Disclaimer: Everything is based on my opinion. I am not a hardcore VN reader, but I have read around ~20 VN titles. This review contains some minor spoiler hidden behind spoiler tags.
Also, did some translation criticisms. TL;DR at bottom.

Story length: 20-40 hours for all routes (Still depends on how fast you read, but this is a good estimate)

I'll start with the most important statement of the experience: Aokana is good.
It is one of the most well-received VNs for a lot of reasons. It has a fun engaging story.
School life, sci-fi, sports, all at once! You also don't see much sports-centric VN around.
It's a great VN overall.



Generally, the characters are interesting and unique; while some can be associated with a certain trope. Some characters are well-developed with reasonable backgrounds.

I personally think the MC, Masaya Hinata, has a weak back story. He basically exhibited PTSD at a young age after getting outsped by a newbie, though still enough to keep the plot going.
3 of 4 main heroine got their own interesting back story as well. The other heroine didn't have any compelling background.

At a point, it seemed to focus too much on Asuka for quite some time. It felt like she always had the preferential treatment, but it was not the case.
The common route eventually focused on specific characters and switched it around.

Every side character had at least minor role to fulfill in certain routes. Though 1 or 2 minor characters are almost at the point of being irrelevant; and the story won't change even if they were to be removed.

The main antagonist/nemesis has a weak motivation factor. The VN didn't explain why Saki Inui is so attached to Irina Avalon; and why Irina hates to have fun. Being the best at the sport just because you hate to have fun is a weak argument for a villain if you ask me.

I want to mention early that the art for this VN is really great. Most of the characters, especially the heroines, are clearly appealing and charming.
Even the side characters are attractive and expressive. Character sprites has numerous expressions and poses. CGs are wonderfully presented. Backgrounds are pleasant and clean. Color choices are vividly pleasing to the eye.
The skies and clouds deserve a special mention on how good they are drawn despite being easily overlooked. Chibi moments are cute too!

Though it doesn't go without any con. Some shading and shadows doesn't make any sense, especially on Shindou and Kasumi. For Shindou, you'd assume he was a villain because of the color and the dark aura he gives off but he's actually a nice guy. As for Kasumi, she has the darkest shading and shadows that goes with her edgy character design and attitude. After her "change of heart", her complexion and shading totally changed.
Some shadows doesn't make any sense when you're floating in air with direct sunlight on your skin.
For a VN that needs to represent positions in a 3D space, they did poorly in distinct representation of positions. It's hard to interpret the movements without the corresponding text.

Music is overall great and helps set the atmosphere and mood; but nothing worthy of making it into your playlist. Battle music that plays during matches also sets up the hype and intensity. Song tracks are well-timed for climax.
Sound effects are okay, nothing remarkable. The dog just doesn't sound like a dog.
I'd rate the soundtrack pretty high.


For a modern VN, it lacks some QoL features.
Though not really a big issue, UI has unlabeled buttons, and there are no tooltips when you hover cursor over them.
There are no key binds for basic features such as auto-play, quick save, load, etc.
There is no colored backplate nor fonts to easily associate who is speaking. It gets confusing at times, especially when you don't want to waste a glance on the name of the speaker.

Voice bookmark is an unnecessary feature but definitely a welcome one. I have saved 128/150 voice lines, and I can say it's a good thing. I've saved a lot of funny dialogues from Misaki

This VN has a feature of changing the language after a single key press. Pressing 'J' changes the language to Japanese; 'E' for English; "C" for Simplified Chinese; and 'T' for Traditional Chinese. This feature can help those people learning Japanese.

The game also offers 1440P Hi-Resolution assets, which isn't present in most modern VNs as most are still 720P.

The gallery is unlocked after finishing a single route. The gallery system is good with playback of specific scenes, huge number of CGs and videos, and music player.

An existing patch can be applied to the game files to unlock the Perfect Edition of the game which contains explicit content. Link will be in the comments

This part of the discussion is limited to the English translation of the original Japanese text

As for the translation quality, it generally seems okay, but I can't call it good.
There are several typos and some questionable decisions. Some lines are unexpectedly translated to give a different idea than the intended Japanese line; thus, changing the context. They added lines that weren't originally there. At times, it did the opposite and removed lines for no particular reason. It's difficult to properly follow the voice acting when the translation is that inconsistent. I know it's not possible to do that perfectly for every line but it can definitely be done better than this.

A few of the translation can only be understood with Japanese characters in mind. Most of the wordplay can't be translated to English, so the translator has to find the nearest English equivalent, which itself might give the wrong interpretation. There are a lot of lines where the translation just doesn't do the job of conveying what things were intended to be. Some context are lost in the process of translation. There is a few objectively wrong translation. Also, a lot of inconsistency in the way they translated some kanji to English. You just can't change the meaning of a kanji halfway after you introduced its translation.

Despite being a foreigner, Irina's Japanese isn't that broken nor bad; however, the English translation made it seem like that she's speaking broken Japanese by using broken English. This is not the case. The MC even made a remark on how good her Japanese is.

The translation is still passable. The plot is still told as it should be. Aside from wordplays, idioms, and jokes, I don't think you'll be missing anything else.

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Personal thoughts

• For something that talks a lot about physics, they are ignoring a lot of physics. Though I know this is sci-fi and they can go with whatever science they want. I just think there are numerous flaws once you start to think about it.
• For the Perfect Edition, there is a single explicit scene that wasn't present in any of the routes. You have to view it in the gallery to play the scene. I'm not sure why this is the case. (Link for Perfect Edition will be in the comments)
• Madoka Aoyagi's voice acting is great. Her VA definitely nailed that "responsible jester" character.
• How would you compare the heroines? Misaki > Asuka > Rika > Mashiro
• Best sprite - Hayato Shirase. He looks so damn cool
• I didn't encounter any bugs or crash
• Is it worth buying full price? Yes.
• Looking forward on getting Aokana EXTRA 1 and EXTRA 2

TL;DR Great art and music, good plot. If you're looking for your next VN, get Aokana.
Final rating: 8.5/10