VN - Ren'Py - My Bully Is My Lover [Ch.1 Ep.4] [NiiChan]

When you look for the perfect game in this genre, you want to see writing that wouldn't be out of place in a classic movie or bestselling novel, but with beautiful porn renders that you would never see in those mediums.

Unfortunately, this game delivers just the opposite. Porn-level writing and some brief vanilla lewd scenes that don't come close to moving the needle. The bad writing is a much bigger issue, so it will dominate this review, but the lack of quality H scenes is also a major factor, so let's just get it out of the way.

The lewd scenes in this game are quite poor. Most of them are short, barely or poorly animated, and usually extreme vanilla. They take too long to get to, often multiple chapters and hundreds if not thousands of slides of dialogue in between, and the payoff isn't even worth it.

The developer evidently realizes the issue, as he tries to remedy it by giving completely random, out-of-context still renders of lewds in between scenes. Let's just make it clear right now. These renders don't make up for the lack of content in the actual game. Not even close. If anything, they just highlight how long it's been since the last sex scene and exacerbate the immensity of the terrible dialogue and tropey, unrealistic anime scenarios the reader has to slog through.

The MC is as generic as it gets. Honey Select already has a problem with generic, creepy looking male characters as it is. But this game truly takes the path of least resistance. The MC is literally the generic model in Honey Select. And the lack of any effort in rendering him extends to the writing, too. The MC is as bland as they come, with a true lack of any spine or defining characteristics. He's the most milquetoast of milk and toast.

The writing around him fails to do him any favors either, as he's supposedly this great and upstanding guy despite doing next to nothing. He somehow has advice to offer to the girls even in their fields, but it's more annoying than anything when he goes and patronizes them from an unearned position of authority, Yet, if the writing is to be believed, they actually thank him for it. He's not so much a character as he's a creepy-looking canvas to project your personal desire for recognition and hero worship onto.

(I think Honey Select also has a problem with making visually distinct looking female characters, but this game at least attempts to give them all different hair colors, styles, and eye colors, which is about the extent of differentiation of HS girls.)

The game takes realism, pisses on it, and throws it through a blender. You have weird, vindictive seemingly omnipotent parents meddling with high school kids. You have high school burnouts becoming CEOs and then becoming homeless within the span of a few years. You have the spineless MC becoming the victim of an orchestrated bullying conspiracy for no apparent reason. You have teenage assassins and spies. You have outrageously powerful empire makers whose sisters run burger joints for... reasons, I guess (probably for the same plot contrivances as why a hugely popular rich girl streamer, Freya, wants to spend all her time there taking burger orders instead of... you know... doing her job).

All the while, the game insists on being painfully self-referential. The MC has "met" all the characters before, despite the fact that he's allegedly moved countries. Almost every character somehow, however unlikely and obliquely, ties in with each other. But none of these connections have any real payoff. They just serve to shrink the world. There's no awe over how expansive and immersive the world is, or the sense of kismet over how these people managed to find each other across a vast and challenging planet. You just get the sense that the universe in My Bully is My Lover is about 30 characters big.

No one in this VN talks like a normal person either. The dialogue in this game is more wooden than a George Lucas film. The MC even calls his mom "mother" in conversation with her, and that's not even the most wooden part of his speech pattern.

But the real issue is how abysmal the storytelling is. The storyline is bogged by gratuitously long and meandering flashbacks. None of which actually expresses what the author thinks they express. Apparently, the MC was badly "bullied" by these girls in school. By which it means they had the audacity of turning him down when he asked to date them, I guess? And then they made fun of him a few times and asked him to carry and gofer some items for him, which the MC willingly does.

I guess this qualifies as making the MC's life hell, because despite the gratuitously long and meandering flashback sequences, we never actually see anything particularly awful happening to him, at least nothing in which he was complicit himself. It's the MC that keeps pushing himself towards these girls that he's obsessed with, and never working to extricate himself from the situation. If anything, it seems like the behavior of someone who's into it. The only possible interpretation for why the girls are "bullies" is if you subscribe to some incel doctrine that being nice to a girl means you're somehow entitled to sex.

But wait! We later learn that not only did none of the bullies actually want to bully the MC, they're actually madly in love with him and were forced to do it by one of the bullies' jilted mother, who is supposedly this ultra-wealthy and powerful CEO type who is as influential and vindictive as the plot demands.

Worst of all, these girls are into him for the weirdest of reasons. One of them is in love with the MC because he literally said he'd be her prince when they were six years old. The other one likes his headpats (really). Another one likes him because he's... there... I guess, because she jumps him in a bathroom and they end up having sex.

Ostensibly it's because the MC is "nice." But it doesn't actually show the MC doing anything. In fact, it seems like any time the MC shows any level of common courtesy, he's basically made out like this knight in shining armor, despite the fact that these girls are supposedly insanely beautiful privileged young women who naturally would be having a bunch of boys fawning over them their entire lives. The story literally reads like an Incel NiceGuy™ fantasy.

(Just as an aside to any aspiring writers who want to write genuinely nice guys in their stories: having some manners and doing little courtesies does not make you a nice guy. Likewise, holding onto grudges while you outwardly say things are fine does not make you a nice guy. Expecting favorable outcomes because you do minor acts of kindness does not make you a nice guy, though it does make you a NiceGuy™.)

Obviously, if you hang out for a few days with a girl in a park when you're six, she'll be in love with you and reserve herself for you for the rest of her life. Because who needs women who are fully formed individuals with their own ambitions and desires, when they can just be one-dimensional placeholders for the MC's almighty dick?

Oh, I guess at one point he was overweight, but by the time the story starts, he's back in shape. Which means fuck all because apparently the girls were all into him even back when he was fat. So... chalk it up to another useless plot point that doesn't do shit.

The developer makes sure to emphasize that "this is not a revenge game" but at the same time refuses to allow the characters to develop past the alleged bullying that took place. The girls are still hung up on it. The MC is still hung up on it. But god forbid they actually talk it through rather than pretending like they're totally different people from their high school selves. Instead, the MC earns brownie points for... what... exactly? Shitty communication? Not going on a rampage and murdering them in their sleep? The bar is on the floor with this man.

Oh, and I guess there's some weird incest storyline with the MC's sister and mother, but no one gives a shit because they're exhausted by the overwrought plot.

Just do yourselves a favor, find some H renders and lewd scenes and invent a story in your head rather than reading through slide after slide of terrible writing. You're almost guaranteed to come up with something better, or at least something that's more to your tastes.

This one gets 2 stars, and that's being generous in rewarding the amount of effort the developer spent to nearly finish it.

First time played i loved it since this is not revenge type game the only thing i want is---
The only thing that i want from a player's perspective is 2 things....
1.More scenes with Klara
2. Please add Hera to the mc's love interest
is it possible to have her too in our mc's harem tbh i really love her model and besides klara she is the only milf model to get in relationship with our mc maybe our mc can saev her from th mysterious someone who is manipulating her....i really hope dev adds her to love interest....these are the only 2 thing for me that is missing....

The story is pretty nonsensical, with early 20 year olds being assasins with years of experience and near superhuman abilities, mafia that uses school bullying as a form of revenge, 6 year olds that live alone and cook for themselves and a lot of other far out stuff...

The dialogues follow from that and many times the characters react and communicate with each other in really unrealistic ways. The MC for example says that he is an asshole and deserves all the bad stuff that happened in his life because he "forgot" that he had made a promise at 8 y.o. to be someone's prince for life and he committed the heinous crime of declaring his love to another girl when he was 17....

The models are nice (I really like Honey Select models so if you don't your opinion may vary here) but the animations are a bit short and weird at times.

The sex scenes are very short and not particularly hot, either on the images or the descriptions/dialogues. They are also few and far between so you can't play this for the sex scenes, and as I mentioned, the story is not really anything to write home about either so...

To top it all off, every now and then you have these flashbacks to the childhood of some of the characters that are extremely long and hardly add anything to them, these could have provided the same background story in half the length or less.

All in all I would say this is a 2/5 or 3/5 if feeling generous.

I've really enjoyed this game ALOT, it's got a good mix of Humor, emotional heartfelt moments & overall good story so far & the character renders in this game are great (Especially Moon, who is drop dead gorgeous)

I cant wait to see whats next in future episode releases.

Yeah, melodramatic stories are my guilty pleasure, so MBML hit me straight in my heart.
To be honest, all that Mafia story is pretty unrealistic, but Nii-chan made pretty good job with characters, so all plot twist kicked my balls and made me scream like FUCK! WHY? Some girls have developed backstory based on their past. YES I"M TALKING ABOUT EMY!!! Well, maybe Lily's teenage sport movie is a bit long. But again, it's just prologue.
Renders are pretty nice and sex animations look good. Soundtrack sometimes becomes too goofy, but when teh drama starts, music successfully complement scene adding right atmosphere.

And the most notable thing for me is... Actually, I'm full harems enjoyer, who picks all possible girls and avoids games without harems. But MBML is the first AVN where I REALLY WANT to pick the Solo Route. With Emy, of course!

5/5. I really enjoyed your game, Nii-chan

As per ch 1 ep1 part 2

Beforehand, how I can commence harem mode with Emma backstory haha. it's such strong backstory compared to aine or gwen, with tragic beginning, it makes me quite a bit mushy that I would go vanilla and ignore gwen scene after that. What keep me to going harem mode is because Emma is my least favorite model, not the story but the arts, to me her head proportion(without hat) seems a tiny bit off. Her head proportion as child is perfect to her child body, even her hair as child is probably my favorite of them all, very fitting with her pesona.

Story 7/10
Interesting story, I loved bully turned lover manhwas, I love many titles about it, so this one is my cup of tea as well. Altho the bits of past bullied moments is rather weak on this one and the already changed bullies attitude toward mc when they reunite. It may be choice made by dev like emphasizing this is not revenge game but i think its a missing opportunity, especially with implementation of story branching. The change of attitude is understandable given how story goes, but I hope the memory of getting bullied recalled some more before the whole backstory of being forced to bully as that would be a nice stall, progression, path branching, as there could be more scenario of sexual scene prior the whole revelation with different kind of tension like hate fk, or revenge fk. Again, i read that this is not revenge game, but the way i see it, revenge fk is not actual revenge, mc might forgive the girls already but he just channel his past anger during sexual scene and turn it to male dom, that offer different lines amd action which possibly unlock more tags and kinks, so instead of all vanilla sexual scene with three bullies, there will branch of another tension during sex scene that will be boosted by utilizing past bullied mc memory.

Arts 8/10
Everything become more polished after like prologue episode 4 or 5 and become even more solid after like 7, including the arts. The model depict character personality pretty well. The animation also improved as it goes like sexual moment emphasis and proper climax ending scene. Since gwen past relation revolved around sexual tension, I do wish that gwen sex scene getting some improvement like proper moment emphasis, more position, and climax ending(s) emphasis, since I think this animation made when everything still improving.

UI 8/10
Menu is clean, there's also a separate menu via phone, altho it's not actively used for something like texting, call, or notifying even when there's phone call or texting scene where it could be utilized for that . If it's just act as secondary access to menu it served it's purpose very well, otherwise it's redundant to the basic menu, still, nice touch.

Fap material 7/10
For this point of progress, I said it's decent enough of sexual content, altho for me the sexual pacing of most of women are kinda rushed, most of them have full intercourse right away, I think it could be stalled to gives some tease and feels of progression and conquest. There's also some character that may go slow like aine and perhaps moon and freya, hopefully they will balance out the fast sexual pacing of the others.

Sound 8/10
Some moments had great selection of song, while some other I found it rather odd for the moment. It's not really a bother tho, it's fine. I would give more point if there's some sfx during sexual scene, like flops and moan, that would be grande.

Overall, great game, I love to see it continue improving and hopefully also improve past contents like early sky and gwen scene, and also some bullying scene to stay true to the title. My favorite girl is claire but unfortunately she isn't an option, tbh I don't mind even if she isn't a love interest but I would still bang her for whatever reason in any of your game. I think dev notice this as well that claire model is polished and hot but dev didn't milk her popularity yet but stall it for perhaps another vn where she become LI. I respect this decision, hopefully it's another good vn. I should give this a 4* but I give an extra * for having reference to my another favorite VN.

Well done dev~

First of all, I really liked my experience playing this AVN. I want to make this review without giving away too much spoilers so bear with me.

Music – The choice of music selections is really great which are in tune with the situation and feel of the scenes. I have them added to my Spotify playlists just to let my brain recall some of the memorable scenes that happened while the BGM plays on shuffle.

Scenes & Dialogue – You can tell a lot of thought and planning has gone into them to get the best effect the Dev wanted to show. The pace of the dialogue and the number of scenes to show are properly balanced.
The Dev combines them perfectly to make use of dialogues to explain the actions of the characters but not fully describe the scene itself just through dialogue but also make a render of a sequence of actions.
Not reading a wall of text that describes the whole scene in the text is always a huge plus. You actually know you are playing an AVN not reading a picture book.

Characters – The characters are what I like to think of as a work in progress. (Especially the game only being on the end of the prologue despite being 7 episodes long. I know right. We are in this for the long run, and I’m with it all the way through.)
we start off getting introduced to characters with your typical genres like “The Beautiful Polite one”, “The Quiet and Mysterious one”, and the “Wild, Outgoing, Tomboyish one”. There’s also the typical “Little Sister character”, “The Motherly Type”, “The Mischievous Little Minx type”, “The Hard-Working Sporty character”, and a “Thoughtful and Smart jack-of-all-trades woman”.

Aine, being one of the main focuses first comes off as polite and distant to the MC. That is until she learns of her relationship with him. At first, we only see her as someone strict and distant but as the story progressed her personality develops further along with her relationship with the protagonist, and starts showing emotions such as Kindness, Embarrassment, and Fondness for him. We start seeing her develop her own goals as we get shown their past.

Gwen’s Perfect as is. (No bias. Honest… Okay maybe a little bit).

Emma starts off being introduced as Quiet and Reserved, added with her usual “Dead-Pan” expression, which made her very mysterious to me. Her character arc typically starts off in episodes 5-6, her past gets revealed and it does get pretty heavy, Which I never really expected. It showed a lot of how she came to be personality-wise and shows how she could be in the future. (The quiet ones are usually the kinkiest I see.)

Sky’s story is something to enjoy as it’s the first one we get a lot of progress on since it went straight into the action. Her personality is unfortunately something we haven’t explored yet as we just get told and shown that MC and she suddenly have feelings for each other that have been pent-up for a long time that they deny which eventually explodes. All the dialogue we get explaining this is that they know they both felt this way for each other for a long while now and then we went straight to a short flashback of a “Mistake” that happened. It’s not a bad thing per se since I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be left as is. We should be getting a longer explanation of how this happened in her character arc (Maybe…. I don’t know…. I hope). One thing is that her route is connected to another’s LI so you must be in her route to access another’s which does tell me that they will have a future arc that relates to each other to progress both of their stories and that’s one of the things I’m MOST excited about. But god knows when that could be and the excitement is killing me.

The characters after this bit haven’t had much progress yet since I guess there isn’t enough time or space in the prologue. (Kek)

Lily in my opinion is currently being overshadowed by the rest of the cast as even though we see a bit of her past, her appearance gets thrown in-between here and there so I can’t really say much about her personality in-depth as I can only shallowly judge it based on what I’ve been shown so far. “The Hard-Working Sporty character” stays as is for now.

Naomi is almost the same as lily where she gets shown here and there but rarer so I still can’t comment about her character only what I’ve judged so far, “Thoughtful and Smart jack-of-all-trades woman”. (Maybe she can empty out my pipes. Hehehe.)

Freya comes off as the mischievous character nuff said.

Klara also the same. One hawt M’lady.

Everything I said can still be subject to change as we are only just getting started with the story.

So I have tried one of the earlier version back in a year or so, when the game is still quite "vanilla" with its school-bully turned lover, harem apartment lovey-dovey plot. Thought it was okay back then despite the very childish dialogue and only a few almost identical sex scenes with the blue-haired "roommates". Renders quality are above the average HS game and girls are designed cutely. I thought maybe after a few versions, when the characters are all introduced and developed, this can become a good light-hearted nukige.

One year later, i.e. today I tried the latest version and I am so confused with what is going on with the game now.

Good things first: the quality of the renders has gone up a lot, and the new girl Moon is very beautifully design and sexy.

Bad things now:
1) Abrupt change in plot, unplanned writing
From a simple plot line of "meeting your high school bully again and living with her", the game took an abrupt turn and seems to have turned into some sort of mafia-gang-crime-assassin-mystery. It would have been cool if it was build-up from the beginning, hint at from the dialogue or perhaps just a bit of foreshadow in the character's action, but no, these changes just pop out of nowhere and it feel so forced and weird. To make these changes, more and more characters are introduced for the sake of telling the story, but they are hardly getting any meaningful arc or dialogues so they are not developed at all. The change in plot is so sudden that I cannot help but suspect the dev actually didn't plan the writing at all but just threw in whatever ideas they have and make a messy stew out of the plot. The dev/writer of the game went all out to try and add depths to the plot by adding sudden, unnecessary back stories to every girls, e.g. the whole Emma and mother flashbacks which took almost an entire episode (that is perhaps the single longest flashback scenes in the history of AVN - am I watching NARUTO or something?) But these backstories are clearly afterthoughts because they just pop out from thin air without any foreshadowing or build up. It is the worst kind of things you can do to ruin a character.
And of course the dialogues remain childish and non-sensical. Everyone has like the IQ of 12 year old in this game.

2) Hardly any sex scenes
For a game that has been in development for such a long time, I thought there would be substantial amount of H-scenes, seeing that the writing is hardly given any thought. But no, despite the one thousand characters introduced we only get to see like less than 10 scenes with a handful of the girls, and these are few and far in between (out of the 3-4 hours playtime, only 5 mins are H-scenes) and they are all very basic AND identical.
I am not saying the game should be overflooded with sexy time but if your writing is already so poor, maybe more H-scenes can compensate your poorly laid-out writing, but in this case both aspects are equally lacking.

conclusion: bad writing + hardly any scenes.

Hope this game becomes better in the future.

I really love that. The art and render where good. Story is also good. The way you end end chapter 1 part 2, now i can't wait for the next update. Hope the next update will be soon release. I am waiting for that.

One of the best games I had the pleasure of playing on this site and have been playing since it's first release.

The writing is great and has been continously improving since sice episode 1, the characters all have their roles in the story and are all easily lovanle after learning their bacstory, which is very important in a game of this genre.

The renders and sex scenes are top notch and provide a good sensual experience and are usually an effect of important story bits, and let's not forget the music which ranges from being pretty good to absolutely hilarious (in a good way).

All in all this is a great and enjoyable read that I will continue following till the end!!! 10/10

(Reviewed as of Ch1 Ep1 - Part 2 + Emma's Solo Ending)

I have played this game since Ep 4 and after playing Ch1, i decided to review the game due to the goddess Aine in the beach.
Firstly, the story is interesting. My first impression of the game is bad because it reminds me of the anime Masamune kun's revenge, fortunately the plot is different. Characters development are good, but MC in my opinion is too altruistic.
Secondly, renders are great and get better every patch, i love the cutscenes. Sex scene is quite decent, but the dick licking scenes look a little funny to me
Lastly, i love the music. Those K-pop songs hit the right spot.
Ending, i deeply apologize for any inconvenience about my bad English above, i'm trying to improve by getting out of my comfort zone by writing ratings.
TLDR: I rated the game 4.5/5. Everything is great, only the start of the game reminds me of Masamune-kun's revenge.

Some of the best models I've seen before. Really knows how to bring out all the best qualities from Honey Select. Episode 1 really refined the quality from the prelude and added more movement and animations to liven up the narrative and tone.

The story takes some time to digest, but it really pulls you in through its characters and their circumstances. Each character feels unique and fully fleshed out.

Also, it has some truly great scenes--especially the ones with Gwen where the need and understanding between the character felt genuine and palpable. I would like if there were more scenes, but overall I like the style of this game, which builds longer, more meaningful scenes.

My bully is my Lover is a very pretty VN with a good premiss but boring writing.

I think the game is very pretty in general and evidently a lot of effort has gone into making the game look good. I think the characters are very cool style wise and some of them are even actually quite interesting to interact with. My issue comes with the premiss and writing.

They stated at the start that this is gonna be a game which focuses more on the story then choices and I don't mind it but I don't think the story is that good overall. The premise is just your stereotypical harem but honestly, its just as boring. I've been trying to get through the prelude to try and give it a fair chance but I genuinly fall asleep while trying to get through it. I think its the combination of the story being very predictable while also having a main character who has a personality as flat as cardboard.

Overall, if you want a pretty harem fap experience, here you go. If you want more sustainence with a story with a bit more meat then I think you should look elsewhere.

The intro says that it has some anime inspired elements, and the stereotypical Japanese harem-seeking-protagonist being a weak-willed nice guy who can't say no is probably the most glaring.

I have no problems with the premise, I realise that it's not a revenge game, however I was expecting at least some degree of hesitation. The protagonist almost instantly decides that he's over what happened in the past and will forgive them, even the obsessed sister character holds no ill will towards the ones who ruined her darling brother's high school years - all this before any of them have apologised yet.

The side characters have depth, but on the face of it, many seem to be more on the manipulative side, be it the bullies in question, the absentee mother, or the obsessed sister. Arranged marriages are bad, unless it's the protagonist being manipulated into one as he lacks the ability to say no, then it's fine.

Dialogue is good and pretty natural, although the inner monologues are a bit heavy handed and feature too much repetition, they could be made a lot more concise, allowing the dialogue to flow a bit more.

Visuals are what you'd expect from a HS game, decent enough, but doesn't seem to have the same degree of fidelity that some others are able to reach with mods/custom animations/models/post work/etc. I'm not a fan of the random pinup splashes, they're a bit jarring and bordering on spoiler-ish.

All in all, it's ok. Many people will enjoy this, but it's not for me.

Plot : 4..5/5 Story starts off in a weird direction but takes your on a couple of spins in the process, found it extremely captivating and interesting plenty of plot twists happening aswell the flashback chapter with one of the girls is a real tear jerker and the very last update had me going Shit did not see that coming

Characters 10/10 honestly there isnt a character i dislike maybe freya or Sky, but even those are great for what they are
all different type of girls with amazing personalities( PS klara,Lily and moon are awesome)

Music: 8/10 the music fits the theme and is pretty good choice wise imo

Renders: 9/10 think out of HS2 games its one of the best out there aswell to me

Keep up the good work Niichan
(Review based on prologue ep7)

I really enjoyed this when I last played a year ago. I continued where I left of and it seems poorly written now, though I will assume it is me that changed. The author seem to be trying to make the story deeply emotional but it just doesn't hit because it never seems believable and it's not because of the fantasy parts.
Spoiler (but don't worry it's not that relevant to the story): In the scene where Emy is a 5 year old she's described as extremely intelligent and having done impressive things until then and her mother is very impressed about what she just said but she's just been saying stuff a lot of 5 year olds would say. After that her mother gets a disease and instead of it being a normal serious disease so that people can know that it's something that can happen, it's a disease which is not impossible but almost no one ever has, so in stead of me being worried about the character I'm going "Wait a minute, what?".
These details are not important to the story but they are important to immersion and it's miss after miss on that front which is a problem when you're trying to get the reader emotionally involved, which the author does seem to want to do.
The 2 stars are for the renders, which are decent.

Very Good Game . In this game there are some emotional scene and also comes with many mystery . Excellent game comes with good render nice graphics and animation . Characters are also very good especially Gwen and Emma .

Ok I really enjoyed playing this one. This is the first time I've tried one of NiiChan's work and I'm impressed so far. The story here is very interesting and all the characters are written very well. Yes few of them could've gone with more screen time but as far as the main girls are concerned, everyone has good characterization and most importantly depth. They're not like random NPC's but actually have their own different stories and arcs. Gotta say lily's backstory is just a massive lore dump without any development or connection to the story which is boring as hell.

Also I thought Gwen was the best girl but Emma clearly won me over with her sad backstory no jutsu tho her mother having cancer and all is pretty easy and cheap to get away with. It still gets you emotional nonetheless. The music is implemented well too and the renders are quite smooth and amazing. As of chapter 7, I see some inconsistencies in MC's character as in how he acts like a completely different person at time , and I'm also not particularly fond with his face design. Other than this nitpick, it's quite an enjoyable experience and let's see what the next update brings.

amazing update so far, I couldn't place the song in the trailer but then I realised Emmy cant communicate keep up the awesome work NiiChan, story is beautifully written and the models are simply adorable.

Interesting plot, and the characters are unique in their own ways. I rarely get immersed in reading the dialogues but I am never disappointed with this one. The choice of songs and the timing is just superb. Emy best girl <3