[My cousin & I stayed up until an obscene hour last night playing this VN. To the unaware, DRAMAtical Murder is a BL visual novel created by Nitro+Chiral, the same folks who made Togainu no Chi. Our Japanese sucks, so this is not at all a comprehensive summary. But if you want to know a little bit about the story before the English patch is released in a few months, then feel free to read on!]
So there’s a guy named Aoba who helps run a junk shop and he one day gets a call from a creepy-voiced customer. Said customer starts hitting on him out of nowhere and tells him his voice is beautiful or some shit. After ending that weird and uncomfortable phone call, three costumed neighborhood kids drop by to harass Aoba and scream about how he’s a pervert because of some dirty message on his phone. Anyway, Aoba’s shift ends and he heads outside and talks to his adorable robot dog, Ren, which is called an “all-mate,” the future replacement for real pets. Queue intro.
Aoba hits up the town and runs into his childhood bff Koujaku, who for some reason is real popular with the ladies and has a few stereotypical groupies hanging around him 24/7. After shopping a little, Aoba runs into some punks, but is saved by his friend Mizuki. Mizuki is part of a 'Lib' team called Dry Juice (all the team names are hilariously un-hardcore). And apparently there’s a team called Morphine that’s been causing trouble lately and something called “kamikakushi” (which literally means "spiriting away") that seems really important but hell if I understand.
Aoba heads out to watch a Rhyme battle, which is kind of what a street fight would be like if it had the mechanics of a Japanese RPG, and runs into two snazzy Yakuza guys named Trip and Virus who look almost exactly the same, but are apparently not twins. And then the police show up and they all run the hell outta there. While heading back home, some Rastafari-haired mofo nearly runs Aoba over with his motorcycle. And it of course turns out to be Mr. Domination-by-violence a.k.a. Mink, but we don’t officially meet him until later.
So Aoba goes home and gets bitched at by his grandmother, who apparently has some amazing ass cooking that Koujaku won’t ever shut up about. But that’s later. For now, Aoba gets some 8-bit game downloaded onto his phone and it starts with a princess saying, “Help me, someone take me away from this place.” And so he walks around for a bit and when he reaches the ocean, the game abruptly ends.
The next day, Aoba heads out on an errand and runs into Koujaku again. At some point, the fangirls finally take notice of him, and one of them is like, “Oh, how cute! Look at his hair! Doesn’t he look like a girl?” (lmao.) You get a choice here, and we decided to slap the bitch away and have Aoba be all like, “You’re a girl DON’T TOUCH ME.” Anyway, Aoba walks into some shitty building and his cute robot dog Ren suddenly yells, “WATCH OUT!” And some SERIOUSLY TRIPPY SHIT happens.
Somehow Aoba gets sucked into a Rhyme battle and REN GOES INTO HUMAN FORM AND THERE ARE KILLER BUNNIES EVERYWHERE. And then some guy wearing a doctor’s outfit and giant killer bunny head pops out and he summons an army of cute little killer bunnies to kick Aoba’s ass. And Aoba is all like, “I DON’T WANT TO FIGHT WHAT IS GOING ON.” And the rabbit doctor guy, who seems to know Aoba somehow, gives him the username Sly Blue and chants for him to “fight fight FIGHT.”
And so Aoba has some kind of panic attack and his vision gets blurry, but when it’s all over, Aoba becomes like a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSON and his voice goes like two octaves lower and everything. And this new Aoba isn’t fucking around. They leap into action and humanoid Ren turns his arm into an awesome gun, which kicks the bunnies’ asses. (It looks pretty hot so here’s a screenshot of it.) Aoba snaps out of Badass Mode and goes back to his normal self all like, “Huh what just happened.”
And Aoba’s headaches (which have been happening more and more frequently) feel worse than ever now. The bunnies launch a counterattack, and since Ren’s HP is low, it completely fucks him up. And the bunnies are all like, “WE SURE SHOWED THEM.” Until something strange happens and Ren’s HP inexplicably replenishes itself. Aoba and Ren are enveloped in shadows, so the enemy has no idea wtf is going on. There’s a white flash and you briefly hear the voice of Badass Aoba before the screen fades to black. When Aoba comes to, he’s for some reason in front of his junk shop and Ren is back in dog form. Aoba hardly remembers anything about the Rhyme battle. And that is the crazy ass first hour of DRAMAtical Murder.
