As promised last summer when we reviewed the Kandagawa Jet Girls TV series, we’re finishing up this niche multimedia series by talking about the game of the same name, released westward digitally on PS4 and PC via Steam.
As with most of these niche (and honestly non-niche as well) anime multimedia franchises, both the game and TV series exist as their own semi-separate thing, despite having the same basic premise and, to promote each other, basically, and this also using some lifted sequences from the anime.
Though in this specific case you really could have guessed this was based on a videogame, since the whole setup is so light on story, but heavy on “plot”, and just the idea itself of mixing shooting into jet ski racing is very videogamey, borne from the need to spice up the basic formula and find a way to incorporate clothing destruction into this one too, as it’s the brainchild of Kenichiro Taniguchi, the creator of Senran Kagura.
Of course it’s him. Though this time is developed by Shade Inc (the Bullet Girls series, Gun Gun Pixies, Samurai Maiden) and Honey Parade Games, the latter also having co-developed the Splatoon-clone of Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash, so it fits thematically in the “literal wetworks und anime lesbians” sense.
Just this time with the framing of a Wave Race style game.
The premise is once again about team of anime girls sexy archetypes and stereotypes competing on the popular sport of Jet Racing, where two girls work together as duo, the Jetter piloting the jet ski itself and the Shooter using water guns to attack the rival teams and jet skis.
Rin Nakimi, wanting to follow in the footsteps of her mother, a legendary Jetter like her mother, she moves out of the countryside into the big city of Asakusa to attend a Jet Racings school to realize her dream, and there she meets a girl named Misa Aoi, which joins her, forming a team and becoming better friends, while meeting an ensemble of other Jet Ski racers, like the chinese idol streamer twins, the busty weeaboo foreigners, the mikos, the ojousama and her ninja maid, etc.
Most having the expected flavours of “history will tell you they were great friends”…. and actually being that, because yuribaiting will get us more attention, as usual, though its worth noting there’s no clothes destruction, i was surprised given the developer and producer, but then again this was made when Sony started becoming very prudish and fighting against these kind of games that also made their platforms offering unique,
Yeah, it’s kinda weird how there’s really nothing explicit, aside from some of the racy (pun intended) design like the miko racing outfits, the pornish ninja-kabuto ones of the weeaboo american girls, but even the mini-game about washing the jetski is surprisingly SFW, instead of being a ecchi version ìof the Bikini Car Wash Girls movie. There are still jiggle physics for the tits, plenty of bikini costumes and you do have the ability to customize the clothes’ transparency in the Dressing Room, but even that is incredibly tame compared to what we have seen in SK games.
I don’t mind too much but i’ts weird, so it’s a strange case where the anime is the one less censored and made more in line of what the developers and producer wanted..
Still, the writing is enjoyably silly and self-aware, even if way more normal and “tame” compared to SK’s batshit weird and bonkers stories, the characters can be fun despite being mostly typical anime girl archetypes that don’t really deviate, and unlike in SK their design are more distinct instead of swapping heads and hair of different kind on 2/3 models of varying boob size.
Kinda of a monkey paw thingie, as is how the models look good, the presentation is actually quite good, i like the style to the menù and i think the soundtrack is pretty good… almost too good for this game, but it’s clear they spent most of their budget on the girls models and voice acting, the fairly simplicistic textures of the race tracks themselves (even when they look “busy”) will remind you this is a budget game, not that low of a budget, but a budget niche game nevertheless.
Which isn’t a diss, the game is a niche budget game, and it does try to do something unique, in this case i recommend doing the tutorials first, as gameplay is more complicated than you might expect, the tutorials alone will take more than you’d expect, which makes sense since there are many mechanics to explain, like mid-air tricks, the shields, and how to control the nose of the jetski to either brace and keep acceleration going, or take a small dive for extra bonus gauge.
there are some Mario Kart-esque systems, like the drifting system and the power gauge that while full lets you pull an ultimate of sorts, can also be spent on small boosts, but you’re not just racing, as there are TPS elements thrown in, meaning you’ll have to attack or evade attacks from the other racers, which might use the standard issue puny issue water rifle or the weapons found in item boxes, and while you can have the shooter enter Shooter mode and attack automatically while in range, you can also decide to turn back and aim manually with the weapon, while in the meantime the jetter will take over the driving, and the IA is decent at keeping you on track, so to speak.
Also, the game rewards doing drifting and pulling tricks mid-air by charging the gauge, which in turn when full let’s you do the aforementioned “ult/special attack”, that also depends on what weapon you have equipped, and various mid-air tricks give different bonuses, like more boost gauge, brief seconds of invincibility or extra gauge gain, for example.
Drifting, important as it is for a racing game of this nature, does feel a bit stiff, it will be useful but the controls for it aren’t as tight as they could/should be, but you can get used to it, it’s not a deal breakers…. other issues sadly are hard to ignore, and they are mostly the same of Beach Peach Splash, which means gameplay is rough, unbalanced and inconsistent, as in, there are some cool ideas but they’re half baked and unbalanced.
Actually, despite unbalanced weapons, i do feel PBS still was decent enough for a Splatoon clone, as were Kandagawa Jet Girls has really big issues that will inevitably stick out even if you wanna try and ignore them, like an the overall slow sense of speed, as these jetski never feel like they are going at anything but “moderate speed”, and no boosts or the many boost pads (or some of the ultimates special skill or buffs given by some tricks) can really remedy this overall, you get the feeling the jets skis could go faster but simply don’t, like they have a physical lock to prevent such.
Another major issue is that the story content has IA racers that are embarassingly easy to face, and outside some of the intended more hardened story finales or something, you’ll be moving unmolested through all the circuit, leaving not just the fodder racers, but also the rival duo you’re facing well behind you… again, is either that or they suddendly spiked the IA’s food or something, as the CPU opponent remember this a race and they’re supposed to give a challenge, but even so after a couple of hours you’ll easily leave the competition in the watery dust,
And this is true even if you’re not good with racing karts that aren’t kart or old arcade racers, i’m not good at racing games, but even i found this either too easy, heck, for the first entire scenario/campaign with the series protags, the IA is so dumb that even the named rival racers forget (either that or simply don’t know) they could be using their special attacks too, but even so the lack of any kind of rubberbanding still means there’s no real way of catching up to the leading racers, unless they happen to do a big fumble, often thanks to the not so precise drifting system that will have you eating a lot of walls before you get to grips with it.
You’d wish there was either more to the shooting or more focus on the actual racing, this feels like a decent idea but again, this compromise just makes you wish it was either a more arcade experience like Hydro Thunder or something that rewards master the actual racing in itself, or that plays more into the main idea of this being anime Road Rash via Mario Kart but with jet skis.
For example, characters themselves do not determine the stats, those depends on the jet ski chosen, but certain characters combo have an unique trick move alongside generic ones…. which is still kinda lame and makes choosing the character too much just pure aesthetic, at least do like in MK Double Dash and have each character a specific weapon or ability only they can summon depending if they drive or shoot, since we’re doing the two people on one vehicle thing.
Regardless, the campaigns soon feel repetitive due to the small amount of characters and tracks available, even with them offering slightly different routes and daytime/nightime version, and the format of “VN-esque cutscene” before and after the level carried over from SK doesn’t fit too well for a racing game, where a tournament set-up would have made a bit more sense…. even more since the teams race to win the titular Kandagawa Cup in an actual tournament.
The track design is also mostly unremarkable, the circuits/tracks mostly mesh together as they look and feel samey, often being littered by random shit like baloons you can pop and maybe find shield or boost gauge pick-ups, maybe extra currency to spent on the oddly buried Shop) you’ll quickly see how little these have to offer in terms of obstacles and shit, with the few exceptions of the vertical or horizontal water jet pumps that will reveal how the water physics can be fucky too, making the jet ski itself react in an exaggerated fashion and even send you flying for a bit.
Speaking of, even if the customization for the girls is relatively limited, it is fairly extensive for the jet skis, at least in terms of aesthetic customization, there is a lot of stuff, from decals, visual effects for drifting, patterns, skins, BGMs for the ultimates/special attacks, colorization, etc.
You can also buy machine parts that improve handling, acceleration and speed, these can be quite expensive and oddly you don’t have to necessarily grind the races, because there are 4 mini-games you can access from the Clubroom menu and they’re absurdily generous with how many coins/points/currency they net you, like you get pennies from actually winning races, but millions by doing the machine washing mini-game on Hard like 5 times..
Definitely helps because tackling the harder difficulties on Free Mode races means confronting IA that are tougher because they already have the machine parts upgraded to the max, meaning after hours of mostly embarassingly easy races against the computer, you’re gonna get creamed because they have maxed out stats that give them immediate, tangible advantage out of the gate, and don’t expect you to have those as well, and remember, there is no real rubberbanding of any kind, so you’ll just get served what you inflicted on the CPU racers, in a way, as they’ll simply leave you behind by a lot, doesn’t matter how good you actually are at the actual racing, or even if you get handed by the RNG a MK-esque item akin to the Blue Shell.
Heck, even before that you’ll need to buy some upgrades parts to even stand a chance in the latter story campaigns, which really doesn’t make me wanna bother with online, assuming you can actually find anyone in the servers without organizing first.
Still, Free Mode offers also the classic Time Trial mode (and you can upload or download ghost data), and the Story mode offers 8 campaigns, which are composed of 8 races each (aside from the first being 12 chapters long), with a final mini-campaign unlocked when you finish all the others.
the story content is similar to the anime but often some events are different, some characterizations also slightly different (like one of the mikos was supergay in the anime, here not really), but to my slight surprise each arc/campaign’s story follows the specific team from their point of view, and there are no shared-recycled VN bits, so there’s no winning a race only to lose it in the following cutscene because of a shared continuity or something like that
Also, there is a game exclusive 7th team of girls, the Kanizawa Technical High, the crazy-looking & eepy one that do the “what do you know of loss and Pain?” edgy chuunibiyou bit, their arc unlocking only after completing the 6 previous arcs,
There is a decent amount of content, mostly in the Story campaign, and outside of the aforementioned Free, Time Trial and Online modes, there are a lot of customization items to buy and also many to unlock by completing all three missions/objectives attached on each Story race.
I do think it’s a decent enough sized package, plus in the western release they included the Ryona & Ryobi SK DLC for free in the base release, the other 10 Senran Kagura girls chosen for the collaboration are paid DLC, which can also be bought via a 30 bucks Season Pass.
Which is a fuckin pisser, given how characters matter little in terms of actual gameplay, and the season pass asks almost the full price of the base game, the fuck, Marvelous?
I went into Kandagawa Jet Girls with some expectations, since it was also made by the Senran Kagura producer that made the series a niche success, and i enjoyed the anime counterpart before, but sadly the videogame version is a weird disappointment, even putting aside that performance is fine yet loading screen can look like the entire game froze and is about to crash, but never does.
Aside from the fact the studios (Shade Inc and Honey Parade Games) had to basically pre-censor any really racy ecchi content and excesses that distinguished the SK games, the game itsels suffers from the same issues of Peach Beach Splash, all exacerbated by a gameplay that tries some interesting ideas and has more mechanics than expected, but these come off as more underbaked, unbalanced, almost rendered moot by an absurdly easy IA for the computer rivals.
This could have been a decent racer, but even when the IA remembers to actually give you a challenge, the lack of any rubberbanding, very little proper sense of speed, the sometimes iffy water physics and drifting being a bit more clunky than you would wanna put it back down to mediocrity.
Frankly i’m kinda disappointed, since this could have been fun, it’s not bad, and i’m glad they localized, but i would have understood if they didn’t, since is just kinda a meh racing game that also lacks the quirky ecchi extravaganzas that made the Senran Kagura games an experience, while also suffering from little worthwhile content, middling track design, so it’s no wonder most people haven’t gotten the achievements/trophies for the story campaigns, repetive as they are.
But even if we got the usual fanservice excess, at heart Kandagawa Jet Girls is really not much more than a mediocre budget anime racing game, so if you’re still curious and you’ve seen the anime before, just wait it to go on sale on Steam or PSN.
Otherwise just watch the anime series, as that stays true to the vision they had for the series/franchise i recommend checking out the anime series, that is better and more indicative of the overall vision they had for the franchise, without having to consider how much of a prude paradise Sony’s platforms (and not only theirs, as this was before Steam started arbitrarily deny eroge visual novels being released on their service) were becoming – kinda – all of a sudden.
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