• Price: $19.99 USD
• Developer: Studio Élan
• Publisher: Sometimes You
• Release Date: February 21, 2025

A review code was kindly provided by Sometimes You on behalf of Studio Élan. We thank them for allowing us to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

Content warning: rated T; homelessness & food insecurity, past suicide attempt & child abuse mentioned, offscreen animal death, divorce

I always like to check out the latest visual novels, and the eShop summary for yuri VN Please Be Happy caught my attention from the very first sentence. Slice-of-life is great on its own, but add a fantasy version of Wellington, New Zealand as the (unusual) setting and I’m in!

The main character is a Korean fox spirit named Miho, who has spent a long time searching for someone who made a huge impact on her in the brief time she knew them. Our story begins with her deciding to travel to Wellington after hearing good things about the city.

Miho has been alone for as long as she can remember; she has no friends or family. This isn’t necessarily by choice, as people always forget her by the next day. She doesn’t trust others because of previous experiences, and so she doesn’t understand people either. Without anyone to teach or support her, she must resort to stealing food and sleeping outdoors to survive.

Unexpectedly, Juliet, one of the people Miho steals from, tracks her down and offers her free food and a place to stay. Miho is shocked to realize that Aspen, a local barista and aspiring author, somehow remembers her when she sees her again the next day – and so does Juliet!

“I wanna learn how to be a person!” ~Miho

After being forgotten by people for so long, Miho bravely accepts Juliet’s offer and takes this chance to get to know these women, and to finally be known herself in return. She decides to learn how to live instead of just surviving.

Now that she’s not spending all her time figuring out where her next meal will come from or where she’ll sleep, Miho doesn’t really know what to do with herself. Aspen and Juliet can’t stay with her all day, so Miho must find new ways to entertain herself – such as trying to paint for the first time or watching TV.

She ends up meeting new people as she explores Wellington on her own and tries new things. They may not remember her the next day, but she slowly learns more about their lives every time she runs into them. (Cyrus was probably my favorite side character!)

“If we want the rewards of being loved, we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.” ~Tim Kreider

And when Aspen and Juliet are available, Miho will gradually strengthen her relationships with them. It was so heartwarming to see her open up and grow as a person as the story progressed. Once Miho has settled in, the limited choices you make will eventually lead you down either Aspen or Juliet’s romantic routes.

What was really nice was the way that the development of any romantic feelings doesn’t affect the friendship between Miho, Aspen, and Juliet in a negative way. There aren’t any dramatic love triangles where they fight it out. 😂

I also appreciated how the dramatic moment towards the end of chapter 3 wasn’t exactly the same in each route. The small, brief conflict and new character for Aspen’s route differed from the ones in Juliet’s story.

I feel like visual novels sometimes don’t differentiate some of the routes enough, so I was happy to see a bit more variety here. (You can also switch things up across playthroughs by selecting the side character story you missed out on the first time.)

Each love interest’s route is split into 2 different endings. For the most part, the content in the main story of that route is the same, but the endings you’ll see after the credits are where the split occurs based on 3 (?) choices you made earlier in the story.

I thought that Juliet’s route was much more emotional, and I liked her more overall, but I still enjoyed Aspen’s route. Interestingly enough, I prefer the ending the guide referred to as “comfy” for Juliet but the “wild” one more for Aspen.

There are no bad endings in Please Be Happy; having them wouldn’t make much sense based on the title, now would it? 🤔 Miho’s story is just so incredibly touching, and is indeed a very happy one. I was so affected by the characters and their stories that I found myself crying several times. (And it’s not easy to make me cry!)

Most of the side characters’ storylines made me very emotional as well. Some of them are a little bittersweet, but they’re definitely worth experiencing. (Mr. Kim didn’t stir up as many emotions as the other side characters, but he was still quite likable.)

The ending theme song made me cry, too. I thought the lyrics really connected with the story. The soundtrack was very effective in conveying the emotions of each scene and capturing the essence of the story.

You can listen to the soundtrack under the Extras section, and also check out the gorgeous CG art in the gallery section. They made some great design choices for the game in general; for one thing, they included both a dyslexic font and different font size options.

I liked how they displayed the dialogue in speech bubbles above the narrative text in the text boxes. The dialogue happens to be fully voiced in English (not sure about other languages). It was a nice choice to have one of the characters greet you as you load your save, making them seem just as welcoming as they are in the game itself!

I loved all of the characters in Please Be Happy – there wasn’t anyone who I disliked. Miho was a great main character, and her initial cluelessness was adorable and often quite funny (“what’s a calorie” 😂).

My only real complaint was that there were a few times when I could select one of the locations on the map, and there weren’t any character interactions in those scenes. As a result, they felt like “filler” scenes instead of something that meaningfully moved the story forward.

Overall though I thought the writing was just fantastic. So many scenes gave me goosebumps and made me tear up, such as an important moment with Silver. They made me cry a lot, but I’m so happy I got to experience this wonderful story. If you enjoy visual novels at all, Please Be Happy is a must-play.

I hope to see more from Studio Élan in the future. They referenced the Underworld and a war between humans and the Fabled (fantasy creatures), which could perhaps be the basis for a spin-off. A continuation of Eunbi’s story might be nice as well. In the meantime, I need to check out their previous visual novel on Switch, Heart of the Woods (2021), to enjoy more content from such a talented team.

9/10