Lately I want to think up ways to utilize my Japanese more as well as practise writing, so I aim to write some demo impressions and final game reviews for VNs that I am going to play. Here's a demo impression of the JP Switch version of
Iwakura Aria. The game will be localized and released on Steam and Switch in 2025.
Last year, when I walked into this gaming store in Japan, Iwakura Aria immediately caught my eyes: the cover art is beautiful yet creepy, grim yet colorful. The character on the left shows no emotion on her face whatsoever. But her eye is so piercing that it may even see through souls. The other character on the right, surrounded by flowers, is sleeping peacefully with a notebook in hand. Knowing virtually nothing about the game, I had no idea how to interpret this scene. But at that moment, my gut murmured: this one looks special.
And so, another game into the library. Although I have the final game on the shelf right now, my old habit of checking out the demo of a visual novel first leads to this post.
Illustrated by artist 100 Nen and written by Nemuru Gogo, Iwakura Aria is indeed a beautiful game, starting from the UI. Upon launching the demo, I was greeted by a minimalistic menu. Being a gamer for ages, I entered the config menu out of instinct. There is this beautifully-drawn CONFIG banner decorated by flowers. UI has a crucial impact to how we perceive a game – for example, Persona 5 feels stylish and absolutely trendy because of the red, black and white UI. Here, in Iwakura Aria, the UI gives the game a classy, elegant, but very distanced feeling – just like the box art itself.
The demo has three story segments available on the main menu. The first segment “Iwakura Mansion” (岩倉邸) is the beginning first hour of Iwakura Aria, whilst the remaining two “Her Body” (彼女の身体) and “Time Between The Two” (2人の時間) are short snippets further into the game. The story of Iwakura Aria began with our orphan main character, Ichiko Kitagawa, recalled the eventful summer of 1966. Her life was completely stuck back then – being jobless and disappointed with the world. When she was reluctantly helping the orphanage’s fund-raising bazaar, she met a man whose attention was caught by Ichiko’s handy drawing – a rare thing that Ichiko truly enjoys doing. Amano Iwakura, the richman passing by, happened to be searching for a resident housemaid. Learning that Ichiko was jobless at the moment, he proceeded to hire her. A week later, Ichiko stepped into the luxurious mansion of Iwakura house…
Unlike the art, the opening of Iwakura Aria did not leave a strong impression but only an interesting glimpse of what’s to come. After arriving at the mansion, Ichiko was greeted by Amano, introduced to his daughter Aria, briefed about her upcoming work tasks and asked to familiarized herself with the mansion. A friendly and handsome ex-Kazoku member (華族, aristocracy in Japan prior to 1947) and his gorgeous daughter who seldom leaves the house, on the surface the two seems to be no different from ordinary fathers and daughters, albeit their social status and beauty. However, after Ichiko falling asleep inside her room at night, I was shown a peculiar scene – Aria and Amano were conducting certain affair in a room full of knives and medicine bottles. Aria was unhappy with not being informed by his father about the hiring of Ichiko, and Amano cheerfully suggested that Ichiko can be fired whenever they want. ...Looks like these two are not as perfect as they might appear.
Despite the uneventful writing, how the writer depicts Ichiko’s reaction to Amano left a positive impression on my mind. Ichiko was a victim of sex abuse – she was harassed by her ex-employer and other men at work. This past trauma surfaced when she, before being introduced to Aria, learnt that she is the only resident housemaid. Being alone with a man in the mansion, friendly or not, exposed her old wound, and she was afraid of getting assaulted by Amano. At that instant, I know the characters in Iwakura Aria will be dimensional and have proper personal history – a quality which many good visual novels possess.
Instead of being a pure visual novel with story scenes back-to-back, Iwakura Aria allows the players to move within the mansion between scenes. Players are expected to explore a certain room in order to further progress the story. In the demo, I visited the same room twice and was greeted by an alleged foreshadowing of a future event. Due to a lack of time limit, in the final game I will definitely attempt to investigate the mansion thoroughly before moving on.
Although the other two episodes available in the demo illustrated a change in character dynamics compared with the opening hour of the game, they are merely a few minutes long, so I am not dissecting them here. Apart from the excellent art and intriguing story, Iwakura Arai is fully-voiced by a league of high-profiled VA: Sayumi Suzushiro for Ichiko, Toshiyuki Morikawa for Amano and Chie Nakamura for Aria. Be sure to prepare your earphones or headphones for a nice auditory adventure in this beautiful game.
Overall, after playing the demo, I am ready to dive in, to see if the story and everything else can live up to the art. That’s a tall ask, but I remain optimistic.