Destiny Star Girlfriend 2 (Shukusei no Girlfriend 2 -The Destiny Star of Girlfriend-) is a single-heroine visual novel developed by mirai and published by Shiravune. This romance comedy focuses on a relationship with a dark magical girl with a serious personality.
While this is technically a standalone release, I’d suggest reading the initial Destiny Star Girlfriend first. Destiny Star Girlfriend 2 mostly skips the introduction of certain characters or concepts from the previous installment. It’s still easy enough to follow, but it’s a better experience with that background knowledge, plus it features certain callbacks to jokes from the original that will otherwise be missed.
A New Bond
Much like the first Destiny Star Girlfriend, the story starts with the very average and slightly perverted Seiji having a crush on his classmate Yuuri. However, this is soon forgotten after a few encounters with Maja Krienke, the focal heroine of this installment.
At first, Maja comes off as somewhat delusional and overly serious. She has an almost military-esque feel about her and tells Seiji to stay away so as not to get caught up in the war between darkness and light. Despite this, he keeps talking to her, even bringing her food as she’s been living in the park and not eating much.
Soon enough, Seiji finds out that her talk of battles is real. When helping an injured Maja, a demon she’s contracted to help named Sabnock appears. Due to her loss in a battle, the contract is changed. Maja now has to fight competing demons with Seiji now bound to help her; he is granted magic to fight, but the two are now tied together by a magical rope with his death waiting if he moves too far away.
While the idea of being tied together and forced to cohabitate is the same as the first Destiny Star Girlfriend, Maja’s personality creates a very different dynamic.
Together with a Naive Magical Girl
Maja moves in with Seiji, with his mother going as far as to choose to stay with relatives, so he has space to ‘make her his‘. Aside from occasional visits from the demon Sabnock (who amusingly turns out to be a surprisingly good manager, diligent and offering positive reinforcement), they’re alone for the most part.
Unfortunately for him, romance isn’t on her mind. She’s oblivious enough to the idea to feel his body or walk naked in front of him. The build-up to the story’s romance comes from that change of Maja thinking of him only as an ally (and magical familiar) to actually thinking of him as a romantic interest. However, it isn’t exactly a smooth transition.
Complicating things more (along with adding to the adult nature of this series) is that Seiji’s inherited magic is dark magic. To control it, he needs to act more like a demon and not suppress his desires. Unsurprisingly, as a young man living alone with a beautiful magical girl, those desires revolve around her body. Luckily or not, Maja sees this only as a part of her duty and doesn’t really understand that he genuinely desires her.
A lot of the earlier humor in Destiny Star Girlfriend 2 is the disconnect between the two. Seiji’s interested in her chest? Must be because of a feeling of motherly comfort. These types of misunderstandings continue throughout most of the story, leading not just to humorous moments, but also dictating the development of their relationship. It’s a somewhat slow progression of Maja’s changing feelings and coming to understand them.
Beyond that, several of the funny moments are about how Maja is generally quite naive. Despite acting like a stoic warrior at times, a lot of her actions can be foolish. She ends up eating weeds after falling for a scam and is tricked far too easily.
Stars and Lions
While there’s certainly plenty of comedy throughout, it ramps up much more about a third of the way through the approximately 5-hour story. The first section of the story mostly features Seiji and Maja spending time together alone, but soon enough they’re frequently visited by the magical girls from the light side, then later by another important character.
Yuuri’s bombastic personality and outrageous statements add a lot to the comedy, as anyone who has read the first Destiny Star Girlfriend may expect. Her contrast with Maja’s far more serious personality just adds to the humor. The calmer Kanako is always around too, though without much screen time, as is their teacher Fujiko who is often causing trouble for Seiji with her failed inventions.
Petra is a new character in Destiny Star Girlfriend 2 and she comes in like a storm, making a huge impression and taking over the story for a while. She’s energetic and obnoxiously outgoing. Seiji even compares her to a rowdy dog at one point. I found her to be a lot of fun.
The story uses her character well to explore Maja’s past, answering important questions about how she found herself serving Sabnock as a dark magical girl. This part is not too serious or extensive, but it adds some interesting background and helps to understand Maja’s personality more. There isn’t much depth to the plot in this visual novel, so what little it adds here is appreciated.
While your impression will be down to your preferences in comedy and heroine type, perhaps the one downside of Destiny Star Girlfriend 2 to me was that Maja can feel a bit overshadowed. Yuuri and Petra both have very loud personalities and add a lot more ‘laugh out loud’ humor, so I ended up liking them more, while Maja’s scenes are more often about her obliviousness. Still, Maja has a lot of sweet moments later on where she shows just how in love she is, and I enjoyed the time with her.
Recharging Power Through H
Considering that Seiji essentially recharges through H-scenes and similar events, it’s no surprise that there are quite a few for a short visual novel. Most of the ten H-scenes in the adult version of Destiny Star Girlfriend 2 are closer to the end of the story, but there are other moments of physical closeness earlier on, as well as the occasional appearance of nude sprites.
Aside from a brief mention of anilingus and a scene where another character gets involved, the adult scenes are fairly standard for a romcom visual novel. They do escalate over time to a point, tying into the idea of satisfying Seiji’s growing desire and how it’s tied to the growth of his power.
Systems and Localization
If you’ve played the first Destiny Star Girlfriend, there are no major changes to the systems here. There are three decision points with three choices, none of which make any notable difference. It’s essentially a kinetic visual novel, so there’s no need for a guide or walkthrough.
The user interface remains minimal, with many features only accessible via keyboard shortcuts. There’s no feature to jump to previous points in the backlog.
While I can’t comment on translation accuracy, the English version reads well and the editing has been done to a high level. Considering the difficulty in translating comedy and how unique some of the personalities are here, it is impressive how well this has been done.
Magical Art
Destiny Star Girlfriend 2 contains 25 CGs, all of which are high quality. The majority of these are from the 10 adult scenes. The sprites look great too, as do the backgrounds, both of which are mostly shared with the first Destiny Star Girlfriend.
The use of animation is fairly frequent and helps to bring the scenes to life. Unfortunately though, the magical battles aren’t quite as impressive as in the first Destiny Star Girlfriend with less magical glyphs and beams of light and more clouds of darkness. Maja does have a video for her transformation, though it isn’t as visually striking as Yuuri’s from the previous title.
The voice acting is done well, though Maja’s more subdued personality doesn’t help her stand out as much as Yuuri or Petra. The background music fits the scenes well.
Verdict
Destiny Star Girlfriend 2 works well as a short experience, focusing on a single heroine. The comedic moments are great, as are the visuals. Maja may not stand out as much as some heroines, but I enjoyed the time spent on her story, especially after discovering parts of her story at the start of the Destiny Star Girlfriend series.
DESTINY STAR GIRLFRIEND 2 IS RECOMMENDED
Want to check out more visual novels? Why not check out our review of Real Anime Situation! 2? We have also covered a wide variety of visual novels both original to English and localized from Japanese, which you can check out here.
Many thanks go to Shiravune for a PC review code for this title.
A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.
