I booted this up expecting something weird and it still caught me off guard. The whole thing feels like it was animated on a busted VHS player someone found in a flooded basement, all flickery lines and colors that don't stay inside the outlines. Haruko's just there, no explanation, and honestly that's the most FLCL thing about this. The music loops are these muffled lo-fi beats that keep cutting out at random, like someone's tapping the aux cord with their foot. I spent way too long just watching her idle animation, that little sway she does where her skirt lifts just enough to make you lean forward. The art style is deliberately messy, sketch lines still visible, which somehow makes the whole thing feel more intimate than those hyper-polished games where everyone looks like a plastic doll.

The interaction system is barebones but the animations have this jittery quality that works. You click around and sometimes things happen, sometimes they don't. There's one scene where she pulls out her bass guitar, the Rickenbacker 4001, and the way she handles it is... look, I'm not saying I understand why that's hot but here we are. The physics are janky in a way that loops back around to being charming, her hair clipping through her shoulder during one of the more explicit sequences. The demo cuts off right when things get properly unhinged, which is either frustrating or perfectly on-brand for a series that never explains itself. I forgot to mention the sound design during the more intense moments, these distorted guitar riffs that sound like The Pillows recorded through a tin can. Actually no, I didn't forget, I just got distracted by how her expression barely changes even when things escalate. That deadpan look while everything goes chaotic around her, that's the character. The whole thing feels like a fever dream you'd have after falling asleep watching Adult Swim at 3AM, which I definitely didn't do. The demo tag is what it is, you get enough to know if you want more, and the rough edges somehow make the polished stuff feel boring in comparison.