Starry☆Sky~In Summer~ Review

Not as good as Spring for me, but still enjoyable~

Game Information

Producing Company: Honeybee

Artist: Kazuaki

Release Date: 27th March 2009

Story

Continuing from the previous game, the season is now summer and Tsukiko is hard at work training in her archery club for the Inter-High archery championships along with club captain Homare and vice-captain Ryunosuke (as well as the other members). Since it is Homare’s last year as chairman of the club, everyone wants to try their best and win it for him. The club also gets a new member – an archery prodigy named Azusa who Tsukiko has met one before – when he told her that her posture with her bow was amazing. However, Azusa is pretty cocky and doesn’t get on well with Ryunosuke at all! Will they manage to win the championship and make Homare’s last year successful?

I have to admit here that i found this game to have poorer writing than Spring. The common route was very good though, and the “baka trio” made me laugh quite a bit. Honeybee did improve on one thing though and made the character routes much more separate here than in spring (which is definitely a good thing). On the other hand, Azusa’s route had lots of unused potential and Ryunosuke’s route just wasn’t long enough to balance out his character properly. Although, i must admit that Homare’s route was easily one of the best in the entire series!

Characters

Homare Kanakubo

CV: Soichiro Hoshi

Homare is a 3rd year astrology student who is captain of the archery club. He is pretty talented at archery but he struggles under pressure, this caused the club to lose the inter-high last year. Homare is generally an easy-going guy but if you behave badly then he can be very scary! He’s also very good at cooking and cares a lot about Tsukiko.

Normally, I’m not so keen on senpai characters since they usually just annoy me, however, Homare is just too sweet and his caring nature really appealed to me. His route really reflected his character too – which i really liked. On a side note, it was really weird hearing Soichiro Hoshi voice a serious character 😛

Ryunosuke Miyazi

CV: Hiroshi Kamiya

Ryunosuke is a second year student who is the vice-captain of the archery club, he takes his job very seriously and is much more harsh on everyone than Homare. Despite his cold exterior, ryunosuke actually has a soft side. He also enjoys sweet foods very much and his lunch usually consists of cake. He also gets scared very easily and falls asleep when given fizzy drinks.

Ryunosuke should be a tsundere – however, (as I said earlier) his route was too short for his character development so he was way too tsun and only turned dere in the last 15 minutes of his route which I really didn’t like (even though I am a tsundere fan). I did laugh at his eating habits though and his falling asleep with fizzy drinks (especially since the baka trio would always use this weakness to their advantage). All in all, he would’ve been a really adorable character but his route let him down a lot.

Azusa Kinose

CV: Jun Fukuyama

Azusa is the first year archery prodigy who has just joined the archery club, he is very cocky though and I don’t think many people like him at first. He also enjoys teasing Tsukiko and is pretty deredere over her at times. Beneath his cool exterior, Azusa is actually quite insecure. Since he’s a member of the space department at school, he has to eat freeze-dried food.

I actually found Azusa to be a pretty interesting character at the start of the game, but i felt that his route – while being completely adorable, didn’t do his character that much justice as it felt that all of his issues were resolved during the common route. I also don’t approve of the fact that his epilogue was like 1 year in the future while every other character in all the games had an epilogue at least 3 years in the future. His voice actor was pretty awesome though.

Artwork

Even though the art was still really good overall, I didn’t like the artwork as much in this game as I felt that there were a few more issues – specifically the inconsistency of Azusa’s eyes and Ryunosuke’s hair. Apart from that, the art was still of a very high quality and very “cute”. Background art was still nice too.

Music

Song: Break High by Hiroshi Kamiya (who plays Ryunosuke in the game)

The opening song to this game is really good and i really enjoy listening to it. Overall, the BGM in this game is almost the same as Spring but i still enjoyed it quite a bit. Still no vocal ending song 😦

The voice acting in Summer was also top-notch and i really liked all the voice actors – I’ve even heard of some before!

System

The system for Summer was also the same as the one for Spring except this one was green. I still liked it though.

Scores

Story: 16
Characters: 19
Artwork: 18.5
Music: 19
System: 18

Total: 90.5

Conclusion

I honestly feel that Starry☆Sky~In Summer~ is definitely a worthwhile game to play, especially since it is so short. However, I didn’t feel that is was as good as its predecessor. Maybe this was due to my lack of knowledge and interest in archery, so someone more interested in the subject would definitely find this interesting. Homare’s route was very good though so definitely play it! 😀