• Price: $49.99 USD (digital), only available from 3rd party sellers physically so price varies
• Developer: Idea Factory
• Publisher: Aksys Games
• Release Date: October 27, 2022

Content warnings: Somewhat dystopian society, unethical scientific practices, and one love interest struggles with suicidal ideation.

Sailor Moon is one of my favorite series, so when I saw that Paradigm Paradox was an otome with “female” superheroes I was pretty excited. The premise is that (most of) the male love interests transform into female superheroes “with secret powers all so new to [them].” They are the ones named Sailor Moon! 🎶 Not dissimilar to the Sailor Starlights from the final season of Sailor Moon. I really like the art style and the idea for the story, so let’s see if the game is “super” too!

Orphaned heroine Yuuki Takanashi lives in Theta, a colony located inside of a climate-controlled dome. The colony was established after the environment deteriorated to the point that it was unable to sustain life. Despite the circumstances behind the colony’s creation, its citizens have all the amenities they need. Yuuki considers herself an ordinary girl, and she spends her days going to school and hanging out with her best friend.

There are rumors that monsters appear in Theta after curfew, and superheroes supposedly defeat them. Yuuki has never seen any proof that these rumors are true…until the one time she’s out after curfew. A monster attacks her, but she’s saved by a group of four girls. This incident results in Yuuki manifesting powers of her own, and she becomes a part of their team.

The group calls themselves the Blooms, and they’ve been tasked with eliminating monsters – known as Vectors – who attack Theta. Each girl can use Psychokinesis powers as well as a unique ability of their own. Yuuki is interested in getting to know her new teammates, but they don’t seem too interested in socializing outside of “work.”

Of course, this can mostly be attributed to her teammates being guys who are embarrassed about having to transform into girls in order to use their powers. The commander doesn’t want the public to uncover the group’s secret activities. He also heavily discourages any romance between the members. Yuuki’s got her work cut out for her if she wants to befriend her coworkers of sorts.

Winning Love By Daylight 💕🌹

Yuuki’s love interests include the 4 guys-turned-magical-girls on her team, one support staff member for the team, and 3 antagonists allied with the Vectors. I liked a lot of the character designs, but their personalities were more of a mixed bag:

The Blooms

Kamui (🚹)/Sena (🚺)

Kamui is a flirty guy who everyone seems to like, but he pushes people away due to his past and doesn’t think people really like him. His behavior as Sena is a little different; she’s more of a tsundere and acts like Yuuki is a burden to cover for the fact that she cares about her and wants her to stay safe.

I liked Kamui for the most part, but he’s waaaaaay too self-sacrificing for my tastes. He overextends himself to help others. I did like his relationship with his grandfather (I wish we got more of grandpa, to be honest). The best ending for Kamui was cute, but it felt like the writers “deus ex machina”-ed the main plot issue with a resolution coming out of nowhere.

Mihaya (🚹)/Moka (🚺)

Mihaya can often be found in the library, so he’s already getting bonus points for reading a lot. (I also really like his hair.) His routes have some of my favorite lines in the game, including the scene where Yuuki says, “He’s only a first-year student, but he has a real air of gravitas about him. Or maybe he actually doesn’t have an ounce of gravitas and I’m just a dingbat.” 😂

I think Mihaya does his best to be considerate, but he gets the “at least you tried award” for his attempts to comfort people even though his peers say cruel things about him. He’s a bit awkward but ultimately means well. His storyline had the potential to be one of the more interesting ones, but the resolution wasn’t satisfying enough.

Tokio (🚹)/Kaori (🚺)

Similar to Mihaya, Tokio is an awkward guy – but he seems to have more trouble understanding other people. This could be attributed in part to his background. He seems more open and friendly in his female form. There’s a story arc where he and Yuuki have a misunderstanding, and he comes off as a little cold in those scenes, but I liked him overall.

Tokio is similar to Mihaya in that he shares an interest in intellectual pursuits, although he investigates more scientific topics. They just don’t write strong enough conclusions for each love interest’s stories, and that holds true with Tokio as well. That being said, he’s pretty and smart, and his CGs were the best overall.

Ayumu (🚹)/Haruka (🚺)

Aesthetically, Ayumu reminds me of Hijikata from Hakuouki, and with Haruka I thought of another Haruka – Sailor Uranus from Sailor Moon. You know, if she had black hair. This Haruka had my favorite design out of the whole team, so I was already thinking I’d like them. Sadly, he’s overly aggressive with Yuuki, getting physical with her several times when he’s angry.

I can deal with enemies doing something to harm the main character in an otome, but once a love interest does it I completely lose interest in them. Ayumu is also overprotective of his sister to the point of isolating her even from female friends. He does improve as his story progresses, but out of the Blooms he’s my least favorite.

The Enemy: Yuuki “I Can Change Him” Takanashi

Yuuki is a very caring person, and she almost cares too much. She tries to get to know the love interests, and wants to know why they are way they are. I think she tends to misinterpret her relationships with the others a lot, which gets kind of awkward. But what’s good about Yuuki is that she isn’t a complete doormat; she does stand up for herself.

However, she’s a bit naive, and every time one of the love interests opens up to her at all she’ll say that they’re “kind” and/or “amazing.” (I wanted to shove a thesaurus in her hands.) She forgives the love interests who frighten and hurt her. There are certain aspects of the antagonist LIs that I like, but for the most part I wasn’t a fan. Some otome fans enjoy these dynamics in fiction, and I don’t begrudge them for their tastes. It’s just not for me.

Yukinami

I can acknowledge that Yukinami has a traumatic past that didn’t allow him to learn social norms, and still say that his behavior isn’t okay. He’s very carefree and doesn’t understand concepts like friendship. Yet he’s possessive of Yuuki, and constantly demands her attention.

He gets extremely violent and has frequent mood swings, and Yuuki keeps thinking about how she doesn’t want to make him angry. Even though he makes an effort to get better after learning that his behavior isn’t okay, that doesn’t make for a great relationship.

Hyuga

Hyuga is 24 years old to Yuuki’s 16, so I’m already uncomfortable starting his route. On the plus side, I didn’t see much in terms of romance with him. He’s also pretty violent and has mood swings, and he’s very disdainful of Yuuki, the Blooms, and humanity in general. The “mother hen” aspect of his personality is cute and funny when it pops up, but I’d pass on Hyuga personally.

Ibuki (🚹)/Moravia (🚺)

Ibuki is another love interest who I had high hopes for based on his appearance, but his views and actions are concerning. I don’t take as much issue with love interests who attack the main character when they’re enemies, but stop when they start the process of befriending each other. That’s what happens with Ibuki.

I got some laughs from poor Yuuki’s inability to recognize that Ibuki and Moravia are the same people. (Wow, two characters with heterochromia and pink hair? I wonder if they could be the same person. 🤔😂)

She’s also alarmingly slow to remember that a person’s male and female forms both use the same phrasing. Despite the occasional amusement in Ibuki’s route – and that he’s not violent with Yuuki post-friendship – I didn’t like that he is 21 (five years older than her), and he’s got a warped mentality.

Other: Ryo

Ryo works with the Blooms as support staff, and he’s a 26 year old. I don’t mind age differences if everyone is an adult, but Yuuki is 16! Thankfully the romance is more hinted towards than anything. I would have liked Ryo more as a love interest if this wasn’t a story about a high schooler. He’s mature, competent, and inquisitive.

Overall Thoughts: Oto-meh

To be honest, I was disappointed with Paradigm Paradox. I had high expectations for it based on the quality of the art, and had hoped for a more cheerful atmosphere. I wouldn’t have minded the dystopian society as much if the Blooms had been more welcoming to Yuuki.

One of the major issues I had with the game was that way too many of the love interests could be placed in the emotionally distant category. It felt like there was too much overlap between the love interests’ personality types. The romance is fairly shallow, which is okay since Yuuki’s in high school, but the shallowness extends to the overall plot too.

They could have at least made things interesting and more complex by exploring gender and sexuality; however, they did not have any romantic encounters between Yuuki and her love interests when they were in their female forms. Yuuki as a bi-/pansexual would have made sense in this, and it would have added some sort of LGBT+ representation to the otome genre.

And similar to Charade Maniacs, Paradigm Paradox just has too many love interests for them to write an effective story. They made the decision to add several short – and sudden – bad endings for each love interest when they could have fleshed out their normal and happy endings more. The longer bad endings at least had some impact.

Many of the normal endings felt completely pointless like the shorter bad endings. The happy endings weren’t terribly satisfying, and the true ending didn’t sit well with me either. Like Kamui’s happy ending, the true ending seemed like one with “deus ex machina” shenanigans and the conflict didn’t feel completely resolved. If you’re looking for an otome to play, I’d recommend something like Cupid Parasite or the Code: Realize games (of which there are 3) instead.

6/10