Jack Jeanne Review

Review code used, with many thanks to MMPR.

Jack Jeanne follows with Kisa Tachibana. When Kisa was younger, she was doing plays with her older brother Tsuki and her childhood friend Soshiro. Years later, we find out her brother became a well-known graduate of a famous all-boys drama school Univeil. While Kisa would never admit it, her dream has always been to stand on stage like her brother. But since the school is for boys, Kisa thinks her dream will never come to fruition.
One day she meets a man who introduces himself as the headmaster of Univeil. He offers her the unique chance to attend the school, but she has to attend, pretending she is a boy.

At this point, you might be wondering, why is the game’s name Jack Jeanne? This was my first thought as well, so allow me to explain. Only men can attend Univeil, but they still need to have players who will perform female roles. So if a student is playing a man he is called Jack, if a student plays a woman they would be called Jeanne.

The captions of Onyx and Rhodonite going head to head

Univeil is divided into four different classes: Amber, Onyx, Rhodonite and Quartz. Onyx focuses mainly on dancing and is mainly a class with Jacks. The Rhodonite class is all about singing and comprises Jeanne’s. Quartz is the class where all the students go that don’t necessarily have good dancing or singing skills, so would be the most diverse. Amber can be described with just one word: Weird, and I will leave it at that. Months after Kisa has auditioned, she finds out she got accepted into Univeil and is sorted into the Quartz class. This is where the story starts.

The Performers

There are six routes in Jack Jeanne, and they are all playable right from the start. There also isn’t a fixed route order to the game, so you could just do whatever you are feeling or you could keep with the order the game gives you which is: Suzu Orimaki > Soshiro Yonaga > Mitsuki Shirota > Sarafumi Takashina > Kai Mutsumi > Neji Kokuto.

Suzu Orimaki

He is the first person who makes friends with Kisa and right away they hit it off. Partly because of Suzu’s likeable personality. Suzu is that typical best friend type in the story, he really reminded me of Kazuma in Lover Pretend. Like Soshiro he is all about motivating his fellow peers and helping everyone out. But in contrast, Suzu is more of an extrovert and inserts himself in situations. When I think of Suzu I think of the athletes in school, sort of a Troy Bolton from High School Musical with his sports career and his acting.

In Univeil, Suzu is clumsy and often forgets lines but he is a hard worker and won’t stop until his task is fulfilled. From the start, Suzu is pretty protective of Kisa and of course, he doesn’t know why in the beginning. I think they had a decent amount of chemistry from very early on in the game and I enjoyed them together more than I thought I would.

Soshiro Yonaga

He is Kisa’s childhood friend and the only one who knows her secret. Sou (short for Soshiro) very much looks up to Kisa and is always there to help his friends in any way he can. His personality is just so pure in every way. He is kind, gentle and always ready to help others in any situation. Sometimes I wished he was more assertive, most of the time I am not such a fan of men like Soshiro.

His story is really about him finding his way into becoming the performer and keeping up with the rest, whether that is as a Jack or Jeanne. He struggles more than the others in the first years. Of course, being to only one who knows about Kisa’s secret does not mean they have more romance in the game. There was a decent amount of romance, but this route mostly focussed on Sou’s jealousy of his love interest which is an interesting take in an otome game.

Btw, one of his interactions with Kisa and Suzy really shook me. My eyes went wide with shock for a second. It was so unlike him, but very good for the story.

Mitsuki Shirota

Mitsuki is the only main character in the second year of Quartz. He is the best singer in Quartz and often helps with singing lessons and is excited about anything that has to do with him singing. This character’s gender tripped me up the most because most of the time, I forgot Mitsuki was a man. As you might have guessed, he mostly played Jeanne’s roles at Univeil.

Mitsuki will mostly act disinterested or a bit standoffish. He can also come across as lazy. He will just watch the rest of Quartz and give snide comments here and there. But we quickly find out he has a lot of heart for Quartz and is just as motivated as the rest of his class.

His relationship was not so much romantic as it was more on a best-friends basis. Kisa has to work to get through Mitsuki’s walls, but once that happens, we get to see a whole new side to him, which I really liked.

Sarafumi Takashina

Sarafumi, or Fumi for short, is the best and most elegant dancer in Quartz. He is also one of the third years at Univeil and the Al Jeanne of Quartz. Fumi has also performed multiple times with Kisa’s brother Tsuki, leaving him seeking the same thrill in performances that he had with Tsuki. Growing up in a traditional Japanese family, his family had a lot of expectations for him, and he eventually left to attend Univeil. Fumi’s attitude is pretty laid-back, and he often makes flirty comments towards Kisa to see her reaction. He is also very intelligent and intuitive.

At the start of the game, I didn’t know what to think of him quite yet. Because he was a trained dancer, I figured he would be girly and sort of a snob. But further into the game, I was proved wrong, and I actually did fall for him a little bit, okay, maybe a lot.

He and Kisa had a good dynamic where he admired her, and they pushed each other to become the best performers and could be free in their acting. Furthermore, their romantic relationship was mostly flirty and Fumi took the lead with his flirty attitude. This “route” was definitely my second favourite.

Kai Mutsumi

He is the Jack Ace of Quartz and often plays with Fumi in performances. Kai is a third year at Univeil and, in the common routes, spends time coaching the first years on acting in Jack roles. At the weekend, you can often find him with orphan children at the church where he teaches the kids about acting. Kai is very kind to everyone and is always willing to help classmates with their acting. But behind his quiet mask, he has no self-confidence and believes he performs only to make his partners shine. His journey in the game is about him finding his confidence and believing he himself is also a star.

Immediately I knew Kai would be my favourite, I always like the tall, dark and handsome types. I mean, can you blame me…

His route did get more emotional than some other routes, but it was a good change of pace. Also, their relationship made my heart beat faster a couple of times, and I found him just so endearing and lovable. Anyway, in short, the best route for me.

Neji Kokuto

The last third-year student is Neji. He plays both Jack and Jeanne roles, but his main task in the performances is coming up and writing the scripts for the plays. Most of the time, Neji would remind me of a crazy scientist, with him coming up with these crazy scripts. Aside from the scripts, he is also the director of the plays. He has a very eccentric personality that doesn’t change throughout the game. Neji can sometimes seem a little mean because he likes to really challenge his actors and make them think hard about their roles. Basically, he asks them for the impossible sometimes.

Okay, so this route has a lot to unpack. This was such a rollercoaster of emotions, and now I understand why it was the “final” route. Of course, no eccentric character can ever be just that, eccentric. Neji actually has a really deep back story, and I was fascinated when reading it. This route had a fair amount of romance overall, and I think the ending was probably the most special in a romantic way.

Visuals and Sound

As advertised, the visuals for Jack Jeanne are made by Ishida Sui, who is known for the well-known Tokyo Ghoul. And it definitely brought an interesting new flavour to the CGs (Computer Graphs) in the otome world.

The CG had a watercolour style with a mixture of bright and light colours to make the images smooth and dreamlike. The images also had a lot of movement in them due to them being in acting school, but they also made the story come alive. To be honest, I was not really into the art style at first, but as the game got further along, I started noticing all these details and really ended up liking it.

The Quartz class at the summer performance

The soundtrack gave off a prep school vibe, which Univeil obviously is. It was nice but not super memorable for me. But where the music shines in the game is in the music for the performances. The developers have come up with a lot of different songs for all of the performances, and I could appreciate the fact that they all fit the themes of the plays. Loving the songs also made it easier to play the rhythm games because I would move around with the beat.

System

Okay, so there is a lot to unpack if we’re talking about the system of the game.

Parameter raising

Every day in Jack Jeanne you have to pick a skill to level up; this is also directly linked to the affection levels of the Quartz students. So for Fumi, it is the colour red, which is Agility and For Suzu the colour orange for Run.

A handy trick I, unfortunately, found out at about 90% into the game is the ability to pick a skill to work on for the entire week by holding R and selecting a skill. This way, you don’t have to pick a skill every single day like I did.

On the parameter raising screen, we also have a health bar that you have to keep track of, because when you have no health left, your skills won’t be able to level up because you will fail your classes.

Rhythm game

During your training at Univeil and during the performances, you will need to do some rhythm games in order to win first place at the school performances. There are two types of rhythm games, the first one is singing, and the second one is dancing. The games have three difficulty levels: “NORMAL”, “HARD” and for the people that want a challenge, the is “EXPORT’ mode. Although the game itself does not care which mode you choose, you do have to get SS rank on at least one performance to get first place.

So, this is embarrassing, but I saw people online saying that they could do the “NORMAL” mode even with their eyes closed. So maybe it’s just me, but I did struggle with the dancing games sometimes. I did always manage to get an SS rank, but still, it could be stressful sometimes 😂.

Weekend events

When it’s the weekend, Kisa, of course has free time. On these two days, you can pick either: Go Out or Stay In and rest. Resting will replenish your health. And if you decide to Go Out, you can spend your day with a character of your choice. If we are talking affection raising, this would be the perfect opportunity to pick the character you’re aiming for.

Sometimes there is an exclamation mark next to the character; these are affection events that happen before the actual route of the character starts. These scenes also include CGs.

Overall Thoughts

Jack Jeanne was really not what I expected it to be. I like to go into Otome games blindly, so I was surprised by the story and system. The biggest difference with this game is that it is not your traditional Otome game, it focuses much more on gathering accomplishments, upping your skills and forming meaningful connections with the other characters. So If you are looking for a game with a lot of romance, then this isn’t the game for you. I would say that about 80 to 90% of the game is the common route, and the rest is about the chosen character. It also took me a long time to even finish the common route; this could also be because of the fact that while playing this game, I was finishing my graduation assignment in real life and didn’t have loads of time to play it.

Jack Jeanne has a lot of good elements in the game. The first one is the story; it was a detailed and well-thought-out storyline. In the beginning, it did start off a little slow, but after the first performance, the ball started rolling. The second part, where the game really shines, is the characters. Each character had their own personality, and it was really fleshed out, and further along in the game, they all have their own character developments. Personally, I would recommend the game to people based on the characters alone.

There is just one downside for me with Jack Jeanne and that is, as mentioned before, the length of the common route. I understand why it has the length that it has, but I have to admit I struggled to keep playing it for longer periods at a time. I guess going into the characters’ routes faster is just more my speed.

Conclusion

I find it difficult to rate Jack Jeanne because I just could never really get into it, due to my own busy personal life at that moment. But looking at all the great elements this game has: visuals, music, characters and the story, I can recognize that this is a great and unique game, and definitely an innovative step for otome games. I would recommend that everyone gives it a try because there is something for everyone in Jack Jeanne.

Final verdict: I like it a lot