Bone(s) to pick with Motonari's route
Let me start it off by saying that IkeSen is my favorite otome game ever. Hell, it might be one of my favorite games, period. All the routes I have gone through were great in their own ways. I have taken a long break from games, and the first one I came back to was, as you might guess, IkeSen. I have stopped playing right when Motonari was introduced (ENG), so I was rather excited to see I came back to his route already being there, so of course, I dove right in.
You know, we always joke that all these boys have trauma MC has to fix; all these suitors are good people that had a lot of bad things happen to them. Motonari is different. He is a bad person who had a lot of bad things happen to him. He is a scumbag, and he is perfectly aware of it, nay, he is absolutely at peace with that thought; and I think that is genuinely great. It is not a Kenshin who is a misunderstood villain, it is not a Kennyo who knows he is doing bad things, but believes his reasons are important enough to explain them, and maybe repent. Mouri is a scoundrel because it is the only fun way to live, and that is an important distinction from others.
There is no sympathy for the devil here, Motonari is straight-up evil, he has a corrupt moral code which is obviously very different from MC’s. (which is very entertaining to explore in the Spark of Love and Captive Hearts gacha stories, his shitty morals from his own POV are a treat) We finally have a suitor on our hand that MC won’t understand by just digging her way to his heart. All she digs up are the (legitimate) reasons for the way he is, that is it; there is no heart of gold to be found deep down there. This Mr. Twister really shines through as the dickhead he is in others' routes. (I was absolutely enamoured by him in Sasuke's route, like yes, go, Joker looking ass, do your thing, king) There is literally no room for "eh, maybe he is just a bad boy with a heart of gold".
This brings me exactly to the reason this route left me somewhere between “confused” and “frustrated”. There are no touching (see what I did there) points between these two, no way they would find common ground. Yet just 2 chapters before the Epilogue, all of a sudden Motonari has a change of heart because MC is hot ig idk™️ . There was no slow and non-linear build-up to his change like there was with Kenshin, for example. Mouri just decided he loves MC now for some bloody reason, he goes from treating her like a dog to like the love of his life in a snap, losing all character integrity. There is no chemistry there, as I said, these two literally are opposites and not the attracting ones, but the facing-absolutely-different-directions ones. Their "bickering" was more like serious warranted disagreements and actual fighting, there was nothing cute about them constantly arguing. It is like we were just given a very good character study instead of a route, and at the end someone went “oh shoot, the romance!” I did not “believe” MC throughout the whole thing either, she excused some of Motonari’s most questionable behavior (even at the very damn beginning!) solely because of his physical attractiveness, that is it. I guess the power of horny “fixed” the man! (AND his OCD! Which is a separate reason for my frustration altogether)
I am just angry that MC went through no transformation of her own, I guess. I think that would have salvaged the route in some way. Just for reference, to describe what I mean, I’d say Nobunaga’s and Masamune’s routes are two very good examples of MC and the suitor learning from each other. In Motonari’s route, however, MC just fully drags Mouri into her mindset (again, with no effort, blink and you’ll miss the point it happens) without making a single step towards him. Imagine how cool it would have been if we finally got a Bonnie and Clyde instead of a Beauty and the Beast? (shoutout)
That brings me over to my last point. Do you know who had chemistry, unlike MC and Motonari? Do you know whose convictions were different but on the same axis? Do you know whose bickering was fun? Kicho and Motonari. (At first I was like, haha, Motonari and Kicho as a joke, but bro, I don't think it’s a joke anymore) Yes, I am dead serious. I consciously acknowledged that I sensed that whole dynamic being delightful and making sense during the scene where Mouri smokes in front of Kicho. I legitimately felt like I had to make MC leave the premise to give the two the privacy they clearly needed. Motonari and Kicho are those aforementioned opposites that attract, and I realized how little sense Motonari made with MC only thanks to these two guys' electricity being there for contrast. They are similar enough – there is a reason Kicho did not hire Motonari and Motonari did not hire Kicho – they were partners in crime, equals; yet different enough to disagree, while still doing the same thing. They just did it for different reasons, whereas MC was busy with something from a completely different field, and of course, for reasons absolutely disconnected from both of the men. Both are extremely smart, but Mouri is hot-headed and Kicho would give Elsa a run for her money, Motonari is quick and cunning, and Kicho is careful and calculated. These are polar opposites that attract. Just imagine if all this was cut from this couple and applied to MC and Motonari instead.
I just felt very disappointed by an unchanging goody two shoes, genuinely infuriating flowerhead MC and the weakest relationship writing I have seen in IkeSen yet.
