VN Talk: Variable Barricade - Part 4: Taiga

This week's love interest is Taiga, who seems to be fairly popular among English speakers. He's loud and abrasive, but Hibari can be too, which means that she's not one to lay down and take it. As always for these types of posts, this is a recent game and there are spoilers ahead, so if you want to avoid them you'll want to stop reading now.

That said, I found Taiga very strange and off-putting in the common route. He's blunt and likes to tease Hibari (and not in a romantic fashion) to get a rise out of her. Though insightful like Shion, he lacks Shion's sense of discretion. And this is weird, because he's supposed to be one of Hibari's suitors, but in the common route he doesn't really do anything to try to court her. Ichiya's always cooking and showering her with cheesy romance lines. Shion tries to cuddle with her and take her to spas or fashion boutiques. Even Nayuta tries to get her attention in order for her to pick him.

Taiga doesn't try to be nice. So he was the last of the suitors whose barricade board I did in the common route, but when I did it, I saw that beneath the crass exterior was a guy with a big heart. I mean, I figured something of the sort was coming as a character detail because this is a rom-com and not the kind of otome where you expect to find assholes (though, hello Shion), but it was nice to see how the game would soften him.

Turns out Taiga is an orphan and has a soft spot for the other orphans at the orphanage where he grew up, acting as a big brother for the rest of them. But that's not all. It's through the orphanage that he knows Hibairi's grandfather, who has regularly donated to support the orphanage over the years. Thus, he and Taiga have known each other for most of Taiga's life.

In fact, her grandfather dotes on Taiga rather like a grandson, and it's through his patronage that Taiga is able to travel internationally and bring back stories to share with her grandfather. Taiga doesn't travel glamorously. It seems outside of the obvious airfare needed to leave an island country like Japan he's the sort who backpacks everywhere, takes odd jobs for extra spending money, and probably stays in hostels, so the stories he tells are the kind of misadventures a wealthy man like Takamune could never have undertaken in his own younger years.

Should Hibari choose Taiga as her tentative fiance at the end of the common route, her grandfather calls Taiga out of hiding to join them in the room, in a deviation from the usual scene where he formalizes her choice and she then leaves to go home. The reason for this is that Taiga has a special role in the house as an observer. He's not a suitor, though Hibari's grandfather makes it clear to both of them that he would be perfectly happy if Hibari and Taiga chose each other. Taiga's role is to watch the other guys since they may behave differently alone than with other people and to help keep the peace. This is why he's never actually tried courting Hibari. He never saw himself as a suitor. This is a job.

Grudgingly, he accepts the temporary fiance role just so Hibari's grandfather can get the rest of the extended family off their back, with the understanding that Hibari will still choose from the other three. But now that Hibari knows this, it changes their dynamic when they return home. Hibari begins confiding in Taiga precisely because he's always there, he knows the shenanigans she has to put up with, and there's no romantic pressure coming from him because he's not in the game. This ironically creates scenes where he and Hibari actively get to know each other, with Hibari asking natural questions about things in his room, or his gambling addiction, which turns out to not be nearly as bad as it sounds.

It turns out that Taiga only gambles when he goes abroad, it's what he does instead of buying souvenirs like most people, and he's a sort of all-in person. If he wins, but then loses all his winnings in the next round, then all he lost was imaginary money. (And reading between the lines, if he loses that first round, he doesn't keep going to get the money back.) Her grandfather speculates that Taiga uses gambling as a chance to beat the system, since Taiga recognizes that no matter how hard he works in this world, there are some goals he may never achieve.

Taiga turns out to be quite dependable, though still crass with an attitude, but Hibari's leaning on him doesn't go unnoticed by the rest of her suitors, so he finds himself repeatedly trying to deflect and maintain that he's not a serious romantic competitor to the other guys. And this it livens up his side of the story, because we know that's more or less the truth… for now.

Eventually this comes to a head in the conflict for the first act of Taiga's route. Hibari comes home from school only to overhear the guys in the living room, cornering Taiga. Shion, being the most canny of the other suitors, pushes hard, and Taiga, attempting to settle the matter once and for all, reminds the guys that he likes big-chested women and Hibari's far too flat for his tastes. And he lays it on pretty thick that Hibari is not likely to get any bigger with age, and well, one can imagine that this scene did not end happily for anyone. I will say though, that when even Nayuta can read the mood, it's pretty bad.

The apology scene is good though, with Taiga admitting that even though she's not what he normally finds attractive, he is attracted to her nonetheless, and it's her spicy personality that really gets him. Soon after, Taiga shifts from observer to active participant, and promises to romance the hell out of Hibari so she chooses him.

And of course, that's what Hibari (and the player!) looks forward to. So this is where things start to go sideways.

It's not that Taiga doesn't take her out on a date, or to places meaningful to him like the orphanage where he grew up, but he essentially gets cold feet. After spending time with Taiga, Hibari realizes that her worldview is very small, and there's a lot she doesn't know since she grew up so sheltered. She sees Taiga as a font of knowledge and decides that she needs to up her game so she's not so far behind him.

Though Taiga does not want her to remain ignorant, he's so intimidated by her quest to better herself that he's afraid that someday she'll shoot right past him and then decide she no longer needs him. So he tries to push her back, put some distance between them, and of course never saying exactly why he's doing this. When the other guys, who aren't blind about Hibari's growing attraction to Taiga, attempt to stand down as suitors, he reveals his role as observer to force them to stay.

They stay, but not to resume courtship, which would be pretty awkward, but to form a support network for Hibari. I have to say that one of Variable Barricade's strengths is in how the cast pulls together to help someone, and it's these little nuggets that remind me of or make me look forward to their own routes.

Eventually Taiga moves out of the house entirely in the middle of the night in the hopes no one will see him, though he doesn't manage to elude Hibari, and even when the two of them are clearly alone and Hibari is at her lowest, he still doesn't explain himself and leaves, assuring himself that it's for the best. And then he visits her grandfather to formally withdraw as an observer (and give the man's credit card back, which is how Taiga could travel internationally while being unemployed).

Though this did not push him past Shion, I was disappointed that his route had resorted to the "I'm not good enough and I can't tell her that" ploy. The first two-thirds was great, but I wish it hadn't made the finale all about finding a way to convince Taiga to come back. I realize that Taiga's greatest fear is disappointing those he cares about, he apparently refused real jobs from Hibari's grandfather in the past for that very reason, but it's not fun to play through his mental baggage when we only get the rationale after wallowing in the misery.

The good thing is that when Hibari does get him to return, it's basically like setting bait. She texts him everyday about little things in her life at the house, including the other guys, so he starts to miss being there. Eventually Taiga decides he ought to resume contact and sends her a message to meet in public. Hibari goes, and when they meet he makes a pretty idiotic proposal saying that the only way he'll be with her is if she gives up everything, her friends, her family name, her fortune, and runs away with him.

Of course Hibari isn't willing to consider any of that, and for all her moping, her temper flares up and she grabs Taiga by the collar to let him know that being a Tojo is who she is, and by giving that up she wouldn't be herself anymore. Though she does bawl, she really lets him have it, and I was grinning the whole time.

He finally comes clean and admits he was testing her, because he wanted to make sure she wasn't willing to blindly do anything he says, and he tells her about his fear of her eventually being disappointed in his capabilities. Bringing the whole thing back to his gambling motif, he offers to make the gamble of his life on their marriage working out. While that's nice of him to say, what I really like is Hibari's rejoinder. She points out that she dislikes risk, but doesn't have a problem marrying him, because from her point of view, she'll get to be with the man she loves, and if it turns out that he's an asset to the company, that's just a bonus.

Next week is the poster boy, Ichiya.