The friend of an eroge protagonist usually leads a life of misfortune.
Some of these characters fruitlessly repeat the same eccentric behavior over and over again and earn the ire of the heroines, while other best friend types get embroiled in the protagonist’s two-timing and end up playing matchmaker on his behalf.
More than anything else, however, the most common characterization for this character, not to mention the main source of his misfortune, is that he isn’t popular with girls.
Best friend characters are extremely unpopular. Beautiful women won’t even get near them. The reason is simple—imagine what would happen if a girl the player was interested in hooked up with the protagonist’s best friend instead. Complaints would flood the development studio, and the player base would dwindle.
It’s quite possible that even I would send a fist through the screen if an obnoxious asshole who kept butting in ultimately stole a cute girl away from me. Or I would immediately spam the game’s support page with all sorts of nasty abuse, then follow up by leaving enraged reviews on message boards and the like, so all we players who’d been wronged could dry our tears together.
Now then, the character of Kousuke Takioto reflected in the mirror is versatile enough that his qualities range from extremely hapless to downright cursed. Of course.
Kousuke appears in MagicalExplorer (MX for short), a tactical simulation game often derogatorily referred to as a click game because you have to click through menus to do anything. The player character rotates between campus life and battling through dungeons as part of school or other events, strengthening themselves and their party members along the way. Additionally, MX lets you craft weapons, armor, magic, and magic catalysts. Using the crafting system, you can equip unique weapons and can even open up a shop to shoot for becoming the city’s top alchemist merchant.
Being an eroge, obviously it contains plenty of romantic elements, too. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call them the primary focus of the game.
In-game, these beautiful and powerful heroines are involved in your daily life to an abnormal degree (so long as you’re the protagonist), with erotic episodes popping up so often, you’d think it was a blessing from on high (so long as you’re the protagonist). You can even successfully sneak into the women’s bath and catch a glimpse of all the leading ladies at their sexiest (so long as you’re the protagonist).
The main character’s friend, Kousuke Takioto, is what you’d call a comic relief character—tearfully biting down on his handkerchief as he jealously side-eyes the protagonist flirting with all the different love interests. A foil through and through.
While he has lines like “That girl is super cute, right? Well, actually…” and “She’s supposed to be the prettiest girl in the Academy,” the main character inevitably snatches away anyone he’s interested in. It goes without saying, but none of them are reserved for Kousuke Takioto.
Far from it, since all the girls in the game hate his guts. He’s pretty good-looking, but between his poorly-timed dirty comments and downright boneheaded behavior, it’s clear why he’s so reviled. A few of the heroines don’t outright hate him, but these exceptions comprise a small portion of the overall cast.
Thus, when we view the romantic elements from Kousuke Takioto’s perspective, we find he is a supremely unfortunate individual.
His misfortune extends to the game’s combat as well. All male eroge characters are prone to having unremarkable combat abilities in the first place. It makes sense. The ladies and gentlemen playing eroge are after the beautiful young heroines they wish to make their own.
When sought-after heroines are powerful, their popularity increases. The higher their popularity, the higher the merch sales. Above all, however, the developers love their female creations and want to make them as strong as possible, so it’s natural they’d be so effective in combat.
Despite all those caveats, Kousuke Takioto’s combat ability isn’t terrible. Nevertheless, the fact that he’s geared toward experienced players, the fact that he doesn’t have his own unique weapon, and more than anything, the fact that heroines get such preferential treatment makes him seem underappreciated in comparison. Most people remove him from their main party by the end of the game. I was no exception, of course. I wanted to use the heroines instead!
“Gaaah…”
The Kousuke Takioto reflected in the mirror heaved a sigh.
“I guess I should try confirming if I really am Kousuke Takioto for now…”
I grasped at the smallest of straws as I removed a scarf around my neck that was essentially the unlucky best friend’s defining character trait. Nonetheless…
“Is reality truly so cruel?”
Why had this happened? It seemed I really was Kousuke Takioto. This body was not my own. And the reason for my metamorphosis…remained unclear, along with any way to get back to normal.
Besides, instead of focusing on why this had transpired, I needed to think about what I was going to do next. It would be one thing if I understood why I had transformed, but I doubted it would clear up anytime soon. It would be more constructive to consider how I was going to live from here on out.
“This is the world of MagicalExplorer, right?”
It wasn’t Japan. The MX world had been developed through a combination of magic and machinery. A fantasy world, home to elves, beastfolk, and dwarves, too.
In that case—
“I should…be able to use magic, right?”
No, I would definitely be able to use magic. A few moments prior, while confirming I was indeed Kousuke Takioto, I had found a school admission information guide. This guy was enrolled at Tsukuyomi Magic Academy.
Who could get into a magic academy without being able to use magic?
“Magic, huh?”
If it was possible, I absolutely wanted to try. Actually, wouldn’t I end up getting expelled if I couldn’t? How was I supposed to do it, though?
“In the game, you just click the mouse button, and it comes out on its own…”
I had no game screen, and I definitely couldn’t click any mouse buttons. I couldn’t even look at my own stats. I would have liked to at least see how much HP and MP I had, but that wasn’t happening.
However, Kousuke Takioto had only been able to enroll in the Academy because he could use magic. Maybe there was a chance he had a textbook on spellcraft lying around?