Yuri fans will be well acquainted with the idea of love blossoming within the walled garden of a girls’ school with young ladies from the upper crust. Fragile Feelings offers us a different take on this setting, with a slow burn romance between an anxious young assistant teacher and the glamorous school nurse.
Fragile Feelings by ebi-hime is a short indie visual novel released in 2023. This original English language visual novel (OELVN) was recently updated with an epilogue as bonus content, so what better time to take a look?
Living in the Fishbowl
Ann Clements has been cloistered away in St Cecilia’s for most of her life. She was sent to this prestigious girls’ school in the Japanese countryside not for her benefit, but so her family no longer had to deal with her. After all, she’s living on borrowed time. Diagnosed with a terminal illness, she didn’t expect to live long enough to graduate, and doesn’t know how long she has left.
Ten years on from this, she finds herself still sheltered away from the world in this private academy. Rather than leaving to find a new place in the world after graduation, she took a job as an assistant teacher, working with a special needs student. Then one day, things begin to change. Kohaku, a new school nurse, arrives at St Cecilia’s.
The beginning of Fragile Feelings creates an almost oppressive atmosphere in a way. The world within the walls of St Cecilia’s is all Ann knows, outside of the occasional trips to the local hospital. Anything new is a source of anxiety, and Kohaku is certainly far from the familiar. With high heels, piercings, and an outgoing personality, she’s nothing like the staff or students she’s known before.
As Ann grows closer to Kohaku, we begin to see not only her world expand, but changes in how she sees the world. Ann is an anxious mess at the best of times, but I enjoyed seeing her grow, becoming able to deal with Kohaku’s macabre humor and banter, even getting in some good jabs herself. Kohaku’s appearance sparks change for Ann and encourages her to journey out of the ‘fishbowl’ she’s lived her life in.
Stormy Relationships
Despite only taking around six hours to read, “slow burn” is certainly apt when describing Fragile Feelings. The relationship between Ann and Kohaku gets off to a very slow start, and it’s interesting to see just how much Ann struggles to deal with Kohaku’s direct compliments and certainly less-than-proper behavior. Someone who kicks a vending machine is not typically someone that Ann would befriend…not that she has many friends to begin with.
It doesn’t help that Runa, Ann’s only friend from her student days (and who is still a student), and isn’t exactly a fan of Kohaku. Despite not liking Kohaku (and making her aggression incredibly clear), she has some things in common with her, including being very straightforward and not quite fitting in with the well-mannered ladies of St Cecilia’s.
Both Kohaku and Runa have their own hang-ups and backstories, though Runa’s are mostly backloaded. Fragile Feelings explores both of their issues with not fitting in and their other problems, along with having some serious drama.
Ann certainly feels like the main focus of the story to me though, as we see her pessimistic attitudes challenged by Kohaku and her encouraging Ann to try new things and live her life. The slow change in the relationship with her echoes a slow change in Ann in a way that was incredibly satisfying to read. With that said, while efforts have certainly been made to remedy it, I do imagine that there are going to be people who aren’t happy with how a certain other character is treated, but I do feel it worked well as part of the story.
Slow Start. Fast End.
I’ve used the word “slow” quite a few times already, but it really is a key part of how I felt about Fragile Feelings. It took me some time to start enjoying it. Events moved forward at a snail’s pace at first, it took me some time to actually start to like Kohaku, and the isolated environment of St Cecilia’s felt like everything was at a standstill, at least until Kohaku started to drag some excitement into Ann’s life.
I’m glad I stuck with it though. At a certain point, it felt like time started to move quickly. Relationship issues started to come to a head after they had been slowly rising in the background until then finally boiling over. I enjoyed Fragile Feelings until this point, but as the climax approached, it began to get far more exciting as the drama ramped up.
Speaking of climaxes and excitement, I should note that much like some of ebi-hime’s other visual novels such as All The Words She Wrote, there is an adult content patch for Fragile Feelings. If you choose not to install it, then it’s made clear that events of that nature do happen and there are CGs where they’re scantily clad, but it fades out for the actual events. I’d hesitate to say it’s for ‘all ages’ however, since there are some other types of events and topics discussed that more sensitive readers may find disturbing.
Sights and Sounds of St Cecilia’s
Fragile Feelings features character art by a studio called Thai Chau in a not-quite-standard anime style, similar to quite a few OELVNs. I do feel like some of the other work displayed in their portfolio is better, but it looks good for the most part. I do admit I wondered a little when I saw one of the final CGs and a character didn’t have a nose, and the shapes of the faces felt odd. But there are also some great CGs in there too. I like the details on the clothing too and little touches like how Ann always has eyebags due to how run down she is work well.
The user interface looks great and is themed nicely around hearts and hospitals, which seems appropriate for Fragile Feelings. There are some little annoyances in how it works however, like no button to hide the textbox (you can use the middle mouse button or H key), and no backlog window (similar to a number of other titles built with the Ren’Py engine), instead having to scroll text back in the textbox.
Fragile Feelings is unvoiced and contains 13 custom background music tracks. These worked well to set the mood of the scene. In particular, I’ll highlight ‘Pay Attention, Ladies’, which did a great job in making the stern headmistress feel even more intimidating, along with her appearance and dialogue.
Verdict
Fragile Feelings is a somewhat different take on the common yuri setting of a girls’ school, focusing on a young assistant teacher and school nurse. Despite failing to immediately grab my attention and a slow feeling through much of the visual novel, the relationships between the characters and writing kept me interested enough to want to find out more until it started to become more and more interesting. While I have some minor gripes, by the end I felt like it was certainly worth reading through Fragile Feelings.
FRAGILE FEELINGS IS RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for another visual novel set in schools like these, you might want to check out Otome Domain or Otoboku: Maidens Are Falling For Me, which are not quite yuri titles but have a similar feel. 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 ebi-hime for a PC review code for All The Words She Wrote.
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.
