Destiny Star Girlfriend (Shukusei no Girlfriend -the destiny star of girlfriend-), developed by mirai and published by Shiravune, is one of those rare single heroine visual novels. Focusing on a relationship between an underwhelming guy and an arrogant magical girl, it’s a short and sweet romantic comedy.
Tied Together
Seiji has a crush on his classmate Yuuri. Popular, kind, and sweet, anyone could see why someone would like her. That is until he finds out about the real personality behind the act of a perfect girl.
Yuuri isn’t just confident, she’s arrogant, at times approaching the level of a god-complex. Admittedly, she has good reason to be confident. Yuuri is secretly a magical girl, and not just any, but one of the most powerful ones around.
They come together one night when Seiji is attacked by demons. Yuuri comes to the rescue, not even realizing that the victim is her classmate, she cares so little about those she sees as beneath her. Everything seems okay, until another magical girl appears and shoots through them, nearly killing them both.
Through a little magic, their lives are tied together to save them, leaving them unable to move more than one meter away from each other. This opens a story of forced cohabitation between Seiji, who used to like Yuuri, and Yuuri, who thinks he’s barely worth even considering as a person.
Living Together with a Magical Girl
Between being a single-heroine visual novel and being literally tied together, as you can imagine, there’s a strong focus on the time spent together throughout Destiny Star Girlfriend. There are barely any scenes throughout the whole visual novel that don’t focus primarily on the two of them together.
As Seiji started with a crush on Yuuri, I was concerned it was going to focus on him trying to win her over. Luckily, they took the far more interesting idea of having him be disillusioned, leaving them with more of an equal starting position. One of the earlier moments works as a good example to illustrate this, with Yuuri standing on top of a chair so she can look down on him, to which he responds by shaking the chair.
Destiny Star Girlfriend has quite a lot of fun comedic moments like that. Whether they’re sniping at each other or just playing around, it includes a lot of short scenes full of jokes. Yuuri’s personality works well with this, as her confidence is so over the top that it’s hilarious. This ties into nearly everything she does, even having her power up during battles by being complimented through a cheer routine. Amusingly enough though, she’s absolutely useless at many things outside of her skill set. The comedic interactions are the best part of this.
Growing Closer
While Destiny Star Girlfriend is quite short, only taking me 5.5 hours to complete, it does a good job of bringing them together in that time without feeling rushed.
We see Yuuri slowly begin to open up to Seiji, and moments when her arrogant front begins to break, showing hints of vulnerability and things hidden underneath that confidence. We learn a little more about Seiji’s feelings of inadequacy and how he wants to change that. It shows how the characters can relate to each other, despite being very different. Being forced together slowly turns into growing together, and not wanting this enjoyable time to end. While it never goes into much depth with these moments, I felt they helped to flesh out the characters a little, making them a lot more interesting and giving them understandable motivations.
Stars and Story
The main focus of Destiny Star Girlfriend is on the two characters Yuuri and Seiji, but others do appear on occasion. It is a rather small cast though.
Kanako is perhaps the most important of the secondary characters, and the only one with significant screen time. She’s another magical girl that Yuuri is mentoring. She works well as a contrast, being very serious and calm, though with her own unique quirk. Despite the very different personalities, she adores Yuuri and is always taking care of her.
Other than Kanako, there’s a teacher who works for the government body behind the magical girls, the dark magical girl, several companions, and a handful of others. While they don’t have much screen time, they’re all charming. Kanako and several other characters appear to be the main characters of sequels and spin-offs, which I’d love to see Shiravune localize.
These all come together in the story, though in terms of plot it’s quite limited. There’s a somewhat thin story about more demons appearing recently and the reasons behind it. Some things mentioned do hint at disconcerting topics, but it never goes into these in any detail.
The story set up some events where Yuuri has to battle demons, and a few more serious topics involving dark backstories, but more often it leads to comedic moments such as Yuuri arguing for a pay rise. Even when things do momentarily get serious, problems are always resolved quickly and often in comedically simple ways. Still, some of the story moments nicely link in with Seiji’s growing confidence and it wrapped up nicely with the short epilogue.
Destiny Star Girlfriend isn’t one to play for the plot. It’s all about the romance and the comedy. Still, it works nicely to set up the situations for those fun and sweet moments.
No Tentacles in This Magical Girl Game!
Unsurprisingly for a visual novel with cohabitation and an 18+ version available, there are quite a few moments of comedic nudity and bathroom issues. In the beginning, Yuuri barely even considers Seiji, so acts fairly defenseless.
I did feel that some of the sexual scenes escalated unrealistically quickly. Yuuri mentioned being disgusted by the idea of sex, but sexual situations happen even before they consider dating. It goes into ‘she says no, but her body says yes’ territory too, which makes sense based on her personality but is something that some may be uncomfortable with.
I did like that even the adult scenes link into Yuuri’s arrogance and need to be seen as on top. Rather than making it a generic scene, it fits her character perfectly as she talks about putting him in his place and making him a slave to pleasure.
Despite Yuuri’s slightly dominating personality, the content is fairly vanilla. Unlike many visual novels with magical girls, there are no tentacles or darker content to be found here. As always with Shiravune titles, mosaics remain in place.
Systems
While there are two points where you can choose between three options, these don’t seem to matter. None of them lead to any different CGs or events, only a slightly different few lines of text. This isn’t a kinetic visual novel, but it’s fairly close to being one.
Outside of gameplay (or lack thereof), most of the regular visual novel elements are present, including a gallery and event replay menu. That said, the user interface is surprisingly minimal and a lot of the functions are only accessible via keyboard controls. One notable missing feature is the ability to jump back to previous lines through the backlog, though the backlog is accessible and lines can be replayed.
Localization
As always, I can’t comment on translation accuracy other than not picking up anything unusual. That the way it’s written flows well and the way it brings across the comedy is a positive though. It’s all edited without notable issues; I only noticed a handful of typos, which is less than some visual novels on release.
Blasts of Magical Energy
With 25 CGs and 12 adult scenes, there’s quite a lot for such a short visual novel and they all look great. The sprites are all high quality too. I particularly liked Yuuri’s, with her wink and flesh fang showing off a lot of personality.
Outside of that, the magical battles are the most visually impressive. There’s a lot of use of motion, from characters sliding in, rotating magical glyphs appearing, beams of light flashing, and even the textbox shaking as the surrounding area is peppered with magical blasts. There’s even a video for the magical girl transformation, though this would be excluded from the non-18+ version as it includes nudity. The opening video is left out in the non-adult version too, which is a pity as it’s quite a nice one.
The background music is reasonably varied and always seems to fit the scene. The magical battles again stand out here. The voice acting is high quality, showing off the character’s vibrant personalities. Experienced visual novel voice actors are behind the characters, so this is no surprise
Verdict
Destiny Star Girlfriend is a very focused experience and, while short, this works to its benefit. It delivers a sweet romance, occasional moments of surprising depth, and plenty of comedy, supported by some great visuals. Perhaps it could have given us a chance to get to know the other characters a little more, but that’s what the sequels are for.
DESTINY STAR GIRLFRIEND IS RECOMMENDED
Want to check out more visual novels? Why not check out our review of KamiYaba: Destiny On A Dicey Deadline?
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.
