Gensou Manège Review

Gensou Manège is an otome game that follows the heroine Emma, a witch who lost her powers when she was young and is now living a quiet life. She is led by the memento her father left her and finds herself swept away with the arrival of a travelling amusement park in town. It’s a Visual Novel, Otome published by PQube with a release date of January 31st, 2025 for platforms Nintendo Switch and Steam.

Game Overview

I will awaken the magic within you, and you will free us from the Rêve…

Set in a wondrously evocative re-imagining of France, a beautifully crafted otome visual novel following Emma, orphaned at a young age, as she fights to uncover her forgotten memories. A witch who lost her powers when young and now living a quiet life, Emma is led by the memento her father left her and finds herself swept away with the arrival of a travelling amusement park in town.

Filled with magic and dreams but holding a dark secret, Emma feels an immediate connection to the wondrous La Foire du Rêve. She discovers that hidden underneath the lustrous fairy-like charm of the park, its employees are trapped, bound to the amusement park and only the magic within Emma can free them. But it has been years since Emma has been able to access her magic, and she must dig deep within herself, navigating painful repressed memories, in order to recover it.

Working at the Rêve as she unravels the tangled threads of her forgotten past, Emma forges bonds with the employees of the amusement park. A cast of wonderful characters; the dazzling director Hugo, the stoic accountant Serge, the Tunde Performer Crier, the kind-hearted rabbit Lyon, the Hikikomori Mechanic Luciole, and Emma’s special childhood friend, Arnaud. Each character with their own crosses to bear, stories of tragedy and longing woven together with desperation, Emma builds deepening bonds of friendship, and maybe more, as she works to unlock her magic and their freedom.

With its gorgeously subdued artwork, radiating warmth and romance, Genso Manège is a dream-like otome fantasy with an outstanding visual power that conjures an unforgettably bittersweet tale.

I’ve actually played the demo of this game a while back; albeit I never got around to playing it so I’m happy I finally got the chance to since I’ve always been interested in this game!

Characters

There’s six main routes in this game which include Hugo, Serge, Crier, Lyon, Luciole, and Arnaud. I’ve seen recommended route orders suggested by the developers were Hugo ⇒ Serge / Crier ⇒ Lyon / Luciole ⇒ Arnaud — but honestly doing Hugo’s route first would make everything seem less ‘surprising’ in a way so I recommend saving Hugo as the penultimate route with Arnaud being last. I honestly don’t think the order matters aside from that. Arnaud is actually locked until you do Hugo’s route so you literally can’t do his first anyway. I started with Serge because I love the kuudere megane types lol.

Serge (CV: Umehara Yuuichirou) is the La Foire du Rêve's accountant who handles all the finances related to the amusement park. He's very strict and doesn't show his emotions much, but he's very dedicated to his work. He's also indebted to Hugo who helped him in the past. 

Serge was the first route I decided to do since I already knew off the bat he would be my type. I’ll probably always have a bias for tsunderes, but I can’t help but love those dense-about-love megane types (yes, I’m thinking of Kent from Amnesia). I’ll admit, sometimes I can see why these type of characters can come off as dry, but honestly once they warm up to you it’s really fun to watch them fumble with romantic gestures and words. If anything, seeing him struggle to understand love or things that would be seen as embarrassing was pretty funny — especially when he’d get advice from Hugo about it. At one point he admits he hadn’t been around women much, which makes sense given his demeanor around Emma (and given his backstory, it’s actually not as surprising as you’d think). This route actually delves into more of the backstory related to the plot, so I think for that reason it’s a good route to start with. The tone of the route shifts a bit from lighthearted to a bit more serious later on, so there’s definitely more action to look forward to if you’re worried about this route playing it safe in terms of content. As for Emma and Serge’s chemistry, while there is certainly an age-gap, I don’t tend to mind it in these scenarios (as I’ve seen much bigger age gaps in other games lol trust me) and I still thought their dynamic was overall very cute.

Luciole (CV: Shirai Yuusuke) is shut-in (a hikikomori if you will) mechanic at La Foire du Rêve who doesn't say much and barely shows himself. Due to an incident in the past, he's isolated himself from others. He has a distain for magic and is against Emma using it.   

Luciole isn’t really my type, but I can appreciate his type of character. He’s a lot like Shishiba from Sidekicks (like legit) he’s even voiced by the same voice actor Shirai Yuusuke — which I thought was funny. Albeit, I think even Shishiba wasn’t as cold towards the heroine (but it’s been a while since I played that game so I can’t remember lol). However, Luciole has his reasons and I can see why he has distrust in his heart — that being said, a peeve I have with these type of characters is that they project their hate on the wrong things. In this case, he hates magic due to something related to his past — but without spoiling too much I can definitely say it’s more people who are the real issue (I mean come on). There was also a scene where Emma is told not to do something and then, of course, she does it (which was almost comical it felt like it should’ve come out of a 4koma or something). I couldn’t really take the plot seriously after that LOL. But even though I had my issues with this route, that isn’t to say he isn’t a cute character — I actually like the slow build-up to his romance, so I was fine that it didn’t happen right away. I think the plot felt a bit predictable once you got to the point where you found out more about his past, but it didn’t make it less entertaining. I will say one thing though, slight spoiler for his end one of my biggest turn offs is yandere ending tropes that come out of nowhere (it just isn’t for me, sorry). Also wish they elaborated on how he became part of the Manège because it was kind of vague imo.

Crier (CV: Shimono Hiro) is La Foire du Rêve's main performer; he loves juggling and doing tricks in order to put smiles on people's faces.  He's actually the only one who can leave the Rêve so he goes out a lot for supply runs. He complains a lot about the heroine at first, but deep down he does care in his own way.

Crier was so cute!! Okay, if you know me, I love tsunderes and Crier was no exception. I swear Hiro Shimono always voices that same type of character sometimes. He reminded me a lot of Uta from Ayakashi Gohan but maybe more on the tsundere side. I think he’s actually the one I felt the most suited to Emma — maybe it’s due to the fact they’re the same age but I felt like their chemistry was the best (especially since they both liked sweets too). I think because their situation was similar, it was easy to have them paired off a lot. I feel like out of all the routes this plot was definitely more self-contained from the rest of the routes; I liked how there was a lot of light-hearted moments (with Crier being super tsundere). It’s not plot heavy so it was easy to enjoy without having to pick up on certain pieces of the plot. Anyway, Crier was definitely the perfect type of tsundere and the relationship between him and Emma was really believable in my opinion.

Lyon (CV: Suzuki Yuuto) is a costume performer at La Foire du Rêve who's very quiet and pure-hearted. He never takes off his costume so no one knows what he looks like.

I immediately knew what type of character Lyon was the moment I saw him; a sweet boy who deserves it all but can’t catch a break (bc the writers are evil). He’s kind of as wholesome as it gets and honestly it’s because of that his personality reminds me more of a child rather than a 15 year old. Because of that there’s a sense of immaturity from him but I’m guessing its related to his backstory. Although his love for picture books is definitely explained, I think he’s a good person for Emma because the two of them are so sweet and caring to one and other. Kind of like Crier’s route, I feel like Lyon’s route is also somewhat self-contained in it’s own plot — not super related to the main plot. Regardless, I really liked him as a character and I think his backstory was interesting (and sad). I do think there was more potential to delve a bit deeper into his story, but it was pretty straightforward enough.

Hugo (CV: Hatano Wataru) is the mysterious and playful director of the La Foire du Rêve. He's kind and gentlemanly and treats everyone equally. Although it's hard to tell what he's thinking, he can be stubborn at times and refuse to take yes or no for an answer. When he learns Emma is a witch, he asks for her help to free the Rêve.

I’m not usually one to care for the gentlemanly type — unless they have certain quirks to them. I think Hugo definitely had those quirks? He’s protective, smart, and has a matureness to him that makes him very attractive. At times he reminded me of Howl from Howl’s Moving Castle — especially given how dynamic his character was with the more you learned about him. I think that’s why I was so drawn to his character at times (Emma also kept comparing him to a magician even though he’s not a magic user like Emma). Honestly, even if I didn’t care for him and Emma as a pairing, I’d still like this man — he just has that perfect smooth, gentlemanly personality. Story wise, this is definitely the route where you’ll need to buckle up for the majority of the plot dump. There’s a lot to uncover, so I feel like this should be the penultimate route rather than the first you start with. I really enjoyed all the CGs with this guy though, I feel like he had the best in terms of romance content.

Arnaud (CV:  Abe Atsushi) is a journalist who lives with his mother, Alice, and Emma in Blancbourg. His family took in Emma when she got Amnesia in an accident seven years ago. Because of this, he's very protective of Emma and is cautious with her decision to be involved with the La Foire du Rêve.

Unfortunately, this is more or less the ‘true route’ in a way and I kind of hate it when otome games do that. It makes it feel like this route in particular is so important to plot reveals that the romance tends to get shafted. And if I absolutely adored the character maybe this wouldn’t be a problem but I’m not a big fan of the childhood friend trope nor am I a fan of the onii-san trope. BUT, that being said, I was afraid that Arnaud’s route was going to be the stereotypical childhood friend trope that I dislike but it surprisingly wasn’t… which I’m not super sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I kind of found him annoying at first because of how jealous he’d get in a lot of routes but after playing his route — I didn’t absolutely hate him. I think he’s redeemable a lot of ways and I feel for the guy at times but I think his romance with Emma could’ve been handled a bit better. There’s a lot of drama in this route so prepare for that — so much so that it drags on a bit and the romance gets put on the sidelines. But, I guess it wraps up the story at least. His sort of personality isn’t my cup of tea, but I think I can probably see the appeal.

System / Gameplay

In case you’re worried about a long common route, definitely don’t be. It’s about 3 chapters long and once you hit chapter 4, that’s when you hit a character route so you get into it pretty quickly. The routes themselves aren’t too long and it goes up to about 8 chapters.

I’m not going to lie, when I first heard about this game and I saw the purple UI and purple text on top of it, my eyes hurt from it. I only played the demo in Japanese, so I felt like back then the text was hard to read on top of the textbox. However, adjusting the opacity settings of the textbox really helped and after a while I got used to it. To add on that, you have the option of changing the font-style between bordered and shadowed so that may help if you have trouble reading. I actually really like the overall layout of the game itself, it’s super colorful and bright which suits the game well.

Aside from the UI, the gameplay is fairly standard for a visual novel — skip functions, autoplay, ect. There’s a minigame called the Éveil System, which is essentially what happens when Emma practices her magic. You literally just tap stars on the screen (albeit it’s better to just swipe around rather than tap). Technically, it affects the story but after you play it once you can actually skip it and it’ll default to the best score. It’s not a bad addition to the game, but not totally necessary either.

There’s also after stories and additional content after you complete a route — with an extra CG I might add! So if you’re wondering why you’re missing a CG when you complete a route, don’t worry; you can get it from the after story portion in the extras. Speaking of CGs, I actually thought they were all very beautiful and each character gets a plentiful amount. One unfortunate thing is, I’m not sure if it’s because it’s CERO-B rated or not but the kissing CGs are very tame and it doesn’t really look like any of the characters are kissing (rather touching noses). Kind of a thing some games do, but alas.

Overall Thoughts

Lastly, there’s our heroine Emma! I actually thought she was a very cute, engaging heroine. I can only imagine how cute she would sound if she was voiced (if only). That being said, I liked how she made a lot of her own choices — albeit sometimes they weren’t the best — but I have to give her credit where it’s due, I mean she did try! The whole her being a witch after her mother plot just makes me think of her as a cute Atelier game heroine tbh. So yeah, maybe she wasn’t the most unique otome heroine but her heart was in the right place and I can’t hate her. I do wish the trope of making the heroine self-doubt and self-loath would die out a bit though.

Overall, I think this otome game is a super fun, enchanting adventure. It reminded me of Cafe Enchante and even the Psychedelica series (especially the witch and magic stuff). That being said, it most definitely isn’t nearly as dark as those games so don’t worry about it seeming deceiving at first glance. While it does tackle some darker themes, it’s really not as dark as some otome games can get (trust me). The majority of this game is definitely fluff, and it’s not all hopelessness that’s for sure.

To be honest, I think the plot is pretty simple compared to some otome games I’ve played. It didn’t really bother me though because I was honestly expecting something a lot more light-hearted and fluffy but it ended up being slightly more tragic than I thought it would be. Kind of like, Wand of Fortune type plot (not overly complicated). Even Cafe Enchante got to be pretty overzealous with the plot twists imo and has a very long common route; while that’s not necessarily a bad it can probably be a bit much depending on what you’re in the mood for because games like that could get really gritty.

I’m glad I finally got to play this game! Like I said, I’ve been wanting to play it since it came out in Japan but it kind of went off the radar for me and I kind of forgot about it to be honest. I’ve been a lot more interested in non-otomate games recently so this literally is just adding to my list of non-otomate games that I like lol.

Anyway, if you’re a casual otome game player, you’ll 100% enjoy this game so I really do recommend it!

Trailer

[Many thanks to PQube for providing a review copy]