LarryTyphoid
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I've only recently watched the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime and liked it enough to start exploring the monstrous labyrinth that is the Evangelion franchise outside of the original anime and End of Evangelion film. The video games in particular are some of the weirdest shit I've ever seen. In case you're not familiar with the series somehow, it's a violent mecha anime with psychological drama and horror elements, which contributes to how weird these games are.
Ayanami Raising Project is an Evangelion-themed Princess Maker clone released on the Dreamcast, PS2, Nintendo DS, and Windows, in which the player is an officer of Nerv assigned to, uh, "raise" Rei Ayanami. So you come up with her schedules, decide which stats to increase, etc, like in a Princess Maker game. If you're not familiar with Princess Maker, it's like a simulation strategy game where you're a dad raising your daughter, except this time Rei from Evangelion is your surrogate daughter. Okay. The PS2 version and all subsequent versions added the feature to also "raise" Asuka Soryu.
Just like Princess Maker, there's a bunch of different endings in which your chosen girl takes a certain life path. According to the wiki, Rei's life choices include (but are not necessarily limited to) "S&M queen, policewoman or gun-toating maid", and Asuka's include "scientist, manga artist, singer, astronaut and nun". Unlike Princess Maker (at least from what I know of that series), you can steer your girl's romantic decisions. You can have Rei or Asuka pursue Shinji, or, uh, the... player character. Of course. One of the characters in the game, Maya the bridge technician, is shocked and appalled if the player pursues this route considering the fact that he is a grown man and Rei is a 14 year old girl. I doubt she's actually able to stop the madman dating sim protagonist from getting his way in the end, though.
Shinji Ikari Raising Project is a sequel to Ayanami Raising Project, except this time you're raising Shinji. I haven't played this game either, but judging from the boxart this one was directed towards fujos. I mean, holy shit, just look at Shinji there. He makes the Shinji in the anime look like fucking Charles Bronson.
This game has you controlling Captain Misato Katsuragi, Shinji's guardian in the series, and it's up to you to raise him to be a man. You have to manage stats such as "morality", "sensitivity", and, of course, "sex appeal". It's up to best girl Misato to decide whether or not Shinji will be a fujobait faggot with Kowaru (the white haired guy on the boxart), or a harem protagonist who gets all the bitches. And yes, there are multiple endings where Shinji becomes gay with Kowaru, as I'm sure anyone could predict from the boxart. Shinji can also romance pretty much any woman in the game except Dr. Ritsuko Akagi (because Ritsuko is the one backing Kowaru's homosexual agenda); yes, this includes the PC Misato.
Unlike Ayanami Raising Project, however, this game actually tries to tie in with the series. There are three different story routes: Thanatos, Pathos, and Campus. Believe it or not, but Thanatos actually adapts the events of the original series, mindrape and genocide and all. You can even recreate the beach scene from End of Evangelion with the girl of Shinji's choice and not just Asuka, although I can't confirm if Shinji ends up choking them or masturbating over them like in the movie. "Pathos" is the same as Thanatos, except more light-hearted and comedic, and with the option to get a happier ending by preventing the whole genocide thing. "Campus" is the slice-of-life romcom universe just like in Ayanami Raising Project. Hideaki Anno really opened a nasty can of worms by putting that alternate-universe romcom segment in the series finale.
To my shame I've actually read some of this game's manga adaptation (which was in publication for TEN fucking years). From what I can tell, it adapts the Pathos route but I'm not going to finish it to find out. There is this funny panel, though:
I don't know, the idea of women teaming up to stop someone from becoming a fag cracks me up.
There's like 3 more whacky dating sim games I want to talk about, but in writing all this up I've spent a dangerous amount of time in proximity to the most radioactive form of waifufaggotry there is, so I'll come back to this thread later. I ended up being surprisingly fascinated by the second game, though. I think there's English fan translations out there so I might end up writing an LP for it. All this has reminded me of reading that old Princess Maker 2 LP like 10 years ago.
Ayanami Raising Project is an Evangelion-themed Princess Maker clone released on the Dreamcast, PS2, Nintendo DS, and Windows, in which the player is an officer of Nerv assigned to, uh, "raise" Rei Ayanami. So you come up with her schedules, decide which stats to increase, etc, like in a Princess Maker game. If you're not familiar with Princess Maker, it's like a simulation strategy game where you're a dad raising your daughter, except this time Rei from Evangelion is your surrogate daughter. Okay. The PS2 version and all subsequent versions added the feature to also "raise" Asuka Soryu.
Just like Princess Maker, there's a bunch of different endings in which your chosen girl takes a certain life path. According to the wiki, Rei's life choices include (but are not necessarily limited to) "S&M queen, policewoman or gun-toating maid", and Asuka's include "scientist, manga artist, singer, astronaut and nun". Unlike Princess Maker (at least from what I know of that series), you can steer your girl's romantic decisions. You can have Rei or Asuka pursue Shinji, or, uh, the... player character. Of course. One of the characters in the game, Maya the bridge technician, is shocked and appalled if the player pursues this route considering the fact that he is a grown man and Rei is a 14 year old girl. I doubt she's actually able to stop the madman dating sim protagonist from getting his way in the end, though.
Shinji Ikari Raising Project is a sequel to Ayanami Raising Project, except this time you're raising Shinji. I haven't played this game either, but judging from the boxart this one was directed towards fujos. I mean, holy shit, just look at Shinji there. He makes the Shinji in the anime look like fucking Charles Bronson.
This game has you controlling Captain Misato Katsuragi, Shinji's guardian in the series, and it's up to you to raise him to be a man. You have to manage stats such as "morality", "sensitivity", and, of course, "sex appeal". It's up to best girl Misato to decide whether or not Shinji will be a fujobait faggot with Kowaru (the white haired guy on the boxart), or a harem protagonist who gets all the bitches. And yes, there are multiple endings where Shinji becomes gay with Kowaru, as I'm sure anyone could predict from the boxart. Shinji can also romance pretty much any woman in the game except Dr. Ritsuko Akagi (because Ritsuko is the one backing Kowaru's homosexual agenda); yes, this includes the PC Misato.
Unlike Ayanami Raising Project, however, this game actually tries to tie in with the series. There are three different story routes: Thanatos, Pathos, and Campus. Believe it or not, but Thanatos actually adapts the events of the original series, mindrape and genocide and all. You can even recreate the beach scene from End of Evangelion with the girl of Shinji's choice and not just Asuka, although I can't confirm if Shinji ends up choking them or masturbating over them like in the movie. "Pathos" is the same as Thanatos, except more light-hearted and comedic, and with the option to get a happier ending by preventing the whole genocide thing. "Campus" is the slice-of-life romcom universe just like in Ayanami Raising Project. Hideaki Anno really opened a nasty can of worms by putting that alternate-universe romcom segment in the series finale.
To my shame I've actually read some of this game's manga adaptation (which was in publication for TEN fucking years). From what I can tell, it adapts the Pathos route but I'm not going to finish it to find out. There is this funny panel, though:
I don't know, the idea of women teaming up to stop someone from becoming a fag cracks me up.
There's like 3 more whacky dating sim games I want to talk about, but in writing all this up I've spent a dangerous amount of time in proximity to the most radioactive form of waifufaggotry there is, so I'll come back to this thread later. I ended up being surprisingly fascinated by the second game, though. I think there's English fan translations out there so I might end up writing an LP for it. All this has reminded me of reading that old Princess Maker 2 LP like 10 years ago.
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