Full spoilers ahead for both YOU and ME and HER: A Love Story (Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi/Totono) and Summer Pockets.

I recently played two VNs, that on the surface level, seemingly have almost nothing in common. First we have Totono, which is a bizarre meta experience that explores what it means to play a visual novel and make choices that influence lives of heroines. Then, we have Summer Pockets, which is a more generally wholesome Key experience that explores the importance of summer vacation and how you choose to spend your youth. After finishing Summer Pockets, I began connecting the dots between these two different VNs, and exploring the feminist themes and messages shared by them.

Early on in Totono, you can allow (and must to progress the game) Aoi to patch the game so that you can be propelled towards getting a good ending. She states that, by doing this, you can no longer be cucked. Much, much later, we discover in more explicit terms that this means that Miyuki can never enter a relationship with anyone other than you, and even if she did, she wouldn’t be truly happy.

The crux of this culminates in your final choice of the game, that you must lock into permanently. Aoi or Miyuki? Who do you choose? By choosing Miyuki, you are giving into the future that you had chosen very early on in the game, therefore disallowing the option of her finding happiness any other way. It’s you and Miyuki forever now, baby. Of course she is pressuring you into choosing this option now, she’s experienced the future without happiness so many times at this point. She feels like she’s earned it. And maybe she has, maybe your actions up til now made her feel like she had no other choice.

Choosing Aoi, however, allows you to free Miyuki from this curse. You cannot be with Miyuki, but Miyuki is now free to choose her own future without the pressure of needing to make you love her. After all, if you play any more VNs after Totono, you’ll find Aoi again, and again, and again. She’s everywhere. She’s the embodiment of VN heroine.

If you can’t tell by the way I’m talking about it, I chose Aoi. Not only was I irritated being forced into an unskippable H scene where Miyuki never acknowledged the thought that maybe I wasn’t a guy, or maybe I didn’t have a penis, I also wanted to let Miyuki be free to make her own choices. I’ve found that several women have chosen Aoi as well. Now, I’m not judging you for choosing Miyuki, if you did. I think allowing her the choice was important.

Onto Summer Pockets. I expected the VN to be similar to most VNs, where the heroine’s happiness tends to be truly tied to loving the protagonist. However, while playing through various heroine routes, I never felt like their character seemed to be missing the love of the protagonist. They seemed to be perfectly happy in their own right, to various degrees (at least, when they appeared in other routes.)

At the very end of the game, in the Pocket route, Umi/Nanami shows Shiroha her potential futures. While only a short moment in this long game, this was one of the most important scenes of the entire game for me. I immediately noticed that Umi was showing Shiroha potential futures from the different endings that Hairi had experienced, clearly showcasing that Shiroha was happy in every one. She had friends. She had people that cared about her. Shiroha was happy, regardless of whether she fell in love with Hairi.

While it’s bittersweet that Shiroha can be happy without the existence of Umi in the future, I do feel like this was the point she was making. Umi was making the ultimate sacrifice for her mother. She was allowing her mother to make her own choices, to pursue her own happiness.

And so, the themes of allowing these women to make their own choices in the pursuit of happiness prevailed in both Totono and Summer Pockets. Two different curses that result in very similar outcomes. Miyuki’s patch-curse to force her to end up with you, whether you reciprocate or not. Shiroha’s premonition-curse that guilts her into avoiding others. They tie in together in a very lovely way, and I wanted to showcase that a bit here.

Thanks for reading.

TL;DR: choosing aoi is choosing feminism