Saku Saku: Love Blooms with the Cherry Blossoms (Yuri)

This is my 2nd installment of this Visual Novel known as Saku Saku: Love Blooms with the Cherry Blossoms. You can find the first blog here.

In this post I will be going over the ending and playthrough for the PMC (Public Morals Committee) Chairwoman Yuri. Yuri was part of the committee until an incident involving the members of the PMC and Student Council ended with several resigning or being removed for a time. This let Yuri become the President of the Committee. Between being the school's PMC Chairwoman she is also an employee of the in-school private restaurant in which many of the out-of-town students work to make money for their expenses. These students including Yuri and her sister Hanako live in the school's dorm.

Yuri is very committed to her work and at the beginning of the novel, she and Yuma share their thoughts on how they believe love to be 'unneeded' and neither one has a positive outlook on a love life with anyone else. However what kind of VN would this bee if that didn't change at some point right? Well, that is exactly what happens.

Yuri and Mio (a childhood friend of Yuma) are pretty close friends and Mio hangs out quite a bit with Yuri's sister Hanako. Hanako also provides Mio her contraband of BL manga, which gets confiscated by Yuma and Yuri on a regular basis. Through different events, Yuma is forced to join the Student Council, and later due to the increased workload between the Student Council and the PMC, the members split into two groups. Anna, Konami, and Sou make up the Student Council, and Yuri, Mio, and Yuma make up the PMC.

It is through this that Yuri and Yuma begin to get closer and closer to one another. Hanako who really doesn't care for Yuma (for some odd reason) tries to cause issues by planting fears into Yuri's mind that because of her 'moral' approach to things and due to a past incident she tries to make Yuri not think about Yuma so much. However, as time goes by this fails and Yuma and Yuri soon find themselves getting closer and closer.

It is during this time that we come to a unique situation, Yuri knows that Mio has strong feelings for Yuma and has been supporting her in her attempts to get with Yuma. However, after finding out her own feelings for Yuma she battles with the emotions of confessing to Yuma but also telling Mio how she feels. Yuri asks for Yuma and Mio to come with her to a place to speak, and after some time she confesses to Yuma which Mio hears as well. It is at that moment that Mio gives them both her blessing, however she then goes home and you see how devastated she really is to see Yuma and Yuri together. She does get over of course but the heart-breaking moment does make you question your own desire to go down that path. 

As the two begin to get closer they eventually start a more physical relationship (you know those things called H-scenes yeah enter those), that said I want to be upfront here, there is one scene that to be quite frank is blown way out of proportion. At some point Yuri, knowing that Yuma wanted her sexually, decided to take some initiative and bought a box of condoms. If nothing else at least you can say they practiced safe sex, (at least the first time) and it didn't exactly say how many were in the box and there are multiple boxes with many different amounts, but in this particular scene, he basically goes through a whole box. Now, I'm not an expert or anything but I know for a fact that such a thing is next to impossible. 

Regardless though their relationship continues to grow and they go through trials and tribulation of a relationship. It is during this time that something starts to happen. Tina the soul reaper is informed that another soul reaper has a target close to Yuma and Yuri and that he will be setting up the events that will lead to their death. Tina is unable to figure out who it is, and she can only wait and see what happens next. It is during this time that the soul reaper shows himself to Hanako, she is his target. 

Once he shows himself to her he informs her of her impending death. Though he doesn't tell her exactly when or how she will die he speaks with her and tells her he's willing to prolong her life if she does him a favor. He informs her that to prolong her life she will need to break up Yuma and Yuri. Hanako is taken aback by this revelation and despite the fact that she's been trying to do that to some extent now she has a better motive to do it.

As the story progresses Yuma and Yuri come to a dark realization about their relationship. Yuri also comes clean about her past and why she became the way she was. She was a model for a short time and enjoyed it greatly, but because of her exposure, she also became exposed to a few other male students that used that as a pretext to try to force her to go with them. Eventually, she dropped out of the industry and focused heavily on her PMC work. 

In a strange turn of events, the two realized that they had spent a great deal of time with one another, but in doing so they were spending less time with others such as their friends and family. This fact was brought up by Hanako during an argument with Yuri when she made the statement that they had always been together but since she got with Yuma that she was distant. Because of this Yuri confronts Yuma and they mutual break up.

With this event, the soul reaper out to kill Hanako keeps his end of the bargain, and decides not to take her life. Yuma and Yuri however do not stay broken up for long before they finally decide to get back together. With their relationship back on Yuma convinces Yuri to do what makes her happy, and that includes going back to modeling. 

I ain't going to lie, of the two stories I have played through thus far this one was the weakest in the end. I feel there is a great deal of more potential on this one that could have been done at the end that I feel they left a lot unsaid and done. The story itself wasn't bad and I did enjoy her route. Compared to Konami however it did leave a bit to be desired. Overall I still enjoyed this playthrough and plan on doing Mio's next.