When I first heard of Lilja and Natsuka: Painting Lies, the points I heard about most often were that it was a girls’ love story and that the heroine was blind. I was surprised to find that the story doesn’t overly focus on either of these things.
Lilja and Natsuka: Painting Lies is an all-ages mystery story by Frontwing with a scenario written by Asou Ei, the writer behind euphoria. Despite being all-ages and having some rather cute moments, this isn’t exactly a lighthearted story.
Mysterious Painter
Lilja is a genius painter, who happens to be both blind and confined to a wheelchair. While very few know who is behind her paintings, her work is said to be powerful enough to change the lives of those who view it. Unsurprisingly, she has no end of requests, but she only takes those few that spark her inspiration.
There’s something beyond the request for each client that we see Lilja take. Something that’s being hidden, a message from someone who couldn’t have sent it, or something else is always there to explore. Each request is set out similarly to the cases to be solved, and this is where Natsuka comes in.
Natuska is very dissimilar to Lilja. She has occasional flashes of insight, particularly regarding emotional matters, but she’s certainly not smart. She doesn’t even understand her own thought process at times. She is however cheerful and energetic, while Lilja is quite reserved and logical. Lilja hires Natsuka as her assistant to be a pair of eyes, but values this because Natsuka views the world in such a different way to her in many ways.
This dynamic was interesting to see. Lilja clearly values Natsuka, even if she claims that 99.9 percent of what the latter says is mindless babble, and it shows how different perspectives can be helpful. Less intelligent characters are often used as punching bags in stories, but this isn’t the case here at all. Natsuka’s emotional view of situations and clear visual narration can both be the inspiration for Lilja’s paintings and help her to understand what’s going on, outside of what can be gathered through normal investigation and logic.
While Lilja and Natsuka: Painting Lies does get dark, there is a comedic vibe at times. The pairing of a sensible character and a silly one is nothing new conceptually, but it made for some fun interactions between the two. We do on occasion get to see Lilja relax a little and poke fun at Natsuka or act smug, which helps to show how close they are.
It’s a Puzzle (to Natsuka at least)
We mostly see the story of Lilja and Natsuka: Painting Lies through Natsuka’s perspective, which feels like a good choice. As a mystery title, there are often clues hidden throughout, some of which she understandably doesn’t pick up on, but we as readers might. Certain things don’t become evident until the end of the case and others until even later which makes for a satisfying payoff.
While I’ll avoid specifics as that does take the fun out of mysteries, I did think that the clues felt tied together nicely for the most part. However, some of the situations are far too much of a stretch to be believable, with some actions being quite absurd even for people who are in particularly bad situations. One even throws in an overly used cliché.
More positively, I did enjoy that a key theme was overcoming problems, even if the events weren’t always sensible. It also threw in some misleading aspects to the mysteries, which kept me on my toes.
This is a somewhat short visual novel, having taken me less than 9 hours to finish reading. As such, there aren’t many cases to solve. That said, each case introduces new characters with fairly well-developed backstories for the runtime, and each case felt like it neither overstayed its welcome nor ran too short.
While Lilja and Natsuka: Painting Lies is structured around the cases, in my opinion, the most hard-hitting part is the emotional impact of exploring the main characters’ pasts and seeing how their backstories have affected their lives. Natsuka in particular has some secrets that I did not expect at all. It’s often said that Natsuka is needed as Lilja’s eyes, but finding out more about Natsuka is one of the parts of this visual novel that I’ll remember the longest.
The final case was the one I enjoyed the most, as it was where the relationship between Lilja and Natsuka was tested the most.
A Lily Blooming?
The romance between Lilja and Natsuka is rather understated. There’s an employer/employee relationship officially, but we see friendship highlighted by occasional moments of physical closeness, like Lilja resting her head on Natsuka’s stomach. The relationship is made somewhat clearer at one point, but there aren’t declarations of love or passionate kisses in Lilja and Natsuka: Painting Lies.
It’s far more subtle. For example, I mentioned above that Lilja happens to be disabled. It is made clear that, despite this, she’s always the most competent person in the room. She can do everything herself and to a higher standard than almost everyone else. She doesn’t need help for anything other than Natsuka’s unique perspective, and while Natsuka acts as Lilja’s eyes, this is only for solving cases and not for daily life. The story even engages in role reversal at times, with Lilja taking care of Natsuka. It barely mentions her disability. Instead, it’s used to show how close she becomes to Natsuka, by allowing her to help. Moments like Natsuka feeding Lilja or carrying her to bed (which Lilja can normally do herself) are used as a sign of how their relationship has grown. This is made even clearer when we eventually see the earlier moments of their relationship. Despite the romance not being explicit, the relationship between the two is one of the most important elements of the story.
While the love between women may not be so direct between Lilja and Natsuka, there are several other relationships between women in this story. These are more explicitly stated and treated respectfully, without any real surprise or issues. I liked how this was handled, but I do find it a little immersion-breaking in stories like this where the vast majority of people they run into all happen to be women who love women.
Paintings and Records
The artwork by kippu has a very distinct style. Some of the CGs in particular help to create a visual identity for Lilja and Natsuka: Painting Lies by having a textured look, similar to an old painting. The backgrounds and sprites are given a cleaner look.
The music felt like it always fit the situation well and was pleasant to listen to. The voice acting was great too, with Natsuka’s energetic nature and Lilja’s more reserved personality coming through well, while also hitting during the emotional moments. A lot of the voice actors have played well-known parts in popular anime too, such as Ruby Hoshino from Oshi no Ko, Bocchi and Kita from Bocchi the Rock, Kaguya from Kaguya-sama: Love is War, among others.
Verdict
At first, Lilja and Natsuka: Painting Lies seems like a fairly lighthearted story about a cheerful girl helping to spark the imagination of a blind painter, but there is a lot behind the premise. It’s a mix of mystery, surprise reveals, and most importantly an emotional journey of character growth with a hint of romance. Supported by some great-looking art and a great performance from a surprisingly well-known anime voice cast, it’s worth the read.
LILJA AND NATSUKA: PAINTED LIES IS RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for another visual novel with girls romance, you might want to check out UsoNatsu ~The Summer Romance Bloomed From A Lie~. 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 Frontwing for a PC review code for Lilja and Natsuka: Painted Lies.
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.
