Title: My Mother Kyoko - NTR Fallen
Release date:
2020-09-11
Developer & publisher: Azienda
Ain't it nice, when a visual novel proudly advertises its genre within the title itself? There is no ambiguity what the game is about, and you can safely dive inside knowing you will get exactly what it says on the tin. Just looking at the title itself, from the both dreaded and coveted three letter combination we can conjecture, that this visual novel is NTR themed, with the protagonist's mother as a central character. Let's dive deeper, in order to see if the title is any good for an original English language release.
We enter the family of Ryota and Kyoko, the son and the mother, who live a simple life, occasionally struggling with the money. The husband is away on a business trip and does not physically appear in the game, though we see a few phone conversations with him. After their landlord raises the rent, the monetary situation becomes especially bad, thus prompting Ryota to take a part-time job on a farm. Now, in a classical NTR game, the scenario would continue with Kyoko borrowing money from some creepy old guy, and becoming his sex slave, after she is unable to repay it, but luckily MMK doesn't go that route.
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| And you are ogling her cleavage... |
In fact, the financial situation has almost nothing to do with the NTR scenario in this case, and despite what one might initially believe, the game actually belongs to the NTR-A subgenre, and there is no coercion, blackmail or other unsavoury techniques used to seduce Kyoko. MMK is a bi-protagonist game, meaning that both Kyoko and Ryota take equal stances as the protagonists and we see the tale unfolding from both of their perspectives, which in my opinion is an ideal way to tell a NTR story.
The plot gets onto the rails, when Kyoko, who works as a shop assistant, attracts the eye of her colleague Youichi, who wants to seduce and fuck his milf co-worker. However, to his great surprise Kyoko has almost no resistance to his advances, and basically jumps into his arms herself. Not only that, but she is proven to be an insatiable nymphomaniac, who cannot get enough of the forbidden fruit. At the same time, Youichi, who initially only wanted a quick fuck, starts developing feelings for Kyoko. Now, that doesn't sound sinister at all, does it? And that is true, as Youichi is not the villain of this story - if the game is to be said to have an antagonist, that person without a doubt would be Ryota, as he is the one who seeks to cockblock his mother.
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| Why not both?... |
I usually consider the family member NTR to be the lesser kind of netorare - the "fake" NTR if you will. It doesn't have the same impact as the stealing of one's girlfriend or wife, because frankly a son has no right to dictate who his mother should or shouldn't have sex with. Unless... You see, Ryota has a secret - he has long hidden romantic and sexual feelings for his mother, and it's becoming more and more difficult for him to reign them in. That revelation made me really dislike Ryota, and write him off as an "incestuous creep". After it becomes clear that Youichi, while a womanizer, is not really a bad guy, I started to root for him and Kyoko, and hoped that after everything is well and done he won't just throw Kyoko away, and that there would be a good ending for those two.
In fact, I'd say that all of the three available endings can be considered good endings for the lover couple, and bring Ryota to varying levels of despair, which is a nice bonus. "My Mother Kyoko" is a pretty short game, which I have finished in 2:40 h, and is pretty much linear for majority of its runtime, with the ending determined by a choice near the end. While the short runtime can be considered decent for the first effort of a new developer team, I missed some expansion on the characters. Kyoko's transformation into a sultry seductress was pretty fast and should have been fleshed out some more.
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| Compliments always work... |
Moreover, an aspect of many NTR games I love is the physical transformation of the heroine, after she is "corrupted". Kyoko also goes through such a transformation, like wearing more revealing clothes, using more make-up. However, the fast pace hurts our ability to savour such transformations. For example, Kyoko lightens her hair in one scene, but in just few scenes she dyes the hair again. We just have no time to appreciate her changes, before more of them occur.
Nevertheless, the most important, and frankly hottest, aspect of the NTR games is the psychological transformation, and that one is done really well. We see how Kyoko starts dotting on Ryota less and less, as she is spending more time with Youichi, which makes sense - as a high school student he is basically an adult, and should be capable of preparing a meal for himself, instead of waiting for his mother to do that every time.
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| It's like she is eating with her anus :-) |
That said, I must confess that I adore scenarios, where corrupted heroines become really mean to the people they previously loved. As Kyoko becomes more and more consumed by her sexual cravings, she starts doing naughty things, like having sex with her son just in the next room, or in what I consider to be the best scene in the game, shamelessly sends Ryota on a fruitless errand that consumes his whole day, just so she could invite Youichi to the house.
It's inevitable that Ryouta eventually finds out what is going on, and he can react in a few different ways, which determines the ending. One of the endings even allows him to confess his incestuous desires, but reality ensues, and his mother reacts in a very predictable manner to such a revelation. In fact, I like the outcome of that particular decision the best, but all the endings are good enough. But that's it... They are only "good enough", but pretty cliche as far as netorare games go, and not very adventurous. The resultant scenarios have been previously seen in this or that NTR-themed work, and do not feel fresh. I believe the endings could have had more impact with some tweaking.
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| Peanut gallery... |
I don't know about the general audience, but I am for once glad that "My Mother Kyoko" is not just another 3D rendered game, but an actual drawn title. I loved the graphics, and while they are at first glance somewhat simplistic, they really fit the game and have their own charm, and the sex scenes are actually really hot, if not particularly numerous.
Nevertheless, I have a few quibbles about the technical side of the game. For some reason, the developers either disabled or removed some of the essential Ren'Py features. For example, "F" or even "Alt-Enter" can not switch between the windowed and the full-screen presentation anymore, incredibly useful rollback feature has been replaced with a non-interactive backlog, and you cannot even take screenshots anymore. Moreover, the devs, for some gods damned reason, have introduced artificial loading screens between the scenes. These are some strange tactical decisions, and I hope the devs will unlock the Ren'Py functions for their next game, which will also be a netorare VN.
Frankly, I cannot wait, as MMK was a really well done, albeit on the short side, mother netorare VN. Cannot wait what the devs will show us for their next affair.
Links of Interest
Final Verdict: 72%
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