VN Talk: My Sweet Bodyguard - Part 5: Sora

I was looking forward to Sora's route since he's a bright and optimistic personality on the other routes, even if he tends to get a little too huggy with the MC, but by the time I finished it, I wasn't sure I liked him as much anymore. It wasn't that he turned out to be a secret jerk, but there were two things about him that bothered me on his route.

The MC meets Sora first out of all the bodyguards during her rescue in the prologue, but she thinks she's being helped by another woman, who turns out to be Sora, who sometimes crossdresses as a disguise. He looks really good as a woman, and given his upbeat personality and that he's even enthusiastic about it on other routes, I assumed he was fine with it. And I actually think that he is fine with it, and proud of how well he passes, since he even has a photo album of him in his disguises which he admits are all of him dressed as a woman.

Given his protests on his own route, I suspect the problem is that Sora doesn't want to look feminine in front of a woman he's attracted to, but even if the MC is nothing but supportive he always feels resistant about it. It's not until the ending when the MC tells him his disguise is what allowed them to meet that he kind of dials it back, but it doesn't feel like there was a solid resolution on how he really feels about it and I didn't like the "I can't look girly in front of my woman" vibe I was getting.

VN Talk: My Sweet Bodyguard - Part 4: Subaru

Subaru, though seemingly the poster boy of My Sweet Bodyguard, actually pissed me off in the prologue for being rude and arrogant, so I wasn't inclined to like him, but he becomes a lot more tolerable later in Katsuragi and Kaiji's routes, which softened my impression of him. I especially liked seeing him discombobulated by Kaiji's sisters, which showed that he wasn't as put-together as he pretended to be. (And his freak out expression is a nice contrast to his usual smug one.)

It admittedly helps that the MC's internal commentary after choosing him is full of snark. She's impressed by his resume (Harvard grad, studied in Paris, professional accolades, etc.), but not his personality, which makes it a little weird when she starts falling for him about a third of the way in. There is the "there's only one bed" trope which results in them awkwardly sharing it, and unlike the other love interests, he passes himself off as the MC's boyfriend to cover for his need to shadow her 24/7. This produces some expected emotional confusion, but he doesn't act terribly boyfriend-like other than physical proximity.

I guess it's nice that he cleans her place and cooks for her (because those are always boyfriend points), but the way he does it suggests more that he thinks her standards are below what he can tolerate if he's going to be living with her. It's like no good deed he does comes without a put down, but the MC is attracted to him anyway. In universe multiple people comment on how attractive he is so I suppose it's possible the MC just can't get over how gorgeous he is, but as the player I think his character design is just "okay" and not obviously more attractive than the other love interests.

VN Talk: My Sweet Bodyguard - Part 3: Kaiji

As I mentioned in last week's My Sweet Bodyguard post, I was leaning towards choosing Kaiji as a love interest for being a similar age to the MC, and also being a childhood friend, which I thought could make for a more interesting dynamic than the other characters who are all strangers.

I thought it was off to a promising start. People who knew each other as children and then separated as they went to different schools, only to randomly meet each other again later in life is a thing that happens. So I wasn't bothered by the MC not remembering certain aspects of their childhood friendship, and though their romance does include a childhood marriage proposal, that's pretty much par for the course. I expect to be running into tropes in this game, so there's no harm in feeding the player the candy they're here for.

But even though I thought we were off to a promising start with the two getting reacquainted after an uncertain number of years (I think the MC moved away when she was about eleven, but the exact age is unclear), I found I didn't like their dynamic that much. Kaiji has a lot of fun teasing her due to their shared history, but otherwise spends a lot of time telling other characters how he's not interested in her. And meanwhile the MC spends a lot of time noting evidence that supports her theory that Kaiji hates women (he actually never says anything of the sort).

VN Talk: My Sweet Bodyguard - Part 2: Katsuragi

Picking Daichi Katsuragi first was a "me choice" rather than seeing who the protagonist seemed to mesh with the best. Voltage protagonists are never named, though they often come with their own personality, so they aren't completely blank slates. But when I first started messing around with the Love 365 app I didn't think about it so much as looking for a story with a love interest that I would find interesting. So those early days were a lot of hopscotching through the various titles to use my free reading time as much as possible before I had to pay.

What I'm getting at, is I was lured to My Sweet Bodyguard due to its premise (a lot of Voltage games are exactly what the name says on the tin) and then chose Katsuragi to be my protagonist's bodyguard because I thought if I was going to read a romance with any of these guys, I wanted the boss, who's older and more experienced than the others. (Might also be my own age talking.) I played about halfway through his story before my free time ran out and then set the game aside as I played other things.

Coming back after all this time, and having bought a bunch of other My Sweet Bodyguard routes while they were on sale, I restarted from the prologue and found I almost wanted to set up the protagonist with either Kaiji or Subaru, just so their age would be closer. Katsuragi's age isn't given anywhere to my knowledge, but since he's the only love interest who goes by his family name instead of his given one, he's probably several years older so they would not be able to address each other as peers. My personal guess is he's in his thirties since there are other love interests in Love 365 who are canonically in their forties and they look older than Katsuragi.