It’s spring. Couples are starting to appear everywhere in the season of love, but Tsumugu doesn’t even have a crush, aside from on his favorite virtual idol. My Klutzy Cupid (Ore no Cupid ga Ponkotsu Sugite Kowa~i) sees an angel of love give him a push. But if he doesn’t find love within 90 days, the consequences are quite extreme.
Cursed Item
My Klutzy Cupid begins with Tsumugu finding the Love Note. While he’s not interested at first, the angel Lovmieil (Eil) appears before him and explains that it’s now his. If he writes a name in the Love Note, it can show the level of the romantic bond and give him advice on how to raise it. But if he doesn’t find love by raising his bond with someone to 100 within 90 days, he’ll be rendered impotent permanently.
While this sounds like a rather horrible predicament, My Klutzy Cupid is a comedy, and this is not taken seriously. The consequences are hardly ever mentioned, and aside from some initial unhappiness, he doesn’t seem to hold it against Eil. A good thing too, since she ends up staying at his home, even if a few threats to his virility are needed to make it happen.
Luckily, there are a few romantic candidates in sight, even if Tsumugu doesn’t see it right away. We’re briefly introduced to these through scenes at school, home, and his part-time job. Briefly is the keyword here.
Short Story
My Klutzy Cupid is fairly short as it is. I took 13 hours to complete all routes and endings. The common route is particularly short though, and doesn’t do enough to introduce each heroine.
The story itself is fairly minimal, with the common route mostly being the setup of receiving the Love Note and using its advice to get closer to the heroines.
While you can check the exact details in our guide, there are four points during the common route where you can choose a main heroine and see a scene with them. Outside of that though, we only really see much of the main heroine Eil in the common route. There are a few little hints of story and moments for some heroines, but before actually choosing one, there was never enough to entice me to choose them over another.
Fortunately, when deciding to choose a heroine, while the scenes for those four points don’t do much to introduce them in some cases, it does make a start at it, and they’re enjoyable. Still, I often felt like I was only getting to know the heroine well after entering their route.
As for the routes themselves, they typically followed a standard formula of some slice-of-life scenes, a little drama due to some problem, a quick resolution, and a happy ending. My Klutzy Cupid has a very relaxed tone, where you can be assured that nothing too serious will happen in most cases and love will conquer all.
My Klutzy Cupid doesn’t have a particularly memorable story. On top of that, it feels like the developer just tweaked the premise of their earlier work, KamiYaba: Destiny On A Dicey Deadline, then took it in a different direction. But rather than the story, the heroines are the charm point.
Lovmieil (Eil) – The Klutzy Cupid
Lovmieil or Eil is the titluar Klutzy Cupid and main heroine. Energetic, easygoing, sometimes smug, and not above throwing around threats, she’s not exactly the ideal angel. That’s not even counting her lack of experience in love and attempts to help you that just make things worse.
While Eil seems like a space case at times, Tsumugu has fun spending time with her. She has a lot of dreams, and we get to experience some of these with her. Her route features an almost desperate love and the most interesting reveals.
Isuzu Inui – The Estranged Childhood Friend
A brief mention is made early on about something that made Tsumugu and Isuzu grow apart, but you have to keep choosing her and her route to find out more. While she’s a childhood friend, I didn’t really feel it until later in the route due to this wall between them. Instead, she came off as more of a friendly sporty girl at first.
We do find out that there’s a good reason for this throughout her route, and I enjoyed unraveling the secret here. Still, it lacked those cliché childhood friend interactions throughout.
Rinka Saijou – The Standoffish Student
Rinka is a mystery through the common route unless choosing her. It actually feels odd that she accepts a certain invite if not heading for her route, as we barely seem to know her otherwise.
This standoffish classmate has a secret, though it’s a fairly obvious one. But make the right choices, and you can spend some time playing games with her and your friends. I think a lot of people will appreciate the theme shown here about going for your dreams, and the difficulties in doing so.
Uta Sakuma – A (Step)Sister Is Fine Too
Through some complicated family circumstances, Tsumugu and Uta live together without their estranged father. She’s the most obviously interested in Tsumugu, often showing her jealousy, and her scenes are unabashedly horny, even before getting to her route. She’s not above pushing the situation either. It’s to the level that I’d not be surprised if she purposely stuck herself in a washing machine and called him over. In a way it makes sense, in that the more extreme situations make him see her as a woman, rather than as a sister.
I found Uta’s route to be one of the best. It goes into the use of the Love Note a little more than others, has relatable drama, and an emotional ending that connects to the main mystery. On top of that, her effort and excitement about romantic situations can be rather cute.
Kururu Kosaki – Love Detective
Sadly, while routes are short generally, Kururu’s is particularly so as a side character. While she’s quiet, she’s oddly perceptive and has a strong intuition, seemingly knowing everything going on around school. She figures out that something is going on, and after a confrontation that could be taken from a detective in a mystery novel, decides to support Tsumugu as his advisor.
Her route feels fairly rushed due to the length, which is a pity as it has a setup of a practice relationship turning real that could have been expanded quite a lot. While the route itself is fairly weak due to this and lacks even the minimal drama of the other routes, she’s one of my favorite heroines. Her insightful nature reminds me a little of Yukari from Kamiyaba.
Kotohina Minekoshi – Hot For Sensei
Kotohina is the kind young teacher everyone admires. She’s easy to talk to and even enjoys manga. Throughout the common route, we do see something unusual about the way she treats Eil though…
Her route not only explores the forbidden romance between student and teacher but has the most engaging and serious drama. Even so, it’s never in doubt that a happy end is in sight, even if for no other reason than due to events that will have been already seen in another route that needs to be played before this one.
Mixed Routes
In terms of enjoyment, I felt fairly mixed about the heroine routes. Each heroine had her own charms, but I would’ve liked longer routes in all cases to explore the relationships more. While to a lesser extent than the common route in most cases, their stories felt slightly rushed too, with problems often appearing and being resolved extremely quickly. I did enjoy some of the dramatic moments, so it’s a pity they were over so quickly.
The Uta, Eil, and Kotohina routes were more interesting to me, as they related more to the story about the love cupid and relationships with characters other than the protagonist. Isuzu, Rinka, and especially Kururu felt more standalone.
Many of the slice-of-life moments throughout were enjoyable, but none of these stood out as memorable. The comedy was fun too, but very few moments were laugh-out-loud funny. The romance was pleasant, but again felt like it didn’t take enough time to build up tension.
Adult Content
The Steam version has adult content removed, but all routes are included. As well as cutting scenes, nude sprites and CGs are removed, and some CGs are cropped. Textual references to nudity have been left in though. As normal, this content can be restored by a free patch, which you can learn more about here.
If purchasing the adult version or restoring this content with the patch, you’ll find mostly vanilla scenes, with some slight fetish content including being in public, a slightly masochistic heroine who talks about belonging to you, some role play, and a foot scene. The length of the scenes is average and no mosaics are included, though one scene does include a lightbeam censor.
Localization
I’m not in a position to talk about translation accuracy, but on a more general level, the quality of editing is high and it reads well. It retains honorifics to an extent, so Uta calls you ‘Nii-san’ (there are no Bubby’s or Broski’s here!).
Production Values
The quality of the art feels high overall, with a delicate pastel style typical of moege. It includes plenty of sprite variations, including back sprites, but fairly limited animation. It does use it to good effect at times though; seeing a character bounce around in excitement is cute. Some of the expressions are great too, particularly Eil’s smug face. There are a decent amount of CGs too, as long as you’re playing the full version and it’s 1080p by default.
The background music and songs are fitting but fairly forgettable. There are some good voice actors and the quality was high here overall, though it didn’t feel like there were any standout performances.
Options are fairly comprehensive, with several fonts to choose from, individual voice volumes, and more. It had all the standards too, like skipping to the next choice.
Verdict
While I enjoyed My Klutzy Cupid for the characters and do recommend reading it, it certainly has its weaknesses around the story, its length, and feeling rushed at times. I’ve mentioned the slightly older Kamiyaba from the same developer a couple of times during this review, and in some ways, it feels like a budget version of that, despite Kamiyaba being slightly cheaper.
It’s worth picking up and reading. I think most will enjoy it, but I don’t think it’ll blow anyone away unless they particularly like one of the heroines.
WAIT FOR SALE ON MY KLUTZY CUPID
Want to check out more visual novels? Why not check out our review of KamiYaba: Destiny On A Dicey Deadline, another work by Hulotte?
Many thanks go to NekoNyanSoft 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.
