Review: Luckydog1 (Tennenouji)
Luckydog1 is a BL visual novel created by Tennenouji and illustrated by Yura which was originally released in 2009. Last month the English version was finally released by MangaGamer, so I wanted to write a short blog post about it! I've played a little bit of the Japanese version before, but never got to finish it back then, so it was finally time to finish this game.
Story Protagonist Giancarlo is a low ranking member of a mafia group CR:5 and is currently kept captive in a prison in the United States. Life is easy for him and he's on friendly terms with the guards. However, after four high ranking members of CR:5 are thrown into prison, Giancarlo receives a letter ordering him to help them break out. If he succeeds, he's promised to become their next leader.
As far as I know there's no recommended route order, so I played the game in the following order: Ivan > Giulio > Luchino > Bernardo. This game has a lot of choices, so I used this guide which was created by the fan translator of the game who also got to translate the official version!
The story of this game takes place in the United States during the 1930s, which I know almost nothing about, but I thought it was an interesting setting! Gian is known for his great luck such as his many succesful prison escapes, which is also how he earned the nickname ''lucky dog''. However, because he is on friendly terms with the guards his life is pretty easy and he's not in a hurry to get out this time. This changes when he receives a letter ordering him to break the other CR:5 members out of prison.
I thought it was kind of funny that Gian's the uke in this game, yet while they're still in prison there's multiple scenes in which he tops, such as the visitor and also one of the prison guards. I think that's really something you only see in older BL games, but I can appreciate it. All four routes kind of follow a similar pattern, and after the prison break you end up in the city of Daivan where you'll choose which character you'll team up with. I also thought it was fun how the game shows which route you're on, as well as the status screen which you can see below, so you can kind of keep track which routes you finished and which ones still have endings you haven't played yet.
Characters The first route I played was Ivan's route who's easily my favorite character because he's just too funny. He's a total tsundere who also gets flustered when Gian acts flirty with Bernardo. He swears a lot and it was really amusing hearing the voice actor say stuff like ''fuck'' and ''shit'' in English. One of my favorite scenes is this conversation they have with the whole group shortly after his 18+ scene in which he kind of threatens Gian to ''fuck him again'' and everyone's looking at him like ''huh, again?'' and Ivan just looks so embarrassed... Their relationship is strangely cute because even though Ivan doesn't directly admit he likes Gian or anything, he kind of immediately acts like they're already in a relationship and suddenly kisses Gian. When Gian asks him why he did that, Ivan claims that's what ''pals do''. I need to play the fandisc Badegg after this because I want to see more interactions between these two...
After finishing Ivan's route I played Giulio's route. He's the quiet type who doesn't talk much, though he shouldn't be underestimated as he went to prison for murder and is also a skilled killer, which is why his nickname is ''mad dog''. He also has an obsession with dead bodies which, well... you'll see when you play his route. He's a sweet character but he does have some interesting hobbies. Even though Gian thinks it's the first time they met, Giulio sometimes acts like he has known him for even longer. His relationship with his grandfather also seems complicated as he easily gets ordered around and will not do anything against his wishes, although he could obviously beat him in a fight if he wanted to, so I was curious to learn more about that. I have played his route before years ago so I still remembered a few details of it, but still a very good route!
The third route I played was Luchino's route, which mostly focuses on his past and the death of his wife and daughter. He also doesn't seem to trust the boss of CR:5 whose whereabouts are currently unknown. Luchino is a playboy who loves women, but I was surprised how easily he ended up with Gian lol. This is something I like about this game because they don't really seem to be bothered by the fact that their partner is a man, so there's not a lot of dialogue that focuses on that kind of drama either. That one scene in which they dress up like police officers is probably one of the funniest scenes in the entire game because it's so dumb (in a good way). I really liked him together with Gian as a pairing and will definitely be checking out any extra content that focuses on them too.
The final route I played was Bernardo's route, who's someone Gian has known for a long time and they're pretty close to each other. They often jokingly flirt with each other and use nicknames such as ''darling'' and ''honey'', though they haven't done anything more than that (until you play his route of course). Bernardo takes care of all kinds of communications between the groups within the city so he's usually in his room answering phone calls and doesn't always tell Gian the truth about everything. Even though he isn't the type of character I would usually like, I enjoyed his interactions with Gian a lot.
Thoughts and impressions Luckydog1 is one of these games that always received positive reviews from Japanese fans and also always ranked high in BL magazine polls. It was originally released in 2009, but the game has gotten a number of spinoff games and a fandisc (Luckydog1+Badegg). I'm curious if they will also localize Badegg some day, but maybe I'll just play it in Japanese. Of course because this is an older game, the artstyle is also a bit different from games that would be released nowadays, but honestly I don't really mind and I think it has a certain kind of charm to it. Yura's artstyle has changed a lot throughout the years, so it is kind of fun to compare the CGs from this game to some of the more recent Luckydog1 art. I also really liked this game's humor and Gian often has the funniest lines imaginable. Of course it has serious scenes too, but combining humor with pretty dark elements such as non-con and murder seems to be a common theme in Yura's games. So I think that as long as you're okay with these kinds of themes, I recommend checking it out yourself!
The English localization also didn't disappoint, and the translation often matched the spoken dialogue in the game pretty well. I imagine some of the jokes in the game were a little difficult to translate (not to mention all of the unique insults...) as Japanese and English are very different languages, but I think it was handled well. I also like how they kept some of the the Italian terms, which I sometimes had to look up, but I had fun doing a little research as this wasn't a topic I ever learned much about before. I read the interview with the translator which MangaGamer published the other day which you can read here, which I recommend reading as there's a lot of interesting information. They also seem happy to answer any questions about translation choices, so if you have questions I think you can always just ask them. It also helps that they have been fan translating this game for many years and are obviously very passionate about it, and I think most people in the fandom have come across their translations at some point!
I think after this I will definitely try to play Luckydog1+Badegg as I already miss some of the characters, but luckily this is one of these games that has a lot of extra content. I'm currently still waiting for the release of Tennenouji's newest game Ani Asobi too, which I think is still scheduled to be released somewhere this year. All of Tennenouji's games have such different themes, so it's always a surprise what kind of project they're working on next.
