Ever Maiden – An Informal Review

In June 2021 mysterious titan of the Visual Novel scene Liar-soft announced the release of a yuri (genre known for girls holding hands and occasionally being gay) horror mystery game titled Ever Maiden or Evermaiden as I will refer to it since I just personally think it makes more sense.

Evermaiden is a game written by Umihara Nozomu who had previously written Fairytale Requiem for Liar-soft, as well as Shinsou Noise in collaboration with Silky’s Plus and the artist formerly known as DMM, and also more recently Adabana Itan (which I would link to but it’s blocked in europe) in collaboration with Aniplex. I say “in collaboration with” since Umihara is an in-house writer for Liar-soft and has worked on a number of other Liar-soft projects. I don’t think Umihara’s name pops up in most Visual Noveliers’ heads when they think of Liar-soft but I’ve been a pretty dedicated fan of her’s since I read Fairytale Requiem in 2016. The visual artist for Evermaiden, Ooishi Ryuuko, is also a return from Fairytale Requiem although they are perhaps more well known for their work on the steampunk series and in particular Sekien no Inganock. Ooishi is easily one of my favourite artists in the scene, perhaps in general, and since I genuinely wasn’t expecting another game with their involvement I was overjoyed to see them as the main artist and designer working together with Umihara again.

Evermaiden was released on the 25th of February 2022, which is to say about a week ago, and I finished it a couple of days ago and since I don’t think my MS Paint style mouse art could do it justice I felt compelled to try to use my words instead. I’m going to separate this blogpost into an introduction to the work, a spoiler-free review, and then finally some spoilerful ramblings discussions. Since I’d like people to read the game and experience it for themselves I usually wouldn’t include a spoiler part, especially this close to release, but I just have too many thoughts that I need to pluck out of my brain and plant into the dirt (read: this blog, it’s dirt).

This is a pretty long one so sorry for not supplying any reading music but just put on some nice piano tunes or something it’ll be fine.

So what exactly is this Evermaiden?

Well that’s a spoiler dude so that won’t be answered here, I will do my best to introduce you to the game though. I’ve already listed a couple of Umihara’s credits but to those who haven’t played the games the titles alone won’t really tell you much. Every game Umihara has written and planned is to some degree and by some definition a mystery game, and as mentioned Evermaiden is of course no different. Shinsou Noise, and later Butterfly Seeker again in collaboration with Silky’s Plus but without DMM sticking their fingers in the pie this time, has a detective style mystery aesthetic to it and a case-based structure even including the solving of mystery puzzles as part of the gameplay. Fairytale Requiem and to a degree Adabana Itan are more about slowly uncovering the truth of a strange situation, both with some degree of horror elements. Evermaiden falls in the second camp but with a bit of a twist to it. Despite being advertised as a yuri mystery horror adventure game (if that’s a mouthful it’s because I ripped it from the site) it’s very readily apparent right away that it is a scifi game. There’s no big “Holy shit dude I thought this was a different thing but it was scifi all along I’m shitting bricks dude” Visual Novel style genre shift, it’s just scifi from the start of the game which is why I don’t feel worried about including it in this spoiler free bit. Now Umihara isn’t a stranger to science fiction elements but Evermaiden is through and through a scifi horror yuri mystery adventure mystery wait-I-said-that-already game.

Going into the plot or setting or characters without stepping into spoilers is difficult and arguably impossible. Evermaiden is the kind of game were slowly uncovering and piecing all of those things together is the whole mystery. Going off the information available on the game’s site as well as content from the very start of the trial though I can introduce some basics. The Puellarium, puella meaning “maiden” but y’all meguka heads knew that already, is a strict girls school with a long list of rules pertaining to decency. As you’d probably expect it’s a religious school but rather than praying to some dead dude like normal people they all gather to pray to a “great maiden”. The protagonist Alouette finds herself a fish out of water, a bird version of the saying would perhaps be more apt but birds hang out in all kinds of places including on land and in the water, in the school and struggles to adapt to the rules. Aloutte does not know why or how she ended up at the school and finds that the other girls have similarly unclear memories. Alouette is a friendly and positive girl but finds the strict rules of the school difficult as they ban things such as showing skin, touching each other, and of course romantic relationships. The romantic interest(?) of the game, Rook, on the other hand is a cold girl who prioritises following the rules above all else. Now this doesn’t sound much like scifi so far but I don’t think I can really go into that aspect in a way that makes sense without also discussing elements that are definitely spoilers. To put it in the least spoilery and least helpful way possible the thing they study at school isn’t normal school stuff like maths and what the inside of frog look… wait no they do study that one actually.

Evermaiden’s system is, I suppose, map based but it’s more or less linear and no guide is needed since you can’t really miss any scene or ending. The soundtrack is a mix of original and royalty free tracks, the original ones being mostly composed by Sapporo Momoko (who also did Fairytale Requiem) but also featuring some Matsumoto Shinichirou (who worked on Adabana Itan). Similarly to other Liar-soft titles the game only has one vocal track which serves as both opening and ending theme and it is of course performed by Rita and composed by Blueberry&Yogurt (it’s also of course very good). The game’s structure is chapter based and through the map system you also have some choice of what order to read scenes in. Like a Shakespearian comedy, or a shoujo manga, the cast is more or less coupled up in pairs and the game features seven sex scenes, one being side content and one being mob sex (as in not featuring main or side characters). The overall length of the game is a bit on the shorter side, not quite full standard eroge length but not that far off. The trial is quite substantial as it covers the full first chapter. I feel like I should say something about the art here but it’s just going to devolve into me dorking out so I’ll save it for the review.

The Review

Oh my God dude the art. Evermaiden is a game that perfectly plays into the strengths of both writer and visual artist. Before I go off about the art I’d like to dip a bit more into Umihara talk. I don’t think it would be unfair to say that Umihara sometimes fail to hit the landing with her games. Umihara pulls a lot from mysteries and horror but also fairytales and her third acts and endings tend to lean more into the fairytale no matter how spooky or detective-y the previous two acts were which can definitely feel a bit disatisfying if you’ve got your expectations set for something else. If you’re sat there expecting an intricate web of twists and shat brix and the game ends up just kind of handwaving a lot of that to focus on the characters you might write an angry erogamescape review asking Silky’s Plus to get Kazuki Fumi to write their mystery games instead. Evermaiden manages to weave together these sometimes disparate goals and satisfies your goopy erogamer brain’s desire for sick reveals and explanations while still leaning into the fairytale and romance. Evermaiden deftly explains just enough to leave you feeling like you got all the answers you wanted but also leaves space for you to think big about the setting. The game is satisfying as a love story, as a scifi story, and it also brings plenty of fuel for your thought fires, plenty of gum for your thinking teeth to chew on and like unlike normal gum the flavour doesn’t go away in seconds you can just keep chewing until your brain jaw hurts and the tasty gum juices keep coming. Evermaiden has a really nice mix of called shots that makes you go “Oh my God is this going where I think it is” and reveals you don’t see coming but make so much sense when they do. Now I will say as much as it’s advertised as horror it’s not a particularly scary game, mostly because it’s just too beautiful both textually and visually. There are some scenes where you’re aware that something dark is lurking behind the beauty you’re witnessing but I feel like that unease isn’t really what people come to horror for. Now I would not call it a bad horror game and I think the horror aesthetic is very important and used very well which finally gets us to me going wild about the art.

It’s hard for me to discuss Ooishi’s art without just devolving into monkee like yells of enjoyment but I will do my best to stay grounded and human. Ooishi’s highly expressive art lends itself perfectly to horror as seen in games like France Shoujo or Shingakkou where they were in charge of just the horror related art. I could go on forever about the use in France Shoujo in particular (especially since I haven’t actually read Shingakkou yet) but basically Ooishi is very good at creating pieces that convey mood and for horror this is especially apt since an oppressive and uneasy mood does a lot more than like a big spooky monster guy. Don’t get me wrong I love big spooky monster dudes and fun monster designs but that’s a different flavour of horror. In Evermaiden Ooishi is of course the main artist and designer though not just in charge of the expressive mood pieces so we have a lot more to discuss. Something very notable about Ooishi’s style is their use of textures and patterns creating an almost collage like feeling. Evermaiden uses a lot of flower patterns in particular as well as fabric textures creating a textile look which reminded me of looking through my mother’s fabric cupboard back when she worked as a seamstress. The colours are also extremely striking and really pop against the black and white of (for example) the uniforms. The most visually striking scenes are accompanied by equally visually striking language, really the only word to describe it is beautiful. The flower motif is woven into both the visual and literal language and forms a real aesthetic harmony. When talking about “nice aesthetics” in Visual Novels I feel like it’s usually about how the designs and menus look like a persona or how the colouring staff put in some neat rim lighting, or if I’m the one talking it’s probably about how nicely coloured the cum is. Evermaiden I feel like really sticks out in how the visual and literal language play on each other and how choices like texture make both emotional, visual, and narrative sense.

I haven’t touched on this at all yet somehow so let’s get into the voice acting next. Evermaiden has a pretty starstudded cast featuring both veteran voices like Moka Choko in the lead role, as well fairly new faces like Kitaooji Yuki playing Canary. The main heroine Rook is played by one of my personal favourites Aji Sanma and man her and Moka Choko voicing the main couple is just amazing. I found the casting of Kawashima Rino as the tomboy Robin a bit off and the cast was a bit limited in number overall but I feel like the absolutely perfect casting of the main two really outshines any problems.

Okay so what complaints do I have? The soundtrack is a bit limited and there’s one royalty free track with a bit of a migraine inducing tone in it, the track is thankfully not used much. The original tracks the game does have I’m a big fan of, I love the Dark Souls-like boss music composed by Matsumoto Shinichirou especially. The settings menu is really limited as with all Liar-soft games, feels weird complaining about the settings menu in a Visual Novel but I’m kind of grasping for straws here. I’m sure the physical box of the game only contains a crystal case and not even a manual, Liar-soft does that a lot too (I played a digital copy so I do not actually know if this is true).

So would I recommend Evermaiden? Like with anything (other than France Shoujo go read France Shoujo please) it of course depends. I think fans of Liar-soft in general will have probably already started reading it, to fans of the steampunk series in particular though I definitely recommend it since I think you’ll find some comfy familiarities. The game’s also an easy recommend to mystery and scifi fans unless you’re looking for detective stories or hard scifi. Evermaiden is very soft scifi and there’s very little detective work. I think it’s probably a safe recommend to yuri fans as well probably, probably. I should mention that Umihara has a track record of including some pretty rough sexual content in her games (Fairytale Requiem in particular) but Evermaiden does not have any of that, there’s a little bit of whipping but nothing to warrant a big warning.

I think that’s about as much as I can say while staying completely clear of spoilers so thank you for reading this far xoxoxo. If you feel curious about the game go read it now but if you know you’re not going to play it and just want my insane ramblings then carry.

SPOILERS PAST THIS POINT!!!

THESE ARE SPOILERS!!!

Okay so for real what is Evermaiden?

Hey I’m not gonna start with spoilers right away just in case you’re reading this by accident right now so stop reading if you don’t want to be spoiler on the Liar-soft game Evermaiden, okay? Cool. I considered doing some fancy html to hide the spoilers but couldn’t be bothered and my blog design is awful so I’m sorry if you’re scrolling through to find something else and end up reading this.

So Evermaiden is a science fiction game set in a post post scarcity world. The titular Evermaiden is an arcane machine combining both old and new world technology to create a man made God which saw to the needs of a small priviledged group and eventually became seen as an actual God rather than a piece of technology by those who got her blessings. With the loss of old world technology people were unable to reproduce the Evermaiden and she was also incapable of recreating herself so with deterioration scarcity would once again become a fact of life for the priveleged few who at this point have become a cult of evermaiden worshipping cyber gnostics disgusted by the physical body and biological realities of being a human after having lived mostly free from them for so long. The thing they couldn’t completely be free of even with the Evermaiden though was human reproduction, for these cyber gnostics artificial insemination is the norm but even that is something they’d rather be free from. Needless to say the class divide between those with infinite resources thanks to the Evermaiden and those without got so severe that the world became completely split. Those living on the “outside” having a rich variety of cultures including groups that sought to become part of the “inside” group while still being completely cut off from them. The Puellarium is a research facility with the goal of creating a new Evermaiden using the processing power of the human brain but also to create a way for those on the “inside” to reproduce without the nasty biological reality of it all. Only one girl could become an Evermaiden replacement but the rest could still be turned into homunculus birthing machines. The girl who’s chosen as the new Evermaiden is of course Rook but after meeting and falling in love with Alouette her resolve and suitability is shaken. This isn’t the whole plot or setting but I think it’s enough to make clear what Evermaiden is really about.

Yeah so this is a game about bodily autonomy and reproductive rights. I think it’s pretty key to note that basically all the girls in the Puellarium are from the “outside” and none of them are aware of the real intent of the project. These are girls taken from less privileged positions and used to outsource the reproduction of the privileged class. I think this is a really neat way to bring up the colonial and classist problems around adoption and surrogacies from “poor nations”. These are often painted as purely positive things, the idea with adoptions is that you “save” a child from somewhere bad and bring it to a clearly better place, surrogacy which is the clearer parallel to Evermaiden is of course a way for same sex couples to have children but it is also often times less privileged women selling their reproductive function to privileged couples. Not all same sex couples have the ability to get a surrogate since it’s often a question of large amounts of money, it’s reproductive outsourcing and just as colonial as other forms of outsourcing. I think this is a bit more of a niche read but it’s a pretty clear parallel and real interesting so I felt like I had to bring it up.

On a less class and colonialism and all that jazz level there’s of course more general feminist reads that can be performed here. The game discusses a variety of family units and forms of child-rearing when talking about the backgrounds of the heroines. There’s a heroine from communal groups of “outsiders” where the children are raised by the whole community and monoamory is an exception rather than a norm, there’s a heroine from an agrarian monogamous community where they needs tons of kids to help work at the farm and take care of the other children, and then the main heroine Rook was raised by a single mother who aspired to be like the “insiders” desperately trying to keep her daughter pure of the sins of the flesh. None of these are necessarily painted as better or worse as the game is more interested in what happens when you don’t fit inside the familial framework that has been forced on you. Rook represents adapting to it, abandoning your self in favour of the structure, and Alouette is the inability to adapt and will to break free. We see this inability to adapt after continuous abuse eventually lead to an attempted suicide by Alouette but in the end you have her break Rook free from her destiny as a mindless maiden, an enslaved God, a mother. Love prevails, be gay do crime.

Another lil interesting angle to get at is that the Puellarium exists in two different states before and after Rook takes control as the new Evermaiden. The Puellarium began more explicitly as a research facilty and would violently punish rule breaking. Through a memory altering chastity belt, you read that right, the girls were rid of information that was deemed unecessary and problematic like for example the existence of men. The goal was to completely rid the girls of any memories of sex or sexual reproduction at all since it was of course scene as a sin of the flesh but it didn’t really pan out since even if you don’t remember what a dick is you can still go and smooch a girl (and then get whipped as punishment). After Rook takes control and all the researchers and staff die the research facility is turned into a school and the violent punishments are removed but the end goal of turning girls into breeding machines and the rules remain and are just enforced socially instead. Nothing truly changes it’s just the same thing expressed slightly differently. There’s no meaningful change if you just go “Well we’re not whipping girls for holding hands anymore but it’s still just as forbidden”. While the new Puellarium is slightly easier for Alouette to go through since there’s no threat of violence it’s still an opressive space she wants to be free from, it’s still trying to force her into a frame she does not fit inside of.

God there’s a lot more I feel like I could discuss. Like I haven’t brought up the fact that the girls are learning to polish their powers of “creation” which isn’t limited to just the homunculus breeding program end goal of course. The Puellarium aims to standardise what they use these powers for, trying to stiffle individuality. You could do a read of this as a commentary on the industrial nature of the school system or a discussion of creativity and art there’s… there’s a lot to dig into here. God going back to the family unit talk earlier there’s a very good scene where Rook talks about her understanding of marriage as not only purely political but also quite horrifying contract and man the whole thing about how she can’t create flowers since she can only create inanimate things while Alouette creates a wild arrangement of plants and gets it labled as weeds because it strays from the platonic ideal of the garden rose which is a purely cultivated man made flower aaaaah there’s so much.

I wrote this blogpost hoping that putting the thoughts on paper would rid my skull of them but the more I write the more I think of to discuss. Please play the game and talk to me about it instead, and also read France Shoujo and talk to me about that too and also Nekochan no Choubouken please pretty please.

xoxo always yours

Zodi

ABOVE ARE SPOILERS!!!