Otome Game Review: Bad Medicine -Infectious Teachers- (pt. 1)

BadMedicineOP

Rejet strikes again.

Not that I’ve ever reviewed anything by Rejet on Metanorn before. …This is probably the fastest I’ve ever fully completed an otome game. It came out May 28th and it arrived for me Monday, so I pretty much dropped absolutely everything I was doing and became a shut in to play this. Mind you though, it is pretty short. Anyways, I would have put this all into one single post, but with only 4/6 routes written, I was near 10,000 words. So to make this look less stupidly long, I’m splitting the game into 2 posts (plus I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about some routes).  ヽ(´ー`)ノ So Kashu Rem, Nagihara Ryota and Tojo Kairi will be in part 2.

This was certainly a Rejet game, but it surprisingly wasn’t as dark as something like say, Black Wolves Saga or Diabolik Lovers.

Plot Summary

Kawana Hina is a transfer student to the super elite school, Saint Christopher, due to the family moving for her father’s promotion. When she first arrives though, there’s a teacher’s meeting going on. Though that has nothing to do with anything and is just a convenient plot excuse to have her meet all of her new (ikemen) teachers at once. The teachers all have some sort of dark side to their personality. But it’s not like Hina knows that yet. It’s not until she has to go for “special guidance lessons” for breaking school regualtions that she learns that her teachers are all ドS and have issues aren’t as nice as she thought they were. There are a ton of rules at Saint Christopher’s, so Hina inevitably breaks one.

So based on a choice right at the beginning of the game, Hina gets to date one of her bipolar teachers. Er, maybe “date” is stretching it a bit. There’s not a whole lot of actual romance, and it’s mostly just Hina sitting through the teacher’s various mental issues until they finally sort out their lives (if they ever do) and then maybe something happens in the ending.

…I’m using the drama CD covers for preview pictures, since this game has a pitiful amount of CG’s, minus the endings and I was really disappointed to find out that the covers appeared in the OP, but nowhere else like say, in the actual game. OTL

Shido Kaname

Shido

The “perfectionist”. Kaname is the English teacher and he went to some elite university in the US. He’s rather popular with students due to his kind personality and easy to understand explanations, but he’s just a liiiittle bit obsessed with following the rules. Or that’s what I thought his issue was at first, but that seems to apply to all of the teachers, so it’s probably best just to call him a sadist. …Though that also applies to all of the other teachers as well. Let’s just go with the “perfectionist” thing. His glasses are just for appearances (though, uh, I’m definitely not complaining that he wears them). Takahashi Hiroki is his seiyuu. …I’d explain who that is, but the last notable thing I’ve heard him in is Jooubachi no Oubou (a …not so good R-18 otome game ww).

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Nagihara Taiki

Nagihara

Saint Christopher’s math teacher. His thing is supposed to be “paranoia”, but uh, I would have never guessed without reading the site. I was also wondering what the hell the clicking noise was all the time during hisドS moments too, but I guess it’s him playing with his lighter (his other “black” thing is that he smokes). Other than that though, Taiki is level headed and approachable enough. CV=Terashima Takuma.

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Kuzuha Kakeru

Kuzuha0

Kakeru is the “playboy” who (kind of secretly) has a thing against women due to family issues. Female students seem to really like him though due to his looks and approachable personality. Surprisingly, he’s also the youngest of the routes at age 26 and his hobby is that he rides around on a motorcycle (because of course he has one). He’s also the world history teacher, and voiced by Takahashi Naozumi. …Again, that seiyuu is not really in the recent anime, so it’s hard to explain who he is. OTL Though if you’re better informed in otoge, he was Kano in Gekka Ryouran, and Cheshire in Alice=Alice.

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Hmm, where to begin. I’ve finished the entire game at this point, so I might as well talk about it as a whole. On the plus side, the concept was super interesting, the teachers were all actually adult aged in late 20’s to early 30’s (unlike those otoge where someone went to university at age 16 and whatever), and the voice acting was great (of course). On the down side though, the game was really short. That’s not a bad thing by itself, but it feels like a lot more could have been done if this was longer. The guidance lessons just felt so disjointed from whatever the rest of the route was doing. I’m not saying that I wanted the characters to act like even bigger assholes all the time to Hina, but they would be super ドS there for just a tiny portion of the game, and then half the time pretend that it never happened. What was the point? …Though I don’t really think I really fully understood the guidance lessons in the first place. It just seemed like a convenient plot device to show off the worst of whatever route you were on and then things continued like normal. The route that worked the best (it will be in part 2 of the review) was actually the one where the character was blatantly always an asshole, and his “nice teacher” side was just something he did for the job. But I guess I’ll expand on that when it’s relevant in the next post.

Though with the shortness, the system was thankfully SO easy to figure out. There were only about 8 choices per route, and it was so easy to get on whatever route you were aiming for since the “bad” choices made the dialogue box slightly darker. I didn’t encounter any bugs either, though I hardly ever use anything except the “skip” and “jump” options. Those worked fine. The DHM recording was used okay. I still love the concept and the way it sounds in absolutely any game, but I dunno, it just didn’t work in Bad Medicine as well as it did in something like Diabolik Lovers. Maybe because there was a pretty big lack of anything remotely romantic going on. There were scenarios where you got the feeling that the characters were maybe crossing the student/teacher line,  but they never seemed to go too far over it.

The art was great, but the number and placement of CGs was kind of sad. There were maybe 2 CGs during the route and then 4 for the endings (2 for the Lovers, one each for the Collapse and Doll Ends). Half of them, Hina wasn’t even there. Hell, for Taiki’s route they spent an entire CG on the scene with Kaname and Taiki talking. …Because screw romance, apparently. It’s more important to show two characters standing there not doing anything remotely interesting.

Hina was a pretty typical heroine. She certainly studied a lot, but she performed pretty much every clumsy cliche ever. ww Kaname’s route as a whole was kind of disappointing compared to everyone else, but luckily, the character I was looking forward to the most (again, I’ll cover this in part 2) didn’t let me down. I’ll talk about the characters as a whole in the next post too, I guess.

BadMedicine

So yeah, part 2 will be out whenever I finish writing out the routes.

About

University student and the one at Metanorn who's known for wearing glasses. Likes blood, insanity and plot twists, but also plays otome games and adores cute romance anime. It balances out... somehow.
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18 Responses to “Otome Game Review: Bad Medicine -Infectious Teachers- (pt. 1)”

  1. Di Gi Kazune says:

    The pun is… what infectious disease these bad sensei are spreading among the girls…

  2. Kyokai says:

    This looks very interesting and as I do like Terashima Takuma, I can only wonder how his smoky visage worked out for his character. Though, the whole strict Asian parents got me chuckling, we sure know how that works. xD

    The artist seems the same as DiaLovers? I’d definitely look forward to part II.

    • Karakuri says:

      I’m pretty sure that the artist for this was Futaba Hazuki or something help, I can’t Japanese. DiaLovers’s artist is Satoi (though not anymore since she seems to have stopped working for Otomate). The company who made the games is the same. Kind of. Diabolik Lovers was a collab between Rejet and Otomate. Bad Medicine is all Rejet.

  3. d-LaN says:

    In every place that have “moral police” I go, it seems like Rejet and their otomes is one of their favorite target for “that creepy and sexist otome” bait. Not to mention the bashing on ppl who enjoyed stuff like this *shakes head* Personally, while I’m not fond/uncomfortable with some of Rejet themes, I still do not bash the fan base of it for enjoying their products.

    As for Bad Medicine….. Well, the art style is good like most Rejet games but the previews is ady setting off my NOPE radar XD Though going by Kaname route it does seem to be tamer when compare to DiaLovers. The endings are still very NOOOOPPPPPE though.

    – At first I thought the pic with happy Hina is just some ranom SOL scene but it was just her imitating Deer-chan (Yui) instead after some Shiki style text spamming.

    PS Which reminds me of Origami breakdown in DAL 10 that has her screaming for an entire page

    – Dat logic though. Sure Kaname might be attempting to brainwash me, but he just reaally misunderstood and a good person at heart!

    I will put my thoughts in after I read the rest of the routes….. I think.

    • Karakuri says:

      Yeah, I know what you mean. I pretty much try to avoid those parts of the internet as much as I can. I like Rejet for their darker themes, so this is all within my comfort level. DiaLovers was the only one that really pushed it so far. xD

      The whole game was so much tamer than DiaLovers. Er, minus some of the bad ends in the ones I haven’t talked about yet.

      Yeah, I’m not even 100% why Hina lost it in that ending (the screencap was after he told her to get lost). Something about disappointing Kaname. DAL 10? Date A Live?

      Yep otoge logic!

      • d-LaN says:

        Yep, Date A Live. Specifically, this.

        Man, these games are so fun in a “MUST SEE HOW FAR CAN THEY GO” way. Kakeru Collapse end is way more tame than what I expected though XD

        Also I noticed Friend A seems to be the indirect cause of a lot of things in the 3 routes. Is she a walking jinx or something?

        • Karakuri says:

          Pffft ahahaha I kind of want to read those now. Those full page screams are amusing.

          Yeah, pretty much. xD All of the Collapse Ends are way tamer than I thought they would be. …It’s the half I haven’t talked about yet where they decided to stop holding back.

          Uhh, I dunno. Friend A (…there wasn’t even “Friend B”, so I don’t know why they didn’t name her “Friend”) was just kind of a convenient plot device, I guess. I wish we could have heard more about her and Basketball Senpai, but I guess not.

  4. Namika says:

    *sulks*
    This looks so interesting ;_;
    *continues to sulk*

    • Karakuri says:

      Aww, study hard! Japanese wasn’t too hard to learn.

      • Highway says:

        Don’t listen to her! It’s plenty hard! You have to keep at it. But you could do it. I’ve only been going at about an hour a day for 2 3/4 years (not counting anime watching time).

  5. anaaga says:

    Jesus Christ, I want to attend a school like that. I am willing to repeat high school just to get teachers like that.

    And lol that slut ending. Reminds me of that slutty Akira in Togainu no Chi

    • Karakuri says:

      …Same here, man. Though Hina’s actions were a lot of foreign concepts to me (talking to the teacher about course material, answering in class, …studying in general ww).

      Lol yeah, that might be my favourite bad ending (go Hina).

  6. Jenna says:

    OMG thanks a lot for this review
    I was kinda looking forward to this ond, its reallyyyy sad that there are sooooo few CGs T^T
    But I think that I’ll play it anyway ^___^

    Thanks again, you’re the only person who wrote this review in english I think

    • Karakuri says:

      You’re welcome! And yeah… I really wish Rejet would have more CGs in their games! (Or even more interesting ones…)

  7. kenzie says:

    Where can you buy this game?

    • Karakuri says:

      I bought it off of amiami, but I just checked and it appears it is sold out there now. Maybe try the Japanese Amazon? Depending on the seller, they sometimes ship overseas.

  8. Petersag says:

    mainmovs.com

  9. Limo in UAE says:

    I found the post to be good. The shared information are greatly appreciated

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