The Expression Amrilato, known as Kotonoha Amrilato in Japan, is a girls’ love visual novel released by SukeraSparo back in 2017. The game is primarily known for featuring the use of Esperanto, a real-life constructed (planned) language based on roots originating from various European languages. The Expression Amrilato was released and published in English by MangaGamer back in 2019 and served as SukeraSparo’s debut into the international market, eventually giving way to the global releases of Kudan no Folklore and other titles under their adult imprint SukeraSomero.
I first heard of The Expression Amrilato as a visual novel that let readers have the satisfaction of not only experiencing a sweet and fluffy tale of romance between cute girls, but also as a gateway to learning a language relatively unfamiliar to the average person. I was intrigued at the prospect of a visual novel, which is already pretty niche, incorporating the very specific subject of a constructed language as the main concept that the story revolves around. That’s pretty crazy; I couldn’t even begin to imagine how it would work!
And so, once again we venture into unfamiliar territory. Will a cute tale of girls’ love be enough to keep the reader interested despite large portions of what would otherwise be study modules for their foreign language class? Let’s find out by diving into SukeraSparo’s The Expression Amrilato!
Pink is the New Blue!
We start off in a shopping district where Rin Takatoo, your commonplace average high school student, is searching for a specific treat to munch on as she dawdles around for the weekend. Upon finding the taiyaki she had been craving for a while, Rin promptly pays the fee and enjoys her well-earned reward. Or that should have been the case, at least. As she walks away from the taiyaki shop, she suddenly finds herself a little bit out of balance—an unfortunate position to find yourself in, especially with a tasty treat in your hands! Thankfully, she’s able to prop herself up against the wall and stabilize. She manages to avoid the embarrassment of tripping in a public space and protect her freshly-made taiyaki. There’s just one problem left now: the sky seems to have turned pink.
Understandably, Rin starts freaking out. What should have been a beautiful blue sky in the middle of a typical afternoon suddenly turned pink while she was struggling to regain her balance. However, she soon realizes that the foreign sky is the least of her worries. As she looks at her surroundings, Rin realizes the gravity of her situation. It’s not just the sky that changed—the signs, the people, and the shopping district itself had morphed into something else. Although eerily familiar, the language written and spoken by the neighborhood she found herself in is a far cry from the Japanese she grew up with. She found herself in a world that could not understand her.
Lost and hopeless, she sits in an alley feeling miserable about her rotten luck. Without anyone to console her with words she knows, Rin settles with shedding tears in solitude. Suddenly, a cute girl who, according to Rin, was ‘beautiful enough to be a real life idol’ approaches and tries to engage her in a conversation. Although a bit rocky at the start, the girl responded to Rin mentioning “Japanese” and expressed a bit of understanding. The girl introduces herself as Ruka, and the two are able to establish bits of proper communication with Japanese as the common denominator.
Juliamo, the Language of Yuri Love
After an extended dialogue about what to do next, Ruka decides to bring Rin to her home to help her get used to the unfamiliar scenery through some good old compassion. She helps her get changed, eat a proper meal, take a bath (together, no less!), and get enough rest. Although taking it all in stride, Rin is notably still anxious about the whole situation, but eventually relaxes enough to accept and adapt to her current predicament due to Ruka’s many kind gestures.
They eventually go to the library to seek formal help with Rin’s situation. There, she learns that she isn’t a unique case, as the phenomenon seems to regularly happen in Ruka’s world. After being granted authorization to become Rin’s guardian, Ruka takes it upon herself to start teaching Rin about how things work under their pink sky. She decides to start by teaching Rin “Juliamo”, the language of her world. From then on, the two find themselves entangled in a unique master-pet relationship, where Rin is completely dependent on Ruka for her needs.
Of course, Rin eventually gets motivated enough to start breaking away from her full dependence on Ruka. She actively seeks material and opportunities to learn Juliamo as the story progresses, hoping that eventually she can at least stand on her own two feet and engage Ruka as an equal. With a desire to understand and be understood, Rin starts the difficult journey of learning this foreign world’s tongue to express herself to others despite her foreign origins.
And maybe, just maybe, find a little bit of romance along the way.
Putting Your Thoughts Into Words
For most of my time reading The Expression Amrilato, it reminded me of my experiences being in a foreign language class. Rin, a character that encapsulates what it means to be monolingual, is very relatable with how she struggles at the start. Barely stringing along words to make sentences, sounding like a child learning their first words—it’s a pretty endearing sight to see a character not instantly be a genius when they encounter a foreign language, and it comes with all the annoyances too! I felt like the visual novel was very thorough with portraying the frustration that comes with not being able to express yourself through another language, and it serves as great motivation on the reader’s part to join Rin as she learns Juliamo.
It doesn’t come off one-sidedly only too, as Ruka, the character proficient in Juliamo, essentially struggles in Japanese the same way Rin struggles in her foreign language studies. I felt like this mutual endeavor to try and learn their mother tongues to better understand each other was a worthwhile story element to be invested in, and is convincing enough to justify budding romances given they live under the same roof. The overall setting also provides an apt environment for conflicts surrounding misunderstandings brought about by their differences in languages. The inability to express themselves in ways that they both understand repeatedly reared its head in various parts of the visual novel, and although simple in its resolution, was realistic enough to not make it feel forced.
The Barriers of Language
On the other hand, as much as I liked the focus on Rin’s struggles with the language, I felt like it ultimately took away from the potential of better developing Ruka as a character. Much of the information about Ruka and why she’s an important character as a parallel to Rin is established in the background through Rin’s interactions with another cast member, which gives Ruka less of a spotlight than I would have liked her to have as the main romantic interest of the story. This initially isn’t a problem, but as the conflict starts to shift to a direction where Ruka’s own motivations weigh into the stakes of the story, the lack of expressions from her side makes some part of their relationship’s development feel a little bit shallow.
This is where I think the benefit of multiple perspectives would have done The Expression Amrilato a big favor. As a reader, without characters’ thoughts being present throughout the text, we can only really assume their own opinions and feelings through the limited information being fed to us by the story. Add the fact that Ruka primarily functions through the use of Juliamo and now you have a difficult chain where you’re supposed to learn about her but you have to learn about Juliamo first too. Sure, it’s less of a problem when you’re motivated to learn and the subject is simple enough, but I feel like from a general visual novel reader’s POV, besides the lack of focus on her own motivations, it’s a struggle to remain interested in the overall story if I’m being gatekept by the learning content.
At least, that’s the case if you stick to reading The Expression Amrilato the way it was intended to be read: with minimal translations and normal Juliamo writing. The visual novel does offer the option of providing translations for the dialogue written in Juliamo and the ability to skip all the minigames and quizzes related to testing your knowledge about the language, but I feel like taking away that struggle detracts from the experience of having Rin as your protagonist. It oversimplifies the pitch of the game, turning it into a simple girls’ love story about the hardships of interacting with people who speak a different language that’s just, well, cute.
Personally, I would have liked to just see more of Ruka and the kind of life she has. We’re only really given glimpses of it through the questions Rin throws to the people around her, and I feel like it’s a missed opportunity not to expand on that. The normalcy of their world from a resident’s POV would have been a great addition to the reader’s experience of The Expression Amrilato’s setting. It provides a good parallel to Rin’s own thoughts about her situation and could serve as an avenue for emphasizing differences in a more impactful way.
Learning Esperanto, Hopefully!
Putting aside my own thoughts about what it could have done better, I feel like if there’s something that The Expression Amrilato did incredibly well, it’s the study portions available to readers in the game. Accessible even outside of the main story, the materials provided by the visual novel to learn Esperanto (Juliamo in-game) is very extensive and covers a lot of bases. From the basics such as subject-verb agreement to more complicated stuff such as tenses and conjugations, the game is rich in what it can offer in terms of knowledge and serves as a great starting line should the reader decide to continue learning Esperanto. It’s super cute too, using variations in teaching methods such as show and tell, mix and match, and fill in the blanks.
As a first time learner of the language, it was a really fun experience slowly getting used to how Esperanto’s sentence structures worked and recognizing commonplace words that characters used throughout the story. If there’s one complaint I have about this learning portion, it’s the fact that because the sessions require actual effort to study up on, it ends up taking you out of your immersion in the narrative. It’s fun, but after self-studying for the test part of the game for 30 minutes to an hour, I’d usually find myself not exactly enthusiastic about reading the next part of their love story. I’d instead decide to rest up a bit because I’d feel tired from actually having studied, similar to how it would go if I still had classes.
Regardless, I still think that this is my favorite part of The Expression Amrilato by far. There’s just so much to take in from the material, and if you do end up scoring high on the minigames, the feeling of satisfaction associated with successfully passing the module is pretty incredible. It’s a cool way of engaging visual novel readers like us to learn more about Esperanto and how it works.
Art and Music
When thinking about how to describe the artwork in The Expression Amrilato, the first thing that comes to mind is “watercolor”. Chisato Naruse’s way of coloring the 26 CGs in the visual novel introduces a lot of soft and fluffy textures, making it feel accurate to the idea of a sweet romance budding between girls. Although it is a bit jarring how differently the style translates to the individual sprites, I think they still look really good regardless. I especially love how she does their eyes—it evokes the very moe style of big, round irises with color gradients that make you feel like you’re staring into a sky full of stars. I just wish it fit better against the visual novel’s backgrounds; they’re kind of out of place!
As for the music tracks, there are only 12 in total. Most of them use the piano as the main instrument, evoking a relaxing atmosphere similar to what cafe music does. Interestingly, the opening theme of the game, The Road to You, is very different in terms of music genre as it prominently features an electric guitar in its ensemble. Among these tracks, I think Thinking Time stuck to my head the most because of how it kept looping during the quiz portions. It’s pretty good at doing what it does—being increasingly annoying the more frustrated you get with the material. Overall, not exactly incredible, but I think it’s sufficient for what it wants to do for the game.
Verdict
The Expression Amrilato is a visual novel that attempts to illustrate the difficulty of overcoming barriers to mutual understanding. By incorporating Esperanto, a constructed language, as its main vehicle for story progression, it subjects its readers through the same hardships its protagonist Rin goes through as she struggles to express herself in a world that does not understand her words. With the plethora of study material available within the game, it doubles as an amazing way to jumpstart your own journey to learn Esperanto.
Although it incorporates themes of language and its hardships really well in how it weaves misunderstandings within the characters’ relationships, its focus on establishing the surroundings that Rin moves in ultimately took away opportunities to build characters like Ruka into solid members of the cast. With most interactions with her veiled under a thin layer of Esperanto, it also demands a bit of investment from its readers into its exercises, an investment that others may not be willing to give due to The Expression Amrilato’s simplistic storyline and resolutions.
If you’re looking for an experience that’s not quite like anything you’ve ever read before, do give The Expression Amrilato a try! Frustratingly relatable, it straddles the barrier between people caused by the use of different languages and tries to tell a story about breaking it down. Ambitious yet simplistic, it’s a read that’ll have you experience what it’s like learning to speak once again.
THE EXPRESSION AMRILATO IS RECOMMENDED
Purchase: MangaGamer
If you are looking for another girls’ love visual novel, you might want to check out Lilja and Natsuka: Painting Lies. We have also covered a wide variety of visual novels both originally in English and localized from Japanese, which you can check out here.
Many thanks go to MangaGamer for a PC review code for The Expression Amrilato.
Visual novel reader that wishes there were more than 24 hours in a day. Gacha victim, TCG enjoyer, and VTuber simp. Still trying to live happily.
