Starless, the brainchild, the magnum opus of Sei Shoujo. People know Sei Shoujo for his work on Bible Black, Discipline, and probably Heartworks. However, it is
Starless that is that got the biggest work put into it by Sei Shoujo. So much so that he went to hiring more employees to help him work on future games.
Starless had THAT much input from Sei Shoujo.
Now if anyone who has even heard of Sei Shoujo knows that the man loves his hardcore content (me as well). I can understand it is not for the faint of heart. In fact, Starless is up there in terms of extreme of the likes of Maggot Baits, Euphoria, and even works from
Liquid. The context to how the scenes happening lead up to it are the most interesting things to me about
Starless.
Before I start, I would like to give a shout-out to
JASTUSA for their wonderful localization of
Starless. The
writing was the best part of the game and it couldn't have been better without the localization's team working on it. Their work is put into great enjoyment as we get into our main character:
Sawatari Yukito. I love the main character. Sawatari is a snarky yet lovable character that gets tired of being fed with shit work (both figuratively and literally). He will lampshade the obsurdity that his rich employer involves themselves in such decadent acts. He never changes that aspect of him but his perservance it admirable, especially to his employer:
Mamiya Marie. She is what I consider, the most
brutal and
evilest femdom character I've read in a visual novel/eroge. She is the caricature of a rich aristocrat taking advantage of the lower classes while having the culture of masked orgy participant, from
Eyes Wide Shut.
Mamiya Marie's daughters, all have their own characters to them. The main thing to know is that they are just as evil as their mother but with some interesting reasoning behind their behaviors.
Mamiya Marika is the nicest of all the children but can get easily jealous. Without spoiling her sex scenes, she brings the phallus to the yard.
Mamiya Marisa is the classic tsundere turned into the worst caricature. Ironically, the sex scenes where she is in are not as brutal. However, she is an asshole.
Mamiya Kyouichi, the son of the bunch, has oedepidus complex. Which he takes his outlet on the long-working maid:
Nonohara Mikako. She is a mother of one son:
Nonohara Makoto, he was poked and pricked by the Mamiya family....they made his dick huge (Marisa even says it is bigger than a "black guy's dick" cause of course she would say that)
Sawatari works with two other maids:
Asagiri Sachie, the one who worked longer than most other maids/butlers in the family mansion. She is conniving and greedy woman.
Mitarai Yuuna, the newcomer maid after Sawatari. The classic love-interest to Sawatari. However, in this game, this will not end well.
In fact, this game has a lot of bad endings. There is practically only 1 good ending. The story's universe and setting still make the journey all the more enjoyable. As easy to tell as some of these characters may seem, they have some heart in them. Every sex scene has some self-awareness to them (thanks to Sawatari mostly) you cannot help but laugh or feel a weird sense of satisfaction. For example, Sawatari sees Sachie DEFECATE ON A POOL TABLE because of a bet she lost. Sachie wants to still go one more gambling round but needs money. She tries to ask Sachie while acting all sexy and naked. What was Sawatari's response:
"You know this not very sexy coming from someone who just took a huge shit on the pool table. Please don't touch me."
Even though the endings can be really punishing, I did enjoy what I learned from them. On different playthroughs, replaying the dialogue made me realize a deeper meaning from them because of the bad endings in hindsight.
You remember how I mentioned Mamiya Marie being really evil? She has quite a soft-spot for Sawatari. Hell, she never tries to cripple/emasculate someone if she knows they cannot take or haven't wronged her. She even lets Sawatari leave as request of their deal (albeit she will still try to get him back).
The most heartwarming thing about her is kind of has a facade to her mean demeanor, at least towards Sawatari. In some of the bad endings, you will find out Sawatari has impregnated one of the girls very early on. Marie catches on with this later on. She has the decency to not fuck with revelation because she knows Sawatari should decide if he likes the girl or not.
This culminates further when Sawatari confesses he wants to buy off Mikako's debt so she doesn't suffer through slavery (Context: Marie was the one who put her in debt in the first place). Marie is so moved by Sawatari's decision. She decides to accept the money but also get Sawatari immediately hitched with Mikako (who became a widow at the time, no thanks to Marie). It gets even better though. Marie won't give her up until one last orgy involving Mikako. Before she starts, however, Marie sterilizes the participant (not Sawatari) who will fuck her. She hid this information from Sawatari, but the main gist is that Marie wanted Mikako to have Sawatari's baby.
Although I did mention there was only one good ending, this ending with Mikako was more on the positive end for me.
Overall, I really enjoyed this game with hardcore stuff . It had a full cast of mature-bodied characters, my kind of fetish, and the execution made the hardcore scenes easier to swallow than if I watched the same scene in maggot baits or Euphoria. I do hope the sequal to
Starless:
The Great Deceiver; gets the localization treatment by
JASTUSA no matter how long it takes.
P.S. Do you ever find it funny how most of the Sei Shoujo games are named after
King Crimson songs. Food of thought, eh?