Jack Jeanne is a visual novel by Broccoli and tells the story about KisaTachibana, a girl who must disguise herself as a boy to enter Univeil. Univeil as a top class acting school that caters only to male students. Kisa hopes to become a successful entertainer and to find out what happened to her brother who was a student at Univeil but mysteriously disappeared. Each of the groups that Univeil has is based on different rare minerals.This is the first time I've reviewed an otome game.
The game has apretty good take on the crossdressing as it was not seen as creepy or deviant in the game and I was pleasantly surprised.The plot is almost similar to Ouran Host Club with its concept of romance and antics of the academy.Broccoli always goes the extra mile when it comes to interactivity in visual novels which I've praised before years ago in my comic part visual novel review.
It includes 2 different types of rhythm game sections where you have to maintain a highscore in order to keep on being in the top spot of the school.One section has you pressing left to right to keep focus on singing and press x for a button mash bonus score round. The other section is simply press the button at the right time and your relationships with other classmates can help you out a great deal during these sections.
While infrequent, it certainly helps give a twist to the typical visual novel formula.
You can also take lessons during your time in school throughout the week to further improve your skills in becoming a better performer and this kind of time management interactivity system is almost similar to Comic Party Portable.
Each class parameter, depending on the classes you take also boosts your relationships with your classmates.You can choose to repeat certain lessons if you like by pressing the r button.In addition, you can hang out with classmates to boost your stats and relationship during the weekends at certain areas or take this chance to rest.
It is a pretty lengthy visual novel and certainly not one you could finish in a day as there is lots of replay value from the routes you take. The user interface was clear and well organized. Surprisingly, the localization of it turned out to be good enough to help make the characters engaging. The art direction and character designs by the Tokyo Ghoul Mangaka was incredible.
I honestly didn’t think Sui Ishida would work on something like Otome or even have a posh aesthetic either. If you’re familiar with his works, a lot of it is pretty gritty stuff not exactly for the faint of heart. Here, the posh setting didn’t feel pretentious but just more down to earth and real. The 3D graphics on the other hand was not exactly the best out there but still does a good job complimenting Sui Ishida’s art. I was really taken by surprise how it reaches Project Diva levels of solid choreography for the performances; it really was that well animated. The voice acting is pretty decent. The music too is good but admittedly, I kind of wished that Ling Tosite Sigure or Akikane had some tracks in the game because of their work on Tokyo Ghoul and also because of Sui Ishida working on the songwriting of the game.
Its actually the first time that Akira Kosemura has worked on video games because they normally do J-dramas but here it was a pretty good debut into the world of gaming.
Overall,it was a great visual novel.
It gets 5 out of 5 stars.
This was a pretty good start for me, in getting more into the Otome visual novels and I may consider reviewing them in the future as it has been a while since I've reviewed any visual novels so I think I'll do more of them again in the future.