Sunday, May 10, 2026
Where Does 'Worth' Begin and End?
It
has been a long time since I have felt the need to do an expanded
examination of a visual novel I have reviewed. However, there is a
surprising amount to be said about Dracu-Riot and Yuzusoft in general
and, coupled with my general enjoyment, it has led to me ruminating on the
game far more than I would have otherwise. Particularly the idea I
have encountered among the title's audience viewing Yuzusoft’s work as ‘slop’.
To me this seems strange given the clear effort involved in making
those titles and how they are put together with a great deal of
intention in order to achieve the genre’s expectations while still
standing out in their own right.
So
in order to full appreciate the complexities and issues surrounding
Drau-Riot we will be going through its entire narrative structure
from the Common Route to Nicola’s Sub-heroine route. Then the
overarching points which are common to the whole game will be picked
apart to reveal how all these routes are drawn together. Spoilers
will be constant and extensive so be warned. In addition it is
assumed you have read my original review here for my
broader thoughts and opinions on Drau-Riot. Now let’s dissect this
undead corpse and understand its workings.
Protecting Romance – Narrative Analysis
-Common route-
In
terms of Yuzusoft’s common routes, this one might be their smoothest
and most consistent in terms of the natural feeling heroine
interactions and escalating conflict. Rather than having segregated
sections for each heroine, they are instead given a time to shine
within the group dynamics of the dorm cast where they endear
themselves to the player through an organic set of interactions with
Yuuto and co. Given the importance of the dorm group to later
character moments and the overall themes of the game a
lot of effort is put into setting up the baseline for future
developments which it does with a deft hand and does not draw too
much attention to itself.
Slowly escalating the stakes throughout the
common route is the vampire drug case which brilliantly adds enough
tension for a climax at the end of the common route which is big
enough to be exciting but minor enough to be easily eclipsed by the
conflicts in the routes. This is a lesson they would apparently
forget in Senren Banka and Angelic☆Chaos RE-BOOT! with both having
an action set piece whose stakes are far above anything in their
respective routes so harming their ability to properly present
greater or more personal threats in their stories. Once you have
reached life or death as the stakes for your story everything else
seems more minor by comparison since the threat of death is the
ultimate danger. Dracu-Riot’s common route also manages intrigue
well through dangling plot threads surrounding Yuuto’s lycanthrope
powers and their origin. They are touched upon but left to the
individual routes to develop creating a great sense of continuity and
flow into each route. This opening provide a strong foundation and
the rest of the game builds up one aspect or another introduced
here making it the perfect encapsulation of the broader experience
the player can expect from the title.
-Miu’s Route-
Miu
is obviously the main heroine of Dracu-Riot, she is the first one
Yuuto meets and gets the most screen time even outside of her own
route leading to her being front and centre of the player’s mind
for most of the game. What makes this interesting is how it has
affected her route since it acts as a grand finale for the cast and
story where all get a chance to shine and be resolved as they
face the greatest threat posed to them by any conflict. This is to the
point that her route should probably have been locked behind the
completion of all the others since there are so many references to them. If a player chooses Miu first they will not
appreciate these nods and satisfying resolutions and at worst they
may even be spoiled about what to expect from other characters. The
biggest example of this being Anna’s behaviour towards Sayo since
it reveals her self martyring nature that Mera’s route relies on
for a big emotional moment so playing Miu’s route beforehand
somewhat undermines it.
Insecurities
are the name of the game for Miu’s route with the main hurdle the
pair must overcome being the whispering voices of doubt in their own
head. These inner demons stick around just enough to make the act of
overcoming them meaningful and in doing so side step the possibility
of the player getting frustrated with how self inflected their
problems can be. Transforming Miu’s blushing pretensions of
adulthood into a genuine maturity makes for an endearing arc since it
satisfying to see her come to understand that the allure she aspires
to have is more than just crude references to sex. The element of
possessiveness and aggressiveness in Miu which the relationship brings to
the front compliments this journey as it maintains a sense of her
as a flawed person while shifting the humour to focus around it
rather than her old weakness to teasing.
It also helps that Miu and
Yuuto have some of the most consistently amusing banter in this route
which really sells the back and forth nature of their relationship as
they constantly outplay each other. If there is any problem with this
approach it is in the lack of connection to the main themes of
Dracu-Riot, hence why the route leans into aspects of other routes
and a dramatic finale to try and bridge the gap. The attack on the
island has nothing to do with the pair’s love nor has any personal
connection to them and only works when framed through the rest of the game it
references. Even its defining moment where the vampires and humans
come together to save Yuuto and a child from a collapsed building is
about the character of the people on the island rather than Miu or
Yuuto themselves. Ultimately this division is unlikely to be noticed
since the game flows from one to the other smoothly and the
excitement will overcome any lack of cohesion.
-Rio’s Route-
If
there is one thing Rio’s route highlights about Dracu-Riot it is
the vague nature of the lycanthrope and games complete aversion to
providing details of anything not happening on the island. The big
reveal of this route is the existence of artificial lycanthropes and
the fact Rio and Yuuto are both the result of these experiments. This
seems to exist to explain why Yuuto has multiple powers despite never
having eaten another vampire while providing a nice bit of tension
when people start to come after the two of them in pursuit of this
power. However, nothing about this experiment and the narrative
issues it brings up are ever really explained. For example, why don’t
either of them remember being experimented on and why would they just
be abandoned without any monitoring after the project was ended? Why
did Rio awaken as a vampire without any stimulus while Yuuto had to
drink vampire blood? Were Rio and Yuuto the only test subjects or
were there more? There are many more questions like this which the
game just glosses over when it should have taken more time to examine
them given the prominence it gave to a major re-contextualisation to
Yuuto’s life. Yet these are all characterised by not being about or
related to the island so they are discarded by the side of the road.
As
for the rest of the route, Rio’s innocence and her maternal streak
are capitalised on for great effect as she grows into understanding
just how valuable her supporting role is to the people around her.
Playing off her friendship with Elina was one of the smartest choices
this route makes since they are at opposite ends of the innocence
spectrum and constantly talk passed each other for comic effect. Yet
it in the sincere way Elina pushes Rio to be more aggressive in her
feelings for Yuuto that reinforces the sense Elina cares about Rio’s
happiness even if she also wants to tease them. The handling
of Rio discovering she is a lycanthrope is combined with an
escalation in the action as a bounty is put on her and Yuuto’s heads in order to create the most effective confirmation of love in the
entire game. It mixes Yuuto’s frantic searching for Rio with Rio’s
own increasing spiral downwards and leads them into a positive
overflowing of emotion between the pair as they both find acceptance
in their common condition.
This should have probably been the end of
the route since the narrative after this point runs into a few
hiccups. First of these is Ougi being used as a straight villain who
is spouting uninspired evil lines which sit directly opposed to the
sympathetic view the other routes give to him. He also does not
really fit in with the theming and character arcs of this route
and instead feels as if he was crammed in here because the developers
thought they needed another action scene. Secondly there is a new
revelation that lycanthropes can turn vampires back into humans. This
should be a world shattering reveal since it offers a way for any
vampire to become a human and this creates a lot of possible issues
for the power balance between vampires and humans. Except this reveal
is actually just an excuse for Yuuto and Rio to share their memories
and not have to deal with the existence of two lycanthropes running
free. However, the memory sharing and its romantic outcome are a
strong note to end on and I cannot deny the way it completed their
arc is satisfying.
-Mera’s Route-
Dracu-Riot’s
world building and its integration into its story is at its best in
Mera’s route since it is willing to address the issues surrounding
vampire society and does not try to shy away from the grey nature of those
involved. As the only human in the dorm group, Mera is the embodiment
of the ideal relationship between vampires and humans since she sees
them as her equals and cares about them. Her struggles with the
undocumented vampires where she tries to her best to protect and help
people in a situation not their fault and rubs up against the
structures which see them as sub human. This clash between her ideals
of equality and what she can realistically achieve form the backbone
of her arc as she becomes more capable and willing to take a stand
for what she believes in. The relationship between her and Yuuto also
plays into this dynamic as they find their comfort zone to become a
walking example of this ideal. The fact Yuuto overcomes his vampiric
temptations to be with the one he loves nicely ties into this bond
being romantic rather than lustful.
What makes this all come together
is the route’s willingness to explore the way old wounds, ways and
grudges cannot be easily forgotten and it will take a long time for
them to truly fade away. Even after Mera and Yuuto’s victory things
are not magically better for everyone, the Hunters still hate
vampires and the vampires are still suspicious of humans, but the
first step has been taken by the pair towards the future they
envision. This small hope ends up feeling more powerful than the
grand coming together of vampires and humans in Miu’s route since
it captures the reality of our own world and how change comes about.
Positioning Anna as the antagonist of this route and highlighting her
self martyring nature allows her to be a foil to Mera by being the
jaded old guard to her youthful idealism. That said the contrivance
to make Anna related to Mera was a bit too much since it felt like
the game shouting this contrast at you especially since she dies at
the end further push this idea. Another knock against the story is
the one dimensional nature of the Hunters who are just violent racists and nothing else which makes it hard to believe Mera grew up
connected to them. Some more nuance to their motivations, in
particular for Kaede, would have gone a long way to making the human
side of the conflict feel more justifiable rather than simply hate
fuelled.
-Nicola’s Route-
Since
I already explained the issues with Nicola and her sub-heroine route
in my review I will try to cover a few different points here so as
not to repeat myself. These mainly centre around Nicola’s
grandfather who acts as the route’s main antagonist. His appearance
in the story as well as the conflict and its resolution are abrupt
and quickly move from one stage to another at an unnatural pace. Too
much of his identity seems to have come about from a need to make him
comedic rather than from his role as the test of the Nicola and
Yuuto’s love and so the scenes with him in lack the needed tension
for them overcoming him to have catharsis. Yet it is the very nature
of his existence which poses the biggest problem to the overall
narrative of Dracu-Riot, he is a vampire who has extended his life by
transferring his consciousness into animals. This opens a strange can
of worms concerning the nature of the vampire virus, can animals also
be infected with it? If he can transfer his consciousness does that
mean he knows what consciousness is and its location in the body?
Does being in an animal body not substantially alter his perception
of the world? Obviously the game does not want you to think about
these holes hence why he is a comedic character so the player will
not take him seriously. However, as you might have noticed by now
such holes are a common feature of Dracu-Riot’s storytelling.
-Elina’s Route-
Elina
might be my favourite character which is interesting given her route
is by far the most self-contained one with its conflicts and
characters only existing inside of it. As a result it has a greater
sense of focus then the other routes, the romance and
everything exists in service of showcasing the pair's bond rather than the
overarching themes of Dracu-Riot. This is mostly to its benefit with
Elina and Yuuto’s relationship being adorable and giving enough
space to fully explore the push and pull of Elina’s extrovert
personality against her deep seated insecurities about abandonment.
It is also nice to have the female character be the one with the
dangerous and controllable desire and the male being on the receiving
end as it flips the dynamics of their relationship on its head while
tying into Elina’s fears. Elina’s route is well thought out with
a lot of effort being put into creating situations where the couple’s
future is at stake rather than pointing some simple danger at them.
The Russians exemplify this technique since even if they are defeated
now they will never leave Yuuto alone so threatening his future with
Elina rather than just being an enemy to be battled than forgotten
about. Having the Russians use the police is a great little flipping
on the head of Yuuto’s normal status as someone working to assist
the police making for a nice thriller atmosphere in their pursuit of
him. In its totality this is the most singular and focused route
about two people in love and is paced to perfection, but its
detechment from the rest of the game will make it feel vestigial to
player’s more invested in the connectivity offered by the other
routes.
Genre Above All – Stray Thoughts
-Vampire Virus – Science VS. Magic-
Having
the origin of vampirism be a virus is a source of problems for
Dracu-Riot’s world building since the player is going to have at
least a passing understanding of how viruses function so not
meeting this expectation is distracting. The reason for this choice
is clearly to ground the title in its present day setting by
providing a modern explanation for vampires while also justifying why
Yuuto has to constantly be going to hospital. For the most part this
choice works as an explanation due to how most vampires and their
powers stick within a relatively reasonable range to the framework
established in the game’s opening hours. Where it starts to crumble
in the many expansions to this core which go beyond its simple
outline. These are things like the transfer of consciousness into
animals, the ability to absorb memories through drinking blood or the
non-physical related powers like telekinesis. What do these extremes
all have in common? They are all effectively magic and the player
subconsciously picks up on this shifting to the more extreme end of
fantasy and feels a dissonance between the pseudo-science explanation
from before. Since the developers clearly want vampires to be
mailable to whatever the narrative needed them to be, letting them
just have a vague magical nature would side step this issue through
correctly setting the player’s expectations. It also does not
entirely exclude the idea of scientific study if they wanted to
maintain the reason for Yuuto’s visits to hospital.
-Vampires As A Race Allegory-
Throughout
Dracu-Riot vampires are grouped together under the idea of them as a
‘race’. This is clearly intentional given the various parallels
to discrimination against real world racial group from a racially charged term of discrimination in ‘sucker’ to the difficulty in
find property due to landlords not wanting vampires in their as tenants to a vampire’s signature hold no legal weight and so needing a
human to sign their documents. The messaging around this use of race
is to highlight the negative impact of discrimination and the harm it
does not other people who are just the same at their core. It is
broadly successful at keeping this theme from feeling too preachy or
familiar and Mera’s route showcases a surprisingly nuanced take on the mutual damage and entrenching of preconceptions this racism has done
to both vampires and humans.
Issues with vampires as a race only
start to raise their head when it comes to their status as
supernatural beings. The idea of the vampires as 'diseased' and the
existence of a vaccine which can prevent a human turning into a
vampire has unfortunate parallels to real life rhetoric against
minorities. Add to this the fact the vampires are a genuine threat to
humans due to their powers and they need/want to feed on
humans creates a justification of human discrimination while also
echoing the ideas of race politics, such as them being a ‘parasite’ or
‘diseased’ and as a threat due to their divided loyalties, used
throughout history. Nothing among these problematic connections is
intentional on the part of Yuzusoft, but rather it stems from a
somewhat haphazard approach to their theming. They want a narrative
line about discrimination to add texture to the conflicts yet want it
to play second fiddle to the romance and action hence why it meshes
poorly with elements deemed more important for the story it wants to
tell. Obviously Dracu-Riot is not a treatise on racism but rather a
simple parable so a complex examination was never going to be
something it was capable of. Instead what should be taken away from
this observation is how hard it is to cover the nature of racism in a
fictional setting especially if you draw parallels to the real world
since the player will naturally look for other similar examples
whether these be intended or not.
-Gambling And The Sex Industry-
Another
interesting quality of Dracu-Riot’s writing is its somewhat
uncomfortable relationship with Brothels and Casinos which
characterise its setting. These two industries are the core economic
pillars the vampire island is built on yet you could be forgiven for
forgetting this fact given how minor their presence is from start to
finish. Gambling gets the somewhat larger presence since both Elina
and Nicola working at a casino and it is occasional used as a backdrop
for certain action scenes or dramatic build up. Even here none of the
characters engage in gambling for money themselves outside of one
instance where it is justified as an undercover operation to catch a
criminal so absolving them of any negative connections with the act.
This odd tiptoeing around the Casinos' existence is likely born of the
strict controls Japan has on its gambling and Yuzusoft not wanting to
be seen as endorsing it while also wanting use its taboo and alluring
nature to their advantage.
The sex industry fairs far worse with the
only notable interactions with it being the confiscation of illegal
pornography which was smuggled in and the opening joke about Yuuto’s
friend want to lose is virginity at a brothel. At no point does any
character actually go anywhere near these brothels despite the fact
we are told they are a major part of the islands financial income so
must occupy a lot of space yet is somehow completely invisible within
the narrative. If it were not immediately obvious, the reason for
this absence is how brothels do not fit into the idea of pure romance
pushed by Dracu-Riot. For the game the act of sex is a manifestation
of love between two partners and expresses their bond in the most
physical and intimate manner possible. A brothel would complicate
this idea of sex by adding in an element of sex being something
transnational which commodifies it and stands in opposition to sex
being a sacred act of love. There is a good reason Yuuto declines any
attempt to get him to go to a brothel and he always follows this
rejection up with a comment about wanting his first time to be with
someone he loves. This puts the brothels in a strange position where
they exist for the sack of making the island more seedy and
mysterious yet they cannot actually appear on screen so leave the
heavy lifting to the casinos.
-‘Yuzuslop’-
When
talking to someone about the works of Yuzusoft, the phrase ‘Yuzuslop’
or something with a similar sentiment often emerges. It can be meant endearingly
but nonetheless reveals how their audience sees their output. But why
do they view it this way? When boiled down the issue can traced to
two points, the similarity of their output and the nature of the
Slice of Life Romance genre. All Yuzusoft games share a core identity
based around their brand of light and pure romance and differentiate
themselves through their unique gimmicks be this vampires, spies or
shinigami. This brand of story born from their style of writing is
immediately recognisable to the player from the first scene and
communicates they are in good hands. Having a feeling of familiarity
can be exactly what attracts a player to Yuzusoft’s work, they want
a comfortable experience with just enough new to keep it from
becoming too predictable and for many Yuzusoft give them exactly what
they want. However, this is a double edged sword and familiarity and
predictable are the parents of contempt and form the underlying idea
of a Yuzusoft game as ‘low effort’ or ‘unimaginative’.
The
studio is walking a fine line between appealing to their audience and
losing them due to a lack of new and exciting ideas, hence why they
are so insistent on gimmicks even if it results in strange narrative
problems. Anything but being thought of as producing the same game
over and over again. Then the issue of genre expectation for slice of
life romances rears its head, the conventions and tropes of the genre
have become a set of expectations most titles in the genre choose to
adhere to as part of their appeal and Yuzusoft is not exception. Yet
utilising them brings their games closer in form to the homogenised
lump of the genre fiction and risks becoming lost in the sea of other
similar titles vying for attention. The aforementioned gimmicks are
the main way this is tackled, but even they cannot entirely wash away
the association with mediocrity brought from this connection with the
largest and most saturated visual novel genre. At every turn Yuzusoft has
to fight this two front war against the genre they have chosen and
their success should be a demonstration of their abilities even in
the face of being labelled as ‘slop’.
Conclusion
If
there is one thing you should take away from this article through
both its criticism and praise, it is the intent and effort behind
everything in Dracu-Riot and by extension all of Yuzusoft’s work.
This is far from some low effort ‘slop’ but instead a title
crafted by developers who clearly love the genre while understanding
the chains of audience expectation which come with it. Despite not
having ambitions to be high art, there is still value in what it
offers since a well made example of a genre played straight is
surprisingly difficult to pull off without leaning too heavily into
cliché and mediocrity. Bring joy through a comfortable atmosphere
and pure romance is a skill worth recognising and not dismissing as
‘slop’.
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