izigame.me

Chemically Bonded is a sweet BxG romance VN set a Japanese high school, where you ‘play’ as a generic male protagonist who finds himself caught up in the drama between two girls, Kiyoko and Naomi, whose friendship has fallen apart under mysterious circumstances.
What caused the relationship between these two girls to deteriorate? That is something the main character spends the first half of the story trying to figure out, while simultaneously developing his bonds with both heroines.
CB’s story itself is somewhat cliché (if I had a penny for every BxG romance VN set in high school that’s on Steam, I’d have enough to buy a sausage roll from Greggs), but it’s in the presentation of this fairly simple idea that CB really shines.
CB’s art, if it isn’t apparent enough from the screenshots on the store page, is very pretty: especially the backgrounds. There are a lot of backgrounds in this VN, and while they’re mostly used to depict Yet Another Japanese High School, they have some absolutely gorgeous lighting effects on them: it all looks very aesthetic. Some of the backgrounds even have subtle animations on them, like the drifting dust particles in the chemistry classroom, or the neon lights in the arcade, which makes them even more immersive.
The character art, too, is really nice. It’s in a traditional anime style, but the shading looks very soft, which complements the backgrounds and the slow-paced, dreamy prose (I’ll write more about that later).
Though CB’s story is very ‘anime’ (and it’s self-aware of it, too: there’s a lot of jokes to be found therein about tsunderes, and fourth-wall-breaky ‘if I was a character in a VN, I bet this would totally happen lol’), the designs of the two love interests are very subdued, which I appreciated. I love rainbow-haired anime girls, but I don’t think that’d work here, given the ‘heart’ of CB’s story is actually quite down to Earth.
The UI in CB is also incredibly polished throughout, with numerous styles of textbox (it becomes more unobtrusive when CGs are displayed, to better show off the pretty art), and an interactable phone that lets you text and call the two heroines are certain points in the story. The phone in particular was a nice touch, it reminded me a little of Steins;Gate.
It’s obvious a huge amount of effort was put into the visual presentation of this VN, and it really paid off: it all looks very cohesive. CB is definitely one of the prettiest EVNs I’ve ever read, and I even think it stands on an even footing with a lot of JVNs. It’s incredibly gorgeous all around.
As for the actual story, there isn’t that much too it. Naomi and Kiyoko’s falling-out is based on a pretty simple misunderstanding which, though the story beats around the bush a little before letting them talk things through, only takes about two minutes to hammer out. This might seem underwhelming, but given the characters are high school students, I think the initial drama is feasible enough: teenagers tend to be melodramatic, after all.
The writing style itself, meanwhile, is a bit of a mixed bag. I think the dialogue is pretty fun and well-rendered on the whole (some reviewers mentioned they didn’t care for Naomi’s tsundereness, but I thought her constant ‘hpmh’ing and her snippy retorts were quite charming, really!), but the main character likes to monologue a lot: mostly about unimportant things, like how the clouds scud across the sky, or the way the heroines’ hair look when it flutters in the breeze. There is a point in the story, granted, where Naomi pokes fun at the MC for spacing out and staring at the sky so much when he’s supposed to be talking to her (which is why Naomi is, in fact, the best girl), so I think this is something the writer was aware of. The slow pace of the story seems (to me, at least) like a deliberate stylistic choice, which was used to highlight the beauty in ‘the mundance everyday’, and how easily it is to take your high school years for granted.
From a purely technical standpoint, the prose in CB is fine. It’s all grammatically correct, the sentence structures and word choices are varied enough to remain interesting (apart from the constant references to Kiyoko’s hair and eyes looking like chocolate… Seriously, reading this VN started to make me feel hungry), and I only spotted a handful of typos. I’ve definitely read worse prose in VNs, both in EVNs and translated JVNs. I do think some of the MC’s internal narration could have been trimmed down, however, as it can start to feel superfluous in places. I confess, I started to skim the MC’s inner monologue, because it rarely felt like it added much to the story: I was more invested in seeing the characters interacting than I was in reading even more chocolate-adjacent similes.
If you can look past the MC’s somewhat purplish inner monologue, however, CB is quite a sweet story. I think the two love interests are both likeable, even if they are a bit tropey, and the drama between them is believable enough. The visual presentation is the star of the show, though: it’s clear the VN was put together with a lot of love and passion, and I think that alone makes it well worth the asking price.
I’d recommend CB to anybody who’s looking for a cute slice of life story which is, despite the odd few anime-isms, reasonably grounded. It’s not the most exciting story in the world, but I don’t think it’s trying to be. It’s short and sweet, and for what it is, it’s very well presented.