Sakura is an aloof and lazy guy who just sleeps anywhere whenever he wants to. He gave me strong Shu from Diabolik Lovers vibes at first. Besides the qualities previously mentioned, he’s a smoker and always skips class.
From the get-go, he makes it clear that Nina is wasting her time trying to get close to him, and that such behavior greatly annoys him.
Things start progressing once Seri mentions that Sakura hates going home because it’s lonely, and that he has a knack for avoiding self-care – he never eats proper meals, just instant noodles. With Seri’s initial encouragement, Nina starts going to Sakura’s house frequently to cook food for him. Although he strongly questions her motives, she insists that she only wants to be his friend.
On one of the occasions in which Nina goes to Sakura’s house, he mistakes her intentions and thinks she’s only a stalker who wants to have sex with him like all other women. He forces himself on Nina, and short non-con begins taking place until Nina makes it clear that her intent is different and leaves.
After this event Nina spends some time without talking to Sakura until Haruna tells her that nobody has seen him lately. She goes to his house to make food for him once again and he apologizes for what happened the previous time. Nina insists that she truly just wants to become his friend and cheer him on to be able to listen to the vocals that had touched her heart two years back. Sakura only retaliates by calling her dumb despite the fact that he is clearly touched, then Nina starts cooking as usual.
At this point Sakura starts opening his heart up to her – they have dinner together, and as they chat Nina glances at his university schedule out of curiosity. She points out that they have a few lessons together and tells Sakura that he should attend next day’s lesson because she’ll definitely save a spot for him.
The day after Sakura actually shows up and takes the seat next to Nina in their shared lesson. Everyone at university is shocked for the reason that he is well-known for his skipping habits. Post-class, Haruna and Seri poke fun at him since he attended just for Nina, and Sakura insists he only gave in seeing that she was too stubborn.
Later that day, Sakura explains that his mother passed away from an illness when he was young, and his older sister got married and moved away. He joined S-leeper, as he enjoyed singing, but his father died from overworking himself while Sakura wasn’t even there to see him during his last moments.
Following this tragedy, Sakura went into a deep depression yet kept singing, despite the fact that he had begun noticing that people didn’t seem to care about Liar-S’s music as much as their looks. One day, Sakura was incredibly sick and his throat was a mess, therefore his singing was extremely poor. The public didn’t seem to notice any changes regardless of the band’s bad performance, hence he realized that not even Liar-S’s fans cared about the way they sounded since they only paid attention to the member’s visuals.
Subsequent to his story, Sakura reveals that he’s afraid to sing – he lost any will he had left to perform because of everything that happened. Seeing that he looks really heartbroken, Nina embraces him to comfort him and ends up spending the night at his house. She gives him her first time to “fill his loneliness”. Although her reason sounds pretty dumb as I’m writing it, the development between these two was actually pretty good and I shipped it pretty hard so I had no problem with it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
The next day Sakura is especially lovey-dovey around Nina. He refuses to go to university because they don’t have any shared lessons, however he still goes to pick her up in the library after her classes are over. Since Nina’s doing an assignment, Sakura sits next to her and then rests his head on the table to sleep while waiting for her. Following this, they walk to his house together and have sex at night again.
At this point Nina grows insecure and thinks to herself that even if Sakura is just doing that kind of stuff with her to feel better, she’s fine with giving him all of her to take at least a bit of his sadness away – but it’s so obvious that Sakura is WHIPPED for her; he turns into an absolute ball of cheesy fluff around her.
Eventually Nina decides that things can’t go on as they are and asks Sakura what he truly wants to do with his life. She claims that she’ll make anything he wishes come true. Sakura doesn’t really know what to reply, nevertheless he settles for telling her that he wants to run away from everything.
Nina responds by literally dragging him to the train station and buying random tickets for the both of them to get on any train and go wherever it takes them. Coincidentally, the train stops in the ocean, which is the place Sakura mentioned he wanted to see again.
The two love birds spend their time playing around the beach. Nina asks Sakura to sing for her like he did two years back, and as soon as she hears his voice she starts crying because his voice is too beautiful.
They buy sparklers to admire at night, then they end up spending the night in a love hotel while Nina freaks out since the ambient is different and she’s embarrassed of having sex. Sakura just laughs it off and as they lie down together he promises he won’t do anything. Nina falls asleep quickly but she confesses her love for Sakura before dozing off.
The day after they hurry back because Nina had a bunch of missed calls from her mother. Before they leave the beach, Sakura tells Nina that he’ll start singing again thanks to the fact that Nina loves his music.
They’re literally a pair of newlyweds post-beach event, yet nothing is official since Sakura hasn’t confessed. At the end of Liar-S’s summer festival live show, Sakura admits how much he loves and adores her, thus they finally confirm their feelings for each other and kiss.
Unfortunately, as they’re having a fluffy make out session, the rest of Liar-S walks in on them. Nina tries to play it cool; on the other hand Sakura outright tells them that they cockblocked him and he wants them to leave. He’s so blunt it’s amazing.
In the end Sakura is busy with band activities after the summer festival, however the next time they see each other they stay in a hotel room to be a fluffy pair of lovebirds. They have an adorable kissing session and Sakura remarks that Nina’s been getting better at kissing. Nina’s all bashful like “I wouldn’t know, you’re my first”, needless to say this leaves Sakura feeling s h o o k, for he realizes that her first kiss was the one he forcefully imposed on her in the beginning of the route, when he thought she was only in it for the sex. Nina says it’s fine since it was him that kissed her anyway but he’s like IT’S NOT FINE and promises that he will be super soft and gentle with her forever ( ಥ益ಥ) HE’S ADORABLE.
The whole Encore epilogue is a blessing. Nina tries to keep things low-key, nonetheless Sakura is a clingy ball of fluff who keeps sticking close to her and doing lovey-dovey stuff at university, therefore every single student knows they’re dating. Everyone constantly talks about them and the guys say they would feel sorry for any dude who ever tried to take Nina away from Sakura because he would get exterminated immediately.
The Liar-S members convince Nina of helping them to make Sakura stop smoking, as it’s bad for his vocal chords and general health. Due to the fact that Liar-S threatens to confiscate Nina if he continues smoking, Sakura begrudgingly cooperates. He replaces his cigarette addiction with… an addiction to kissing Nina ( ಥ益ಥ) HE’S SO CUTE.
The plan ends up flopping because it’s very embarrassing for Nina to make out in public with Sakura every day, however Sakura agrees to slowly quit smoking since it worries Nina.
Before continuing with the next route, I’ll take a moment to point out that Sakura’s route is the only engaging one and everything else in this game felt like a chore to beat.
Moving on: Chiya is a shy tsundere who keeps his guard up at all times and acts like he hates Nina’s presence even if he doesn’t. As soon as Seri introduces her to Liar-S, he says that the band doesn’t need an amateur’s opinion on their songs.
One day, Chiya spots Nina being dragged away by a group of men and saves her. He scolds her and tells her that she should be more self-conscious.
Nina’s attempts to befriend Chiya don’t show any results for quite some time. Despite Chiya’s harsh words, Nina insists on becoming his friend. Seri gives her advice on how to gain Chiya’s favor by telling her about the things he favors (for example, his favorite food).
Days after taking in Seri’s details about Chiya, Nina chases Chiya around trying to convince him to talk to her. They run throughout the city until Nina eventually loses track of him.
As Nina is about to go back home, a stranger asks her for directions to an unclear place. She’s about to lead him there until Chiya appears. He points out that the shady dude had bad intentions and then drags her away. Chiya makes her sit on a bench, subsequent to this he scolds her for being careless.
Thanks to her discomfort around unknown males and the shock of what could have happened, Nina is incredibly scared and keeps trembling. Chiya stays with her until she manages to calm down. She thanks him for his help and states that he’s kind for being so considerate; afterwards she asks if they can chat casually for a bit. Chiya agrees to chat and Nina gives him dog-shaped homemade cookies. It turns out that Seri told her Chiya’s favorite animals were dogs, and that he was a sweets lover. Nina concluded that making what he likes would help them bond.
Despite his tsundere tendencies, Chiya is touched by her efforts so he agrees to eat what she made. He finishes everything; in turn Nina excitedly thanks him. She asks him for his phone number to contact him – she wants them to keep setting up meetings with each other to become friends. Chiya reluctantly gives Nina his number and goes all tsun telling her he’ll be free next Sunday, yet trying to play it off as if wanting to meet with her is not the reason he’s giving that information.
Haruna helps Nina buy new clothes for her date with Chiya and picks the styling that suits his preferences (clothes that give off a sophisticated look). During their “friendly” meeting on Sunday they do a bunch of lovey-dovey date activities such as going to the planetarium, the mall, eating in a restaurant, and then taking a walk through the park. Once Chiya learns that Haruna was the one who picked out Nina’s clothing, he mentally curses him for it.
Sadly, at this point the game starts showing that it has no intention to show me development in routes other than Sakura’s, so there’s a fast-forward to Nina thinking to herself that she’s been hanging out with Chiya a lot, and that he smiles around her more often.
While Liar-S are getting ready for a live show, Nina and Chiya run into Meri, a singer who wants Chiya to compose the songs for her upcoming album. Meri tells him that Liar-S is going to disband soon anyway –in view of the fact that Sakura refuses to sing properly–, which seemingly pushes Chiya to agree to help Meri.
Chiya begins dedicating all of his time to composing, thus Nina gets worried and visits his house. He confesses that all of the songs he tried to compose sounded like they were made for Liar-S, and meant for Sakura to sing rather than for Meri. Chiya asks for Nina’s opinion on the tracks, and Nina decides to stop by his house every day to cook for him and make sure he doesn’t neglect his health; additionally she will give him her opinions on the daily to help him modify the songs to suit Meri.
On one of the days Nina visited Chiya, he told her his sob story – he was incredibly passionate about composing and wanted his pieces to be heard by the public, however Liar-S only gets requests to perform their debut song all the time, and as Sakura refuses to put effort into singing his songs won’t ever be recognized since they won’t stand out. Nina decides to spend the night at Chiya’s house due to the fact that he’s unsettled, and they get romantic and mushy.
After the songs for Meri are completed, Nina confronts Sakura and asks him to sing properly because she doesn’t want Chiya’s dream to end. Sakura isn’t convinced until Chiya finishes composing the songs and faces him: Chiya requests Sakura’s motivation to sing his songs, and tells him that he doesn’t want Liar-S to disband. Sakura is presumably moved by Chiya’s determination and agrees to sing with all his might.
In the extra scenario Chiya and Nina are being lovey-dovey in his house, but Nina’s curfew was approaching, so he walked her home. On their way there Chiya says that he wants to formally introduce himself to her parents to get their approval – when he does, Nina’s father reacts negatively, yet her mother seems to approve of him. The scenario ends with Chiya declaring that he won’t give up until her father accepts their relationship.
The Encore was incredibly lame and all of it involved being Meri’s wingwoman and setting her up with Liar-S’s manager. Way to cockblock me for some random side-character.
Soutaro is a beautiful boy who identifies as a woman and prefers to be called Haru because it’s a more feminine name. As expected, his gender identity is executed really poorly throughout the route.
Haru is also seemingly gay, but he’s unsure as he’s only ever dated men. He is often involved with “prince candidates”, boys that he dates for the reason that they’re precisely that – princely material. Haru’s ideal type is a guy that can protect and look after him.
The start of Haru’s route shows him supporting Nina as she attempts to befriend Sakura and Chiya. Haru and Nina team up to cook for them together, and Haru is basically an accessory sticking to Nina while she does everything in her power to get the other Liar-S members to like her.
Nina occasionally has sleepovers with Haru, either because she can’t go back home or because one of them is troubled. Although Nina is hesitant about this arrangement at first, Haru continuously calls himself her female friend so she gets used to it.
At the very least half of the route proceeds as mentioned above. The chemistry and relationship between Haru and Nina is of a friendly nature, yet for some reason even though there’s no romantic connection whatsoever between these two, Nina falls in love with Haru.
Sakura eventually notices that Nina has a crush on Haru, therefore he decides to act as her wingman. Since she suspects that Haru has a prince candidate, Sakura reveals information that leads them into thinking that it could be Liar-S’s former bassist, Shinya.
Sakura sets up an encounter with Shinya so that Nina can figure out if he’s Haru’s current prince candidate or not. Coincidentally, Shinya and Nina run into Haru and they end up going on a “triple date”. Shinya’s behavior is very similar to that of a real prince, hence Nina gets depressed for the reason that she’s a woman – her gender makes it impossible for her to become Haru’s ideal prince.
At the end of the day Haru gets her a gift, which makes Nina get emotional and she steals a kiss from him. She confesses but Haru’s like “Nina is no prince, as you’re a girl you’re a princess that needs to get a guy who will protect you”. Needless to say, I groaned at this line because of course they had to bring up gender roles.
Haru’s point of view after this scene reveals that he does like Nina back, however he considers that he’s too weak to protect her.
Nina and Haru agree to remain friends, yet things are awkward between them.
One day, Seri confesses to Nina and tries to convince her to date him, telling her that he’ll make her happy whilst Haru won’t love her. His true snake self makes a debut and he admits that from the beginning, he never expected her to befriend Liar-S. Seri had only asked this of her to see her suffering and laugh at it. He also states that Haru will never go against him, thanks to the fact that he’s always been really grateful to Seri for giving him a place to belong in Liar-S, thus Nina should just accept his confession because Haru isn’t going to do anything to stop the relationship from happening.
Haru notes that Nina is troubled the day after the confession, and manages to persuade her to share her problems with him. Haru, just like Seri said, isn’t opposed to her dating Seri. He tells Nina that she should just accept his feelings, so she runs off and arranges a meeting with Seri.
Later that day, it’s revealed Nina just wanted to directly turn down Seri’s confession. Seri tries to force himself on her; thankfully Haru shows up to save the day because he grew a pair. He declares that he can’t hand Nina over to Seri and apologizes for it. Turns out Seri had texted Haru the place he and Nina were going to be at – it’s unclear what his reason was, nevertheless it seems like Seri wanted to test Haru’s resolve and was ready to have his way with Nina if he turned out to be too much of a coward to show up.
Haru takes Nina to his house and narrates his sob story: when Haru was younger his father passed away, so his mother had to work hard as a single mom to support the family. Since she had no money, Haru’s uncle convinced her to stay with him.
After they moved in with his uncle, Haru’s mother stopped working and always looked depressed. One day, Haru saw his mother getting raped by his uncle, and he found out that he raped her every day, threatening to stop offering financial support for Haru if she didn’t go along with his demands.
Despite what he had witnessed, Haru was too scared to do anything so he just acted like he saw nothing and began spending less time at home to run away from his problems. Eventually, his mother escaped and left him a letter apologizing for being unable to protect him any longer.
Haru’s uncle was so heartbroken that he became delusional: he saw Haru as his mother, thus Haru started acting and dressing like a female just to go along with it. Yes, he took his mother’s place and also got raped by his uncle. I don’t know what the writers were thinking.
Ultimately, Haru’s grandparents found out about what his uncle did to Haru’s mother, hence they disowned him and took custody of Haru. Although it seemed like his life would improve, his grandparents shunned him because apparently he was considered a disgrace after everything that happened.
As soon as Haru enrolled at university, his family agreed to let him move into a house by himself, and offered to pay his living expenses just to get rid of him.
Haru explains to Nina that thanks to everything that happened in the past, his female/mom persona became a habit but he wants to become a prince for her. He had always hated his first name, Soutaro, since it was a manly name, however for Nina he would finally go back to being Soutaro.
Nina and Haru kiss and officially become a couple. In the end Haru retains both the manly and effeminate side of himself, nevertheless only shows his Soutaro side around Nina.
The epilogue shows them having sex for the first time and Soutaro apologizes for being nervous since he’s never done it with a woman before.
What did I just play. I don’t think it’s necessary to explain why the gender identity plot is so moronic and plain offensive, yet I’ll still do it as it’s just unacceptable. Haru didn’t willingly adopt his female identity, he was forced into it through mental abuse and then just got used to calling himself a woman. He also began hating his male self, but out of nowhere he’s fine with going back to being a male just because he wants to be a “prince” for Nina and protect her. What the fuck is this? What is this writing? Who came up with this and thought it was okay?
Leaving aside the awful representation and the mess at the end of the route – the main problem in the narrative is that it spent most of the time showing Nina befriending Liar-S and it didn’t seem like a Haru route until the very end. There were no romantic moments at all, only the sudden “oh I like Haru” realization and the subsequent drama. Thanks to the writers neglecting the romantic aspect, Nina and Soutaro had no chemistry as a couple and the story wasn’t satisfying at all. The two of them just really didn’t seem like a couple.
Finally, right when I thought Liar-S had nothing worse to offer, I was proven wrong.
Seri is an actual piece of shit, and the distant, shittier cousin of Toma from Amnesia. Crazy fangirls harassing protagonist? Check. Locking the heroine in their house to “protect her”? Check. Keeping her from leaving? Check. I guess at least Toma didn’t rape the MC.
Honestly Seri’s story was so similar to Toma’s route that I couldn’t help but think they were inspired by it. Seems like they tried to replicate the Toma formula for guaranteed success and failed terribly.
First of all, I did not enjoy this at all. Seri is abusive to hell and back and there’s no possible way to redeem his character. As pointed out by Haru in his own story, Seri is the biggest liar in Liar-S. Every part of his nice personality is a façade to manipulate people and acquire whatever he wants.
The mess begins with Nina attempting to befriend Sakura. For some reason, Seri gets jealous whenever he sees them together, despite the fact that he keeps encouraging Nina to grow closer to Sakura.
As time goes by, Sakura notices that his relationship with Nina is improving at a rapid pace and decides to push her away. To do so, he asks her to meet him and forcibly kisses her on the spot. Nina runs away and Seri spots her in the sidewalk as he passes by driving his car. He takes her to his house to shelter her from the rain outside.
As soon as Nina narrates what happened with Sakura, Seri gets pissed and decides to rape her. Since he believes that Nina likes Sakura, he instructs her to picture that he’s Sakura and proceeds to rape her multiple times until she passes out. This dude is trash.
The day after Nina leaves the house but doesn’t tell anyone that she got raped. To make matters worse, she begins getting harassed for seemingly no reason – later on, she finds out that her personal information was leaked in a Liar-S fansite, along with a photo of her kissing Sakura. This photo is what triggered the anger of crazy Liar-S fangirls.
Seri continues behaving like an asshole; he offers to help Nina to stop the abusers, nonetheless the price for his aid is sex. At this point Nina still has brain cells so she clearly rejects his offer and curses his very existence.
Over time the harassment escalates in such a way that Seri decides to intervene whether Nina willingly accepts his help or not. He goes to Nina’s house and introduces himself to her parents as her boyfriend, then convinces them of leaving her in his custody after explaining that she was being threatened on the daily. Although Nina attempts to reason with her parents, they force her to move in with Seri as they believe it will be the best alternative to keep her safe.
Post-move Seri keeps raping her every other day, yet as time goes by she seems to feel confused because she low-key enjoys it. Sadly, things just continue going downhill from here.
Seri pulls a Toma and tries to keep Nina from leaving the house at all. He attempts to intimidate her by showing her sinister letters that were addressed to her. The truth is he expects her to leave anyway, therefore he hired one of his sly lovers to follow Nina all the time and continuously harass her in various forms.
Nina falls into Seri’s trap and leaves the house without suspecting anything is wrong. The snake hired by Seri pursues her all day, then proceeds to do things such as pushing her in the way of incoming traffic and leaving intimidating letters with a dead rat in Seri’s mailbox, seemingly sent to Nina.
Nina is overwhelmed and runs back to the house. She anxiously waits for Seri’s return since she’s terrified. Seri pretends to be worried and to know nothing about the culprit of such vile actions. Subsequent to this, he begins locking the apartment’s door before leaving to stop Nina from trying to escape, and he tries to justify this conduct by stating that he’s merely worried about her safety.
Nina is locked up for a long time – apparently, weeks – and during this twisted house arrest Seri still has his way with her while Nina questions why she likes being raped.
One day, Seri invites her to one of Liar-S’s live shows. Nina accepts as she concludes that it will be her only chance to run away from him. Following the live show’s end, she spots the perfect chance to escape and even wants to report Seri to the police… but she decides it doesn’t feel right and she doesn’t want to leave him alone. At this point this proves to be some twisted case of Stockholm syndrome that the writers somehow consider romantic.
The woman Seri had hired to stalk Nina shows up and reveals Seri’s evil plan of intimidating Nina just to force her to stay with him. Seri appears and starts kissing with the random chick out of nowhere. Nina’s brain cells disappeared sometime in the route, hence she throws a tantrum and begs him to not do that sort of intimate stuff with anyone who isn’t her.
For whatever reason, Nina’s change of heart turns Seri on – he drags her to a hotel nearby for more rape. Nina asks him why he hates her so much and Seri’s story is basically “uhh when I met you over two years back you were the only whore that didn’t fall for my fake charms so I despised you”.
Seri shares that he started Liar-S because Nina mentioned seeking to decide her own future instead of following what her wealthy family planned for her. This statement inspired him to do the same. Due to the fact that Nina came back and didn’t like Liar-S’s music, he decided to finally make his dream of breaking her pure self come true.
Nina cries because Seri is pitiful and asks him to be honest with the Liar-S members about his love for the band. She then kisses Seri and tells him that she can’t leave him alone for the reason that she wants to take all of his pain away; Nina also claims that he needs to stop fucking around with other women, as she will always be by his side. Oh gee, too romantic to live.
The next day, Seri goes to confront Sakura and instruct him to sing properly since he loves Liar-S more than anyone and he doesn’t want them to disband. All problems are magically solved and Liar-S gets approval to produce a new song.
Ultimately, Seri apologizes to Nina for being crap and confesses that he loves her. He offers to exit Nina’s life, yet she tells him that he needs to take responsibility for breaking her because now she can’t live without him, thus he needs to stay with her forever.
Clearly this is too romantic for me to understand.
After Liar-S’s live show in the summer festival, Seri fucks Nina against a tree. Oh goody, what a romantic ending.
In a short epilogue Seri takes her to watch the stars together and she thinks to herself that it doesn’t matter if everything coming out of Seri’s mouth is a lie, as she accepts all of him including his lies.
Although every Encore is usually fluffy and cute, Seri’s just shows him using Nina as his cum dumpster and continuously trying to make her jealous. Good riddance to this asshole and his whole cursed route.
I have no idea how the writers reached the conclusion that Seri’s route would be a positive addition to an otoge.
