change the fact that we aren't bringing up how emotionally and physically scarred these hostesses/prostitutes are, and that's not even counting their post-war trauma into the mix. The game doesn't want you to think that women have it easy but they never get into the nitty gritty of how it isn't easy until there are outside forces (Caleb's men) to mess things up. And then that's not even related to the women themselves, that's a completely unrelated factor.
...(Big tonal change here) Anyways the third and last thing I don't like about this game is sometimes the anime humor is not funny to me. Haha Meryl called Stella a granny. Haha Stella called Meryl a chibi-loli. Laugh now. When the jokes are funny they are Pretty Funney I will admit.
Overall Thoughts on Season One
I think this game has some small issues but is still quite fun. The pacing is average but then builds up to something fantastic, the characters are fun, the music is tasty, the writing is amazing, the brushes have swag and the lighting is yolo. I didn't mention it but goddamn I love the art for this game who is the artist for this??
Literally I have no idea how season two is going to follow this up. Ending on an insane cliffhanger isn't bad, but I'm so invested in the fates of the characters I already know and love that seeing season two's new cast means absolutely nothing to me. In fact, if season two is focused majorly on this new cast before getting back into continuing season one's story, I may just die.
Rose Guns Days Season One: 8.5/10. I got so stressed about this game my back hurts
Rose Guns Days - Season Two
So I finished season two last night, and I really didn't have to chew on it much to know that I felt... Underwhelmed by it? It definitely was not as satisfying as the first season, but again, the first season was so good I really wondered how it could even be followed up.
Let's go into the good first:
I said Caleb was the star of season one, and Rose is definitely the star of season two. Her character arc conclusion in the second season is perfect, it felt so natural. I honestly don't have a lot to say about it that I didn't say in my thoughts on season one. She stumbles, she fails, she has an offscreen sex scene with Leo I DESERVED TO SEE, then she fights Caleb, "wins", and becomes the (underground) head of City 23. It was a great wrap up of season one's arc for her.
The rest of the season has us just only occasionally seeing Rose, which really highlights how important she is now that we only get to see glimpses of her instead of her always being the focus. I really hope they don't try to fiddle with her character arc any more because this seems like the best place for her to be.
In general, the first two chapters were just great. Aside from Rose growing as a person, there was just a lot of great tension, lot of great scenes, and so much stuff to really keep you on your toes. Leo was still a loveable scrunko, and I actually think it's fine that he disappears from the story after everything's over because he's grown as a person, too. Not as much or as noticeable as Rose, but it's still something. His and Rose's romance was peak fiction, and I don't know if he'll come back in seasons three or four... but if he doesn't, I'm fine with it.
Uh. What else did I like? Seeing how City 23 improved was pretty good. It's cool that this is just a political drama basically and how they comment on how it's impossible to please everyone.
Uh........ I liked Zel, she was cute. She's kinda mega OP but so was Leo so it's fine.
This scene was funny because a character said that exact line and Zel just repeated it for no reason
Mmmmm... Okay yeah I can't think of anything else I really liked in this season. It definitely wasn't garbage, but after the second chapter ends it basically kinda sinks down into boringsville. No matter how much they tried to make me care about the new characters who's names I literally can't remember as I'm typing this, it was a little too late and their dynamic isn't as fun as I think Ryukishi thinks they are. Seriously when they first appeared I just remembered going, "God I hope they aren't the focus for the rest of the game". And God loves to hurt me.
So the things I DIDN'T like about this season... There's basically only two things.
One: I... do NOT like the future side narration for this game anymore. It actively annoys me whenever it's onscreen.
Why is this? Why have I changed so fast when in season one I said it was fine? It's because it does something that's in a lot of media, not necessarily just Japanese media. This is called hyperbolic racism. Hyperbolic racism is basically just racism taken to the absolute next level to the point where it's almost comical. DGS's fantranslation of Barok van Zieks does this where Naruhodou would do anything and van Zieks would start dropping slurs on him like he was in a race against Lowtiergod or something.
The reason I don't like this hyperbolic racism in RGD is because it goes too far in very specific ways. For starters, it does make sense that an occupied Japan would lose its sense of culture and maybe even dislike its old roots. This was explained in the first season and it makes perfect sense to me. But season two takes it up a step further by cranking that hyperbolic racism notch up to 11, specifically with the implications of the talk about video games, where it's revealed that Japanese people and culture are now used as main villains in video games.
In RGD Japan lost the war, Japan became occupied by America and China. How the hell does this snowball into Japan becoming such a hated race that now everyone just fucking hates them and makes them into villains and hates their culture? Are we forgetting who's side the Japanese were on in the first place? You know. GERMANY? WITH THE NAZIS?
In real life, Germany ALSO lost the war and ALSO had American (and Russian) occupation following their defeat. How is it that Germany, who did some pretty awful things, whose leader is literally the main bad guy of WWII, somehow didn't end up exactly like Japan did in RGD? How did they succeed in diplomatic efforts so easily when they did some pretty awful stuff? Obviously German people do not deserve to be stripped of their identities/culture, or to be generalized as a country rather than individuals, but if the world of RGD can do that to Japan then why do they stop when it comes to Germany?
And RGD really, REALLY likes to skirt around all the war crimes Japan did during WWII, which makes this vitriolic hatred and hyperbolic racism even less understandable. If they had at least mentioned those then maybe I could sort of understand the hate but they outright refuse to acknowledge them as of season two— it just makes it seem like the world hates Japan because they lost. Which is... stupid!!!
This might be the stupidest shit I've ever typed, but I refuse to believe there's a post WWII world where COD Nazi Zombies mode doesn't exist. I cannot understand why Ryukishi makes Japan so persecuted in this world without a really good established reason.
The only game that I think does this worse is Valkyria Chronicles, where it literally takes place during a fantasy WWII where actually the Jewish people aren't being persecuted in fantasy Germany/Europe, but instead harmless Japanese-coded people who are doing no wrong and definitely didn't do war crimes during WWII! They're just little guys, they wouldn't hurt anyone.
Again, hyperbolic racism is not something exclusive to RGD or just Japanese media. Copypasting from my DGS thoughts a while back, but Americans will love playing the super underdog everyone is mean to/racist to card in media as well. EVERYONE of EVERY race does this trope, because it’s easiest to want to root for an underdog that’s also your countryman. I am only bringing it up here because it does more damage to the story’s racism element (as weird as that sounds).
Also they steal the Chinese food MSG myths from Chinese people which somehow feels double racist what the fuck.
Two: I dislike about season two is they reverse Caleb and Miguel's deaths. I'm less partial to Amanda's death which I didn't even know was supposed to be implied, but I feel like having Caleb and Miguel be alive after all this time is... kind of a huge cop out?
It's like if Leo left at the end of chapter two and then just came back like "Yup that sure was a war I fought". It makes sense for Leo to leave and if he came back so soon it would make his departure feel less important. In the same vein, killing off Caleb and Miguel in a satisfying way to bring Rose's (and I suppose Wayne's as well) arc to a peak only to bring them back so soon is... I just did not like it. It almost felt like Rose's actions didn't mean anything for Caleb to leave and just let her "win".
While it was semi-interesting to see Caleb and Miguel back as allies, I really just would have preferred if they had stayed dead. As it stands, they didn't add anything to the plot that only they could have added. The contact with the Satomi alliance could have easily been another prexisting character or someone else entirely. Why bring back the guys who JUST died 5+ hours ago?
And this is a nitpick, but this game kept trying to pretend like Wayne's life was seriously in danger in the first two chapters, when we learn at the end of season one that he's still alive. That's yet another thing that takes away any meaning from death scenes Wayne might have, of which he had one or two.
Overall Thoughts on Season Two
Yeah I just wasn't into this past the first two chapters. There wasn't really any gradual build up and punch like there was with season one, which started slow and then tumbled into something amazing— season two started amazing and then slowed down a lot until I was just feeling unsatisfied. The ending wasn't really even anything interesting either, and then the game just ENDS? I actually said "WHAT" aloud.
Rose Guns Days Season Two: 5/10. Please season three be better i'll start crying and throwing up NO MORE SOY SAUCE PLEASE
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