Well, I was smitten right off the bat!
I hadn’t played a “fairytale-esque” otome game in quite some time and, as I played through Hugo’s route, it lowkey surprised me (though honestly it shouldn’t have) how much I had been craving an otome game of this type!
Now.
If you are looking for a game with an eight-chapter common route that establishes superb, air-tight world-building and has believable answers to every question you have about this fictional world, you might find this game lacking.
Also, for me, Hugo’s route suffered from the popular otome construct of “canon & finale” routes. There were multiple instances of information being withheld, which I assume will be reveals in other routes.
But, as someone who is not a fan of long, laborious common routes, I thought the fun, sweeping, romantic tone of the game was well done!
As always, character and plot analysis and spoilers after the cut!
When Emma was 10-years-old, in a moment of desperation, her magic sealed Hugo’s soul to her father’s amusement park, the Reve. Then in a continuation of traumatic events (that were not revealed in Hugo’s route), Emma’s brain sealed off her memories probably in an attempt to mentally and emotionally protect herself.
Now 17-years-old, our amnesiac Emma has adjusted to life in a small town in the French countryside living with her adopted family of Arnaud and his mother. And, while she has somewhat accepted that she’s missing memories, the fact that her magic is sealed does thoroughly bother her. And due to her parents (before they passed) and Arnaud always telling her to keep her magic hidden, Emma doesn’t even know much about the magic she is missing. She has no resources to develop her magical skill.
So, imagine her surprise when she finds a person with knowledge of magic at a traveling amusement park that recently came to her small town.
Our lovely Hugo…yes, I am biased.
Hugo approaches Emma in the amusement park, flabbergasted at seeing Emma alive after seven years of not knowing what happened to her.
Our poor, sweet Hugo has been “chained” to the amusement park for seven years, which means he can’t leave the amusement park. Over the past seven years, Hugo has been “collecting souls” (this phenomenon was not explained in Hugo’s route), which I guess means he has been inviting lost souls to join him in his vagabond life? I’m not certain how or why Crier, Clara, Lyon, Serge, and Luciole came to travel with Hugo and the amusement park.
I guess I’ll have to wait for a different route to solve this mystery!
Now, Hugo can travel with the amusement park, but that involves mechanical horses pulling along the huge, human-sized merry-go-round, which happens to look very odd to non-magical humans! So, Hugo has no choice but to travel with the merry-go-round at night.
Hugo, knowing who Emma is even though she does not remember him, makes a proposition. He will help her awaken her magic if, when her magic is strong enough, she promises to release him and everyone else from the curse that chains them to the amusement park.
Wanting to learn about and awaken her magic, Emma quickly, and rather eagerly, agrees to Hugo’s proposition. Because after years of suppression, Emma has finally found someone who is encouraging growth in her magic skills.
Now.
If Hugo’s proposition sets off your red-flag sensor, you’re not wrong. This deal does seem a bit vague and has the feeling of too-good-to-be-true.
And that’s because…Hugo is not being completely honest.
Okay.
So, this route could have gotten really dark with this setup. And, I’m not going to lie, for a split second, I thought that maybe I was dealing with Genso Manege’s version of Nicola Francesca from Piofiore (I say this as someone who loves Nicola, but can, also, admit that he’s a shady, manipulative mafia man 95% of the time!).
However, Hugo is the definition of loyal and true. He always had Emma’s best interests at heart, which, to his mind, causes him to withhold information to “protect” her. And, ultimately, this created the conflict in the route.
Hugo (and Arnaud for that matter) had to wrestle with the questions: 1) how much you should hide from someone in order to protect them and; 2) should you hide age-appropriate information from someone at all?
For Hugo, who is eight-years-older than Emma, he has always been protective of her in his own way. He worked with her father as an engineer at the amusement park. Stubborn, intelligent, a know-it-all, and lacking people skills, Hugo had little human connection in his life. However, over time, eighteen-year-old Hugo and ten-year-old Emma bonded over making people happy with amusement park designs and attractions. Emma and her father gave Hugo a place to belong and he became part of their little family. Hugo also encouraged an unsure Emma that her magic was a force for good to make people happy.
Overall, Emma and Hugo had a very encouraging and supportive relationship.
However, this idyllic life was not meant to last.
This game is set in late-1800s to early-1900s France, with a touch of Code Realize-esque steam punk. And, because politics suck, France became embroiled in a military conflict, which required the military to begin confiscating civilian-use metal for the war effort. It wasn’t not long before the military has their eyes on Emma’s father’s amusement park and they successfully managed to dismantle every metal attraction except the merry-go-round.
Hugo desperately attempted to save the merry-go-round that meant so much to him and Emma. In the end, the military commander had enough and ordered one of his men to shoot Hugo. After sustaining a life-threatening injury, Hugo collapsed and could do nothing as the military commander ordered the soldier to finish Hugo off.
Well, Emma stepped in between the soldier and Hugo and took the shot meant for Hugo. The bullet hit Emma’s magic star-shaped necklace. In that instant Hugo’s dying soul was “chained” to the amusement park.
Something that wasn’t explained in this route was why Hugo was trapped in the full version of the amusement park that existed before the military began dismantling it. I’m guessing it had to do with Emma’s love of the amusement park manifesting itself in having it magically restored? But, I’m not sure about this.
So, in a real-world hospital, Hugo’s body is lying in a comatose state. What Emma is interacting with at the amusement park is Hugo in a “phantom” form. And what Emma doesn’t know, because Hugo is withholding the information, is that the most likely outcome of her releasing Hugo from the amusement park is that he will “officially” die.
Hugo believes that to protect Emma is to: 1) not tell her the truth of her past and their relationship and 2) not tell her the outcome of what it means to “release his soul” from the amusement park.
Now.
Emma is seventeen-years-old and she wants to recover her memories and awaken her magic. Yes, she is still young, but I agree with her that she’s mature and old enough to know about her past and to be aware of the consequences of her actions.
Her character arc was a coming-of-age story. She starts off as a young woman who lives a sheltered, predictable, yet comfortable, life. And part of this comfortable life comes with her suppressing the fact that she is a witch and, while dormant within her, she has access to magic. While she loves Arnaud and his mother, she’s becoming restless and beginning to wonder what more she could do with her life.
When given the opportunity to awaken her magic, Emma enthusiastically seizes her opportunity to learn about magic and herself. Throughout the route, she regularly practiced awakening her magic and by the end all her work was rewarded!
With her own initiative, she says that she wants to work at the amusement park, while she practices awakening her magic. And she finds a place where she belongs, while working at the amusement park, and finds ways to create special moments for herself, Hugo, and the customers.
Emma does not shy away from the tragedy in her life. She wants to know the truth and she pushes Hugo and Arnaud to be honest with her. And when she does learn the truth about her past, the amusement park, her magic, and Hugo’s situation, she mourns but then her mind quickly moves to how to solve Hugo’s situation. She doesn’t let her emotions overtake her mind and heart. This girl is going to find a solution to save the one she loves!
Emma is not a passive, static character. Throughout the route she grows, learns, dreams, and works towards a better understanding of the world around her! There was a practical realism to Emma that when combined with her dreamer optimism was a treat to read!
And she was a wonderful compliment to Hugo.
To me, Hugo was a mix of Arsene Lupin and Impey from Code Realize, Nicola Francesca from Piofiore, and Paschalia from Radiant Tale.
And let me add that I LOVED the vocal performance of Wataru Hatano! So, so good! I could hear the sighs, chuckles, smiles, and the light-hearted nature of Hugo, who’s characterization was brought to life by the voice performance! It is always special when a voice actor breathes life into a character, and the fact that you could hear and understand Hugo’s mischievous sense of humor through the voice performance was so great! Hatano’s performance just added so much to the experience!
Hugo, who has always been more of a pessimist, has been chained to the amusement park for seven years. And in those seven years, he has developed his “showmanship” (aka Arsene Lupin) side of his personality. He has developed into a very personable man who knows how to treat people kindly.
I wouldn’t call Hugo’s Arsene Lupin actions a façade because I truly believe Hugo is a kind, good man who wants people to enjoy the amusement park that is his own special purgatory. To me, Hugo’s earnestness and sincerity seemed genuine. But behind this effusive display of hospitality and showmanship, Hugo is still the same engineer he has always been.
He cares deeply for the amusement park because, in life, he and Emma had loved it so much. However, during his seven years of imprisonment, Hugo had lost the drive to continue creating.
Because being an imprisoned, high-functioning phantom is tough, y’all.
Hugo stopped designing and put away long-cherished blueprints out of melancholy over his situation. And it’s not until Emma comes back into his life that Hugo’s drive to create is reinvigorated.
Both Hugo and Emma are dreamers. But where Hugo is much more likely to give up when things get hard or seem impossible, Emma is the type of person to push through and work to find a solution even when things seem impossible.
And I think the beauty of Emma and Hugo’s relationship is that they bring out and strengthen each other’s dreamer tendencies
They create together.
In their past, Emma and Hugo dreamed of covering Emma’s father’s merry-go-round, and later the amusement park, with electric lights (which are still a *newer* technology in this world). They gave their special project the code name, Starlights.
And, to me, some of the best parts of the route, are Emma and Hugo working to make their Starlights dreams a reality! Creating something special, meant so much to the both of them, and they wanted to share their creation with the world!
But the sense of renewal Hugo felt was bittersweet. He had been rather melancholy for seven years, so he was overjoyed to find Emma again, but he also thought that to be free of the amusement park meant certain death and separation from Emma.
And Hugo being Hugo, he wanted to make his death as easy for Emma as he could. So, for him that meant keeping his distance (which honestly, he failed at quite miserably because let’s face it…he was falling in love with Emma!) and hiding the truth about their relationship and his impending death.
It was only because Emma’s dogged determination and insistence that in Chapter 7, Hugo finally told Emma the entire truth.
And in a beautiful development, after learning the truth, Emma being Emma, decides to critically think and develops a theory on how she could save Hugo’s life. Which was only possible because Hugo told Emma his concerns!
I really loved how Hugo’s Eeyore moment of settling for the worst, was turned upside down by sharing his insecurities, letting Emma into the situation, and trusting her judgement (Yay, a completed character arc for Hugo!)! With her fresh perspective, she was able to bring hope to the situation.
Ultimately, this had been the dynamic of their entire relationship.
They tactfully agree to hope for the best and spend the time they have remaining, before she breaks the curse on the amusement park, together.
Then the night came for Emma to break the curse. She was successful in channeling her magic and when she was done, everyone and everything was gone except for the merry-go-round. As Emma processed what she had accomplished, her magic, star-shaped necklace returned to her in one piece.
The origins and other pertinent information about the necklace were not revealed in Hugo’s route. I’m guessing there will be more revealed in other routes. Though I will say, this would have been a perfect opportunity for the writers to explain a little bit more.
Emma figured out that the magic in her necklace was what ran the amusement park and chained Hugo within it. She realized she could utilize that magic to save Hugo!
She hurried to the hospital where Hugo’s body had been in a coma for seven years. Using the magic within her necklace, she was able to save Hugo’s life. The only downside was that Emma had to use all her magic to save Hugo, so she no longer had any magical abilities.
Which, I honestly thought, this culmination to Emma’s character arc was well-done. Throughout the route, Emma worked towards: 1) awakening her magic and 2) finding a place to belong where she didn’t have suppress herself.
She studiously applied herself in learning about magic and was rewarded for her efforts. And while working to awaken her magic, Emma found a place to belong where she didn’t have to suppress who she was.
What I really liked was that in order to keep her sense of belonging with the person who knew her best, she had to give up the magic she had worked so hard to awaken. Everything she had worked towards dovetailed into an ending where one outcome was not possible without the other.
And in the end, Emma chose connection with the one person who always encouraged and supported her use of magic. Hugo never tried, or even wanted, to suppress Emma’s magic. He always saw it as a force for good and encouraged Emma to see her magic that way, too. And, even though Emma had forgotten him and her memories, she always held his encouraging words close to her heart.
So, while a bittersweet culmination to Emma’s character arc, I loved that Emma didn’t hesitate to save Hugo, her always encouraging and supportive best friend.
To me, this was a beautiful relationship!
-Final Thoughts-
I LOVED Hugo! His character hit all the rights notes for me! I loved his mischievous sense of humor. I loved his earnest, sincere supportive, encouraging, caring nature! I loved his engineering background (I’ve got a soft spot for engineers!)! I even loved that this man was a bit of a pessimistic coward, who had to learn to trust and believe in the woman he loved! Honestly, my list could go on, but I’ll spare you! He is such a great character and I thoroughly enjoyed the journey with him through his route!
This is a great route for me!
Even with the complaints of missing pertinent information to the narrative, I still would say overall this was a well-written route. I just don’t like the otome structure of finale and canon routes. Instead of withholding information and giving hints throughout the entire game, I wish every route was its own self-contained story.
But this is just my personal preference.
I loved the art and music! I loved the whimsical, romantic tone of the game! Hugo’s route just really worked for me! And I know I will replay it in the future!
Otomes as Novels 