Game Overview
Step into a world of romance and flowers in this refreshingly mature Otome that charts the lives of four couples, centered around a local flower shop.
‘Him, the Smile & bloom’ is a unique exploration of the flourishing relationship between two adults and the highs and lows of their budding romance in a modern world.
From the initial spark of attraction to the struggles of maintaining a relationship and navigating life’s choppy waters - Him the Smile & bloom, deftly weaves heartwarming - and heart-breaking! - narrative threads for an genuinely distinct and memorable Otome experience!
Characters
There’s four main routes in this game paired with four different heroines all associated with a flower:
Wataru & Serina (Tweedia): A hard-working younger man, and a woman afraid of love. The tale of two people bearing scars of burned trust finding true happiness at long last.
Ginnosuke & Ami (Mimosa) : A man who has never known true love, and a woman unrefined in matters of the heart. The tale of two people dishonest with their feelings, and the secret love that comes to bloom between them.
Hokuto & Fuuka (Anemone): An oblivious and timid man, and a woman with an unyielding will. The tale of two people united in their feelings finally connecting as one.
Tenya & Miku (Nandina): A man whose love has grown through distance, and a woman at the mercy of her own smoldering emotions. The tale of two who burn with yearning until their dreams become a reality.
Wataru Tori (CV: Kimura Ryouhei) is a college student who meets Serina Aoki after a bad breakup. He's super energetic and wears his heart on a sleeve, while Serina is a bit more timid and careful when it comes to her feelings. Serina actively works at the Fill Flower and undertakes Wataru as her apprentice when he decides to work at the store.
Wataru was the first route I decided to do and out of all the routes, he definitely has the most fluff. I think its due to the fact he has sweet teddy bear / golden retriever energy but he’s really just so innocent you can’t help but love him. This dynamic to me was probably the most interesting probably because I’m so used to (and a little tired of) the heroine being the youngest. In this case, the heroine is older (and not just by a few years) which is nice to see since its often where the heroine tends to be younger than most of the LIs. As for the route itself, it was sweet and I liked how dedicated he was to earn Serina’s affection. I also like how we have a heroine who didn’t feel super inexperienced in a relationship (much to what we see in most games) because she had a past boyfriend while Wataru even had a past girlfriend. Overall, it was a super cute route.
Ginnosuke Sugawa (CV: Suzuki Ryouta) works at Fill Flower and meets Ami Akashi when delivering flowers to her office. Ami is a interior designer who ends up accepting a job at Fill Flower. While Ginnosuke is the prince type who uses his face to be the poster boy of Fill Flower, Ami is very hardworking and takes her job very seriously.
At first glance, I felt like Ginnosuke wasn’t going to be my type but I actually liked him a lot more than I thought I would and he ended up being my favorite! While he gives off the impression he’s just a lady’s man who dates for fun, he has a sweeter side to him and I daresay a ‘tsundere’ side that he keeps hidden. He loves teasing Ami — who is very serious and doesn’t let loose a lot — so their dynamic was super fun and cute to watch. I think someone like Ami was a good fit for him because she was very straightforward with him and wasn’t passive at all (which is refreshing to see). It’s definitely the type of dynamic I don’t typically see in otome games and it was nice to see.
Hokuto Ichige (CV: Furukawa Makoto) is the manager of Fill Flower who has a childhood friend named Fuka Haruyoshi who works at a different company. Unfortunately, he only sees his childhood friend as a younger sister while she harbors feelings for him as a man and works hard for him to try and notice her.
When I first read about their dynamic, I was all in. I think the girl going after the guy childhood friend isn’t something we see a lot and I was ready to get into it. Unfortunately… it didn’t hit like I thought it would and Hokuto ended up being a notch too overprotective / controlling. Which is unfortunate because Hokuto could be super hot and kind of reminded me of Akihiko from Persona 3 in some ways. Fuka was a really cute heroine and it was fun to see her try her hardest to get Hokuto to reciprocate her feelings — but I definitely felt bad for her at times. Maybe Hokuto seemed dense about it, but his reasoning for things just seemed odd. I also hate it when these guys try to make decisions or choices for the heroine — like the girl can’t think for herself (it’s patronizing). While I enjoyed the route at first, there was a lot about Hokuto that bothered me and I couldn’t really look past it (the wither end kinda ruined it completely for me tbh). But alas, I think if you’re into the protective oniichans you’ll like him regardless!
Tenya Minami (CV: Tamaru Atsushi) is an employee at Fill Flower who reunites with his old classmate Miku Yukihara who has just returned from working abroad in Canada. She works at a botanical garden and randomly encounters him when she decides to visit Fill Flower.
Last but not least, there is Tenya — someone who doesn’t really stand out because of how low-energy he is and kind of just exists lol (which is a mood). I wasn’t sure how to feel about him at first since he suddenly threw his feelings at Miku so suddenly, but it ended up being more of a cute dynamic than I thought it would and I was pleasantly surprised. Miku is very unexperienced in relationships and wasn’t as popular as Tenya when they were in high school so it was interesting to see more of that in flashbacks so it helped build their relationship more and make it more believable. Although, if there’s one thing that I would’ve preferred, it’d probably be the tone in which Tenya spoke, if that makes sense. Considering he was a ‘bad boy’ type of character (and one who skipped classes) I would’ve expected him to be a little less ‘lazy’ in his speech because to be honest it just made it seem like he was tired all the time. I guess I just prefer the bad boy types that kind of have that ‘yankee’ dialect (idk lol). Anyway, his wither end was kind of off-putting for me tho (would’ve preferred a diff approach to it).
Random thought: I thought it was interesting Miku was studying abroad in Canada and brought Kozue maple cookies cause I brought my homestay the same thing from Canada LOL.
System / Gameplay
Him, the Smile & bloom is a slice-of-life otome that is very unique in the sense that it doesn’t play out like a traditional otome game with one heroine and multiple guys. Instead, we have just a set of four guys with a heroine paired with each of them. Similar to Norn9, there’s multiple heroines for different guys. You have the option of choosing the story you want in any order you want. Since each story is self-contained, I think playing them in any order is fine and you should just choose who you want.
The routes themselves don’t feel very long and the chapters are very short (there’s about 15 in each route but they’ll barely take 10 minutes to complete). As you go through each route, the characters will discuss about a lot of different flowers and they actually have a compendium of flowers with the LIs talking about them. It was a nice way to learn about different flowers and a really cute thing to add in my opinion. I was happy with the CG amounts and a lot of them were very nicely drawn. If it wasn’t obvious, the artist is Yuuya who draws for Cafe Enchante and Cupid Parasite. This is one of my favorite otome game artists and her art looked so pretty in this game.
You have the option of re-naming any heroine and don’t feel inclined to keep the names if you don’t want to because unfortunately they don’t speak them aloud regardless (much to my disappointment). Otherwise, the game itself plays out like any other traditional otome game. There’s also after stories that you unlock after completing a route. They don’t have CGs, but they’re cute in their own right so be sure to play them as well. One feature I do wish they added was a rewind option to skip back to a choice because there were times where I accidently skipped through it and couldn’t rewind it (kind of annoying).
Overall Thoughts
If you’re looking for a very slice-of-life casual otome game — this would be it. There’s no overly complicated plot or overhaul of text thrown at you; it’s a pretty chill game. I was immediately interested in this game when I saw that there was multiple heroines and I was happy to get such interesting dynamics with each of the characters. I also like how you can tell each heroine has a different personality — none of them are the same so their dynamic with their paired LI is different each time.
While I did like most of the routes, I did wish for a bit more in terms of content; the routes felt fairly short — which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but I’d love to see a FD in the future maybe with some more guys added in because Rei was so hot and I wanted him to be a LI so bad LOL. I think with four routes it feels a bit limited because I’m so used to 5 – 6 routes.
I do wish you could see the heroine’s portrait in this game, that’s definitely one thing I would’ve liked to see especially since they all have individual designs. Also, since the dynamic between these characters are so specific I felt like adding a voice for each heroine would’ve made sense but I guess because this is based on a drama CD — maybe it was something that was intentional and they still want that self-insert feel to it.
So do I recommend this game? For sure! I think it’s definitely worth playing and the fact that there’s different heroines makes the experience a lot more refreshing than your typical single-heroine game. Either way, it was so nice to see a more realistic slice-of-life in a adult setting (rather than high school) because we need more of those.
Trailer
[Many thanks to PQube for providing a review copy]
yuscake.com 