Fortune Arterial: PROLOGUE

The Visual Novel way of depicting Vampires.

Hello my beautiful people! Welcome to my journey into vampires, highschool, crazy-manly best-friends and what seems to be a main character that isn’t totally braindead. Also called Fortune Arterial! Please note that this VN contains high amounts of cliché material and loads’o’moe. It also contains rather hilarious characters and the sprites and art are all rather appealing to look at. I also only felt like putting this disclaimer in because it’s in English, which means that I can’t use this space as a warning for my lack of moon-rune knowledge.

On with the show and such!

And-a-one, And-a-two, And-a-HNNNNGH.

YES. THIS IS A PROLOGUE. NOT THE COMMON ROUTE.

SON OF A BITCH.

So, the introduction (after the eerie and rather creepy/cryptic skit) introduces us to Hasakura Kouhei! The introduction moves fairly fast, but you can pull away that he has been on the road for most (if not his whole) life because of his dad’s job. He apparently lived on this island before, about seven years ago before he moved away. So, here he goes, but this time for good, since this school allows dorms! He wants to live on his own, and he’s a tough protagonist who doesn’t afraid of anything. So with more confidence than any harem-protagonist ever should have, he arrives at his new school, life, etc, the whole shebang.

As I said, this progresses rather quickly.

So, we meet Erika, the extremely obvious vampire for anyone who has read the dscription. She is the (as I call them) ‘God’s Gift’ character, who pretty much does everything and anything. Sports, academics, student council, etc. A bit off-set by the whole, ya’ know, the whole vampire thing, but we’ll get to that some other time. Kohei immediately proves that all guys are perverts and oogles her.

A+. Classy guy.

This goes well until she screams. Then falls over. Then acts really sick and under-the-weather. So, to prove that she is doing cheerfully fine, she rushes up to the school and ditches Kohei at one of the teacher’s room. Said teacher is actually pretty cool and shows you around the school, trying to find someone to escort you to the dorm. You meet Kuze Kiriha right away, but if you know the anime, you know she isn’t the… well, social type. So she tells you where to go and moves on. Cause… well. Yeah. That’s what she does. There always has to be an unsocial type, and Kuze brings this to max level.

So, the next one? OUR BEST FRIEND OF COURSE. This is a harem-VN after all. Every MC needs a best friend. This is actually a bit different though. He’s apparently known as a difficult/scary kind of guy, but he’s a pretty good guy and he’s pretty sympathetic towards the whole “moving a billion times” kind of thing. A best-friend that’s not an idiot. Kind of impressive.

Oh lawdy lawd!

Hachimandaira Tsukasa. He’s a pretty high-level bro. Kouhei’s clothes and luggage are going to be late for a few days, so he talks to them on the phone and basically roars at them to bring it back, which gets the time reduced to just a day late. Then he lets you stay in his room for the night! Also during this time, you are briefly introduced to Yuki Kanade and Yuki Haruna and you get to hear them cause chaos during the night, preventing quite a deal of sleep for you and Tsukasa. I’ll be honest, Kanade is pretty hilarious. I still can’t get over how Kanade is supposedly the older sister. And the whole kick to the shin thing… I don’t know. It amuses me. Greatly. Also, both of them recongize you from when you lived here before! Kouhei remembers after some initial memory lapse. Yay, happy stuff!

So. With nothing better to do with his time after he moves in officially, he decides to go around and.. do what everyone else does. Take pictures. Of everything. Remember the girl up top? Well, it’s about time she gets formerly introduced! Well, you don’t actually hear her name right away, but, spoilers! Togi Shiro is here! And she is chasing down a baby rabbit. That you easily catch, of course, because hey, convenience. The clothes she wears is apparently the Laurel Ring uniform. It’s sort of committee-ish, they help around the church. Enter Sister Amaike. Tsukasa warned Kohei about this one earlier. Real demon. Frying pans. Never a good thing. So, in fear of his life and soul, Kouhei flees, like everyone would.

What to do? Well, let’s look at the map– WOAH. A place that says secret scribbled out mysteriously! Let’s go to it. So, that’s what Kouhei does, except this doesn’t go exceptionally well. For him, anyway. This was awesome for me, maybe not so much for Kouhei. He stumbled upon the student-council base of operations. First, we have Togi Seichiro Asshole Extraordinaire. He tells you were to go, which is to leave, and tries to be threatening with his stupid 15 dollar Sesshomaru-haircut. Then we have Sendo Iori. He’s awesome. He’s one of the more eccentric types of people, but seems to be absurdly good-natured. A complete contrast to Seichiro, who tries to kick you out, he invites you in, where we meet Erika again, who is clearly avoiding the shit out of you for some reason. Tea, awkward silences, and some amusing banter ensues.

So, whats the next segment/portion of the story? Well…

This sums it up quite nicely.

Since you have now been shown all the heroines and such, it’s time for the hilarious school-life portion to really kick into overdrive. This includes Iori switching the bathsigns, which results in poor Kouhei getting the rage of Dracula all over his cheek, then dropping another bomb on him by telling him that Erika fell in love with him at first sight. This boils over into a few more mistakes before the entrance ceremony for the school begins. In which during the ceremony, Erika puts three spotlights on him and tells the whole student body he broke into the girls bath.

And I thought Nanaka’s on-stage confession or Yukino’s faceplant was bad. This was awesome.

So. Yeah. School-life! I can’t record all of it down, since that will make this too long. I’ll just put here as a small review that it is actually pretty funny. Kind of fast-paced, but Kanade’s auction, the constant tea parties by people breaking into your room and the crazy highschool comedy all make for a pretty amusing read. The comedy reminds me of Da Capo II. Not a bad thing, either. It’s feel-good-happy stuff that will probably get a chuckle out of most people at the least. I can’t help but feel bad for Kouhei though. These people are completely insane.

AND THIS IS WHEN THE FUN STOPS.

Kouhei gets told to go to the chapel by Shiro’s brother. Thinking nothing of it, he of course goes, only to see Iori feasting on someone. Kouhei, completely terrified, bolts back to his room and tries to sleep it off, getting kind of traumatized in the process. It’s kind of sick, actually. And then it’s time for the grand reveal! After that, of course you are brought back to the student council’s place. There, he is told that Iori and Erika are vampires, which I’m sure anyone would know by reading this. Yet what I didn’t expect was the ultimatum: You join the student council or they wipe your memories from the last two weeks. Kouhei doesn’t want to be forced into anything, and to him it’d be like transferring schools again, so why the hell not?

This greatly annoys everyone involved. The task is left up to Erika, who is kind of pissed that her friend is going to erase his memories because he’s such a vagina.

OH GOD I WANT MY MOE BACK

SO. Kouhei actually gets some good character development here! He said he wanted to change when he came here and stop being a migrating bird so damn often. He didn’t want to transfer again. He wanted his friends. He didn’t want to restart. The whole thing was stupid. That’s why he was here, of course, so he says screw it! He agrees to join, tells himself he’s a new man, deals with all the vampires and all, and we are then greeted by the Fortune Arterial OP! (Which I actually liked!) which signals the beginning of the actual common route, where choices of waifus are made and more hilarious stuff happens!

——

So. Yes. The prologue! Overall? I can’t say I’m disappointed for now. It remained funny, the fast-paced thing didn’t switch, and the developmental thing with Kouhei was pretty awesome at the moment. So far I’m having fun. Kind of hate Guild Wars 2 for keeping my attention so long and making me put this off.

So, keep in touch. More vampires and no-doubt confusing crap will be waiting for us, stay tuned!

GLORIOUS CHOICES!