I was in a stupor, so I didn’t know where I was, and I couldn’t remember who I was. There was one bell on a bamboo branch that was ringing as it swayed in the wind. While still charmed by it, I took this somewhat strange bell and hung it from my neck. “home.” I started to walk through the bamboo grove. That’s when the wind suddenly fluttered around me, and when I looked back at that moment, I saw a small, pale hand. “Master… is that you…?” A single fox girl was standing there. She was crying and looked very happy. The fox girl Shua yearns for the main character Kaito. At the same time, they live in the forest near a pond, the Mountain Deity Mim interferes with Kaito and Shua, and the Grim Reaper Karin accidentally almost kills Kaito. Once they meet, the sad fate of the fox and the boy springs into action again. Can Kaito, who lost his memories, oppose that fate?

The Fox Awaits Me?

So, that’s all I will spoil about the story since it gives away more then I liked already. Since The Fox Awaits Me is classified as a mystery visual novel, I wondered where most of the mystery went.  Let me elaborate. When I think of mystery, I think of Sherlock Holmesesque stories in which you solve crimes or a mystery. In The Fox Awaits Me, everything is a joke and often refers to something sexual. Every line they make, every move they make (insert Police puns here), they are continually making advances on Kaito. But The Fox Awaits Me won’t let you act on them. Instead, the characters laugh at him, or something pops up from the side of the screen to move the story along. So what’s the purpose of these … sexual advances? I don’t know, probably some kind of fanservice towards a Japanse audience that’s really into these kinds of scenes?

I usually read all the text in a Visual Novel since it’s a wordy genre. But The Fox Awaits me kept the dialogue scenes brief and punctual. Combine this with the hypertension of most of the NPCs, and it feels like you’re playing a VN on steroids. Everything they say flows into a pun or punchline, and most of them weren’t even funny. This could be a lost in translation kind of deal since the game was initially written in Japanse. Due to these playstyle characters pretty much wrap up everything they have to say in one sentence, and then someone else will say their sentence, and so on. Thankfully, the developers took the Switch’s handheld mode into account and made the text large enough to see on any screen.

Artwork

Let’s talk about artwork. The art is well done, and a little bit manga-esque or anime-esque sometimes (especially the shocked faces). The character illustrations and the animations that the characters displayed throughout the entire game feel genuine, which is also shown in their movements. They generally fit the character’s tone and emotions, and it added a bit to the mystery of it all when the themes became darker. One of the more annoying things was the energetic placement of some characters. They would just disappear and reappear somewhere else—something I really must pay credit to the use of Japanese audio. The voice-acting is fantastic, and I appreciate the actors really selling these eccentric and haphazard characters. It really showed just how crazy they are without overdoing it too much. There are also random sound effects used like slaps and bonks, which resembled someone getting hit, but sometimes, they were just inserted into random places, which I didn’t understand.

Readers Discretion

Overall it’s an ecchi-VN. In which Kaito is a decent protagonist. However, I would have enjoyed the game much more without the overly added sexual advances and ‘comedic’ attempts. The Fox Awaits Me delivers a set up for a decent thriller, full of doubt, mystery, and anxiety, which kind of falls flat in the later parts as you let your guard down. The ending is also not that satisfying, so I stopped playing after unlocking two of them. I really could not bring myself to clear the game yet again (on a different route) to discover if it would be more satisfying. Keep in mind that the game does not feature an auto-save feature, so it’s recommended that you save during each choice made as they do weigh heavily on the characters and which routes you end up on.

Conclusion:

The Fox Awaits Me promises a story full of suspense and mystery but does not deliver on its premise. Instead, it hands you a story full of jokes that are not okay in the whole me-too era we are living in. I can imagine that this kind of genre sells well in Japan and I don’t mind a little bit of ecchi-storytelling (since most of the VNs cover some), but I prefer them with more class and style, dripped in the mystery and horror you experience in the first part of the game. The Fox Awaits Me will have to wait a whole while longer for me to finish it.

6/10

Tested on the Nintendo Switch.