Welcome to Cafe Lumière! ~A Dragon Girl Concept Cafe~ (aka Dora-con Cafe) is a short little slice-of-life type visual novel about a cafe with dragon girls. Yep, it pretty much tells you what to expect from it based on the title. There’s already plenty of titles about cafes featuring catgirls, grim reapers, and the like, so why not dragon girls too? Despite the commonness of the setting, I can enjoy a visual novel set in a cozy little coffee shop/bakery once in a while. And as NookGaming’s resident dragon girl connoisseur™, I figured I may as well check to see if this one in particular can pique my interest.
The Reverse Isekai
Our main heroine, Marmalydia Dot Fearburn (usually either shortened to Maru or Lydia), is effectively the god of the world of Fearburn, referred to as the “Mother Dragon”. She raised seven dragon pupils to each become kings and queens of the different realms, and with her tutelage, they have been able to bring peace to the land. This brings about a new set of problems for Maru however: she’s very bored and quite sick of being treated with unconditional reverence instead of as her own person. So, believing her most pressing responsibilities resolved, she decides to take a vacation in another world on a whim.
This brings her to this less magical modern world of Japan, where she stumbles upon a concept cafe themed around tsunderes, and she immediately falls in love with someone treating her bashfully and abrasively for a change. Despite her draconic appearance, she blends right in with the crowd in this environment, most of whom think she’s just an elaborate cosplayer. She then meets our male lead, Masamune Shidou, a young man who is nearing the end of his college years with a lot of time on his hands due to having taken care of most of his credits. The two quickly become friends over a shared love of concept cafes, and on a whim, Maru decides she wants to open up her own dragon-themed concept cafe to give the area a tiny little glimpse of her own world.
One of Maru’s most fiercely attached and loyal pupils/servants/caretakers, Francallan Pridia (Fran for short), follows her to Japan. During an argument to try to bring Maru back, she inadvertently unleashes a fireball that scorches Masamune, burning him nearly to death. Maru then channels some of her life force into the fellow to keep him from dying, which leads to the two dragon girls moving into Masamune’s house to try to tune this donated magical energy for a while, else he will likely disintegrate if not stabilized. Conveniently, Masamune lives in a now mostly-empty house with a ground floor that was turned into a cafe by his grandfather. You can probably guess where this is going.
Welcome to Cafe Lumière! ~A Dragon Girl Concept Cafe~ is a linear visual novel without choices and has a fairly short runtime hovering around six hours or so. Generally, it’s closer to a Nekopara than a Destiny Star Girlfriend (despite using a fairly similar initial hook to put its male and female leads together), as it’s a somewhat mundane little story focused on its small nucleus of characters. Most of its appeal is going to come down to how you feel about spending time with Maru and (to a lesser extent) Fran.
Tails of Life
Maru is pretty much the star of the show of Welcome to Cafe Lumière! ~A Dragon Girl Concept Cafe~, and probably 80% of why I enjoyed it more than I might’ve expected. Despite her age being in the thousands, she’s a bit of a dork. She’s whimsical thanks to a newfound sense of freedom and ability to choose to do something far less burdened by the responsibilities she’s had much of her life. She’s also a bit of a tease with Masamune given the significant difference in role and dynamic between them, but it’s generally very friendly (and mutually enjoyed) as she appreciates the company of someone who treats her more like a friend to enjoy company with than a deity to worship. But she also has something of a vain, selfish, and impulsive side to her as well to balance things a bit.
You get a number of pieces of history of her world as Maru or Fran often reference a story or event that happened there, something which gets integrated into the dragon cafe as a sort of “worldbuilding” and which has the nice effect of fitting the theme. It’s honestly kinda refreshing to have a heroine whom you don’t even come close to knowing everything about what they’ve been through and what the whole of their life has been like in a visual novel like this. Put simply, Maru was a surprisingly fun focal character for pretty much the whole of Dora-con Cafe’s runtime, as she’s both quite adorable and has a surprising amount to her on the whole.
Fran on the other hand is a bit more of a counterbalancing figure to kind of round things out and supply just a pinch of tension. She’s somewhere between jealous and distrusting of Masamune due to how close he gets to her beloved quasi-mother figure of a teacher, though it eventually becomes something closer to a tsundere dynamic. Her devotion and servant-ish status also makes her the more responsible of the two dragon girls, leading her to handle the more professional matters of things. I didn’t enjoy her character as much, but her role in the story at least fills enough of a valuable purpose that I didn’t mind her too much either.
The story is otherwise straightforward and about what I would have expected, with the characters trying to learn how to handle the roadblocks to running a successful cafe. Given they aren’t really concerned with profits and focus mainly on providing the kind of experience they enjoy, the stakes are all but nonexistent. The story also isn’t especially about budding romance, and a fair amount of that is surprisingly left implied rather than following the typical “confession>dating>debauchery” sequence. I was a bit disappointed in the story for pulling one of its punches on a rare attempt at a more emotional setup to something, but it’s otherwise not that kind of visual novel, so this wasn’t a dealbreaker or anything. It’s probably about what you’d expect from a visual novel with the word “cafe” in the name if you’ve read a few of these, but I enjoyed it enough for what it was.
Enjoying the Eye Candy
There are five 18+ scenes in Welcome to Cafe Lumière! ~A Dragon Girl Concept Cafe~, provided that you’ve bought the 18+ version, or you’re using the 18+ DLC patch. While that’s not a ton, they are quite lengthy, I suppose to make up for the lower quantity. Three of them happen during the story, and two more are unlocked in the extras upon completion. The scenes have been de-mosaic’d.
Some aspects of the first couple of scenes feel like they add bits to the characters, though by and large they’re a bit superfluous; they’re mainly there if you want them. The acts are by and large pretty vanilla, and you will see a fair bit of action surrounding certain very noticeable assets of the dragon ladies. And although Maru is the main heroine, her and Fran get about the same focus across these scenes.
If anything, I’m slightly disappointed that their draconic features barely feature in many scenes, including these. As tails are long and largely lay below the waist, they’re rarely in the shot much, and the dragons lack anything like visible wings, meaning what you see much of the time are simply buxom girls with some fancy cosmetic horns. I also recommend turning sound effects off during these scenes, as the choice of sound effects is rather questionable.
Behind the Counter
Despite the developer of Welcome to Cafe Lumière! ~A Dragon Girl Concept Cafe~ being the rather new Cuteuphoria, most of the people who worked on it have quite a bit of experience in the visual novel scene. The main scenario writer worked on titles like Angelic Chaos RE-BOOT, and both the executive producer and character designer worked on titles like Happiness! Sakura Celebration. There aren’t a ton of CGs, but they get the job done.
The main two heroines are fully voiced, as well as one recurring minor character; the rest are unvoiced (including Masamune, as is typical). It’s a bit weird, but minor characters appear infrequently enough that it never becomes outright jarring. Maru’s voice actress, veteran Miu Yuzuhara, does very well in fitting the playful nature of the character.
Localization seemed fine as far as I can tell. There’s a fair share of typos, though the most noticeable one happened during one of the 18+ scenes where a line was delivered by the wrong character, leading to a bit of unintentional hilarity, but nothing else stood out to me. The text also features a lot of emoji, mainly of hearts, stars, and sweat drops, for added moe appeal.
Verdict
There’s not a lot of major surprises in Welcome to Cafe Lumière! ~A Dragon Girl Concept Cafe~, as it’s an otherwise somewhat straightforward slice-of-life cafe-based adult visual novel. Still, I found it more enjoyable than I perhaps was expecting, mainly due to a rather fun main heroine who had quite a bit to enjoy. It ends somewhat abruptly for what it is, although it’s already received an (unlocalized at the time of writing) sequel, so if this is to be considered the start of a series, I enjoyed this maiden voyage enough for what it was.
WELCOME TO CAFE LUMIÈRE! ~A DRAGON GIRL CONCEPT CAFE~ IS RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for another visual novel, you may enjoy A Maiden’s Serenade. We have covered a wide variety of visual novels both original to English and localized from Japanese, which you can check out here.
Thank you to Sekai Project for providing a Steam review code for Welcome to Cafe Lumière! ~A Dragon Girl Concept Cafe~.
Been playing games since my papa gave me an NES controller in the early 90’s. I play games of almost all genres, but especially focus role-playing, action, and puzzle-platform games. Also an enjoyer of many niche things ranging from speedrunning to obscure music from all over the world.
