Shinobi Koi Utsutsu – Garaiya ~ Plot & Character Analysis

If ever an otome route demonstrates the importance of kindness and acceptance, it is Garaiya’s route in Shinobi Koi Utsutsu.

I would classify Shinobi Koi Utsutsu as a romantic comedy, adventure story. This game is lighthearted and will make you smile, laugh, and blush! But underlying the fun and sheer silliness of the set up and plot is a story of a lonely young man who desperately wants a place to belong. There is a gravity to this story and it’s the universal desire for genuine acceptance. At the center of this route is Garaiya and Kaede and the strength of their friendship and the power of unconditional acceptance.

The message of this route is outstanding, and I really loved it!

As always, character and plot analysis and spoilers after the cut!

Garaiya is a sweet young man who has always been alone. A surviving member of the Date family, who was defeated a 100 years ago during a conflict with the Toyotomi, Garaiya believes there is no place for him in the Toyotomi dominated society. After the conflict, in typical historical fashion, the winners took everything and the “losers” lost everything. So, being a Date, Garaiya knows that many doors will forever be closed to him.

So, when a leader of the Tokugawa family (who is masquerading as the Vice President of the ninja institute), recruits Garaiya to join his covert rebellion, Garaiya thinks why the hell not? Garaiya doesn’t care about politics. He doesn’t hold any grudges against the Toyotomi. He has no real reason to join the rebellion…except for one thing. It is a place for him to belong and to be needed. As a member of the Date family, Garaiya has a respected place among other people from families that had been defeated by the Toyotomi and their allies.

Now, Garaiya knows he is settling for allies in a very loose sense. He is not getting acceptance in the way of true friendship. He is joining a group of people who want to overthrow the current political structure. His acceptance is based completely on his family name and what he can do for the political cause. But Garaiya believes that even if he is being used, it is better than being alone.

Good grief. That is sad.

When the “Vice President” infiltrates the ninja institute, he takes Garaiya with him as a student. Now, all Garaiya wants is friends and to be accepted, but because he is there as a spy, he believes he is unworthy of making friends and eventually spends all his time hiding away in the library. Because of his situation, as a spy, he is too scared and guilty to reach out for the things he genuinely needs in his life, so his perception of being alone is just perpetuated. 

All this changes when Kaede is recruited for the ninja institute.

Kaede is an orphan who dreams of joining the Sanada Braves Corp. They are highly trained and highly respected ninjas. The Vice President finds her in the town apprehending a thief, and recruits her to the institute because he knows her true power. She joins the institute, essentially on probation, but her status as a student will be made permanent if she can get a top score on the mid-term exams in six months.

On the surface, Kaede has the mero-mero ninjitsu. Whenever she gets flustered and her heart rate goes up, she emits her mero-mero powers that makes men go all flirty, and act as if they are “in love with her” for about a minute. The full breadth of her power is that her blood can turn people into mindless puppets that can be controlled. Of course, our heroine, knows nothing about her powers, and it isn’t until the final confrontation that the Vice President tells her about her “forbidden” ninjitsu potential.

On her first day at the institute, Kaede accidentally triggers her mero-mero powers, and makes the most popular boys in school, and Garaiya, fall in love with her for a minute. Her teacher, Sanada says that she needs to train so she can control her mero-mero powers. She also needs to study hard and bring her practical ninja skills up to par by six months so she can pass the exam and continue being a student.

After a fairly brief prologue, you jump right into the characters route (which I totally LOVE!). In selecting Garaiya’s route, Kaede is making the decision for Garaiya to be her training partner.

Now, at first Garaiya is shocked and a bit confused that she picked him, but he does his best to hide his pleasure that he got picked for anything (HAHA!). And even though he’s secretly happy to be picked, since he’s never experienced this before and doesn’t know what to do, he avoids Kaede.

Kaede finally finds Garaiya in the library, and in the most round-about way possible, he invites Kaede into his private use room to study. He is so happy and flustered, yet he hides his excitement of having someone in the library with him behind his “lord of darkness” persona.

Garaiya is never honest about his feelings, and is always trying to protect himself behind this persona. However, there are moments when he becomes quiet and understated. His rambling stops, and his words become hesitant. And those quiet moments are the ones where he sometimes lets his true thoughts and feelings be heard. 

Now this scene, where Kaede enters the library room for the first time, has some of the sweetest and most adorable otome moments of all time!

I can’t emphasize this enough: Garaiya is so sweet! And voice actor, Hiro Shimono, does a FABULOUS job voicing this quirky character! Honestly, I’ve experienced two characters, (Kuroyuki and Garaiya), that have been voiced by Shimono and I thoroughly enjoyed his work both times! He is such a great voice actor, who brings such a range of emotion to these characters!

At one moment, Garaiya is rambling and muttering (which he does a LOT), which Kaede has a difficult time comprehending, and that makes you laugh. The next moment his admission that no one in the institute besides Sanada has ever come looking for him, pains your heart. The moment after that, when Kaede admits that she doesn’t have any friends at the institute and she will be Garaiya’s first friend, warms your heart with happiness.

And while Kaede is an oblivious-to-love heroine, what I really loved about her was that with Garaiya she tried to understand him. She listened to his rambling without judging him. She didn’t cut him off. She didn’t tell him that he was annoying. She listened to him, rambling and all. And she embraced him for it. She looked past his awkwardness and “lord of darkness” persona and saw the kindness and compassion underneath. And while, later in the route, she’s completely oblivious to Garaiya’s feelings, there were times when she was very intuitive. She figured out that Garaiya was hiding something important, but she never presses him on it. And she doesn’t stop caring about Garaiya even though she knows he is hiding something from her.

As the story continues, Kaede comes to Garaiya’s library room every day to study and spends time with him. She quickly becomes the one thing that Garaiya has always needed in his life…a true friend. And it is their kindness they both recognize and appreciate in each other.

But this becomes a problem for Garaiya’s whose job it is to get blood from, or kidnap, Kaede for the Tokugawa rebellion. He internally struggles over what he should do. Give up the friend he has always wanted, or follow the orders of the rebellion organization that had accepted him to begin with. And while on the surface the answer seems clear, for Garaiya it is horribly difficult because he believes that if he tells Kaede the truth she will turn away from him and leave him alone again. And this inner conflict festers inside Garaiya well into the final confrontation of the route.

In an attempt to keep Kaede safe, Garaiya disappears from the school. Kaede of course wants to know what happened, and searches everywhere for him. She finally finds and reads the “diary” he had been keeping since he met her. In his diary, Garaiya admits everything he could never tell Kaede to her face, things like: he loves her and he is the Tokugawa spy.

Kaede takes all these revelations in stride and decides to keep them to herself. She then finishes her training and decides to take her mid-term exam on her own, which everyone says is crazy for her to do. There is no way that she will get a passing grade on her own. But Kaede wants to find Garaiya to try to save him. And she fears that if she told everyone else that Garaiya is the Tokugawa spy, they would try to apprehend him or, worse, kill him.

So, Kaede sets off on her exam and begins by breaking the location code with the skills she learned from Garaiya and the books he recommended her (awww!). Her intuition is correct and Garaiya is sent to kidnap her in the middle of her exam. Garaiya half-heartedly tries to apprehend her, but he can’t get himself to do it. And all the while, Kaede is talking with Garaiya and trying to figure out how to get through to him.

Garaiya’s inner conflict goes into overdrive as he sees that even after he “betrayed” her and their friends, Kaede has not given up on him. She still considers him her friend and wants to help him. At this point, Garaiya essentially freezes up. He knows what is expected of him, but he can’t hurt Kaede.

Of course, while this is going on the Vice President shows up and reveals his true identity as the leader of the Tokugawa rebellion. He begins to attack Kaede, deciding he will simply take her blood, which is the key to her ninjitsu.

Kaede fights back, refusing to give in to the Vice President or give up on Garaiya. The Vice President is merciless and attacks her limbs, which limits her mobility. Still, Kaede doesn’t give up. All the while, Garaiya is begging the Vice President to stop hurting Kaede. He knows they can get what they want from Kaede without killing her.

I’m not going to lie. This part was hard to read.

Like I get what the writers were doing. Garaiya is so convinced that no one could ever genuinely care about him and be his friend, that it literally takes watching the woman he loves be killed by a million cuts, for him to finally spring into action. His insecurities and hopelessness run that deep. And I don’t begrudge the writers for making it take extreme conditions for Garaiya to overcome his doubts and insecurities. But even with this understanding, it was hard to read what was happening to Kaede.

And at first, I questioned Kaede’s decision to fight this battle on her own, and not ask one of her classmates for help. But reading this scene, I came to understood her decision. She was willing to die to try to save her best friend, and she went into this mission knowing her death was a possibility. She had accepted this reality because she loved her best friend and wanted to help him above all…which is beautiful!

Finally, Garaiya’s love for Kaede conquers his need for acceptance from the Tokugawa rebellion group. Garaiya releases the full scope of his power, which reveals his actual body that had been under a self-inflicted curse to conserve his power (which is a fun twist!), and overtakes the Vice President.

Once the Vice President is under control, Sanada and the classmates show up and they witness Garaiya saving Kaede’s life. The Sanada Brave Corp arrive and takes the Vice President away. And Anayama uses his abilities to quickly heal Kaede’s wounds.

Sanada knew that Garaiya had been the spy the entire time. And in the end, since Garaiya used his power to save Kaede and ignored the orders from the Tokugawa, Sanada uses his influence to exonerate Garaiya from any possible conviction from being a spy. And as Kirigakure pointed out, Garaiya didn’t actually do anything wrong. Yes, he was a spy, but he never actually completed any of his assignments. Sarutobi, Kamakiyo, Anayama agree with Kirigakure’s assessment and they happily accept Garaiya back as their classmate.

This acceptance from his classmates, means so much to Garaiya. He believed he would never be accepted by descendants of the Toyotomi and their allies, which all of his classmates are, that he blocked out any possibility of forming friendships with the people around him. And most of all, Garaiya has the love and acceptance of Kaede.

What is really special about this, is that Garaiya offered Kaede love and acceptance first. Even if he didn’t understand what he was doing, Garaiya had an innate ability to care about people. Garaiya was never cruel or filled with hate towards anybody. He simply lived in fear of being alone and abandoned. But once he clears his conscience and comes clean about being a spy, Garaiya is able to embrace the friendship offered by his classmates.

This lonely boy, is lonely no longer.

A lovely ending.

-Final Thoughts-

I love Garaiya! To me, he’s a great hero! He’s so sweet and quirky, and I felt all sorts of emotions reading his story. Garaiya will make you laugh, cry, and blush all in one scene! It was a joy to experience him finding friendship and love, something he’s always craved for himself but was always too scared to pursue. This boy deserves the world!

I really came to love Kaede, as well! At first, her oblivious-to-love nature was kind of annoying, but I really appreciated her intuitive nature when it came to trying to understand her quirky friend. She doesn’t judge him and always takes the time to listen to his ramblings. And the end, when she refuses to give up on Garaiya and takes all the Vice President’s attacks in order to emotionally reach her friend, was outstanding! Kaede doesn’t give up and she is loyal to the people who mean the most to her. She’s a really wonderful heroine!

Shinobi Koi Utsutsu is a really fun romantic comedy, adventure game that never takes itself too seriously, but still manages its emotional moments really well! There are the adventure elements of: ninjas, fighting, and political intrigue. There are the emotional character moments that make you feel for our sweet hero (Garaiya is MARVELOUS!). And these elements are written to work into the lighthearted tone of the game, so the angst never overshadows the romantic comedy elements. And believe me…this game made me laugh at the pure absurdity of it all!

I found this game to be really engaging and I thoroughly enjoyed the balance the writers struck between absurdity and sincerity! 

For me, this was a great route! And it’s something I will definitely read again!