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  1. Otome Kitten @[email protected] ·

    Genso Manège Review (Nintendo Switch)

    Release Date: January 31, 2025 (North America)
    Developers:  MAGES / LOVE&ART
    Publishers: PQube
    Platforms:  Nintendo Switch, PC (Steam)
    ESRB Rating: T (Teen)

    SYNOPSIS

    Set in a wondrously evocative re-imagining of France, the story follows the protagonist, 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.

    ART AND MUSIC

    Scenario Director: Ayano Ishikawa, Ayano SuehiroArtist/Illustrators: MeijScenario Writers: Uta Amemiya, Muri Sasaki, Touko Fujitani, Nami Tayama, Ayano SuehiroOST: Naoki Chiba (OP Composition), Rico Sasaki (OP vocals), BigBoom (ED composition), H!Superb (ED vocals)

    I was every bit as surprised to hear a jpop boy group in my otome games. If you’re into these niche spaces, I’m sure you’ve NEVER heard of H!Superb before (lol). And its because they are fairly nugu 누구 (and I dont mean this in a dismissive kind of way, they are just internationally unheard of), but they have a very dedicated fanbase in Japan, so I was pretty happy to find out they did the game’s ED theme. It was my fav track of Genso Manege’s entire OST.

    Meij, the illustrator for Genso Manege is a freelance artist, that’ve worked on a few joseimuke games in the past, including character designs for the unit Lancelot in I★CHU. They’ve also done several Nijisanji illustrations, one I can particularly remember was Uki Violeta’s birthday illustrations, which was just *chef kiss*.

    Voice Acting

    Wataru Hatano as “Hugo” – Wizard (TaiAli), Gekkamaru (Nightshade), Adonis Otogari (Ensemble Stars), Lindo (Dance with Devils), Noah (Cafe Enchante), Kawamura Kyoshirou (Winter’s Wish), Keith Howell (IkePri)

    Yuichiro Umehara as “Serge” –  Paschalia (Radiant Tale), Kohei Minato (Sympathy Kiss), Benkei (Birushana), Canus Espada (Café Enchanté), Enishi (Jack Jeanne), Demento (Period Cube), Shingen Takeda (IkeSen), Sage (Nekopara Catboys Paradise), Rain (Shiro to Kuro no Alice), Oochidori (Touken Ranbu)

    Hiro Shimono as “Crier” – Senri (Norn9), Nayuta (Variable Barricade), Sho Kurusu (Utapri), Kuroyuki (Nightshade), Zena (Akatsuki no Yona), Alear (FE Engage), Kiel (RF4), Hakusan (Touken Ranbu), Ray Blackwell (IkeRev), Kokichi Oma (Danganropa), Ryunosuke (The Great Ace Attorney)

    Yuto Suzuki as “Lyon” – Shion (CollarxMalice), Noah Reed (Orfleurs), Sosuke (Spiral Memoria), Nine (Shiro to Kuro no Alice), Enforcer (Despera Drops)

    Shirai Yusuke as “Luciole” – Scarecrow (BUSTAFELLOWS), Eltcreed Valentine (Steam Prison), Watson (London Detective Mysteria), Amemura Ramuda (Hypnosis Mic), Garu (NU:Carnival), Ars (Period Cube), Usui Masumi (A3!), Miki Hiraizumi (Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome), Tsuzumi (Ken ga Kimi), John (Mistonia no Kibou)

    Abe Atsushi as “Arnaud” – Chinami (Harukanaru 5), Sorata Suzuhara (Norn9), Kohaku (Harukanaru 6), Suishinshi Masahide (Touken Ranbu), Kishinami Hakuno (FATE/EXTELLA), Musashi Miyamoto (Harukanaru 7), Camael (Tokyo Babel), Hinata Minoru (Digimon Survice)

    CHARACTERS AND ROUTES

    There are six obtainable romance routes in Genso Manège. The only locked route is Arnaud’s, which becomes available only after completing Hugo’s “Amour End”(Good End). The rest of the guy’s are playable from the start.

    The developers have suggested a recommended play order: Hugo → Serge = Crier → Lyon = Luciole → Arnaud. I played in this order, and while I thought the story flowed well this way, I personally think that Crier and Hugo’s routes are interchangeable as starting points since both routes feel more lighthearted compared to the others. Crier’s route, in particular, was a bit vanilla, and while Hugo’s route contained a few plot spoilers, its overall tone falls on the lighthearted side in comparison to others.

    Then again, I feel that the first five routes can be played in any order, as long as Arnaud’s is saved for last since his route felt like a culmination of the story that tied up loose ends.

    Walkthroughs:

    ⬇️ Click to view Content Warnings Kidnapping, death, women abuse, human experimentation, angry mobs, violence, gun violence, age gap.

    HUGO

    Hugo is the Director of La Foire du Rêve and was the one who invited the heroine to be part of the Rêve and work there from the start. He possesses a gentle demeanor, and always speaks in a calm manner. He holds a certain authority within the Rêve that everyone respects. Most of the employees/staff, feel indebted to his kindness. At times, he shows his playful side to the heroine.

    I actually wondered why Hugo’s route was the devs’ pick to start with. His route had a lot of revelations that related to the game’s overall plot, so I thought it would be best to play it before the finale (Arnaud’s). But, after playing his route, I realized that his story sort of sets you up where you are slowly introduced to the game’s setting, albeit only revealing a few plot points to help you better understand the overarching story. I think playing his route first will also help you understand the circumstances of the other LIs’ routes that you’ll play next, so in my experience, this really helped me grasp everyone else’s situation in the Rêve .

    Romance-wise, I’m not exactly sure if I enjoyed Hugo and Emma’s chemistry, to be honest! Their relationship felt more like a guardianship rather than what it would be with lovers, at least to me anyway. Other than that, I wasn’t too thrilled with Hugo’s story either and I was not a fan of Emma here…🤷🏻‍♀️

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    This route also dragged A LOT! Like, the part where they kept talking about light bulbs… I get that they were trying to connect this to awakening Emma’s powers or make some kind of analogy, but damn, I wasn’t too enthused to sit through all that light bulb talk, my dudes!🤣 (cackles) I thought it was also kind of funny how the story focused so much on the lights in the Reve and their project to fully brighten up the entire amusement park, and that they had to do it in Paris… ??? Like, what a weird choice to move the plot forward.🤔😅 The whole starlights-in-Paris plotline seemed to come out of nowhere???

    Emma was also very passive here. Babygurl really was just standing there while the plot tells us, she’s doing something when it’s really a whole lot of nothing… I’m being sarcastic here, please dont take this literally! Hugo was pretty hot in his engineer-outfit sprite though! That low ponytail! Mmhmm 🥵

    Serge

    • kuudere, megane
    • soft
    • Caleb at home… (im sorry!)😭

    La Foire du Rêve‘s head of finances. Serge, is in charge of all the accounting aspects, and auditing related to the Rêve’s supplies and inventory. He is indebted to Hugo, who once came to his aid in his previous occupation, and has been diligently working for him ever since. Serge is very loyal and respects Hugo as the Reve’s Director. He has a cold, intimidating demeanor and he speaks bluntly, but he is just as harsh on himself as he is on others.

    Get you a man who looks at you, the way Serge looks at Hugo! jk!
    Serge, is your typical kuudere megane love interest. Blunt, stoic, completely clueless about love, cold, & always direct to the point…He’s very straight-laced on the surface but also a softie at heart. Definitely the perfect stereotypical character to cast Umehara, right?🤭

    For the most part, I enjoyed his relationship with Emma. I love their banter and how he adored Emma’s cooking. I thought the fluff here was done pretty well. Sad to say, I’m still not a fan of the heroine in this route.🥲

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    Normally, it pains me to say something negative about heroines, they’re like my children, I swear! But Emma here was kind of a ditz? Why on earth would you offer to help Serge with accounting when you don’t have a single iota of what accounting even is? At one point, I couldn’t help but resonate with Serge’s annoyance with her (lol). I know it’s her good intention to want to be useful, but sometimes she just doesn’t think logically. Why are they writing heroines like this?🥴 I’m fairly sure 17 years old is old enough to actually have some common sense or critical thinking. My rambling aside, she does get better in other routes!

    I was also pretty surprised that Serge’s route took a major turn on to the heavier topics, like the imprisonment and torture of women that were suspected to be witches. It also hints on the Hamelin incident, amongst other things. It’s funny how it’s such a contrast to Hugo’s route where they just flamboyantly talked about light bulbs and then bam, you have Serge’s route and see him being tortured in jail! The whiplash!🤣

    Also, this route made it seem that french people aren’t fond of spicy food. Is that true???😭 On a closing note, I honestly couldn’t care less about the age gap here, but I’ve listed it in the content warnings above since I know there are people who aren’t fond of it in their fiction.

    CRIER

    • tsun
    • dere 🥹

    Crier is a performer at La Foire du Rêve. He’s skilled at juggling and doing various tricks that the audience, especially the youth, loves. He complains a lot about the heroine at first, but in truth, he’s very attentive and caring towards Emma. When he’s not performing, he’s busy running errands and getting supplies from town for the Reve.

    I think tsun Hiro Shimono characters are essentially an otome gamer’s guilty pleasure, don’t you think? That said, I loved this route! Crier is such a cutie-patootie, but what really made him stand out to me was his personality and how caring he is, not only to the heroine, but also to everyone else. He was very likable in other routes too, which gained him plus points from me! Despite his initial harsh tone, the boy has a heart of gold! I also loved his dynamic with Emma, and yes, unlike in the two previous routes, Emma here was great! Hallelujah! She had a lot of agency and wasn’t afraid to bite back, which made her chemistry with Crier very fun, not to mention, believable!

    On another note, I found this route to be the most lighthearted compared to the others. Based on the themes alone, I’d consider it fairly vanilla, which isn’t bad; quite the opposite, in fact! Though it wasn’t perfect, it had a clear direction on where it was going. The bad ending, however, was kind of depressing. Oof, I wish I had skipped it, but alas!😢

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    I would’ve complained about how odd it was that they were just forced to be *fake lovers* out of nowhere (to appease Clara and the rest of the folks in the Reve), but I didn’t mind this plot device, really! Sure, there could’ve been other ways to tighten their relationship and show their *lovey-dovey* moments, but I thought this one worked fine, so I can’t fault the writing for using what ticked. Emma finally had some agency here! It was also so refreshing to see her get jealous of how Crier was being nice to Clara (not knowing they were twins) and wished that Crier would’ve treated her the same. Girlie is finally boy-crushing, it’s cute!🥹

    LYON

    • what an angel!🥺
    • so pure! must be protected at all times!🥺🤲

    Lyon is La Foire du Rêve’s bunny mascot. The children who visit the amusement park love him. He’s very calm, sometimes quiet, and absolutely purehearted. He never takes off his costume, so no one really knows what he looks like in person.

    Aw. I actually love this route too.🥺 I liked that there was a strong build-up to the mysteries surrounding the Reve’s magic here, and the way Emma and Lyon uncovered things bit by bit was enjoyable to witness. On top of that, Lyon is absolutely a darling cinnamon roll. His cute bunny mascot embodies his adorable persona to a T. I couldn’t really fault him for anything in his story! He’s an angel!🥺This route made my heart sink because of how wholesome it was. Though, I’d say out of all the guys, Lyon had the most difficult circumstances in the Reve. The angst here was pretty up there. Made me profusely sob.😭

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    Protect Lyon at all cost!😤

    On the side, Emma was great here as well! She took a lot of initiative for herself. She was even selfish at times and made silly, reckless decisions, especially when she insisted on reviving the dead despite being warned so many times not to. Though given the circumstances, her actions to me felt reasonable, out of pure desperation so I don’t hold this against her.

    I think my only issue was that the reincarnation ending wasn’t very clear. It was pretty vague actually! I wish they had clarified where this *new* Lyon came from. The story blatantly ignored the fact that only a year had passed since Emma freed all the souls in the Reve, including Lyon’s. Does that mean this reincarnated Lyon already existed while the soul/phantom Lyon was still trapped in the Reve? So many plot holes are being overlooked here! Oh well… 🤷🏻‍♀️

    LUCIOLE

    • the hikikomori mechanic
    • secretly a cinamon roll, but…

    A man of few words and even fewer appearances, Luciole is the mechanic of La Foire du Rêve. He only comes out at night to perform maintenance around the amusement park and keeps to himself in his tent during the day. He seems to despise the idea of magic and is strongly against the heroine using her powers.

    There’s a reason Luciole is so adamant and unwilling to accept the use of magic. In this route, you’ll get to find out why. At the heart of it, I really liked Luciole as a character. His route started off strong, especially during his back-and-forth exchanges with the heroine. Their little tete-a-tete through letter exchanges was cute!🥹 His entire route however, felt pretty weak, in my opinion. They pretty much did a great job building up tension and intrigue with his story, but the turning point and resolution, especially at the end, felt rather too convenient, almost frustratingly so!

    **On the positive side, the best part of this route was hearing Shiraimu shift from being a tsun to a total cinnamon roll!🥹

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    There were so many missed opportunities in this route, it hurts! The chance to make him the resident yandere character was wasted. He had the perfect setup for it! Wouldn’t it have been great for Luciole to go twisted because he didn’t want to see MC get hurt anymore? Plus, the trauma he has with his mom fits the typical yandere backstory, so I was surprised they didn’t explore that. I would’ve loved to see it. Instead, we get a yandere ending in his BAD END, and even that one felt half-baked! So disappointing!😭

    The angry mob trope honestly feels very tired to me. Because we see it in almost EVERY SINGLE OTOME GAME, and it’s usually just there to create a conflict that puts the heroine in danger, only to be conveniently resolved almost immediately. This route was no exception, but the way it was handled here felt especially sloppy! The resolution they came up with just doesn’t make sense logically. Like no way an angry mob would just calm down because you told them to calm down LOL angry mobs aren’t that easily pacified by mere words, because y’know… they’re angry and their judgements are clouded in the heat of the moment. The whole ordeal of Luciole’s monologue in front of them felt so dumb (I’m sorry!)😭 And the crowd going: “Oh, we messed up and believed a drunk, hur dur…so we started throwing stones at this young lady because drunk man said she bad!” Like wow, really? is this twitter???😂😂😂

    I really liked Luciole as a love interest, honest to god! (Dude, just wanna eat some good food and be with his woman) But this route…. it made me lose braincells fr…🥴

    ARNAUD

    • not the oniichan route
    • Arnaud with frenchman hat < Arnaud

    Arnaud works as a journalist and is Emma’s childhood friend. After an accident seven years ago, Emma became an orphan and was taken in by Arnaud’s family, so she has been living with him and his mother, Alice, ever since. Arnaud tends to fuss around Emma and dotes on her on account of her amnesia.

    This route is meant to be played last, as a lot of plot events from the previous LIs were also revisited here, and I thought that if I had played Arnaud’s route earlier (immediately after Hugo’s), the story likely wouldn’t have made as much sense to me, so I’m glad I stuck with the suggested route order.

    I think Arnaud may be my fav LI in this game, and that’s because he’s such a polarizing character… (or maybe I’m just being biased because of Abe Atsushi? lol) He was quite possessive of the heroine, and I didn’t mind his overprotectiveness at all; I actually enjoy that trope! Heh. 🤭 I can understand why some might find it uncomfortable though, given their familial relationship and the fact that they were raised under the same roof. But for me, it didn’t come off as creepy in the slightest. Plus, he has the most gorgeous CGs in the game!

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    On the romance side of things, I really liked how Arnaud confessed to Emma early on in his route. Like, wow, the boy is fast! And the plot twist with him secretly reporting to his father about Emma was maybe a little too predictable; like clearly you could see that coming from a mile away. Regardless, I still enjoyed how his story progressed!

    I also liked that they revisited the Hamelin incident here and expanded on it a bit from Serge’s route. However, I felt this route had a lot of things going on that didn’t really favor Arnaud and the heroine, nor their relationship. Is it just me, or did it seem like everything got convoluted toward the end? There were a lot of unnecessary scenes that could’ve just been scraped off. This route seemed to put more emphasis on being the ‘truth’ route rather than its focus on romance.🤷🏻‍♀️

    On a side note, Arnaud’s military sprite was hawt! Seriously, everyone seems to look good without their hats. Hugo looked hot with his low ponytail, and without that ugly tophat, and Arnaud looked incredibly fine without his frenchman hat. THROW AWAY THOSE HATS MAN!

    EMMA (Main Heroine)

    • macaron girlie
    • sometimes good, sometimes 🧍‍♀️

    Emma is alright, I guess? There were routes where I considered her decently written, like in Crier’s and Lyon’s routes. I thought these were the stories where she had the most agency and displayed a bit of critical thinking. However, a lot of the time, she remained very passive that it got on my nerves.😭 There were situations where she’d dawdle the heck out when something is urgently needed of her. She is aware of this though so I’d credit her that self awareness. And in her defense, she’s only 17 and was raised very sheltered. But still… sometimes, she just… really isn’t… logically thinking through her decisions. The scenarios where she fell short seemed to outweigh the good (at least in my opinion). There were scenes in the game that would literally go like this:

    Emma: (After everyone repeatedly told her not to use magic in public) 🧍‍♀️
    Also Emma: *Proceeds to use magic in public*

    Emma: “This town doesnt like newcomers, I must not act suspicious”
    Also Emma: *Proceeds to act suspicious*

    😭😭😭

    There were a lot of inconsistencies in how she was written across all routes. And while I’ve facepalmed several times during her 🧍‍♀️🧍‍♀️🧍‍♀️ moments, I don’t think she was terrible overall, to be honest. Like I said, she’s alright!🙂Not a fav, & she could’ve been better.

    I have to say, though, her love for macarons made me crave for them too, that I had to get out of the house in the dead cold winter afternoon and drive up to a local pâtisserie to get some french macarons myself!😭

    SYSTEM AND LOCALIZATION

    The UI for Genso Manège was a standout to me. The animated clip that plays before the menu screen was absolutely beautiful, and to top it off, the pastel-colored manège/carousel on the opening screen ticked all my aesthetic boxes! Ha!

    PROS:

    • Heroine’s Name Customization: The heroine’s name can be changed. Great for those who prefer to self-insert.
    • Heroine Side Image Sprite ON/OFF
    • Love Catch System
    • Quick Save/Quick Load
    • Clear List – to track what endings you’ve unlocked so far.
    • Sound Library
    • Character Profiles (with voices)
    • Seiyuu Commentaries
    • CG Library
    • Manual Instructions
    • Status Screen: allows you to check the LI affection points you’ve accumulated during gameplay.
    • Backlog and Rewind function
    • MINI GAME – can be skipped and does not affect your endings, if you choose to do so.
    • Font Style Selection

    CONS:

    • No Chapter Select – You can however, replay scenes in the CG gallery.
    • No SKIP to Next choice function.
    • SLOW Skip Reads
    • Black screen bugs

    I experienced a couple of black-screen bugs in the game where if a scene transitions to the next chapter or slide and you accidentally press any button during the transition, the screen completely blacks out while the game continues running. The only way to circumvent this was to completely close the game and restart, which really sucks if you forgot to save beforehand.

    About the Mini Game
    Eveil System – is a mini-game that lets you collect stars that appear in random locations on your screen. If you’re playing in handheld mode, you can simply tap or glide your fingers on the screen to collect them. If you’re playing in TV mode, you can use the L and R joysticks to collect the stars. After completing the tutorial (on your first playthrough), you should be able to skip this mini-game whenever it comes up. There are no consequences for skipping it during the story, and it won’t affect your endings.

    Localization

    The localization was well done, and the translations flowed smoothly in the game. Granted, I blitzed through this pretty fast, so I didn’t really notice any typos or text errors during my gameplay. There also weren’t any text box issues, so overall, it was pretty solid!

    TRAILER

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMvcr8Y8Gzk

    OVERALL THOUGHTS

    This was a decent-length title, not too short but not overly long either. It took me around 40 hours to complete everything (playing docked on TV). Chapters 1-3 make up the game’s common route, and Chapter 4 is where the LI’s route branches off. There are also only two endings for each love interest: the “Amour End” (good end) and the “Rêve End” (bad end).

    Not as Fluffy as You Think

    My initial impression after finishing my first route (Hugo) was that the game kind of deceives you into thinking it’s all going to be a fluffy ride throughout due to its bright pastel, sparkly-colored theme. But in contrast, the game actually carries a whole lot of angst. It’s not on the level of Cafe Enchante deception, though, so you can rest easy on that!😂

    This title was a mixed bag for me, some routes were decently paced, while some faltered and dragged the narrative too much with trivial things. Given how often the titular manège (magical carousel) was mentioned in the common route, and the fact that it’s even plastered in the game’s title, I expected it to play a significant role throughout the story. But, it turned out to be crucial only in Hugo’s route and was barely relevant elsewhere. It would’ve been more satisfying if all the routes had some connection to the manège, allowing it to be the central element that tied the story together. That would’ve been a nice full-circle to its overarching story, no? Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. The entire *magical manège* theme felt underutilized, which I found disappointing.

    TBF, I’ve already mentally prepared and toned down my expectations knowing that the writing team for this game included a few writers from past games I wasn’t the biggest fan of (e.g., ChariMani and ParaPara). As a result, when certain aspects didn’t quite hit the mark for me, the impact wasn’t as bad as it might’ve been if I hadn’t set those expectations. If you know what I mean!

    On a different note, I have to say, unlocking the reverse harem ending was a good reason to finish all the routes in this game! 😆

    Speaking of routes (and love interests), I think, Arnaud ended up as my favorite LI just because his character was a bit polarizing at first. I’m also a big box-pusher (hako-oshi), so I thought all the guys were great in my opinion. None of them really annoyed me, and that’s a good thing! As for their individual routes, the one I enjoyed the most from start to finish was Lyon’s.🥺 Albeit, his story had one of the most angsty themes in the game (I still ate it up, haha).😆

    LI RANKING:

    Arnaud > Lyon = Crier > Serge > Luciole > Hugo

    ROUTE RANKING:

    Lyon > Crier > Serge > Arnaud > Hugo > Luciole

    Arnaud is literally me irl😭😭😭

    As for the romance, this game showcased a lot of sweet scenarios between the heroine, and her LI. It’s also worth noting that this otome game is rated CERO B in Japan, so I think it’s designed to appeal to all audiences, especially the younger crowd. There are no spicy, mature scenes here, so if you’re after that, you are going to be disappointed.

    **As for the ratio of kiss CGs, well… I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed in that regard as well.🥲 All gripes aside, I do think Lyon’s very wholesome story was a breath of fresh air,🥺💛🐇💛so if you’re a fan of the wholesome cinamon roll type, I really recommend not skipping his route!🥹

    Do I recommend this game? YES.
    In all honesty, I never thought I’d see the day where Genso Manège would get localized. I remember it being one of the few non-Otomate titles announced in Japan, back when the otome genre was slowly transitioning to the Switch console in 2020. This title also garnered a couple of votes in the localization survey, I did five years ago.🥹 So getting to play it in English now feels rather surreal.

    Genso Manège feels light on the surface, but it’s actually a title that isn’t afraid to reveal its hidden gray undertones. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “dark,” the story can definitely get pretty heavy. This is also a game that I think would be great for beginners in the otome genre who aren’t afraid to explore heavier themes in fiction.

    For the seasoned players who love angst, I definitely think you’ll enjoy this too, though I’d suggest tempering your expectations, as it isn’t on the grandiose level of Hakuoki. But, it has the right touch and balance of romance & adventure, not to mention, likable love interests, to keep you sufficiently entertained! Do pick it up when you get the chance!🫶

    #GensoManège #GensoManègeReview #GensoManege #Mages #nintendoSwitch #OtomeGameReview #Pqube

    #gensomanege #gensomanegereview #mages #nintendoswitch #otomegamereview #pqube
  2. Otome Kitten @[email protected] ·

    Genso Manège Review (Nintendo Switch)

    Release Date: January 31, 2025 (North America)
    Developers:  MAGES / LOVE&ART
    Publishers: PQube
    Platforms:  Nintendo Switch, PC (Steam)
    ESRB Rating: T (Teen)

    SYNOPSIS

    Set in a wondrously evocative re-imagining of France, the story follows the protagonist, 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.

    ART AND MUSIC

    Scenario Director: Ayano Ishikawa, Ayano SuehiroArtist/Illustrators: MeijScenario Writers: Uta Amemiya, Muri Sasaki, Touko Fujitani, Nami Tayama, Ayano SuehiroOST: Naoki Chiba (OP Composition), Rico Sasaki (OP vocals), BigBoom (ED composition), H!Superb (ED vocals)

    I was every bit as surprised to hear a jpop boy group in my otome games. If you’re into these niche spaces, I’m sure you’ve NEVER heard of H!Superb before (lol). And its because they are fairly nugu 누구 (and I dont mean this in a dismissive kind of way, they are just internationally unheard of), but they have a very dedicated fanbase in Japan, so I was pretty happy to find out they did the game’s ED theme. It was my fav track of Genso Manege’s entire OST.

    Meij, the illustrator for Genso Manege is a freelance artist, that’ve worked on a few joseimuke games in the past, including character designs for the unit Lancelot in I★CHU. They’ve also done several Nijisanji illustrations, one I can particularly remember was Uki Violeta’s birthday illustrations, which was just *chef kiss*.

    Voice Acting

    Wataru Hatano as “Hugo” – Wizard (TaiAli), Gekkamaru (Nightshade), Adonis Otogari (Ensemble Stars), Lindo (Dance with Devils), Noah (Cafe Enchante), Kawamura Kyoshirou (Winter’s Wish), Keith Howell (IkePri)

    Yuichiro Umehara as “Serge” –  Paschalia (Radiant Tale), Kohei Minato (Sympathy Kiss), Benkei (Birushana), Canus Espada (Café Enchanté), Enishi (Jack Jeanne), Demento (Period Cube), Shingen Takeda (IkeSen), Sage (Nekopara Catboys Paradise), Rain (Shiro to Kuro no Alice), Oochidori (Touken Ranbu)

    Hiro Shimono as “Crier” – Senri (Norn9), Nayuta (Variable Barricade), Sho Kurusu (Utapri), Kuroyuki (Nightshade), Zena (Akatsuki no Yona), Alear (FE Engage), Kiel (RF4), Hakusan (Touken Ranbu), Ray Blackwell (IkeRev), Kokichi Oma (Danganropa), Ryunosuke (The Great Ace Attorney)

    Yuto Suzuki as “Lyon” – Shion (CollarxMalice), Noah Reed (Orfleurs), Sosuke (Spiral Memoria), Nine (Shiro to Kuro no Alice), Enforcer (Despera Drops)

    Shirai Yusuke as “Luciole” – Scarecrow (BUSTAFELLOWS), Eltcreed Valentine (Steam Prison), Watson (London Detective Mysteria), Amemura Ramuda (Hypnosis Mic), Garu (NU:Carnival), Ars (Period Cube), Usui Masumi (A3!), Miki Hiraizumi (Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome), Tsuzumi (Ken ga Kimi), John (Mistonia no Kibou)

    Abe Atsushi as “Arnaud” – Chinami (Harukanaru 5), Sorata Suzuhara (Norn9), Kohaku (Harukanaru 6), Suishinshi Masahide (Touken Ranbu), Kishinami Hakuno (FATE/EXTELLA), Musashi Miyamoto (Harukanaru 7), Camael (Tokyo Babel), Hinata Minoru (Digimon Survice)

    CHARACTERS AND ROUTES

    There are six obtainable romance routes in Genso Manège. The only locked route is Arnaud’s, which becomes available only after completing Hugo’s “Amour End”(Good End). The rest of the guy’s are playable from the start.

    The developers have suggested a recommended play order: Hugo → Serge = Crier → Lyon = Luciole → Arnaud. I played in this order, and while I thought the story flowed well this way, I personally think that Crier and Hugo’s routes are interchangeable as starting points since both routes feel more lighthearted compared to the others. Crier’s route, in particular, was a bit vanilla, and while Hugo’s route contained a few plot spoilers, its overall tone falls on the lighthearted side in comparison to others.

    Then again, I feel that the first five routes can be played in any order, as long as Arnaud’s is saved for last since his route felt like a culmination of the story that tied up loose ends.

    Walkthroughs:

    ⬇️ Click to view Content Warnings Kidnapping, death, women abuse, human experimentation, angry mobs, violence, gun violence, age gap.

    HUGO

    Hugo is the Director of La Foire du Rêve and was the one who invited the heroine to be part of the Rêve and work there from the start. He possesses a gentle demeanor, and always speaks in a calm manner. He holds a certain authority within the Rêve that everyone respects. Most of the employees/staff, feel indebted to his kindness. At times, he shows his playful side to the heroine.

    I actually wondered why Hugo’s route was the devs’ pick to start with. His route had a lot of revelations that related to the game’s overall plot, so I thought it would be best to play it before the finale (Arnaud’s). But, after playing his route, I realized that his story sort of sets you up where you are slowly introduced to the game’s setting, albeit only revealing a few plot points to help you better understand the overarching story. I think playing his route first will also help you understand the circumstances of the other LIs’ routes that you’ll play next, so in my experience, this really helped me grasp everyone else’s situation in the Rêve .

    Romance-wise, I’m not exactly sure if I enjoyed Hugo and Emma’s chemistry, to be honest! Their relationship felt more like a guardianship rather than what it would be with lovers, at least to me anyway. Other than that, I wasn’t too thrilled with Hugo’s story either and I was not a fan of Emma here…🤷🏻‍♀️

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    This route also dragged A LOT! Like, the part where they kept talking about light bulbs… I get that they were trying to connect this to awakening Emma’s powers or make some kind of analogy, but damn, I wasn’t too enthused to sit through all that light bulb talk, my dudes!🤣 (cackles) I thought it was also kind of funny how the story focused so much on the lights in the Reve and their project to fully brighten up the entire amusement park, and that they had to do it in Paris… ??? Like, what a weird choice to move the plot forward.🤔😅 The whole starlights-in-Paris plotline seemed to come out of nowhere???

    Emma was also very passive here. Babygurl really was just standing there while the plot tells us, she’s doing something when it’s really a whole lot of nothing… I’m being sarcastic here, please dont take this literally! Hugo was pretty hot in his engineer-outfit sprite though! That low ponytail! Mmhmm 🥵

    Serge

    • kuudere, megane
    • soft
    • Caleb at home… (im sorry!)😭

    La Foire du Rêve‘s head of finances. Serge, is in charge of all the accounting aspects, and auditing related to the Rêve’s supplies and inventory. He is indebted to Hugo, who once came to his aid in his previous occupation, and has been diligently working for him ever since. Serge is very loyal and respects Hugo as the Reve’s Director. He has a cold, intimidating demeanor and he speaks bluntly, but he is just as harsh on himself as he is on others.

    Get you a man who looks at you, the way Serge looks at Hugo! jk!
    Serge, is your typical kuudere megane love interest. Blunt, stoic, completely clueless about love, cold, & always direct to the point…He’s very straight-laced on the surface but also a softie at heart. Definitely the perfect stereotypical character to cast Umehara, right?🤭

    For the most part, I enjoyed his relationship with Emma. I love their banter and how he adored Emma’s cooking. I thought the fluff here was done pretty well. Sad to say, I’m still not a fan of the heroine in this route.🥲

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    Normally, it pains me to say something negative about heroines, they’re like my children, I swear! But Emma here was kind of a ditz? Why on earth would you offer to help Serge with accounting when you don’t have a single iota of what accounting even is? At one point, I couldn’t help but resonate with Serge’s annoyance with her (lol). I know it’s her good intention to want to be useful, but sometimes she just doesn’t think logically. Why are they writing heroines like this?🥴 I’m fairly sure 17 years old is old enough to actually have some common sense or critical thinking. My rambling aside, she does get better in other routes!

    I was also pretty surprised that Serge’s route took a major turn on to the heavier topics, like the imprisonment and torture of women that were suspected to be witches. It also hints on the Hamelin incident, amongst other things. It’s funny how it’s such a contrast to Hugo’s route where they just flamboyantly talked about light bulbs and then bam, you have Serge’s route and see him being tortured in jail! The whiplash!🤣

    Also, this route made it seem that french people aren’t fond of spicy food. Is that true???😭 On a closing note, I honestly couldn’t care less about the age gap here, but I’ve listed it in the content warnings above since I know there are people who aren’t fond of it in their fiction.

    CRIER

    • tsun
    • dere 🥹

    Crier is a performer at La Foire du Rêve. He’s skilled at juggling and doing various tricks that the audience, especially the youth, loves. He complains a lot about the heroine at first, but in truth, he’s very attentive and caring towards Emma. When he’s not performing, he’s busy running errands and getting supplies from town for the Reve.

    I think tsun Hiro Shimono characters are essentially an otome gamer’s guilty pleasure, don’t you think? That said, I loved this route! Crier is such a cutie-patootie, but what really made him stand out to me was his personality and how caring he is, not only to the heroine, but also to everyone else. He was very likable in other routes too, which gained him plus points from me! Despite his initial harsh tone, the boy has a heart of gold! I also loved his dynamic with Emma, and yes, unlike in the two previous routes, Emma here was great! Hallelujah! She had a lot of agency and wasn’t afraid to bite back, which made her chemistry with Crier very fun, not to mention, believable!

    On another note, I found this route to be the most lighthearted compared to the others. Based on the themes alone, I’d consider it fairly vanilla, which isn’t bad; quite the opposite, in fact! Though it wasn’t perfect, it had a clear direction on where it was going. The bad ending, however, was kind of depressing. Oof, I wish I had skipped it, but alas!😢

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    I would’ve complained about how odd it was that they were just forced to be *fake lovers* out of nowhere (to appease Clara and the rest of the folks in the Reve), but I didn’t mind this plot device, really! Sure, there could’ve been other ways to tighten their relationship and show their *lovey-dovey* moments, but I thought this one worked fine, so I can’t fault the writing for using what ticked. Emma finally had some agency here! It was also so refreshing to see her get jealous of how Crier was being nice to Clara (not knowing they were twins) and wished that Crier would’ve treated her the same. Girlie is finally boy-crushing, it’s cute!🥹

    LYON

    • what an angel!🥺
    • so pure! must be protected at all times!🥺🤲

    Lyon is La Foire du Rêve’s bunny mascot. The children who visit the amusement park love him. He’s very calm, sometimes quiet, and absolutely purehearted. He never takes off his costume, so no one really knows what he looks like in person.

    Aw. I actually love this route too.🥺 I liked that there was a strong build-up to the mysteries surrounding the Reve’s magic here, and the way Emma and Lyon uncovered things bit by bit was enjoyable to witness. On top of that, Lyon is absolutely a darling cinnamon roll. His cute bunny mascot embodies his adorable persona to a T. I couldn’t really fault him for anything in his story! He’s an angel!🥺This route made my heart sink because of how wholesome it was. Though, I’d say out of all the guys, Lyon had the most difficult circumstances in the Reve. The angst here was pretty up there. Made me profusely sob.😭

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    Protect Lyon at all cost!😤

    On the side, Emma was great here as well! She took a lot of initiative for herself. She was even selfish at times and made silly, reckless decisions, especially when she insisted on reviving the dead despite being warned so many times not to. Though given the circumstances, her actions to me felt reasonable, out of pure desperation so I don’t hold this against her.

    I think my only issue was that the reincarnation ending wasn’t very clear. It was pretty vague actually! I wish they had clarified where this *new* Lyon came from. The story blatantly ignored the fact that only a year had passed since Emma freed all the souls in the Reve, including Lyon’s. Does that mean this reincarnated Lyon already existed while the soul/phantom Lyon was still trapped in the Reve? So many plot holes are being overlooked here! Oh well… 🤷🏻‍♀️

    LUCIOLE

    • the hikikomori mechanic
    • secretly a cinamon roll, but…

    A man of few words and even fewer appearances, Luciole is the mechanic of La Foire du Rêve. He only comes out at night to perform maintenance around the amusement park and keeps to himself in his tent during the day. He seems to despise the idea of magic and is strongly against the heroine using her powers.

    There’s a reason Luciole is so adamant and unwilling to accept the use of magic. In this route, you’ll get to find out why. At the heart of it, I really liked Luciole as a character. His route started off strong, especially during his back-and-forth exchanges with the heroine. Their little tete-a-tete through letter exchanges was cute!🥹 His entire route however, felt pretty weak, in my opinion. They pretty much did a great job building up tension and intrigue with his story, but the turning point and resolution, especially at the end, felt rather too convenient, almost frustratingly so!

    **On the positive side, the best part of this route was hearing Shiraimu shift from being a tsun to a total cinnamon roll!🥹

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    There were so many missed opportunities in this route, it hurts! The chance to make him the resident yandere character was wasted. He had the perfect setup for it! Wouldn’t it have been great for Luciole to go twisted because he didn’t want to see MC get hurt anymore? Plus, the trauma he has with his mom fits the typical yandere backstory, so I was surprised they didn’t explore that. I would’ve loved to see it. Instead, we get a yandere ending in his BAD END, and even that one felt half-baked! So disappointing!😭

    The angry mob trope honestly feels very tired to me. Because we see it in almost EVERY SINGLE OTOME GAME, and it’s usually just there to create a conflict that puts the heroine in danger, only to be conveniently resolved almost immediately. This route was no exception, but the way it was handled here felt especially sloppy! The resolution they came up with just doesn’t make sense logically. Like no way an angry mob would just calm down because you told them to calm down LOL angry mobs aren’t that easily pacified by mere words, because y’know… they’re angry and their judgements are clouded in the heat of the moment. The whole ordeal of Luciole’s monologue in front of them felt so dumb (I’m sorry!)😭 And the crowd going: “Oh, we messed up and believed a drunk, hur dur…so we started throwing stones at this young lady because drunk man said she bad!” Like wow, really? is this twitter???😂😂😂

    I really liked Luciole as a love interest, honest to god! (Dude, just wanna eat some good food and be with his woman) But this route…. it made me lose braincells fr…🥴

    ARNAUD

    • not the oniichan route
    • Arnaud with frenchman hat < Arnaud

    Arnaud works as a journalist and is Emma’s childhood friend. After an accident seven years ago, Emma became an orphan and was taken in by Arnaud’s family, so she has been living with him and his mother, Alice, ever since. Arnaud tends to fuss around Emma and dotes on her on account of her amnesia.

    This route is meant to be played last, as a lot of plot events from the previous LIs were also revisited here, and I thought that if I had played Arnaud’s route earlier (immediately after Hugo’s), the story likely wouldn’t have made as much sense to me, so I’m glad I stuck with the suggested route order.

    I think Arnaud may be my fav LI in this game, and that’s because he’s such a polarizing character… (or maybe I’m just being biased because of Abe Atsushi? lol) He was quite possessive of the heroine, and I didn’t mind his overprotectiveness at all; I actually enjoy that trope! Heh. 🤭 I can understand why some might find it uncomfortable though, given their familial relationship and the fact that they were raised under the same roof. But for me, it didn’t come off as creepy in the slightest. Plus, he has the most gorgeous CGs in the game!

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    On the romance side of things, I really liked how Arnaud confessed to Emma early on in his route. Like, wow, the boy is fast! And the plot twist with him secretly reporting to his father about Emma was maybe a little too predictable; like clearly you could see that coming from a mile away. Regardless, I still enjoyed how his story progressed!

    I also liked that they revisited the Hamelin incident here and expanded on it a bit from Serge’s route. However, I felt this route had a lot of things going on that didn’t really favor Arnaud and the heroine, nor their relationship. Is it just me, or did it seem like everything got convoluted toward the end? There were a lot of unnecessary scenes that could’ve just been scraped off. This route seemed to put more emphasis on being the ‘truth’ route rather than its focus on romance.🤷🏻‍♀️

    On a side note, Arnaud’s military sprite was hawt! Seriously, everyone seems to look good without their hats. Hugo looked hot with his low ponytail, and without that ugly tophat, and Arnaud looked incredibly fine without his frenchman hat. THROW AWAY THOSE HATS MAN!

    EMMA (Main Heroine)

    • macaron girlie
    • sometimes good, sometimes 🧍‍♀️

    Emma is alright, I guess? There were routes where I considered her decently written, like in Crier’s and Lyon’s routes. I thought these were the stories where she had the most agency and displayed a bit of critical thinking. However, a lot of the time, she remained very passive that it got on my nerves.😭 There were situations where she’d dawdle the heck out when something is urgently needed of her. She is aware of this though so I’d credit her that self awareness. And in her defense, she’s only 17 and was raised very sheltered. But still… sometimes, she just… really isn’t… logically thinking through her decisions. The scenarios where she fell short seemed to outweigh the good (at least in my opinion). There were scenes in the game that would literally go like this:

    Emma: (After everyone repeatedly told her not to use magic in public) 🧍‍♀️
    Also Emma: *Proceeds to use magic in public*

    Emma: “This town doesnt like newcomers, I must not act suspicious”
    Also Emma: *Proceeds to act suspicious*

    😭😭😭

    There were a lot of inconsistencies in how she was written across all routes. And while I’ve facepalmed several times during her 🧍‍♀️🧍‍♀️🧍‍♀️ moments, I don’t think she was terrible overall, to be honest. Like I said, she’s alright!🙂Not a fav, & she could’ve been better.

    I have to say, though, her love for macarons made me crave for them too, that I had to get out of the house in the dead cold winter afternoon and drive up to a local pâtisserie to get some french macarons myself!😭

    SYSTEM AND LOCALIZATION

    The UI for Genso Manège was a standout to me. The animated clip that plays before the menu screen was absolutely beautiful, and to top it off, the pastel-colored manège/carousel on the opening screen ticked all my aesthetic boxes! Ha!

    PROS:

    • Heroine’s Name Customization: The heroine’s name can be changed. Great for those who prefer to self-insert.
    • Heroine Side Image Sprite ON/OFF
    • Love Catch System
    • Quick Save/Quick Load
    • Clear List – to track what endings you’ve unlocked so far.
    • Sound Library
    • Character Profiles (with voices)
    • Seiyuu Commentaries
    • CG Library
    • Manual Instructions
    • Status Screen: allows you to check the LI affection points you’ve accumulated during gameplay.
    • Backlog and Rewind function
    • MINI GAME – can be skipped and does not affect your endings, if you choose to do so.
    • Font Style Selection

    CONS:

    • No Chapter Select – You can however, replay scenes in the CG gallery.
    • No SKIP to Next choice function.
    • SLOW Skip Reads
    • Black screen bugs

    I experienced a couple of black-screen bugs in the game where if a scene transitions to the next chapter or slide and you accidentally press any button during the transition, the screen completely blacks out while the game continues running. The only way to circumvent this was to completely close the game and restart, which really sucks if you forgot to save beforehand.

    About the Mini Game
    Eveil System – is a mini-game that lets you collect stars that appear in random locations on your screen. If you’re playing in handheld mode, you can simply tap or glide your fingers on the screen to collect them. If you’re playing in TV mode, you can use the L and R joysticks to collect the stars. After completing the tutorial (on your first playthrough), you should be able to skip this mini-game whenever it comes up. There are no consequences for skipping it during the story, and it won’t affect your endings.

    Localization

    The localization was well done, and the translations flowed smoothly in the game. Granted, I blitzed through this pretty fast, so I didn’t really notice any typos or text errors during my gameplay. There also weren’t any text box issues, so overall, it was pretty solid!

    TRAILER

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMvcr8Y8Gzk

    OVERALL THOUGHTS

    This was a decent-length title, not too short but not overly long either. It took me around 40 hours to complete everything (playing docked on TV). Chapters 1-3 make up the game’s common route, and Chapter 4 is where the LI’s route branches off. There are also only two endings for each love interest: the “Amour End” (good end) and the “Rêve End” (bad end).

    Not as Fluffy as You Think

    My initial impression after finishing my first route (Hugo) was that the game kind of deceives you into thinking it’s all going to be a fluffy ride throughout due to its bright pastel, sparkly-colored theme. But in contrast, the game actually carries a whole lot of angst. It’s not on the level of Cafe Enchante deception, though, so you can rest easy on that!😂

    This title was a mixed bag for me, some routes were decently paced, while some faltered and dragged the narrative too much with trivial things. Given how often the titular manège (magical carousel) was mentioned in the common route, and the fact that it’s even plastered in the game’s title, I expected it to play a significant role throughout the story. But, it turned out to be crucial only in Hugo’s route and was barely relevant elsewhere. It would’ve been more satisfying if all the routes had some connection to the manège, allowing it to be the central element that tied the story together. That would’ve been a nice full-circle to its overarching story, no? Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. The entire *magical manège* theme felt underutilized, which I found disappointing.

    TBF, I’ve already mentally prepared and toned down my expectations knowing that the writing team for this game included a few writers from past games I wasn’t the biggest fan of (e.g., ChariMani and ParaPara). As a result, when certain aspects didn’t quite hit the mark for me, the impact wasn’t as bad as it might’ve been if I hadn’t set those expectations. If you know what I mean!

    On a different note, I have to say, unlocking the reverse harem ending was a good reason to finish all the routes in this game! 😆

    Speaking of routes (and love interests), I think, Arnaud ended up as my favorite LI just because his character was a bit polarizing at first. I’m also a big box-pusher (hako-oshi), so I thought all the guys were great in my opinion. None of them really annoyed me, and that’s a good thing! As for their individual routes, the one I enjoyed the most from start to finish was Lyon’s.🥺 Albeit, his story had one of the most angsty themes in the game (I still ate it up, haha).😆

    LI RANKING:

    Arnaud > Lyon = Crier > Serge > Luciole > Hugo

    ROUTE RANKING:

    Lyon > Crier > Serge > Arnaud > Hugo > Luciole

    Arnaud is literally me irl😭😭😭

    As for the romance, this game showcased a lot of sweet scenarios between the heroine, and her LI. It’s also worth noting that this otome game is rated CERO B in Japan, so I think it’s designed to appeal to all audiences, especially the younger crowd. There are no spicy, mature scenes here, so if you’re after that, you are going to be disappointed.

    **As for the ratio of kiss CGs, well… I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed in that regard as well.🥲 All gripes aside, I do think Lyon’s very wholesome story was a breath of fresh air,🥺💛🐇💛so if you’re a fan of the wholesome cinamon roll type, I really recommend not skipping his route!🥹

    Do I recommend this game? YES.
    In all honesty, I never thought I’d see the day where Genso Manège would get localized. I remember it being one of the few non-Otomate titles announced in Japan, back when the otome genre was slowly transitioning to the Switch console in 2020. This title also garnered a couple of votes in the localization survey, I did five years ago.🥹 So getting to play it in English now feels rather surreal.

    Genso Manège feels light on the surface, but it’s actually a title that isn’t afraid to reveal its hidden gray undertones. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “dark,” the story can definitely get pretty heavy. This is also a game that I think would be great for beginners in the otome genre who aren’t afraid to explore heavier themes in fiction.

    For the seasoned players who love angst, I definitely think you’ll enjoy this too, though I’d suggest tempering your expectations, as it isn’t on the grandiose level of Hakuoki. But, it has the right touch and balance of romance & adventure, not to mention, likable love interests, to keep you sufficiently entertained! Do pick it up when you get the chance!🫶

    #GensoManège #GensoManègeReview #GensoManege #Mages #nintendoSwitch #OtomeGameReview #Pqube

    #gensomanege #gensomanegereview #mages #nintendoswitch #otomegamereview #pqube
  3. Otome Kitten @[email protected] ·

    Genso Manège Review (Nintendo Switch)

    Release Date: January 31, 2025 (North America)
    Developers:  MAGES / LOVE&ART
    Publishers: PQube
    Platforms:  Nintendo Switch, PC (Steam)
    ESRB Rating: T (Teen)

    SYNOPSIS

    Set in a wondrously evocative re-imagining of France, the story follows the protagonist, 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.

    ART AND MUSIC

    Scenario Director: Ayano Ishikawa, Ayano SuehiroArtist/Illustrators: MeijScenario Writers: Uta Amemiya, Muri Sasaki, Touko Fujitani, Nami Tayama, Ayano SuehiroOST: Naoki Chiba (OP Composition), Rico Sasaki (OP vocals), BigBoom (ED composition), H!Superb (ED vocals)

    I was every bit as surprised to hear a jpop boy group in my otome games. If you’re into these niche spaces, I’m sure you’ve NEVER heard of H!Superb before (lol). And its because they are fairly nugu 누구 (and I dont mean this in a dismissive kind of way, they are just internationally unheard of), but they have a very dedicated fanbase in Japan, so I was pretty happy to find out they did the game’s ED theme. It was my fav track of Genso Manege’s entire OST.

    Meij, the illustrator for Genso Manege is a freelance artist, that’ve worked on a few joseimuke games in the past, including character designs for the unit Lancelot in I★CHU. They’ve also done several Nijisanji illustrations, one I can particularly remember was Uki Violeta’s birthday illustrations, which was just *chef kiss*.

    Voice Acting

    Wataru Hatano as “Hugo” – Wizard (TaiAli), Gekkamaru (Nightshade), Adonis Otogari (Ensemble Stars), Lindo (Dance with Devils), Noah (Cafe Enchante), Kawamura Kyoshirou (Winter’s Wish), Keith Howell (IkePri)

    Yuichiro Umehara as “Serge” –  Paschalia (Radiant Tale), Kohei Minato (Sympathy Kiss), Benkei (Birushana), Canus Espada (Café Enchanté), Enishi (Jack Jeanne), Demento (Period Cube), Shingen Takeda (IkeSen), Sage (Nekopara Catboys Paradise), Rain (Shiro to Kuro no Alice), Oochidori (Touken Ranbu)

    Hiro Shimono as “Crier” – Senri (Norn9), Nayuta (Variable Barricade), Sho Kurusu (Utapri), Kuroyuki (Nightshade), Zena (Akatsuki no Yona), Alear (FE Engage), Kiel (RF4), Hakusan (Touken Ranbu), Ray Blackwell (IkeRev), Kokichi Oma (Danganropa), Ryunosuke (The Great Ace Attorney)

    Yuto Suzuki as “Lyon” – Shion (CollarxMalice), Noah Reed (Orfleurs), Sosuke (Spiral Memoria), Nine (Shiro to Kuro no Alice), Enforcer (Despera Drops)

    Shirai Yusuke as “Luciole” – Scarecrow (BUSTAFELLOWS), Eltcreed Valentine (Steam Prison), Watson (London Detective Mysteria), Amemura Ramuda (Hypnosis Mic), Garu (NU:Carnival), Ars (Period Cube), Usui Masumi (A3!), Miki Hiraizumi (Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome), Tsuzumi (Ken ga Kimi), John (Mistonia no Kibou)

    Abe Atsushi as “Arnaud” – Chinami (Harukanaru 5), Sorata Suzuhara (Norn9), Kohaku (Harukanaru 6), Suishinshi Masahide (Touken Ranbu), Kishinami Hakuno (FATE/EXTELLA), Musashi Miyamoto (Harukanaru 7), Camael (Tokyo Babel), Hinata Minoru (Digimon Survice)

    CHARACTERS AND ROUTES

    There are six obtainable romance routes in Genso Manège. The only locked route is Arnaud’s, which becomes available only after completing Hugo’s “Amour End”(Good End). The rest of the guy’s are playable from the start.

    The developers have suggested a recommended play order: Hugo → Serge = Crier → Lyon = Luciole → Arnaud. I played in this order, and while I thought the story flowed well this way, I personally think that Crier and Hugo’s routes are interchangeable as starting points since both routes feel more lighthearted compared to the others. Crier’s route, in particular, was a bit vanilla, and while Hugo’s route contained a few plot spoilers, its overall tone falls on the lighthearted side in comparison to others.

    Then again, I feel that the first five routes can be played in any order, as long as Arnaud’s is saved for last since his route felt like a culmination of the story that tied up loose ends.

    Walkthroughs:

    ⬇️ Click to view Content Warnings Kidnapping, death, women abuse, human experimentation, angry mobs, violence, gun violence, age gap.

    HUGO

    Hugo is the Director of La Foire du Rêve and was the one who invited the heroine to be part of the Rêve and work there from the start. He possesses a gentle demeanor, and always speaks in a calm manner. He holds a certain authority within the Rêve that everyone respects. Most of the employees/staff, feel indebted to his kindness. At times, he shows his playful side to the heroine.

    I actually wondered why Hugo’s route was the devs’ pick to start with. His route had a lot of revelations that related to the game’s overall plot, so I thought it would be best to play it before the finale (Arnaud’s). But, after playing his route, I realized that his story sort of sets you up where you are slowly introduced to the game’s setting, albeit only revealing a few plot points to help you better understand the overarching story. I think playing his route first will also help you understand the circumstances of the other LIs’ routes that you’ll play next, so in my experience, this really helped me grasp everyone else’s situation in the Rêve .

    Romance-wise, I’m not exactly sure if I enjoyed Hugo and Emma’s chemistry, to be honest! Their relationship felt more like a guardianship rather than what it would be with lovers, at least to me anyway. Other than that, I wasn’t too thrilled with Hugo’s story either and I was not a fan of Emma here…🤷🏻‍♀️

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    This route also dragged A LOT! Like, the part where they kept talking about light bulbs… I get that they were trying to connect this to awakening Emma’s powers or make some kind of analogy, but damn, I wasn’t too enthused to sit through all that light bulb talk, my dudes!🤣 (cackles) I thought it was also kind of funny how the story focused so much on the lights in the Reve and their project to fully brighten up the entire amusement park, and that they had to do it in Paris… ??? Like, what a weird choice to move the plot forward.🤔😅 The whole starlights-in-Paris plotline seemed to come out of nowhere???

    Emma was also very passive here. Babygurl really was just standing there while the plot tells us, she’s doing something when it’s really a whole lot of nothing… I’m being sarcastic here, please dont take this literally! Hugo was pretty hot in his engineer-outfit sprite though! That low ponytail! Mmhmm 🥵

    Serge

    • kuudere, megane
    • soft
    • Caleb at home… (im sorry!)😭

    La Foire du Rêve‘s head of finances. Serge, is in charge of all the accounting aspects, and auditing related to the Rêve’s supplies and inventory. He is indebted to Hugo, who once came to his aid in his previous occupation, and has been diligently working for him ever since. Serge is very loyal and respects Hugo as the Reve’s Director. He has a cold, intimidating demeanor and he speaks bluntly, but he is just as harsh on himself as he is on others.

    Get you a man who looks at you, the way Serge looks at Hugo! jk!
    Serge, is your typical kuudere megane love interest. Blunt, stoic, completely clueless about love, cold, & always direct to the point…He’s very straight-laced on the surface but also a softie at heart. Definitely the perfect stereotypical character to cast Umehara, right?🤭

    For the most part, I enjoyed his relationship with Emma. I love their banter and how he adored Emma’s cooking. I thought the fluff here was done pretty well. Sad to say, I’m still not a fan of the heroine in this route.🥲

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    Normally, it pains me to say something negative about heroines, they’re like my children, I swear! But Emma here was kind of a ditz? Why on earth would you offer to help Serge with accounting when you don’t have a single iota of what accounting even is? At one point, I couldn’t help but resonate with Serge’s annoyance with her (lol). I know it’s her good intention to want to be useful, but sometimes she just doesn’t think logically. Why are they writing heroines like this?🥴 I’m fairly sure 17 years old is old enough to actually have some common sense or critical thinking. My rambling aside, she does get better in other routes!

    I was also pretty surprised that Serge’s route took a major turn on to the heavier topics, like the imprisonment and torture of women that were suspected to be witches. It also hints on the Hamelin incident, amongst other things. It’s funny how it’s such a contrast to Hugo’s route where they just flamboyantly talked about light bulbs and then bam, you have Serge’s route and see him being tortured in jail! The whiplash!🤣

    Also, this route made it seem that french people aren’t fond of spicy food. Is that true???😭 On a closing note, I honestly couldn’t care less about the age gap here, but I’ve listed it in the content warnings above since I know there are people who aren’t fond of it in their fiction.

    CRIER

    • tsun
    • dere 🥹

    Crier is a performer at La Foire du Rêve. He’s skilled at juggling and doing various tricks that the audience, especially the youth, loves. He complains a lot about the heroine at first, but in truth, he’s very attentive and caring towards Emma. When he’s not performing, he’s busy running errands and getting supplies from town for the Reve.

    I think tsun Hiro Shimono characters are essentially an otome gamer’s guilty pleasure, don’t you think? That said, I loved this route! Crier is such a cutie-patootie, but what really made him stand out to me was his personality and how caring he is, not only to the heroine, but also to everyone else. He was very likable in other routes too, which gained him plus points from me! Despite his initial harsh tone, the boy has a heart of gold! I also loved his dynamic with Emma, and yes, unlike in the two previous routes, Emma here was great! Hallelujah! She had a lot of agency and wasn’t afraid to bite back, which made her chemistry with Crier very fun, not to mention, believable!

    On another note, I found this route to be the most lighthearted compared to the others. Based on the themes alone, I’d consider it fairly vanilla, which isn’t bad; quite the opposite, in fact! Though it wasn’t perfect, it had a clear direction on where it was going. The bad ending, however, was kind of depressing. Oof, I wish I had skipped it, but alas!😢

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    I would’ve complained about how odd it was that they were just forced to be *fake lovers* out of nowhere (to appease Clara and the rest of the folks in the Reve), but I didn’t mind this plot device, really! Sure, there could’ve been other ways to tighten their relationship and show their *lovey-dovey* moments, but I thought this one worked fine, so I can’t fault the writing for using what ticked. Emma finally had some agency here! It was also so refreshing to see her get jealous of how Crier was being nice to Clara (not knowing they were twins) and wished that Crier would’ve treated her the same. Girlie is finally boy-crushing, it’s cute!🥹

    LYON

    • what an angel!🥺
    • so pure! must be protected at all times!🥺🤲

    Lyon is La Foire du Rêve’s bunny mascot. The children who visit the amusement park love him. He’s very calm, sometimes quiet, and absolutely purehearted. He never takes off his costume, so no one really knows what he looks like in person.

    Aw. I actually love this route too.🥺 I liked that there was a strong build-up to the mysteries surrounding the Reve’s magic here, and the way Emma and Lyon uncovered things bit by bit was enjoyable to witness. On top of that, Lyon is absolutely a darling cinnamon roll. His cute bunny mascot embodies his adorable persona to a T. I couldn’t really fault him for anything in his story! He’s an angel!🥺This route made my heart sink because of how wholesome it was. Though, I’d say out of all the guys, Lyon had the most difficult circumstances in the Reve. The angst here was pretty up there. Made me profusely sob.😭

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    Protect Lyon at all cost!😤

    On the side, Emma was great here as well! She took a lot of initiative for herself. She was even selfish at times and made silly, reckless decisions, especially when she insisted on reviving the dead despite being warned so many times not to. Though given the circumstances, her actions to me felt reasonable, out of pure desperation so I don’t hold this against her.

    I think my only issue was that the reincarnation ending wasn’t very clear. It was pretty vague actually! I wish they had clarified where this *new* Lyon came from. The story blatantly ignored the fact that only a year had passed since Emma freed all the souls in the Reve, including Lyon’s. Does that mean this reincarnated Lyon already existed while the soul/phantom Lyon was still trapped in the Reve? So many plot holes are being overlooked here! Oh well… 🤷🏻‍♀️

    LUCIOLE

    • the hikikomori mechanic
    • secretly a cinamon roll, but…

    A man of few words and even fewer appearances, Luciole is the mechanic of La Foire du Rêve. He only comes out at night to perform maintenance around the amusement park and keeps to himself in his tent during the day. He seems to despise the idea of magic and is strongly against the heroine using her powers.

    There’s a reason Luciole is so adamant and unwilling to accept the use of magic. In this route, you’ll get to find out why. At the heart of it, I really liked Luciole as a character. His route started off strong, especially during his back-and-forth exchanges with the heroine. Their little tete-a-tete through letter exchanges was cute!🥹 His entire route however, felt pretty weak, in my opinion. They pretty much did a great job building up tension and intrigue with his story, but the turning point and resolution, especially at the end, felt rather too convenient, almost frustratingly so!

    **On the positive side, the best part of this route was hearing Shiraimu shift from being a tsun to a total cinnamon roll!🥹

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    There were so many missed opportunities in this route, it hurts! The chance to make him the resident yandere character was wasted. He had the perfect setup for it! Wouldn’t it have been great for Luciole to go twisted because he didn’t want to see MC get hurt anymore? Plus, the trauma he has with his mom fits the typical yandere backstory, so I was surprised they didn’t explore that. I would’ve loved to see it. Instead, we get a yandere ending in his BAD END, and even that one felt half-baked! So disappointing!😭

    The angry mob trope honestly feels very tired to me. Because we see it in almost EVERY SINGLE OTOME GAME, and it’s usually just there to create a conflict that puts the heroine in danger, only to be conveniently resolved almost immediately. This route was no exception, but the way it was handled here felt especially sloppy! The resolution they came up with just doesn’t make sense logically. Like no way an angry mob would just calm down because you told them to calm down LOL angry mobs aren’t that easily pacified by mere words, because y’know… they’re angry and their judgements are clouded in the heat of the moment. The whole ordeal of Luciole’s monologue in front of them felt so dumb (I’m sorry!)😭 And the crowd going: “Oh, we messed up and believed a drunk, hur dur…so we started throwing stones at this young lady because drunk man said she bad!” Like wow, really? is this twitter???😂😂😂

    I really liked Luciole as a love interest, honest to god! (Dude, just wanna eat some good food and be with his woman) But this route…. it made me lose braincells fr…🥴

    ARNAUD

    • not the oniichan route
    • Arnaud with frenchman hat < Arnaud

    Arnaud works as a journalist and is Emma’s childhood friend. After an accident seven years ago, Emma became an orphan and was taken in by Arnaud’s family, so she has been living with him and his mother, Alice, ever since. Arnaud tends to fuss around Emma and dotes on her on account of her amnesia.

    This route is meant to be played last, as a lot of plot events from the previous LIs were also revisited here, and I thought that if I had played Arnaud’s route earlier (immediately after Hugo’s), the story likely wouldn’t have made as much sense to me, so I’m glad I stuck with the suggested route order.

    I think Arnaud may be my fav LI in this game, and that’s because he’s such a polarizing character… (or maybe I’m just being biased because of Abe Atsushi? lol) He was quite possessive of the heroine, and I didn’t mind his overprotectiveness at all; I actually enjoy that trope! Heh. 🤭 I can understand why some might find it uncomfortable though, given their familial relationship and the fact that they were raised under the same roof. But for me, it didn’t come off as creepy in the slightest. Plus, he has the most gorgeous CGs in the game!

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    On the romance side of things, I really liked how Arnaud confessed to Emma early on in his route. Like, wow, the boy is fast! And the plot twist with him secretly reporting to his father about Emma was maybe a little too predictable; like clearly you could see that coming from a mile away. Regardless, I still enjoyed how his story progressed!

    I also liked that they revisited the Hamelin incident here and expanded on it a bit from Serge’s route. However, I felt this route had a lot of things going on that didn’t really favor Arnaud and the heroine, nor their relationship. Is it just me, or did it seem like everything got convoluted toward the end? There were a lot of unnecessary scenes that could’ve just been scraped off. This route seemed to put more emphasis on being the ‘truth’ route rather than its focus on romance.🤷🏻‍♀️

    On a side note, Arnaud’s military sprite was hawt! Seriously, everyone seems to look good without their hats. Hugo looked hot with his low ponytail, and without that ugly tophat, and Arnaud looked incredibly fine without his frenchman hat. THROW AWAY THOSE HATS MAN!

    EMMA (Main Heroine)

    • macaron girlie
    • sometimes good, sometimes 🧍‍♀️

    Emma is alright, I guess? There were routes where I considered her decently written, like in Crier’s and Lyon’s routes. I thought these were the stories where she had the most agency and displayed a bit of critical thinking. However, a lot of the time, she remained very passive that it got on my nerves.😭 There were situations where she’d dawdle the heck out when something is urgently needed of her. She is aware of this though so I’d credit her that self awareness. And in her defense, she’s only 17 and was raised very sheltered. But still… sometimes, she just… really isn’t… logically thinking through her decisions. The scenarios where she fell short seemed to outweigh the good (at least in my opinion). There were scenes in the game that would literally go like this:

    Emma: (After everyone repeatedly told her not to use magic in public) 🧍‍♀️
    Also Emma: *Proceeds to use magic in public*

    Emma: “This town doesnt like newcomers, I must not act suspicious”
    Also Emma: *Proceeds to act suspicious*

    😭😭😭

    There were a lot of inconsistencies in how she was written across all routes. And while I’ve facepalmed several times during her 🧍‍♀️🧍‍♀️🧍‍♀️ moments, I don’t think she was terrible overall, to be honest. Like I said, she’s alright!🙂Not a fav, & she could’ve been better.

    I have to say, though, her love for macarons made me crave for them too, that I had to get out of the house in the dead cold winter afternoon and drive up to a local pâtisserie to get some french macarons myself!😭

    SYSTEM AND LOCALIZATION

    The UI for Genso Manège was a standout to me. The animated clip that plays before the menu screen was absolutely beautiful, and to top it off, the pastel-colored manège/carousel on the opening screen ticked all my aesthetic boxes! Ha!

    PROS:

    • Heroine’s Name Customization: The heroine’s name can be changed. Great for those who prefer to self-insert.
    • Heroine Side Image Sprite ON/OFF
    • Love Catch System
    • Quick Save/Quick Load
    • Clear List – to track what endings you’ve unlocked so far.
    • Sound Library
    • Character Profiles (with voices)
    • Seiyuu Commentaries
    • CG Library
    • Manual Instructions
    • Status Screen: allows you to check the LI affection points you’ve accumulated during gameplay.
    • Backlog and Rewind function
    • MINI GAME – can be skipped and does not affect your endings, if you choose to do so.
    • Font Style Selection

    CONS:

    • No Chapter Select – You can however, replay scenes in the CG gallery.
    • No SKIP to Next choice function.
    • SLOW Skip Reads
    • Black screen bugs

    I experienced a couple of black-screen bugs in the game where if a scene transitions to the next chapter or slide and you accidentally press any button during the transition, the screen completely blacks out while the game continues running. The only way to circumvent this was to completely close the game and restart, which really sucks if you forgot to save beforehand.

    About the Mini Game
    Eveil System – is a mini-game that lets you collect stars that appear in random locations on your screen. If you’re playing in handheld mode, you can simply tap or glide your fingers on the screen to collect them. If you’re playing in TV mode, you can use the L and R joysticks to collect the stars. After completing the tutorial (on your first playthrough), you should be able to skip this mini-game whenever it comes up. There are no consequences for skipping it during the story, and it won’t affect your endings.

    Localization

    The localization was well done, and the translations flowed smoothly in the game. Granted, I blitzed through this pretty fast, so I didn’t really notice any typos or text errors during my gameplay. There also weren’t any text box issues, so overall, it was pretty solid!

    TRAILER

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMvcr8Y8Gzk

    OVERALL THOUGHTS

    This was a decent-length title, not too short but not overly long either. It took me around 40 hours to complete everything (playing docked on TV). Chapters 1-3 make up the game’s common route, and Chapter 4 is where the LI’s route branches off. There are also only two endings for each love interest: the “Amour End” (good end) and the “Rêve End” (bad end).

    Not as Fluffy as You Think

    My initial impression after finishing my first route (Hugo) was that the game kind of deceives you into thinking it’s all going to be a fluffy ride throughout due to its bright pastel, sparkly-colored theme. But in contrast, the game actually carries a whole lot of angst. It’s not on the level of Cafe Enchante deception, though, so you can rest easy on that!😂

    This title was a mixed bag for me, some routes were decently paced, while some faltered and dragged the narrative too much with trivial things. Given how often the titular manège (magical carousel) was mentioned in the common route, and the fact that it’s even plastered in the game’s title, I expected it to play a significant role throughout the story. But, it turned out to be crucial only in Hugo’s route and was barely relevant elsewhere. It would’ve been more satisfying if all the routes had some connection to the manège, allowing it to be the central element that tied the story together. That would’ve been a nice full-circle to its overarching story, no? Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. The entire *magical manège* theme felt underutilized, which I found disappointing.

    TBF, I’ve already mentally prepared and toned down my expectations knowing that the writing team for this game included a few writers from past games I wasn’t the biggest fan of (e.g., ChariMani and ParaPara). As a result, when certain aspects didn’t quite hit the mark for me, the impact wasn’t as bad as it might’ve been if I hadn’t set those expectations. If you know what I mean!

    On a different note, I have to say, unlocking the reverse harem ending was a good reason to finish all the routes in this game! 😆

    Speaking of routes (and love interests), I think, Arnaud ended up as my favorite LI just because his character was a bit polarizing at first. I’m also a big box-pusher (hako-oshi), so I thought all the guys were great in my opinion. None of them really annoyed me, and that’s a good thing! As for their individual routes, the one I enjoyed the most from start to finish was Lyon’s.🥺 Albeit, his story had one of the most angsty themes in the game (I still ate it up, haha).😆

    LI RANKING:

    Arnaud > Lyon = Crier > Serge > Luciole > Hugo

    ROUTE RANKING:

    Lyon > Crier > Serge > Arnaud > Hugo > Luciole

    Arnaud is literally me irl😭😭😭

    As for the romance, this game showcased a lot of sweet scenarios between the heroine, and her LI. It’s also worth noting that this otome game is rated CERO B in Japan, so I think it’s designed to appeal to all audiences, especially the younger crowd. There are no spicy, mature scenes here, so if you’re after that, you are going to be disappointed.

    **As for the ratio of kiss CGs, well… I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed in that regard as well.🥲 All gripes aside, I do think Lyon’s very wholesome story was a breath of fresh air,🥺💛🐇💛so if you’re a fan of the wholesome cinamon roll type, I really recommend not skipping his route!🥹

    Do I recommend this game? YES.
    In all honesty, I never thought I’d see the day where Genso Manège would get localized. I remember it being one of the few non-Otomate titles announced in Japan, back when the otome genre was slowly transitioning to the Switch console in 2020. This title also garnered a couple of votes in the localization survey, I did five years ago.🥹 So getting to play it in English now feels rather surreal.

    Genso Manège feels light on the surface, but it’s actually a title that isn’t afraid to reveal its hidden gray undertones. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “dark,” the story can definitely get pretty heavy. This is also a game that I think would be great for beginners in the otome genre who aren’t afraid to explore heavier themes in fiction.

    For the seasoned players who love angst, I definitely think you’ll enjoy this too, though I’d suggest tempering your expectations, as it isn’t on the grandiose level of Hakuoki. But, it has the right touch and balance of romance & adventure, not to mention, likable love interests, to keep you sufficiently entertained! Do pick it up when you get the chance!🫶

    #GensoManège #GensoManègeReview #GensoManege #Mages #nintendoSwitch #OtomeGameReview #Pqube

    #pqube #otomegamereview #nintendoswitch #mages #gensomanegereview #gensomanege
  4. Otome Kitten @[email protected] ·

    Genso Manège Review (Nintendo Switch)

    Release Date: January 31, 2025 (North America)
    Developers:  MAGES / LOVE&ART
    Publishers: PQube
    Platforms:  Nintendo Switch, PC (Steam)
    ESRB Rating: T (Teen)

    SYNOPSIS

    Set in a wondrously evocative re-imagining of France, the story follows the protagonist, 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.

    ART AND MUSIC

    Scenario Director: Ayano Ishikawa, Ayano SuehiroArtist/Illustrators: MeijScenario Writers: Uta Amemiya, Muri Sasaki, Touko Fujitani, Nami Tayama, Ayano SuehiroOST: Naoki Chiba (OP Composition), Rico Sasaki (OP vocals), BigBoom (ED composition), H!Superb (ED vocals)

    I was every bit as surprised to hear a jpop boy group in my otome games. If you’re into these niche spaces, I’m sure you’ve NEVER heard of H!Superb before (lol). And its because they are fairly nugu 누구 (and I dont mean this in a dismissive kind of way, they are just internationally unheard of), but they have a very dedicated fanbase in Japan, so I was pretty happy to find out they did the game’s ED theme. It was my fav track of Genso Manege’s entire OST.

    Meij, the illustrator for Genso Manege is a freelance artist, that’ve worked on a few joseimuke games in the past, including character designs for the unit Lancelot in I★CHU. They’ve also done several Nijisanji illustrations, one I can particularly remember was Uki Violeta’s birthday illustrations, which was just *chef kiss*.

    Voice Acting

    Wataru Hatano as “Hugo” – Wizard (TaiAli), Gekkamaru (Nightshade), Adonis Otogari (Ensemble Stars), Lindo (Dance with Devils), Noah (Cafe Enchante), Kawamura Kyoshirou (Winter’s Wish), Keith Howell (IkePri)

    Yuichiro Umehara as “Serge” –  Paschalia (Radiant Tale), Kohei Minato (Sympathy Kiss), Benkei (Birushana), Canus Espada (Café Enchanté), Enishi (Jack Jeanne), Demento (Period Cube), Shingen Takeda (IkeSen), Sage (Nekopara Catboys Paradise), Rain (Shiro to Kuro no Alice), Oochidori (Touken Ranbu)

    Hiro Shimono as “Crier” – Senri (Norn9), Nayuta (Variable Barricade), Sho Kurusu (Utapri), Kuroyuki (Nightshade), Zena (Akatsuki no Yona), Alear (FE Engage), Kiel (RF4), Hakusan (Touken Ranbu), Ray Blackwell (IkeRev), Kokichi Oma (Danganropa), Ryunosuke (The Great Ace Attorney)

    Yuto Suzuki as “Lyon” – Shion (CollarxMalice), Noah Reed (Orfleurs), Sosuke (Spiral Memoria), Nine (Shiro to Kuro no Alice), Enforcer (Despera Drops)

    Shirai Yusuke as “Luciole” – Scarecrow (BUSTAFELLOWS), Eltcreed Valentine (Steam Prison), Watson (London Detective Mysteria), Amemura Ramuda (Hypnosis Mic), Garu (NU:Carnival), Ars (Period Cube), Usui Masumi (A3!), Miki Hiraizumi (Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome), Tsuzumi (Ken ga Kimi), John (Mistonia no Kibou)

    Abe Atsushi as “Arnaud” – Chinami (Harukanaru 5), Sorata Suzuhara (Norn9), Kohaku (Harukanaru 6), Suishinshi Masahide (Touken Ranbu), Kishinami Hakuno (FATE/EXTELLA), Musashi Miyamoto (Harukanaru 7), Camael (Tokyo Babel), Hinata Minoru (Digimon Survice)

    CHARACTERS AND ROUTES

    There are six obtainable romance routes in Genso Manège. The only locked route is Arnaud’s, which becomes available only after completing Hugo’s “Amour End”(Good End). The rest of the guy’s are playable from the start.

    The developers have suggested a recommended play order: Hugo → Serge = Crier → Lyon = Luciole → Arnaud. I played in this order, and while I thought the story flowed well this way, I personally think that Crier and Hugo’s routes are interchangeable as starting points since both routes feel more lighthearted compared to the others. Crier’s route, in particular, was a bit vanilla, and while Hugo’s route contained a few plot spoilers, its overall tone falls on the lighthearted side in comparison to others.

    Then again, I feel that the first five routes can be played in any order, as long as Arnaud’s is saved for last since his route felt like a culmination of the story that tied up loose ends.

    Walkthroughs:

    ⬇️ Click to view Content Warnings Kidnapping, death, women abuse, human experimentation, angry mobs, violence, gun violence, age gap.

    HUGO

    Hugo is the Director of La Foire du Rêve and was the one who invited the heroine to be part of the Rêve and work there from the start. He possesses a gentle demeanor, and always speaks in a calm manner. He holds a certain authority within the Rêve that everyone respects. Most of the employees/staff, feel indebted to his kindness. At times, he shows his playful side to the heroine.

    I actually wondered why Hugo’s route was the devs’ pick to start with. His route had a lot of revelations that related to the game’s overall plot, so I thought it would be best to play it before the finale (Arnaud’s). But, after playing his route, I realized that his story sort of sets you up where you are slowly introduced to the game’s setting, albeit only revealing a few plot points to help you better understand the overarching story. I think playing his route first will also help you understand the circumstances of the other LIs’ routes that you’ll play next, so in my experience, this really helped me grasp everyone else’s situation in the Rêve .

    Romance-wise, I’m not exactly sure if I enjoyed Hugo and Emma’s chemistry, to be honest! Their relationship felt more like a guardianship rather than what it would be with lovers, at least to me anyway. Other than that, I wasn’t too thrilled with Hugo’s story either and I was not a fan of Emma here…🤷🏻‍♀️

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    This route also dragged A LOT! Like, the part where they kept talking about light bulbs… I get that they were trying to connect this to awakening Emma’s powers or make some kind of analogy, but damn, I wasn’t too enthused to sit through all that light bulb talk, my dudes!🤣 (cackles) I thought it was also kind of funny how the story focused so much on the lights in the Reve and their project to fully brighten up the entire amusement park, and that they had to do it in Paris… ??? Like, what a weird choice to move the plot forward.🤔😅 The whole starlights-in-Paris plotline seemed to come out of nowhere???

    Emma was also very passive here. Babygurl really was just standing there while the plot tells us, she’s doing something when it’s really a whole lot of nothing… I’m being sarcastic here, please dont take this literally! Hugo was pretty hot in his engineer-outfit sprite though! That low ponytail! Mmhmm 🥵

    Serge

    • kuudere, megane
    • soft
    • Caleb at home… (im sorry!)😭

    La Foire du Rêve‘s head of finances. Serge, is in charge of all the accounting aspects, and auditing related to the Rêve’s supplies and inventory. He is indebted to Hugo, who once came to his aid in his previous occupation, and has been diligently working for him ever since. Serge is very loyal and respects Hugo as the Reve’s Director. He has a cold, intimidating demeanor and he speaks bluntly, but he is just as harsh on himself as he is on others.

    Get you a man who looks at you, the way Serge looks at Hugo! jk!
    Serge, is your typical kuudere megane love interest. Blunt, stoic, completely clueless about love, cold, & always direct to the point…He’s very straight-laced on the surface but also a softie at heart. Definitely the perfect stereotypical character to cast Umehara, right?🤭

    For the most part, I enjoyed his relationship with Emma. I love their banter and how he adored Emma’s cooking. I thought the fluff here was done pretty well. Sad to say, I’m still not a fan of the heroine in this route.🥲

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    Normally, it pains me to say something negative about heroines, they’re like my children, I swear! But Emma here was kind of a ditz? Why on earth would you offer to help Serge with accounting when you don’t have a single iota of what accounting even is? At one point, I couldn’t help but resonate with Serge’s annoyance with her (lol). I know it’s her good intention to want to be useful, but sometimes she just doesn’t think logically. Why are they writing heroines like this?🥴 I’m fairly sure 17 years old is old enough to actually have some common sense or critical thinking. My rambling aside, she does get better in other routes!

    I was also pretty surprised that Serge’s route took a major turn on to the heavier topics, like the imprisonment and torture of women that were suspected to be witches. It also hints on the Hamelin incident, amongst other things. It’s funny how it’s such a contrast to Hugo’s route where they just flamboyantly talked about light bulbs and then bam, you have Serge’s route and see him being tortured in jail! The whiplash!🤣

    Also, this route made it seem that french people aren’t fond of spicy food. Is that true???😭 On a closing note, I honestly couldn’t care less about the age gap here, but I’ve listed it in the content warnings above since I know there are people who aren’t fond of it in their fiction.

    CRIER

    • tsun
    • dere 🥹

    Crier is a performer at La Foire du Rêve. He’s skilled at juggling and doing various tricks that the audience, especially the youth, loves. He complains a lot about the heroine at first, but in truth, he’s very attentive and caring towards Emma. When he’s not performing, he’s busy running errands and getting supplies from town for the Reve.

    I think tsun Hiro Shimono characters are essentially an otome gamer’s guilty pleasure, don’t you think? That said, I loved this route! Crier is such a cutie-patootie, but what really made him stand out to me was his personality and how caring he is, not only to the heroine, but also to everyone else. He was very likable in other routes too, which gained him plus points from me! Despite his initial harsh tone, the boy has a heart of gold! I also loved his dynamic with Emma, and yes, unlike in the two previous routes, Emma here was great! Hallelujah! She had a lot of agency and wasn’t afraid to bite back, which made her chemistry with Crier very fun, not to mention, believable!

    On another note, I found this route to be the most lighthearted compared to the others. Based on the themes alone, I’d consider it fairly vanilla, which isn’t bad; quite the opposite, in fact! Though it wasn’t perfect, it had a clear direction on where it was going. The bad ending, however, was kind of depressing. Oof, I wish I had skipped it, but alas!😢

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    I would’ve complained about how odd it was that they were just forced to be *fake lovers* out of nowhere (to appease Clara and the rest of the folks in the Reve), but I didn’t mind this plot device, really! Sure, there could’ve been other ways to tighten their relationship and show their *lovey-dovey* moments, but I thought this one worked fine, so I can’t fault the writing for using what ticked. Emma finally had some agency here! It was also so refreshing to see her get jealous of how Crier was being nice to Clara (not knowing they were twins) and wished that Crier would’ve treated her the same. Girlie is finally boy-crushing, it’s cute!🥹

    LYON

    • what an angel!🥺
    • so pure! must be protected at all times!🥺🤲

    Lyon is La Foire du Rêve’s bunny mascot. The children who visit the amusement park love him. He’s very calm, sometimes quiet, and absolutely purehearted. He never takes off his costume, so no one really knows what he looks like in person.

    Aw. I actually love this route too.🥺 I liked that there was a strong build-up to the mysteries surrounding the Reve’s magic here, and the way Emma and Lyon uncovered things bit by bit was enjoyable to witness. On top of that, Lyon is absolutely a darling cinnamon roll. His cute bunny mascot embodies his adorable persona to a T. I couldn’t really fault him for anything in his story! He’s an angel!🥺This route made my heart sink because of how wholesome it was. Though, I’d say out of all the guys, Lyon had the most difficult circumstances in the Reve. The angst here was pretty up there. Made me profusely sob.😭

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    Protect Lyon at all cost!😤

    On the side, Emma was great here as well! She took a lot of initiative for herself. She was even selfish at times and made silly, reckless decisions, especially when she insisted on reviving the dead despite being warned so many times not to. Though given the circumstances, her actions to me felt reasonable, out of pure desperation so I don’t hold this against her.

    I think my only issue was that the reincarnation ending wasn’t very clear. It was pretty vague actually! I wish they had clarified where this *new* Lyon came from. The story blatantly ignored the fact that only a year had passed since Emma freed all the souls in the Reve, including Lyon’s. Does that mean this reincarnated Lyon already existed while the soul/phantom Lyon was still trapped in the Reve? So many plot holes are being overlooked here! Oh well… 🤷🏻‍♀️

    LUCIOLE

    • the hikikomori mechanic
    • secretly a cinamon roll, but…

    A man of few words and even fewer appearances, Luciole is the mechanic of La Foire du Rêve. He only comes out at night to perform maintenance around the amusement park and keeps to himself in his tent during the day. He seems to despise the idea of magic and is strongly against the heroine using her powers.

    There’s a reason Luciole is so adamant and unwilling to accept the use of magic. In this route, you’ll get to find out why. At the heart of it, I really liked Luciole as a character. His route started off strong, especially during his back-and-forth exchanges with the heroine. Their little tete-a-tete through letter exchanges was cute!🥹 His entire route however, felt pretty weak, in my opinion. They pretty much did a great job building up tension and intrigue with his story, but the turning point and resolution, especially at the end, felt rather too convenient, almost frustratingly so!

    **On the positive side, the best part of this route was hearing Shiraimu shift from being a tsun to a total cinnamon roll!🥹

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    There were so many missed opportunities in this route, it hurts! The chance to make him the resident yandere character was wasted. He had the perfect setup for it! Wouldn’t it have been great for Luciole to go twisted because he didn’t want to see MC get hurt anymore? Plus, the trauma he has with his mom fits the typical yandere backstory, so I was surprised they didn’t explore that. I would’ve loved to see it. Instead, we get a yandere ending in his BAD END, and even that one felt half-baked! So disappointing!😭

    The angry mob trope honestly feels very tired to me. Because we see it in almost EVERY SINGLE OTOME GAME, and it’s usually just there to create a conflict that puts the heroine in danger, only to be conveniently resolved almost immediately. This route was no exception, but the way it was handled here felt especially sloppy! The resolution they came up with just doesn’t make sense logically. Like no way an angry mob would just calm down because you told them to calm down LOL angry mobs aren’t that easily pacified by mere words, because y’know… they’re angry and their judgements are clouded in the heat of the moment. The whole ordeal of Luciole’s monologue in front of them felt so dumb (I’m sorry!)😭 And the crowd going: “Oh, we messed up and believed a drunk, hur dur…so we started throwing stones at this young lady because drunk man said she bad!” Like wow, really? is this twitter???😂😂😂

    I really liked Luciole as a love interest, honest to god! (Dude, just wanna eat some good food and be with his woman) But this route…. it made me lose braincells fr…🥴

    ARNAUD

    • not the oniichan route
    • Arnaud with frenchman hat < Arnaud

    Arnaud works as a journalist and is Emma’s childhood friend. After an accident seven years ago, Emma became an orphan and was taken in by Arnaud’s family, so she has been living with him and his mother, Alice, ever since. Arnaud tends to fuss around Emma and dotes on her on account of her amnesia.

    This route is meant to be played last, as a lot of plot events from the previous LIs were also revisited here, and I thought that if I had played Arnaud’s route earlier (immediately after Hugo’s), the story likely wouldn’t have made as much sense to me, so I’m glad I stuck with the suggested route order.

    I think Arnaud may be my fav LI in this game, and that’s because he’s such a polarizing character… (or maybe I’m just being biased because of Abe Atsushi? lol) He was quite possessive of the heroine, and I didn’t mind his overprotectiveness at all; I actually enjoy that trope! Heh. 🤭 I can understand why some might find it uncomfortable though, given their familial relationship and the fact that they were raised under the same roof. But for me, it didn’t come off as creepy in the slightest. Plus, he has the most gorgeous CGs in the game!

    ⬇️ Spoilers

    On the romance side of things, I really liked how Arnaud confessed to Emma early on in his route. Like, wow, the boy is fast! And the plot twist with him secretly reporting to his father about Emma was maybe a little too predictable; like clearly you could see that coming from a mile away. Regardless, I still enjoyed how his story progressed!

    I also liked that they revisited the Hamelin incident here and expanded on it a bit from Serge’s route. However, I felt this route had a lot of things going on that didn’t really favor Arnaud and the heroine, nor their relationship. Is it just me, or did it seem like everything got convoluted toward the end? There were a lot of unnecessary scenes that could’ve just been scraped off. This route seemed to put more emphasis on being the ‘truth’ route rather than its focus on romance.🤷🏻‍♀️

    On a side note, Arnaud’s military sprite was hawt! Seriously, everyone seems to look good without their hats. Hugo looked hot with his low ponytail, and without that ugly tophat, and Arnaud looked incredibly fine without his frenchman hat. THROW AWAY THOSE HATS MAN!

    EMMA (Main Heroine)

    • macaron girlie
    • sometimes good, sometimes 🧍‍♀️

    Emma is alright, I guess? There were routes where I considered her decently written, like in Crier’s and Lyon’s routes. I thought these were the stories where she had the most agency and displayed a bit of critical thinking. However, a lot of the time, she remained very passive that it got on my nerves.😭 There were situations where she’d dawdle the heck out when something is urgently needed of her. She is aware of this though so I’d credit her that self awareness. And in her defense, she’s only 17 and was raised very sheltered. But still… sometimes, she just… really isn’t… logically thinking through her decisions. The scenarios where she fell short seemed to outweigh the good (at least in my opinion). There were scenes in the game that would literally go like this:

    Emma: (After everyone repeatedly told her not to use magic in public) 🧍‍♀️
    Also Emma: *Proceeds to use magic in public*

    Emma: “This town doesnt like newcomers, I must not act suspicious”
    Also Emma: *Proceeds to act suspicious*

    😭😭😭

    There were a lot of inconsistencies in how she was written across all routes. And while I’ve facepalmed several times during her 🧍‍♀️🧍‍♀️🧍‍♀️ moments, I don’t think she was terrible overall, to be honest. Like I said, she’s alright!🙂Not a fav, & she could’ve been better.

    I have to say, though, her love for macarons made me crave for them too, that I had to get out of the house in the dead cold winter afternoon and drive up to a local pâtisserie to get some french macarons myself!😭

    SYSTEM AND LOCALIZATION

    The UI for Genso Manège was a standout to me. The animated clip that plays before the menu screen was absolutely beautiful, and to top it off, the pastel-colored manège/carousel on the opening screen ticked all my aesthetic boxes! Ha!

    PROS:

    • Heroine’s Name Customization: The heroine’s name can be changed. Great for those who prefer to self-insert.
    • Heroine Side Image Sprite ON/OFF
    • Love Catch System
    • Quick Save/Quick Load
    • Clear List – to track what endings you’ve unlocked so far.
    • Sound Library
    • Character Profiles (with voices)
    • Seiyuu Commentaries
    • CG Library
    • Manual Instructions
    • Status Screen: allows you to check the LI affection points you’ve accumulated during gameplay.
    • Backlog and Rewind function
    • MINI GAME – can be skipped and does not affect your endings, if you choose to do so.
    • Font Style Selection

    CONS:

    • No Chapter Select – You can however, replay scenes in the CG gallery.
    • No SKIP to Next choice function.
    • SLOW Skip Reads
    • Black screen bugs

    I experienced a couple of black-screen bugs in the game where if a scene transitions to the next chapter or slide and you accidentally press any button during the transition, the screen completely blacks out while the game continues running. The only way to circumvent this was to completely close the game and restart, which really sucks if you forgot to save beforehand.

    About the Mini Game
    Eveil System – is a mini-game that lets you collect stars that appear in random locations on your screen. If you’re playing in handheld mode, you can simply tap or glide your fingers on the screen to collect them. If you’re playing in TV mode, you can use the L and R joysticks to collect the stars. After completing the tutorial (on your first playthrough), you should be able to skip this mini-game whenever it comes up. There are no consequences for skipping it during the story, and it won’t affect your endings.

    Localization

    The localization was well done, and the translations flowed smoothly in the game. Granted, I blitzed through this pretty fast, so I didn’t really notice any typos or text errors during my gameplay. There also weren’t any text box issues, so overall, it was pretty solid!

    TRAILER

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMvcr8Y8Gzk

    OVERALL THOUGHTS

    This was a decent-length title, not too short but not overly long either. It took me around 40 hours to complete everything (playing docked on TV). Chapters 1-3 make up the game’s common route, and Chapter 4 is where the LI’s route branches off. There are also only two endings for each love interest: the “Amour End” (good end) and the “Rêve End” (bad end).

    Not as Fluffy as You Think

    My initial impression after finishing my first route (Hugo) was that the game kind of deceives you into thinking it’s all going to be a fluffy ride throughout due to its bright pastel, sparkly-colored theme. But in contrast, the game actually carries a whole lot of angst. It’s not on the level of Cafe Enchante deception, though, so you can rest easy on that!😂

    This title was a mixed bag for me, some routes were decently paced, while some faltered and dragged the narrative too much with trivial things. Given how often the titular manège (magical carousel) was mentioned in the common route, and the fact that it’s even plastered in the game’s title, I expected it to play a significant role throughout the story. But, it turned out to be crucial only in Hugo’s route and was barely relevant elsewhere. It would’ve been more satisfying if all the routes had some connection to the manège, allowing it to be the central element that tied the story together. That would’ve been a nice full-circle to its overarching story, no? Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. The entire *magical manège* theme felt underutilized, which I found disappointing.

    TBF, I’ve already mentally prepared and toned down my expectations knowing that the writing team for this game included a few writers from past games I wasn’t the biggest fan of (e.g., ChariMani and ParaPara). As a result, when certain aspects didn’t quite hit the mark for me, the impact wasn’t as bad as it might’ve been if I hadn’t set those expectations. If you know what I mean!

    On a different note, I have to say, unlocking the reverse harem ending was a good reason to finish all the routes in this game! 😆

    Speaking of routes (and love interests), I think, Arnaud ended up as my favorite LI just because his character was a bit polarizing at first. I’m also a big box-pusher (hako-oshi), so I thought all the guys were great in my opinion. None of them really annoyed me, and that’s a good thing! As for their individual routes, the one I enjoyed the most from start to finish was Lyon’s.🥺 Albeit, his story had one of the most angsty themes in the game (I still ate it up, haha).😆

    LI RANKING:

    Arnaud > Lyon = Crier > Serge > Luciole > Hugo

    ROUTE RANKING:

    Lyon > Crier > Serge > Arnaud > Hugo > Luciole

    Arnaud is literally me irl😭😭😭

    As for the romance, this game showcased a lot of sweet scenarios between the heroine, and her LI. It’s also worth noting that this otome game is rated CERO B in Japan, so I think it’s designed to appeal to all audiences, especially the younger crowd. There are no spicy, mature scenes here, so if you’re after that, you are going to be disappointed.

    **As for the ratio of kiss CGs, well… I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed in that regard as well.🥲 All gripes aside, I do think Lyon’s very wholesome story was a breath of fresh air,🥺💛🐇💛so if you’re a fan of the wholesome cinamon roll type, I really recommend not skipping his route!🥹

    Do I recommend this game? YES.
    In all honesty, I never thought I’d see the day where Genso Manège would get localized. I remember it being one of the few non-Otomate titles announced in Japan, back when the otome genre was slowly transitioning to the Switch console in 2020. This title also garnered a couple of votes in the localization survey, I did five years ago.🥹 So getting to play it in English now feels rather surreal.

    Genso Manège feels light on the surface, but it’s actually a title that isn’t afraid to reveal its hidden gray undertones. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “dark,” the story can definitely get pretty heavy. This is also a game that I think would be great for beginners in the otome genre who aren’t afraid to explore heavier themes in fiction.

    For the seasoned players who love angst, I definitely think you’ll enjoy this too, though I’d suggest tempering your expectations, as it isn’t on the grandiose level of Hakuoki. But, it has the right touch and balance of romance & adventure, not to mention, likable love interests, to keep you sufficiently entertained! Do pick it up when you get the chance!🫶

    #GensoManège #GensoManègeReview #GensoManege #Mages #nintendoSwitch #OtomeGameReview #Pqube

    #gensomanege #gensomanegereview #mages #nintendoswitch #otomegamereview #pqube
  5. Semantically Secure @[email protected] ·

    Head’s up: This is a blog post about applied cryptography, with a focus on web and cloud applications that encrypt data at rest in a database or filesystem. While the lessons can be broadly applicable, the scope of the post is not.

    One of the lessons I learned during my time at AWS Cryptography (and particularly as an AWS Crypto Bar Raiser) is that the threat model for Encryption At Rest is often undefined.

    Prior to consulting cryptography experts, most software developers do not have a clear and concise understanding of the risks they’re facing, let alone how or why the encrypting data at rest would help protect their customers.

    Unsurprisingly, I’ve heard a few infosec thought leader types insist that encryption-at-rest is security theater over the years. I disagree with this assessment in the absolute terms, but there is a nugget of truth in that assertion.

    The million dollar question.

    Let’s explore this subject in a little more detail.

    Why should we listen to you about this topic?

    (If you don’t need any convincing, feel free to skip this section.)

    Encryption at rest is a particular hobby horse of mine. I previously wrote on this blog about the under-celebrated design decisions in the AWS Database Encryption SDK and the need for key-committing AEAD modes in multi-tenant data lakes.

    Before my time at Amazon, I had also designed a PHP library called CipherSweet that offers a limited type of Searchable Encryption. The goal of CipherSweet was to improve the cryptography used by SuiteCRM. (The library name is, of course, a pun.)

    I’ve also contributed a ton of time making cryptography easy-to-use and hard to misuse outside of the narrow use-case that is at-rest data encryption. To that end, I designed PASETO as a secure-by-default alternative to JSON Web Tokens.

    I also have a lot of skin in the game when it comes to developer comprehension: I was the first Stack Overflow user with a gold badge for both [security] and [encryption], largely due to the effort I put into cleaning up the bad cryptography advice for the PHP ecosystem.

    I have spent the past decade or so trying to help teams avoid security disasters in one form or another.

    Why should we not listen to you about this topic?

    If you happen to know a cryptography expert you trust more than some Internet stranger with a blog, I implore you to listen to them if we disagree on any point. They may know something I don’t. (That said, I’m always happy to learn something new!)

    I also do not have a college degree in Cryptography, nor have I published any papers in prestigious academic journals. If you care very much about this sort of pedigree, you will likely find my words easily discarded. If this describes your situation, no hard feelings.

    Why and How to use Encryption At Rest to Protect Sensitive Data

    Important: I’m chiefly interested in discussing one use-case, and not focusing on other use cases. Namely, I’m focusing on encryption-at-rest in the narrow context of web applications and/or cloud services.

    This is not a comprehensive blog post covering every possible use case or threat model relating to encryption at rest. Those other use cases are certainly interesting, but this post is already long enough with a narrower focus.

    In particular: I’m not talking about the threats faced by activists or whistleblowers. This is a software engineering and applied cryptography focused blog post.

    If you’re only interested in compliance requirements, you can probably just enable Full Disk Encryption and call it a day. Then, if your server’s hard drive grows legs and walks out of the data center, your users’ most sensitive data will remain confidential.

    Unfortunately, for the server-side encryption at rest use case, that’s basically all that Disk Encryption protects against.

    If your application or database software is online and an attacker gains access to it (e.g., through SQL injection), with full disk encryption, it might as well be plaintext to an online attacker.

    It do be like that with online attacks.

    Therefore, if you find yourself reaching for Encryption At Rest to mitigate the impact of the kind of vulnerability that would leak the contents of your database or filesystem to an attacker, you’re probably unwittingly engaging in security theater.

    Disk Encryption is important for disk disposal and mitigating hardware theft, not preventing data leakage to online attackers.

    So the next logical thing to do is draw a box around the system or component that stores a lot of data and never let plaintext cross that boundary.

    What Do You Mean By “Encryption At Rest”?

    Encryption At Rest is best contrasted with Encrypted In Transit.

    For Encryption-in-Transit, think TLS.

    For Encryption-at-Rest, think of anything a web app or cloud service would do to encrypt data before storing it in… where ever the data is actually stored.

    If there’s another usage of the term to mean something else, it’s not one that I’m familiar with.

    Client-Side Encryption

    Note: The naming here is a little imprecise. It is client-side encryption with respect to your data warehouse (i.e. SQL database), but not with respect to the user experience of a web application. In those cases, client-side would mean on the actual end user’s device.

    Instead, client-side encryption is the generic buzz-word to mean that you’re encrypting data outside of the box you drew in your system architecture. Generally, this means that you have an application server that’s acting as the “client” for the purpose of bulk data encryption.

    There are a lot of software projects that aim to provide client-side encryption for data stored in a database or filesystems; e.g., in Amazon S3 buckets.

    This is a step in the right direction, but implementation details matter a lot.

    Quick aside: For the remainder of this blog post, I’m going to assume an architecture that looks like a traditional web application, for simplicity.

    The assumed architecture looks vaguely like this:

    • User Agents (e.g., web browsers) that communicate with the application server.
    • Application Server(s) respond to HTTP requests from user agents, manages key material using KMS, encrypts / decrypts records stored in the database.
    • Database Server(s) which store ciphertext on behalf of the application server.

    This is an abstract design, so the actual implementation details you encounter in the real world may be simpler or more complex in different respects.

    There are other interesting design considerations for OS-level end-user device encryption that I’m not going to explore today. For example: Adiantum is extremely cool.

    I’m also not going to dive deep into laptop theft or the importance of Full Disk Encryption as a mechanism for ensuring data is erased from solid state hard drives, or the activities of hostile nation states. That’s a separate discussion entirely.

    Security Considerations for Client-Side Encryption

    The first question to answer when data is being encrypted is, “How are the keys being managed?” This is a very deep rabbit hole of complexity, but one good answer for a centralized service is, “Cloud-based key management service with audit logging”; i.e. AWS KMS, Google CloudKMS, etc.

    We could talk about key management for a very long time, but there’s other things I want to focus on, so let’s revisit that in a future blog post.

    Before we begin, you may find it helpful to read my previous blog post on a related matter: Lucid Multi-Key Deputies Require Commitment. It’s not strictly necessary, but some of the terminology used there may be helpful to understanding this one.

    Next, you have to understand how the data is being encrypted in the first place.

    Bulk Data Encryption Techniques

    Bad answer: AES in CBC mode without HMAC.

    Worse answer: AES in ECB mode.

    Generally, you’re going to want to use an AEAD construction, such as AES-GCM or XChaCha20-Poly1305.

    For those not in the loop: AEAD is an acronym that stands for Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data.

    You’ll also want key-commitment if you’re storing data for multiple customers in the same hardware. You can get this property by stapling HKDF onto your protocol (once for key derivation, again for commitment). See also: PASETO v3 and v4, or Version 2 of the AWS Encryption SDK.

    It may be tempting to build your own custom committing AEAD scheme out of, e.g., AES-CTR and HMAC. If you do this, take extra care that you don’t introduce canonicalization risks in your MAC.

    Either way, using an AEAD mode is a significant improvement over using AES directly.

    Is Your Deputy Confused?

    Even if you’re using IND-CCA secure encryption and managing your keys securely, there is still a very stupid attack against many data-at-rest encryption schemes.

    To understand the attack, first consider this sort of scenario:

    Alice and Bob use the same health insurance provider, who is storing sensitive medical records for both parties. Bob works as a database administrator for the insurance company he and Alice both use. One day, he decides to snoop on her private medical history.

    Fortunately, the data is encrypted at the web application, so all of the data Bob can access is indistinguishable from random. He can access his own account and see his data through the application, but he cannot see Alice’s data from his vantage point on the database server.

    Here’s the stupid simple attack that works in far too many cases: Bob copies Alice’s encrypted data, and overwrites his records in the database, then accesses the insurance provider’s web app.

    Bam! Alice’s plaintext recovered.

    What’s happening here is simple: The web application has the ability to decrypt different records encrypted with different keys. If you pass records that were encrypted for Alice to the application to decrypt it for Bob, and you’re not authenticating your access patterns, Bob can read Alice’s data by performing this attack.

    The cryptographic attack is literally copy and paste, from the database administrator’s perspective. It’s stupid but it works against too many encryption-at-rest software projects.

    In this setup, the application is the Deputy, and you can easily confuse it by replaying an encrypted blob in the incorrect context.

    The mitigation is simple: Use the AAD mechanism (part of the standard AEAD interface) to bind a ciphertext to its context. This can be a customer ID, each row’s value for the primary key of the database table, or something else entirely.

    If you’re using AWS KMS, you can also use Encryption Context for this exact purpose.

    An Illustrative Example

    Let’s say you have a simple web application that encrypts data before storing it in a SQL database.

    Let’s also write it to use AES-GCM, since unauthenticated CBC mode is awful.

    A quick and dirty implementation might look like this:

    class User {    public function __construct(        public readonly string $username,        public string $email,        public string $fullName    ) {}}class UserModel {    public function __construct(protected Database $db)    {}    public function save(User $user): bool    {        return $this->db->upsert(           'users',            [ // set               'full_name' => aes128gcm_encrypt($user->fullName),               'email' => aes128gcm_encrypt($user->email)                       // encryption details abstracted           ],            [ // where               'username' => $user->username           ]        );    }    public function fetch(string $username): User    {        $row = $this->db->fetch('users', ['username' => $username]);        return new User(            $username,            aes128gcm_decrypt($row['email']),            aes128gcm_decrypt($row['full_name'])        );    }}

    For the abstracted aes128gcm functions in the pseudocode above, just assume they’re getting the key from KMS during encryption and storing an encrypted data key in a place the ciphertext can reference later on decrypt. I didn’t want to complicate the pseudocode with a lot of boilerplate.

    You might decide to prove the confused deputy risk by doing something like this:

    $model = new UserModel($db);$model->save(new User('alice', '[email protected]', 'Alice McWonderland'));$model->save(new User('bob', '[email protected]', 'Bob BurgerMeister'));// Fetch Alice's data$aliceData = $db->fetch('users', ['username' => 'alice']);$bobData = $db->fetch('users', ['username' => 'bob']);// This is the attack the database server can perfrom:// Replace Bob's full_name with Alice's email$db->upsert('users', [    'full_name' => $alice['email']], ['username' => 'bob']);$badBob = $model->fetch('bob');

    Now Bob’s full name is set to Alice’s email address.

    Okay, So What?

    Now imagine someone performs the same attack, but against salary fields in a payroll system.

    The Curious Case of CipherSweet

    My knowledge of this risk didn’t manifest itself in a vacuum. It was discovered over the years of maintaining an open source library.

    The first release of CipherSweet mitigated most of this risk by construction: Each field uses a different encryption key, through a key derivation scheme.

    In pseudocode, this construction looks something like this:

    def encryptRow(self, records):    for field, type in self.fieldsToEncrypt:       key = self.getFieldSymmetricKey(self.table, field)       records[field] = encryptField(key, field)

    Since CipherSweet’s inception, if you try to replace Alice’s encrypted zip code with Alice’s encrypted social security number, the keys would be wrong, so it would lead to a decryption failure.

    Or so I thought!

    As I mentioned in my blog post about multi-tenancy and confused deputy attacks, if your AEAD mode doesn’t commit to the key used, it’s possible to craft a single (ciphertext, tag) that decrypts to two different plaintext values under two different keys.

    CipherSweet’s original ModernCrypto suite used XChaCha20-Poly1305, which is not key-committing, and therefore susceptible to this sort of misuse.

    This violated the Principle of Least Astonishment and motivated the development of a new algorithm suite called BoringCrypto, which used BLAKE2b-MAC instead of Poly1305. This change was released in version 3.0.0 in June 2021.

    However, even with BoringCrypto in 3.0.0, this only mitigated most of the issue by construction. The last mile of complexity here is that each field must also be bound to a primary key or foreign key.

    Encrypting with AAD has been possible since a very early release of CipherSweet, but being possible to use securely is not sufficient. It should be easy to use securely.

    CipherSweet Version 4.7.0, which was released last month, now only requires a code change that looks like this in order to mitigate confused deputies in an application:

      $multiRowEncryptor = new EncryptedMultiRows($engine);  $multiRowEncryptor+     ->setAutoBindContext(true)+     ->setPrimaryKeyColumn('table2', 'id')      ->addTextField('table1', 'field1')

    This is in addition to the new Enhanced AAD feature, which allows for flexible and powerful context binding based on other fields and/or string literals.

    (In fact, this new convenience feature actually uses Enhanced AAD under-the-hood.)

    This doesn’t come for free, however: Users have to know the serial / primary key for a record prior to writing it, in order to use it as AAD when encrypting fields. However, that’s a much easier pill to swallow than expecting PHP devs to manage the complexity of context-binding themselves.

    As you can see, mitigating confused deputies in an encryption library (without making it unwieldy) requires a painstaking attention to detail to get right.

    As Avi Douglen says, “Security at the cost of usability comes at the cost of security.”

    Given the prevalence of client-side encryption projects that just phone it in with insecure block cipher modes (or ECB, which is the absence of a block cipher mode entirely), it’s highly doubtful that most of them will ever address confused deputy attacks. Even I didn’t get it right at first when I made CipherSweet back in 2018.

    What about non-databases?

    Everything I mentioned in the previous section was focused on confused deputy attacks against client-side encryption for information that is stored in a database, but it’s a general problem with encrypting data at rest and storing the ciphertext “server-side”.

    If you’re storing encrypted data in an S3 bucket, rather than in MySQL, you still need some form of context-binding mechanism to prevent the dumb and obvious attack from working against a deputy that reads data from said S3 bucket.

    If you take nothing else away from this blog post, remember: Authenticate your access patterns.

    Why aren’t things better already?

    As with most things in software security, the problem is either not widely known, or is not widely understood.

    Unknown unknowns tend to fester, untreated, across the entire ecosystem.

    Misunderstood issues often lead to an incorrect solution.

    In this case, at-rest encryption is mostly in Column B, and confused deputy attacks are mostly in Column A.

    The most pronounced consequence of this is, when tasked with building at-rest data encryption in an application, most software developers do not have a cohesive threat model in mind (let alone a formal one).

    This leads to disagreement between stakeholders about what the security requirements actually are.

    How can I help improve things somewhat?

    Most importantly, spread awareness of the nuances of encryption at-rest.

    This blog post is intended to be a good conversation starter, but there are other resources to consider, too. I’ve linked to many of them throughout this post already.

    If you’re paying for software to encrypt data at rest, ask your vendor how they mitigate the risk of confused deputy attacks. Link them to this blog post if they’re not sure what you mean.

    If said vendor responds, “this risk is outside of our threat model,” ask to see their formal threat model document. If it exists and doesn’t align with your application’s threat model, maybe consider alternative solutions that provide protection against more attack classes than Full Disk Encryption would.

    Finally, gaining experience with threat modeling is a good use of every developer’s time. Adam Caudill has an excellent introductory blog post on the subject.

    Closing Thoughts

    Despite everything I’ve written here today, I do not claim to have all the answers for encryption at rest.

    However, you can unlock a lot of value just by asking the right questions. My hope is that anyone that reads this post is now capable of asking those questions.

    Addendum (2024-06-03)

    After I published this, the r/netsec subreddit has expressed disappointment that this blog post had “no mention of” consumer device theft or countries experiencing civil unrest and pulling hard drives from data centers.

    You could make a congruent complaint that it also had no mention of Batman.

    To be clear, I’m not saying that the use cases and risks Reddit cares about are off-topic to any discussion of full-disk encryption. They matter.

    Rather, it’s that they’re not relevant to the specific point I am making: Even in the simplest use case, far from the annoying details of end user hardware or the whims of nation states, encryption-at-rest is poorly understood by most developers, and should be thought through carefully.

    Your threat model is not my threat model, and vice versa.

    I never advertised this blog post as a comprehensive and complete guide to the entire subject of encryption-at-rest. If you too felt under-served by this blog post for not addressing the corner cases that really matter to you, I hope this addendum makes it clearer why I didn’t cover them.

    Finally, if you feel that there’s an aspect of the encryption-at-rest topic that really warrants further examination, I invite you to blog about it.

    If your blog post is interesting enough, I’ll revise this post and link to it here.

    https://scottarc.blog/2024/06/02/encryption-at-rest-whose-threat-model-is-it-anyway/

    #Cryptography #cybersecurity #encryption #encryptionAtRest #security #symmetricCryptography #technology

    #cryptography #cybersecurity #encryption #encryptionatrest #security #symmetriccryptography
  6. HowToPhil (Phillip R) @[email protected] ·

    #Software devs could learn a thing or two about knowing when something is finished and leaving it alone. #Casio has that lesson in the #f91w

    youtube.com/watch?v=KWI8xCWqbxw

    #software #casio #f91w
  7. RΛZIΣL @[email protected] ·
    thank you fisch devs for making me unironically listen to vocaloid and exposing me to #KasaneTeto 🙏🙏🙏
    #KasaneTeto
    #kasaneteto
  8. R.L. Dane :Debian: :OpenBSD: :FreeBSD: 🍵 :MiraLovesYou: @[email protected] ·

    Dear #Go / "#Issue9" devs,

    Bro, do you even Unix? 🤦‍♂️

    rld@Intrepid:~$ go --version |& head -1
flag provided but not defined: -version
rld@Intrepid:~$ go -version |& head -1
flag provided but not defined: -version
rld@Intrepid:~$ go -v |& head -1
flag provided but not defined: -v
rld@Intrepid:~$ go -V |& head -1
flag provided but not defined: -V
rld@Intrepid:~$ go version |& head -1
go version go1.24.9 freebsd/amd64
rld@Intrepid:~$
    #go #issue9
  9. R.L. Dane :Debian: :OpenBSD: :FreeBSD: 🍵 :MiraLovesYou: @[email protected] ·

    Please take note, #CLI / #TUI devs.

    Some of us still like 80x25, and would like our tools to be usable at that resolution.

    #kthxbai

    P.S. 80x24, what was I thinking??? 😂🤦‍♂️

    #cli #tui #kthxbai
  10. R.L. Dane :Debian: :OpenBSD: :FreeBSD: 🍵 :MiraLovesYou: @[email protected] ·

    Please take note, #CLI / #TUI devs.

    Some of us still like 80x25, and would like our tools to be usable at that resolution.

    #kthxbai

    P.S. 80x24, what was I thinking??? 😂🤦‍♂️

    #cli #tui #kthxbai
  11. R.L. Dane :Debian: :OpenBSD: :FreeBSD: 🍵 :MiraLovesYou: @[email protected] ·

    Please take note, #CLI / #TUI devs.

    Some of us still like 80x25, and would like our tools to be usable at that resolution.

    #kthxbai

    P.S. 80x24, what was I thinking??? 😂🤦‍♂️

    #cli #tui #kthxbai
  12. R.L. Dane :Debian: :OpenBSD: :FreeBSD: 🍵 :MiraLovesYou: @[email protected] ·

    Please take note, #CLI / #TUI devs.

    Some of us still like 80x25, and would like our tools to be usable at that resolution.

    #kthxbai

    P.S. 80x24, what was I thinking??? 😂🤦‍♂️

    #kthxbai #tui #cli
  13. R.L. Dane :Debian: :OpenBSD: :FreeBSD: 🍵 :MiraLovesYou: @[email protected] ·

    Please take note, #CLI / #TUI devs.

    Some of us still like 80x25, and would like our tools to be usable at that resolution.

    #kthxbai

    P.S. 80x24, what was I thinking??? 😂🤦‍♂️

    #cli #tui #kthxbai
  14. R. L. Dane :debian: :openbsd: @RL_Dane ·

    Update: everything working again!
    Those devs are total chads!!!

    ----

    Well *that* was obviously too good to last. :(

    All of the Youtube Music clients I could find on F-Droid are b0rken now. Thanks GOOG.

    I mean, yeah, it's technically stealing, but considering what you pay your artists, it's just stealing what was already stolen.

    I can only imagine how frustrating this arms race must be to the developers of these programs.

    #vimusic #rimusic #simpmusic #gyawun
  15. R. L. Dane :debian: :openbsd: @[email protected] ·

    Update: everything working again!
    Those devs are total chads!!!

    ----

    Well *that* was obviously too good to last. :(

    All of the Youtube Music clients I could find on F-Droid are b0rken now. Thanks GOOG.

    I mean, yeah, it's technically stealing, but considering what you pay your artists, it's just stealing what was already stolen.

    #ViMusic #RiMusic #SimpMusic #Gyawun

    I can only imagine how frustrating this arms race must be to the developers of these programs.

    #vimusic #rimusic #simpmusic #gyawun
  16. R. L. Dane :debian: :openbsd: @[email protected] ·

    Update: everything working again!
    Those devs are total chads!!!

    ----

    Well *that* was obviously too good to last. :(

    All of the Youtube Music clients I could find on F-Droid are b0rken now. Thanks GOOG.

    I mean, yeah, it's technically stealing, but considering what you pay your artists, it's just stealing what was already stolen.

    #ViMusic #RiMusic #SimpMusic #Gyawun

    I can only imagine how frustrating this arms race must be to the developers of these programs.

    #vimusic #rimusic #simpmusic #gyawun
  17. R. L. Dane :debian: :openbsd: @[email protected] ·

    Update: everything working again!
    Those devs are total chads!!!

    ----

    Well *that* was obviously too good to last. :(

    All of the Youtube Music clients I could find on F-Droid are b0rken now. Thanks GOOG.

    I mean, yeah, it's technically stealing, but considering what you pay your artists, it's just stealing what was already stolen.

    #ViMusic #RiMusic #SimpMusic #Gyawun

    I can only imagine how frustrating this arms race must be to the developers of these programs.

    #gyawun #simpmusic #rimusic #vimusic
  18. R. L. Dane :debian: :openbsd: @[email protected] ·

    Update: everything working again!
    Those devs are total chads!!!

    ----

    Well *that* was obviously too good to last. :(

    All of the Youtube Music clients I could find on F-Droid are b0rken now. Thanks GOOG.

    I mean, yeah, it's technically stealing, but considering what you pay your artists, it's just stealing what was already stolen.

    #ViMusic #RiMusic #SimpMusic #Gyawun

    I can only imagine how frustrating this arms race must be to the developers of these programs.

    #vimusic #rimusic #simpmusic #gyawun
  19. R. L. Dane :debian: :openbsd: @RL_Dane ·

    @thfr

    Good to know I don't have to fetch GNU ls ^___^

    But honestly, not missing it. :D

    Is colorls developed by one of the devs, or is it imported from ?

    The only thing I sometimes miss is the . Even vim seems to be missing it, for some reason.
    Oh, and emoji. Emojis work great in Chromium, but almost nowhere else.

    #openbsd #freebsd #pcre
  20. βrυɲϋs @[email protected] ·

    Je ne connaissais pas la version Python de Deluxe Paint ! 🤩
    Deluxe Paint je l'avais utilisé sur Amiga, c'est une tuerie ce truc !
    Pour le lancer (Debian 13) j'ai juste eu à extraire depuis l'archive tar.gz
    (numpy et pygame) était déjà installés.
    Et ça marche ! Yhea !

    pydpainter.org/
    Note que les devs ont un compte Masto, il est indiqué dans la page.

    #graphisme #PixelArt #DeluxePaint

    #graphisme #pixelart #deluxepaint
  21. G a b r i e l l e @[email protected] ·

    Another little #InfinityNikki clip. 💜
    This was part of the new quests where those red vortexes sucked you in while you were flying and attempting to land on disappearing, tiered, timed platforms that were slightly outside of camera view, (aka hell on mobile) but thankfully when I loaded in again it skipped me to the next platform where she is doing her celebratory dance here 😅 godbless the Infold devs.

    #infinitynikki
  22. G a b r i e l l e @[email protected] ·

    Another little #InfinityNikki clip. 💜
    This was part of the new quests where those red vortexes sucked you in while you were flying and attempting to land on disappearing, tiered, timed platforms that were slightly outside of camera view, (aka hell on mobile) but thankfully when I loaded in again it skipped me to the next platform where she is doing her celebratory dance here 😅 godbless the Infold devs.

    #infinitynikki
  23. G a b r i e l l e @[email protected] ·

    Another little #InfinityNikki clip. 💜
    This was part of the new quests where those red vortexes sucked you in while you were flying and attempting to land on disappearing, tiered, timed platforms that were slightly outside of camera view, (aka hell on mobile) but thankfully when I loaded in again it skipped me to the next platform where she is doing her celebratory dance here 😅 godbless the Infold devs.

    #infinitynikki
  24. G a b r i e l l e @[email protected] ·

    Another little #InfinityNikki clip. 💜
    This was part of the new quests where those red vortexes sucked you in while you were flying and attempting to land on disappearing, tiered, timed platforms that were slightly outside of camera view, (aka hell on mobile) but thankfully when I loaded in again it skipped me to the next platform where she is doing her celebratory dance here 😅 godbless the Infold devs.

    #infinitynikki
  25. t o d d w a r n e r @[email protected] ·

    And another thing . . .

    Dear #Unicode Consortium, OS vendors, and #WordProcessor devs.

    Fix the #ellipsis situation. #AP styling demands ... (three dots in a row) and #Chicago (#CMOS) . . . (three dots spaced out, but still a single character). Most narrative writers (fiction, memoir, etc.) standardize on Chicago styling.

    A character exists to support the AP styled ellipsis. For Chicago we have to type [dot] [non-breaking space] [dot] [non-breaking space] [dot]. This sucks. FIX IT!

    #amwriting

    #amwriting #cmos #chicago #ap #ellipsis #wordprocessor
  26. 11thDwarf 🦀 @[email protected] ·

    most devs think "production-ready" means kubernetes. it means: survives a 3AM pager, junior can deploy without Slack huddle, and costs < $50/mo. k8s is for problems most of us don't have yet. #DevOps #webdev #programming

    #devops #webdev #programming
  27. 11thDwarf 🦀 @[email protected] ·

    most devs think "production-ready" means kubernetes. it means: survives a 3AM pager, junior can deploy without Slack huddle, and costs < $50/mo. k8s is for problems most of us don't have yet. #DevOps #webdev #programming

    #devops #webdev #programming
  28. 11thDwarf 🦀 @[email protected] ·

    most devs think "production-ready" means kubernetes. it means: survives a 3AM pager, junior can deploy without Slack huddle, and costs < $50/mo. k8s is for problems most of us don't have yet. #DevOps #webdev #programming

    #devops #webdev #programming
  29. 11thDwarf 🦀 @[email protected] ·

    most devs think "production-ready" means kubernetes. it means: survives a 3AM pager, junior can deploy without Slack huddle, and costs < $50/mo. k8s is for problems most of us don't have yet. #DevOps #webdev #programming

    #devops #webdev #programming
  30. Bart Blast @[email protected] ·

    Elixir devs who use VS Code - this one's for you! Hologram just got its official VS Code extension! 🧩 Full syntax highlighting for HOLO templates: ~HOLO sigils in .ex files and standalone .holo template files. More here: hologram.page/blog/hologra... #Hologram #Elixir #ElixirLang #BEAM #WebDev

    #hologram #elixir #elixirlang #beam #webdev
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