As the story goes, Umitsuki Production’s Love Escalator (ラブ・エスカレーター,1998) was slated for an earlier release date but was continually postponed. The July 1997 issue of Bug Bug magazine reported the game as being 78% completed.1 Two months later, E-Login touched upon the game’s various delays and revealed a release date of August 8.2 In reality, Love Esclator was not released until April the following year. As a result of these delays, Love Escalator bears the reputation of being one of the final erogē released for the PC-98. While the extent of this claim can be questioned, what holds true is that this point in time was undoubtedly the era of Windows, with various bishōjo magazines having covered and continuing to cover how this shift in operating systems affected both the otaku industry and otaku culture. For example, published in March 1997, the computer column of Dengeki Hime’s first issue points out that the common presumption that a PC-98 was the machine for bishōgē was no longer the case.3 By its third issue, Dengeki Hime warned readers that while bishōgē may not require powerful computers and that modern PCs can be expensive to purchase, eventually, PCs will have to be replaced.4 With the Japanese release of Microsoft Windows 98 just right around the corner, those on PC would eventually have to make the transition. Love Escalator itself only arrived three months before Windows 98. To an extent then, the game certainly represents the end of an era.
Takashi Kurosaki (黒崎 崇) is in his last year of high school and has spent the past the few years living a life he admits is rather aimless—going to school, hanging out with friends, and going home. In other words, Takashi has no hobbies and holds no aspirations. In contrast, Takashi’s best friend, Toru Wakiya (脇谷 徹), has recently developed one singular goal: to date the new transfer student Rie Kawai (河合 理恵). Despite Toru’s brash attitude, he is incapable of directly confessing his feelings to Rie so he concocts a scheme. It turns out that Takashi and Rie were rather close friends in middle school but drifted apart. It would not be all too strange for Takashi to approach Rie and invite her to a group outing where Toru hopes he can woo her. Unfortunately for Toru, both Takashi and Rie harbor unrequited feelings for one another and the circumstances of their reunion eventually leads to the start of a relationship yet one that must be kept secret from Toru. Love Escalator centers on the trials and tribulations of Takashi and Rie’s relationship during their last year of high school.
The story begins in April and ends the following March. In that time period, players will experience various story events—a day at the beach, the sports festival, a ski trip, and so on. These arcs take place on specific dates spread across the academic year. In between, players will decide how Takashi can spend his time. He can hang out with Toru, ask Rie out on a date, or go home alone. Furthermore, Takashi can also spend time with two “side” heroines befriended early on, Hinako Oosawa (大沢 ひな子) and Noriko Yamamoto (山本 のり子) who are respectively defined by their haughtiness and fashion sensibility.
The universal locations for dates includes the amusement park, the art gallery, the park, the movie theater, the performing theater, the bar, the aquarium, the clothing store, the love hotel, the game center, the back alley, and Takashi’s own house. While there is some flavor to the dialogue, these dates consist of stock conversations. Outside the scripted narrative events, this is how players will be spending their time.
By going out on dates, Takashi will build affection with the player’s chosen heroine which will lead to new sex scenes. Rie in particular boasts several additional CGs that are both part of the main story and side content. Sex itself bears a few mechanics. First, there are different acts and positions that Takashi and the heroine can engage in. Initially, players can only take three actions and if they go over this threshold, the heroine will slap and scold Takashi and their affection rating will go down. By having sex, the limit to these actions also increases leading to different positions and scenarios.
Given that sex increases both endurance and affection, players who are aiming to unlock every CG will be spending their time alternating between having sex and going to the locations listed above—consecutive dates to the same location will lower a heroine’s affection. While this is all optional content, Umitsuki Production undoubtedly expended an extraordinary amount of effort in both scripting and animating these additional scenes. These systems prevent players from simply repeating the same actions, demonstrating the game’s consideration for balancing its romantic, sexual, and narrative aspects. Furthermore, the way in which Love Escalator mechanically frames sex itself serves as a reflection of the intimacy between Takashi and the heroine. It is Rie who most benefits from this as the other heroines only play minor roles in the game’s main story. In other words, as Takashi and Rie emotionally bond so too do they become more open and bold in their physical intimacy with Rie in particular shifting from feeling mild embarrassment about her own sexual feelings to something more confident.
Regarding the story, Love Escalator‘s initial premise may seem rather odd. Unaware that Takashi and Rie are dating, Toru continues asking Takashi to invite Rie out to group events where he attempts to impress her to no avail. Throughout the game, Takashi admits his own guilt about “betraying” Toru. Embodying the persona of the childhood friend, Rie is more than kind to everyone around her, Toru included. But, she never leads him on. In fact, she remains ignorant of the real reason Takashi keeps their relationship a secret. It is perhaps comedic how many other characters come to realize or learn that Takashi and Rie are a couple. If Love Escalator is ever titillating, it is not because the romance between Takashi and Rie is one built on the pleasure of secrecy or immorality. In other words, Love Escalator is far from ever being a mean-spirited game in which Toru’s pining is framed as foolish. One may ultimately question why this narrative framing, but players will just have to be patient. As much as Love Escalator is about the relationship between Takashi and Rie, it is also about Takashi’s own growth as a person who comes to realize the consequences of their (in)actions.
As for the development of Takashi and Rie’s relationship, Love Escalator concerns itself with the performance of gender, questioning whether Takashi is “man” enough for Rie and whether Rie can remain a faithful woman. Two particular arcs see other men test the boundaries of Takashi and Rie’s relationship, both stories ending in displays of machismo. Tiring perhaps but Love Escalator, like so many other bishōgē. of the era, is about the follies of youth. These characters can be immature, quick to anger, and wayward, but as the conclusion of the game approaches, the larger cast begins to grapple with their future. Rie makes it clear to Takashi that she will be attending college but Takashi himself remains unsure of what he will do following graduation, setting up the game’s final arc.
Finally, a word on Love Escalator’s prologue. Love Escalator was written by MAB and Takashina Miki, the latter also serving as the game’s director. There is a poetic quality to the prologue that is perhaps absent from the rest of the game but is nevertheless a triumph of bishōgē. It is here that we learn of Takashi and Rie’s past which in turn reveals why the two drifted apart and why Takashi lives his life the way he does. Takashi’s reunion with Rie forces him to confront the choices he has made and the choices he will make, leading to his confession. The prologue is at turns melancholic and jubilant. Drawn in pencil-like sketches, the past is appropriately rendered as a memory whose recollections only brings forth the faintest of details—Takashi himself admits to having forgotten the circumstances behind his initial friendship with Rie and their falling out. These flashbacks imbue in the reader Takeshi’s own sense of regret. Yet, it is also the moment in the present when Takashi is finally able to reach across to Rie and embrace her that one feels the beauty of romance, of second-chances, and of the PC-98.
End Notes
- Bug Bug, “ラブ・エスカレーター,” No. 6 (June 1997), pp. 42 ↩︎
- E-Login, “ラブ・エスカレーター,” No. 9 (September 1997), pp. 28. For those who may be confused by the reportage of these dates, bear in mind that it was not uncommon for magazines to release the issue for the following month the prior month. So it is likely that the September issue of E-Login was in fact published in early August. ↩︎
- Dengeki Hime, “パソコンゲームを選ぶ ベストマシンはこれだ,” Vol. 1 (March 1997), pp.68 ↩︎
- Dengeki Hime, “Windows98まであと半年 激動期を乗りきる 美少女ゲームパソコン” Vol. 3 (March 1998), pp. 106 ↩︎
Bibliography
Bug Bug, No. 6 (June 1997)
Dengeki Hime, Vol. 1 (March 1997).
Dengeki Hime, Vol. 3 (March 1998)
E-Login, No. 9 (September 1997)