article 1 — august 18, 2025
an ode to paradise — a paradise blvn (pil/slash) review.

be prepared. this one is a long one.

to paradise,

the game that has ruined my life. something, for the past month or so, i have been completely entrenched in the world of. it sucks so fucking bad. it rules so hard. i despise it deeply and love it endlessly.

it all started when my lovely fiancé showed me an edit of this horror game neither of us were familiar with. from the video alone, we became super interested in the concept — it was both a horror vn AND a bl? there are a few novels i have seen that fit the niche (sweet pool, togainu), yet outside of bad ends, english translated horror blvns are hard to come by. we were privvy to snippets of cannibalism and gore cgs in the edit. of course, with that being our bread and butter, we quickly saved the game's title and kept it on the backburner while we finished up our watchlist at the time.

a week or two rolls by. i am tantalized by the very existence of this game- the curiosity of what it holds damn near kills me. i decided to take a peek at the VNDB entries for the characters, immediately recognizing two of the subjects of that edit: azuma and takara. don and i take the time to explore the spoiler-free surface level of the page, reading all of the profiles and regarding all of the attributes of each character. my mind settles on the fact that we need this game.

the steam summer sale comes along. we quickly learned that the yaoi game we were recently introduced to, paradise, was disappointingly not on sale. we decided instead to go halfsies on the game, each pitching in 10 dollars for the 20 dollar purchase to have in don's steam family (which i am gladly mooching off of). this has been both the best and worst 10 dollars i have spent in my life.

he day we purchase the game: june 26th. first time we play the game: july 6th. life gets in the way, okay? regardless, the first time we open this game, we are completely unprepared for the sheer amount of exposition. there is SO much reading. there is SO much reading. there is so much leading up to the introduction of everyone else. we slowly can piece together the plot within a sea of prologue.


assuming the audience is unaware of the premise of this game, "uke supreme" azuma is a boring convenience store worker who dredges on with his day-to-day life in search of something to hold on to. on a whim, he enters a lottery and ends up winning a vacation to 6-day remote island tour. there are 9 other compatriots on the tour, with varying relevance, that are present for work-related or other reasons. one other, in particular, is also there from winning a lottery- takara. he is one of three romancible characters; the other two being salary/fisherman matsuda and architect/asshole mitsugi. there are two other important characters, tour guide hongou and photographer shimada, that have their own respective endings, just no romantic route options (which is so unfortunate).

being someone who has been minimally exposed to other yaoi visual novels, i was suprised at how big the cast felt. despite there only being 5 truly important characters, it still felt like a staggering amount for such a story. even moreso for the fact that i immediately adored EVERYONE. their introductions were all so charming and entertaining, each voice felt fitting to the respective character, and i immediately fell in love with the main cast. even the side characters, to which i still am neutral towards, felt amicable. i swooned over matsuda in the same breath that i laughed over mitsugi's antics, i clinged to hongou and declared him my sweet baby kitten, giggled at takara's excitable behavior and overstuffed suitcase, i adored shimada's personable nature and obvious passion for photography. i knew these characters was powerful in winning over my heart.

from left to right: mitsugi, shimada, takara, azuma, matsuda, and hongou.

route reviews [spoilers imminent]

Content Warning: this game is explicitly 18+ and contains themes of intense violence, rape, psychological torture, childhood trauma and abuse, unavoidable death, cannibalism, confinement, forced feminization, and suicide. the reviews will contain spoilers of the game but base-level talk of these subjects.

matsuda's route

look at him. look at this smug asshole.

the first of them all to win my affections was matsuda. while playing with don, i pointed at matsuda and essentially declared "that one." i knew i wanted to start his route first, since we found out extremely quickly that takara's was only unlockable under the conditions you completed both mitsugi and matsuda's. his stoic yet tired dad energy immediately reminded me of my fiancé. i knew i needed that man.

i want to sum his route up with one single word; contradictory.

as much as i absolutely love matsuda, he was made for me and me alone, his writing felt very janky at times. he went from a pleasantly agreeable and composed guy with a little hint of darkness within him to a senselessly violent and sadistic rapist. controversially, him being a rapist is not what bothers me most. i truly felt it was unnecessary to add to his character attributes, but it makes sense with the way you see him regard others. what bothered me the absolute most was how Quickly this shift happened. it wasn't gradual, it wasn't born out of necessity, it just kind of happened. it was like a switch flipped in his writing that turned him into a completely different person. it wasn't like he was hiding under the facade of a mask the whole time, it looked like there wasn't even a mask to begin with- the rapist mentality just appeared. he became Evil Rape Guy out of seemingly nowhere, and don and i both literally had to stop and go, "did we miss something here??". it felt gratuitous and excessive to have him act in that way towards azuma when there was literally 0 motivation for him to. his actions felt more in tune with the personality of kido, a side character, than matsuda himself.

don't get me wrong, i utterly enjoyed his shift to violence. i felt like that was way more thought out than just making him a rapist for the sake of the plot. as soon as he stopped caring and started punching and axing people was when i cheered. i am a complete sucker for characters that shed their mask and go absolutely insane, re: yuuya kizami, patrick bateman; re:: aspd coded bitches. i think matsuda is honestly untintentional aspd rep, just from the way he superficially regards everyone on the island and his "love" for azuma is purely manipulative. he literally decides on a ration system based on performance. despite being aspd coded, is he Good representation? absolutely not. it might just be my own projection ultimately, but i love aspd characters, which is why i've forgiven matsuda for the crime of being poorly written. i can fix him, i swear.

outside of his writing being dogshit at times, he can be so cute and endearing. this is why the sudden personality shift felt so jarring- he is SO sweet in the beginning of his route. he nearly has a heart attack and loses 5 years off his life when azuma climbs a tree. he's dejected like a kicked puppy when azuma doesn't agree with what he does. he kicks azumas sandcastle and cheers. he runs into a burning cabin to save azuma. he's so protective over azuma times that it's sickening. those silly elements of his character are what i adore the most, the softness wirhin his otherwise serious personality. within his complexity, i cannot help but fall in love with him from these moments alone, cementing him as one of my peronal favorites in paradise, overall route aside.

mitsugi's route

he's lucky he's pretty.

the second route, being the only choice we had, was mitsugi. oh, mitsugi.

takara's route

i get this guy way too much. i wish there were more cgs...

i was so fucking excited for this route.

! bonus other !

shimada's ending

you deserved so much more.

one of my favorite endings in the entire game, dare i say.

hongou's ending

my perfect little 35 y/o kitty princess.

i have no idea why or how my brain latched onto this man so hard despite not even being a romancible option, but it did. i love hongou WAY too much.

oh, paradise. how i loathe you. i have wasted more than 30 hours of gameplay throwing myself into the insanity that is this yaoi visual novel. it does nothing but consume half of my waking thoughts, and for what?? i cannot in good faith even call this game anything extrordinary. i think it has a great storyline, an interesting plot, yet it left me with nothing but more questions by the end.

i'm hoping that the fandisks kiwame and musubi compensate for such an unsatisfying conclusion. there is still so much about this universe that i simply Need to know. despite being left hungry for more knowledge, i will do anything to see more interactions between all of these characters. i love every single one of them (minus the outlier 4-man posse) and their group dynamic as a whole. maybe that's truly what makes me so fond of this series.