Guest Review by KatGrrrlThe Expression Amrilato is the first visual novel by Yuri developer SukeraSparo, initially released in Japanese in 2017 and localised into English and Chinese by MangaGamer. The original Japanese-only version is available on Windows, Android and IOS whilst MangaGamer’s release—which this review will be covering—is available on Windows, Linux and Mac OS.
The Expression Amrilato tells the story of Rin, a high school girl whose life is upended when she suddenly finds herself in a strange world only slightly different than her own, where the sky is pink and everyone around her speaks an unfamiliar language. Lost and confused, Rin is saved from despair by a girl named Ruka who knows a smattering of Japanese. Conversing with Ruka, Rin learns that in this world people speak a language called Juliamo (a fictionalised version of Esperanto), and with the help of Ruka and a woman named Rei, she sets about mastering this language in order to most effectively communicate with those around her.
I didn’t run into any major issues on the technical side. The game runs nicely in both windowed mode and fullscreen. All language options are available in the game’s settings menu and the store page on Steam even encourages playing the game in Japanese or Chinese to help learn those languages. The game does have full controller support, but there isn’t a button layout guide and the menus aren’t designed around it, so I found myself only using a controller for advancing text and used a mouse for menus and lessons. Also, the only way to exit the game when playing is to go to the settings menu first in order to go to the main menu so you can exit the game, which is slightly confusing.
The English translation reads excellently, which is doubly important in a game that teaches you an entire other language. Naturally, there are a lot of misunderstandings and puns involving Japanese and the translation cleverly approaches this by selectively rendering the Japanese word in romaji above the English translation, a bit like furigana. Gameplay is largely linear, with only minor choices until near the end where it diverges into the game’s three endings. There are also the Juliamo lessons which are optional and can be turned on or off in the settings, though I recommend keeping them on for the best experience. The soundtrack is sufficiently earwormy with the opening theme song being a particular standout, a pop rock tune sung by Sagara Kokoro (aka 556t of kairo) with composition and arrangement by RYU of BLOOD STAIN CHILD. A full instrumental version plays in the main menu, so you can enjoy RYU shredding a wicked guitar solo as you fumble around in the settings. The game has full voice acting, including spoken Juliamo which greatly adds to the worldbuilding. The voice acting is largely excellent all round, with my only gripe being some of the native Juliamo speakers sounding a bit too stilted for what you’d expect of a native of a language, but this a very minor complaint. The art is solid, with the perpetually pink sky giving off an almost exotic vibe to what is an otherwise equally mundane world as ours, which feels quite fitting for Rin’s perspective. I particularly liked the surprised reaction sprites for Rin and Ruka, they’re very goofy and cute.
Juliamo. What is Juliamo? Juliamo is a fictionalised version of the real constructed international auxiliary language Esperanto, created in 1897 by a guy named L. L. Zamenhof. Constructed means the language was consciously devised for a purpose instead of developing naturally, and for Esperanto that purpose is for communication between people who do not share a first language. So what’s the differences between the fictional Juliamo and real Esperanto? The main one is the script. Esperanto uses the familiar Latin alphabet whereas Juliamo uses its own fictional one, albeit heavily inspired by Latin with a side dish of Greek and Japanese. The other differences are Juliamo has some additional vocabulary and small changes to grammar as mentioned in a splash screen every time you boot up the game. As I am not an Esperanto speaker, I can’t pinpoint the exact differences here unfortunately, but the game was supervised by Japan’s National Esperanto Association so rest assured that the majority of what you learn is proper Esperanto. Sure enough, I checked out some Esperanto resources after finishing the game and a good chunk of early vocab and grammar I recognised from what I had learnt ingame. The game teaches you through both lessons and the narrative. The lessons are minigames where you memorise a bunch of vocab and match them with the translation and this is where you learn the majority of vocab. These lessons can be accessed at any time from the main menu for additional study, and you’ll need it if you want to do the optional quiz for the final lesson as the vocab list is simply way too long to memorise in a single sitting. Grammar is taught through the narrative where you effectively study alongside Rin, but unlike vocab you’ll never be quizzed on it. There’s a good chunk of Juliamo dialogue early on in the story that by design the reader likely won’t understand, so taking the time to study Esperanto independently can reward you with an interesting new experience on a second playthrough.
Outside of the language difference and the pink sky, the world of The Expression Amrilato isn’t much different from ours. One of those similarities is social and systemic discrimination, which now extends to the vizitantoj—those who are isekai’d into this world like our protagonist Rin. Vizitantoj are essentially immigrants. The government provides a scheme for vizitantoj which includes a stipend and store discounts, but we are told these benefits have recently been the subject of major cuts (which very much made me think of the UK’s recent cuts to disability benefits.) We are also told of shop owners charging higher prices for vizitantoj and—the most relevant of these to the story—school bullying.
There are three main characters in The Expression Amrilato. The first is Rin, our protagonist and a vizitanto who frequently considers herself boyish, particularly in contrast to Ruka. She isn’t overly adept at learning languages, wishing she put more effort in learning English at school. This is most evident by how she often speaks in Japanese to people she knows won’t understand her, and for those who do understand to some degree, she rarely attempts to consciously speak slower so she can be understood easier and occasionally slurs her words without realising she is doing so. This can be both equally amusing and frustrating to watch and there definitely were a few facepalm worthy moments (how do you accidentally buy an apple instead of a potato? just use your eyes?), but most importantly it adds to the misunderstandings between Rin and Ruka which naturally results in a plentiful of Yuri situations. These misunderstandings all strike the right balance of being sufficiently amusing and cute without veering into downright uncomfortable territory. Speaking of cute, Ruka. Rin frequently gushes about how cute she is from the moment they first met. She speaks some Japanese, enough for basic communication with Rin but little enough that she is a mystery in a lot of ways for much of the story. One thing that isn’t a mystery is that she is very fond of Rin from very early on, but she struggles to effectively put her feelings into words, something that is difficult even when you speak the same native language. Rin too clearly develops feelings for Ruka early on. This ties into the central theme of the story—language—neatly, as we follow these two girls as they work to find their own expressions to convey their love.
Our third character is the librarian Rei who mainly acts as a teacher to Rin. She is unfortunately the weakest part of the story. Initially she appears to not know any Japanese, however it slips during a heated argument with Rin and following this she starts teaching Rin. My problem with this is that at no point in the story is there a reason given for why she withheld her knowledge of Japanese from Rin. Especially given her job responsibility in working with vizitantoj, it comes across as extremely irresponsible. Maybe this is the intended reading of her character, but even so it doesn’t really fit the general atmosphere that the rest of the story goes for. I reckon this is all simply for narratives sake to force Rin to study with Ruka early on in the story, but have Rei later on for the more difficult stuff. And certainly, Rei does often act as a matchmaker between the two, not that this interpretation makes her actions any less irresponsible.
The story is mostly paced well, though there is a bit of lull in the middle where Ruka isn’t present as much, and at times it feels less like you’re reading a Yuri story and more like you’re back at school (whether this a good or bad thing, you decide.) The story splits into three endings, one bad ending and two good endings. After I first reached one of the endings, I initially didn’t even realise that there were any other endings as there is no ending counter or similar in the menus. It was only when I saw CGs I didn’t remember getting in the now unlocked CG gallery did I look up an ending guide online to make sure I wasn’t suffering severe memory loss. The first of the good endings I got seems like the true ending as it results from making what seems like the best possible choices and I believe it’s where the sequel continues from, and while it was satisfying as far as the Yuri is concerned, it seemed a little underwhelming as a climax to story. The second good ending however was more of the climax I was expecting. I think one big singular ending which combines the best of both would’ve worked better.
Art – 7
Story – 8
Characters – 7 (8 for Rin and Ruka, 5 for Rei)
Service – 2 (one mildly revealing bathing CG)
Yuri – 8
Overall – 8
If you’re a language nerd, a Yuri fan or most importantly a language nerd Yuri fan, I thoroughly recommend this delightfully unique combination of Yuri and language learning.
KatGrrrl finds herself getting more addicted to Yuri by the day. Socials at linktr.ee/katgrrrl
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