I was thinking today about how most harem VNs require you to suspend your disbelief in two major areas just in order for the story to work. First, it always ends up being a little too easy to recruit new lovers to the relationship. In real life, there'd likely be lots of discussion and at least a few arguments before even a third person could be let in the door, and the haremmonger would need to have those same spirited confabs with both parties. You'd have to go through the same process for all future additions as well. A fair amount of peril would be involved each time and one wrong move at any point could easily leave you utterly forsaken and alone. I can just imagine how well it would have gone over if I'd ever broached the idea of a harem to any of my previous girlfriends. "Honey, did you know many couples are exploring polyamory these days? How would you feel if we broadened our relationship out a little so as to include your little sister, your best friend, three of my college mates, my gym instructor, and this one lady who works with my mom? ...why are you looking at me like that? PLEASE PUT THE KNIFE DOWN."
Once you lay down that difficult groundwork for the harem, I wouldn't expect things to go quite as smoothly as most harem VNs depict either. Human beings naturally get jealous. Maybe girl #3 can mentally accept that you and girl #7 are perfectly entitled to have some quality alone time this week given the knowledge that she'll get her own bite at the apple eventually, but emotionally that'd be anything but easy. I feel like other negative emotions would inevitably spring up when you have that many people crammed into one relationship as well. There'd surely be bickering and drama in spades. The occasional catfight -- sometimes involving actual incompatible cats who belong to different harem members -- would be inevitable. Also, a harem wouldn't be immune to the same issues regular couples go through all the time. It can be hard enough to make the time needed to keep just one person from feeling lonely and neglected...imagine how inhumanly good you'd have to be at scheduling when you are everything to 8 or 15 other people.
One thing I really like about Color of My Sound so far is the way it adroitly avoids both of those issues I just pointed out. I feel like we're still a really long way before any character will fall in love with the MC and would want to formally enter a relationship with him. Even when that does happen, we'll probably be wondering all the while if she's really sincere or just playing the MC. The story works so well because all the characters can be interested in the MC for reasons that are not necessarily romantic at all even if sex might be involved in the relationship. For some of them, he's likely their assigned mission, and their personal feelings whether positive or negative are something they have to put aside in order to get the job done. In the long run, those feelings will surely start to matter more -- the game does have the romance tag, after all -- but I can't even imagine most of the characters telling the MC they love him any time soon. If Safiya were to say it, it'd definitely be brown trousers time for me. Here's hoping that Gallant Trombe will be able to continue to avoid the typical harem tropes and keep telling us one of the most unique stories you'll ever find on this site!
