REVIEW | Is Majestic☆Majolical vol.3 a Good Finale?

Genre: Visual Novel, Otome

Platform: PC

Release Date: May 25th, 2018

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Finally, we’ve reached the end of the road. After two okay entries, what awaits us in the final volume? Will the Shell route bait from other volumes be worth it?

To be fair, the answer to one of those questions is not so bad.

[spoiler]

Ruu

Ruu is a very famous and trendy idol who’s well-known for his charming demeanor and beautiful voice. Lapis meets him as he attempts to hide from his rabid fangirls, and he expresses immediate interest in her. Ruu invites her to his live show and they exchange contact information. Throughout his first conversation with Lapis, he states that their meeting feels like fate, and that he might have fallen in love at first sight. Oddly, even though Ruu seems like the typical carefree flirt, he appears to mean his words: Lapis’ first attempt at collecting gems from him results in a dark pink gem straight away.

Lapis thinks she’s off to a great start choosing Ruu as her target. However, her butler Jasper notices that the gem is impure. The center of the gem is a different color from the rest, which makes the gem worthless in the exam. The cause behind this phenomenon is unknown, yet Jasper mysteriously asks Lapis to not associate with Ruu anymore.

Due to the fact that Jasper doesn’t explain the reasoning behind his suspicions of Ruu, Lapis continues seeking him out. I can’t blame her because he’s a literal ray of sunshine. Ruu is all smiles and smooth conversations, and always surprises Lapis with gestures such as spontaneous visits to her school.

Shortly after Lapis decides to ignore Jasper’s warning, Ruu invites her to his house. He prepares tea for her and they have a chat, but the topic takes a darker turn when Ruu brings up his abandonment issues. He expresses his happiness over Lapis still contacting him, since there’s never been anybody who has loved him or needed him. Lapis promises to not abandon him and encourages him to lie on her lap while she strokes his head.

Ruu wakes up an hour later and admits that he usually always has nightmares. In turn, Lapis kisses his eyelids and wishes for him to only have good dreams – she then comments that her mother used to do that for her when she was younger. This gesture culminates in Ruu stating that he’s scared of liking her, as it puts his feelings on the line and he might get hurt.

Lapis responds to Ruu’s fear by confessing that she likes him back. Despite Lapis’ guilt over ignoring Shell’s and Jasper’s warnings, they start dating.

Jasper notices the frequency of Lapis’ meetings with Ruu and decides to come clean. He tells her about Ruu’s true identity: his real name is Rune de Luna, the second prince of Variant’s rival country. Variant is Lapis’ country, thus Rune was just interacting with her for spying purposes. Following this, a heartbroken Lapis attempts to avoid contacting Rune, but he kidnaps her. He insists that he had been fooling her all along, though Lapis notes that he seems genuinely sad about the outcome.

Jasper shows up to save Lapis and injures Rune. Lapis and Jasper leave an unconscious Rune in Jasper’s room, and the butler explains that he first met Rune over a decade ago when he was in the human world. Rune was a lonely little kid who was abandoned by his parents. Jasper temporarily took him under his wing and Rune saw him as an older brother figure. Jasper eventually had to return to the magic world, so Rune ran away before the day Jasper left arrived.

Years later, Jasper met Rune again and was offered a position as a spy for Rune’s country. Since Jasper wanted to find a childhood friend of his, spying on Variant seemed convenient. He accepted Rune’s proposal and successfully found out that his friend was dead. He abandoned his position as a spy right after this revelation, and Rune accused him of abandoning him for a second time.

Lapis forgives Jasper for keeping the details from her and takes care of Rune every day until his injuries heal. Jasper seals Rune’s magic to ensure he won’t escape. While Rune stays in Lapis’ house, he refuses to listen to anything Jasper asks him to do and only obeys when Lapis is the one suggesting it instead lmao whipped. Jasper becomes the number one Rune/Lapis shipper and fucks off to the magic world because Rune only lets Lapis care for him anyway.

Eventually, Rune stops his tsundere routine and admits that he does truly love Lapis. The two of them do the sexy deed and Rune tells Lapis to stop gathering gems from random human classmates and use him as her only target instead. Of course, Lapis’ first attempt at collecting a new gem from Rune results in a dark pink stage four gem. This boy is smitten and so am I.

On the next day, Rune shares what his situation at home is like. Rune’s magic is greater than that of his father and his older brother, so the two of them feared him. Rune could tell that they were planning to assassinate him due to the risk that he posed, therefore he ran away before they got the chance to; that’s when he met Jasper.

Jasper’s departure made Rune go back to his country and beg his family for another chance. They let him stay and decided to treat him like a pet rather than an equal being. However, they got tired of this too and turned him into a spy under the guise of finding the secret of Variant’s magical gems. Rune whole-heartedly believes that his older brother is dying and needs the gems to recover. On the other hand, Chalcedony had previously told Lapis that Variant shares the medicine of the gems with every country, which makes Lapis doubt Rune’s version of the story.

Lapis’ suspicions are confirmed by Jasper, who investigated Rune’s country in the time he was gone. Rune’s father is sick and close to death, which makes it convenient for Rune’s older brother to keep Rune away and inherit the throne. This way, he can use Rune as an asset to the country and simultaneously keep him away. Nevertheless, Lapis trying to reveal that Rune is being lied to ends with disastrous results.

Rune snaps and maintains his belief that Jasper is lying. He also tries to convince Lapis that their love was fabricated by his dark magic. The argument taking place in Jasper’s room makes the latter burst into the room, so Rune points a knife at Lapis’ throat to bluff and force Jasper to unseal his magic. Once he gets his magic back, Rune uses a portal to teleport out of the house.

Lapis runs to Rune’s house and finds a bottle of magic gems knocked over. She realizes that Rune’s voice has the ability to collect gems from his audience, but every single one of the gems is almost completely transparent, devoid of strong emotions.

Lapis finds Rune in the stage that he debuted in. Rune explains that his brother thought he was useful for his singing ability, yet was disappointed to find that he couldn’t manage to gather any strong gems. Due to the transparent gems that his singing gathers, he’s convinced that nobody will love him. Lapis shows him the gems she collected from him – although the first one was muddy and tainted by dark magic, the other ones are a strong dark pink. Rune asks her to extract a gem from him one last time, and the result is a powerful deep red gem. The two of them cry from happiness and embrace each other.

Good End: Rune wants to keep his life in the human world. Lapis decides to stay with him, so the two of them talk to Chalcedony to achieve Variant’s approval. Rune has to give up his dark magic since Variant considers there is a possibility of Rune taking Lapis hostage and using her as leverage someday. In the middle of this mess, Rune’s older brother passes away (for seemingly no particular reason?) and Rune’s uncle is appointed to take the throne when Rune’s father passes away from illness.

Rune’s magic is broken permanently by using some deus ex machina key. Yes, conveniently Rune obtains a very powerful magic key that can break anybody’s magic. Okay.

Rune and Lapis get married in the human world and look adorable while I scream in the distance. The end.

Shell

Shell is Lapis’ highly talented classmate, who appears to dislike Lapis and makes it his goal in life to one-up her at every turn. “Appears” being the operative word, since this is just a one-sided suspicion from Lapis. The truth is that Shell has had a big dumb crush on Lapis for years, and therefore is the personification of the boys who poke fun at the girl they like because they’re emotionally constipated. It’s pretty funny how literally every character is well-aware of Shell’s crush, with the exception of Lapis herself. In fact, he is so smitten that despite having high enough grades to take the gem collection exam somewhere else, Shell chooses to take his exam in the same human school that Lapis is going to attend.

On their first day of school, Shell and Lapis accidentally bump into each other. Regardless of their past rocky relationship, Shell states that he doesn’t want to fight her and doesn’t particularly enjoy doing so. They reconcile and Lapis insists on them shaking hands to make amends.

The conflict with Ruu’s gem color happens again in this route. Nonetheless, this time around Lapis chooses to stop collecting gems from Ruu. Shell volunteers to teach Lapis the best strategy to gather gems, but before this, he confesses in the middle of a seemingly normal conversation. Legit, both Lapis and I were left speechless. Still, Shell just ignores the unanswered confession and picks up where their last discussion left off.

Over time, Lapis realizes that she’s falling in love with Shell. Her newfound feelings incite jealousy over his lovey-dovey behavior with his targets. However, this jealousy is short-lived for the most part, as Shell continuously acts in a way that reminds her of his feelings for her. Despite the attraction being mutual, Lapis doesn’t make any move to respond to Shell’s confession. She decides that she’ll keep her affection a secret until the gem collection exam is over.

One day, Shell takes Lapis to a double date in an amusement park. Shell is paired up with his target, while Lapis is paired up with a guy who has a crush on her. The two couples split for a few minutes, yet once they reunite, Lapis spots Shell’s target leaning up to kiss him from afar.

Lapis runs home, followed by Shell sometime after. The two of them talk about the situation in Lapis’ room, and he explains that he avoided the girl’s kiss. Lapis admits that she felt jealous, but Shell interrupts her before she manages to confess. He states that they shouldn’t start dating until the exam is over, nonetheless, fucked up otome game fanservice mentality prompts him to leave a hickey on Lapis’ chest as a “promise” of what will come later.

The cringe in this scene is strong.

Thankfully, Chalcedony busts into the room and is determined to cockblock Shell to hell and back.

Good End: The day of the cultural festival, Shell completes his exam and returns to the magic world. Lapis is momentarily kidnapped by Ruu, yet Shell shows up with permission to use his magic in the human world since he passed his graduation exam. Shitty rushed writing unfolds in a laughable magic battle between Ruu and Shell, which Shell wins by using ancient advanced magic.

Following the battle, Lapis and Shell steal a moment together and become a couple. The ending fast-forwards to the future, where Lapis and Shell both already finished their education and got jobs more involved in teaching rather than their initial plan of aiming for the war department.

Chalcedony

Majestic Majolical’s third volume focuses on Chalcedony, who is Lapis’ eldest brother. From his introduction in volume 1, right off the bat, we know that Chalcedony is hilarious in every sense of the word. Due to the fact that he’s in a high position of power, working as an aide to the king, he tries to come off as composed and serious. However, as soon as he’s in Lapis’ vicinity, he turns into a dorky, overprotective older brother with a strong sister complex.

In the prologue, Chalcedony sends himself into a thought spiral – he weeps and tells Lapis that she’s too cute and he’s worried that the horrible men from the human world will get close to her. And this is far from the end of it. Chalcedony actually goes to Lapis’ room the day before she leaves for the human world and cries in her arms, asking her to change her mind and stay because he’ll be lonely without her.

A mere two days following Lapis’ arrival in the human world, Chalcedony shows up at her school and excitedly reveals that he got a vacation from work to stay with her. Later that day, he loses his shit when Lapis gets home at 9 o’clock. After finding out that she went to a concert with Shell, Chalcedony loses his shit once again and starts proposing unreasonable curfews – at one point, he even says that maybe she shouldn’t even go to school. Jasper’s intervention saves Lapis from a 3 p.m. curfew and Chalcedony concludes that she must be home by 7 p.m. every day since otherwise he will get a heart attack and die.

Chalcedony’s ending involves Lapis giving up on Ruu as a target because of Jasper’s suspicions. Lapis fails her graduation exam due to not finding another target to collect gems from, which causes Jasper to feel responsible for her failure. Jasper resigns from his position as a butler and mysteriously disappears, so Lapis and Chalcedony decide to look for him and bring him back. Lapis remarks that no matter how uncertain the future may be, her kind older brother will definitely love and support her forever.

We stan Chalcedony for eternity.[/spoiler]

Volume three isn’t without its faults, but it’s on par with the rest of Majestic☆Majolical’s entries, so at least it’s not a huge downgrade nor anything as negative as that. I don’t know how they dropped the ball so badly with Shell, though. The hype about his route? Gone. Found dead in a ditch. Somehow, the one character that has been teased throughout the entirety of the series actually has one of the sloppiest routes.

I suspected Ruu would be the extra, unnecessary and forgettable route, in lieu of the fact that he was close to non-existent in previous volumes. However, his route along with Chalcedony as a character is the saving grace of the volume. The pacing of Shell’s route is all over the place, and his personality makes it seem like three different brain cells were arguing in a room while developing his route, with different ideas on what they wanted to do for his narrative.

I’m not implying Ruu’s route is perfect. Nonetheless, it’s much better than Shell’s. The poor, tsundere childhood rival with a huge crush gets shafted so hard that every other part of the plot appears to be a masterpiece in comparison. The entirety of Shell’s route is some odd push and pull game between him and Lapis; it’s just a lot of fluffy filler. Regardless, the writers suddenly decide that they need to dump in as much magical plot as possible in the last 5 minutes of gameplay. The ending’s writing is much worse than most chaotic fanfiction from fanfiction.net back in the 2000s. Seriously, it’s laughable.

Well, at least Ruu is husband material! Or was! Initially!

Okay, I honestly don’t know what to make of Ruu as a character. I think he is at his best at the start of the route, as a ray of sunshine with deep-rooted insecurities that need addressing. It’s not that I hate the bratty personality he reveals later on – it’s just that he was too cute in the beginning and it’s truly a waste to throw that away.

As a whole, Majestic☆Majolical isn’t all that good. As I mentioned when talking about the first volume, it can be described as a lighthearted game. By calling it decent, I’m giving it as much praise as is possible without entering the delusional territory. I won’t lump it in with the list of horrible games I’ve played, but I also won’t lump it in with the good ones. The series will certainly stay in the forgettable shelf and be nothing but a far-off memory a few months from now.

I believe the closest I got to liking the game was in my volume two playthrough, during Shinnosuke’s route. If you really, absolutely want to try Majestic☆Majolical out, then you’re better off picking up a copy of the second entry. Trust me.